“You’re a swindler, you know, and a scoundrel. I don’t want you to talk to me.”
He pretended to laugh, but I know now that he was very angry with me.
Some time after that (I don’t know how long, but it was probably not long) my mother and Campbell got married, out in a Western city somewhere, and went away for a time, leaving me with my grandmother.
I couldn’t understand it, and I said so. Just before they started away on a train, my mother told me in the railroad station that Campbell was my new papa, and that I must love him very much. I remember what I said in reply. I asked:—
“Is my father dead?”
“Don’t talk about that, dear,” said my mother, trying to hush me. But I asked the question again:—
“Is my father dead?”
“No, dear, but your father has gone away, and we’ll never see him again. So you mustn’t think about him.”
“Then you have two husbands at once,” I answered. “How can you have two husbands at once?”