means--that they're going to say something they don't want us to
hear?) Well, Mother and the lady on the bench talked and talked ever
so long, and then Mother called me up, and the lady cried a little
over me, and said, "Now, perhaps, if I'd had a little girl like
that--!" Then she stopped and cried some more.

We saw this lady real often after that. She was nice and pretty and
sweet, and I liked her; but she was always awfully sad, and I don't
believe it was half so good for Mother to be with her as it would have
been for her to be with those jolly, laughing ladies that were always
having such good times. But I couldn't make Mother see it that way at
all. There are times when it seems as if Mother just _couldn't_ see
things the way I do. Honestly, it seems sometimes almost as if _she_
was the cross-current and contradiction instead of me. It does.

Well, as I said before, I didn't like it very well out there, and I
don't believe Mother did, either. But it's all over now, and we're
back home packing up to go to Boston.

Everything seems awfully queer. Maybe because Father isn't here,
for one thing. He wrote very polite and asked us to come to get our
things, and he said he was going to New York on business for several
days, so Mother need not fear he should annoy her with his presence.
Then, another thing, Mother's queer. This morning she was singing away
at the top of her voice and running all over the house picking up
things she wanted; and seemed so happy. But this afternoon I found her
down on the floor in the library crying as if her heart would break
with her head in Father's big chair before the fireplace. But she
jumped up the minute I came in and said, no, no, she didn't want
anything. She was just tired; that's all. And when I asked her if she