“Papa came over and put his head down on my shoulder the way he used to when he called me his little comforter, and said, ‘Oh, yes, Lucy, you want to know! Please say you want to know what your daddy has to tell you.’
“So I said, ‘All right,’ and Elise, he was going to get married! Oh, I just hated it! He told me lots about the lady. She was from Boston, and that was why I had never seen her, and had never heard about it. She had never been in Louisville. He said she was beautiful, and she did look nice in the picture he had in his pocket case, and he said she was just as lovely as she could be. I just sat there and let him talk, and finally he said, ‘Well, chicken, what do you think about it?’ I don’t know what made me say what I did. Somehow it popped out before I thought. I said, ‘Are you sure she isn’t marrying you for your money?’
“And papa sort of stiffened up and looked hard at me, and finally he said in a queer voice, ‘Good Lord, how old are you?’ I said, ‘I am eleven,’ and he said, ‘Well, you sound like Mrs. Worldly Wiseman, aged fifty. I suppose you will feel better if I say that the lady has more money than I have, and that I will be lucky if people do not claim that I have been the fortune hunter.’
“‘Well, what is she going to marry you for?’ I asked. ‘She says she loves me,’ papa said. I said, ‘We don’t want her here! We are getting along all right.’ Oh, I didn’t mean to be so ugly, but somehow I hated to have papa marry anyone, and I didn’t know this lady. So papa went off awfully cross at me and the next person was Auntie Mabel. Papa had told me first; he thought he ought to, and then he went up and told Aunt Mabel. She came down pretty soon. I was right there in the big chair, trying to imagine what it would be like to have a stranger in the house.
“Auntie said, ‘Well, Lucy, what do you think of the news?’ I said, ‘It is nothing to us; we can keep in our rooms most of the time.’
“‘I can’t,’ said Aunt Mabel, ‘because I shall leave when she comes. Not that I have the slightest objection, but all the same off I go. I knew it would happen sooner or later, but Henry waited so long that I hoped he was going to let well enough alone. But men are all alike!’ And she did go, Elise, the very day before papa brought the lady home. And I couldn’t go because there was no place for me to go and Auntie wouldn’t take me with her because she said it would make papa angry. So I had to stay whether I wanted to or not. It was perfectly awful!”
“Poor, poor Lucee!” murmured Elise, patting the hand she held.
“I was expecting to see a lady ’most as old as Auntie, and papa came up the steps with somebody young. Why, she was awfully young, and had as much powder on her nose as anybody. I was looking through the curtains, and when I saw them coming, I ran upstairs and hid. Papa hunted and called, but I wouldn’t answer, and I heard him getting angry, and then she said, ‘Don’t mind, Henry; it is the most natural thing in the world. Let me find her, I know just where to look,’ and papa said in the silliest way, ‘Go ahead, darling, the house is yours, and the child too if you will have such a bad one.’
“Well, Elise, she came up those stairs and straight to the table I was under, as though someone had told her! The cover went down to the floor, and she lifted it up, and said ‘Coop!’ but I came out crosser than ever, and we had a horrid time.
“So that is the way it went. Worse and worse all the time. Papa was not cross with me because she wouldn’t let him be, and I felt pretty mean to think a stranger had to tell my own father how to treat me. At first she tried to act so sweet to me, and used to want to play with me. I told her I thought it was silly, but she said she had lots of brothers and sisters, and they always romped around together and had a fine time, and she said if I would only be friends we could have such larks. I told her I hoped I was polite and all she said was to wonder where I got my disposition.