Excerpt from The Bride's Hero Both volumes are here in my writing-desk. I was looking them over a little before beginning this. I never called my book a diary; one hears so much fun being made of girls who keep diaries. But then, most girls have some one to whom they can go and tell their troubles, or the fun they have, or to ask advice. I have nobody at all, for any one who knows Aunt Dora would know I could n't say things I really care for in my heart to her. My first volume I called Letters to my Darling Mother. I wonder what Aunt Dora would say if she saw that inscription? She would think something was very wrong with my head. Oh, how glad I am she '11 never know about my books! How glad I am that I shan't really have to hear her say anything about them! For it's hopeless arguing with Aunt Dora. You begin a subject, and she snaps you up with a snubby sort of answer that finishes the matter and you at the same time, making you feel a Worm. Only, of course, she hardly ever does it to Marguerite, or to new acquaintances; only to people she is tired of, and impatient with, like me. I used to feel, somehow, as if my mother might come back and read those letters of mine to her, maybe while I was asleep. I used always to imagine myself asking her advice about things, and then I 'd dream that she told me what I ought to do, or comforted me when I was miserable. I never had time to know my mother very well, or she me, in this world because she died before I was three. But sometimes, m flashes, it seems as if I an remember her. I distinctly see a beautiful young face, close to mine, bending over me when I 'm in bed. It is a small oval face, without much color, and it has a sweet, curved mouth, the upper lip shaped like a how. The eyes are gray, the color of slate, with golden brown spots round the pupils; and they look at me from under long, dark lashes that curl up softly. I can see her little, delicate nose, with sensitive nostrils, and her brown hair parted in the middle, and spraying into what I like to call love locks over her forehead. It 's a pretty word, and one finds it in poetry or old fashioned stories about sweet heroines of other times; so it seems to suit my mother, for I think of her as being rather old-fashioned, or, anyhow, not hard and brilliant like the mothers of a great many girls I know especially not at all like Aunt Dora, who says I am old-fashioned. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.