Dear me, Daddy, but it was a funny sensation! I felt as benevolent as
a Trustee of the John Grier home. I kissed one sweet, sticky little
boy--but I don't think I patted any of them on the head!
And two days after Christmas, they gave a dance at their own house for
ME.
It was the first really true ball I ever attended--college doesn't
count where we dance with girls. I had a new white evening gown (your
Christmas present--many thanks) and long white gloves and white satin
slippers. The only drawback to my perfect, utter, absolute happiness
was the fact that Mrs. Lippett couldn't see me leading the cotillion
with Jimmie McBride. Tell her about it, please, the next time you
visit the J. G. H.
Yours ever,
Judy Abbott
PS. Would you be terribly displeased, Daddy, if I didn't turn out to
be a Great Author after all, but just a Plain Girl?
6.30, Saturday
Dear Daddy, We started to walk to town today, but mercy! how it poured. I like
winter to be winter with snow instead of rain.
Julia's desirable uncle called again this afternoon--and brought a
five-pound box of chocolates. There are advantages, you see, about
rooming with Julia.
Our innocent prattle appeared to amuse him and he waited for a later
train in order to take tea in the study. We had an awful lot of
trouble getting permission. It's hard enough entertaining fathers and
grandfathers, but uncles are a step worse; and as for brothers and
cousins, they are next to impossible. Julia had to swear that he was
her uncle before a notary public and then have the county clerk's
certificate attached. (Don't I know a lot of law?) And even then I
doubt if we could have had our tea if the Dean had chanced to see how
youngish and good-looking Uncle Jervis is.
Anyway, we had it, with brown bread Swiss cheese sandwiches. He helped
make them and then ate four. I told him that I had spent last summer
at Lock Willow, and we had a beautiful gossipy time about the Semples,
and the horses and cows and chickens. All the horses that he used to
know are dead, except Grover, who was a baby colt at the time of his
last visit--and poor Grove now is so old he can just limp about the
pasture.
He asked if they still kept doughnuts in a yellow crock with a blue
plate over it on the bottom shelf of the pantry--and they do! He
wanted to know if there was still a woodchuck's hole under the pile of
rocks in the night pasture--and there is! Amasai caught a big, fat,
grey one there this summer, the twenty-fifth great-grandson of the one
Master Jervis caught when he was a little boy.