And I believe it is Cousin Grace.  She never looks at you in Aunt Jane’s I’m-amazed-at-you way.  And she laughs herself a lot, and sings and plays, too—­real pretty lively things; not just hymn tunes.  And the house is different.  There are four geraniums in the dining-room window, and the parlor is open every day.  The wax flowers are there, but the hair wreath and the coffin plate are gone.  Cousin Grace doesn’t dress like Aunt Jane, either.  She wears pretty white and blue dresses, and her hair is curly and fluffy.

And so I think all this is why I keep forgetting to be Mary.  But, of course, I understand that Father expects me to be Mary, and so I try to remember—­only I can’t.  Why, I couldn’t even show him how much I knew about the stars.  I tried to the other night.  I went out to the observatory where he was, and asked him questions about the stars.  I tried to seem interested, and was going to tell him how I’d been studying about them, but he just laughed kind of funny, and said not to bother my pretty head about such things, but to come in and play to him on the piano.

So, of course, I did.  And he sat and listened to three whole pieces.  Now, wasn’t that funny?

* * * * *

Two weeks later.

I understand it all now—­everything:  why the house is different, and Father, and everything.  And it is Cousin Grace, and it is a love story.

Father is in love with her.

Now I guess I shall have something for this book!

It seems funny now that I didn’t think of it at first.  But I didn’t—­not until I heard Nellie and her beau talking about it.  Nellie said she wasn’t the only one in the house that was going to get married.  And when he asked her what she meant, she said it was Dr. Anderson and Mrs. Whitney.  That anybody could see it that wasn’t as blind as a bat.

My, but wasn’t I excited?  I just guess I was.  And, of course, I saw then that I had been blind as a bat.  But I began to open my eyes after that, and watch—­not disagreeably, you know, but just glad and interested, and on account of the book.

And I saw: 

That father stayed in the house a lot more than he used to.

That he talked more.

That he never thundered—­I mean spoke stern and uncompromising to
Cousin Grace the way he used to to Aunt Jane.

That he smiled more.

That he wasn’t so absent-minded at meals and other times, but seemed to know we were there—­Cousin Grace and I.

That he actually asked Cousin Grace and me to play for him several times.

That he went with us to the Sunday-School picnic. (I never saw Father at a picnic before, and I don’t believe he ever saw himself at one.)

That—­oh, I don’t know, but a whole lot of little things that I can’t remember; but they were all unmistakable, very unmistakable.  And I wondered, when I saw it all, that I had been as blind as a bat before.