You don't really need to be afraid of Big Growly. It makes rather a noise while It lasts, but once It is finished, there is no more about it. It is like a thunderstorm which you hear sleepily among the hills in the night. All you have to do is just to pull the bed-clothes over your head and put your fingers in your ears. There is not the least danger, not really. Altogether we are about as well off for Grown-ups as it is possible to be, and though lessons are seen to sharply enough--that is all in the day's work. While for the rest, we live less of the Double Life than other children have to do--that is, we don't have to "_pretend_ good," and that makes all the difference. And this brings me to the tale of Polly Pretend. That was what we called her. And by and by other people found her out, and did so too. And it is an awful thing to be going through the world with a name like that. Yet Polly Pretend wasn't half a bad girl either. Indeed, if she had been left alone, she would have been quite nice. It wasn't her fault. Only this tale is a "terrible example" for parents and guardians. _They_ put such things, like nasty medicine, in the books we have to read, and why shouldn't I hit back, when it is only my poor old Dear Diary that sees it? Till Mr. Dignus gets ready to print it, that is. Polly Pretend had a father and mother, but worse than most. If ever they had been young, they had forgotten all about it. Polly mustn't run or romp, nor speak above her breath, nor climb a tree, nor do anything that makes life happy and really worth living. And when we went to see her, it was ever so much worse than going to church four times a Sunday. _We_ only go once, except on special occasions, because our folks believe in making Sunday an extra happy day. And, after all, church is church, and there is always the music, which is nice, and the organist's back hair, which isn't--and the sermon is never very long and sometimes interesting. Then for the boys there are the bees booming in the tall windows, and the flies that will persist in crawling stickily over the old gentlemen's bald heads--really quite pious flies they are. For the old gentlemen would be sure to go to sleep if it were not for the excitement of watching out and moving those flies on! But at Polly Pretend's house it was ever so much worse. You couldn't believe it if you had not been there. And, do my best, I really can't give you an idea. All the toys locked up, of course, all the drawing things, and every book except two--one of which was that everlasting _Josephus_, and the other the _Pilgrim's Progress_. As we knew these by heart, you may guess how cheerful it was. And you had to learn chapters till you hated the sight of an Oxford Bible, and hymns till you wanted to throw the book behind the fire.