March 6.–Anna and her set will have to square accounts with Mr Richards to-morrow, for nine of them ran away from school this afternoon, Alice Jewett, Louisa Field, Sarah Antes, Hattie Paddock, Helen Coy, Jennie Ruckel, Frankie Younglove, Emma Wheeler and Anna. They went out to Mr Sackett’s, where they are making maple sugar. Mr and Mrs Sackett were at home and two Miss Sacketts and Darius, and they asked them in and gave them all the sugar they wanted, and Anna said pickles, too, and bread and butter, and the more pickles they ate the more sugar they could eat. I guess they will think of pickles when Mr Richards asks them where they were. I think Ellie Daggett and Charlie Paddock went, too, and some of the Academy boys.
March 7.–They all had to stay after school to-night for an hour and copy Dictionary. Anna seems reconciled, for she just wrote in her journal: “It was a very good plan to keep us because no one ever ought to stay out of school except on account of sickness, and if they once get a thing fixed in their minds it will stay there, and when they grow up it will do them a great deal of good.”