Dear Enemy Part 19

Was there ever a more docile and obedient pupil than

S. McBRIDE?

Thursday. My dear Judy:

I've been spending the last three days busily getting under way all those latest innovations that we planned in New York. Your word is law.

A public cooky jar has been established.

Also, the eighty play boxes have been ordered. It is a wonderful idea, having a private box for each child, where he can store up his treasures. The owners.h.i.+p of a little personal property will help develop them into responsible citizens. I ought to have thought of it myself, but for some reason the idea didn't come. Poor Judy! You have inside knowledge of the longings of their little hearts that I shall never be able to achieve, not with all the sympathy I can muster.

We are doing our best to run this inst.i.tution with as few discommoding rules as possible, but in regard to those play boxes there is one point on which I shall have to be firm. The children may not keep in them mice or toads or angleworms.

I can't tell you how pleased I am that Betsy's salary is to be raised, and that we are to keep her permanently. But the Hon. Cy Wykoff deprecates the step. He has been making inquiries, and he finds that her people are perfectly able to take care of her without any salary.

"You don't furnish legal advice for nothing," say I to him. "Why should she furnish her trained services for nothing?"

"This is charitable work."

"Then work which is undertaken for your own good should be paid, but work which is undertaken for the public good should not be paid?"

"Fiddlesticks!" says he. "She's a woman, and her family ought to support her."

This opened up vistas of argument which I did not care to enter with the Hon. Cy, so I asked him whether he thought it would be nicer to have a real lawn or hay on the slope that leads to the gate. He likes to be consulted, and I pamper him as much as possible in all unessential details. You see, I am following Sandy's canny advice: "Trustees are like fiddle-strings; they maunna be screwed ower tight. Humor the mon, but gang your ain gait." Oh, the tact that this asylum is teaching me! I should make a wonderful politician's wife.

Thursday night.

You will be interested to hear that I have temporarily placed out Punch with two charming spinsters who have long been tottering on the brink of a child. They finally came last week, and said they would like to try one for a month to see what the sensation felt like.

They wanted, of course, a pretty ornament, dressed in pink and white and descended from the Mayflower. I told them that any one could bring up a daughter of the Mayflower to be an ornament to society, but the real feat was to bring up a son of an Italian organ-grinder and an Irish washerwoman. And I offered Punch. That Neapolitan heredity of his, artistically speaking, may turn out a glorious mixture, if the right environment comes along to choke out all the weeds.

I put it up to them as a sporting proposition, and they were game. They have agreed to take him for one month and concentrate upon his remaking all their years of conserved force, to the end that he may be fit for adoption in some moral family. They both have a sense of humor and ACCOMPLIs.h.i.+NG characters, or I should never have dared to propose it.

And really I believe it's going to be the one way of taming our young fire-eater. They will furnish the affection and caresses and attention that in his whole abused little life he has never had.

They live in a fascinating old house with an Italian garden, and furnis.h.i.+ngs selected from the whole round world. It does seem like sacrilege to turn that destructive child loose in such a collection of treasures. But he hasn't broken anything here for more than a month, and I believe that the Italian in him will respond to all that beauty.

I warned them that they must not shrink from any profanity that might issue from his pretty baby lips.

He departed last night in a very fancy automobile, and maybe I wasn't glad to say good-by to our disreputable young man! He has absorbed just about half of my energy.

Friday.

The pendant arrived this morning. Many thanks! But you really ought not to have given me another; a hostess cannot be held accountable for all the things that careless guests lose in her house. It is far too pretty for my chain. I am thinking of having my nose pierced, Cingalese fas.h.i.+on, and wearing my new jewel where it will really show.

I must tell you that our Percy is putting some good constructive work into this asylum. He has founded the John Grier Bank, and has worked out all the details in a very professional and businesslike fas.h.i.+on, entirely incomprehensible to my non-mathematical mind. All of the older children possess properly printed checkbooks, and they are each to be paid five dollars a week for their services, such as going to school and accomplis.h.i.+ng housework. They are then to pay the inst.i.tution (by check) for their board and clothes, which will consume their five dollars. It looks like a vicious circle, but it's really very educative; they will comprehend the value of money before we dump them into a mercenary world. Those who are particularly good in lessons or work will receive an extra recompense. My head aches at the thought of the bookkeeping, but Percy waves that aside as a mere bagatelle. It is to be accomplished by our prize arithmeticians, and will train them for positions of trust.

If Jervis hears of any opening for bank officials, let me know; I shall have a well-trained president, cas.h.i.+er, and paying teller ready to be placed by this time next year.

Sat.u.r.day.

Our doctor doesn't like to be called "Enemy." It hurts his feelings or his dignity or something of the sort. But since I will persist, despite his expostulations, he has finally retaliated with a nickname for me. He calls me "Miss Sally Lunn," and is in a glow of pride at having achieved such an imaginative flight.

He and I have invented a new pastime: he talks Scotch, and I answer in Irish. Our conversations run like this:

"Good afthernoon to ye, docther. An' how's yer health the day?"

"Verra weel, verra weel. And how gas it wi' a' the bairns?"

"Shure, they're all av thim doin' foin."

"I'm gey glad to hear it. This saft weather is hard on folk. There's muckle sickness aboot the kintra."

"Hiven be praised it has not lighted here! But sit down, docther, an'

make yersilf at home. Will ye be afther havin' a cup o' tay?"

"Hoot, woman! I would na hae you fash yoursel', but a wee drap tea winna coom amiss."

"Whist! It's no thruble at all."

You may not think this a very dizzying excursion into frivolity; but I a.s.sure you, for one of Sandy's dignity, it's positively riotous. The man has been in a heavenly temper ever since I came back; not a single cross word. I am beginning to think I may reform him as well as Punch.

This letter must be about long enough even for you. I've been writing it bit by bit for three days, whenever I happened to pa.s.s my desk.

Yours as ever,

SALLIE.

P.S. I don't think much of your vaunted prescription for hair tonic.

Either the druggist didn't mix it right, or Jane didn't apply it with discretion. I stuck to the pillow this morning.

THE JOHN GRIER HOME,

Sat.u.r.day.

Dear Gordon:

Your letter of Thursday is at hand, and extremely silly I consider it.

Of course I am not trying to let you down easy; that isn't my way. If I let you down at all, it will be suddenly and with an awful b.u.mp. But I honestly didn't realize that it had been three weeks since I wrote.

Please excuse!

Also, my dear sir, I have to bring you to account. You were in New York last week, and you never ran up to see us. You thought we wouldn't find it out, but we heard--and are insulted.

Would you like an outline of my day's activities? Wrote monthly report for trustees' meeting. Audited accounts. Entertained agent of State Charities Aid a.s.sociation for luncheon. Supervised children's menus for next ten days. Dictated five letters to families who have our children.