"No, but I wasn't thinking of houses just now. A house isn't a home always. Our house isn't. Tom and I are the home part of our house. Aunt Maria is housekeeper and Dad just stops there once in a while. They don't care about having a home, I reckon."
The man was silent with astonishment at her keen observations, and mistaking his silence for disapproval at her criticisms, she hastily resumed, "The kind of a home I mean is where all the folks in it like each other and are always nice like the Carsons."
"So your father isn't like Mr. Carson?"
"Not a bit—yet."
"Is he mean to you?"
"N-o, not exactly. He is a Catt, that's all. I reckon it is me—I, who is mean. I get mad and sass him when he shakes me, and once when he whipped me I burned up his slippers."
"Does he whip you often?"
"No, this was the only time—so far. I spilled candy on his best hat, which is enough to make any man mad; but being a Catt, he was very mad. I haven't seen him since, because he is away on a trip, but when he comes back I am going to tell him I am sorry I burned up his shoes. I was just beginning to think maybe there was hopes of his being like Mr. Carson yet when I made him mad. Now I suppose I will have to begin all over again."
"Then you think your father is improving?"
"Why, you see, Dad has had a hard time of it. There have been so many things to make him feel bad. When he was in college he got expelled because of something dreadful another boy did, and then a man who was working with him in the mines cheated him out of all his share, and mamma died, and money has been hard to get and—well, he got cross."