He had written from London, and it was many pages of wonderful things
all flavored with me. He told me about Miss Chester and what good
friends they were, and how much he hoped she would be in Hillsboro when
he got here. He said that a great many of her dainty ways reminded him
of his "own slip of a girl", especially the turn of her head like a
"flower on its stem." At that I got right out of bed like a jack jumping
out of a box and looked at myself in the mirror.

There is one exercise here on page twenty that I hate worst of all. You
screw up your face tight until you look like a Christmas mask to get
your neck muscles taut and then wobble your head around like a new-born
baby until it swims. I did that one twenty extra times and all the
others in proportion to make up for those two hours in bed. Hereafter
I'll get up at the time directed on page three, or maybe earlier. It
frightens me to think that I've got only a few weeks more to turn from a
cabbage-rose into a lily. I won't let myself even think "luscious peach"
and "string-bean." If I do, I get warm and happy all over and let up on
myself. I try when I get hungry to think of myself in that blue muslin
dress.

I haven't been really willing before to write down in this torture
volume that I took that garment to the city with me and what Madam Rene
did to it--made it over into the loveliest thing I ever saw, only I
wouldn't let her alter the size one single inch. I'm honorable as all
women are at peculiar times. I think she understood, but she seemed not
to, and worked a miracle on it with ribbon and lace. I've put it away on
the top shelf of a closet, for it is torment to look at it.

You can just take any old recipe for a party and mix up a début for a
girl, but it takes more time to concoct one for a widow, especially if