There was no sign of a private sitting room that I could put at this
young man's disposal, but he himself has solved the difficulty by
proposing to occupy our new laboratory. So he spends his evenings with a
book and a pipe, comfortably stretched in the dentist's chair. There
are not many society men who would be willing to spend their evenings so
harmlessly. That girl in Detroit is a lucky young thing.
Mercy! An automobile full of people has just arrived to look over the
institution, and Betsy, who usually does the honors, not here. I fly.
ADDIO!
SALLIE.
My dear Gordon:
This is not a letter,--I don't owe you one,--it's a receipt for
sixty-five pairs of roller skates.
Many thanks.
S. McB.
Friday.
Dear Enemy:
I hear that I missed a call today, but Jane delivered your message,
together with the "Genetic Philosophy of Education." She says that
you will call in a few days for my opinion of the book. Is it to be a
written or an oral examination?
And doesn't it ever occur to you that this education business is rather
one-sided? It often strikes me that Dr. Robin MacRae's mental attitude
would also be the better for some slight refurbishing. I will promise to
read your book, provided you read one of mine. I am sending herewith the
"Dolly Dialogues," and shall ask for an opinion in a day or so.
It's uphill work making a Scotch Presbyterian frivolous, but persistency
accomplishes wonders.
S. McB.
May 12. My dear, dear Judy:
Talk about floods in Ohio! Right here in Dutchess County we are the
consistency of a wet sponge. Rain for five days, and everything wrong
with this institution.
The babies have had croup, and we have been up o' nights with them. Cook
has given notice, and there's a dead rat in the walls. Our three camps
leaked, and in the early dawn, after the first cloudburst, twenty-four
bedraggled little Indians, wrapped in damp bedding, came shivering to
the door and begged for admission. Since then every clothesline, every
stair-railing has been covered with wet and smelly blankets that steam,
but won't dry. Mr. Percy de Forest Witherspoon has returned to the hotel
to wait until the sun comes out.
After being cooped up for four days with no exercise to speak of, the
children's badness is breaking out in red spots, like the measles. Betsy
and I have thought of every form of active and innocent occupation that
could be carried on in such a congested quarter as this: blind man's
buff and pillow fights and hide-and-go-seek, gymnastics in the dining
room, and bean-bags in the school room. (We broke two windows.) The boys
played leapfrog up and down the hall, and jarred all the plaster in the
building. We have cleaned energetically and furiously. All the woodwork
has been washed, and all of the floors polished. But despite everything,
we have a great deal of energy left, and we are getting to that point of
nerves where we want to punch one another.