“An’ so your ma just had to mope it out alone.  Oh, I don’t mean your pa was unkind.  He was always nice an’ polite, when he was in the house, an’ I’m sure he meant to treat her all right.  He said yes, yes, to be sure, of course she was lonesome, an’ he was sorry.  ’T was too bad he was so busy.  An’ he kissed her an’ patted her.  But he always began right away to talk of the comet; an’ ten to one he didn’t disappear into the observatory within the next five minutes.  Then your ma would look so grieved an’ sorry an’ go off an’ cry, an’ maybe not come down to dinner, at all.

“Well, then, one day things got so bad your grandma took a hand.  She was up an’ around the house, though she kept mostly to her own rooms.  But of course she saw how things was goin’.  Besides, I told her—­some.  ’T was no more than my duty, as I looked at it.  She just worshipped your pa, an’ naturally she’d want things right for him.  So one day she told me to tell her son’s wife to come to her in her room.

“An’ I did, an’ she came.  Poor little thing!  I couldn’t help bein’ sorry for her.  She didn’t know a thing of what was wanted of her, an’ she was so glad an’ happy to come.  You see, she was lonesome, I suppose.

“‘Me?  Want me?—­Mother Anderson?’ she cried.  ‘Oh, I’m so glad!’ Then she made it worse by runnin’ up the stairs an’ bouncin’ into the room like a rubber ball, an’ cryin’:  ’Now, what shall I do, read to you, or sing to you, or shall we play games?  I’d love to do any of them!’ Just like that, she said it.  I heard her.  Then I went out, of course, an’ left them.  But I heard ’most everything that was said, just the same, for I was right in the next room dustin’, and the door wasn’t quite shut.

“First your grandmother said real polite—­she was always polite—­but in a cold little voice that made even me shiver in the other room, that she did not desire to be read to or sung to, and that she did not wish to play games.  She had called her daughter-in-law in to have a serious talk with her.  Then she told her, still very polite, that she was noisy an’ childish, an’ undignified, an’ that it was not only silly, but very wrong for her to expect to have her husband’s entire attention; that he had his own work, an’ it was a very important one.  He was going to be president of the college some day, like his father before him; an’ it was her place to help him in every way she could—­help him to be popular an’ well-liked by all the college people an’ students; an’ he couldn’t be that if she insisted all the time on keepin’ him to herself, or lookin’ sour an’ cross if she couldn’t have him.

“Of course that ain’t all she said; but I remember this part particular on account of what happened afterward.  You see—­your ma—­she felt awful bad.  She cried a little, an’ sighed a lot, an’ said she’d try, she really would try to help her husband in every way she could; an’ she wouldn’t ask him another once, not once, to stay with her.  An’ she wouldn’t look sour an’ cross, either.  She’d promise she wouldn’t.  An’ she’d try, she’d try, oh, so hard, to be proper an’ dignified.