That’s what Mrs. Champernowne said when she gave it to me for my New Year’s Gift—and that I could make one of my beautiful embroideries for its cover, which I shall do, because I like making pictures with stitches. But why should I drone on like Lady Hoby about Improving Passages and Sorrowful Meditations on my sins? How boring! Anyway, I don’t commit any very terrible sins, apart from once ruining my gown when I jumped off a log. And losing things. That’s why I haven’t written anything in this before—I lost it under my bed for a while. But now I’ve found it I’m going to write everything in it. It can be a book about me, Lady Grace Cavendish, Maid of Honour. And all my favourite things. Why not? My favourite person (apart from my mother, who is dead, God rest her soul) is Her Majesty the Queen. She’s a bit old, which you’re never supposed to say or she might throw a shoe at you. She is thirty-six! Even for a great lady, that is almost too old to get married and have children—as Mrs.
