Please forget about that dreadful letter I sent you last week--I was
feeling terribly lonely and miserable and sore-throaty the night I
wrote. I didn't know it, but I was just sickening for tonsillitis and
grippe and lots of things mixed. I'm in the infirmary now, and have
been here for six days; this is the first time they would let me sit up
and have a pen and paper. The head nurse is very bossy. But I've been
thinking about it all the time and I shan't get well until you forgive
me.
Here is a picture of the way I look, with a bandage tied around my head
in rabbit's ears.
Doesn't that arouse your sympathy? I am having sublingual gland
swelling. And I've been studying physiology all the year without ever
hearing of sublingual glands. How futile a thing is education!
I can't write any more; I get rather shaky when I sit up too long.
Please forgive me for being impertinent and ungrateful. I was badly
brought up.
Yours with love,
Judy Abbott
THE INFIRMARY
4th April
Dearest Daddy-Long-Legs,
Yesterday evening just towards dark, when I was sitting up in bed
looking out at the rain and feeling awfully bored with life in a great
institution, the nurse appeared with a long white box addressed to me,
and filled with the LOVELIEST pink rosebuds. And much nicer still, it
contained a card with a very polite message written in a funny little
uphill back hand (but one which shows a great deal of character). Thank
you, Daddy, a thousand times. Your flowers make the first real, true
present I ever received in my life. If you want to know what a baby I
am I lay down and cried because I was so happy.
Now that I am sure you read my letters, I'll make them much more
interesting, so they'll be worth keeping in a safe with red tape around
them--only please take out that dreadful one and burn it up. I'd hate
to think that you ever read it over.
Thank you for making a very sick, cross, miserable Freshman cheerful.
Probably you have lots of loving family and friends, and you don't know
what it feels like to be alone. But I do.
Goodbye--I'll promise never to be horrid again, because now I know
you're a real person; also I'll promise never to bother you with any
more questions.
Do you still hate girls?
Yours for ever,
Judy