le a portion is heard of him." I could not make out what he meant.
He is James' and John's minister.

_Wednesday._--Captain Menteith was at our house to dinner to-day and he
tried to make Anna and me laugh by snapping his snuff-box under the
table. He is a very jolly man, I think.

_Thursday._--Father and Uncle Edward Richards came to see us yesterday
and took us down to Mr. Corson's store and told us we could have
anything we wanted. So we asked for several kinds of candy, stick candy
and lemon drops and bulls' eyes, and then they got us two rubber balls
and two jumping ropes with handles and two hoops and sticks to roll them
with and two red carnelian rings and two bracelets. We enjoyed getting
them very much, and expect to have lots of fun. They went out to East
Bloomfield to see James and John, and father is going to take them to
New Orleans. We hate to have them go.

_Friday._--We asked Grandmother if we could have some hoop skirts like
the seminary girls and she said no, we were not old enough. When we were
downtown Anna bought a reed for 10 cents and ran it into the hem of her
underskirt and says she is going to wear it to school to-morrow. I think
Grandmother will laugh out loud for once, when she sees it, but I don't
think Anna will wear it to school or anywhere else. She wouldn't want to
if she knew how terrible it looked.

I threaded a dozen needles on a spool of thread for Grandmother, before
I went to school, so that she could slip them along and use them as she
needed them. She says it is a great help.

Grandmother says I will have a great deal to answer for, because Anna
looks up to me so and tries to do everything that I do and thinks
whatever I say is "gospel truth." The other day the girls at school were
disputing with her about something and she said, "It is so, if it ain't
so, for Calline said so." I shall have to "toe the mark," as Grandfather
says, if she keeps watch of me all the time and walks in my footsteps.

We asked Grandmother this evening if we could sit out in the kitchen
with Bridget and Hannah and the hired man, Thomas Holleran. She said we
could take turns and each stay ten minutes by the clock. It gave us a
little change. I read once that "variety is the spice of life." They sit
around the table and each one has a candle, and Thomas reads aloud to
the girls while they sew. He and Bridget are Catholics, but Hannah is a
member of our Church. The girls have lived here always, I think