m with all the Government things he does too. He _must_ be very
clever; that's what put it in my head that _perhaps_ some day I might be
clever that way too. For I don't want to be either a soldier or a
sailor, or a lawyer like father was before he got into Government
things, and I'm sure I'm not good enough to be a parson, though I think
I'd rather like it; and so sometimes I really get frightened that I'll
be no good at anything at all, and a boy must be something.

I think father and mother would be pleased if I were a great writer.

And then we really have had some adventures: that makes it more
interesting to make out a story about ourselves, for I think a book just
about getting up and going to bed, and breakfast, and dinner, and tea,
would be very stupid--though, all the same, in story-books I do like
rather to know what the children have to eat, and something about the
place they live in too.

To go back about grandfather. The reason we don't much like his being
with us isn't exactly that we don't care for him. He's not bad. But
father's his only child, and our grandmother died a good while ago, and
I think she must have been a very giving-in sort of person, and that's
bad training for any one. When I'm grown up, _if_ ever I marry, I shall
settle with my wife before we start that she mustn't give in to me too
much, and I'll stick to it once it's settled. For I've got rather a
nasty temper, and I feel in me that if I was to get too much of my own
way it would get horrid. It's perhaps because of that that it's been a
good thing for me to have four sisters, for they're _nearly_ as bad as
four wives sometimes. I don't get too much of my own way at present, I
can tell you.

I often think I'm rather like grandfather. P'raps if he'd had four
sisters or a not-too-giving-in wife he'd have been better. Now, I hope
that's not rude? I don't mean it to be; I'm rather excusing him. And I
can't put down what isn't true, even though nobody should ever see this
'veracious history'--that's what I'm going to put on the
title-page--except myself. And the truth is that grandfather expects
everybody and everything to give in to him. Not _always_ father, for he
does see how grand and clever father is, and that he can't be expected
to come and go, and do things, and give up things, just like a baby.
But oh, as for poor little mums!--that's mother--her life's not her own
when gran's with us. And it isn't that she's silly a bit. She's