"Now and then," I said to Hannah, "I shall read you parts of it. Only you mustn't run and tell mother." "Why not?" said she, peering into the Suitcase. "Because I intend to deal with Life," I said. "I shall deal with real Things, and not the way we think them. I am young, but I have thought a great deal. I shall mince nothing." "Look here, Miss Barbara," Hannah said, all at once, "what are you doing with this whiskey flask? And these socks? And--you come right here, and tell me where you got the things in this suitcase." I stocked over to the bed, and my blood froze in my veins. IT WAS NOT MINE. Words cannot fully express how I felt. While fully convinced that there had been a mistake, I knew not when or how. Hannah was staring at me with cold and accusing eyes. "You're a very young lady, Miss Barbara," she said, with her eyes full of Suspicion, "to be carrying a flask about with you." I was as puzzled as she was, but I remained calm and to all appearances Spartan. "I am young in years," I remarked. "But I have seen Life, Hannah." Now I meant nothing by this at the time. But it was getting on my nerves to be put in the infant class all the time. The Christmas before they had done it, and I had had my revenge. Although it had hurt me more than it hurt them, and if I gave them a fright I gave myself a worse one. As I said at that time: Oh, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive. Sir Walter Scott. Hannah gave me a horrified glare, and dipped into the suitcase again. She brought up a tin box of cigarettes, and I thought she was going to have delirium tremens at once. Well, at first I thought the girls at school had played a trick on me, and a low down mean trick at that. There are always those who think it is funny to do that sort of thing, but they are the first to squeal when anything is done to them. Once I put a small garter snake in a girl's muff, and it went up her sleeve, which is nothing to some of the things she had done to me. And you would have thought the school was on fire. Anyhow, I said to myself that some Smarty was trying to get me into trouble, and Hannah would run to the family, and they'd never believe me. All at once I saw all my cherished plans for the summer gone, and me in the country somewhere with Mademoiselle, and walking through the pasture with a botany in one hand and a folding cup in the other, in case we found a spring a cow had not stepped in. Mademoiselle was once my Governess, but has retired to private life, except in cases of emergency. I am naturally very quick in mind. The Archibalds are all like that, and when once we decide on a course we stick to it through thick and thin. But we do not lie. It is ridiculous for Hannah to say I said the cigarettes were mine. All I said was: "I suppose you are going to tell the family. You'd better run, or you'll burst." "Oh, Miss Barbara, Miss Barbara!" she said. "And you so young to be so wild!"