February 27.
Dear Gordon:
Are you still insulted because I wouldn't take your advice? Don't you
know that a reddish-haired person of Irish forebears, with a dash of
Scotch, can't be driven, but must be gently led? Had you been less
obnoxiously insistent, I should have listened sweetly, and been saved.
As it is, I frankly confess that I have spent the last five days in
repenting our quarrel. You were right, and I was wrong, and, as you
see, I handsomely acknowledge it. If I ever emerge from this present
predicament, I shall in the future be guided (almost always) by your
judgment. Could any woman make a more sweeping retraction than that?
The romantic glamour which Judy cast over this orphan asylum exists only
in her poetic imagination. The place is AWFUL. Words can't tell you
how dreary and dismal and smelly it is: long corridors, bare walls;
blue-uniformed, dough-faced little inmates that haven't the slightest
resemblance to human children. And oh, the dreadful institution smell!
A mingling of wet scrubbed floors, unaired rooms, and food for a hundred
people always steaming on the stove.
The asylum not only has to be made over, but every child as well, and
it's too herculean a task for such a selfish, luxurious, and lazy person
as Sallie McBride ever to have undertaken. I'm resigning the very first
moment that Judy can find a suitable successor, but that, I fear, will
not be immediately. She has gone off South, leaving me stranded, and of
course, after having promised, I can't simply abandon her asylum. But in
the meantime I assure you that I'm homesick.
Write me a cheering letter, and send a flower to brighten my private
drawing room. I inherited it, furnished, from Mrs. Lippett. The wall
is covered with a tapestry paper in brown and red; the furniture is
electric-blue plush, except the center table, which is gilt. Green
predominates in the carpet. If you presented some pink rosebuds, they
would complete the color scheme.