Dear Daddy,
We started to walk to town today, but mercy! how it poured. I like
winter to be winter with snow instead of rain.
Julia's desirable uncle called again this afternoon--and brought a
five-pound box of chocolates. There are advantages, you see, about
rooming with Julia.
Our innocent prattle appeared to amuse him and he waited for a later
train in order to take tea in the study. We had an awful lot of
trouble getting permission. It's hard enough entertaining fathers and
grandfathers, but uncles are a step worse; and as for brothers and
cousins, they are next to impossible. Julia had to swear that he was
her uncle before a notary public and then have the county clerk's
certificate attached. (Don't I know a lot of law?) And even then I
doubt if we could have had our tea if the Dean had chanced to see how
youngish and good-looking Uncle Jervis is.
Anyway, we had it, with brown bread Swiss cheese sandwiches. He helped
make them and then ate four. I told him that I had spent last summer
at Lock Willow, and we had a beautiful gossipy time about the Semples,
and the horses and cows and chickens. All the horses that he used to
know are dead, except Grover, who was a baby colt at the time of his
last visit--and poor Grove now is so old he can just limp about the
pasture.
He asked if they still kept doughnuts in a yellow crock with a blue
plate over it on the bottom shelf of the pantry--and they do! He
wanted to know if there was still a woodchuck's hole under the pile of
rocks in the night pasture--and there is! Amasai caught a big, fat,
grey one there this summer, the twenty-fifth great-grandson of the one
Master Jervis caught when he was a little boy.
I called him 'Master Jervie' to his face, but he didn't appear to be
insulted. Julia says she has never seen him so amiable; he's usually
pretty unapproachable. But Julia hasn't a bit of tact; and men, I
find, require a great deal. They purr if you rub them the right way
and spit if you don't. (That isn't a very elegant metaphor. I mean it
figuratively.)
We're reading Marie Bashkirtseff's journal. Isn't it amazing? Listen
to this: 'Last night I was seized by a fit of despair that found
utterance in moans, and that finally drove me to throw the dining-room
clock into the sea.'
It makes me almost hope I'm not a genius; they must be very wearing to
have about--and awfully destructive to the furniture.
Mercy! how it keeps Pouring. We shall have to swim to chapel tonight.
Yours ever,
Judy
20th Jan.
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
Did you ever have a sweet baby girl who was stolen from the cradle in
infancy?
Maybe I am she! If we were in a novel, that would be the denouement,
wouldn't it?
It's really awfully queer not to know what one is--sort of exciting and
romantic. There are such a lot of possibilities. Maybe I'm not
American; lots of people aren't. I may be straight descended from the
ancient Romans, or I may be a Viking's daughter, or I may be the child
of a Russian exile and belong by rights in a Siberian prison, or maybe
I'm a Gipsy--I think perhaps I am. I have a very WANDERING spirit,
though I haven't as yet had much chance to develop it.
Do you know about that one scandalous blot in my career the time I ran
away from the asylum because they punished me for stealing cookies?
It's down in the books free for any Trustee to read. But really,
Daddy, what could you expect? When you put a hungry little nine-year
girl in the pantry scouring knives, with the cookie jar at her elbow,
and go off and leave her alone; and then suddenly pop in again,
wouldn't you expect to find her a bit crumby? And then when you jerk
her by the elbow and box her ears, and make her leave the table when
the pudding comes, and tell all the other children that it's because
she's a thief, wouldn't you expect her to run away?
I only ran four miles. They caught me and brought me back; and every
day for a week I was tied, like a naughty puppy, to a stake in the back
yard while the other children were out at recess.
Oh, dear! There's the chapel bell, and after chapel I have a committee
meeting. I'm sorry because I meant to write you a very entertaining
letter this time.
Auf wiedersehen
Cher Daddy,
Pax tibi!
Judy
PS. There's one thing I'm perfectly sure of I'm not a Chinaman.