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