accounts of deaths and weddings. I found a piece about my own birth and it gave me a queer feeling.
“In the afternoon some of the Priests come to see Aunt Nancy and stay to supper. Leslie Priest always comes. He is Aunt Nancy’s faverite neffew, so Jim says. I think that is because he pays her compliments. But I saw him wink at Isaac Priest once when he paid her one. I don’t like him. He treats me as if I was a meer child. Aunt Nancy says terrible things to them all but they just laugh. When they go away Aunt Nancy makes fun of them to Caroline. Caroline doesn’t like it, because she is a Priest and so she and Aunt Nancy always quarrel Sunday evening and don’t speak again till Monday morning.
“I can read all the books in Aunt Nancy’s bookcase except the row on the top shelf. I wonder why I can’t read them. Aunt Nancy said they were French novels but I just peeped into one and it was English. I wonder if Aunt Nancy tells lies.
“The place I love best is down at bay shore. Some parts of the shore are very steep and there are such nice, woodsy, unexpected places all along it. I wander there and compose poetry. I miss Ilse and Teddy and Perry and Saucy Sal a great deal. I had a letter from Ilse today. She wrote me that they couldn’t do anything more about the Midsummer Night’s Dream till I got back. It is nice to feel so necessary.
“Aunt Nancy doesn’t like Aunt Elizabeth. She called her a “tyrant” one day and then she said “Jimmy Murray was a very clever boy. Elizabeth Murray killed his intellect in her temper—and nothing was done to her. If she had killed his body she would have been a murderess. The other was worse, if you ask me.” I do not like Aunt Elizabeth at times myself but I felt, dear Father, that I must stand up for my family and I said “I do not want to hear such things said of my Aunt Elizabeth.”
