Dear Enemy Part 23

Thursday evening.

Dear Judy:

Sandy is back after a ten-days' absence,--no explanations,--and plunged deep into gloom. He resents our amiable efforts to cheer him up, and will have nothing to do with any of us except baby Allegra. He took her to his house for supper tonight and never brought her back until half-past seven, a scandalous hour for a young miss of three. I don't know what to make of our doctor; he grows more incomprehensible every day.

But Percy, now, is an open-minded, confiding young man. He has just been making a dinner call (he is very punctilious in all social matters), and our entire conversation was devoted to the girl in Detroit. He is lonely and likes to talk about her; and the wonderful things he says! I hope that Miss Detroit is worthy of all this fine affection, but I'm afraid.

He fetched out a leather case from the innermost recesses of his waistcoat and, reverently unwrapping two layers of tissue-paper, showed me the photograph of a silly little thing, all eyes and earrings and fuzzy hair. I did my best to appear congratulatory, but my heart shut up out of pity for the poor boy's future.

Isn't it funny how the nicest men often choose the worst wives, and the nicest women the worst husbands? Their very niceness, I suppose, makes them blind and unsuspicious.

You know, the most interesting pursuit in the world is studying character. I believe I was meant to be a novelist; people fascinate me--until I know them thoroughly. Percy and the doctor form a most engaging contrast. You always know at any moment what that nice young man is thinking about; he is written like a primer in big type and one-syllable words. But the doctor! He might as well be written in Chinese so far as legibility goes. You have heard of people with a dual nature; well, Sandy possesses a triple one. Usually he's scientific and as hard as granite, but occasionally I suspect him of being quite a sentimental person underneath his official casing. For days at a time he will be patient and kind and helpful, and I begin to like him; then without any warning an untamed wild man swells up from the innermost depths, and--oh, dear! the creature's impossible.

I always suspect that sometime in the past he has suffered a terrible hurt, and that he is still brooding over the memory of it. All the time he is talking you have the uncomfortable feeling that in the far back corners of his mind he is thinking something else. But this may be merely my romantic interpretation of an uncommonly bad temper. In any case, he's baffling.

We have been waiting for a week for a fine windy afternoon, and this is it. My children are enjoying "kite-day," a leaf taken from j.a.pan. All of the big-enough boys and most of the girls are spread over "Knowltop"

(that high, rocky sheep pasture which joins us on the east) flying kites made by themselves.

I had a dreadful time coaxing the crusty old gentleman who owns the estate into granting permission. He doesn't like orphans, he says, and if he once lets them get a start in his grounds, the place will be infested with them forever. You would think, to hear him talk, that orphans were a pernicious kind of beetle.

But after half an hour's persuasive talking on my part, he grudgingly made us free of his sheep pasture for two hours, provided we didn't step foot into the cow pasture over the lane, and came home promptly when our time was up. To insure the sanct.i.ty of his cow pasture, Mr. Knowltop has sent his gardener and chauffeur and two grooms to patrol its boundaries while the flying is on. The children are still at it, and are having a wonderful adventure racing over that windy height and getting tangled up in one another's strings. When they come panting back they are to have a surprise in the shape of ginger cookies and lemonade.

These pitiful little youngsters with their old faces! It's a difficult task to make them young, but I believe I'm accomplis.h.i.+ng it. And it really is fun to feel you're doing something positive for the good of the world. If I don't fight hard against it, you'll be accomplis.h.i.+ng your purpose of turning me into a useful person. The social excitements of Worcester almost seem tame before the engrossing interest of 113 live, warm, wriggling little orphans.

Yours with love,

SALLIE.

P.S. I believe, to be accurate, that it's 107 children I possess this afternoon.

Dear Judy:

This being Sunday and a beautiful blossoming day, with a warm wind blowing, I sat at my window with the "Hygiene of the Nervous System"

(Sandy's latest contribution to my mental needs) open in my lap, and my eyes on the prospect without. "Thank Heaven!" thought I, "that this inst.i.tution was so commandingly placed that at least we can look out over the cast-iron wall which shuts us in."

I was feeling very cooped-up and imprisoned and like an orphan myself; so I decided that my own nervous system required fresh air and exercise and adventure. Straight before me ran that white ribbon of road that dips into the valley and up over the hills on the other side. Ever since I came I have longed to follow it to the top and find out what lies beyond those hills. Poor Judy! I dare say that very same longing enveloped your childhood. If any one of my little chicks ever stands by the window and looks across the valley to the hills and asks, "What's over there?" I shall telephone for a motor car.

But today my chicks were all piously engaged with their little souls, I the only wanderer at heart. I changed my silken Sunday gown for homespun, planning meanwhile a means to get to the top of those hills.

Then I went to the telephone and brazenly called up 505.

"Good afternoon, Mrs. McGurk," said I, very sweet. "May I be speaking with Dr. MacRae?"

"Howld the wire," said she, very short.

"Afternoon, Doctor," said I to him. "Have ye, by chance, any dying patients who live on the top o' the hills beyant?"

"I have not, thank the Lord!"

"'Tis a pity," said I, disappointed. "And what are ye afther doin' with yerself the day?"

"I am reading the `Origin of Species.'"

"Shut it up; it's not fit for Sunday. And tell me now, is yer motor car iled and ready to go?"

"It is at your disposal. Are you wanting me to take some orphans for a ride?"

"Just one who's sufferin' from a nervous system. She's taken a fixed idea that she must get to the top o' the hills."

"My car is a grand climber. In fifteen minutes--"

"Wait!" said I. "Bring with ye a frying pan that's a decent size for two. There's nothing in my kitchen smaller than a cart wheel. And ask Mrs. McGurk can ye stay out for supper."

So I packed in a basket a jar of bacon and some eggs and m.u.f.fins and ginger cookies, with hot coffee in the thermos bottle, and was waiting on the steps when Sandy chugged up with his automobile and frying pan.

We really had a beautiful adventure, and he enjoyed the sensation of running away exactly as much as I. Not once did I let him mention insanity. I made him look at the wide stretches of meadow and the lines of pollard willows backed by billowing hills, and sniff the air, and listen to the cawing crows and the tinkle of cowbells and the gurgling of the river. And we talked--oh, about a million things far removed from our asylum. I made him throw away the idea that he is a scientist, and pretend to be a boy. You will scarcely credit the a.s.sertion, but he succeeded--more or less. He did pull off one or two really boyish pranks. Sandy is not yet out of his thirties and, mercy! that is too early to be grown up.

We camped on a bluff overlooking our view, gathered some driftwood, built a fire, and cooked the NICEST supper--a sprinkling of burnt stick in our fried eggs, but charcoal's healthy. Then, when Sandy had finished his pipe and "the sun was setting in its wonted west," we packed up and coasted back home.

He says it was the nicest afternoon he has had in years, and, poor deluded man of science, I actually believe it's true. His olive green home is so uncomfortable and dreary and uninspiring that I don't wonder he drowns his troubles in books. Just as soon as I can find a nice comfortable house mother to put in charge, I am going to plot for the dismissal of Maggie McGurk, though I foresee that she will be even harder than Sterry to pry from her moorings.

Please don't draw the conclusion that I am becoming unduly interested in our bad-tempered doctor, for I'm not. It's just that he leads such a comfortless life that I sometimes long to pat him on the head and tell him to cheer up; the world's full of suns.h.i.+ne, and some of it's for him--just as I long to comfort my hundred and seven orphans; so much and no more.

I am sure that I had some real news to tell you, but it has completely gone out of my head. The rush of fresh air has made me sleepy. It's half-past nine, and I bid you good night.

S.

P.S. Gordon Hallock has evaporated into thin air. Not a word for three weeks; no candy or stuffed animals or tokimentoes of any description.

What on earth do you suppose has become of that attentive young man?

July 13.

Dearest Judy:

Hark to the glad tidings!

This being the thirty-first day of Punch's month, I telephoned to his two patronesses, as nominated in the bond, to arrange for his return. I was met by an indignant refusal. Give up their sweet little volcano just as they are getting it trained not to belch forth fire? They are outraged that I can make such an ungrateful request. Punch has accepted their invitation to spend the summer.

The dressmaking is still going on. You should hear the machines whir and the tongues clatter in the sewing room. Our most cowed, apathetic, spiritless little orphan cheers up and takes an interest in life when she hears that she is to possess three perfectly private dresses of her own, and each a different color, chosen by herself. And you should see how it encourages their sewing ability. Even the little ten-year-olds are bursting into seamstresses. I wish I could devise an equally effective way to make them take an interest in cooking. But our kitchen is extremely uneducative. You know how hampering it is to one's enthusiasm to have to prepare a bushel of potatoes at once.

I think you've heard me mention the fact that I should like to divide up my kiddies into ten nice little families, with a nice comfortable house mother over each? If we just had ten picturesque cottages to put them in, with flowers in the front yard and rabbits and kittens and puppies and chickens in the back, we should be a perfectly presentable inst.i.tution, and wouldn't be ashamed to have these charity experts come visiting us.

Thursday.

I started this letter three days ago, was interrupted to talk to a potential philanthropist (fifty tickets to the circus), and have not had time to pick up my pen since. Betsy has been in Philadelphia for three days, being a bridesmaid for a miserable cousin. I hope that no more of her family are thinking of getting married, for it's most upsetting to the J. G. H.