This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
JULIE'S DIARY
117
24th OF APRIL.

I AM glad I am twenty years old, for then I have known him two years, when I was nineteen and now that I am twenty. But such nonsense I don't tell him, for he would only laugh and call me a baby, and that would be most improper for a lady of twenty.

25th OF APRIL.

I WAS at home alone this afternoon. Suddenly I was startled out of myself by a violent ringing of the bell which made me tremble with fear.

The letter was for mother; I put it on the table and sat down again in the window. But I could not recover my peaceful frame of mind. The violent ringing still sounded in my ears, and seemed to say: There is danger ahead. I told myself I was silly and nervous, of course the postman had been in a hurry and pulled the bell too vigorously. I wondered from whom the letter could be; I did not know the handwriting. I went over and looked at it. It was an old-fashioned, long and narrow, envelope, and the writing wandered up and down in big, clumsy letters. There was a mistake in the spelling. Who in the world could it be from? I knew the handwriting on all the letters mother generally got.

I wonder, could it be from grandmother's old maid, saying that she was ill? No, that was not very likely, we should have had a message and not a letter.