("Whoa, Douglas.  Well—­mother, you had a nice little nap, didn’t you.  No, no; I won’t be late.  It’s not more than five minutes to the station.  Thanks, Lena.  Yes, Billy dear, you can get in.  Why, I don’t know why you shouldn’t drive.”)

The train is just pulling in.  Charles is there and Maria, each standing on one side of the car-steps.  Now I see them.  That looks like Peggy’s suit-case the porter’s carrying down.  Yes, it is.  There—­there they are, coming down the steps behind him, Cyrus and my dear girl—­how well they look!  Oh, how I hope everything will come right for them!

X. THE SCHOOL-BOY

By Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

Rabbits.

Automobile. (Painted red, with yellow lines.)

Automatic reel. (The 3-dollar kind.)

New stamp-book. (The puppy chewed my other.)

Golly, I forgot.  I suppose I mustn’t use this, but it’s my birthday next month, and I want ’steen things, and I thought I’d better make a list to pin on the dining-room door, where the family could take their pick what to give me.  Lorraine gave me this blank-book, and told me that if I’d write down everything that I knew about Peggy and Harry Goward and all that stuff, she’d have Sally make me three pounds of crumbly cookies with currants on top, in a box, to keep in my room just to eat myself, and she wouldn’t tell Alice, so I won’t be selfish not to offer her any as she won’t know about it and so won’t suffer.  I’m going to keep them in the extra bureau drawer where Peg puts her best party dress, so I guess they’ll be et up before anybody goes there.

Peggy’s feeling pretty sick now to dress up for parties, but I know a thing or two that the rest don’t know.  Wouldn’t Alice be hopping!  She always thinks she’s wise to everything, and to have a thick-headed boy-person know a whacking secret that they’d all be excited about would make her mad enough to burst.  She thinks she can read my ingrown soul too—­but I rather think I have my own interior thoughts that Miss Alice doesn’t tumble to.  For instance, Dr. Denbigh.

Golly, I forgot.  Lorraine said she’d cut down the cookies if things weren’t told orderly the way they happened.  So I’ve got to begin back.  First then, I’ve had the best time since Peggy got engaged that I’ve ever had in my own home.  Not quite as unbossed as when they sent me on the Harris farm last summer, and I slept in the stable if I wanted to, and nobody asked if I’d taken a bath.  That was a sensible way to live, but yet it’s been unpecked at and pleasant even at home lately.  You see, with such a lot of fussing about Peggy and Harry Goward, nobody has noticed what I did, and that, to a person with a taste for animals, is one of the best states of living.  I’ve gone to the table without brushing my hair, and the puppy has slept in my bed, and I’ve kept a toad behind the wash-basin for two weeks, and though