And it’s sheer stupidity to track after a tradition.

I wound a large flapping piece of black crape about my head. (How awfully becoming the garb of a Catholic nun would be! I do not know what is dear, if it is not the rosary. A writhing rope around the waist is celestial carelessness.)

I appeared on the lawn, but without a sprinkler and rake. It would have been too theatrical to carry them.

I gathered the small stones from amid the grasses into a wheelbarrow near by.

Just as my new enterprise was beginning to seem so delightful, the luncheon gong gonged.

My uncle goggled from the hall, and said:

“Where have you been? I was afraid you had eloped.”

“I’ve no chance yet to meet a boy,” I spoke in an undertone.

Afterward I was ashamed that I had been so awkwardly sincere.

22nd—There was one thing that I wanted to test.