be a book, only I shall have to call it a diary, on account of Father,
you know. Won't it be funny when I don't have to do things on account
of Father? And I won't, of course, the six months I'm living with
Mother in Boston. But, oh, my!--the six months I'm living here with
him--whew! But, then, I can stand it. I may even like it--some.
Anyhow, it'll be _different_. And that's something.

Well, about making this into a book. As I started to say, he wouldn't
let me. I know he wouldn't. He says novels are a silly waste of time,
if not absolutely wicked. But, a diary--oh, he loves diaries! He keeps
one himself, and he told me it would be an excellent and instructive
discipline for me to do it, too--set down the weather and what I did
every day.

The weather and what I did every day, indeed! Lovely reading that
would make, wouldn't it? Like this:

"The sun shines this morning. I got up, ate my breakfast, went to
school, came home, ate my dinner, played one hour over to Carrie
Heywood's, practiced on the piano one hour, studied another hour.
Talked with Mother upstairs in her room about the sunset and the snow
on the trees. Ate my supper. Was talked _to_ by Father down in the
library about improving myself and taking care not to be light-minded
and frivolous. (He meant like Mother, only he didn't say it right out
loud. You don't have to say some things right out in plain words, you
know.) Then I went to bed."

* * * * *

Just as if I was going to write my novel like that! Not much I am. But
I shall call it a diary. Oh, yes, I shall call it a diary--till I take
it to be printed. Then I shall give it its true name--a novel. And
I'm going to tell the printer that I've left it for him to make the
spelling right, and put in all those tiresome little commas and
periods and question marks that everybody seems to make such a fuss
about. If I write the story part, I can't be expected to be bothered
with looking up how words are spelt, every five minutes, nor fussing
over putting in a whole lot of foolish little dots and dashes.

As if anybody who was reading the story cared for that part! The
story's the thing.

I love stories. I've written lots of them for the girls, too--little
short ones, I mean; not a long one like this is going to be, of
course. And it'll be so exciting to be living a story instead of
reading it--only when you're _living_ a story you can't peek over to
the back to see how