I don’t remember what I said exactly.  But I know I hurried on and said it fast, so as to get in all I could before he interrupted; for he had interrupted right at the first with an exclamation; and I knew he was going to say more right away, just as soon as he got a chance.  And I didn’t want him to get a chance till I’d said what I wanted to.  But I hadn’t anywhere near said what I wanted to when he did stop me.  Why, he almost jumped out of his chair.

“Mary!” he gasped.  “What in the world are you talking about?”

“Why, Father, I was telling you,” I explained.  And I tried to be so cool and calm that it would make him calm and cool, too. (But it didn’t calm him or cool him one bit.) “It’s about when you’re married, and—­”

“Married!” he interrupted again. (They never let me interrupt like that!)

“To Cousin Grace—­yes.  But, Father, you—­you are going to marry Cousin Grace, aren’t you?” I cried—­and I did ’most cry, for I saw by his face that he was not.

“That is not my present intention,” he said.  His lips came together hard, and he looked over his shoulder to see if Cousin Grace was coming back.

“But you’re going to sometime,” I begged him.

“I do not expect to.”  Again he looked over his shoulder to see if she was coming.  I looked, too, and we both saw through the window that she had gone into the library and lighted up and was sitting at the table reading.

I fell back in my chair, and I know I looked grieved and hurt and disappointed, as I almost sobbed: 

“Oh, Father, and when I thought you were going to!”

“There, there, child!” He spoke, stern and almost cross now.  “This absurd, nonsensical idea has gone quite far enough.  Let us think no more about it.”

“It isn’t absurd and nonsensical!” I cried.  And I could hardly say the words, I was choking up so.  “Everybody said you were going to, and I wrote Mother so; and—­”

“You wrote that to your mother?” He did jump from his chair this time.

“Yes; and she was glad.”

“Oh, she was!” He sat down sort of limp-like and queer.

“Yes.  She said she was glad you’d found an estimable woman to make a home for you.”

“Oh, she did.”  He said this, too, in that queer, funny, quiet kind of way.

“Yes.”  I spoke, decided and firm.  I’d begun to think, all of a sudden, that maybe he didn’t appreciate Mother as much as she did him; and I determined right then and there to make him, if I could.  When I remembered all the lovely things she’d said about him—­

“Father,” I began; and I spoke this time, even more decided and firm.  “I don’t believe you appreciate Mother.”

“Eh?  What?”

He made me jump this time, he turned around with such a jerk, and spoke so sharply.  But in spite of the jump I still held on to my subject, firm and decided.