I shook my head again.
"It isn't—your mother—you haven't had bad news from her?"
And then I blurted it out without thinking—without thinking at all what I was saying: "No, no—but I wish I had, I wish I had; 'cause then I could go to her, and go away from here!" The minute I'd said it I knew what I'd said, and how awful it sounded; and I clapped my fingers to my lips. But 'twas too late. It's always too late, when you've once said it. So I just waited for him to thunder out his anger; for, of course, I thought he would thunder in rage and righteous indignation.
But he didn't. Instead, very quietly and gently he said:
"Are you so unhappy, then, Mary—here?"
And I looked at him, and his eyes and his mouth and his whole face weren't angry at all. They were just sorry, actually sorry. And somehow, before I knew it, I was crying again, and Father, with his arm around me—with his arm around me! think of that!—was leading me to the sofa.
And I cried and cried there, with my head on the arm of the sofa, till I'd made a big tear spot on the linen cover; and I wondered if it would dry up before Aunt Jane saw it, or if it would change color or leak through to the red plush underneath, or some other dreadful thing. And then, some way, I found myself telling it all over to Father—about Mary and Marie, I mean, just as if he was Mother, or some one I loved—I mean, some one I loved and wasn't afraid of; for of course I love Father. Of course I do!
Well, I told him everything (when I got started there was no stopping)—all about how hard it was to be Mary, and how to-day I had tried to be Marie for just a little while, to rest me. He interrupted here, and wanted to know if that was why I looked so different to-day—more as I had when I first came; and I said yes, that these were Marie things that Mary couldn't wear. And when he asked, "Why, pray?" in a voice almost cross, I told him, of course, that Aunt Jane wouldn't let me; that Mary had to wear brown serge and calfskin boots that were durable, and that would wear well.
And when I told him how sorry I was about the music and such a noise as I'd been making, he asked if that was Marie's fault, too; and I said yes, of course—that Aunt Jane didn't like to have Mary play at all, except hymns and funeral marches, and Mary didn't know any. And he grunted a queer little grunt, and said, "Well, well, upon my soul, upon my soul!" Then he said, "Go on." And I did go on.
I told him how I was afraid it was going to be just like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. (I forgot to say I've read it now. I found it in Father's library.) Of course not just like it, only one of me was going to be bad, and one good, I was afraid, if I didn't look out. I told him how Marie always wanted to kick up rugs, and move the chairs out of their sockets in the carpet, and leave books around handy, and such things. And so to-day it seemed as if I'd just got to have a vacation from Mary's hot gingham dresses and clumpy shoes. And I told him how lonesome I was without anybody, not anybody; and I told about Charlie Smith and Paul Mayhew and Mr. Claude Livingstone, and how Aunt Jane wouldn't let me have them, either, even if I was standing where the brook and river meet.