t"
too, because I am eighteen. I coaxed off this winter. It wasn't very
hard, because no mother with three older unmarried girls on her hands
would be very anxious to bring out a fourth. The girls took my part
and advised Mother to let me be a child as long as possible. Mother
yielded for this time, but said I must be brought out next winter or
people would talk. Oh, I hate the thought of it! People might talk
about my not being brought out, but they will talk far more about the
blunders I shall make.

The doleful fact is, I'm too wretchedly shy and awkward to live. It
fills my soul with terror to think of donning long dresses and putting
my hair up and going into society. I can't talk and men frighten me to
death. I fall over things as it is, and what will it be with long
dresses? As far back as I can remember it has been my one aim and
object in life to escape company. Oh, if only one need never grow up!
If I could only go back four years and stay there!

Mother laments over it muchly. She says she doesn't know what she has
done to have such a shy, unpresentable daughter. _I_ know. She married
Grandmother Marshall's son, and Grandmother Marshall was as shy as she
was economical. Mother triumphed over heredity with Jen and Sue and
Alice, but it came off best with me. The other girls are noted for
their grace and tact. But I'm the black sheep and always will be. It
wouldn't worry me so much if they'd leave me alone and stop nagging
me. "Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness," where there were no
men, no parties, no dinners ... just quantities of dogs and horses and
skating ponds and woods! I need never put on long dresses then, but
just be a jolly little girl forever.

However, I've got one beautiful year before me yet, and I mean to make
the most of it.

* * * * *

January Tenth.

It is rather good to have a diary to pour out your woes in when you
feel awfully bad and have no one to sympathize with you. I've been
used to shutting them all up in my soul and then they sometimes
fermented and made trouble.

We had a lot of people here to dinner tonight, and that made me
miserable to begin with. I had to dress up in a stiff white dress
_with a sash_, and Jen tied two big white fly-away bows on my hair
that kept rasping my neck and tickling my ears in a most exasperating
way. Then an old lady whom I detest tried to make me talk before
e