CHAPTER XXI
MARIAN REMEMBERS HER DIARY
"October 15.—You might as well keep a diary, especially in a school where they have a silent hour. It is the queerest thing I ever heard of but every night between seven and eight it is so still in this building you don't dare sneeze. It isn't so bad when you have a roommate because then you have to divide the hour with her. You stay alone half and then you go to the reading-room or the library and read something and try not to whisper to any of the girls, while your roommate stays alone her half of the hour.
"Perhaps the reason I don't like silent hour is because I used to have so many of them at home and now because I haven't any roommate I have to stay alone the whole hour. I don't know what to do with myself and that is why I am going to keep a diary again.
"There is a good reason why I haven't any roommate. When my aunt brought me here the principal said they were expecting a little girl just my age and they were going to put her in this room with me. It isn't much fun to be a new girl in this kind of a school, especially when most everybody is older than you are. When the girls saw my aunt they stared, and they stared at me, too. It wasn't very nice and I felt uncomfortable. As long as my aunt stayed I didn't get acquainted. I didn't even dare say much to Miss Smith. I just moped around and wished I was out in the country with the happy Goldings. They said here, 'Poor little thing, she's homesick,' but I am sure I wasn't if that means I wanted to go back home. My aunt stayed two days and one night. She said she was waiting to see my roommate but at last she gave up and went home and then I felt different. I began to wonder what kind of a girl my roommate would be and when she came I was so happy I could scarcely breathe because she was Dolly Russel. We thought we were going to have such a good time, and we did for a few days until I was a big goose. I wrote home and told my aunt who my roommate was and that ended it. Aunt Amelia wrote to the principal and she wrote to me, and then Dolly went to room with an old girl eighteen years old, from Kansas.
"Dolly says her new roommate is nice, but she's too old and besides that she's engaged. Dolly told me all about it.
"My aunt wouldn't let me room with Dolly because she said we would play all the time instead of studying our lessons. I guess she was afraid we would have a little fun. She told me in a letter that if she had known Dolly Russel was coming to this school she would have sent me somewhere else or kept me at home, no matter what Uncle George and Miss Smith said. I know why. Dolly has told the Kansas girl and some others about my aunt already, how cross she is and such things. I don't mind now what anybody says about Aunt Amelia since I have found out that she isn't any relation to me. She is just my aunt by marriage and you can't expect aunts by marriage to love you, and if your aunt doesn't love you, what's the use of loving your aunt.