he fixed her eyes gravely on my spoiled page, and said: "That
comforts me." I crossed the room, and looked at her book. She had not
even summoned energy enough to make a blot. "What will papa think of
us," she said, "if we don't begin to-night?"

"Why not begin," I suggested, "by writing down what he said, when he
gave us our journals? Those wise words of advice will be in their proper
place on the first page of the new books."

Not at all a demonstrative girl naturally; not ready with her tears, not
liberal with her caresses, not fluent in her talk, Eunice was affected
by my proposal in a manner wonderful to see. She suddenly developed into
an excitable person--I declare she kissed me. "Oh," she burst out, "how
clever you are! The very thing to write about; I'll do it directly."

She really did it directly; without once stopping to consider, without
once waiting to ask my advice. Line after line, I heard her noisy pen
hurrying to the bottom of a first page, and getting three-parts of the
way toward the end of a second page, before she closed her diary. I
reminded her that she had not turned the key, in the lock which was
intended to keep her writing private.

"It's not worth while," she answered. "Anybody who cares to do it may
read what I write. Good-night."

The singular change which I had noticed in her began to disappear, when
she set about her preparations for bed. I noticed the old easy indolent
movements again, and that regular and deliberate method of brushing
her hair, which I can never contemplate without feeling a stupefying
influence that has helped me to many a delicious night's sleep. She said
her prayers in her favorite corner of the room, and laid her head on
the pillow with the luxurious little sigh which announces that she
is falling asleep. This reappearance of her usual habits was really a
relief to me. Eunice in a state of excitement is Eunice exhibiting an
unnatural spectacle.

The next thing I did was to take the liberty which she had already
sanctioned--I mean the liberty of reading what she had written. Here it
is, copied exactly:

"I am not half so fond of anybody as I am of papa. He is always kind, he
is always right. I love him, I love him, I love him.

"But this is not how I meant to begin. I must tell how he talked to us;
I wish he was here to tell it himself.

"He said to me: 'You are getting lazier than ever, Eunice.' He said to
Helena: 'You are feeling the influence of Eunice'