IV
MISS POLLY PRETEND
End of June.
Of course there ought to be a story in all this—the story of my life. I have a Relative who can spin you the story of anybody's life if you only tell him what number of shoe he wears. Only I am just a little girl, and have neither been murdered nor married—as yet. So in my life there are no—what is the word?—ingredients for the pudding. Yes, that is it.
So it must just come anyhow, like things tumbling out of your pocket when you hang head down from a tree or haystack which you are climbing.
All the same I will try always to put one story or one subject into a chapter, though these won't be called "Printed in Gore," or "The House of Crime," or anything like that.
For, you see, the stories the boys read are just stuffed with such things. So it will be rather a change to write about "The Dirty Piece of Embroidery" and "The Colored-Silk Work-basket."
And that reminds me. Often Grown-ups "give it" to their children for the very identical things they used to do themselves when young. There is a friend of father's down at Dumfries whom he calls Mr. Massa. And once we bribed Mr. Massa to tell us all about when father was young—he was his earliest and dearest friend—though, by his telling, father pounded him shamefully and unmercifully for nothing at all, even after they had vowed eternal friendship. And do you know, the things that father did when he was a boy—well, he would thrash Hugh John and Sir Toady for now!
But I expect that all fathers and most mothers were like that. When I am a mother, I shan't be. Because, having kept a Diary, I shall only have to take it out and see how I felt. Don't you think that is a first-rate idea?
Besides, if it is printed, as Mr. Dignus says that it will be, it is bound to be true, and I shall have to believe it. Oh, just won't my children have a good time! Also Hugh John's. But Sir Toady Lion says he isn't going to have any—being married is ever such a swot, and children are all little pigs.