Adopted children -- Juvenile fiction; Girls -- Juvenile fiction
"September 23.--It happened to-day. I was looking at the picture and
my aunt came in still and caught me. She said dreadful things, and I
cried and I don't know what I did, but she said I was saucy and she
didn't know what to do with me. Uncle George heard the noise and came
in and he scolded, too. I never saw him so cross. I almost thought he
was angry with Aunt Amelia, but of course that was not so. At last he
took my father's picture out of the album and gave it to me, and told
me to keep it, and he told me not to go in my aunt's parlor because
she didn't want me there. I knew that before, because I wanted to take
lessons on the piano same as Ella, and she wouldn't let me.
"I am so glad I have my father's picture. It is like having folks of
your own to have a picture of somebody that was yours. I haven't missed
a single question in school on the map of South America. I guess that
is one map I can't forget. I wish I knew where my father went in South
America. I don't dare ask Uncle George. He says I am the trial of his
life, and he doesn't see why I don't behave like other children.
"October 1.--I am getting so I don't care what happens to me. I don't
come straight home from school any more. I always think I will until I
get started home, and then I dread to come because nobody loves me and
I will get scoldings and things anyway, so I stop and look at toads and
frogs and have a good time before I get home, and sometimes nothing
happens. My aunt says I tell things, but I don't. What would I tell
for? I don't even write sad things in my diary because I don't want to
make my grandchildren cry. It would make me feel pretty bad if I found
out that nobody loved my grandmother.
"October 2.--Had a lovely time playing Pocahontas in the grove.
"October 3.--I tried to count the stars last night, but I couldn't. I
wonder why we don't fall off the earth when China's on top? Aunt Amelia
says I ought to know better than to ask her questions. I do.
"October 20.--I listened to what the minister said to-day. It was about
heaven. I've got to try to be awful good on earth so I can surely go
there. Then I guess somebody will love me and when I walk in through
one of the pearly gates, the angels won't look cross.
"October 21.--You get tired of keeping your diary. I am going to write
a book. Its name will be 'The Little Daughter of Thor.' I guess Thor
never had a little girl, but I am going to write it in a book that he
did, and one day when the little girl was a baby and she was playing
with the golden apples, she fell right through the sky on to the earth.
Then I am going to write about how the little girl watched for the
Rainbow Bridge. She was a little stray child on earth, and even the
giants were kind to her. Of course Thor's little daughter would know
enough to know that the only way home was over the blue and golden
Rainbow Bridge that she couldn't see only sometimes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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