must have for my own. I love every glimpse and scent and sound of it. Only the aggressive shriek of the train at the distant crossing makes me shrink and shudder. That was the last thing I heard—a whistle at a crossing—before the day coach which was carrying me home from a happy visit plunged over the embankment. 6

6

Eleven years ago! It seems like many centuries. Yet I remember it as I remember yesterday—that crash before oblivion. I can remember even the thrill of twelve-year old pride in the dignity of that fifty-mile journey, made quite alone. It was the beginning of a longer journey, where the milestones are the years; a journey painful and rebellious, marked with many stations of weariness, and black tunnels of agony; a journey which, despite all the loving care that surrounds me, I must make in isolation of body and spirit. Oh, little blue diary, it is well that I may shut away my moods and my mutiny between your covers! No one in all this house must be made sadder because of me. Not father, unfailing playmate, and tender; not Sarah, whose silent affection is like protecting arms about me. There's a great shaft of sunlight quivering across what I've just written. Incongruous, somehow. And I'm out of tune with the June weather and the birds just beyond my windows.

I must ask Sarah to bring me my first rose from my Sleeping Beauty bush. First roses are always the sweetest—like the kiss of Prince Charming.

I wonder what the nervous doctor's name is—poor Sarah!

June paid me a visit this afternoon while I slept. She was reluctant to waken me, but left me her prettiest card. The first roses from my bush! They have been happily translated to a vase beside me, as I write. Father brought them upstairs with him when he came in for tea.

"Did you kiss her hands and tell her how sorry I would be to miss her?" I asked him soberly.

Father looked alarmed. 7

7

"Whose hands?" he began.

"Who has called on us today?"

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