denly
he looked sharply into my face. Next, if you'll believe it, he
laughed--the queer little chuckle under his breath that I've heard him
give two or three times when there was something he thought was funny.
"Humph!" he grunted. Then he gave me another sharp look out of
his eyes, and said: "I don't think you meant that to be quite so
impertinent as it sounded, Mary, so we'll let it pass--this time. I'll
put my question this way: Don't you ever knit or read or sew?"

"I do sew every day in Aunt Jane's room, ten minutes hemming, ten
minutes seaming, and ten minutes basting patchwork squares together. I
don't know how to knit."

"How about reading? Don't you care for reading?"

"Why, of course I do. I love it!" I cried. "And I do read lots--at
home."

"At--_home_?"

I knew then, of course, that I'd made another awful break. There
wasn't any smile around Father's eyes now, and his lips came together
hard and thin over that last word.

"At--at _my_ home," I stammered. "I mean, my _other_ home."

"Humph!" grunted Father. Then, after a minute: "But why, pray, can't
you read here? I'm sure there are--books enough." He flourished his
hands toward the bookcases all around the room.

"Oh, I do--a little; but, you see, I'm so afraid I'll leave some of
them out when I'm through," I explained,

"Well, what of it? What if you do?" he demanded.

"Why, _Father_!" I tried to show by the way I said it that he knew--of
course he knew. But he made me tell him right out that Aunt Jane
wouldn't like it, and that he wouldn't like it, and that the books
always had to be kept exactly where they belonged.

"Well, why not? Why shouldn't they?" he asked then, almost crossly,
and hitching again in his chair. "Aren't books down there--in
Boston--kept where they belong, pray?"

It was the first time since I'd come that he'd ever mentioned Boston;
and I almost jumped out of my chair when I heard him. But I soon saw
it wasn't going to be the last, for right then and there he began to
question me, even worse than Aunt Jane had.

He wanted to know everything, _everything_; all about the house, with
its cushions and cozy corners and curtains 'way up, and books left
around easy to get, and magazines, and Baby Lester, and the fun we had
romping with him, and everything. Only, of course, I didn't mention
Mother. Aunt Jane had told me not to--not anywhere; and to be
specially careful before Father. But what can you do when he asks you
hims