That was the only time I ever heard my father and mother quarrel. I remember it, because it frightened me terribly. They seemed to be quarrelling about Campbell. When my father called him by bad names, my mother, as I now understand, seemed to defend him, and that made my father angrier than ever. So, when Campbell met us at the ship and seemed so glad to see my mother, I thought of my father, and I hated Campbell. I remembered the names my father used to call him, though I still didn’t know what the words meant. So, when Campbell tried to pet me, I resented it in my childish fashion, saying:— “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?” She tried to explain it by telling me that my father was no longer her husband, but I couldn’t understand. And, Dorothy, I don’t understand it now. Of course I know now that my parents had been divorced, but I don’t and can’t understand how a woman who has been a man’s wife can make up her mind to be any other man’s wife so long as her first husband lives. I suppose I was a very uncompromising little girl at that time, and I was very apt to say what I thought about things without any flinching from ugly truths. So, when they went on trying to hush me by telling me that Campbell was now my papa, I flew into a great rage. I took hold of my hair and tore out great locks of it. I tried to tear off my clothes, and all the time I was saying things that caused all the passengers in the station to gather about us; some of them laughing, and some looking on very solemnly, as I shrieked:— “I won’t have him for my new papa! He’s a swindler and a scoundrel! My papa told you so a long time ago! I hate him, and I’m going to hate you now and for ever, amen!” I didn’t know what the words meant, but they had been strongly impressed upon my memory by the vehemence with which my father had uttered them long before. As for the final phrase, with the “amen” at the end of it, I had heard it in church, and had somehow got the impression that it was some kind of highly exalted curse.