Dear Daddy,
We started to walk to town today, but mercy! how it poured.
I like winter to be winter with snow instead of rain.
Julia's desirable uncle called again this afternoon--and brought
a five-pound box of chocolates. There are advantages, you see,
about rooming with Julia.
Our innocent prattle appeared to amuse him and he waited for a later
train in order to take tea in the study. We had an awful lot of
trouble getting permission. It's hard enough entertaining fathers
and grandfathers, but uncles are a step worse; and as for brothers
and cousins, they are next to impossible. Julia had to swear
that he was her uncle before a notary public and then have the
county clerk's certificate attached. (Don't I know a lot of law?)
And even then I doubt if we could have had our tea if the Dean
had chanced to see how youngish and good-looking Uncle Jervis is.
Anyway, we had it, with brown bread Swiss cheese sandwiches.
He helped make them and then ate four. I told him that I had
spent last summer at Lock Willow, and we had a beautiful gossipy
time about the Semples, and the horses and cows and chickens.
All the horses that he used to know are dead, except Grover,
who was a baby colt at the time of his last visit--and poor Grove
now is so old he can just limp about the pasture.
He asked if they still kept doughnuts in a yellow crock with a blue
plate over it on the bottom shelf of the pantry--and they do!
He wanted to know if there was still a woodchuck's hole under the pile
of rocks in the night pasture--and there is! Amasai caught a big,
fat, grey one there this summer, the twenty-fifth great-grandson
of the one Master Jervis caught when he was a little boy.
I called him `Master Jervie' to his face, but he didn't appear
to be insulted. Julia says she has never seen him so amiable;
he's usually pretty unapproachable. But Julia hasn't a bit of tact;
and men, I find, require a great deal. They purr if you rub them the
right way and spit if you don't. (That isn't a very elegant metaphor.
I mean it figuratively.)
We're reading Marie Bashkirtseff's journal. Isn't it amazing?
Listen to this: `Last night I was seized by a fit of despair
that found utterance in moans, and that finally drove me to throw
the dining-room clock into the sea.'
It makes me almost hope I'm not a genius; they must be very wearing
to have about--and awfully destructive to the furniture.
Mercy! how it keeps Pouring. We shall have to swim to chapel tonight.
Yours ever,
Judy
We started to walk to town today, but mercy! how it poured.
I like winter to be winter with snow instead of rain.
Julia's desirable uncle called again this afternoon--and brought
a five-pound box of chocolates. There are advantages, you see,
about rooming with Julia.
Our innocent prattle appeared to amuse him and he waited for a later
train in order to take tea in the study. We had an awful lot of
trouble getting permission. It's hard enough entertaining fathers
and grandfathers, but uncles are a step worse; and as for brothers
and cousins, they are next to impossible. Julia had to swear
that he was her uncle before a notary public and then have the
county clerk's certificate attached. (Don't I know a lot of law?)
And even then I doubt if we could have had our tea if the Dean
had chanced to see how youngish and good-looking Uncle Jervis is.
Anyway, we had it, with brown bread Swiss cheese sandwiches.
He helped make them and then ate four. I told him that I had
spent last summer at Lock Willow, and we had a beautiful gossipy
time about the Semples, and the horses and cows and chickens.
All the horses that he used to know are dead, except Grover,
who was a baby colt at the time of his last visit--and poor Grove
now is so old he can just limp about the pasture.
He asked if they still kept doughnuts in a yellow crock with a blue
plate over it on the bottom shelf of the pantry--and they do!
He wanted to know if there was still a woodchuck's hole under the pile
of rocks in the night pasture--and there is! Amasai caught a big,
fat, grey one there this summer, the twenty-fifth great-grandson
of the one Master Jervis caught when he was a little boy.
I called him `Master Jervie' to his face, but he didn't appear
to be insulted. Julia says she has never seen him so amiable;
he's usually pretty unapproachable. But Julia hasn't a bit of tact;
and men, I find, require a great deal. They purr if you rub them the
right way and spit if you don't. (That isn't a very elegant metaphor.
I mean it figuratively.)
We're reading Marie Bashkirtseff's journal. Isn't it amazing?
Listen to this: `Last night I was seized by a fit of despair
that found utterance in moans, and that finally drove me to throw
the dining-room clock into the sea.'
It makes me almost hope I'm not a genius; they must be very wearing
to have about--and awfully destructive to the furniture.
Mercy! how it keeps Pouring. We shall have to swim to chapel tonight.
Yours ever,
Judy
