"But, what—was your mother doing with that dress?" he asked then, looking even more puzzled and mystified.
And then suddenly I thought and remembered that Mother was crying. And, of course, she wouldn't want Father to know she was crying over it—that dress she had worn when he first met her long ago! (I don't think women ever want men to know such things, do you? I know I shouldn't!) So I didn't tell. I just kind of tossed it off, and mumbled something about her looking it over; and I was going to say something else, but I saw that Father wasn't listening. He had begun to talk again, softly, as if to himself.
"I suppose to-night, seeing you, and all this, brought it back to me so vividly." Then he turned and looked at me. "You are very like your mother to-night, dear."
"I suppose I am, maybe, when I'm Marie," I nodded.
He laughed with his lips, but his eyes didn't laugh one bit as he said:
"What a quaint little fancy of yours that is, child—as if you were two in one."
"But I am two in one," I declared. "That's why I'm a cross-current and a contradiction, you know," I explained.
I thought he'd understand. But he didn't. I supposed, of course, he knew what a cross-current and a contradiction was. But he turned again and stared at me.
"A—what?" he demanded.
"A cross-current and a contradiction," I explained once more.
"Children of unlikes, you know. Nurse Sarah told me that long ago.
Didn't you ever hear that—that a child of unlikes was a cross-current
and a contradiction?"