Annie laughed happily. "I fear I have been a little deceitful," she said, "but I am sure they will forgive me when they know. I keep a journal; I have always kept one since I was a child. Aunt Harriet wished me to do so. And the journal was very stupid. So little unusual happens here in Fairbridge, and I have always been rather loath to write very much about my innermost feelings or very much about my friends in my journal because of course one can never tell what will happen. It has never seemed to me quite delicate--to keep a very full journal, and so there was in reality very little to write." Annie burst into a peal of laughter. "It just goes this way, the journal," she said. "To-day is pleasant and warm. This morning I helped Hannah preserve cherries. In the afternoon I went over to Margaret's and sat with her on the verandah, embroidered two daisies and three leaves with stems on my centre piece, came home, had supper, sat in the twilight with Grandmother, Aunt Harriet and Aunt Susan. Went upstairs, put on my wrapper and read until it was time to go to bed. Went to bed. Now that took very little time and was not interesting and so, after I went upstairs, I wrote my entry in the journal in about five minutes and then I wrote _The Poor Lady_. Of course, when I began it, I was not at all sure that it would amount to anything. I was not sure that any publisher would look at it. Sometimes I felt as if I were doing a very foolish thing: spending time and perhaps deceiving Grandmother and my aunts very wickedly, though I was quite certain that if the book should by any chance succeed, they would not think it wrong.