Today, Father is out and Sarah busy below stairs. It is five o'clock of a golden September afternoon, and I am alone, and ready to record the events of the past week. Suppose we begin with Peter, who lives next door, as you very well know, and who is an active and ambitious and altogether charming seven-year old. It seems, Diary, that Peter has, during the summer, become hopelessly enamored of Jimmy Simpson, the ten-year old brother of Sammy, a feckless towhead, tanned as a saddle and twice as tough! From my windows, and more recently also from the nearer vantage point of my hammock, I have observed the progress of their friendship, dating from the early days of summer when Jimmy condescended to aid his older brother in the morning delivery of the Simpson milk. Lately, Jimmy has been seen displaying his ragged blue overalls about the lawn adjoining ours. I have heard, too, blood-curdling shrieks and dire groans which I take to portend that Peter has more than once inveigled Jimmy into his own favorite and histrionic pastime of "Injuns and Tigers." Once, Jimmy in his role of scalper became slightly too realistic, and Peter, bursting through the hedge which separates the Goodrich property from ours, fled to me for protection. With his curly head on my breast, I turned against the aggressor. "Jimmy Simpson," I cried indignantly, "aren't you ashamed to frighten a boy younger than yourself? Don't you know that isn't manly?" Jimmy, engaging, brazen, and blue-eyed, stubbed one bare toe against the grass. "Honest, Miss Mavis," he defended himself firmly, "I didn't hurt him none. He's a _baby_, he is!" he concluded, with a positively vicious glance at the back of Peter's head. "I'm not!" shouted the accused, rising up in honest wrath. "Y'are," repeated Jimmy. "Baby an' telltale." Here Peter, to my infinite delight, squared two small brown fists, and disengaging himself from my restraining hands, advanced belligerently upon his idol. "You Jimmy," said Peter. "You take that back--quick!" I swear I saw a gleam of admiration in the Simpson eye. "Yes," I begged hastily, "do take it back, Jimmy." Jimmy shifted uneasily upon his capacious feet. "Well," he began uncertainly. And then a wholly friendly smile irradiated his freckled face. "I was only funning, Peter," he said generously. I breathed again. Peter dropped his hands to his sides and said happily, "Got any cookies for us, Mavis?" I rang my silver bell for Sarah, and presently she appeared from the kitchen, greeted Jimmy in none too friendly accents, and disappearing into her domain returned again with a heaped plate of crisp tan cookies and three glasses of lemonade. "There," said Sarah, grudgingly, "you young limbs!" She looked at my two small friends as she spoke, but I am afraid she included me in her remark.