t a bit interesting--for
this novel, I mean--nor with any of the others, either. In fact, I'm
afraid there isn't much chance now of Mother's having a love story to
make this book right. Only the other day I heard her tell Grandfather
and Aunt Hattie that _all_ men were a delusion and a snare. Oh, she
laughed as she said it. But she was in earnest, just the same. I could
see that. And she doesn't seem to care much for any of the different
men that come to see her. She seems to ever so much rather stay with
me. In fact, she stays with me a lot these days--almost all the time
I'm out of school, indeed. And she talks with me--oh, she talks with
me about lots of things. (I love to have her talk with me. You know
there's a lot of difference between talking _with_ folks and _to_
folks. Now, Father always talks _to_ folks.)

One day it was about getting married that Mother talked with me, and
I said I was so glad that when you didn't like being married, or got
tired of your husband, you could get _un_married, just as she did, and
go back home and be just the same as you were before.

But Mother didn't like that, at all. She said no, no, and that I
mustn't talk like that, and that you _couldn't_ go back and be the
same. And that she'd found it out. That she used to think you could.
But you couldn't. She said it was like what she read once, that you
couldn't really be the same any more than you could put the dress you
were wearing back on the shelf in the store, and expect it to turn
back into a fine long web of cloth all folded up nice and tidy, as it
was in the first place. And, of course, you couldn't do that--after
the cloth was all cut up into a dress!

She said more things, too; and after Father's letter came she said
still more. Oh, and I haven't told yet about the letter, have I? Well,
I will now.

As I said at first, Mother brought it in and handed it over to me,
saying she guessed it was from Father. And I could see she was
wondering what could be in it. But I guess she wasn't wondering any
more than _I_ was, only I was gladder to get it than she was, I
suppose. Anyhow, when she saw _how_ glad I was, and how I jumped for
the letter, she drew back, and looked somehow as if she'd been hurt,
and said:

"I did not know, Marie, that a letter from--your father would mean so
much to you."

I don't know what I did say to that. I guess I didn't say anything.
I'd already begun to read the letter, and I was in such a hurry