“And so your mother—­did that,” Father muttered; and there was the queer little catch in his breath again.

He didn’t say any more, not a single word.  And after a minute he got up and went into the house.  But he didn’t go into the library where Mrs. Small and Cousin Grace were talking.  He went straight upstairs to his own room and shut the door.  I heard it.  And he was still there when I went up to bed afterwards.

Well, I guess he doesn’t feel any worse than I do.  I thought at first it was funny, a good joke—­his trying to have me Marie while Mother was making me over into Mary.  But I see now that it isn’t.  It’s awful.  Why, how am I going to know at all who to be—­now?  Before, I used to know just when to be Mary, and when to be Marie—­Mary with Father, Marie with Mother.  Now I don’t know at all.  Why, they can’t even seem to agree on that!  I suppose it’s just some more of that incompatibility business showing up even when they are apart.  And poor me—­I have to suffer for it.  I’m beginning to see that the child does suffer—­I mean the child of unlikes.

Now, look at me right now—­about my clothes, for instance. (Of course clothes are a little thing, you may think; but I don’t think anything’s little that’s always with you like clothes are!) Well, here all summer, and even before I came, I’ve been wearing stuffy gingham and clumpy shoes to please Father.  And Father isn’t pleased at all.  He wanted me to wear the Marie things.

And there you are.

How do you suppose Mother’s going to feel when I tell her that after all her pains Father didn’t like it at all.  He wanted me to be Marie.  It’s a shame, after all the pains she took.  But I won’t write it to her, anyway.  Maybe I won’t have to tell her, unless she asks me.

But I know it.  And, pray, what am I to do?  Of course, I can act like Marie here all right, if that is what folks want. (I guess I have been doing it a good deal of the time, anyway, for I kept forgetting that I was Mary.) But I can’t wear Marie, for I haven’t a single Marie thing here.  They’re all Mary.  That’s all I brought.

Oh, dear suz me!  Why couldn’t Father and Mother have been just the common live-happy-ever-after kind, or else found out before they married that they were unlikes?

* * * * *

September.

Well, vacation is over, and I go back to Boston to-morrow.  It’s been very nice and I’ve had a good time, in spite of being so mixed up as to whether I was Mary or Marie.  It wasn’t so bad as I was afraid it would be.  Very soon after Father and I had that talk on the piazza, Cousin Grace took me down to the store and bought me two new white dresses, and the dearest little pair of shoes I ever saw.  She said Father wanted me to have them.

And that’s all—­every single word that’s been said about that Mary-and-Marie business.  And even that didn’t really say anything—­not by name.  And Cousin Grace never mentioned it again.  And Father never mentioned it at all.  Not a word.