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I HAD only one serious trouble in school, and that trouble's name was Sarah Millar. I cannot even now explain the influence she had over me. She was not handsome or specially bright, and certainly she was not amiable. I cannot say I ever liked her, and at times I almost hated her, yet I really think she led me into all the serious scrapes in which I was ever involved before I was nine years old. I don't think she cared a pin for me personally. I believe she took that way to annoy Jeanne, whom she hated because she said Jeanne "felt above her."
One of these scrapes I specially remember, because it was the means of breaking off my intercourse with Sarah. It came about in this way. One day late in the fall my father and mother went away on a visit to some cousins in Lanesborough, taking with them Jeanne and Ruth, but leaving my brothers and myself at home under the care of Rose. They were to be gone several days, and mother enjoined me to be very good, to go to school every day, and mind what Rose told me; promising if she heard a good account of me on her return to bring me something pretty from my cousin's store in Lanesborough.