August Third.
_Dear Daddy-Long-Legs_,
It has been nearly two months since I wrote, which wasn’t nice of
me, I know, but I haven’t loved you much this summer--you see I’m
being frank!
You can’t imagine how disappointed I was at having to give up the
McBride’s camp. Of course I know that you’re my guardian, and that
I have to regard your wishes in all matters, but I couldn’t see any
_reason_. It was so distinctly the best thing that could have
happened to me. If I had been Daddy, and you had been Judy, I should
have said, “Bless you, my child, run along and have a good time; see
lots of new people and learn lots of new things; live out of doors,
and get strong and well and rested for a year of hard work.”
But not at all! Just a curt line from your secretary ordering me to
Lock Willow.
It’s the impersonality of your commands that hurts my feelings. It
seems as though, if you felt the tiniest little bit for me the way I
feel for you, you’d sometimes send me a message that you’d written
with your own hand, instead of those beastly typewritten secretary’s
notes. If there were the slightest hint that you cared, I’d do
anything on earth to please you.
I know that I was to write nice, long, detailed letters without ever
expecting any answer. You’re living up to your side of the
bargain--I’m being educated--and I suppose you’re thinking I’m
not living up to mine!
But, Daddy, it is a hard bargain. It is, really. I’m so awfully
lonely. You are the only person I have to care for, and you are so
shadowy. You’re just an imaginary man that I’ve made up--and
probably the real _you_ isn’t a bit like my imaginary _you_. But
you did once, when I was ill in the infirmary, send me a message,
and now, when I am feeling awfully forgotten, I get out your card
and read it over.
I don’t think I am telling you at all what I started to say, which
was this:
Although my feelings are still hurt, for it is very humiliating to
be picked up and moved about by an arbitrary, peremptory,
unreasonable, omnipotent, invisible Providence, still, when a man
has been as kind and generous and thoughtful as you have heretofore
been toward me, I suppose he has a right to be an arbitrary,
peremptory, unreasonable, invisible Providence if he chooses, and
so--I’ll forgive you and be cheerful again. But I still don’t enjoy
getting Sallie’s letters about the good times they are having in
camp!
However--we will draw a veil over that and begin again.
I’ve been writing and writing this summer; four short stories
finished and sent to four different magazines. So you see I’m
trying to be an author. I have a workroom fixed in a corner of the
attic where Master Jervie used to have his rainy-day playroom. It’s
in a cool, breezy corner with two dormer windows, and shaded by a
maple tree with a family of red squirrels living in a hole.
I’ll write a nicer letter in a few days and tell you all the farm
news.
We need rain.
Yours as ever,