_Dear Kate_:
What do you think? Billy is an heir! Before the Smiths went away they
tried to sell their place over in New Jersey, but they was going away
too soon, and an agent couldn't sell it for them in such a hurry, so
they made a will, that if Mrs. Smith died, the place was to go to Mr.
Smith, and if Mr. Smith died first the place was to go to Mrs. Smith,
and if they both died, the place was to go to their adopted son, William
Smith, and that is Billy. Now, what do you know about that? A lawyer
came to me and told me all about it, and the will has been done
something to in court, and I have had to sign some papers, and Billy is
a landowner. Why, we was all so excited when we heard it, we all talked
at once, and when Jack heard it was a farm, he talked onions and pigs at
the same time. We went over there last Sunday, and it looked just as
pretty as ever. It made me feel awful bad about the Smiths, and I cried
at first a lot. The house seemed lonesome with blinds all shut, and no
pigs nor chickens or cattle around the barn, or in the pasture. The
house inside was just as Mrs. Smith left it, cause they had hoped to
sell it furnished, and there was even pickles and preserves in the
cellar. We ate our lunch on the kitchen table which we put under the big
tree looking out over the lake. It was awful pretty. The water was just
like a looking glass, and once and a while a little spurt of wind would
come and ruffle it all up and then it would die down quiet again. Mrs.
Cassidy said it made her think of her home back in Ireland, which is by
a lake, and she talked a long time about her man who has been dead ten
years, "who was one of the finest" in New York and that meant something
in those days. Mrs. Cassidy set down in the shade with Billy, and Tom
and Jack and me went over the place. Jack was crazy about it. He would
take little handfuls of mud and smell it or taste it, and say, "too
sour," or "it needs salt" or "there ain't lime enough," just kinda
talking to himself all the time. He found the pasture with a brook
running through it, and said it would be just the right thing for pigs,
and he saw about ten acres he said the Lord intended for an onion field.
He made over the barn in his mind, and filled it full of holsteins, and
I think if it had not begun to get late and we had to catch a train,
that he would have all the holsteins mothers of growing families, cause
he just located the right kind of a calf pen when we took him by the
coat-tails and dragged him away.
We got home awful tired, and everybody went to bed except Jack, who set
down with a pencil and paper to figure out how much money it would need
to make Lake Rest the model farm of New Jersey.
Good bye, Kate, don't feel too bad. Remember you are going to be just as
happy as me some day, and that's going some.
Yours,
_Nan_.