_Dear Kate_:
Say, but I am a happy girl! What do you think, Billy and me is in the
country. I am going to stay a week, and Billy is going to stay always, I
hope. After I had made that first visit to Mrs. Smith, I kept seeing
that place with the pigs and the chickens and the trees and the lake and
the nice green grass and the kids rolling over on it, and the room here
got smaller and hotter, and Billy got whiter, and I felt I couldn't
stand it, so I sat down and wrote Mrs. Smith, and asked her if she
wouldn't take Billy to board. She was real nice and came over to see me
one day, and ended up by taking me and Billy back with her. She asked me
to stay a week so Billy would get used to her and the place and not be
lonesome. The manager kicked, but I said I was sick, and I got a week's
leave. Mrs. Smith offered to take Billy for nothing, but I wouldn't
stand for that and we settled on $3.50 for his board. I offered to pay
more, but she would not listen to me. She says he will be company for
her baby, and that two is easier to take care of than one anyway.
This life here don't seem real to me. I went to bed at nine o'clock,
which I don't remember I have ever done in my life before. Even as a kid
I was on the streets until ten or eleven o'clock and, in the last three
years, three in the morning has been my bye-bye time. I went up to a
little room under the roof, and lay awake until almost morning, hearing
such a lot of strange sounds that I was as nervous as a hen. There was a
big tree by the corner of the house, and its branches would swish across
the roof as if a ghost was trying to get in the window. Talk about the
quiet of a country night, I never heard so many sounds in all my life
and they all seemed sad. The little frogs go chug, chug, as if their
hearts was broken, and every once in a while, the tinkle of the cow-bell
from some pasture down below, would come to me. There is a night bird
called the whip-o-will that set in a tree up near the barn and called
another one across the lake whose answer I could just hear. There is a
funny animal up here called the bull-frog, who sets upon a log over at
the back of the lake and hollars at his friends. The first time I heard
them, it nearly scared a lung from me, but now I lie in bed and laugh
when they commence. I thought the Smiths were joshing me when they
showed me the little thing that made such a big noise. Wouldn't it be
nice if we could make a noise as big according to our size as the
bull-frog does to his? I know lots of people that I would like to sit on
a log and hollar at.
It seemed I had just shut my eyes when they called me to breakfast, but
it was beautiful. We ate out in front of the kitchen door and saw a gray
mist rise over the lake all turning to rose when the sun touched it. It
looked like a pink silk dancing petticoat under a gray chiffon skirt.
Did you ever eat at a table under a great big tree looking out on the
water? You know you eat different. You eat slow, and you think of the
things you love, the things you have read about, and of what you would
like to be. The toast seems crisper, and the coffee tastes better, and
you forget the rotten crowd and old New York and the hot, dry streets
and the Childs restaurants and the dance halls and the whole bum world.
Then our evenings are so happy! We row around the lake and afterwards
come home and water the flowers. We must pump the water from the pump in
the kitchen and carry it in pails. I had one side of the lawn and Mrs.
Smith had the other side, and last night my flowers took fifteen pails.
It makes my back ache, and the pump coughs as if it had the T. B., but
the flowers are so pretty, and they look so happy and so old fashioned
in the big green tubs, that I am willing to do anything for them. Mrs.
Smith has learnt me their names. There are pansies with purple and
yellow faces, and proud red dahlias, and China astors and hollyhocks
against the wall, and flox all mixed together in a way that shows, as
Mrs. Smith says, that there is no social standing in the country. There
are some poor tea roses that by mistake got planted in a bed of
merrigolds, and they are not doing very well and act unhappy. Each
morning I go over them all and take away the foolish green worms that
always crawl back in the night, although I throw them over the fence.
Then, when all the "chores," as Mr. Smith calls them are done, we shut
the boat-house door and set on the veranda and watch the moon as it goes
down over the tree tops. It shines so beautiful through the pine trees
at the edge of the lake. Everyone is quiet. Even the babies snuggle down
in our arms and stop their chattering. There are two great toads that
live under the front veranda, who come out on the walk and look at each
other as only toads in love can look, and there is a cricket in the
tree down by the lake that calls to a lady cricket who lives over by the
ice house. She answered lovingly for two evenings, but I guess now she
is gone, and he sets in his lonely tree, and calls and calls, and no
soft-voiced cricket says, "Yes, dear." There is a loud-voiced cricket
that sets near the boat-house door, and says, "Come to me, come to me,"
and I fear my lady cricket has gone to him.
Then we take our little lamps and go to bed, and I have the baby near me
if I want to speak to him. I use to have to read till I couldn't keep my
eyes open any longer, but now sleep seems to come to me just like a
friend. Some way I feel that this is the right life, and if I only could
live it long enough, I might become a woman after all.
_Nan_.