It's over--Father's visit is. He has been gone a week, and it will be
a whole month before he can come again. He has to divide up between
Mother and the girls and me, and he can only get away once in two
weeks, because his partner is ill and business has something the matter
with it and has to be watched, which is why he could stay only four
days in Twickenham Town. I don't see why fathers have to work so hard,
and why wives and daughters must have so many unnecessary things, and
such big houses and so many new clothes and automobiles and parties and
pleasures, which aren't real fun after you have them. But most women
seem to want them, and keep on scrambling for what other people
scramble for, and only a few have sense enough to see how foolish it
all is and stop. Maybe they are wound up so tight they can't stop. I
don't know. I only know I do not want to live the life a lot of women
I know live, and I am not going to do it.
I wish Father could see it the way I do--about working so hard, I
mean--and I think he might, for he says I am a chip off the block and
he is the block, and in almost everything we feel alike; but there's
Mother and the girls, who care for things I don't care for, and of
course they must have them. He gives them everything they want, but he
looked so awfully tired the day he came I could think of nothing else
the night he left, which is why I cried so under the sheet, and then
when the tears were out and I felt lighter I got up and wrote him a
long letter and told him I loved him so it hurt, and that he was the
best and dearest father on all this big, big earth, and if he would let
me come and keep house for him I would fly back. But he wouldn't let
me come. He wrote me a letter, though, that I shall keep with my
treasures, and I wish what he said was so. It isn't so. He just
thinks it, but it does your heart good to know somebody cares an awful
lot about you and no matter what you do is going to stand by. What he
wrote me was this:
_Dear little Nut-brown Maid all mine, of course you would come, but you
mustn't. It is too hot and you need what you are getting, and nothing
could help me here so much as to know of that wonderful color of yours
and that you are so well and strong again. That you are getting health
and happy memories for the winter of work and study ahead is the best
tonic I can take, and every morning when I go to my desk I get out that
little picture of you and, nobody being by, I kiss it and send you my
love, and it is a breath of life-giving air to know you are mine.
Since the first time I saw you--you were exactly one hour old and
laughing even then--you have been the joy and delight of my heart, and
I can't afford to run any risk with summer heat and the joy of my
heart. I didn't deserve you, for I wanted a son so badly, and was
fearfully disappointed that you were not a boy. You seemed to
understand and did not get mad about it, and I've often wanted you to
know that no son could mean to me now what my little harum-scarum
daughter means. There has never been a day since you first looked into
my eyes that I haven't thanked God for you, and the thing I am most
afraid of in life is that you may get sick or not be strong, and that
is why I am so glad for you to be in such a charming old place as
Twickenham Town. You were wise, little daughter of mine, to choose so
quaint and queer and dear a place in which to spend your summer, for
there real things still count, and there is more time for the fine
courtesies of life, and the hurry and rush of it, the push and scramble
for place and power, is out of key with its quiet serenity and the
poise that comes from a sense of values that by many of us is to-day
forgotten. I am coming back as soon as I can, for I, too, want the
refreshment and novelty of being where money is not talked and
apologies never made for the absence of things that money gets. Miss
Susanna Mason is a liberal education in herself and no "Course in
Culture" could equal the advantage of being in her society. I have
written her, of course, but tell her again of my sense of privilege,
and my great pleasure, in being a guest in her home, and remember
always you are in your father's heart. Always he is thinking of you._
Now wasn't that a nice letter to get from a father? I'm nothing to be
thankful for; but, if he thinks I am, I am thankful for that, and it
makes life a different thing to know somebody is thankful for you. And
another thing I think would make life nicer, make working and living
not so hard, is to tell people you like them and you believe they are
trying to do their best, even if their best is powerful poor. Of
course, all people don't try to do their best. Some are by nature and
practice mean and horrid and ought to have facts handed out to them,
but most people try to do right, and maybe they would try harder if
they got a little encouragement now and then. Anyhow, I've often
noticed it makes a person take fresh hold again for somebody to give
them a lift in the way of a friendly word or so, and it doesn't cost
much--kindness doesn't. I wonder why we don't have more of it.
The reason why Father liked Twickenham Town so much was that nobody
talked business to him, and if anybody knew he was the head of Bird &
Roller, bankers and brokers, they never mentioned it to him or talked
shop at all, and for four days he forgot stocks and bonds and the ups
and downs of the money-market and let go. And yet I am almost sure Mr.
Willie Prince knows all about him--the business part, I mean--and that,
of course, will mean everybody in Twickenham will know pretty soon.
The reason I think he knows is that I went into the bank to get a check
cashed the morning after Father got here, and I saw Mr. Willie sitting
at a table in a corner of the bank with a copy of Bradstreet open
before him and his eyes close to it. I made it convenient to walk up
to the table and look down at the book, and I saw he was running his
finger down the letter "B," and when he saw me he shut the book quick.
I just smiled and passed on. But not talking business is only one of
the reasons Father liked Twickenham Town so much. Another was because
everybody was so nice to him. He had so many invitations to dinner and
supper, and even breakfast, that he was on a dead go from morning until
night, and he never ate so much in his life as he ate in those four
days. It did him good, and he didn't look tired a bit when he left.