Not at all a demonstrative girl naturally; not ready with her tears, not liberal with her caresses, not fluent in her talk, Eunice was affected by my proposal in a manner wonderful to see. She suddenly developed into an excitable person—I declare she kissed me. “Oh,” she burst out, “how clever you are! The very thing to write about; I’ll do it directly.”
She really did it directly; without once stopping to consider, without once waiting to ask my advice. Line after line, I heard her noisy pen hurrying to the bottom of a first page, and getting three-parts of the way toward the end of a second page, before she closed her diary. I reminded her that she had not turned the key, in the lock which was intended to keep her writing private.
“It’s not worth while,” she answered. “Anybody who cares to do it may read what I write. Good-night.”
The singular change which I had noticed in her began to disappear, when she set about her preparations for bed. I noticed the old easy indolent movements again, and that regular and deliberate method of brushing her hair, which I can never contemplate without feeling a stupefying influence that has helped me to many a delicious night’s sleep. She said her prayers in her favorite corner of the room, and laid her head on the pillow with the luxurious little sigh which announces that she is falling asleep. This reappearance of her usual habits was really a relief to me. Eunice in a state of excitement is Eunice exhibiting an unnatural spectacle.
The next thing I did was to take the liberty which she had already sanctioned—I mean the liberty of reading what she had written. Here it is, copied exactly:
“I am not half so fond of anybody as I am of papa. He is always kind, he is always right. I love him, I love him, I love him.
“But this is not how I meant to begin. I must tell how he talked to us; I wish he was here to tell it himself.
“He said to me: ‘You are getting lazier than ever, Eunice.’ He said to Helena: ‘You are feeling the influence of Eunice’s example.’ He said to both of us: ‘You are too ready, my dear children, to sit with your hands on your laps, looking at nothing and thinking of nothing; I want to try a new way of employing your leisure time.’
“He opened a parcel on the table. He made each of us a present of a beautiful book, called ‘Journal.’ He said: ‘When you have nothing to do, my dears, in the evening, employ yourselves in keeping a diary of the events of the day. It will be a useful record in many ways, and a good moral discipline for young girls.’ Helena said: ‘Oh, thank you!’ I said the same, but not so cheerfully.
“The truth is, I feel out of spirits now if I think of papa; I am not easy in my mind about him. When he is very much interested, there is a quivering in his face which I don’t remember in past times. He seems to have got older and thinner, all on a sudden. He shouts (which he never used to do) when he threatens sinners at sermon-time. Being in dreadful earnest about our souls, he is of course obliged to speak of the devil; but he never used to hit the harmless pulpit cushion with his fist as he does now. Nobody seems to have seen these things but me; and now I have noticed them what ought I to do? I don’t know; I am certain of nothing, except what I have put in at the top of page one: I love him, I love him, I love him.”