ying
around ready to be picked up; Baby Lester laughing and singing all
over the house, and lovely ladies and gentlemen in the drawing-room
having music and tea and little cakes when I come home from school
in the afternoon. And I love it not to have to look up and watch and
listen for fear Father's coming in and I'll be making a noise. And
best of all I love Mother with her dancing eyes and her laugh, and her
just being happy, with no going in and finding her crying or looking
long and fixedly at nothing, and then turning to me with a great big
sigh, and a "Well, dear?" that just makes you want to go and cry
because it's so hurt and heart-broken. Oh, I do just love it all!

And Mother _is_ happy. I'm sure she is. Somebody is doing something
for her every moment--seems so. They are so glad to get her back
again. I know they are. I heard two ladies talking one day, and they
said they were. They called her "Poor Madge," and "Dear Madge," and
they said it was a shame that she should have had such a wretched
experience, and that they for one should try to do everything they
could to make her forget.

And that's what they all seem to be trying to do--to make her forget.
There isn't a day goes by but that somebody sends flowers or books
or candy, or invites her somewhere, or takes her to ride or to the
theater, or comes to see her, so that Mother is in just one whirl of
good times from morning till night. Why, she'd just have to forget.
She doesn't have any time to remember. I think she _is_ forgetting,
too. Oh, of course she gets tired, and sometimes rainy days or
twilights I find her on the sofa in her room not reading or anything,
and her face looks 'most as it used to sometimes after they'd been
having one of their incompatibility times. But I don't find her that
way very often, and it doesn't last long. So I really think she is
forgetting.

About the prospective suitors--I found that "prospective suitor" in a
story a week ago, and I just love it. It means you probably will want
to marry her, you know. I use it all the time now--in my mind--when
I'm thinking about those gentlemen that come here (the unmarried
ones). I forgot and used it out loud one day to Aunt Hattie; but I
shan't again. She said, "Mercy!" and threw up her hands and looked
over to Grandpa the way she does when I've said something she thinks
is perfectly awful.

But I was firm and dignified--but very polite and pleasant--and I said
that I didn't see