I have been home from Cousin Eunice's now for two weeks, for the stylish, private school I went to up there lets out soon. Mammy Lou says I'm the worst person to break out in spots she ever saw, and one of my "spots" last summer was keeping this diary, which I did for a while very hard and fast. Now a whole year has passed and it is summer again and I am so lonesome that I believe I'll write a little every day and tell some of the things we did at Rufe's last winter. If any of you grandchildren who read are afflicted with that trouble of doing things by fits and starts you may know who you inherited it from. I'm not really to blame so much for neglecting you, my diary, for all the time I needed you most last winter you were lost. This is a terrible habit that all my things have--getting lost. My garters do it especially and I have to tear great holes in my stockings by pinning them up and then forgetting to stand stiff-kneed. Rufe told mother last fall that I was so precocious, which I looked up in the dictionary and admired him very much for, that I ought to be where I could have good teachers. So after he and Cousin Eunice had been married long enough to be able to bear the sight of a third party at the breakfast table they wrote for me to come and I went. I was kinder disappointed to see them looking like every-day folks again, for the last time I had seen them they were looking as they had never looked before and never will look again, for Rufe says he'll be hanged if anybody can get him to appear in that wedding suit any more. But oh, that wedding! And oh, that wedding march played on a thundering pipe-organ that makes cold chills run up and down your back thinking what if it was happening to you! When the time comes for "I will" you nearly smother, you're so afraid they might change their minds at the last minute and embarrass you half to death right there before all those people. They didn't change their minds then, though, nor since then either, I honestly believe. They married safe and sound, and Cousin Eunice's favorite book now is _1,001 Tried Recipes_. And Keats is lots of times covered with dust. I got this far last night when Mammy Lou passed by my window on her way to her house from the kitchen and stopped long enough to make me go to bed. She says it takes a sight of sleep and a "passel o' victuals" for a girl of my age, and I don't have enough of either. "I'se shore goin' 'er tell Mis' Mary how you set up uv a night," she said, very fiercely, but she couldn't shake her finger at me for it took both hands to hold the big pan she had under her apron. "An' as fer eatin'! Why, a red bug eats more! An' such truck! Candy and apples and fried chicken and fried Saratoga chips! _Fries_ nuvver was no good for nobody at the gawky age, nohow. It takes _boils_ to fatten them!"