How I hate the green velvet hat ! It is so elaborate and conspicuous . I do n't see how I could ever have liked it . But I vowed to wear it and wear it I will . `` Shirley and I went down to the station this morning to take Little Dog Monday a bang-up Christmas dinner . Dog Monday waits and watches there still , with just as much hope and confidence as ever . Sometimes he hangs around the station house and talks to people and the rest of his time he sits at his little kennel door and watches the track unwinkingly . We never try to coax him home now : we know it is of no use . When Jem comes back , Monday will come home with him ; and if Jem -- never comes back -- Monday will wait there for him as long as his dear dog heart goes on beating . `` Fred Arnold was here last night . He was eighteen in November and is going to enlist just as soon as his mother is over an operation she has to have . He has been coming here very often lately and though I like him so much it makes me uncomfortable , because I am afraid he is thinking that perhaps I could care something for him . I ca n't tell him about Ken -- because , after all , what is there to tell ? And yet I do n't like to behave coldly and distantly when he will be going away so soon . It is very perplexing . I remember I used to think it would be such fun to have dozens of beaux -- and now I 'm worried to death because two are too many . `` I am learning to cook . Susan is teaching me . I tried to learn long ago -- but no , let me be honest -- Susan tried to teach me , which is a very different thing . I never seemed to succeed with anything and I got discouraged .
But since the boys have gone away I wanted to be able to make cake and things for them myself and so I started in again and this time I 'm getting XXXXX surprisingly well .
about around for in of on over that though with