“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 to me. Aunt Elizabeth says Cousin Jimmy fed it too well. I suppose I should not have called it after Lofty John.
“We have maps to draw in school now. Rhoda Stuart always gets the most marks. Miss Brownell doesn’t know that Rhoda just puts the map up against a window pane and the paper over it and copies it off. I like drawing maps. Norway and Sweden look like a tiger with mountains for stripes and Ireland looks like a little dog with its back turned on England, and its paws held up against its breast, and Africa looks like a big pork ham. Australia is a lovely map to draw.
“Ilse is getting on real well in school now. She says she isn’t going to have me beating her. She can learn like the dickins, as Perry says, when she tries, and she has won the silver metal for Queen’s County. The W.C.T.U. in Charlottetown gave it for the best reciter. They had
