it's all coming out. I shan't like that part.
Still, it may be all the more exciting, after all, _not_ to know
what's coming.

I like love stories the best. Father's got--oh, lots of books in the
library, and I've read stacks of them, even some of the stupid old
histories and biographies. I had to read them when there wasn't
anything else to read. But there weren't many love stories. Mother's
got a few, though--lovely ones--and some books of poetry, on the
little shelf in her room. But I read all those ages ago.

That's why I'm so thrilled over this new one--the one I'm living, I
mean. For of course this will be a love story. There'll be _my_ love
story in two or three years, when I grow up, and while I'm waiting
there's Father's and Mother's.

Nurse Sarah says that when you're divorced you're free, just like you
were before you were married, and that sometimes they marry again.
That made me think right away: what if Father or Mother, or both
of them, married again? And I should be there to see it, and the
courting, and all! Wouldn't that be some love story? Well, I just
guess!

And only think how all the girls would envy me--and they just living
along their humdrum, everyday existence with fathers and mothers
already married and living together, and nothing exciting to look
forward to. For really, you know, when you come right down to it,
there _aren't_ many girls that have got the chance I've got.

And so that's why I've decided to write it into a book. Oh, yes, I
know I'm young--only thirteen. But I _feel_ really awfully old; and
you know a woman is as old as she feels. Besides, Nurse Sarah says I
am old for my age, and that it's no wonder, the kind of a life I've
lived.

And maybe that is so. For of course it _has_ been different, living
with a father and mother that are getting ready to be divorced from
what it would have been living with the loving, happy-ever-after kind.
Nurse Sarah says it's a shame and a pity, and that it's the children
that always suffer. But I'm not suffering--not a mite. I'm just
enjoying it. It's so exciting.

Of course if I was going to lose either one, it would be different.
But I'm not, for I am to live with Mother six months, then with
Father.

So I still have them both. And, really, when you come right down to
it, I'd _rather_ take them separate that way. Why, separate they're
just perfectly all right, like that--that--what-do-you-call-it
powder?--sedlitzer, or something li