Grandpa's other daughter, Mother's sister, Hattie, lives here and
keeps house for Grandpa. She has a little boy named Lester, six years
old; and her husband is dead. They were away for what they called a
week-end when we came, but they got here a little after we did Monday
afternoon; and they're lovely, too.

The house is a straight-up-and-down one with a back and front, but no
sides except the one snug up to you on the right and left. And there
isn't any yard except a little bit of a square brick one at the back
where they have clothes and ash barrels, and a little grass spot in
front at one side of the steps, not big enough for our old cat to
take a nap in, hardly. But it's perfectly lovely inside; and it's
the insides of houses that really count just as it is the insides
of people--their hearts, I mean; whether they're good and kind, or
hateful and disagreeable.

We have dinner at night here, and I've been to the theater twice
already in the afternoon. I've got to go to school next week, Mother
says, but so far I've just been having a good time. And so's Mother.
Honestly, it has just seemed as if Mother couldn't crowd the days full
enough. She hasn't been still a minute.

Lots of her old friends have been to see her; and when there hasn't
been anybody else around she's taken Peter and had him drive us all
over Boston to see things;--all kinds of things; Bunker Hill and
museums, and moving pictures, and one play.

But we didn't stay at the play. It started out all right, but pretty
soon a man and a woman on the stage began to quarrel. They were
married (not really, but in the play, I mean), and I guess it was some
more of that incompatibility stuff. Anyhow, as they began to talk
more and more, Mother began to fidget, and pretty soon I saw she was
gathering up our things; and the minute the curtain went down after
the first act, she says:

"Come, dear, we're going home. It--it isn't very warm here."

As if I didn't know what she was really leaving for! Do old folks
honestly think they are fooling us all the time, I wonder? But even if
I hadn't known then, I'd have known it later, for that evening I heard
Mother and Aunt Hattie talking in the library.

No, I didn't listen. I _heard_. And that's a very different matter.
You listen when you mean to, and that's sneaking. You hear when you
can't help yourself, and that you can't be blamed for. Sometimes it's
your good luck, and sometimes it's your bad luck--just ac