Father went to Boston to attend a big meeting of astronomers from all
over the world, and they had banquets and receptions where beautiful
ladies went in their pretty evening dresses, and my mother was one
of them. (Her father was one of the astronomers, Nurse said.) The
meetings lasted four days, and Nurse said she guessed my father saw
a lot of my mother during that time. Anyhow, he was invited to their
home, and he stayed another four days after the meetings were over.
The next thing they knew here at the house, Grandma Anderson had a
telegram that he was going to be married to Miss Madge Desmond, and
would they please send him some things he wanted, and he was going on
a wedding trip and would bring his bride home in about a month.

It was just as sudden as that. And surprising!--Nurse says a
thunderclap out of a clear blue sky couldn't have astonished them
more. Father was almost thirty years old at that time, and he'd
never cared a thing for girls, nor paid them the least little bit of
attention. So they supposed, of course, that 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!