I did not once think how I felt. Well, I jumped up as soon as I heard
the bell, but found I had a dreadful pain in my side, and a cough.
Susan says I coughed all night. I remembered then that I had just
such a cough and just such a pain the last time I walked in the snow
without overshoes. I crept back to bed feeling about as mean as I
could. Mother sent up to know why I did not come down, and I had to
own that I was sick. She came up directly looking so anxious! And
here I have been shut up ever since; only to day I am sitting up a
little. Poor mother has had trouble enough with me; I know I have
been cross and unreasonable, and it was all my own fault that I was
ill. Another time I will do as mother says.

JAN. 31. -How easy it is to make good resolutions, and how easy it is
to break them! Just as I had got so far, yesterday, mother spoke for
the third time about my exerting myself so much. And just at that
moment I fainted away, and she had a great time all alone there with
me. I did not realize how long I had been writing, nor how weak I
was. I do wonder if I shall ever really learn that mother knows more
than I do!

Feb. 17. -It is more than a month since I took that cold, and here I
still am, shut up in the house. To be sure the doctor lets me go down
stairs, but then he won't listen to a word about school. Oh, dear!
All the girls will get ahead of me.

This is Sunday, and everybody has gone to church. I thought I ought
to make a good use of the time while they were gone, so I took the
Memoir of Henry Martyn, and read a little in that.

I am afraid I am not much like him. Then I knelt down and tried to