me
dreadfully, but now I'm beginning to think she does it when she can't
answer my questions. I've asked her lots and lots of things that have
made her sit up and gasp, I can tell you, and I have more all ready as
soon as I get the chance.

There is another thing I will mention while I think of it. Grandma
Evarts is always talking about "rules of life," but the only rule of
life I'm perfectly sure I have is to always mention things when I think
of them. Even that doesn't please the family, though, because sometimes
I mention things they thought I didn't know, and then they are annoyed
and cross instead of learning a lesson by it and realizing how silly it
is to try to keep secrets from me. If they'd TELL me, and put me on
my honor, I could keep their old secrets as well as anybody. I've kept
Billy's for years and years. But when they all stop talking the minute
I come into a room, and when mamma and Peggy go around with red eyes and
won't say why, you'd better believe I don't like it. It fills me with
the "intelligent discontent" Tom is always talking about. Then I don't
rest until I know what there is to know, and usually when I get through
I know more than anybody else does, because I've got all the different
sides--Maria's and Tom's and Lorraine's and Charles Edward's and mamma's
and papa's and grandma's and Peggy's and Aunt Elizabeth's. It isn't that
they intend to tell me things, either; they all try not to. Every one of
them keeps her own secrets beautifully, but she drops things about the
others. Then all I have to do is to put them together like a patch-work
quilt.

You needn't think it's easy, though, for the very minute I get near any
of the family they waste most of the time we're together by trying to
improve me. You see, they are all so dreadfully old that they have had
time to find out their faults and youthful errors, and every single one
of them thinks she sees ALL her faults in me, and that she must help
me to conquer them ere it is too late. Aunt Elizabeth says they mean it
kindly, and perhaps they do. But if you have ever had ten men and women
trying to improve you, you will know what my life is. Tom Price, who
married my sister Maria, told Dr. Denbigh once that "every time a
Talbert is unoccupied he or she puts Alice or Billy, or both, on the
family moulding-board and kneads awhile." I heard him say it and it's
true. All _I_ can say is that if they keep on kneading and moulding me
much longer there