Mammy Lou heard Miss Irene say "Scylla and Chrybdis;" Miss Irene doesn't say it any more though. Doctor Bynum didn't wait for the train to bring him down here that Sunday, but whizzed through the country in his automobile Saturday night. Then he "venied, vidied, vicied" in such a hurry that everybody in town knew it before nap time Sunday afternoon. Mr. Fairfax has gone away on a long trip. Jean said if he had had any sense he would have seen that Miss Irene Campbell wasn't the only girl in the world, but he didn't see it and he's gone. Next week Jean is going home and when I think of how lonesome I'll be something nearly pops inside of me. They have been writing and writing for me to go home with Jean and stay until Rufe and Cousin Eunice and Waterloo get ready to come down this summer, but mother says I may not go unless Jean and I both promise to reform. We're not to eat any more stuffed olives nor write any more poetry--and, _think_ of it! I'm to stop writing in _my diary_! Mother says I'll never have any practical sense if I don't begin now to learn things. I tell her, "Am I to blame if I love a fountain pen better than a darning needle?" The Lord made me so. And I _hate_ sewing. It's as hard for me to sew as it is to keep from writing. Yet if I go home with Jean I must quit writing. Must give up my diary. Must not write one line of poetry, no matter how much my head is buzzing with it! Why, if poets couldn't _write_ their poetry they'd burst a blood vessel! I can't even take you with me to Jean's house and read over what I have written in happier days, you poor little forsaken diary! CHAPTER XIII It seems to me that the writing habit is kinder like poison oak; it's sure to break out on you in the spring, and you can never get it entirely out of your system. I've tried my best to keep from writing, and when you have done your best and failed, why I don't believe even Robert Bruce's spider could have done any more. I promised mother I would stop writing in my diary and I have--for such a long time that every one of the hems in my dresses has had to be let out since I wrote last. But now I just must break my promise, and I reckon if you are going to break a promise at all you might as well break it all to pieces. So I'll just dive in and tell all that happened since I wrote last. You remember that fluffy-skirted widow that I told you about being down here, my diary, and I sharpened seventeen pencils for--a long time ago? Well, she said that _she_ believed every minute of this life was made for enjoyment. She told it to a young man that told it to father that told it to mother and I happened to hear. She said you ought to do the things you enjoy most, as long as they didn't bother anybody else, and if you did things you had to repent of afterward, why, even then, you ought to cut out your sackcloth by a becoming pattern!