Grandmother worries about that finger. Do ask Dorry to write again, or
else take the penholder in your middle one, though we mistrust that’s
damaged, or you’d have written before this. I’ve had my picture taken
and send you one to keep. Look at it often, and if you’ve done anything
wrong, think it shakes its head at you! Little wrong things, or big
ones, all the same. For little wrongs are more dangerous, because we
think they’re of no account. But they show what’s in a person, same as
a little pattern of goods tells what the whole piece is. Show me half an
inch of cotton and I’ll tell you what color the whole spool is.
I’d no idea of having my picture taken. I was right in the heart of
baking, when your Uncle J. drove up and said he’d harnessed up on
purpose. ’T was all a contrived plan between him and the girls. I saw
them smiling together when Mattie brought out my black alpaca. I thought
the girls seemed mighty ready to take hold and finish up the baking. But
he got caught in his own trap, for Lucy Maria went with us, to make sure
my collar and things looked fit to be taken, and she set her foot down
we shouldn’t leave the saloon till he’d had his, for she was going to
have a locket with us both inside, and I had to be done over small. What
an operation it is to have your picture taken! If we could only take
ether and be carried through! He put my head in a clamp, and crossed my
hands, and pinned up a black rag for me to look at, and told me to look
easy and natural, and smile a very little! I’m sure I tried to, but your
Uncle J. says ’t is a very melancholy face, and Lucy Maria says the
cheek-bones cast a shadow! Your father says the worst of it is, it does
look like me! I think it’s too bad to make fun of it, after all I passed
through! Your Uncle J. took things easy and joked with the man, and was
laughing when the cover was taken off and didn’t dare to unlaugh, he
says, so he came out all right, with a laughing face, as he always is.
The girls want we should be taken large and hang up, side by side, in
two oval frames, over the mantel-piece. But their father says he sha’
n’t be hung up alive, if he can help himself.
It isn’t likely I shall write to you again very soon. Cousin Joe and his
accordion are coming, and he’ll bring his sisters, and the young folks
about here know them, and I expect there’ll be nothing but frolicking.
Then there’ll be some of your Uncle J.’s folks after that, so you see
we’ll be all in a hubbub and I shall have to be the very hub of the
hubbub, I suppose. Lucy Maria says, “Tell William Henry to send us a
charade, or something to amuse the company with.” Write when you can.