After Mrs. Small had gone into the house, and he saw that she was sitting down with Cousin Grace in the library, he turned to me and said: 

“And so you came as Mary?”

I said yes, I did.

“Well, I—­I got ready for Marie.”

But then I didn’t quite understand, not even when I looked at him, and saw the old understanding twinkle in his eyes.

“You mean—­you thought I was coming as Marie, of course,” I said then.

“Yes,” he nodded.

“But I came as Mary.”

“I see now that you did.”  He drew in his breath with a queer little catch to it; then he got up and walked up and down the piazza again.  (Why do old folks always walk up and down the room like that when they’re thinking hard about something?  Father always does; and Mother does lots of times, too.) But it wasn’t but a minute this time before Father came and sat down.

“Well, Mary,” he began; and his voice sounded odd, with a little shake in it.  “You’ve told me your story, so I suppose I may as well tell you mine—­now.  You see, I not only got ready for Marie, but I had planned to keep her Marie, and not let her be Mary—­at all.”

And then he told me.  He told me how he’d never forgotten that day in the parlor when I cried (and made a wet spot on the arm of the sofa—­I never forgot that!), and he saw then how hard it was for me to live here, with him so absorbed in his work and Aunt Jane so stern in her black dress.  And he said I put it very vividly when I talked about being Marie in Boston, and Mary here, and he saw just how it was.  And so he thought and thought about it all winter, and wondered what he could do.  And after a time it came to him—­he’d let me be Marie here; that is, he’d try to make it so I could be Marie.  And he was just wondering how he was going to get Aunt Jane to help him when she was sent for and asked to go to an old friend who was sick.  And he told her to go, by all means to go.  Then he got Cousin Grace to come here.  He said he knew Cousin Grace, and he was very sure she would know how to help him to let me stay Marie.  So he talked it over with her—­how they would let me laugh, and sing and play the piano all I wanted to, and wear the clothes I brought with me, and be just as near as I could be the way I was in Boston.

“And to think, after all my preparation for Marie, you should be Mary already, when you came,” he finished.

“Yes.  Wasn’t it funny?” I laughed.  “All the time you were getting ready for Marie, Mother was getting me ready to be Mary.  It was funny!” And it did seem funny to me then.

But Father was not laughing.  He had sat back in his chair, and had covered his eyes with his hand again, as if he was thinking and thinking, just as hard as he could.  And I suppose it did seem queer to him, that he should be trying to make me Marie, and all the while Mother was trying to make me Mary.  And it seemed so to me, as I began to think it over.  It wasn’t funny at all, any longer.