There weren't any spangly dresses and gold slippers about _her_, I can tell you! She was crying on a bench in the park, and Mother told me to stay back and watch the swans while she went up and spoke to her.

(Why do old folks always make us watch swans or read books or look into store windows or run and play all the time?
Don't they suppose we understand perfectly well what it means--that they're going to say something they don't want us to hear ?) Well, Mother and the lady on the bench talked and talked ever so long, and then Mother called me up, and the lady cried a little over me, and said, "Now, perhaps, if I'd had a little girl like that--!" Then she stopped and cried some more.
We saw this lady real often after that.

She was nice and pretty and sweet, and I liked her; but she was always awfully sad, and I don't believe it was half so good for Mother to be with her as it would have been for her to be with those jolly, laughing ladies that were always having such good times.

But I couldn't make Mother see it that way at all.

There are times when it seems as if Mother just _couldn't_ see things the way I do.