"The sun shines this morning. I got up, ate my breakfast, went to school, came home, ate my dinner, played one hour over to Carrie Heywood's, practiced on the piano one hour, studied another hour. Talked with Mother upstairs in her room about the sunset and the snow on the trees. Ate my supper. Was talked _to_ by Father down in the library about improving myself and taking care not to be light-minded and frivolous. (He meant like Mother, only he didn't say it right out loud. You don't have to say some things right out in plain words, you know.) Then I went to bed." * * * * * Just as if I was going to write my novel like that! Not much I am. But I shall call it a diary. Oh, yes, I shall call it a diary--till I take it to be printed. Then I shall give it its true name--a novel. And I'm going to tell the printer that I've left it for him to make the spelling right, and put in all those tiresome little commas and periods and question marks that everybody seems to make such a fuss about. If I write the story part, I can't be expected to be bothered with looking up how words are spelt, every five minutes, nor fussing over putting in a whole lot of foolish little dots and dashes. As if anybody who was reading the story cared for that part! The story's the thing. I love stories. I've written lots of them for the girls, too--little short ones, I mean; not a long one like this is going to be, of course. And it'll be so exciting to be living a story instead of reading it--only when you're _living_ a story you can't peek over to the back to see how it's all coming out. I shan't like that part. Still, it may be all the more exciting, after all, _not_ to know what's coming. I like love stories the best. Father's got--oh, lots of books in the library, and I've read stacks of them, even some of the stupid old histories and biographies. I had to read them when there wasn't anything else to read. But there weren't many love stories. Mother's got a few, though--lovely ones--and some books of poetry, on the little shelf in her room. But I read all those ages ago. That's why I'm so thrilled over this new one--the one I'm living, I mean. For of course this will be a love story. There'll be _my_ love story in two or three years, when I grow up, and while I'm waiting there's Father's and Mother's. Nurse Sarah says that when you're divorced you're free, just like you were before you were married, and that sometimes they marry again. That made me think right away: what if Father or Mother, or both of them, married again? And I should be there to see it, and the courting, and all! Wouldn't that be some love story? Well, I just guess!