Miss Miranda suggested:
Could we all play a little game? I thought it might be fun to say who you think you really are inside. I mean, who from the movies you think you really are. I mean, who is you, really. Oh, now I’ve fumbled it all, and maybe you don’t even know what I mean, but, here, I’ll go first.

I think that maybe I am the girl Miss Monroe plays in The Seven Year Itch, even though I am only sixteen years old because she is so simple and sweet and a little on the dumb side. I don’t mind saying it, but I am, you know. A little on the dumb side. But who would mind if she were as pretty as Miss Monroe? I’m not, as you can see. As pretty as Miss Monroe, but the way she looks and acts is just the way I feel, so I pick her.

But, if I were to say who I want to be more like, it would have to be Bernadette in Song of Bernadette, because, like Miss Monroe, she is simple and sweet, but she also is so good. Watching that movie just makes a girl want to be as good as she can, even if nobody else understands what being good means.

Oh, I am sorry to babble. I really am.

I hope you all can tell me who you think is most like you on the silver screen and maybe you can say too who you wish you could be more like as well, so I don’t feel so silly for having said all that.

Miss Ellhedrine replied:
Dears and darlings, here is your own Ellhedrine. You can always guess what I have been up to when you haven’t seen me for a spot – just working away, preparing for all those dreadful exams. Now that I know I shall see Miss Barbara sometimes at Milchford I am foply anxious to get there (foply is the next one up after triply, you know – singly, doubly, triply, foply).

And every one has been so nice to me. Miss Barbi and Mina saying I am exotic, even though I am only Ellhedrine Joans from a little town in Quirinelle who goes to Brightsea for her holidays, and even though I wear a green school uniform and only put on my squirrel coat to come here. Well, of course that is kind, but I can hear in your dear voices that you really mean it. I am not sure how you can, but I know you do, and that has made me so very happy.

Miranda, your game is just a wonderful idea. Now, I’ll tell you who I feel like on the silver screen, but you must promise not to laugh. It is Katherine Hepburn. Now isn’t that strange. Every one says “Surely you mean Audrey Hepburn”, but I don’t, I mean Katherine. I know she is terribly brunette and I am rather on the blonde side of blonde, but she is who I mean, even so. I could never be chic and poised like Audrey, but Katherine’s wonderful, high-strung, nervous vitality – yes, you see it now, don’t you? – and her magical theatricality (perhaps that is what makes me seem exotic if I have a hint of it). When I see one of her films I “catch” her for days afterwards and sound much more like her than me.

In the summer my two brunette cousins came down from Milchford with a group of sophisticated ‘varsity blondes and brunettes, and Dora said “This is little cousin Ellhedrine [and she did pronounce the “h”, bless her]. She suffers from the delusion that she’s Katherine Hepburn”, and Lucilella said. “Nonsense, darling, she doesn’t suffer from it, she thoroughly enjoys it.”

Anyway, I am sublimely happy at present, and Katherine-ing away like anything when I’m not swotting. And all that hard work does seem to tone me up and make me feel more alive and able to take an interest in just about everything. It is so good for me.