I'm as lonesome as _Marianna in the Moated Grange_ to-night! Isn't
that the lonesomest poem on earth? Everything about it is unsanitary,
too, from the rusty flower-pots to the blue fly "buzzing in the pane."
No wonder it got on Marianna's nerves, in her condition, too! But she
had one thing to be thankful for--she didn't know how many germs that
fly had on its feet!
I'm lonesome for Jean--or somebody! Thank goodness it is nearly time
for Waterloo to come! Cousin Eunice said in a letter that we had from
her to-day she was trying to raise Waterloo right, but he was a trial
to her feelings! Now, poor Cousin Eunice has read Herbert Spencer for
the sake of Waterloo's future education ever since he has been born,
and she has never let him out of her sight with a nurse for fear she
would feed him chewed-up chestnuts and teach him about the Devil. I
reckon you spell him with a capital letter, if you don't waste them on
presiding elders. But Waterloo doesn't always show how carefully he's
been brought up. He is of nervous temperament and told a woman who was
sewing on the machine right loud the other day: "Hus', hus'! God's
sake, make noise _easy_!"
This is disheartening after all the trouble she has taken with his
morals and diet and things like that! She never lets him eat the
"deadly" things that Doctor Gordon is always talking about, but she
_does_ keep a little pure sugar candy on hand all the time to be used
only as a last resort. When she can't make him do any other way on
earth she uses the candy.
Speaking of deadly things reminds me of Doctor Bynum's friends, the
germs. He has told Miss Irene so many stories about their unpleasant
ways that she got to not believing in kissing, but he said pshaw! it
looked like we all had to die of germs anyhow, and so he'd rather die
of that kind than any other!
Cousin Eunice's letters always tell us so many interesting things
about all our friends in the city. She and Ann Lisbeth still live
close neighbors, but they have both bought beautiful places out on one
of the pikes and each one is claiming to be more countrified than the
other. One day Ann Lisbeth ran over and told Cousin Eunice that Doctor
Gordon had heard an owl in their yard the night before, but Cousin
Eunice told her that wasn't anything! She and Rufe had had a _bat_ in
their bedroom!
Doctor Gordon has two automobiles now. He had them the last time I was
in the city and I got to find out exactly what "limousine" means. I
had an idea before that it meant _dark green_, because--oh, well, I
needn't tell the reason; it was silly enough to think such a thing
without making excuses for it. But you know so many swell cars _are_
painted dark green, and so many swell cars are limousines!
Ann Lisbeth is a great help to Doctor Gordon in his practice, he says.
She always remembers the different babies' names and looks up subjects
for him in his surgical books that would knock the knee-cap off of
Jean's little word, "genuflections."
No matter how fine a doctor a lady's husband is she is never permitted
to mention it to her friends, for this is called "unethical." But if
she's expecting company of an afternoon she can happen to have a
bottle with a queer thing inside setting on the mantelpiece and when
the company asks what on earth that thing is she can say, "For
goodness' sake! My husband must have forgotten that! Why that's
Senator Himuck's appendix!"
Ann Lisbeth seems to get sweeter every year and you would never know
she has a foreign accent now except on Sunday night when the cook's
away and the gas stove doesn't do right.
Another good piece of news Cousin Eunice wrote to-day was that the
Youngs are going to try it again at the bungalow this summer.
Professor Young has to go somewhere to rest up from his studies. For
nearly eighteen months now he's been sitting up late at night and
spending the whole of Saturdays, even taking his coffee out to the
laboratory in a thermos bottle, studying pharmacy. He is delighted
with the progress he has made, for he says he has not only learned how
to make a perfectly splendid cold cream for his wife's complexion, but
has discovered just which bad-smelling stuff put with another
bad-smelling stuff is best to develop his films. He says his knowledge
of pharmacy has saved him a lot of money in this way.
Speaking of curious couples reminds me of the Gayles. They're not half
as queer now as they were before they married though. At present they
are neither in Heaven, nor on earth, exactly, but they are cruising on
the Mediterranean. They send me post-cards from every place and I
stick them in my album with great pride.
Another family that we're always glad to hear from is the Macdonalds.
Poor little fluffy-haired Miss Cis! I reckon the very last of her
dimples will soon be changed into wrinkles, for there's _another_ one
since the twins! Nobody can say that Miss Cis is not bearing up
bravely, though. She does all she can to present a stylish,
straight-front appearance when she goes out, which isn't often. But at
home they are all perfectly happy together, Mr. Macdonald getting down
on the floor to play bear, and if he _does_ look more like a devil's
horse while he's doing it, with his long arms and legs, the twins
don't know the difference.
Marrying has helped Julius' looks more than anybody I ever saw. His
cheeks have filled out until he's as handsome as a floor-walker. And
they're so contented that Marcella says actually when she finds a pin
pointing toward her she doesn't know what to wish for.
You may have caught on to it before now, my diary, that the reason I'm
telling you this very last news of all our friends is because I'm
going to stop writing _sure enough_ to-night! I'm ashamed to keep
breaking my promise to mother.
The only ones I've left out, I believe, are Aunt Laura and Bertha. I
wish I had forgotten them for I don't like to say anything hateful in
my diary.
Aunt Laura has joined some kind of New Thoughters and has grown
quantities of new brown hair on the strength of it. And she dresses in
champagne silk all the time.
As for Bertha--she _lives_ to keep up with the "best people," meaning
by this that she runs up to the hairdresser's every other day to see
if she can learn how many "society men" have thrown their wives down
the steps or poured boiling coffee over them since she last heard.
I'm sorry I thought of Bertha so near the last, for I don't want to
leave you with a bad taste in your mouth, my diary. So I'll branch
off and mention something sweet right away.
That blessed Waterloo! He's the sweetest thing I know anything about!
Just about this time I reckon he's begging his "Daddy-boy" to sing
Feep Alsie, Ben Bolt, for that's been his precious little sleepy song
ever since he's been born.
When I think of those three and how happy they are, and how satisfied
they are just to be together, I know that Rufe told me the truth that
day, a long, long time ago! There is only one subject worth writing
about--or one object worth living for! May every one of you
grandchildren find just such an object, and be as happy as they are
while living for it!
It does seem that I ought to be able to think of something beautiful
to wind up my diary with! Everything about me is beautiful! The
honeysuckle is smelling like the very soul of spring and love just
outside my window--and there's a bust of Lord Byron on my mantelpiece
close by. Such a tiny bust--the curly head just fits into the palm of
my hand--when I get grown I'm going to have one big enough to burn
candles before! Not that I shall burn candles before it--for, to tell
the truth, I'd much rather be burning my fingers cooking oatmeal for
some big, brown-eyed "Daddy-boy" and tiny, brown-eyed Waterloo!
Mammy Lou came to my window just as I wrote this last and stuck her
head in.
"Name o' Deuteronomy!" she said in a loud whisper when she saw this
book open before me. "What good'll your _gran'children_ do you, I'd
like to know--if you set up all night and lose your looks so you'll
nuvver fin' a husban'?"
THE END
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