and all, and I saw him and the old setter go down the garden walk
together in pursuit of the desired squirrel, I suppose. I closed the
blinds and drew the curtains again and flung myself on my pillow.
Something warm and sweet seemed to be sweeping over me in great waves,
and I felt young and close up to some sort of big world-good. It was
delicious, and I don't know how long I would have stayed there just
feeling it if Jane hadn't brought in my letter.

He had written from London, and it was many pages of wonderful things
all flavoured with me. He told me about Miss Clinton 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 round 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 "perfect flower"
and "scarlet runner." If I do, I get warm and happy all over. 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 wretched
volume that I took that garment to the city with me and what Madame
Rene did to it--remade it into the loveliest thing I ever saw, only I