What is worse than a burglar? I was passing the scullery window, and Sarah had just thrown a lot of boiling water into a basin in front of them both, so that it made a mist and she didn't see me. I knew, though, she was saying something rude, for when Sarah told her she "shouldn't reely," she muttered something more about a "neglected angel!" I did think at first she meant me, or perhaps the doctor's donkey as usual, but then the words didn't fit either of us? I asked her straight if she did mean the donkey, just for fun, and she said the poor beast was minding his own business and I had better do the same. She left us next month, crying worse than I ever did in my life for really serious things. Mother patted her on the back as she went out at the back door, and she kept saying, "A poor girl's only got her character, mum, and she is bound to think of it--" and Mother said, "Yes, yes, you did quite right!" and seemed just to want her out of the house and a little peace and quiet and will of her own. The very moment Sarah's back was turned, she set to work and turned everything into the middle of the room and left it there while she and Cook swept round into every corner. Ariadne and I rather enjoyed clearing our bed of the towel-horse before we could lie down in it, and having dinner off the corner of the kitchen-table because the dining-room one was lying on its back like a horse kicking. Of course George wasn't allowed home all this time. Mother wrote to him where he was staying at the Duke of Frocester's for the shooting (George shooting! My eye!--and the keeper's legs!) and said he had better not come home till we were straight again. I was in no hurry to be straight again. It was like Heaven. When I was a child I always built my brick houses crooked, and Ariadne called me Queen Unstraight, and that made me cry. But she liked this too. We made all the beds, and didn't bother to tuck them in. It isn't necessary to do so when we turn head over heels in the bed-clothes onto the floor every night three times to make us dizzy and sleepy. We washed up everything with a nice lather of three things mixed that occurred to me, Hudson's, Monkey Soap, and Bath Eucryl. In the end there wasn't a speck of dirt, or pattern either, left on the plates. It looked much cleaner. Why should one eat one's meat off a fat Chinese dragon or have bees all round the edge of one's soup plate ready to fall in? It is a dirty idea. We basted the joints turn and turn about, and our own pinafores. They couldn't scold us for not keeping clean, any more than they can pigs when they put them in a sty. We asked no questions or bothered Mother at all, but we black-leaded the steps and bath-bricked the grates, and washed down the walls with soda-water. The wallpaper peeled off here and there, but that shows it was shabby and ready for death.