Eleven years ago! It seems like many centuries. Yet I remember it as I remember yesterday--that crash before oblivion. I can remember even the thrill of twelve-year old pride in the dignity of that fifty-mile journey, made quite alone. It was the beginning of a longer journey, where the milestones are the years; a journey painful and rebellious, marked with many stations of weariness, and black tunnels of agony; a journey which, despite all the loving care that surrounds me, I must make in isolation of body and spirit. Oh, little blue diary, it is well that I may shut away my moods and my mutiny between your covers! No one in all this house must be made sadder because of me. Not father, unfailing playmate, and tender; not Sarah, whose silent affection is like protecting arms about me. There's a great shaft of sunlight quivering across what I've just written. Incongruous, somehow. And I'm out of tune with the June weather and the birds just beyond my windows. I must ask Sarah to bring me my first rose from my Sleeping Beauty bush. First roses are always the sweetest--like the kiss of Prince Charming. I wonder what the nervous doctor's name is--poor Sarah! June paid me a visit this afternoon while I slept. She was reluctant to waken me, but left me her prettiest card. The first roses from my bush! They have been happily translated to a vase beside me, as I write. Father brought them upstairs with him when he came in for tea. "Did you kiss her hands and tell her how sorry I would be to miss her?" I asked him soberly. Father looked alarmed. "Whose hands?" he began. "Who has called on us today?" "Mrs. Withers!" he answered, suppressing a groan. Rudely I laughed. "Surely, Mavis," father continued plaintively, "you could never demand that I kiss--" I laughed again. Mrs. Withers--ugly name, isn't it!--is the wife of our pastor. She is a good woman, but she possesses little charm. I just touched my roses, with a cautious finger-tip. "June has been here, you prosaic person," I said. "Witness these, and then deny it if you can." Father, relieved, leaned back in my comfortable armchair. At least, I know it _looks_ comfortable. "I did not see her," he said. "That is, not until I entered this room, and found her wearing my daughter's most becoming face." Father is so satisfactory! I'm sure I bridled. "Bring me a mirror, immediately!" I demanded. Father rose obediently to his lean height, and fumbled among the things on my dresser for the fat silver mirror, adorned with its charmingly ugly cupids, which had been my mother's. "There, Miss Vanity!" he said. And while I studied my reflection, he studied me from under his bushy brows. Finally, in silence, I gave him back the glass. "Well?" asked father. "Well?" I responded, which was not courteous. "Do you find yourself prettier than yesterday?" "Oh! Much!" I answered, with conviction.