The Senior Class this year is a great failure, because all are girls but the Petway boy, who is terribly feminine, and crochets his own silk ties, Tony says.  I don’t approve of the seniors at all, and both Roxanne and I are worried over the way Helena Kirby, Belle’s sister, will insist on talking to the Idol when we come out of church.  We both know how important it is for a great man to have lady friends that are great enough to appreciate him.  Of course, Helena can only admire his wonderful eyes, which makes no difference to us at all, for she could never gauge his high soul and genius.  Roxanne says she trusts to the patches on his trousers to keep him from going to walk with her and from sitting on her front steps.  Oh, if we just can keep him pure from prosperity in the shape of new clothes until he makes this second great invention, we will be so thankful, I encourage Roxanne to spend the money on food and her own clothes, so he will not be able to buy a new suit.  We feel so safe with him mortifyingly shabby.

“Oh, Douglass is never going to be in love or marry anybody,” said Roxanne when we were speculating on why Helena would flirt her eyes so at him.  “I feel perfectly sure we’ll have him always.”

I felt relieved that Roxanne felt that way, but I had to remind myself often of her rose-cloud disposition and watch carefully to see that no troubles that I can avert—­like Helena Kirby—­shall come to her or the Idol.

But I started on the subject of the impersonations that the Expression Class of Juniors is to give the last day of April, before the whole academy is turned over to the affairs of the Seniors, like graduation essays being practised from morning to night until you speak each one in your own dreams.  This is the first time they ever had such a thing in the academy, and the whole town is as excited and interested as it well can be.

Mr. Douglass Byrd thought it all up a month ago for us Juniors because of our Senior oppression and after his great loss he went on just the same helping us practise and seemed to be as interested in us as if we had been explosives in a bottle or a test-tube or a retort.  His great serenity of soul is a constant lesson to me.  Good-night, Louise.  You are a comfort; you settle my thoughts, though just of leather.

This is the night of the impersonations and they are over.  It was one of the greatest triumphs ever experienced at the Byrd Academy.  It will probably be mentioned in the future with the same praise as the Colonel’s valedictory that left not a dry eye in the house, because they all knew that all the boys in the Senior Class of sixty-one would go to the war the next week.  I choke up whenever I hear the Colonel tell of it, as I have many times in these last two months of my life in Byrdsville.  Miss Prissy always cries copiously when he gets to the place where she gave him a flower when he had walked home with her—­she only fourteen years old and in short dresses—­and which he wore in battle in his pocket Bible.  What would she do if she should lose the Colonel by sudden death before she has rewarded his affections by marrying him?  She ought to think of that.