busy and happy.
She would make my father buy expensive toys and books and games for me,
and fine clothes, and so of course I was pleased. In about a year my
father married her, and at first it seemed very beautiful to me to have
a real mother, but little by little I began to see that she preferred to
be alone with my father and did not want me around so much. It was very
hard to give up the companionship of my father, but my stepmother kept
me busy with other things, so that I really didn't think much about it
while it was first happening.

"But one day there came a letter. I remember it came while we were at
breakfast, and my father got very white and stern when he read it, and
handed it over to my mother and asked whether it was true, and then she
began to cry and sent me from the table. I found out a few days after
that that my stepmother had two sons, both older than myself, and that
she had not told my father. It was through some trouble they had got
into at school which required quite a large sum of money to cover
damages that my father discovered it, and he was terribly hurt that she
should have concealed it from him. I learned all this from the servants,
who talked when they thought I was not within hearing. There were days
and days when my father scarcely spoke at the table, and when he looked
at me it made a pain go through my heart, he looked so stern and sad. My
stepmother stayed a great deal in her room and looked as if she had been
crying. But after a few weeks things settled down a good deal as they
had been, only that my father never lost that sad troubled look. There
was some trouble about my stepmother's sons, too, for there was a great
deal of argument between her and my father, of which I only heard
snatches, and then one day they came home to stay with us. Something had
happened at the school where they were that they could not stay any
longer. I can remember distinctly the first night they ate dinner with
us. It seemed to me that it was like a terrific thunderstorm that never
quite broke. Everybody was trying to be nice and polite, but underneath
it all there was a kind of lightning of all kinds of feelings, hurt
feelings and wrong ones and right ones all mixed up.

"Only the two boys didn't seem to feel it much. They sort of took things
for granted, as if that had always been their home, and they didn't act
very polite. It seemed to trouble my father, who looked at them so
severely that it almost