I would like to feel that we're friends again.
SALLIE McBRIDE.
THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
Sunday.
Dear Dr. MacRae:
I am in receipt of your calling card with an eleven-word answer to my
letter on the back. I didn't mean to annoy you by my attentions. What
you think and how you behave are really matters of extreme indifference
to me. Be just as impolite as you choose.
S. McB.
December 14.
Dear Judy:
PLEASE pepper your letters with stamps, inside and out. I have thirty
collectors in the family. Since you have taken to travel, every day
about post time an eager group gathers at the gate, waiting to snatch
any letters of foreign design, and by the time the letters reach me
they are almost in shreds through the tenacity of rival snatchers. Tell
Jervis to send us some more of those purple pine trees from Honduras;
likewise some green parrots from Guatemala. I could use a pint of them!
Isn't it wonderful to have got these apathetic little things so
enthusiastic? My children are getting to be almost like real children.
B dormitory started a pillow fight last night of its own accord; and
though it was very wearing to our scant supply of linen, I stood by and
beamed, and even tossed a pillow myself.
Last Saturday those two desirable friends of Percy's spent the whole
afternoon playing with my boys. They brought up three rifles, and each
man took the lead of a camp of Indians, and passed the afternoon in a
bottle shooting contest, with a prize for the winning camp. They brought
the prize with them--an atrocious head of an Indian painted on leather.
Dreadful taste; but the men thought it lovely, so I admired it with all
the ardor I could assume.
When they had finished, I warmed them up with cookies and hot chocolate,
and I really think the men enjoyed it as much as the boys; they
undoubtedly enjoyed it more than I did. I couldn't help being in a
feminine twitter all the time the firing was going on for fear somebody
would shoot somebody else. But I know that I can't keep twenty-four
Indians tied to my apron strings, and I never could find in the whole
wide world three nicer men to take an interest in them.
Just think of all that healthy, exuberant volunteer service going to
waste under the asylum's nose! I suppose the neighborhood is full of
plenty more of it, and I am going to make it my business to dig it out.
What I want most are about eight nice, pretty, sensible young women to
come up here one night a week, and sit before the fire and tell stories
while the chicks pop corn. I do so want to contrive a little individual
petting for my babies. You see, Judy, I am remembering your own
childhood, and am trying hard to fill in the gaps.