Children of divorced parents -- United States -- Fiction; Divorce -- Fiction; Families -- Fiction
And before I could even draw breath to ask any questions, we were
home; and a real pretty lady, with a light-blue dress on, was helping
me out of the car, and kissing me as she did so.
Now, do you wonder that I have been rubbing my eyes and wondering if I
was really I, and if this was Andersonville? Even now I'm not sure but
it's a dream, and I shall wake up and find I've gone to sleep on the
cars, and that the train is just drawing into the station, and that
John and the horses, and Aunt Jane in her I-don't-care-how-it-looks
black dress are there to meet me.
* * * * *
_One week later_.
It isn't a dream. It's all really, truly true--everything: Father
coming to meet me, the lovely automobile, and the pretty lady in the
light-blue dress, who kissed me. And when I went downstairs the next
morning I found out it was real, 'specially the pretty lady; for she
kissed me again, and said she hoped I'd be happy there. And she never
said one word about dusting one hour and studying one hour and weeding
one hour. (Of course, she couldn't say anything about my clothes, for
I was already in a Mary blue-gingham dress.) She just told me to amuse
myself any way I liked, and said, if I wanted to, I might run over to
see some of the girls, but not to make any plans for the afternoon,
for she was going to take me to ride.
Now, what do you think of that? Go to see the girls in the morning,
and take a ride--an automobile ride!--in the afternoon. _In
Andersonville_! Why, I couldn't believe my ears. Of course, I was wild
and crazy with delight--but it was all so different. Why, I began to
think almost that I was Marie, and not Mary at all.
And it's been that way the whole week through. I've had a beautiful
time. I've been so excited! And Mother is excited, too. Of course, I
wrote her and told her all about it right away. And she wrote right
back and wanted to know everything--everything I could tell her; all
the little things. And she was so interested in Cousin Grace, and
wanted to know all about her; said _she_ never heard of her before,
and was she Father's own cousin, and how old was she, and was she
pretty, and was Father around the house more now, and did I see a lot
of him? She thought from something I said that I did.
I've just been writing her again, and I could tell her more now, of
course, than I could in that first letter. I've been here a whole
week, and, of course, I know more about things, and have done more.
I told her that Cousin Grace wasn't really Father's cousin at all, so
it wasn't any wonder she hadn't ever heard of her. She was the wife
of Father's third cousin who went to South America six years ago and
caught the fever and died there. So this Mrs. Whitney isn't really any
relation of his at all. But he'd always known her, even before she
married his cousin; and so, when her husband died, and she didn't have
any home, he asked her to come here.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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