he tried to have me Marie while she wanted me Mary--I did not know
what they wanted; and I wished I had never been born unless I could
have been born a plain Susie or Bessie, or Annabelle, and not a Mary
Marie that was all mixed up till I didn't know what I was.

And then I cried some more.

Mother dropped the dress then, and took me in her arms over on the
couch, and she said, "There, there," and that I was tired and nervous,
and all wrought up, and to cry all I wanted to. And by and by, when I
was calmer I could tell Mother all about it.

And I did.

I told her how hard I tried to be Mary all the way up to Andersonville
and after I got there; and how then I found out, all of a sudden one
day, that father had got ready for _Marie_, and he didn't want me to
be Mary, and that was why he had got Cousin Grace and the automobile
and the geraniums in the window, and, oh, everything that made it nice
and comfy and homey. And then is when they bought me the new white
dresses and the little white shoes. And I told Mother, of course, it
was lovely to be Marie, and I liked it, only I knew _she_ would feel
bad to think, after all _her_ pains to make me Mary, Father didn't
want me Mary at all.

"I don't think you need to worry--about that," stammered Mother. And
when I looked at her, her face was all flushed, and sort of queer, but
not a bit angry. And she went on in the same odd little shaky voice:
"But, tell me, why--why did--your father want you to be Marie and not
Mary?"