“DEAREST FATHER: “My heart is very sore to night. Mike died this morning. Cousin Jimmy says he must have been poisoned. Oh, Father dear, I felt so bad. He was such a lovely cat. I cried and cried and cried. Aunt Elizabeth was disgusted. She said, “You did not make half so much fuss when your father died.” What a crewel speech. Aunt Laura was nicer but when she said, “Don’t cry dear. I will get you another kitten,” I saw she didn’t understand either. I don’t want another kitten. If I had millions of kittens they wouldn’t make up for Mike.
“Ilse and I buried him in Lofty John’s bush. I am so thankful the ground wasn’t frozen yet. Aunt Laura gave me a shoe box for a coffin, and some pink tissue paper to wrap his poor little body in. And we put a stone over the grave and I said “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.” When I told Aunt Laura about it she was horrified and said, “Oh, Emily, that was a dreadful thing. You should not have said that over a cat.” And Cousin Jimmy said, “Don’t you think, Laura, that an innocent little dum creature has a share in God? Emily loved him and all love is part of God.” And Aunt Laura said, “Maybe you are right, Jimmy. But I am thankful Elizabeth did not hear her.”
“Cousin Jimmy may not be all there, but what is there is very nice.
“But oh, Father, I am so lonesome for Mike tonight. Last night he was here playing with me, so cunning and pretty and smee, and now he is cold and dead in Lofty John’s bush.
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“December 18.
“Dear Father:
“I am here in the garret. The Wind Woman is very sorry about something tonight. She is sying so sadly around the window. And yet the first time I heard her tonight the flash came—I felt as if I had just seen something that happened long, long ago—something so lovely that it hurt me.
“Cousin Jimmy says there will be a snow storm tonight. I am glad. I like to hear a storm at night. It’s so cozy to snuggle down among the blankets and feel it can’t get at you. Only when I snuggle Aunt Elizabeth says I skwirm. The idea of any one not knowing the difference between snuggling and skwirming.
“I am glad we will have snow for Christmas. The Murray dinner is to be at New Moon this year. It is our turn. Last year it was at Uncle Oliver’s but Cousin Jimmy had grippe and couldn’t go so I stayed home with him. I will be right in the thick of it this year and it exites me. I will write you all about it after it is over, dearest.
“I want to tell you something, Father. I am ashamed of it, but I think I’ll feel better if I tell you all about it. Last Saturday Ella Lee had a birthday party and I was invited. Aunt Elizabeth let me put on my new blue cashmere dress. It is a very pretty dress. Aunt Elizabeth wanted to get a dark brown but Aunt Laura insisted on blue. I looked at myself in my glass and I remembered that Ilse had told me her father told her I would be handsome if I had more colour. So I pinched my cheeks to make them red. I looked ever so much nicer but it didn’t last. Then I took an old red velvet flower that had once been in Aunt Laura’s bonnet and wet it and then rubbed the red on my cheeks. I went to the party and the girls all looked at me but nobody said anything, only Rhoda Stuart giggled and giggled. I meant to come home and wash the red off before Aunt
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 Elizabeth saw me. But she took a notion to call for me on her way home from the store. She did not say anything there but when we got home she said, “What have you been doing to your face, Emily?” I told her and I expected an awful scolding, but all she said was, “Don’t you know that you have made yourself cheap?” I did know it, too. I had felt that all along although I couldn’t think of the right word for it before. “I will never do such a thing again, Aunt Elizabeth,” I said. “You’d better not,” she said. “Go and wash your face this instant.” I did and I was not half so pretty but I felt ever so much better. Strange to relate, dear Father, I heard Aunt Elizabeth laughing about it in the pantry to Aunt Laura afterwards. You never can tell what will make Aunt Elizabeth laugh. I am sure it was ever so much funnier when Saucy Sal followed me to prayer meeting last Wednesday night, but Aunt Elizabeth never laughed a bit then. I don’t often go to prayer meeting but Aunt Laura couldn’t go that night so Aunt Elizabeth took me because she doesn’t like to go alone. I didn’t know Sal was following us till just as we got to the church I saw her. I shooed her away but after we went in I suppose Sal sneaked in when someone opened the door and got upstairs into the galery. And just as soon as Mr. Dare began to pray Sal began to yowl. It sounded awful up in that big empty galery. I felt so gilty and miserable. I did not need to paint my face. It was just burning red and Aunt Elizabeth’s eyes glittered feendishly. Mr. Dare prayed a long time. He is deaf, so he did not hear Sal any more than when he sat on her. But everyone else did and the boys giggled. After the prayer Mr. Morris went up to the galery and chased Sal out. We could hear her skrambling over the seats and Mr. Morris after her. I was wild for fear he’d hurt her. I ment to spank her myself with a shingle next day but I did not want her to be kicked. After a long time he got her out of the galery and she tore down the stairs and into the
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 church, up one isle and down the other two or three times as fast as she could go and Mr. Morris after her with a broom. It is awfully funny to think of it now but I did not think it so funny at the time I was so ashamed and so afraid Sal would be hurt.
“Mr. Morris chased her out at last. When he sat down I made a face at him behind my hymn book. Coming home Aunt Elizabeth said, “I hope you have disgraced us enough tonight, Emily Starr. I shall never take you to prayer meeting again.” I am sorry I disgraced the Murrays but I don’t see how I was to blame and anyway I don’t like prayer meeting because it is dull.
“But it wasn’t dull that night, dear Father.
“Do you notice how my spelling is improved? I have thought of such a good plan. I write my letter first and then I look up all the words I’m not sure of and correct them. Sometimes though I think a word is all right when it isn’t.
“Ilse and I have given up our language. We fought over the verbs. Ilse didn’t want to have any tenses for the verbs. She just wanted to have a different word altogether for every tense. I said if I was going to make a language it was going to be a proper one and Ilse got mad and said she had enough bother with grammer in English and I could go and make my old language by myself. But that is no fun so I let it go too. I was sorry because it was very interesting and it was such fun to puzzle the other girls in school. We weren’t able to get square with the French boys after all for Ilse had sore throat all through potato picking time and couldn’t come over. It seems to me that life is full of disappointments.
“We had examinations in school this week. I did pretty well in all except arithmetic. Miss Brownell explained something about the questions but I was busy composing a story in my mind and did not hear her so I got poor marks. The story is called Madge MacPherson’s Secret. I am going to buy four sheets of foolscap
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 with my egg money and sew them into a book and write the story in it. I can do what I like with my egg money. I think maybe I’ll write novels when I grow up as well as poetry. But Aunt Elizabeth won’t let me read any novels so how can I find out how to write them? Another thing that worries me, if I do grow up and write a wonderful poem, perhaps people won’t see how wonderful it is.
“Cousin Jimmy says that a man in Priest Pond says the end of the world is coming soon. I hope it won’t come till I’ve seen everything in it.
“Poor Elder MacKay has the mumps.
“I was over sleeping with Ilse the other night because her father was away. Ilse says her prayers now and she said she’d bet me anything she could pray longer than me. I said she couldn’t and I prayed ever so long about everything I could think of and when I couldn’t think of anything more I thought at first I’d begin over again. Then I thought, “No, that would not be honerable. A Starr must be honerable.” So I got up and said “You win” and Ilse never answered. I went around the bed and there she was asleep on her knees. When I woke her up she said we’d have to call the bet off because she could have gone on praying for ever so long if she hadn’t fell asleep.
“After we got into bed I told her a lot of things I wished afterwards I hadn’t. Secrets.
“The other day in history class Miss Brownell read that Sir Walter Raleigh had to lie in the Tower for fourteen years. Perry said “Wouldn’t they let him get up sometimes?” Then Miss Brownell punished him for impertinence, but Perry was in earnest. Ilse was mad at Miss Brownell for whipping Perry and mad at Perry for asking such a fool question as if he didn’t know anything. But Perry says he is going to write a history book some day that won’t have such puzzling things in it.
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“I am finishing the Disappointed House in my mind. I’m furnishing the rooms like flowers. I’ll have a rose room all pink and a lily room all white and silver and a pansy room, blue and gold. I wish the Disappointed House could have a Christmas. It never has any Christmasses.
“Oh, Father, I’ve just thought of something nice. When I grow up and write a great novel and make lots of money, I will buy the Disappointed House and finish it. Then it won’t be Disappointed any more.
“Ilse’s Sunday School teacher, Miss Willeson, gave her a Bible for learning 200 verses. But when she took it home her father laid it on the floor and kicked it out in the yard. Mrs. Simms says a judgment will come on him but nothing has happened yet. The poor man is warped. That is why he did such a wicked thing.
“Aunt Laura took me to old Mrs. Mason’s funeral last Wednesday. I like funerals. They are so dramatic.
“My pig died last week. It was a great finanshul loss ............