Isn't it pathetic? Ordinary children of ten or twelve automatically know
so many things that our little incubator chicks have never dreamed of.
But I have a variety of plans on foot. Just give me time, and you
will see. One of these days I'll be turning out some nearly normal
youngsters.
LATER.
I've an empty evening ahead, so I'll settle to some further gossip with
you.
You remember the peanuts that Gordon Hallock sent? Well, I was so
gracious when I thanked him that it incited him to fresh effort. He
apparently went into a toy shop, and placed himself unreservedly in the
hands of an enterprising clerk. Yesterday two husky expressmen deposited
in our front hall a crate full of expensive furry animals built to be
consumed by the children of the rich. They are not exactly what I should
have purchased had I been the one to disburse such a fortune, but my
babies find them very huggable. The chicks are now taking to bed with
them lions and elephants and bears and giraffes. I don't know what the
psychological effect will be. Do you suppose when they grow up they will
all join the circus?
Oh, dear me, here is Miss Snaith, coming to pay a social call.
Good-by.
S.
P.S. The prodigal has returned. He sends his respectful regards, and
three wags of the tail.
THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
April 7. My dear Judy:
I have just been reading a pamphlet on manual training for girls,
and another on the proper diet for institutions--right proportions of
proteins, fats, starches, etc. In these days of scientific charity, when
every problem has been tabulated, you can run an institution by chart.
I don't see how Mrs. Lippett could have made all the mistakes she did,
assuming, of course,that she knew how to read. But there is one quite
important branch of institutional work that has not been touched upon,
and I myself am gathering data. Some day I shall issue a pamphlet on the
"Management and Control of Trustees."
I must tell you the joke about my enemy--not the Hon. Cy, but my first,
my original enemy. He has undertaken a new field of endeavor. He says
quite soberly (everything he does is sober; he has never smiled yet)
that he has been watching me closely since my arrival, and though I am
untrained and foolish and flippant (sic), he doesn't think that I am
really so superficial as I at first appeared. I have an almost masculine
ability of grasping the whole of a question and going straight to the
point.
Aren't men funny? When they want to pay you the greatest compliment in
their power, they naively tell you that you have a masculine mind. There
is one compliment, incidentally, that I shall never be paying him.
I cannot honestly say that he has a quickness of perception almost
feminine.