It was after supper, and I had gone into the library. Father had gone out to the observatory as usual, and Aunt Jane had gone upstairs to her room as usual, and as usual I was wandering 'round looking for something to do. I wanted to play on the piano, but I didn't dare to--not with all those dead-hair and wax-flower folks in the parlor watching me, and the chance of Father's coming in as he did before. I was standing in the window staring out at nothing--it wasn't quite dark yet--when again I had that queer feeling that somebody was looking at me. I turned--and there was Father. He had come in and was sitting in the big chair by the table. But this time he didn't look right away as usual and give me a chance to slip quietly out of the room, as I always had before. Instead he said: "What are you doing there, Mary?" "N-nothing." I know I stammered. It always scares me to talk to Father. "Nonsense!" Father frowned and hitched in his chair. Father always hitches in his chair when he's irritated and nervous. "You can't be doing nothing. Nobody but a dead man does nothing--and we aren't so sure about him. What are you doing, Mary?" "Just l-looking out the window." "Thank you. That's better. Come here. I want to talk to you." "Yes, Father." I went, of course, at once, and sat down in the chair near him. He hitched again in his seat. "Why don't you do something--read, sew, knit?" he demanded. "Why do I always find you moping around, doing nothing?" Just like that he said it; and when he had just told me-- "Why, Father!" I cried; and I know that I showed how surprised I was. "I thought you just said I couldn't do nothing--that nobody could!" "Eh? What? Tut, tut!" He seemed very angry at first; then suddenly he looked sharply into my face. Next, if you'll believe it, he laughed--the queer little chuckle under his breath that I've heard him give two or three times when there was something he thought was funny. "Humph!" he grunted. Then he gave me another sharp look out of his eyes, and said: "I don't think you meant that to be quite so impertinent as it sounded, Mary, so we'll let it pass--this time. I'll put my question this way: Don't you ever knit or read or sew?" "I do sew every day in Aunt Jane's room, ten minutes hemming, ten minutes seaming, and ten minutes basting patchwork squares together. I don't know how to knit." "How about reading? Don't you care for reading?" "Why, of course I do. I love it!" I cried. "And I do read lots--at home." "At--_home_?" I knew then, of course, that I'd made another awful break. There wasn't any smile around Father's eyes now, and his lips came together hard and thin over that last word. "At--at _my_ home," I stammered. "I mean, my _other_ home." "Humph!" grunted Father. Then, after a minute: "But why, pray, can't you read here? I'm sure there are--books enough." He flourished his hands toward the bookcases all around the room.