Ted has been as good and cunning as possible. He has completely
recovered from the effects of having his eye operated upon, and though
the eye itself is a somewhat gruesome object, Ted is in the highest
spirits. He goes back to Harvard to-day.
. . . . .
As I write, Archie and Quentin are busily engaged in the sand-box and
I look out across the tennis-ground at them. If ever there was a
heaven-sent treasure to small boys, that sand-box is the treasure. It
was very cunning to see the delight various little children took in it
at the egg-rolling on Easter Monday. Thanks to our decision in keeping
out grown people and stopping everything at one o'clock, the egg-rolling
really was a children's festival, and was pretty and not objectionable
this year.
The apple trees are now coming into bloom, including that big arched
apple tree, under which Mother and I sit, by the fountain, on the stone
bench. It is the apple tree that Mother particularly likes. . .
Did Quentin write his poems after you had gone? I never can recollect
whether you have seen them or not. He is a funny small person if ever
there was one. The other day we were discussing a really dreadful
accident which had happened; a Georgetown young man having taken out
a young girl in a canoe on the river, the canoe upset and the girl was
drowned; whereupon the young man, when he got home, took what seemed to
us an exceedingly cold-blooded method of a special delivery letter
to notify her parents. We were expressing our horror at his sending a
special delivery letter, and Quentin solemnly chimed in with "Yes, he
wasted ten cents." There was a moment's eloquent silence, and then we
strove to explain to Quentin that what we were objecting to was not in
the least the young man's spendthrift attitude!
As I walk to and from the office now the terrace is fairly fragrant
with the scent of the many-colored hyacinths which Mother has put out in
boxes on the low stone walls.
. . . . .