Even that doesn't please the family, though, because sometimes
I mention things they thought I didn't know, and then they are annoyed
and cross instead of learning a lesson by it and realizing how silly it
is to try to keep secrets from me. If they'd TELL me, and put me on my
honor, I could keep their old secrets as well as anybody. I've kept
Billy's for years and years. But when they all stop talking the minute
I come into a room, and when mamma and Peggy go around with red eyes
and won't say why, you'd better believe I don't like it. It fills me
with the "intelligent discontent" Tom is always talking about. Then I
don't rest until I know what there is to know, and usually when I get
through I know more than anybody else does, because I've got all the
different sides--Maria's and Tom's and Lorraine's and Charles Edward's
and mamma's and papa's and grandma's and Peggy's and Aunt Elizabeth's.
It isn't that they intend to tell me things, either; they all try not
to. Every one of them keeps her own secrets beautifully, but she drops
things about the others. Then all I have to do is to put them together
like a patch-work quilt.
You needn't think it's easy, though, for the very minute I get near any
of the family they waste most of the time we're together by trying to
improve me. You see, they are all so dreadfully old that they have had
time to find out their faults and youthful errors, and every single one
of them thinks she sees ALL her faults in me, and that she must help me
to conquer them ere it is too late.
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