Whatever can I do with these little ones? I think and think and think
about them. I can't place them out, and it does seem too awful to bring
them up here; for as good as we are going to be when we get ourselves
made over, still, after all, we are an institution, and our inmates are
just little incubator chicks. They don't get the individual, fussy care
that only an old hen can give.
There is a lot of interesting news that I might have been telling you,
but my new little family has driven everything out of my mind.
Bairns are certain joy, but nae sma' care.
Yours ever,
SALLIE. P.S. Don't forget that you are coming to visit me next week.
P.S. II. The doctor, who is ordinarily so scientific and unsentimental,
has fallen in love with Allegra. He didn't so much as glance at her
tonsils; he simply picked her up in his arms and hugged her. Oh, she is
a little witch! Whatever is to become of her?
June 22. My dear Judy:
I may report that you need no longer worry as to our inadequate fire
protection. The doctor and Mr. Witherspoon have been giving the
matter their gravest attention, and no game yet devised has proved so
entertaining and destructive as our fire drill.
The children all retire to their beds and plunge into alert slumber.
Fire alarm sounds. They spring up and into their shoes, snatch the top
blanket from their beds, wrap it around their imaginary nightclothes,
fall into line, and trot to the hall and stairs.
Our seventeen little tots in the nursery are each in charge of an
Indian, and are bundled out, shrieking with delight. The remaining
Indians, so long as there is no danger of the roof falling, devote
themselves to salvage. On the occasion of our first drill, Percy in
command, the contents of a dozen clothes lockers were dumped into sheets
and hurled out of the windows. I usurped dictatorship just in time to
keep the pillows and mattresses from following. We spent hours resorting
those clothes, while Percy and the doctor, having lost all interest
strolled up to the camp with their pipes.
Our future drills are to be a touch less realistic. However, I am
pleased to tell you that, under the able direction of Fire Chief
Witherspoon, we emptied the building in six minutes and twenty-eight
seconds.
That baby Allegra has fairy blood in her veins. Never did this
institution harbor such a child, barring one that Jervis and I know of.
She has completely subjugated the doctor. Instead of going about his
visits like a sober medical man, he comes down to my library hand in
hand with Allegra, and for half an hour at a time crawls about on a rug,
pretending he's a horse, while the bonnie wee lassie sits on his back
and kicks. You know, I am thinking of putting a card in the paper: