Mother says it is, too.

She says she wishes _she'd_ known something about astronomy when she was a girl; that she's sure it would have made things a whole lot easier and happier all around, when she married Father; for then she would have known something about something _he_ was interested in.

She said she couldn't help that now, of course; but she could see that _I_ knew something about such things.

And that was why she was reading to me now.

Then she said again that she thought we owed it to Father, when he'd been so good to let me stay.
It seems so funny to hear her talk such a lot about Father as she does, when before she never used to mention him--only to say how afraid she was that I would love him better than I did her, and to make me say over and over again that I didn't.