The house seems very empty without you and Ted, although I cannot
conscientiously say that it is quiet--Archie and Quentin attend to that.
Archie, barefooted, bareheaded, and with his usual faded blue overalls,
much torn and patched, has just returned from a morning with his beloved
Nick. Quentin has passed the morning in sports and pastimes with the
long-suffering secret service men. Allan has been associating closely
with mother and me. Yesterday Ethel went off riding with Lorraine. She
rode Wyoming, who is really turning out a very good family horse. This
evening I expect Grant La Farge and Owen Wister, who are coming to spend
the night. Mother is as busy as possible putting up the house, and Ethel
and I insist that she now eyes us both with a purely professional gaze,
and secretly wishes she could wrap us up in a neatly pinned sheet with
camphor balls inside. Good-bye, blessed fellow!
"VALUABLEST" KIND OF RABBITS
(To his sister, Mrs. W. S. Cowles)
White House, Oct. 2, 1903.
Tell Sheffield that Quentin is now going to the public school. As yet he
has preserved an attitude of dignified reserve concerning his feelings
on the subject. He has just been presented with two white rabbits, which
he brought in while we were at lunch yesterday, explaining that they
were "the valuablest kind with pink eyes."