I was now thrown on my own resourses, and very bitter. I seemed to have no Friends, at a time when I needed them most, when I was, as one may say, “standing with reluctent feet, where the brook and river meet.”
Tonight I am no longer sick of Life, as I was then. My throws of anguish have departed. But I was then uterly reckless, and even considered running away and going on the stage myself.
I have long desired a Career for myself, anyhow. I have a good mind, and learn easily, and I am not a Paracite. The idea of being such has always been repugnent to me, while the idea of a few dollars at a time doaled out to one of independant mind is galling. And how is one to remember what one has done with one’s Allowence, when it is mostly eaten up by Small Lones, Carfare, Stamps, Church Collection, Rose Water and Glicerine, and other Mild Cosmetics, and the aditional Food necesary when one is still growing?
To resume, Dear Dairy; having uterly failed with Hannah, and having shortly after met Sis on the stairs, I said to her, in a sisterly tone, intimite rather than fond:
“I darsay you can lend me five dollars for a day or so.”
“I darsay I can. But I won’t,” was her cruel reply.
“Oh, very well,” I said breifly. But I could not refrain from making a grimase at her back, and she saw me in a mirror.
“When I think,” she said heartlessly, “that that wreched school may be closed for weeks, I could scream.”
“Well, scream!” I replied. “You’ll scream harder if I’ve brought the meazles home on me. And if you’re laid up, you can say good-bye to the Dishonorable. You’ve got him tide, maybe,” I remarked, “but not thrown as yet.”
(A remark I had learned from one of the girls, Trudie Mills, who comes from Montana.)