Saw Marsh Orde at church Sunday, but couldn't so much as move my mouth at him as Father was watching me like the proverbial hawk. You don't know the Ordes from Adam and I won't bother running down the list again, but Orde is a lamb really. I don't believe a word of that story of the girl in Derry Pond. He cow-eyed me all through the exit hymn- poor clumsy thing. Mary Carswell was there with her cousins. She sings in the choir, but doesn't really sing – just moves her mouth along – afraid of spoiling the sound. Aunt Janey Milburn had us both carry the coffee for the Ladies' Missionary; for once Mary didn't spill it all over the front of her. We made a pretty pair, thought Mary will dangle her hair in plaits like a child.
Sermon indescribably dull as expected. Audible snoring among the venerable of Shrewsbury. Must knock out the rest of this algebra before bed or I will be sniped at by red-nosed bluestockings all day—which is to say, even more than usual.
Shopping with Father was a demi-success at least. We scraped Jones and Mac clean of all that was good—some decent stockings (ribbed cashmere and silk both) a trim pair of ivory-colored shoes with the most darling little Puritan buckles (for Father's little Puritan), two blouses and a really splendid navy jacket with high sleeves. And hats, of course. There was a sorry enough selection at J&M, but I am having one made in Ch'town by the Sisters Parnell. We had lunch at the Parnassus Café on Queen St. and he ordered me plum cake without asking, because I liked it when I was seven. He was in Boston for the firm three weeks in August & brought me a pile of snaps to put in a scrapbook – read in a magazine, I think, that girls like scrapbooks and photographs. Murky & ghostly snaps of buildings, bustles, the windows of shops, a park with trees all in a row. Next is Montreal and then Toronto, of which I am promised more gifts from the Kodak. Haven't the heart to tell him the bitter truth, which is I outgrew scrapbook albums when I was ten.
Attempted to stop by the bookstore for a present for Tom. He's mad for Ibsen and James this year, but of course the intolerable "Booke" [sic] "Shoppe" [sic] hasn't any. You should have seen the face Miss Taylor made when I asked! But they most certainly carry the complete Walter Scott and a lovely selection of embossed color covers on the "tasteful and uplifting" Heroines of Canadian History series—said heroines being primarily fictional and their heroics exclusively swoon-centered, "Evelyn, Girl of the North Country" being an especial favourite. Tom, dear soul that he is, bought me that one for my birthday this year as a joke – it sits on my book shelf now, with a page-long paean to my imaginary virtues as inscription.
Mary will like the snaps, at least. Halloran and I have to make a pie for the Shrewsbury Literary this Wed.. Will have to send away for Tom's gift as there's no getting to C'town before the fourteenth, and who knows if the sophisticates at Geo. Carter's will carry degenerate Norwegians in the first.
Honestly, Diary, I loathe this entire hairy sprawling oaf of a country some days, and the Island most of all.
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