_October 20th._ I don’t need my note-book these days. When one can do so much living with people the birds are no longer a necessity. I hear their songs and calls, and know them for the voices of my friends—real friends for life. But Caro comes over nearly every day, and always there is so much to talk about. And often Cousin Jane comes too; and it’s positively exhilarating to see the way Caro and I are corrupting her morals. That old lady is getting as worldly-minded as if there were not a blackbird saint in existence. The dressmaker made her get a modern corset to be fitted in, and she’s so pleased with herself in it that she wears it all the time. She really looks like another person, for Caro has coaxed her into curl-papers o’ nights, and the soft gray fluff around her face is amazingly different from the wide part with the flat straight bands plastered over her temples and ears. The old Buff Orpington doesn’t know her any more, and Caro says he shrieks and runs at the sight of her. Everybody in Chatterton notices the change, and tells her she looks years younger—as she does; and the other evening Cousin Chad took up the tale, and grew positively sentimental, right before Caro. Cousin Jane blushed and bridled as she must have done over forty years ago, and next day she bought the prettiest stuff for a house dress, and carried it to the wedding-gown dressmaker to make! She says it’s every woman’s Christian duty to be attractive in her own home, and that if Chadwell will be a boy and like frippery, she’ll have to give in to him; the Lord didn’t give men much sense anyway, and you just have to humor them along, like children. I feel rather ashamed of myself, I must confess. I’ve been laughing at her all these years, like all the rest of the family, and been cross with her inside, often. And what she needed most was for somebody to see the simple human need for praise and petting under all her strident aggressiveness; for as soon as she got it she blossomed out like this! I said as much to Caro today, and she cocked her head suddenly to one side as if she heard someone calling her. Then she jumped up, laughing, spun around on one toe, and caught me in her arms. She said I’d given her such a big idea I’d taken her breath away. She wouldn’t tell me what it was, but ran off to the buggy and drove singing down to the gate. * * * * * _October 24th._ Caro has given me the shock of my life. I’ve seen she had some kind of bee in her bonnet for three or four days, but she was bent on being mysterious, so I didn’t tease. Yesterday, as I sat on the side porch, whipping lace, I saw her buggy coming out from between the cedars, and Cousin Jason was in it! Caro was beaming, as usual, and Cousin Jason looked as if he were having a good time, and embarrassed to know what to do with it. I went to meet them as they drove toward the Perchery.