But this is no way to begin. Like the little Mary Marie of long ago I am in danger of starting my dinner with ice-cream instead of soup!

And so I must begin where I left off, of course. And that was at the wedding.

I remember that wedding as if it were yesterday. I can see now, with Mary Marie's ma.n.u.script before me, why it made so great an impression upon me. It was a very quiet wedding, of course--just the members of the family present. But I shall never forget the fine, sweet loveliness of Mother's face, nor the splendid strength and tenderness of Father's. And the way he drew her into his arms and kissed her, after it was all over--well, I remember distinctly that even Aunt Hattie choked up and had to turn her back to wipe her eyes.

They went away at once, first to New York for a day or two, then to Andersonville, to prepare for the real wedding trip to the other side of the world. I stayed in Boston at school; and because nothing of consequence happened all those weeks and months is the reason, I suspect, why the ma.n.u.script got tossed into the bottom of my little trunk and stayed there.

In the spring, when Father and Mother returned, and we all went back to Andersonville, there followed another long period of just happy girlhood, and I suspect I was too satisfied and happy to think of writing. After all, I've noticed it's when we're sad or troubled over something that we have that tingling to cover perfectly good white paper with "confessions" and "stories of my life." As witness right now what I'm doing.

And so it's not surprising, perhaps, that Mary Marie's ma.n.u.script still lay forgotten in the little old trunk after it was taken up to the attic. Mary Marie was happy.

And it _was_ happy--that girlhood of mine, after we came back to Andersonville. I can see now, as I look back at it, that Father and Mother were doing everything in their power to blot out of my memory those unhappy years of my childhood. For that matter, they were also doing everything in their power to blot out of their _own_ memories those same unhappy years. To me, as I look back at it, it seems that they must have succeeded wonderfully. They were very happy, I believe--Father and Mother.

Oh, it was not always easy--even I could see that. It took a lot of adjusting--a lot of rubbing off of square corners to keep the daily life running smoothly. But when two persons are determined that it shall run smoothly--when each is steadfastly looking to the _other's_ happiness, not at his own--why, things just can't help smoothing out then. But it takes them both. One can't do it alone. Now, if Jerry would only--

But it isn't time to speak of Jerry yet.

I'll go back to my girlhood.

It was a trying period--it must have been--for Father and Mother, in spite of their great love for me, and their efforts to create for me a happiness that would erase the past from my mind. I realize it now.

For, after all, I was just a girl--a young girl, like other girls; high-strung, nervous, thoughtless, full of my whims and fancies; and, in addition, with enough of my mother and enough of my father within me to make me veritably a cross-current and a contradiction, as I had said that I was in the opening sentence of my childish autobiography.

I had just pa.s.sed my sixteenth birthday when we all came back to live in Andersonville. For the first few months I suspect that just the glory and the wonder and joy of living in the old home, with Father and Mother _happy together_, was enough to fill all my thoughts. Then, as school began in the fall, I came down to normal living again, and became a girl--just a growing girl in her teens.

How patient Mother was, and Father, too! I can see now how gently and tactfully they helped me over the stones and stumbling-blocks that strew the pathway of every sixteen-year-old girl who thinks, because she has turned down her dresses and turned up her hair, that she is grown up, and can do and think and talk as she pleases.

I well remember how hurt and grieved and superior I was at Mother's insistence upon more frequent rubbers and warm coats, and fewer ice-cream sodas and chocolate bonbons. Why, surely I was old enough _now_ to take care of myself! Wasn't I ever to be allowed to have my own opinions and exercise my own judgment? It seemed not! Thus spoke superior sixteen.

As for clothes!--I remember distinctly the dreary November rainstorm of the morning I reproachfully accused Mother of wanting to make me back into a stupid little Mary, just because she so uncompromisingly disapproved of the beaded chains and bangles and jeweled combs and spangled party dresses that "every girl in school" was wearing. Why, the idea! Did she want me to dress like a little frump of a country girl? It seems she did.

Poor mother! Dear mother! I wonder how she kept her patience at all.

But she kept it. I remember that distinctly, too.

It was that winter that I went through the morbid period. Like our childhood's measles and whooping cough, it seems to come to most of us--us women children. I wonder why? Certainly it came to me. True to type I cried by the hour over fancied slights from my schoolmates, and brooded days at a time because Father or Mother "didn't understand," I questioned everything in the earth beneath and the heavens above; and in my dark despair over an averted glance from my most intimate friend, I meditated on whether life was, or was not, worth the living, with a preponderance toward the latter.

Being plunged into a state of settled gloom, I then became acutely anxious as to my soul's salvation, and feverishly pursued every ism and ology that caught my roving eye's attention, until in one short month I had become, in despairing rotation, an incipient agnostic, atheist, pantheist, and monist. Meanwhile I read Ibsen, and wisely discussed the new school of domestic relationships.

Mother--dear mother!--looked on aghast. She feared, I think, for my life; certainly for my sanity and morals.

It was Father this time who came to the rescue. He pooh-poohed Mother's fears; said it was indigestion that ailed me, or that I was growing too fast; or perhaps I didn't get enough sleep, or needed, maybe, a good tonic. He took me out of school, and made it a point to accompany me on long walks. He talked with me--not _to_ me--about the birds and the trees and the sunsets, and then about the deeper things of life, until, before I realized it, I was sane and sensible once more, serene and happy in the simple faith of my childhood, with all the isms and ologies a mere bad dream in the dim past.

I was seventeen, if I remember rightly, when I became worried, not over my heavenly estate now, but my earthly one. I must have a career, of course. No namby-pamby everyday living of dishes and dusting and meals and babies for me. It was all very well, of course, for some people. Such things had to be. But for me--

I could write, of course; but I was not sure but that I preferred the stage. At the same time there was within me a deep stirring as of a call to go out and enlighten the world, especially that portion of it in darkest Africa or deadliest India. I would be a missionary.

Before I was eighteen, however, I had abandoned all this. Father put his foot down hard on the missionary project, and Mother put hers down on the stage idea. I didn't mind so much, though, as I remember, for on further study and consideration, I found that flowers and applause were not all of an actor's life, and that Africa and India were not entirely desirable as a place of residence for a young woman alone.

Besides, I had decided by then that I could enlighten the world just as effectually (and much more comfortably) by writing stories at home and getting them printed.

So I wrote stories--but I did not get any of them printed, in spite of my earnest efforts. In time, therefore, that idea, also, was abandoned; and with it, regretfully, the idea of enlightening the world at all.

Besides, I had just then (again if I remember rightfully) fallen in love.

Not that it was the first time. Oh, no, not at eighteen, when at thirteen I had begun confidently and happily to look for it! What a sentimental little piece I was! How could they have been so patient with me--Father, Mother, everybody!

I think the first real attack--the first that I consciously called love, myself--was the winter after we had all come back to Andersonville to live. I was sixteen and in the high school.

It was Paul Mayhew--yes, the same Paul Mayhew that had defied his mother and sister and walked home with me one night and invited me to go for an automobile ride, only to be sent sharply about his business by my stern, inexorable Aunt Jane. Paul was in the senior cla.s.s now, and the handsomest, most admired boy in school. He didn't care for girls. That is, he said he didn't. He bore himself with a supreme indifference that was maddening, and that took (apparently) no notice of the fact that every girl in school was a willing slave to the mere nodding of his head or the beckoning of his hand.

This was the condition of things when I entered school that fall, and perhaps for a week thereafter. Then one day, very suddenly, and without apparent reason, he awoke to the fact of my existence. Candy, flowers, books--some one of these he brought to me every morning. All during the school day he was my devoted gallant, dancing attendance every possible minute outside of session hours, and walking home with me in the afternoon, proudly carrying my books. Did I say "_home_ with me"? That is not strictly true--he always stopped just one block short of "home"--one block short of my gate. He evidently had not forgotten Aunt Jane, and did not intend to take any foolish risks! So he said good-bye to me always at a safe distance.

That this savored of deception, or was in any way objectionable, did not seem to have occurred to me. Even if it had, I doubt very much if my course would have been altered, for I was bewitched and fascinated and thrilled with the excitement of it all. I was sixteen, remember, and this wonderful Adonis and woman-hater had chosen me, _me!_--and left all the other girls desolate and sighing, looking after us with longing eyes. Of course, I was thrilled!

This went on for perhaps a week. Then he asked me to attend a school sleigh-ride and supper with him.

I was wild with delight. At the same time I was wild with apprehension. I awoke suddenly to the fact of the existence of Father and Mother, and that their permission must be gained. And I had my doubts--I had very grave doubts. Yet it seemed to me at that moment that I just _had_ to go on that sleigh-ride. That it was the only thing in the whole wide world worth while.

I can remember now, as if it were yesterday, the way I debated in my mind as to whether I should ask Father, Mother, or both together; and if I should let it be seen how greatly I desired to go, and how much it meant to me; or if I should just mention it as in pa.s.sing, and take their permission practically for granted.

I chose the latter course, and I took a time when they were both together. At the breakfast-table I mentioned casually that the school was to have a sleigh-ride and supper the next Friday afternoon and evening, and that Paul Mayhew had asked me to go with him, I said I hoped it would be a pleasant night, but that I should wear my sweater under my coat, anyway, and I'd wear my leggings, too, if they thought it necessary.

(Sweater and leggings! Two of Mother's hobbies. Artful child!)

But if I thought that a sweater and a pair of leggings could m.u.f.fle their ears as to what had gone before, I soon found my mistake.

"A sleigh-ride, supper, and not come home until evening?" cried Mother. "And with whom, did you say?"

"Paul Mayhew," I answered. I still tried to speak casually; at the same time I tried to indicate by voice and manner something of the great honor that had been bestowed upon their daughter.

Father was impressed--plainly impressed; but not at all in the way I had hoped he would be. He gave me a swift, sharp glance; then looked straight at Mother.

"Humph! Paul Mayhew! Yes, I know him," he said grimly. "And I'm dreading the time when he comes into college next year."

"You mean--" Mother hesitated and stopped.

"I mean I don't like the company he keeps--already," nodded Father.

"Then you don't think that Mary Marie--" Mother hesitated again, and glanced at me.

"Certainly not," said Father decidedly.

I knew then, of course, that he meant I couldn't go on the sleigh-ride, even though he hadn't said the words right out. I forgot all about being casual and indifferent and matter-of-course then. I thought only of showing them how absolutely necessary it was for them to let me go on that sleigh-ride, unless they wanted my life forever-more hopelessly blighted.

I explained carefully how he was the handsomest, most popular boy in school, and how all the girls were just crazy to be asked to go anywhere with him; and I argued what if Father had seen him with boys he did not like--then that was all the more reason why nice girls like me, when he asked them, should go with him, so as to keep him away from the bad boys! And I told them, that this was the first and last, and only sleigh-ride of the school that year; and I said I'd be heart-broken, just heart-broken, if they did not let me go. And I reminded them again that he was the very handsomest, most popular boy in school; and that there wasn't a girl I knew who wouldn't be crazy to be in my shoes.

Then I stopped, all out of breath, and I can imagine just how pleading and palpitating I looked.

I thought Father was going to refuse right away, but I saw the glance that Mother threw him--the glance that said, "Let me attend to this, dear." I'd seen that glance before, several times, and I knew just what it meant; so I wasn't surprised to see Father shrug his shoulders and turn away as Mother said to me:

"Very well, dear. Ill think it over and let you know to-night."