our family; and when I tell you that there are eleven of
us--well, you can dimly imagine the kind of a time I have. Two or three
days ago I heard Grandma Evarts say something to the minister about "the
down-trodden and oppressed of foreign lands," and after he had gone I
asked her what they were. For a wonder, she told me; usually when Billy
and I ask questions you would think the whole family had been struck
dumb. But this time she answered and I remember every word--for if ever
anything sounded like a description of Billy and me it was what Grandma
Evarts said that day. I told her so, too; but, of course, she only
looked at me over her spectacles and didn't understand what I meant.
Nobody ever does except Billy and Aunt Elizabeth, and they're not much
comfort. Billy is always so busy getting into trouble and having me get
him out of it, and feeling sorry for himself, that he hasn't time to
sympathize with me. Besides, as I've said before, he's only a boy, and
you know what boys are and how they lack the delicate feelings girls
have, and how their minds never work when you want them to. As for Aunt
Elizabeth, she is lovely sometimes, and the way she remembers things
that happened when she was young is simply wonderful. She knows how
girls feel, too, and how they suffer when they are like Dr. Denbigh says
I am--very nervous and sensitive and high-strung. But she admitted to
me to-day that she had never before really made up her mind whether I am
the "sweet, unsophisticated child" she calls me, or what Tom Price says
I am, The Eastridge Animated and Undaunted Daily Bugle and Clarion Call.
He calls me that because I know so much about what is going on; and he
says if Mr. Temple could get me on his paper as a regular contributor
there wouldn't be a domestic hearth-stone left in Eastridge. He says the
things I drop will break every last one of them, anyhow, beginning with
the one at home. That's the way he talks, and though I don't always know
exactly what he means I can tell by his expression that it is not very
complimentary.

Aunt Elizabeth is different from the others, and she and I have
inspiring conversations sometimes--serious ones, you know, about life
and responsibility and careers; and then, at other times, just when
I'm revealing my young heart to her the way girls do in books, she gets
absent-minded or laughs at me, or stares and says, "You extraordinary
infant," and changes the subject. At first it used to hurt