From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
In Sunday school this morning, Miss Meadows said that now we have learned all of the ten commandments. Who could tell her what God wants us to do? I raised my hand and said that I don’t think God wants us to do anything, he only wants us not to do things. She said well all right, let’s talk a little while about what he doesn’t want us to do. So we did. I said that if God doesn’t want us to kill, he must mean that he doesn’t want us to kill animals either. So then we shouldn’t kill cows and chickens and lambs and eat them. Then Albert asked her that if eating an egg was the same as killing a chicken. Most of us didn’t think that an egg was a chicken yet and besides an egg can’t really feel anything. Then we talked about the other commandments. We said that we shouldn’t tell lies about our neighbors or even about other people and we shouldn’t make statues of other people or animals and worship them and when we become adults we shouldn’t commit adultery, and we shouldn’t want anything that doesn’t belong to us, no matter how beautiful the things are. I would really like to have a little ermine muff with black tails like the one Maxine wore when we met her downtown that day. Of course I don’t want her muff, I just want one just like it, so maybe that isn’t coveting. We talked on and on about all kinds of things and then we went home for lunch.
I do not know the date the photo of Hilda was taken. Brownie appears in the photo so it must have been after April 5, 1912 when she told us Brownie arrived in her life. Perhaps Hilda received the muff she holds as a present later this month or for her birthday in January 1913.