Stafford where nothing ever happens or ever has happened that I know of, and in a family that's awfully nice, of course, but as plain and uninteresting and ordinary as all the rest of the families around here.

Carol doesn't feel the same as I do about it. She's more hopeful. That's because she has lots of imagination and is always romancing about people and thinking there's some story back of their lives that we don't know. I suppose her journal will be awfully different from mine. Well, anyhow, we've both begun, and now we'll see what happens.

November 23. I had to stop short last night because I suddenly got so sleepy. Now I'll go on. I do wish we lived in Bridgeton, for things surely happen once in a while in a big town like that. Or even down in our own village of Stafford itself, and not way out, a mile off on the main road, on this silly little triangle called Paradise Green. Even the trolley doesn't run up this way; that would be something! But there's nothing in the world around here except this little triangle of a green, formed by the turning off of Cranberry Bog Road from the River Road, and the short road that connects the two at the head of the green. I'm sure I don't know why it was ever called Paradise Green. I suppose if I were Carol, I'd find out. She probably will. She's always hunting up historical facts.

Even the automobiles don't come along this way. Nearly all of them keep to the State road over on the other side of the river. There are just three houses around the Green, one on each side, and not another dwelling anywhere within half a mile. So we haven't many near neighbors.

Our house stands at the head of the Green. It's a big square house, with a cupola on top and a veranda around all four sides. Father's father built it when that style of house was just beginning to be popular, and everybody thought it very grand. I hate it myself, because it seems so old-fashioned and dreary compared to those pretty new bungalows they are putting up in Bridgeton. Mother and Father and the Imp and I live here. Father does intensive farming,--he is just crazy about it,--and every one comes to Birdsey's for ideas on the subject.

Dave is my brother. He's seventeen and a half, and a very quiet and thoughtful sort of person. All the same, he can do his own share of teasing in a quiet way. He left high school this year because his health wasn't very good, and is helping Father with the farming. Next year he's going to study scientific agriculture at one of the big colleges. I'm secretly awfully fond of Dave, but 

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