Nothing worries me more than getting a letter, unless it’s having a telegraph come,—­and that does give one a start.  But even that’s sooner over and quicker read; while for a letter, it’s long, and it takes a good while to get to the end.  I feel it might be a kind of waste of time to write in my diary; but not more than writing letters, and it saves the envelopes and hunting them up.  I’m not likely to find much time for either, for the boys are fairly through their winter suits; if I can only keep them along while the spring hangs off so.

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Mrs. Norris was in yesterday, just as I was writing about the boys’ suits, to know if I would let Martha off to work for her after the washing is over.  I told her I didn’t like to disoblige, but I couldn’t see my way clear to get along without Martha.  The boys ought to be having their spring suits this very minute, and Martha was calculating to make them this week; and they’d have to have their first wear of them Sundays for a while before they start on them for school.  I never was so behindhand; but what with fitting off Artemas and the spring cleaning being delayed, I didn’t seem to know how to manage.  Martha is good at making over, and there are two very good coats of Artemas’s that she would do the right thing by; while there was a good many who could scrub and clean as well as she,—­there was that Nora that used to live at Patty’s.  But Mrs. Norris did not take to Nora.  The Wylies tried her, but could make nothing out of her.  I said I thought it would be hard to find the person Mrs. Wylie could get on with.  Not that I ever knew anything about her till she came to live on our street last winter, but they do say she’s just as hard on her own family; for there’s a story that she won’t let that pretty daughter of hers, Clara, marry Bob Prince’s son, Larkin.

Mrs. Norris said she didn’t wonder, for Larkin Prince hadn’t found anything to do since he came home.  I thought there was enough to live upon in the Wylie family, even if Larkin didn’t find something the first minute he’d got his education.

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I can see that Mrs. Norris didn’t take it well that I was not willing to give up Martha; but I don’t really see why I should be the one to give up.  But I must say I haven’t got on as well with the work as I had hoped, Lavinia’s going with the boys so much keeps her clothes half torn off her back, and I can’t seem to see how to make her tidy.  I was real ashamed when I went to lift her out of a mud-puddle yesterday outside the gate; and there was Clara Wylie looking as clean as a white lily, and she stopped to help her out.  It seemed that Lavinia had left her boot in the last mud-puddle, and I would have liked to have gone through the ground.  I hope it will be a lesson to Lavinia, for Miss Wylie oughtn’t to have touched her with her hand.  But she did, yellow gloves and all, and said it was dreadful walking now, the frost so late coming out of the ground, and she had quite envied Lavinia running across the fields after the boys.  But Lavinia has taken to envying Miss Wylie, and wishes she could wear that kind of boots she has, with high heels that keep her out of the mud-puddles.