“We went up to the Disappointed House, and we found one of the boards on the windows loose. So we pried it off and crawled in and went all over the house. It is lathed but not plastered, and the shavings are lying all over the floors just as the carpenters left them years ago. It seemed more disappointed than ever. I just felt like crying. There was a dear little fireplace in one room so we went to work and kindled a fire in it with shavings and pieces of boards (this is the thing we would be scolded for, likely) and then sat before it on an old carpenter’s bench and talked. We decided that when we grew up we would buy the Disappointed House and live here together. Teddy said he supposed we’d have to get married, but I thought maybe we could find a way to manage without going to all that bother. Teddy will paint pictures and I will write poetry and we will have toast and bacon and marmalade every morning for breakfast—just like Wyther Grange—but never porridge. And we’ll always have lots of nice things to eat in the pantry and I’ll make lots of jam and Teddy is always going to help me wash the dishes and we’ll hang the gazing-ball from the middle of the ceiling in the fireplace room—because likely Aunt Nancy will be dead by then.
“When the fire burned out we jammed the board into place in the window and came away. Every now and then today Teddy would say to me ‘Toast and bacon and marmalade’ in the most mysterious tones and Ilse and Perry are wild because they can’t find out what he means.
“Cousin Jimmy has got Jimmy Joe Belle to help with the harvest. Jimmy Joe Belle comes from over Derry Pond way. There are a great many French there and when a French girl marries they call her mostly by her husband’s first name instead of Mrs. like the English do.If a girl named Mary marries a man named Leon she will always be called Mary Leon after that. But in Jimmy Joe Belle’s case, it is the other way and he is called by his wife’s name. I asked Cousin Jimmy why, and he said it was because Jimmy Joe was a poor stick of a creature and Belle wore the britches. But still I don’t understand. Jimmy Joe wears britches himself—that means trousers—and why should he be called Jimmy Joe Belle instead of her being called Belle Jimmy Joe just because she wears them too! I won’t rest till I find out.
“Cousin Jimmy’s garden is splendid now. The tiger lilies are out. I am trying to love them because nobody seems to like them at all but deep down in my heart I know I love the late roses best. You just can’t help loving the roses best.
“Ilse and I hunted all over the old orchard today for a four-leaved clover and couldn’t find one. Then I found one in a clump of clover by the dairy steps tonight when I was straining the milk and never thinking of clovers. Cousin Jimmy says that is the way luck always comes, and it is no use to look for it.
“It is lovely to be with Ilse again. We have only fought twice since I came home. I am going to try not to fight with Ilse any more because I don’t think it is dignified, although quite interesting. But it is hard not to because even when I keep quiet and don’t say a word Ilse thinks that’s a way of fighting and gets madder and says worse things than ever. Aunt Elizabeth says it always takes two to make a quarrel but she doesn’t know Ilse as I do. Ilse called me a sneaking albatross today. I wonder how many animals are left to call me. She never repeats the same one twice. I wish she wouldn’t clapperclaw Perry so much. (Clapperclaw is a word I learned from Aunt Nancy. Very striking, I think.) It seems as if she couldn’t bear him. He dared Teddy to jump from the henhouse roof across to the pighouse roof. Teddy wouldn’t. He said he would try it if it had to be done or would do anybody any good but he wasn’t going to do it just to show off. Perry did it and landed safe. If he hadn’t he might have broken his neck. Then he bragged about it and said Teddy was afraid and Ilse turned red as a beet and told him to shut up or she would bite his snout off. She can’t bear to have anything said against Teddy, but I guess he can take care of himself.
“Ilse can’t study for the Entrance either. Her father won’t let her. But she says she doesn’t care. She says she’s going to run away when she gets a little older and study for the stage. That sounds wicked, but interesting.
“I felt very queer and guilty when I saw Ilse first, because I knew about her mother. I don’t know why I felt guilty because I had nothing to do with it. The feeling is wearing away a little now but I am so unhappy by spells over it. I wish I could either forget it altogether or find out the rights of it. Because I am sure nobody knows them.
“I had a letter from Dean today. He writes lovely letters—just as if I was grown up. He sent me a little poem he had cut out of a paper called ‘The Fringed Gentian.’ He said it made him think of me. It is all lovely but I like the last verse best of all. This is it:
Then whisper, blossom, in thy sleep
How
