I don't know, Miss."

Peter is awfully funny. But he's nice. I like him, only I can't find
out much by him. He's very good-looking, though he's quite old. He's
almost thirty. He told me. I asked him. He takes me back and forth to
school every day, so I see quite a lot of him. And, really, he's
about the only one I _can_ ask questions of here, anyway. There isn't
anybody like Nurse Sarah used to be. Olga, the cook, talks so funny I
can't understand a word she says, hardly. Besides, the only two times
I've been down to the kitchen Aunt Hattie sent for me; and she told
me the last time not to go any more. She didn't say why. Aunt Hattie
never says _why_ not to do things. She just says, "Don't." Sometimes
it seems to me as if my whole life had been made up of "don'ts."
If they'd only tell us part of the time things to "_do_," maybe we
wouldn't have so much time to do the "_don'ts_." (That sounds funny,
but I guess folks'll know what I mean.)

Well, what was I saying? Oh, I know--about asking questions. As I
said, there isn't anybody like Nurse Sarah here. I can't understand
Olga, and Theresa, the other maid, is just about as bad. Aunt Hattie's
lovely, but I can't ask questions of her. She isn't the kind. Besides,
Lester's always there, too; and you can't discuss family affairs
before children. Of course there's Mother and Grandpa Desmond. But
questions like when it's proper for Mother to have lovers I can't ask
of _them_, of course. So there's no one but Peter left to ask. Peter's
all right and very nice, but he doesn't seem to know _anything_ that I
want to know. So he doesn't amount to so very much, after all.

I'm not sure, anyway, that Mother'll want to get married again. From
little things she says I rather guess she doesn't think much of
marriage, anyway. One day I heard her say to Aunt Hattie that it was
a very pretty theory that marriages were made in heaven, but that the
real facts of the case were that they were made on earth. And another
day I heard her say that one trouble with marriage was that the
husband and wife didn't know how to play together and to rest
together. And lots of times I've heard her say little things to Aunt
Hattie that showed how unhappy _her_ marriage had been.

But last night a funny thing happened. We were all in the library
reading after dinner, and Grandpa looked up from his paper and said
something about a woman that was sentenced to be hanged and how a
whole lot of men were writin