November 22, 1913. It's all on account of Miss Cullingford that I'm beginning this journal. I never would have thought of such a thing by myself. Neither would Carol. Now we've both begun one, and it's just because Miss Cullingford is so sweet and lovely, and all the girls at Bridgeton High School want to please her,—Carol and myself most of all.

Miss Cullingford is our English literature instructor, and we all simply adore her. She's the sweetest thing! She's little and slight, with fluffy light hair and dark blue eyes. And she's such an inspiration about literature and English composition! She makes it seem actually like a romance. They always seemed terribly dull, those subjects, when we had Miss Trotter last year. But now we're just crazy about them.

Well, one of the things she said yesterday in composition class was that every one of us ought to keep a journal, not the kind of diary affair that some people keep,—all about the weather and the number of jars of jam they put up, and how Cousin Hannah called that day!—but an occasional record, only written when we felt like it, of the things that happen around us and our ideas about people and so on. She said that the greatest minds of the ages had generally kept such a record, and that they had proved a big addition to history and literature, too.

Then, right there, I raised my hand and said that it was fine, of course, for the great minds to do it, especially when they lived in stirring times and had lots interesting to write about; but what was the use of just plain, ordinary people, as young as we were, doing it, especially when there wasn't anything going on that was interesting at all,—just the same old thing every day?

Miss Cullingford answered that I mustn't make the mistake of thinking any life uninteresting, no matter how quiet and ordinary it might appear to be. You can always find something interesting to write about any kind of life, if you try hard enough. And that was where the advantage of a journal came in,—it made you look around hard to find what was worth while, and you always found it. Also, it was a great help to your style in writing. Then she asked if any of the girls would promise to keep a journal faithfully for a year. Carol and I promised.

Well, now I'm going to see. No life could possibly be more uninteresting than mine, here in quiet little Stafford where nothing ever happens or ever has happened that I know of, and in a family that's awfully nice, of course, but as plain and uninteresting and ordinary as all the rest of the families around here.

Carol doesn't feel the same as I do about it. She's more hopeful. That's because she has lots of imagination and is always romancing about people and thinking there's some story back of their lives that we don't know. I suppose her journal will be awfully different from mine. Well, anyhow, we've both begun, and now we'll see what happens.

November 23. I had to stop short last night because I suddenly got so sleepy. Now I'll go on. I do wish we lived in Bridgeton, for things surely happen once in a while in a big town like that. Or even down in our own village of Stafford itself, and not way out, a mile off on the main road, on this silly little triangle called Paradise Green. Even the trolley doesn't run up this way; that would be something! But there's nothing in the world around here except this little triangle of a green, formed by the turning off of Cranberry Bog Road from the River Road, and the short road that connects the two at the head of the green. I'm sure I don't know why it was ever called Paradise Green. I suppose if I were Carol, I'd find out. She probably will. She's always hunting up historical facts.

Even the automobiles don't come along this way. Nearly all of them keep to the State road over on the other side of the river. There are just three houses around the Green, one on each side, and not another dwelling anywhere within half a mile. So we haven't many near neighbors.

Our house stands at the head of the Green. It's a big square house, with a cupola on top and a veranda around all four sides. Father's father built it when that style of house was just beginning to be popular, and everybody thought it very grand. I hate it myself, because it seems so old-fashioned and dreary compared to those pretty new bungalows they are putting up in Bridgeton. Mother and Father and the Imp and I live here. Father does intensive farming,—he is just crazy about it,—and every one comes to Birdsey's for ideas on the subject.

Dave is my brother. He's seventeen and a half, and a very quiet and thoughtful sort of person. All the same, he can do his own share of teasing in a quiet way. He left high school this year because his health wasn't very good, and is helping Father with the farming. Next year he's going to study scientific agriculture at one of the big colleges. I'm secretly awfully fond of Dave, but just at present he pretends to look down on girls as entirely unnecessary articles in the general scheme of things, so Carol and I are letting him severely alone.

The Imp is my sister. She's twelve years old and a perfect nuisance. Carol and I have named her "The Imp" because she acts just like one. She likes to trot around with us all the time, but we won't have it. It's impossible to have a child of twelve continually hanging on to girls of fifteen or sixteen, and Carol and I simply won't stand it. The Imp is fearfully miffed about this and spends her time thinking up revengeful things to do to us. She makes our lives perfectly miserable sometimes, though we wouldn't let her know it for the world.

Carol's house is on the River Road side of the Green. She lives there with just her mother and her Aunt Agatha. The Fayres are distant relatives of ours, so Carol and I are really cousins. Their house is one of the old style, a real New England farmhouse, and they have a glorious big barn in the back, where we've all played ever since we were babies. One little room off the haymow Carol and I have fixed up as our private den and study. We keep our books and our fancywork there, and her mother gave us an old desk where we do our school work. We always keep the den locked with a padlock, because the Imp would like to get in and rummage around. She's as mad as a hatter because she can't. She threatens to climb in the window sometime, but I don't believe she could possibly. If she did, she'd probably break her neck.

Carol is fifteen years old, and I'm sixteen. Her name is really Caroline, but she hates it and wants to be called "Carol" instead. She says it's so much prettier. And mine is even worse—Susan! Could anything be more dreadful? I've insisted on being called "Susette," which at least is a prettier French form. But no one except Carol will ever call me that. Every one calls me either "Susie" or "Sue," that is, all but the Imp. She, of course, knowing how much I detest it, will say nothing but "So-o-san" on all occasions. Carol she addresses by the horrible nickname of "Cad." Why are some children so irritating, I wonder? The infuriating part is that the Imp's own name is really lovely—Helen Roberta—and she knows it, little torment that she is!

Well, I haven't yet told about the third house on the Green, so now I come to that. It's the one on the Cranberry Bog Road side. It's by far the most interesting of the three,—a long, rambling colonial farmhouse, built, they say, way back in seventeen hundred and something. It has the most fascinating additions in all directions from the main part, and queer little back stairways and old slave quarters, and I don't know what else. But the people who live in it are the interesting part.

To begin with, there's Louis. His whole name is Louis Charles Durant. He is seventeen and goes to high school in Bridgeton with us. We have known him all our lives, and he's the nicest, jolliest boy we know. But the people he lives with I've never understood at all, and if there were any romance or mystery about any one around here, it would be about them.

Come to think of it, they are mysterious. Carol has always said so, but I never thought much about it. And that only goes to show that Miss Cullingford is right. Keeping a journal does certainly make you go about with your eyes open wider and gives you an interest in things you never thought worth while before. I never thought or cared a bit about Louis's folks before, and now I see they're full of possibilities.

November 24. Fell asleep again last night while I was writing. I guess it's because there's nothing very exciting to write about. However, I'll go on from where I left off about Louis's folks. First, there's the old man. Louis's father and mother have been dead a number of years. I never remember seeing either of them. So he lives with this old man, who, they say, is his guardian. His name is John Meadows, or at least that is what he is always called around here. But Louis says that he is French, and that his real name is Jean Mettot. He is very old; he must be eighty at least. And he is very feeble now, too. He sits all day long in a great armchair by the parlor window. He never reads anything but the papers and some great, heavy volumes of French history, but he spends a great deal of time thinking and dreaming, while he looks way off over the meadows toward the river.

Then there's his daughter, Miss Meadows. She's about forty or fifty years old, I should think. Louis says her name is Yvonne. Certainly, that's a fascinating French name. She's very dark and handsome and quick in her ways, but she's very, very quiet and silent. I never had a real conversation with her in my life, though I've talked to her a great many times. I do all the talking, and she nods or smiles or says "Yes" and "No," and that is absolutely all. I feel as if I'd never really know her, if I talked to her a hundred years. They have one servant, a big French peasant from Normandy, who cooks the meals and takes care of the garden and house.

All this doesn't sound very strange, however. And there is something very mysterious about them,—at least, so Carol has always said. I never paid much attention to the thing before, or noticed it. The curious part of it all is the way they treat Louis. He isn't any real relative, so he says. His parents and their parents have just been dear friends from a long way back. It's plain that they think the world of him, too, just as much as if he were a relative. But there's something more. They are continually watching him with anxious eyes. They guard him as if he weren't able to take care of himself any more than a baby. They don't let him have half the liberty and fun that ordinary boys have. Lots of mothers and fathers, who love their children to distraction, aren't half as fussy and concerned about them as these two people are about a boy who isn't even a relative. It makes Louis awfully annoyed, for he hates like anything to be coddled. Once he fell out of an apple-tree and broke a rib, and they nearly went wild. He had a fever that night and lay in a sort of stupor. But when he was coming out of it he heard them talking awfully queerly about him and wringing their hands and whispering that "he would never, never forgive us if Monsieur Louis were to die."

Who "he" was, or why his Aunt Yvonne and his Uncle Jean (as he calls them) should allude to him as "Monsieur Louis," was something Louis couldn't understand. And somehow, when he was better, he didn't like to ask.

They have taught him French, and with them he always has to speak that language. But he doesn't like it, because he says he's an American citizen and would rather talk "United States" than anything else. He's awfully patriotic and proud of this country, and he can't understand why this should bother Mr. and Miss Meadows. But it somehow does. He's sure of it, for they won't let him talk about it, and are always telling him that his great grandfather was born in France and that he should be very proud of it.

Then there's another thing, too, that seems to worry them a lot. Louis is crazy about mechanical engineering. He declares he's going to study that exclusively, when he's through high school, and become an expert in it. This nearly drives them wild. They want him to be a "statesman," as they call it, and study law and history and diplomacy and all that sort of thing.

"You can serve your country best that way," they are always telling him.

Once he said to them:

"The United States has plenty of that sort already. I want to go in for something special." And he says they never answered a word, but just looked queerly at each other and walked off.

Another time he found that the lock on their kitchen door wouldn't work, so he unscrewed it and took it out. He was fixing it when along came his Aunt Yvonne. When she saw what he was doing she burst into tears and rushed away, muttering, "The ancient blood! It will ruin everything!"—or something in French like that.

All these things do not happen frequently, of course, but when something like it does occur, it puzzles Louis dreadfully. He always talks it over with us when we come home together from Bridgeton High School on the trolley, so that's why I happen to know about it.

Well, now I've begun this journal by telling all about ourselves and our homes and everything else I can think of. But as I read it over, it doesn't sound one bit exciting or likely to become "an interesting contribution to history," as Miss Cullingford would say. I wonder what she'd think about it. I'm glad I didn't promise to show her my journal, for I'm not very proud of this sample. I'm crazy to see what Carol has written. We're going to compare our journals to-morrow.

One thing is certain, though. I'm not going to write another word till I've something more interesting to talk about, even if I have to wait six months!