Every morning and every night my prayers are just this:  “O Lord, help Mary Cary through this day.  I’m not asking for to-morrow, it not being here yet.  But This Day help me to hold out.”  And all day long I’m saying under my breath: 

    “Hold on, Mary Cary, hold on, hold on. 
    There never was a night that didn’t have a dawn. 
    There never was a road that didn’t have an end. 
    Wait awhile, wait awhile, and then the letter send.”

I say that so often to myself that I’m afraid somebody will hear me think it.  If that letter isn’t sent soon, the answer will be received by a corpse.

I’m never again going to have a secret.  It’s worse than a tumor or dropsy.  Mrs. Penick has a tumor.  I’ve never seen the dropsy, but a secret is more dangerous, for it dries you up.  Dropsy has water to it.

We had apple-dumplings for dinner.  I sold mine to Lucy Pyle for two cents, and bought a stamp with it.  The stamp is for The Letter.

Miss Katherine has come back.  Came night before last, but I’ve been too excited to write anything down.  Everything I do is done in dabs these days, and few lines at the time is all I’m equal to.

She looks grand.  And oh, what a difference her being here makes!  We are children, not just orphans, when she is with us; and it’s because she loves us, trusts us, brings our best part to the top that we are different when she is about.  The very way she laughs—­so clear and hearty—­makes you think things aren’t so bad, and already they have picked up.  Like my primrose does when I give it water, after forgetting it till it is as limp as old Miss Sarah Cone’s crepe veil.

I haven’t told her anything yet, but I’ve been watching good.  I haven’t seen any particular signs of memories and regrets, she being too busy to have them since she got back.  Still, I believe they are there, and I’m that afraid I’ll say Parke Alden in my sleep I put the covering over my head, for fear she’d hear me if I did.

I am back in her room, and this afternoon she asked me what I was looking at her so hard for.  I told her she was the best thing to look at that came my way, and she laughed and called me a foolish child.  But Mary Cary is thinking, and she isn’t telling all she thinks about, either.

Well, it’s written.  That letter is written and gone.  It was to Dr. Parke Alden.  I sent it to his hospital in Michigan.  I made it short, because by nature I write just endless, having gotten in the habit from making up stories for the girls and scribbling them off when kept in, which in the past was frequent.  This is what I wrote: 

     Dr. Parke Alden: