I’m sorry your little birdie’s dead! He was a nice singing birdie! But I
wouldn’t cry. Maybe you’ll have another one some time, if you’re a good
little girl. Maybe father’ll go to Boston and buy you one, or maybe
Cousin Joe will send one home to you, in a vessel, or maybe I’ll catch
one, or maybe a man will come along with birds to sell, or maybe Aunt
Phebe’s bird will lay an egg and hatch one out. I wouldn’t feel bad
about it. It isn’t any use to feel bad about it. Maybe, if he hadn’t
been killed, he’d ’a’ died. Dorry says, “Tell her, ‘Don’t you cry,’ and
I’ll give her something, catch her a rabbit or a squirrel!” Says he’ll
tease his sister for her white mice. Says he’ll tease her with the tears
in his eyes,--or else her banties.
How do you like your teacher? Do you learn any lessons at school? You
must try to get up above all the other ones. We’ve got two new teachers
this year. One is clever, and we like that one, but the other one isn’t
very. We call the good one Wedding Cake, and we call the other one Brown
Bread. Did grandmother tell you about the Fortune Tellers? We went
to-day and she told mine true. She said my father was a very kind man,
and said I was quick to get mad, and said I had just got something I’d
wanted a long time (watch, you know), and said I should have something
else that I wanted, but didn’t say when. I wonder how she knew I wanted
a gun. I thought perhaps somebody told her, and laid it to Old Wonder
Boy, for we two had been talking about guns. But he flared up just like
a flash of powder. “There. Now you needn’t blame that on to me!” says
he. “You fellers always do blame everything on to me!” Sometimes when
somebody touches him he hollers out, “Leave me loose! Leave me loose!”
Dorry says that’s the way fellers talk down in Jersey. The Fortune
Teller told W. B. that he came from a long way off, and that he wanted
to be a soldier, but he’d better give up that, for he wouldn’t dare to
go to war, without he went behind to sell pies. All of us laughed to
hear that, for Old Wonder Boy is quick to get scared. But he is always
straightening himself up, and looking big, and talking about his native
land, and what he would do for his native land, and how he would fight
for his native land, and how he would die for his native land. He says
that why she told him that kind of a fortune was because he gave her
pennies and not silver money. His uncle that goes cap’n of a vessel has
sent him a letter, and in the letter it said that he had a sailor aboard
his ship that used to come to this school.
[Illustration]
I was going to tell you a funny story about W. B.’s getting scared, but
Dorry he keeps teasing me to go somewhere. I made these joggly letters
when he tickled my ears with his paint-brush. Has your pullet begun to
lay yet? I hope my rooster won’t be killed. Tell them not to. Benjie
says he had a grand great rooster. It was white and had green and purple
tail feathers, O, very long tail feathers, and stood ’most as high as a
barrel of flour, with great yellow legs, and had a beautiful crow, and
could drive away every other one that showed his head, and he set his
eyes by that rooster, but when he got home they had killed him for
broth, and when he asked ’em where his rooster was they brought out the
wish-bone and two tail feathers, and that was all there was left of him.
I wouldn’t have poor little kitty drowned way down in the deep water
’cause to drown a kitty couldn’t make a birdie alive again. Have your
flowers bloomed out yet? You must be a good little girl, and try to
please your grandmother all you can.
From your affectionate brother,