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!

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.