Mary Marie | Page 7

her all right. He said yes, yes, to be sure,
of course she was lonesome, an' he was sorry. 'T was too bad he was so
busy. An' he kissed her an' patted her. But he always began right away
to talk of the comet; an' ten to one he didn't disappear into the
observatory within the next five minutes. Then your ma would look so
grieved an' sorry an' go off an' cry, an' maybe not come down to dinner,
at all.
"Well, then, one day things got so bad your grandma took a hand. She
was up an' around the house, though she kept mostly to 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,