hy couldn't I? There wasn't anybody going to be there
but just myself, _all day long_.

I ran then upstairs to the guest-room closet where Aunt Jane had made
me put all my Marie dresses and things when the Mary ones came. Well,
I got out the very fluffiest, softest white dress there was there, and
the little white slippers and the silk stockings that I loved, and the
blue silk sash, and the little gold locket and chain that Mother gave
me that Aunt Jane wouldn't let me wear. And I dressed up. My, didn't
I dress up? And I just _threw_ those old heavy shoes and black cotton
stockings into the corner, and the blue gingham dress after them
(though Mary went right away and picked the dress up, and hung it in
the closet, of course); but I had the fun of throwing it, anyway.

Oh, how good those Marie things did feel to Mary's hot, tired flesh
and bones, and how I did dance and sing around the room in those light
little slippers! Then Susie rang the dinner-bell and I went down to
the dining-room feeling like a really truly young lady, I can tell
you.

Susie stared, of course and said, "My, how fine we are to-day!" But I
didn't mind Susie.

After dinner I went out into the hall and I sang; I sang all over the
house. And I ran upstairs and I ran down; and I jumped all the last
three steps, even if it was so warm. Then I went into the parlor and
played every lively thing that I could think of on the piano. And I
sang there, too--silly little songs that Marie used to sing to Lester.
And I tried to think I was really down there to Boston, singing to
Lester; and that Mother was right in the next room waiting for me.

Then I stopped and turned around on the piano-stool. And there was the
coffin plate, and the wax cross, and the hair wreath; and the room was
just as still as death. And I knew I wasn't in Boston. I was there in
Andersonville, And there wasn't any Baby Lester there, nor any mother
waiting for me in the next room. And all the fluffy white dresses and
silk stockings in the world wouldn't make me Marie. I was really just
Mary, and I had got to have three whole months more of it.

And then is when I began to cry. And I cried just as hard as I'd been
singing a minute before. I was on the floor with my head in my arms on
the piano-stool when Father's voice came to me from the doorway.

"Mary, Mary, what in the world does this mean?"

I jumped up and stood "at attention," the way you have to, of course,
when fathers sp