“Very well, I shall try to view this dispassionately! I suppose the way to do it is to consider all that was said of me and decide just what was true and what false, and what merely distorted—which is worse than the false, I think.
“To begin with: hiding in the closet at all, just out of vanity, comes under my heading of bad deeds. And I suppose that appearing as I did, after I had stayed there so long, and covering them with confusion, was another. But if so, I can’t feel it ‘dispassionately’ yet, because I am sinfully glad I did it—yes, even if they did see me in the Mother Hubbard! I shall never forget their faces! Especially Mrs. Ann Cyrilla’s. Miss Potter won’t worry over it long—she will say it served me right—but Mrs. Ann Cyrilla will never, to her dying day, get over being found out like that.
“Now for a review of their criticisms of Emily Byrd Starr and the decision as to whether said Emily Byrd Starr deserved the said criticisms, wholly or in part. Be honest now, Emily, ‘look then into thy heart’ and try to see yourself, not as Miss Potter sees you or as you see yourself, but as you really are.
(“I think I’m going to find this interesting!)
“In the first place, Mrs. Ann Cyrilla said I was pig-headed.
“Am I pig-headed?
“I know I am determined, and Aunt Elizabeth says I am stubborn. But pig-headedness is worse than either of those. Determination is a good quality and even stubbornness has a saving grace in it if you have a little gumption as well. But a pig-headed person is one who is too stupid to see or understand the foolishness of a certain course and insists on taking it—insists, in short, on running full tilt into a stone wall.
“No, I am not pig-headed. I accept stone walls.
“But I take a good deal of convincing that they are stone walls and not cardboard imitations. Therefore, I am a little stubborn.
