P. S. I hope you never touch alcohol, Daddy?
It does dreadful things to your liver.
Wednesday.
_Dear Daddy-Long-Legs_,
I’ve changed my name.
I’m still “Jerusha” in the catalogue, but I’m “Judy” every place
else. It’s sort of too bad, isn’t it, to have to give yourself the
only pet name you ever had? I didn’t quite make up the Judy though.
That’s what Freddie Perkins used to call me before he could talk
plain.
I wish Mrs. Lippett would use a little more ingenuity about choosing
babies’ names. She gets the last names out of the telephone
book--you’ll find Abbott on the first page--and she picks the
Christian names up anywhere; she got Jerusha from a tombstone. I’ve
always hated it; but I rather like Judy. It’s such a silly name.
It belongs to the kind of girl I’m not--a sweet little blue-eyed
thing, petted and spoiled by all the family, who romps her way
through life without any cares. Wouldn’t it be nice to be like
that? Whatever faults I may have, no one can ever accuse me of
having been spoiled by my family! But it’s sort of fun to pretend
I’ve been. In the future please always address me as Judy.
Do you want to know something? I have three pairs of kid gloves.
I’ve had kid mittens before from the Christmas tree, but never real
kid gloves with five fingers. I take them out and try them on every
little while. It’s all I can do not to wear them to classes.
(Dinner bell. Good-by.)
[Plate: JUDY AND THE ORPHANS AT JOHN GRIER HOME.]
Friday.
What do you think, Daddy? The English instructor said that my last
paper shows an unusual amount of originality. She did, truly. Those
were her words. It doesn’t seem possible, does it, considering the
eighteen years of training that I’ve had? The aim of the John Grier
Home (as you doubtless know and heartily approve of) is to turn the
ninety-seven orphans into ninety-seven twins.
[Illustration: “ANY ORPHAN
Rear Elevation Front Elevation”]
The unusual artistic ability which I exhibit, was developed at an
early age through drawing chalk pictures of Mrs. Lippett on the
woodshed door.
I hope that I don’t hurt your feelings when I criticize the home of
my youth? But you have the upper hand, you know, for if I become too
impertinent, you can always stop payment on your checks. That isn’t
a very polite thing to say--but you can’t expect me to have any
manners; a foundling asylum isn’t a young ladies’ finishing school.
You know, Daddy, it isn’t the work that is going to be hard in
college. It’s the play. Half the time I don’t know what the girls
are talking about; their jokes seem to relate to a past that every
one but me has shared. I’m a foreigner in the world and I don’t
understand the language. It’s a miserable feeling. I’ve had it all
my life. At the high school the girls would stand in groups and just
look at me. I was queer and different and everybody knew it. I could
_feel_ “John Grier Home” written on my face. And then a few
charitable ones would make a point of coming up and saying something
polite. _I hated every one of them_--the charitable ones most of
all.
Nobody here knows that I was brought up in an asylum. I told Sallie
McBride that my mother and father were dead, and that a kind old
gentleman was sending me to college--which is entirely true so far
as it goes. I don’t want you to think I am a coward, but I do want
to be like the other girls, and that Dreadful Home looming over my
childhood is the one great big difference. If I can turn my back on
that and shut out the remembrance, I think I might be just as
desirable as any other girl. I don’t believe there’s any real,
underneath difference, do you?
Anyway, Sallie McBride likes me!
Yours ever,