fter we came back to
Andersonville. I can see now, as I look back at it, that Father and
Mother were doing everything in their power to blot out of my memory
those unhappy years of my childhood. For that matter, they were also
doing everything in their power to blot out of their _own_ memories
those same unhappy years. To me, as I look back at it, it seems
that they must have succeeded wonderfully. They were very happy, I
believe--Father and Mother.

Oh, it was not always easy--even I could see that. It took a lot of
adjusting--a lot of rubbing off of square corners to keep the daily
life running smoothly. But when two persons are determined that it
shall run smoothly--when each is steadfastly looking to the _other's_
happiness, not at his own--why, things just can't help smoothing out
then. But it takes them both. One can't do it alone. Now, if Jerry
would only--

But it isn't time to speak of Jerry yet.

I'll go back to my girlhood.

It was a trying period--it must have been--for Father and Mother, in
spite of their great love for me, and their efforts to create for me
a happiness that would erase the past from my mind. I realize it now.
For, after all, I was just a girl--a young girl, like other girls;
high-strung, nervous, thoughtless, full of my whims and fancies; and,
in addition, with enough of my mother and enough of my father within
me to make me veritably a cross-current and a contradiction, as I had
said that I was in the opening sentence of my childish autobiography.

I had just passed my sixteenth birthday when we all came back to live
in Andersonville. For the first few months I suspect that just the
glory and the wonder and joy of living in the old home, with Father
and Mother _happy together_, was enough to fill all my thoughts. Then,
as school began in the fall, I came down to normal living again, and
became a girl--just a growing girl in her teens.

How patient Mother was, and Father, too! I can see now how gently and
tactfully they helped me over the stones and stumbling-blocks that
strew the pathway of every sixteen-year-old girl who thinks, because
she has turned down her dresses and turned up her hair, that she is
grown up, and can do and think and talk as she pleases.

I well remember how hurt and grieved and superior I was at Mother's
insistence upon more frequent rubbers and warm coats, and fewer
ice-cream sodas and chocolate bonbons. Why, surely I was old enough
_now_ to take care of m