Mary Marie | Page 7

her own rooms. But of course she saw how things was goin'. Besides, I told her--some. 'T was no more than my duty, as I looked at it. She just worshipped your pa, an' naturally she'd want things right for him. So one day she told me to tell her son's wife to come to her in her room.
"An' I did, an' she came. Poor little thing! I couldn't help bein' sorry for her. She didn't know a thing of what was wanted of her, an' she was so glad an' happy to come. You see, she was lonesome, I suppose.
"'Me? Want me?--Mother Anderson?' she cried. 'Oh, I'm so glad!' Then she made it worse by runnin' up the stairs an' bouncin' into the room like a rubber ball, an' cryin': 'Now, what shall I do, read to you, or sing to you, or shall we play games? I'd love to do any of them!' Just like that, she said it. I heard her. Then I went out, of course, an' left them. But I heard 'most everything that was said, just the same, for I was right in the next room dustin', and the door wasn't quite shut.
"First your grandmother said real polite--she was always polite--but in a cold little voice that made even me shiver in the other room, that she did not desire to be read to or sung to, and that she did not wish to play games. She had called her daughter-in-law in to have a serious talk with her. Then she told her, still very polite, that she was noisy an' childish, an' undignified, an' that it was not only silly, but very wrong for her to expect to have her husband's entire attention; that he had his own work, an' it was a very important one. He was going to be president of the college some day, like his father before him; an' it was her place to help him in every way she could--help him to be popular an' well-liked by all the college people an' students; an' he couldn't be that if she insisted all the time on keepin' him to herself, or lookin' sour an' cross if she couldn't have him.
"Of course that ain't all she said; but I remember this part particular on account of what happened afterward. You see--your ma--she felt awful bad. She cried a little, an' sighed a lot, an' said she'd try, she really would try to help her husband in every way she could; an' she wouldn't ask him another once, not once, to stay with her. An' she wouldn't look sour an' cross, either. She'd promise she wouldn't. An' she'd try, she'd try, oh, so hard, to be proper an' dignified.
"She got up then an' went out of the room so quiet an' still you wouldn't know she was movin'. But I heard her up in her room cryin' half an hour later, when I stopped a minute at her door to see if she was there. An' she was.
"But she wasn't cryin' by night. Not much she was! She'd washed her face an' dressed herself up as pretty as could be, an' she never so much as looked as if she wanted her husband to stay with her, when he said right after supper that he guessed he'd go out to the observatory. An' 't was that way right along after that. I know, 'cause I watched. You see, I knew what she'd said she'd do. Well, she did it.
"Then, pretty quick after that, she began to get acquainted in the town. Folks called, an' there was parties an' receptions where she met folks, an' they began to come here to the house, 'specially them students, an' two or three of them young, unmarried professors. An' she began to go out a lot with them--skatin' an' sleigh-ridin' an' snowshoein'.
"Like it? Of course she liked it! Who wouldn't? Why, child, you never saw such a fuss as they made over your ma in them days. She was all the rage; an' of course she liked it. What woman wouldn't, that was gay an' lively an' young, an' had been so lonesome like your ma had? But some other folks didn't like it. An' your pa was one of them. This time 't was him that made the trouble. I know, 'cause I heard what he said one day to her in the library.
"Yes, I guess I was in the next room that day, too--er--dustin', probably. Anyway, I heard him tell your ma good an' plain what he thought of her gallivantin' 'round from mornin' till night with them young students an' professors, an' havin' them here, too, such a lot, till the house was fairly overrun with them. He said he was shocked