Second Period: 1875. THE GIRLS AND THE JOURNALS.
CHAPTER XI. HELENA’S DIARY.
We both said good-night, and went up to our room with a new object in view. By our father’s advice we had resolved on keeping diaries, for the first time in our lives, and had pledged ourselves to begin before we went to bed.
Slowly and silently and lazily, my sister sauntered to her end of the room and seated herself at her writing-table. On the desk lay a nicely bound book, full of blank pages. The word “Journal” was printed on it in gold letters, and there was fitted to the covers a bright brass lock and key. A second journal, exactly similar in every respect to the first, was placed on the writing-table at my end of the room. I opened my book. The sight of the blank leaves irritated me; they were so smooth, so spotless, so entirely ready to do their duty. I took too deep a dip of ink, and began the first entry in my diary by making a blot. This was discouraging. I got up, and looked out of window.
“Helena!”
My sister’s voice could hardly have addressed me in a more weary tone, if her pen had been at work all night, relating domestic events. “Well!” I said. “What is it?”
“Have you done already?” she asked.
I showed her the blot. My sister Eunice (the strangest as well as the dearest of girls) always blurts out what she has in her mind at the time. She fixed her eyes gravely on my spoiled page, and said: “That comforts me.” I crossed the room, and looked at her book. She had not even summoned energy enough to make a blot. “What will papa think of us,” she said, “if we don’t begin to-night?”
“Why not begin,” I suggested, “by writing down what he said, when he gave us our journals? Those wise words of advice will be in their proper place on the first page of the new books.”