“DEAR FATHER: “O, I have such an exiting thing to tell you. I have been the heroin¹ of an adventure. One day last week Ilse asked me if I would go and stay all night with her
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 because her father was away and wouldn’t be home till very late and Ilse said she wasn’t fritened but very lonesome. So I asked Aunt Elizabeth if I could. I hardly dared hope, dear Father, that she would let me, for she doesn’t aprove of little girls being away from home at night but to my surprise she said I could go very kindly³. And then I heard her say in the pantry to Aunt Laura It is a shame the way the doctor leaves that poor child so much alone at nights. It is wikked of him. And Aunt Laura said The poor man is warped⁴. You know he was not a bit like that before his wife—and then just as it was getting intresting Aunt Elizabeth gave Aunt Laura a nudge and said s-s-s-h, little pitchers⁵ have big ears. I knew she meant me though my ears are not big, only pointed⁶. I do wish I could find out what Ilse’s mother did. It worrys me after I go to bed. I lie awake for ever so long thinking about it. Ilse has no idea. Once she asked her father and he told her (in a voice of thunder) never to mention that woman to him again. And there is something else that worrys me too. I keep thinking of Silas Lee who killed his brother at the old well. How dreadful the poor man must have felt. And what is it to be warped.
“I went over to Ilses and we played in the garret. I like playing there because we dont have to be careful and tidy like we do in our garret. Ilses garret is very untidy and cant⁷ have been dusted for years. The rag room is worse than the rest. It is boarded off at one end of the garret and it is full of old close and bags of rags and broken furniture. I dont like the smell of it. The kitchen chimney goes up through it and things hang round it (or did). For all this is in the past now, dear Father.
“When we got tired playing we sat down on an old chest and talked. This is splendid in daytime I said but it must be awful queer at night. Mice, said Ilse,—and spiders and gosts. I dont believe in gosts I said skornfully.

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