“Each one of us is to keep a diary, and if we have not looked for ‘It’ each day, we are to state what particular thing prevented us. We can search every nook and corner in the house but one room, the mystery room, as we call it, which is on the second floor, and barred and locked so that no one can enter. Mother only laughs when Janet and I talk about ‘It,’ and declares that the whole thing is just my aunt’s eccentric way of doing things. You know mother spent a summer up here with her when I was a wee tot, and my aunt grew very fond of me.
“Although I have had no time as yet to search for the mystery of mysteries, my first entry in my diary reads: ‘Arose at 7 A. M. and prepared breakfast. Cooked three meals and did housework all day, and am too tired to do anything but go to bed. Jan meant to help me, but she had to hurry with her plowing, and Cynthia Loretto says she never does housework, as it makes her hands rough.’
“You would laugh if you could see Jan scratching the earth with a baby rake. She was going to plant before she plowed, and hadn’t the slightest idea as to the proper time and way of planting her seeds. But she looks a dear in a smock and a big pink sunbonnet that matches the pink in her cheeks and on her nose, for her dear little snub has burned to the same color.
“It is great sport to see her take the stump, as I call it, and hold forth on woman suffrage. She talks beautifully, is so earnest and looks so sweet, and, as mumsie says, knows so little about it from a commonsense point of view. But when Cynthia Loretto suddenly appears and squelches her eloquence by witheringly ordering her to do something for her,—she bosses her dreadfully,—poor Jan drops from her pedestal and crawls about with the meekness of a mouse for the rest of the day.
“I was afraid my dreams of teaching liberty were doomed to oblivion, for there don’t seem to be any girls about to form a club, when one day, while reading the paper, an inspiration came. Fi-fo-fum, I have written to Mrs. Van Vorst, and she is going to send me three little slum boys, and I am not only going to give them the joy-time of their lives, but teach them ‘Liberty and Humanity—your best.’ When I asked Mr. Banker if there would be any objection to having these little waifs, he not only consented, but said he would pay their way up here. Isn’t that the dandiest thing going?
“Mother objected at first, but when I said I would teach them to wash the dishes—how I hate that job!—and to do chores about the house, she only said, ‘Well, you will have to make the bread then, for three hulking boys will eat a cartful,’—you know mother is the bread-maker. Then her eyes twinkled, and I had to hug her good and tight, for I knew she was just testing my ‘I can’ motto.
“Janet thought the idea fine, but when Cynthia Loretto heard of it she declared that she hated boys, they were such horrid, smelly things,—one would have thought they were weeds,—and that she would not have them in the house. Well, I was not going to be bossed by her, so promptly told her in my bestest manner—I am always very cool and sweet when awfully mad—what Mr. Banker had said. Well, that silenced her, but I can foresee that she will make trouble for my little liberty kids, for that’s what they’re going to be.
“Did I tell you that Cynthia is an artist? Her studio is up in the little square cupola, or tower that crowns the house. Here she paints, and sleeps until all hours of the morning, for she slumbers in a beauty-mask—Janet let that out—and it has to be kept on until noon. Janet has to bring up her coffee every morning. At dinner my lady with ‘the manner’ and artistic temperament appears in a freakish get-up. Yesterday she was a Neapolitan maiden in a red skirt and blue bodice, with a rug for an apron, and a white cloth on her head. She dresses this way to create atmosphere, she declares, as she is her own model, and paints herself in a big mirror, that she got Sam to lug up from one of the lower rooms.
“She can be extremely disagreeable, for yesterday, while I was on one of my mountain prowls—mother was taking a nap—she was sitting on the veranda in one of her outlandish costumes, when an odd, little old lady came along in a black poke-bonnet, carrying a basket on her arm. As soon as Cyn saw that basket she jumped up and ordered the old lady off the premises, saying that we could not be bothered with peddlers.
“The poor old soul immediately turned about and hobbled away, muttering and mumbling to herself, for Jan heard her as she came up the path from her miniature hillside farm. Mother was quite annoyed when she heard about it, for she said that she was undoubtedly one of the neighbors, and had brought us something in a basket to be friendly, as country people do. I think Cynthia should have allowed her to rest on the veranda, even if she was a peddler.