Mumsie is a dear, and I am going to put all about her in this diary.
Mumsie says I am an old-fashioned girl (how little she knows me!), but
I’ll be old-fashioned enough anyhow to keep a diary. It will be useful
to read about the people, and parties, and things I’m going to enjoy.
Yes, enjoy is the word. Dances and afternoon teas, and those things the
rich people do, I’m going to have my share of. I’m glad I’m a girl,
especially when one has such a good aunt as Mumsie. She was nothing more
than a friend of my mother—the mother I never knew. And, I am sure, the
best of friends!
Just to think I am really to spend a winter in this great Canadian City!
I shall call it the City of Mammon. After my village home that seems the
only name for it, and there is evidence of wealth everywhere. I almost
gasp when I think of what some things I see must have cost, the silk
dresses, the great hats with ostrich plumes, the motors. And I must
confess to being dazed when I came out of the station. The bells clanged
so loudly and the engines puffed as if they wished to specially frighten
me; but they didn’t, that is, not much. Perhaps it is that the station
held the noises in under its great, glass roof; but the noise and the
buffeting, and the many people in a hurry made a strange confusion. At
home the station roof is the vault of Heaven, so that we score sometimes
in our village. And when we got into the street the cars, the motors,
and the lights flashing here and there—it was all so fairy-like and
heavenly that—Oh! it is good to be alive.
Mumsie has given me such a big room with an outlook over the street. I
feel almost as Cinderella must have felt when at the Prince’s Ball
before the midnight bell. I wonder if I shall be asked to any balls! But
of course I shall. If Uncle should try to be an old fogey—but he won’t.
That is enough to write about for the first day. No, I must put down
more about Mumsie. When she met me at the station and took me in her
arms and kissed me, it seemed as if her heart opened and I fell right
in; and when she spoke I felt as if I had known her voice all my life.
She had a hundred things to ask about myself: how she thought of them
all I can’t imagine. She is full of fun, with lots of amusing stories,
or at least she seems to make fun out of almost anything. She has
reddish hair—a poet would no doubt call it golden—which she does like
the Queen, and her voice when she gets talking is generally loud, though
the louder it gets the nicer it sounds, it is so cheery. My uncle, her
husband, Mr. George Somers, is a largish man with roast-beef cheeks and
gray hair, though he is not the least bit old looking. He has a straight
nose, a full and polished forehead, and a cropped, white moustache. He
is a lawyer, and has a voice for humbugging with. I like him, and there
is a twinkle in his eye.
P.S. I am so happy!