BETTY'S DIARY

Betty was down with the flu. She had a horrible cold and cough and was running very high temperature. She could not go to school and neither could she play with the children in the neighborhood, as she had to stay in bed and take rest.

Betty was getting extremely restless and bored as she had already spent two days in bed and did not know what to do. Her mother suggested that Betty should keep a diary. She moved Betty's bed towards the window so that Betty could look down into the garden and the neighboring houses down till the end of the street. Betty's mother told her to make a note of all the exciting things she could see out of her window. Betty thought about the idea of keeping a diary and it did not seem very exciting to her. But since she had nothing better to do she decided to get started with her diary.

The next day, before her brother left for school, he gave her one of his old unused notebooks. Betty looked out and noticed most of the usual happenings of the neighborhood. She saw the mailman come and deliver mail. After a while the milkman came to all the houses. The newspaper boy followed him. Most of the nighbours left their houses and went to work. The neighbor's cat climbed a tree and got stuck in it for almost one hour till she was rescued. Some men came in a green van to the next door neighbour, the Pine's house and took away some furniture. She even took down the telephone number of the van.

That afternoon when her brother came home she showed him her diary. She also realised that it was pretty uninteresting so she decided to give up the idea of keeping a diary.

The next day when she was lying in bed, she heard Mrs. Pine come into her house and speak to her mother. As Betty lay in bed, she couldn't exactly hear what Mrs. Pine was saying but she kept catching a few words like stolen furniture, robbers, empty house and the conversation continued along those lines. Betty quickly ran down and interrupted her mother. Betty's mother immediately asked to keep quiet because she was discussing something important with Mrs. Pine. Betty then ran upto her room and got the diary down and showed it to Mrs. Pine. Betty had noted the number of the van down in the diary, so had the description of the van and the men in it. Mrs. Pine immediately thanked Betty and told her what a clever girl she was. They then called the police and filed a complaint. Betty went upto her room and once again took up her diary and began writing.