Of course, I knew that that was bad and wicked and unkind to Mother, and she’d feel so grieved not to have me satisfied with her.  And I wouldn’t have told her of it for the world.  So I tried just as hard as I could to forget him—­on account of Mother, so as to be loyal to her.  And I did ’most forget him by the time I’d got home.  But it all came back again a little later when we were unpacking my trunk.

You see, Mother found the two new white dresses, and the dear little shoes.  I knew then, of course, that she’d have to know all—­I mean, how she hadn’t pleased Father, even after all her pains trying to have me go as Mary.

“Why, Marie, what in the world is this?” she demanded, holding up one of the new dresses.

I could have cried.

I suppose she saw by my face how awfully I felt ’cause she’d found it.  And, of course, she saw something was the matter; and she thought it was—­

Well, the first thing I knew she was looking at me in her very sternest, sorriest way, and saying: 

“Oh, Marie, how could you?  I’m ashamed of you!  Couldn’t you wear the Mary dresses one little three months to please your father?”

I did cry, then.  After all I’d been through, to have her accuse me of getting those dresses!  Well, I just couldn’t stand it.  And I told her so as well as I could, only I was crying so by now that I could hardly speak.  I told her how it was hard enough to be Mary part of the time, and Marie part of the time, when I knew what they wanted me to be.  But when she tried to have me Mary while he wanted me Marie, and he tried to have me Marie while she wanted me Mary—­I did not know what they wanted; and I wished I had never been born unless I could have been born a plain Susie or Bessie, or Annabelle, and not a Mary Marie that was all mixed up till I didn’t know what I was.

And then I cried some more.

Mother dropped the dress then, and took me in her arms over on the couch, and she said, “There, there,” and that I was tired and nervous, and all wrought up, and to cry all I wanted to.  And by and by, when I was calmer I could tell Mother all about it.

And I did.

I told her how hard I tried to be Mary all the way up to Andersonville and after I got there; and how then I found out, all of a sudden one day, that father had got ready for Marie, and he didn’t want me to be Mary, and that was why he had got Cousin Grace and the automobile and the geraniums in the window, and, oh, everything that made it nice and comfy and homey.  And then is when they bought me the new white dresses and the little white shoes.  And I told Mother, of course, it was lovely to be Marie, and I liked it, only I knew she would feel bad to think, after all her pains to make me Mary, Father didn’t want me Mary at all.

“I don’t think you need to worry—­about that,” stammered Mother.  And when I looked at her, her face was all flushed, and sort of queer, but not a bit angry.  And she went on in the same odd little shaky voice:  “But, tell me, why—­why did—­your father want you to be Marie and not Mary?”