You hear when you can't help yourself, and that you can't be blamed for.

Sometimes it's your good luck, and sometimes it's your bad luck--just according to what you hear! Well, I was in the window-seat in the library reading when Mother and Aunt Hattie came in; and Mother was saying: "Of course I came out! Do you suppose I'd have had that child see that play, after I realized what it was?
As if she hasn't had enough of such wretched stuff already in her short life! Oh, Hattie, Hattie, I want that child to laugh, to sing, to fairly tingle with the joy of living every minute that she is with me.

I know so well what she _has_ had, and what she will have--in that--tomb.

You know in six months she goes back--" Mother saw me then, I know; for she stopped right off short, and after a moment began to talk of something else, very fast.

And pretty quick they went out into the hall again.
Dear little Mother! Bless her old heart! Isn't she the ducky dear to want me to have all the good times possible now so as to make up for the six months I've got to be with Father?
You see, she knows what it is to live with Father even better than I do.
Well, I guess she doesn't dread it for me any more than I do for myself.