The next evening he took me out to the observatory to see the stars.  That was lovely.  Honestly I had a perfectly beautiful time, and I think Father did, too.  He wasn’t stiff and polite one bit.  Oh, I don’t mean that he was impolite or rude.  It’s just that he wasn’t stiff as if I was company.  And he was so happy with his stars and his telescope, and so glad to show them to me—­oh, I had a beautiful time, and I told him so; and he looked real pleased.  But Aunt Jane came for me before I’d had half enough, and I had to go to bed.

The next morning I thought he’d be different, somehow, because we’d had such a lovely time together the night before.  But he wasn’t.  He just said, “Good-morning, Mary,” and began to read his paper.  And he read his paper all through breakfast without saying another word to me.  Then he got up and went into the library, and I never saw him again all day except at dinner-time and supper-time, and then he didn’t talk to me.

But after supper he took me out again to see the stars, and he was just as nice and friendly as could be.  Not a bit like a man that’s only a father by order of the court.  But the next day—!

Well—­and that’s the way it’s been all the week.  And that’s why I say he’s been so queer.  One minute he’ll be just as nice and folksy as you could ask anybody to be, and the very next he’s looking right through you as if he didn’t see you at all, and you wonder and wonder what’s the matter, and if you’ve done anything to displease him.

Sometimes he seems almost glad and happy, and then he’ll look so sorry and sad!

I just can’t understand my father at all.

* * * * *

Another week later.

I’m so excited I don’t know what to do.  The most wonderful thing has happened.  I can’t hardly believe it yet myself.  Yet it’s so.  My trunk is all packed, and I’m to go home to-morrow. To-morrow!

This is the way it happened.

Mother wrote Aunt Jane and asked if I might not be allowed to come home for the opening of school in September.  She said she understood quite well that she had no right to ask this, and, of course, if they saw fit, they were entirely within their rights to refuse to allow me to go until the allotted time.  But that she could not help asking it for my sake, on account of the benefit to be derived from being there at the opening of the school year.

Of course, I didn’t know Mother was going to write this.  But she knew all about the school here, and how I came out, and everything.  I’ve always told Mother everything that has happened.  Oh, of course, I haven’t written “every few minutes,” as she asked me to. (That was a joke, anyway, of course.) But I have written every few days, and, as I said before, I told her everything.

Well, when the letter came I took it to Aunt Jane myself; and I was crazy to know what was in it, for I recognized the writing, of course.  But Aunt Jane didn’t tell me.  She opened it, read it, kind of flushed up, and said, “Humph!  The idea!” under her breath, and put the letter in her pocket.