_Dear Kate_:
I have been house furnishing. No, not for myself, but for Charlie Haines
who lives across the hall from me. He is an awful nice fellow and is
working in the General Electric and doing real good. He told me he is
getting seventy five a month now and was going to get married to a
little girl he has been engaged to a long time, way off in Vermont where
he used to live. We had a heart to heart talk and I asked him all about
her and found she was just a nice little girl who goes to Sunday school
and teaches the girls and has never been farther away from home than
Brattleboro, wherever that is. He thought of taking a bigger room and
rooming for a while, but I told him not to be a fool, and not to board
neither. Take a little girl from the country that has always had
something to do and put her in a room in a rooming house or a boarding
house, and she would go crazy or get to chasing around with the lazy
women who live in them places and if she was not a fine sort of girl you
can't tell where she would land. A woman wants something to do, and then
it ain't no life for a man to come home from work and have to chase out
to a restaurant for his grub or down to a long table of folks. What he
wants is to take off his coat and wash his face in the kitchen sink and
put on a pair of straw slippers and set down smelling the beef steak and
onions frying in his own kitchen. And they can talk without a lot of
people rubbering and after supper he can help her wash the dishes, and
water the geranium and then get in the morris chair and put his feet on
the radiator or window sill and smoke and sing "Home sweet home." He
fell for the stuff and got quite excited, but then he sort of shifted
around and I tumbled to the fact that he hadn't saved much money and
didn't know how to get the furniture. I said, "Now, you just trust your
aunt Nancy, we will buy it on the installment plan." I found out he had
only about $25 after he had payed their fare down here, cause her folks
are poor, so I said, "Well, we will go look up a flat. Better get out a
ways so you will get more for your money", and we found a pretty place
at 207th Street for twenty dollars a month. Four rooms and bath on the
fifth floor and there ain't no elevator, but they are both strong so it
won't hurt them to climb the stairs, and he will be so tickled to get
home nights that he won't think about them. He wanted to furnish it and
have it all ready when they come back, he is going up to get her and be
married at her folks', but I put the nix on that too. I said, "We will
furnish the bed room and the kitchen so as you can have a place to stay,
but let her pick out the fancy things like the parlor rug and the dining
room table. It will make it seem more like her own," and so he done
everything I said. They got back about five days ago and say, haven't
we been the busy ladies! She is an awful nice little thing, has not got
much sense and green--well, Kate. Believe me, we are the funniest
looking pair. I guess she makes her own clothes and her hats--they must
have been wished on her. But I like her and she is the happiest thing
about the flat. She thinks it is the grandest place she ever seen. I was
right about letting her pick her own things as it has given her
something to do, the first few days when she was kinda lonesome for her
mother and little bit afraid of Charlie. We went to a place on 125th
Street and picked out the furniture, a real nice dining room table and a
little side board that looks like real mahogany, and six chairs. Got a
centre table and a nifty rug for the parlor and a morris chair and a
rocking chair, and got the bed room furniture all white, and didn't we
have fun buying kitchen things! We went to the ten-cent store and bought
everything you ever heard of, from frying pans to egg beaters, and we
packed them home in the subway looking like immigrants just landed. She
got the grandest set of dishes, a hundred pieces for three ninety five.
Each dish has got a wreath of pink roses around the edge and they would
make even fried onions smell like Spring. I am going to help her make
the curtains, cause lace ones don't look right in such a little place
and we bought some white stuff with dots in it for six cents a yard. I
can come up mornings once in a while and sew them. They didn't have
money enough to pay all down, so I lent Charlie fifteen dollars and they
have to pay ten dollars a month. They will get along fine. Alice is
going to the market herself and I told them they ought to live for five
dollars a week for the two of them, so they will save money.
Gee, it kinda made me feel all in that the flat was not mine. When you
come out, Kate, let us hire a flat and you stay home and take care of
Billy and do the cooking and I will hustle the dough. Wouldn't I just
love to put my door key at night into a little place like they are in,
and feel it was ours and go out in the kitchen and eat some Irish stew,
and then set down and have a gab fest with you over what we had done all
day? Well, maybe we will do it. Just want a thing bad and you will get
it and I want a little place of our own some day and you and Billy with
me and no fear of the police. I am waiting to hear from you.
Yours,
_Nan_.