u!"

"I told him that I knew I was acting badly," Martie said, "I said that
I felt terribly about it. I even cried--I'm not proud of myself, Pa!
And he asked me to think it over, and not to worry about postponing the
wedding, and--I think he was tremendously surprised, but he didn't say
one unkind word!"

"Well, he should have, then," Malcolm said harshly. "And you are a
fortunate woman if, when it suits your high-and-mightiness to come to
your senses, he doesn't take his turn to jilt YOU! On my word, I never
heard anything like it! What possesses you is more than I can
understand. You deliberately bring unhappiness down on your family, and
act as if you were proud of yourself! I don't pretend to be perfect,
but all my life I have given my children generously--"

"Pa," Martie said suddenly, "I wonder if you believe that!" She stood
up now, facing him, her breath coming quickly. It seemed to Martie that
she had been waiting all her life to say this: hoping for the
opportunity, years ago, dreading the necessity now. "I wonder if you
believe," she said, trembling a little, "that you--and half the other
fathers and mothers in the world--are really in the right! I didn't ask
to be born; Sally didn't ask to be born. We didn't choose our sex. We
came and we grew up, and went to school, and we had clothing and food
enough. But then--THEN!--when we must really begin to live, you
suddenly failed us. Oh, you aren't different from other fathers, Pa.
It's just that you don't understand! What help had we then in forming
human relationships? When did you ever tell us why this young man was a
possible husband, and that one was not? I wanted to work, I wanted to
be a nurse, or a bookkeeper--you laughed at me! I had a bitter
experience--an experience that you could have spared me, and Lydia
before me, if you had cared!--and I had a girl's hell to bear; I had to
go about among my friends ASHAMED! You didn't comfort me; you didn't
tell me that if I learned a little French, and brushed up my hair, and
bought white shoes, the NEXT young man wouldn't throw me over for a
prettier and more accomplished woman! You were ashamed of me! Sally,
just as ignorant as Teddy is this minute, dashed into marriage; she was
afraid, as I was, of being a dependent old maid! She married a good
man--but that wasn't your doing! I married a bad man, a man whose
selfishness and cruelty ruined all my young days, crushed the youth
right out of me, and he might be