It is tradgic to think that, after having so long anticapated that party, I am now here in sackcloth and ashes, which is a figure of speech for the Peter Thompson uniform of the school, with plain white for evenings and no jewellry.

It was with anticapatory joy, therefore, that I sent the acceptances and the desired measurements, and sat down to cheerfully while away the time in studies and the various duties of school life, until the Holadays.

However, I was not long to rest in piece, for in a few days I received a letter from Carter Brooks, as follows: 

Dear Barbara:  It was sweet of you to write me so promptly, although I confess to being rather astonished as well as delighted at being called “Dearest.”  The signature too was charming, “Ever thine.”  But, dear child, won’t you write at once and tell me why the waist, bust and hip measurements?  And the request to have them really low in the neck?  Ever thine, Carter.

It will be perceived that I had sent him the letter to mother, by mistake.

I was very unhappy about it.  It was not an auspisious way to begin the Holadays, especially the low neck.  Also I disliked very much having told him my waist measure which is large owing to Basket Ball.

As I have stated before, I have known very few of the Other Sex, but some of the girls had had more experience, and in the days before we went home, we talked a great deal about things.  Especially Love.  I felt that it was rather over-done, particularly in fiction.  Also I felt and observed at divers times that I would never marry.  It was my intention to go upon the stage, although modafied since by what I am about to relate.

The other girls say that I look like Julia Marlowe.

Some of the girls had boys who wrote to them, and one of them—­I refrain from giving her name had—­a Code.  You read every third word.  He called her “Couzin” and he would write like this: 

Dear Couzin:  I am well.  Am just about crazy this week to go home.  See notice enclosed you football game.

And so on and on.  Only what it really said was “I am crazy to see you.”

(In giving this Code I am betraying no secrets, as they have quarreled and everything is now over between them.)

As I had nobody, at that time, and as I had visions of a Career, I was a man-hater.  I acknowledge that this was a pose.  But after all, what is life but a pose?

“Stupid things!” I always said.  “Nothing in their heads but football and tobacco smoke.  Women,” I said, “are only their playthings.  And when they do grow up and get a little intellagence they use it in making money.”

There has been a story in the school—­I got it from one of the little girls—­that I was disapointed in love in early youth, the object of my atachment having been the Tener in our Church choir at home.  I daresay I should have denied the soft impeachment, but I did not.  It was, although not appearing so at the time, my first downward step on the path that leads to destruction.