I've been too disappointed lately to write in my diary. Somehow, I think like Rufe, that there's only one thing worth writing about, and there's been very little in that line going on around here lately. Poor Rufe is having a harder time now than he had when Bertha was on his hands, for Cousin Eunice has taken it into her head to show him that she doesn't have to accept him the minute he gets untangled from a summer flirtation. Those were her very words. She and I go for long walks with him every morning, down through the ravine; and they read poetry that sounds so good you feel like somebody's scratching your back. And she wears her best-fitting shirtwaists. One good thing about Cousin Eunice is that her clothes never look like she'd sat up late the night before to make them. And when she's expecting him at night her eyes shine like they had been greased; and I can tell from the way she breathes quick when she hears the gate open that she loves him. Yes, she adores the sound of his rubber heels on the front porch; but she won't give in to him. She's punishing him for the Bertha part of it. Mother says she's very foolish, for men will be men, especially on nights in June; but Mammy Lou says she's exactly right; and I reckon mammy knows best, for she's been married a heap more times than mother ever has. "The longer you keep a man feelin' like he's on a red-hot stove the better he loves you," Mammy Lou told Cousin Eunice to-night, as she was powdering her face for the last time before going down-stairs and trying to keep us from seeing that she was listening for a footstep on the gravel walk. "An' a husban's got to be treated jus' like a lover! A good, heavy poker's a fine thing to make a husban' know 'is place--an' Lawk! a lazy husban's like a greasy churn--you have to give him a thorough scaldin' to do any good!" This morning at the breakfast table, after father had helped the plates to chicken, saving two gizzards for me, he said: "Times have changed since I was a young man!" As this wasn't exactly the first time we had heard such a remark none of us paid any attention to it until we saw mother trying to make him hush. Then we knew he must be starting to say something funny about Cousin Eunice and Rufe, for mother always stops him on this subject whenever she can, because she doesn't want Bertha's feelings hurt. But Bertha never seems to mind. She's decided to marry the commercial traveler, I'm almost sure, although her people say he's not "steady." Steady means staying still, so who ever heard of a traveling man who was steady?