And he is awfully nice.  He brought me a perfectly beautiful bracelet the other day—­but Mother wouldn’t let me keep it.  So he had to take it back.  I don’t think he liked it very well, and I didn’t like it, either.  I wanted that bracelet.  But Mother says I’m much too young to wear much jewelry.  Oh, will the time ever come when I’ll be old enough to take my proper place in the world?  Sometimes it seems as if it never would!

Well, as I said, it’s plain to be seen who it is that Grandfather and Aunt Hattie favor; but I’m not so sure about Mother.  Mother acts funny.  Sometimes she won’t go with either of them anywhere; then she seems to want to go all the time.  And she acts as if she didn’t care which she went with, so long as she was just going—­somewhere.  I think, though, she really likes the violinist the best; and I guess Grandfather and Aunt Hattie think so, too.

Something happened last night.  Grandfather began to talk at the dinner-table.  He’d heard something he didn’t like about the violinist, I guess, and he started in to tell Mother.  But they stopped him.  Mother and Aunt Hattie looked at him and then at me, and then back to him, in their most see-who’s-here!—­you-mustn’t-talk-before-her way.  So he shrugged his shoulders and stopped.

But I guess he told them in the library afterwards, for I heard them all talking very excitedly, and some loud; and I guess Mother didn’t like what they said, and got quite angry, for I heard her say, when she came out through the door, that she didn’t believe a word of it, and she thought it was a wicked, cruel shame to tell stories like that just because they didn’t like a man.

This morning she broke an engagement with Mr. Easterbrook to go auto-riding and went with the violinist to a morning musicale instead; and after she’d gone Aunt Hattie sighed and looked at Grandfather and shrugged her shoulders, and said she was afraid they’d driven her straight into the arms of the one they wanted to avoid, and that Madge always would take the part of the under dog.

I suppose they thought I wouldn’t understand.  But I did, perfectly.  They meant that by telling stories about the violinist they’d been hoping to get her to give him up, but instead of that, they’d made her turn to him all the more, just because she was so sorry for him.

Funny, isn’t it?

* * * * *

One week later.

Well, I guess now something has happened all right!  And let me say right away that I don’t like that violinist now, either, any better than Grandfather and Aunt Hattie.  And it’s not entirely because of what happened last night, either.  It’s been coming on for quite a while—­ever since I first saw him talking to Theresa in the hall when she let him in one night a week ago.

Theresa is awfully pretty, and I guess he thinks, so.  Anyhow, I heard him telling her so in the hall, and she laughed and blushed and looked sideways at him.  Then they saw me, and he stiffened up and said, very proper and dignified, “Kindly hand my card to Mrs. Anderson.”  And Theresa said, “Yes, sir.”  And she was very proper and dignified, too.