Pa seemed to enjoy these outbursts. I could not see why. I was unnerved to have enraged people whom I had not thought of when writing, as well as others that I had not even heard of.

“You must answer these letters,” said Pa. “It will give you a balanced sense of responsibility.”

I had to chew my pen for quite a time. I wrote humbly that I had not known the specific people but had meant simply to make fun of general reality. Pa said it was a generous letter, that it could not do any harm, neither would it do any good.

So I read the copies and then something came up in me and I jabbed down a postscript: “I don’t know you and am sorry that you are angry, but if the cap fits you and you make a noise and wear it, I can’t help it.”

There was no reply to these letters.

Other letters to Ma put the cap on. The one from Grandma was a sizzler. To me she wrote that she had hoped her eyelids would be closed in death before such a disgrace had been brought upon her, but she did not blame me so much as my mother.

Ma got another letter, from an old neighbour when we had lived up the country, pitching into her and accusing her of aiding me in making fun of him because Ma had always been stuck up because she was a swell, and thought her family better than his.

It was dreadful that Ma, the one perfect member of our ménage, who was beautiful and good and clever, who had sacrificed her life for Pa and me, should have this to bear.

“I knew there was something wrong,” she remarked. “There has been no one near the place to borrow so much as a bottle of yeast or half a hundred of flour for weeks.”

Ma is the most wonderful housekeeper in the district. The result is that the neighbours for miles around come to her when they want anything. They send to her when there is an accident, and more than once she has set an arm or leg in such a way that the doctor coming later has highly commended her skill and left it untouched. She can make dresses like a picture, and her pastry is so light and flaky that Pa says one needs a nosebag to keep it from flying away during consumption. Her bread is always taken for that of the best bakery, and so on, and so on. It is a sore trial for Ma to have such a poor husband, but added to that having her daughter, whom she had hoped would be a comfort, turning out to be a wolf in the barn, was indeed tragedy for Ma. It wasn’t any pleasure to me, but I had brought it on myself. It was right that I should suffer, but Ma was suffering through no fault of her own. She was a genuine heroine.