Mary Marie | Page 5

he was a hopeless old bachelor and wouldn't ever marry.
He was bound up in his stars, even then, and was already beginning to
be famous, because of a comet he'd discovered. He was a professor in

our college here, where his father had been president. His father had
just died a few months before, and Nurse said maybe that was one
reason why Father got caught in the matrimonial net like that. (Those
are her words, not mine. The idea of calling my mother a net! But
Nurse never did half appreciate Mother.) But Father just worshipped
his father, and they were always together--Grandma being sick so much;
and so when he died my father was nearly beside himself, and that's
one reason they were so anxious he should go to that meeting in Boston.
They thought it might take his mind off himself, Nurse said. But they
never thought of its putting his mind on a wife!
So far as his doing it right up quick like that was concerned, Nurse said
that wasn't so surprising. For all the way up, if Father wanted anything
he insisted on having it, and having it right away then. He never wanted
to wait a minute. So when he found a girl he wanted, he wanted her
right then, without waiting a minute. He'd never happened to notice a
girl he wanted before, you see. But he'd found one now, all right; and
Nurse said there was nothing to do but to make the best of it, and get
ready for her.
There wasn't anybody to go to the wedding. Grandma Anderson was
sick, so of course she couldn't go, and Grandpa was dead, so of course
he couldn't go, and there weren't any brothers or sisters, only Aunt Jane
in St. Paul, and she was so mad she wouldn't come on. So there was no
chance of seeing the bride till Father brought her home.
Nurse said they wondered and wondered what kind of a woman it could
be that had captured him. (I told her I wished she _wouldn't_ speak of
my mother as if she was some kind of a hunter out after game; but she
only chuckled and said that's about what it amounted to in some cases.)
The very idea!
The whole town was excited over the affair, and Nurse Sarah heard a
lot of their talk. Some thought she was an astronomer like him. Some
thought she was very rich, and maybe famous. Everybody declared she
must know a lot, anyway, and be wonderfully wise and intellectual; and
they said she was probably tall and wore glasses, and would be thirty
years old, at least. But nobody guessed anywhere near what she really

was.
Nurse Sarah said she should never forget the night she came, and how
she looked, and how utterly flabbergasted everybody was to see her--a
little slim eighteen-year-old girl with yellow curly hair and the merriest
laughing eyes they had ever seen. (Don't I know? Don't I just love
Mother's eyes when they sparkle and twinkle when we're off together
sometimes in the woods?) And Nurse said Mother was so excited the
day she came, and went laughing and dancing all over the house,
exclaiming over everything. (I can't imagine that so well. Mother
moves so quietly now, everywhere, and is so tired, 'most all the time.)
But she wasn't tired then, Nurse says--not a mite.
"But how did Father act?" I demanded. "Wasn't he displeased and
scandalized and shocked, and everything?"
Nurse shrugged her shoulders and raised her eyebrows--the way she
does when she feels particularly superior. Then she said:
"Do? What does any old fool--beggin' your pardon an' no offense
meant, Miss Mary Marie--but what does any man do what's got
bejuggled with a pretty face, an' his senses completely took away from
him by a chit of a girl? Well, that's what he did. He acted as if he was
bewitched. He followed her around the house like a dog--when he
wasn't leadin' her to something new; an' he never took his eyes off her
face except to look at us, as much as to say: 'Now ain't she the adorable
creature?'"
"My father did that?" I gasped. And, really, you know, I just couldn't
believe my ears. And you wouldn't, either, if you knew Father. "Why, I
never saw him act like that!"
"No, I guess you didn't," laughed Nurse Sarah with a shrug. "And
neither did anybody else--for long."
"But how long did it last?" I asked.
"Oh, a month, or maybe six weeks," shrugged Nurse Sarah. "Then it

came September and college began, and your father had to go back to
his teaching. Things began to change then."
"Right then, so you could see them?" I wanted to know.