City and town life -- Fiction; Diary fiction; Girls -- Fiction; Love stories, American
It was till plumb breakfast time this morning before Aunt Laura made
known to us what new thing she's got up to talk about all the time.
Father calls it a "fad." He said the minute he saw her come he was
willing to bet on anything, from the latest breakfast food to an Aunty
Saloon League, but mother told him it was sinful to bet about such
things, for last summer it was foreign missions. It is just as well
that he didn't bet, for he would have lost, it being the heart disease
which she has very bad. She said she didn't tell us right at first
because she knew we didn't care anything about hearing it, but she
thought we better be prepared in case a spell came on her suddenly,
for she had felt worse symptoms lately than ever before. Bertha had
acted awful good all day and not let the baby cry nor slobber on Aunt
Laura for the sake of the will.
I guess I've been worse this last week than ever before, for it is the
first time I've been ashamed to tell what I've done in my diary.
Bertha knows if Aunt Laura could get Brother Sheffield to marry her
she would unwill the money from the baby; so she thinks up things to
tell me to do to keep them from being together, and I've been doing
them. One time I hid her purple Sunday bonnet, then her curls to keep
her from going to prayer-meeting, but I'm glad to say that I have
never taken the dimes which Bertha said she would give me for doing
them. I hate Aunt Laura enough to do mean things to her myself, which
is a better principle than to do them just for dimes.
This is Sunday again and I have to go to church. Somehow, during the
summer, Sunday smells like black silk, for mother and all the ladies
that can afford it wear it to church to let the others see how well
off they are. When I was _right_ little and got tee-ninsy cards at
Sunday-school I imagined Heaven looked like those cards, all
lilies-of-the-valley and little pink lambs, but since I've grown older
my views have changed. Preachers always think you can't go to Heaven
unless you do just like they do, and I couldn't be like a preacher to
save my life, except about chicken.
Aunt Laura had to look all over the place for her black silk waist
this morning and then not find it, so she got into a bad spell and
couldn't go to church. After the sermon was over and we were trying to
forget it by standing around and telling the other ladies how much
fruit we had put up this past week, Brother Sheffield came up and
asked mother if Aunt Laura was sick, not being out to services. Mother
said she was, but she hoped to find her all right when we got home, as
she never was sick very long, and I knew she would be well because it
was ice-cream for dinner. He said then he'd be over to see her this
afternoon as he hadn't seen her in so long.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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