After chapel, Thursday

What do you think is my favourite book?  Just now, I mean; I change every three days.  Wuthering Heights.  Emily Bronte was quite young when she wrote it, and had never been outside of Haworth churchyard.  She had never known any men in her life; how could she imagine a man like Heathcliffe?

I couldn’t do it, and I’m quite young and never outside the John Grier Asylum—­I’ve had every chance in the world.  Sometimes a dreadful fear comes over me that I’m not a genius.  Will you be awfully disappointed, Daddy, if I don’t turn out to be a great author?  In the spring when everything is so beautiful and green and budding, I feel like turning my back on lessons, and running away to play with the weather.  There are such lots of adventures out in the fields!  It’s much more entertaining to live books than to write them.

Ow ! ! ! ! ! !

That was a shriek which brought Sallie and Julia and (for a disgusted moment) the Senior from across the hall.  It was caused by a centipede like this:  only worse.  Just as I had finished the last sentence and was thinking what to say next—­plump!—­it fell off the ceiling and landed at my side.  I tipped two cups off the tea table in trying to get away.  Sallie whacked it with the back of my hair brush—­which I shall never be able to use again—­and killed the front end, but the rear fifty feet ran under the bureau and escaped.

This dormitory, owing to its age and ivy-covered walls, is full of centipedes.  They are dreadful creatures.  I’d rather find a tiger under the bed.

Friday, 9.30 p.m.

Such a lot of troubles!  I didn’t hear the rising bell this morning, then I broke my shoestring while I was hurrying to dress and dropped my collar button down my neck.  I was late for breakfast and also for first-hour recitation.  I forgot to take any blotting paper and my fountain pen leaked.  In trigonometry the Professor and I had a disagreement touching a little matter of logarithms.  On looking it up, I find that she was right.  We had mutton stew and pie-plant for lunch—­hate ’em both; they taste like the asylum.  The post brought me nothing but bills (though I must say that I never do get anything else; my family are not the kind that write).  In English class this afternoon we had an unexpected written lesson.  This was it: 

               I asked no other thing,
               No other was denied. 
               I offered Being for it;
               The mighty merchant smiled.

               Brazil?  He twirled a button
               Without a glance my way: 
               But, madam, is there nothing else
               That we can show today?