obably take it to mother. I wanted to buy a ring too, to
hang on a ribbon around my neck. But the violets had made a fearful hole
in my thirteen dollars.

I borrowed a stub pen at the stationer's and I wrote on the photograph,
in large, sprawling letters, "To YOU from ME."

"There," I said to myself, when I put it under the pillow. "You look
like a photograph, but you are really a bomb-shell."

As things eventuated, it was. More so, indeed.

Mother sent for me when I came in. She was sitting in front of her
mirror, having the vibrater used on her hair, and her manner was
changed. I guessed that there had been a family Counsel over the poem,
and that they had decided to try kindness.

"Sit down, Barbara," she said. "I hope you were not lonely last night?"

"I am never lonely, mother. I always have things to think about."

I said this in a very pathetic tone.

"What sort of things?" mother asked, rather sharply.

"Oh--things," I said vaguely. "Life is such a mess, isn't it?"

"Certainly not. Unless one makes it so."

"But it is so difficult. Things come up and--and it's hard to know what
to do. The only way, I suppose, is to be true to one's beleif in one's
self."

"Take that thing off my head and go out, Hannah," mother snapped. "Now
then, Barbara, what in the world has come over you?"

"Over me? Nothing."

"You are being a silly child."

"I am no longer a child, mother. I am seventeen. And at seventeen there
are problems. After all, one's life is one's own. One must decide----"

"Now, Barbara, I am not going to have any nonsense. You must put that
man out of your head."

"Man? What man?"

"You think you are in love with some drivelling young Fool. I'm not
blind, or an idot. And I won't have it."

"I have not said that there is anyone, have I?" I said in a gentle
voice. "But if there was, just what would you propose to do, mother?"

"If you were three years younger I'd propose to spank you." Then I
think she saw that she was taking the wrong method, for she changed her
Tactics. "It's the fault of that Silly School," she said. (Note:
These are my mother's words, not mine.) "They are hotbeds of sickley
sentamentality. They----"

And just then the violets came, addressed to me. Mother opened them
herself, her mouth set. "My love is like a white, white rose," she said.
"Barbara, do you know who sent these?"

"Yes, mother," I said meekly. This was quite true. I did.

I am indeed sorry to record th