"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.
"At the end of the story, Thor himself will find the little girl and will take her in his chariot across the Rainbow Bridge to the shining bright city in the clouds where her mother will hug her pretty near to pieces. Maybe when I get the book done, I will write another about what Thor's little daughter did when she got home. About the songs she used to sing with her mother, and the flowers they used to pick and about everything that is happiness. It will be nicer to do than keeping an old diary about real things.
"The nicest looking man's picture I ever saw is my father, so I am going to have him for Thor. My father looks kind and smiling, but he looks, too, as if he would know how to use Thor's big hammer if the bad giants tried to cross the Rainbow Bridge. I think it is queer that I like the god of thunder so well that I will let him have my father's face in my book.