The Goal

* * * * * The day after Donald had taken her into his confidence regarding his
plans, Rose made up her mind to keep a diary.

"Even though he may be thousands of miles away, I mean to keep myself as
close to him as possible by writing him as I would talk to him, about
_all_ the things which happen in my life, and, unless I set them down as
they happen, I shall forget," she told Miss Merriman, after the seal of
secrecy had been removed from her lips.

"Perhaps _you_ can succeed in keeping one. _I_ never could," laughed her
friend. "Each January First I start a new one, and register a solemn vow
to keep it up longer, at least, than I did the one the previous year. If
I follow that system until I am three hundred and fifty years old, I
will complete just one before I die."

Smiles accepted the implied challenge, and, day by day, with few
omissions, the dated pages bore new testimony to her application in
performing a self-appointed task. The plan bore fruit, too, for Donald,
in his rare replies to her confidential letters, which went to him each
fortnight, was able to praise her as the best of correspondents, writing
once, "You have an exceptional gift for making incidents seem real and
people alive, in your letters, and of realizing that, with us who are so
far away from home, it _is_ the little things which count. Ethel, alas,
is hopeless in this respect. She writes me faithfully; but invariably
says that nothing has happened except the usual occurrences of everyday
life, and thereby utterly misses the great fact that it is just those
very things that the lonely exile most longs to hear about. I would
actually rather have her write that they had baked beans on Saturday
night than that so-and-so had given a charity whist at the Vendome."