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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Dear Enemy, by Jean Webster
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Dear Enemy
+
+Author: Jean Webster
+
+Release Date: July 3, 2008 [EBook #238]
+Last updated: November 14, 2015
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEAR ENEMY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Mike Lynch
+
+
+
+
+
+DEAR ENEMY
+
+By Jean Webster
+
+
+
+STONE GATE, WORCESTER,
+
+MASSACHUSETTS,
+
+December 27.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+Your letter is here. I have read it twice, and with amazement. Do I
+understand that Jervis has given you, for a Christmas present, the
+making over of the John Grier Home into a model institution, and that
+you have chosen me to disburse the money? Me--I, Sallie McBride, the
+head of an orphan asylum! My poor people, have you lost your senses, or
+have you become addicted to the use of opium, and is this the raving of
+two fevered imaginations? I am exactly as well fitted to take care of
+one hundred children as to become the curator of a zoo.
+
+And you offer as bait an interesting Scotch doctor? My dear
+Judy,--likewise my dear Jervis,--I see through you! I know exactly
+the kind of family conference that has been held about the Pendleton
+fireside.
+
+"Isn't it a pity that Sallie hasn't amounted to more since she left
+college? She ought to be doing something useful instead of frittering
+her time away in the petty social life of Worcester. Also [Jervis
+speaks] she is getting interested in that confounded young Hallock, too
+good-looking and fascinating and erratic; I never did like politicians.
+We must deflect her mind with some uplifting and absorbing occupation
+until the danger is past. Ha! I have it! We will put her in charge of
+the John Grier Home." Oh, I can hear him as clearly as if I were there!
+On the occasion of my last visit in your delectable household Jervis and
+I had a very solemn conversation in regard to (1) marriage, (2) the low
+ideals of politicians, (3) the frivolous, useless lives that society
+women lead.
+
+Please tell your moral husband that I took his words deeply to heart,
+and that ever since my return to Worcester I have been spending one
+afternoon a week reading poetry with the inmates of the Female Inebriate
+Asylum. My life is not so purposeless as it appears.
+
+Also let me assure you that the politician is not dangerously imminent;
+and that, anyway, he is a very desirable politician, even though
+his views on tariff and single tax and trade-unionism do not exactly
+coincide with Jervis's.
+
+Your desire to dedicate my life to the public good is very sweet, but
+you should look at it from the asylum's point of view.
+
+Have you no pity for those poor defenseless little orphan children?
+
+I have, if you haven't, and I respectfully decline the position which
+you offer.
+
+I shall be charmed, however, to accept your invitation to visit you in
+New York, though I must acknowledge that I am not very excited over the
+list of gaieties you have planned.
+
+Please substitute for the New York Orphanage and the Foundling Hospital
+a few theaters and operas and a dinner or so. I have two new evening
+gowns and a blue and gold coat with a white fur collar.
+
+I dash to pack them; so telegraph fast if you don't wish to see me for
+myself alone, but only as a successor to Mrs. Lippett. Yours as ever,
+
+Entirely frivolous,
+
+And intending to remain so,
+
+SALLIE McBRIDE.
+
+
+P.S. Your invitation is especially seasonable. A charming young
+politician named Gordon Hallock is to be in New York next week. I am
+sure you will like him when you know him better. P.S. 2. Sallie taking
+her afternoon walk as Judy would like to see her:
+
+
+I ask you again, have you both gone mad?
+
+
+THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
+
+February 15.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+We arrived in a snowstorm at eleven last night, Singapore and Jane and
+I. It does not appear to be customary for superintendents of orphan
+asylums to bring with them personal maids and Chinese chows. The night
+watchman and housekeeper, who had waited up to receive me, were thrown
+into an awful flutter. They had never seen the like of Sing, and thought
+that I was introducing a wolf into the fold. I reassured them as to his
+dogginess, and the watchman, after studying his black tongue, ventured a
+witticism. He wanted to know if I fed him on huckleberry pie.
+
+It was difficult to find accommodations for my family. Poor Sing was
+dragged off whimpering to a strange woodshed, and given a piece of
+burlap. Jane did not fare much better. There was not an extra bed in
+the building, barring a five-foot crib in the hospital room. She, as you
+know, approaches six. We tucked her in, and she spent the night folded
+up like a jackknife. She has limped about today, looking like a decrepit
+letter S, openly deploring this latest escapade on the part of her
+flighty mistress, and longing for the time when we shall come to our
+senses, and return to the parental fireside in Worcester.
+
+I know that she is going to spoil all my chances of being popular with
+the rest of the staff. Having her here is the silliest idea that was
+ever conceived, but you know my family. I fought their objections step
+by step, but they made their last stand on Jane. If I brought her along
+to see that I ate nourishing food and didn't stay up all night, I might
+come--temporarily; but if I refused to bring her--oh, dear me, I am not
+sure that I was ever again to cross the threshold of Stone Gate! So here
+we are, and neither of us very welcome, I am afraid.
+
+I woke by a gong at six this morning, and lay for a time listening to
+the racket that twenty-five little girls made in the lavatory over my
+head. It appears that they do not get baths,--just face-washes,--but
+they make as much splashing as twenty-five puppies in a pool. I rose and
+dressed and explored a bit. You were wise in not having me come to look
+the place over before I engaged.
+
+While my little charges were at breakfast, it seemed a happy time
+to introduce myself; so I sought the dining room. Horror piled on
+horror--those bare drab walls and oil-cloth-covered tables with tin
+cups and plates and wooden benches, and, by way of decoration, that one
+illuminated text, "The Lord Will Provide"! The trustee who added that
+last touch must possess a grim sense of humor.
+
+Really, Judy, I never knew there was any spot in the world so
+entirely ugly; and when I saw those rows and rows of pale, listless,
+blue-uniformed children, the whole dismal business suddenly struck
+me with such a shock that I almost collapsed. It seemed like an
+unachievable goal for one person to bring sunshine to one hundred little
+faces when what they need is a mother apiece.
+
+I plunged into this thing lightly enough, partly because you were too
+persuasive, and mostly, I honestly think, because that scurrilous Gordon
+Hallock laughed so uproariously at the idea of my being able to manage
+an asylum. Between you all you hypnotized me. And then of course, after
+I began reading up on the subject and visiting all those seventeen
+institutions, I got excited over orphans, and wanted to put my own ideas
+into practice. But now I'm aghast at finding myself here; it's such a
+stupendous undertaking. The future health and happiness of a hundred
+human beings lie in my hands, to say nothing of their three or four
+hundred children and thousand grandchildren. The thing's geometrically
+progressive. It's awful. Who am I to undertake this job? Look, oh, look
+for another superintendent!
+
+Jane says dinner's ready. Having eaten two of your institution meals,
+the thought of another doesn't excite me.
+
+LATER.
+
+
+The staff had mutton hash and spinach, with tapioca pudding for dessert.
+What the children had I hate to consider.
+
+I started to tell you about my first official speech at breakfast this
+morning. It dealt with all the wonderful new changes that are to come to
+the John Grier Home through the generosity of Mr. Jervis Pendleton,
+the president of our board of trustees, and of Mrs. Pendleton, the dear
+"Aunt Judy" of every little boy and girl here.
+
+Please don't object to my featuring the Pendleton family so prominently.
+I did it for political reasons. As the entire working staff of the
+institution was present, I thought it a good opportunity to emphasize
+the fact that all of these upsetting, innovations come straight from
+headquarters, and not out of my excitable brain.
+
+The children stopped eating and stared. The conspicuous color of my
+hair and the frivolous tilt of my nose are evidently new attributes in a
+superintendent. My colleagues also showed plainly that they consider me
+too young and too inexperienced to be set in authority. I haven't seen
+Jervis's wonderful Scotch doctor yet, but I assure you that he will have
+to be VERY wonderful to make up for the rest of these people, especially
+the kindergarten teacher. Miss Snaith and I clashed early on the subject
+of fresh air; but I intend to get rid of this dreadful institution
+smell, if I freeze every child into a little ice statue.
+
+This being a sunny, sparkling, snowy afternoon, I ordered that dungeon
+of a playroom closed and the children out of doors.
+
+"She's chasin' us out," I heard one small urchin grumbling as he
+struggled into a two-years-too-small overcoat.
+
+They simply stood about the yard, all humped in their clothes, waiting
+patiently to be allowed to come back in. No running or shouting or
+coasting or snowballs. Think of it! These children don't know how to
+play.
+
+STILL LATER.
+
+
+I have already begun the congenial task of spending your money. I bought
+eleven hot-water bottles this afternoon (every one that the village drug
+store contained) likewise some woolen blankets and padded quilts. And
+the windows are wide open in the babies' dormitory. Those poor little
+tots are going to enjoy the perfectly new sensation of being able to
+breathe at night.
+
+There are a million things I want to grumble about, but it's half-past
+ten, and Jane says I MUST go to bed.
+
+Yours in command,
+
+SALLIE McBRIDE.
+
+P.S. Before turning in, I tiptoed through the corridor to make sure that
+all was right, and what do you think I found? Miss Snaith softly closing
+the windows in the babies' dormitory! Just as soon as I can find
+a suitable position for her in an old ladies' home, I am going to
+discharge that woman.
+
+Jane takes the pen from my hand.
+
+Good night.
+
+
+THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
+
+February 20.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+Dr. Robin MacRae called this afternoon to make the acquaintance of the
+new superintendent. Please invite him to dinner upon the occasion of his
+next visit to New York, and see for yourself what your husband has done.
+Jervis grossly misrepresented the facts when he led me to believe
+that one of the chief advantages of my position would be the daily
+intercourse with a man of Dr. MacRae's polish and brilliancy and
+scholarliness and charm.
+
+He is tall and thinnish, with sandy hair and cold gray eyes. During the
+hour he spent in my society (and I was very sprightly) no shadow of a
+smile so much as lightened the straight line of his mouth. Can a shadow
+lighten? Maybe not; but, anyway, what IS the matter with the man? Has he
+committed some remorseful crime, or is his taciturnity due merely to his
+natural Scotchness? He's as companionable as a granite tombstone!
+
+Incidentally, our doctor didn't like me any more than I liked him. He
+thinks I'm frivolous and inconsequential, and totally unfitted for this
+position of trust. I dare say Jervis has had a letter from him by now
+asking to have me removed.
+
+In the matter of conversation we didn't hit it off in the least. He
+discussed broadly and philosophically the evils of institutional care
+for dependent children, while I lightly deplored the unbecoming coiffure
+that prevails among our girls.
+
+To prove my point, I had in Sadie Kate, my special errand orphan. Her
+hair is strained back as tightly as though it had been done with a
+monkey wrench, and is braided behind into two wiry little pigtails.
+Decidedly, orphans' ears need to be softened. But Dr. Robin MacRae
+doesn't give a hang whether their ears are becoming or not; what he
+cares about is their stomachs. We also split upon the subject of
+red petticoats. I don't see how any little girl can preserve any
+self-respect when dressed in a red flannel petticoat an irregular inch
+longer than her blue checked gingham dress; but he thinks that red
+petticoats are cheerful and warm and hygienic. I foresee a warlike reign
+for the new superintendent.
+
+In regard to the doctor, there is just one detail to be thankful for: he
+is almost as new as I am, and he cannot instruct me in the traditions
+of the asylum. I don't believe I COULD have worked with the old doctor,
+who, judging from the specimens of his art that he left behind, knew as
+much about babies as a veterinary surgeon.
+
+In the matter of asylum etiquette, the entire staff has undertaken my
+education. Even the cook this morning told me firmly that the John Grier
+Home has corn meal mush on Wednesday nights.
+
+Are you searching hard for another superintendent? I'll stay until she
+comes, but please find her fast.
+
+Yours,
+
+With my mind made up,
+
+SALLIE McBRIDE.
+
+
+
+SUP'T'S OFFICE,
+
+JOHN GRIER HOME,
+
+February 27.
+
+Dear Gordon:
+
+Are you still insulted because I wouldn't take your advice? Don't you
+know that a reddish-haired person of Irish forebears, with a dash of
+Scotch, can't be driven, but must be gently led? Had you been less
+obnoxiously insistent, I should have listened sweetly, and been saved.
+As it is, I frankly confess that I have spent the last five days in
+repenting our quarrel. You were right, and I was wrong, and, as you
+see, I handsomely acknowledge it. If I ever emerge from this present
+predicament, I shall in the future be guided (almost always) by your
+judgment. Could any woman make a more sweeping retraction than that?
+
+The romantic glamour which Judy cast over this orphan asylum exists only
+in her poetic imagination. The place is AWFUL. Words can't tell you
+how dreary and dismal and smelly it is: long corridors, bare walls;
+blue-uniformed, dough-faced little inmates that haven't the slightest
+resemblance to human children. And oh, the dreadful institution smell!
+A mingling of wet scrubbed floors, unaired rooms, and food for a hundred
+people always steaming on the stove.
+
+The asylum not only has to be made over, but every child as well, and
+it's too herculean a task for such a selfish, luxurious, and lazy person
+as Sallie McBride ever to have undertaken. I'm resigning the very first
+moment that Judy can find a suitable successor, but that, I fear, will
+not be immediately. She has gone off South, leaving me stranded, and of
+course, after having promised, I can't simply abandon her asylum. But in
+the meantime I assure you that I'm homesick.
+
+Write me a cheering letter, and send a flower to brighten my private
+drawing room. I inherited it, furnished, from Mrs. Lippett. The wall
+is covered with a tapestry paper in brown and red; the furniture is
+electric-blue plush, except the center table, which is gilt. Green
+predominates in the carpet. If you presented some pink rosebuds, they
+would complete the color scheme.
+
+I really was obnoxious that last evening, but you are avenged.
+
+Remorsefully yours,
+
+SALLIE McBRIDE.
+
+P.S. You needn't have been so grumpy about the Scotch doctor. The man is
+everything dour that the word "Scotch" implies. I detest him on sight,
+and he detests me. Oh, we're going to have a sweet time working together
+
+
+
+THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
+
+February 22.
+
+My dear Gordon:
+
+Your vigorous and expensive message is here. I know that you have plenty
+of money, but that is no reason why you should waste it so frivolously.
+When you feel so bursting with talk that only a hundred-word telegram
+will relieve an explosion, at least turn it into a night lettergram. My
+orphans can use the money if you don't need it.
+
+Also, my dear sir, please use a trifle of common sense. Of course I
+can't chuck the asylum in the casual manner you suggest. It wouldn't
+be fair to Judy and Jervis. If you will pardon the statement, they have
+been my friends for many more years than you, and I have no intention
+of letting them go hang. I came up here in a spirit of--well, say
+adventure, and I must see the venture through. You wouldn't like me if
+I were a short sport. This doesn't mean, however, that I am sentencing
+myself for life; I am intending to resign just as soon as the
+opportunity comes. But really I ought to feel somewhat gratified that
+the Pendletons were willing to trust me with such a responsible post.
+Though you, my dear sir, do not suspect it, I possess considerable
+executive ability, and more common sense than is visible on the surface.
+If I chose to put my whole soul into this enterprise, I could make the
+rippingest superintendent that any 111 orphans ever had.
+
+I suppose you think that's funny? It's true. Judy and Jervis know it,
+and that's why they asked me to come. So you see, when they have
+shown so much confidence in me, I can't throw them over in quite the
+unceremonious fashion you suggest. So long as I am here, I am going to
+accomplish just as much as it is given one person to accomplish every
+twenty-four hours. I am going to turn the place over to my successor
+with things moving fast in the right direction.
+
+But in the meantime please don't wash your hands of me under the belief
+that I'm too busy to be homesick; for I'm not. I wake up every morning
+and stare at Mrs. Lippett's wallpaper in a sort of daze, feeling as
+though it's some bad dream, and I'm not really here. What on earth was I
+thinking of to turn my back upon my nice cheerful own home and the good
+times that by rights are mine? I frequently agree with your opinion of
+my sanity.
+
+But why, may I ask, should you be making such a fuss? You wouldn't be
+seeing me in any case. Worcester is quite as far from Washington as the
+John Grier Home. And I will add, for your further comfort, that whereas
+there is no man in the neighborhood of this asylum who admires red hair,
+in Worcester there are several. Therefore, most difficult of men, please
+be appeased. I didn't come entirely to spite you. I wanted an adventure
+in life, and, oh dear! oh dear! I'm having it! PLEASE write soon, and
+cheer me up. Yours in sackcloth,
+
+SALLIE.
+
+
+THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
+
+February 24. Dear Judy:
+
+You tell Jervis that I am not hasty at forming judgments. I have a
+sweet, sunny, unsuspicious nature, and I like everybody, almost. But no
+one could like that Scotch doctor. He NEVER smiles.
+
+He paid me another visit this afternoon. I invited him to accommodate
+himself in one of Mrs. Lippett's electric-blue chairs, and then sat
+down opposite to enjoy the harmony. He was dressed in a mustard-colored
+homespun, with a dash of green and a glint of yellow in the weave, a
+"heather mixture" calculated to add life to a dull Scotch moor. Purple
+socks and a red tie, with an amethyst pin, completed the picture.
+Clearly, your paragon of a doctor is not going to be of much assistance
+in pulling up the esthetic tone of this establishment.
+
+During the fifteen minutes of his call he succinctly outlined all the
+changes he wishes to see accomplished in this institution. HE forsooth!
+And what, may I ask, are the duties of a superintendent? Is she merely a
+figurehead to take orders from the visiting physician?
+
+It's up wi' the bonnets o' McBride and MacRae!
+
+I am,
+
+Indignantly yours, SALLIE.
+
+
+THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
+
+Monday.
+
+Dear Dr. MacRae:
+
+I am sending this note by Sadie Kate, as it seems impossible to reach
+you by telephone. Is the person who calls herself Mrs. McGur-rk and
+hangs up in the middle of a sentence your housekeeper? If she answers
+the telephone often, I don't see how your patients have any patience
+left.
+
+As you did not come this morning, per agreement, and the painters did
+come, I was fain to choose a cheerful corn color to be placed upon the
+walls of your new laboratory room. I trust there is nothing unhygienic
+about corn color.
+
+Also, if you can spare a moment this afternoon, kindly motor yourself
+to Dr. Brice's on Water Street and look at the dentist's chair and
+appurtenances which are to be had at half-price. If all of the pleasant
+paraphernalia of his profession were here,--in a corner of your
+laboratory,--Dr. Brice could finish his 111 new patients with much more
+despatch than if we had to transport them separately to Water Street.
+Don't you think that's a useful idea? It came to me in the middle of
+the night, but as I never happened to buy a dentist's chair before, I'd
+appreciate some professional advice. Yours truly,
+
+S. McBRIDE.
+
+
+THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
+
+March 1.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+Do stop sending me telegrams!
+
+Of course I know that you want to know everything that is happening, and
+I would send a daily bulletin, but I truly don't find a minute. I am so
+tired when night comes that if it weren't for Jane's strict discipline,
+I should go to bed with my clothes on.
+
+Later, when we slip a little more into routine, and I can be sure that
+my assistants are all running off their respective jobs, I shall be the
+regularest correspondent you ever had.
+
+It was five days ago, wasn't it, that I wrote? Things have been
+happening in those five days. The MacRae and I have mapped out a plan of
+campaign, and are stirring up this place to its sluggish depths. I like
+him less and less, but we have declared a sort of working truce. And the
+man IS a worker. I always thought I had sufficient energy myself, but
+when an improvement is to be introduced, I toil along panting in his
+wake. He is as stubborn and tenacious and bull-doggish as a Scotchman
+can be, but he does understand babies; that is, he understands their
+physiological aspects. He hasn't any more feeling for them personally
+than for so many frogs that he might happen to be dissecting.
+
+Do you remember Jervis's holding forth one evening for an hour or so
+about our doctor's beautiful humanitarian ideals? C'EST A RIRE! The man
+merely regards the J. G. H. as his own private laboratory, where he
+can try out scientific experiments with no loving parents to object.
+I shouldn't be surprised anyday to find him introducing scarlet fever
+cultures into the babies' porridge in order to test a newly invented
+serum.
+
+Of the house staff, the only two who strike me as really efficient are
+the primary teacher and the furnace-man. You should see how the children
+run to meet Miss Matthews and beg for caresses, and how painstakingly
+polite they are to the other teachers. Children are quick to size up
+character. I shall be very embarrassed if they are too polite to me.
+
+Just as soon as I get my bearings a little, and know exactly what we
+need, I am going to accomplish some widespread discharging. I should
+like to begin with Miss Snaith; but I discover that she is the niece
+of one of our most generous trustees, and isn't exactly dischargeable.
+She's a vague, chinless, pale-eyed creature, who talks through her nose
+and breathes through her mouth. She can't say anything decisively and
+then stop; her sentences all trail off into incoherent murmurings. Every
+time I see the woman I feel an almost uncontrollable desire to take her
+by the shoulders and shake some decision into her. And Miss Snaith is
+the one who has had entire supervision of the seventeen little tots aged
+from two to five! But, anyway, even if I can't discharge her, I have
+reduced her to a subordinate position without her being aware of the
+fact.
+
+The doctor has found for me a charming girl who lives a few miles from
+here and comes in every day to manage the kindergarten. She has big,
+gentle, brown eyes, like a cow's, and motherly manners (she is just
+nineteen), and the babies love her.
+
+At the head of the nursery I have placed a jolly, comfortable
+middle-aged woman who has reared five of her own and has a hand with
+bairns. Our doctor also found her. You see, he is useful. She is
+technically under Miss Snaith, but is usurping dictatorship in a
+satisfactory fashion. I can now sleep at night without being afraid that
+my babies are being inefficiently murdered.
+
+You see, our reforms are getting started; and while I acquiesce with
+all the intelligence at my command to our doctor's basic scientific
+upheavals, still, they sometimes leave me cold. The problem that keeps
+churning and churning in my mind is: How can I ever instil enough love
+and warmth and sunshine into those bleak little lives? And I am not sure
+that the doctor's science will accomplish that.
+
+One of our most pressing INTELLIGENT needs just now is to get our
+records into coherent form. The books have been most outrageously
+unkept. Mrs. Lippett had a big black account book into which she jumbled
+any facts that happened to drift her way as to the children's family,
+their conduct, and their health. But for weeks at a time she didn't
+trouble to make an entry. If any adopting family wants to know a child's
+parentage, half the time we can't even tell where we got the child!
+
+     "Where did you come from, baby dear?"
+     "The blue sky opened, and I am here,"
+
+is an exact description of their arrival.
+
+We need a field worker to travel about the country and pick up all
+the hereditary statistics she can about our chicks. It will be an easy
+matter, as most of them have relatives. What do you think of Janet Ware
+for the job? You remember what a shark she was in economics; she simply
+battened on tables and charts and surveys.
+
+I have also to inform you that the John Grier Home is undergoing a very
+searching physical examination, and it is the shocking truth that out
+of the twenty-eight poor little rats so far examined only five are up to
+specification. And the five have not been here long.
+
+Do you remember the ugly green reception room on the first floor? I have
+removed as much of its greenness as possible, and fitted it up as the
+doctor's laboratory. It contains scales and drugs and, most professional
+touch of all, a dentist's chair and one of those sweet grinding
+machines. (Bought them second-hand from Doctor Brice in the village, who
+is putting in, for the gratification of his own patients, white enamel
+and nickel-plate.) That drilling machine is looked upon as an infernal
+engine, and I as an infernal monster for instituting it. But every
+little victim who is discharged FILLED may come to my room every day for
+a week and receive two pieces of chocolate. Though our children are not
+conspicuously brave, they are, we discover, fighters. Young Thomas Kehoe
+nearly bit the doctor's thumb in two after kicking over a tableful of
+instruments. It requires physical strength as well as skill to be dental
+adviser to the J. G. H. . . . . . . . . . .
+
+Interrupted here to show a benevolent lady over the institution. She
+asked fifty irrelevant questions, took up an hour of my time, then
+finally wiped away a tear and left a dollar for my "poor little
+charges."
+
+So far, my poor little charges are not enthusiastic about these new
+reforms. They don't care much for the sudden draft of fresh air that has
+blown in upon them, or the deluge of water. I am shoving in two baths
+a week, and as soon as we collect tubs enough and a few extra faucets,
+they are going to get SEVEN.
+
+But at least I have started one most popular reform. Our daily bill
+of fare has been increased, a change deplored by the cook as causing
+trouble, and deplored by the rest of the staff as causing an immoral
+increase in expense. ECONOMY spelt in capitals has been the guiding
+principle of this institution for so many years that it has become a
+religion. I assure my timid co-workers twenty times a day that, owing to
+the generosity of our president, the endowment has been exactly doubled,
+and that I have vast sums besides from Mrs. Pendleton for necessary
+purposes like ice cream. But they simply CAN'T get over the feeling that
+it is a wicked extravagance to feed these children.
+
+The doctor and I have been studying with care the menus of the past, and
+we are filled with amazement at the mind that could have devised them.
+Here is one of her frequently recurring dinners:
+
+BOILED POTATOES BOILED RICE BLANC MANGE
+
+
+It's a wonder to me that the children are anything more than one hundred
+and eleven little lumps of starch.
+
+Looking about this institution, one is moved to misquote Robert
+Browning.
+
+     "There may be heaven; there must be hell;
+     Meantime, there is the John Grier--well!"
+S. McB.
+
+
+
+THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
+
+Saturday.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+Dr. Robin MacRae and I fought another battle yesterday over a very
+trivial matter (in which I was right), and since then I have adopted for
+our doctor a special pet name. "Good morning, Enemy!" was my greeting
+today, at which he was quite solemnly annoyed. He says he does not wish
+to be regarded as an enemy. He is not in the least antagonistic--so long
+as I mold my policy upon his wishes!
+
+We have two new children, Isador Gutschneider and Max Yog, given to us
+by the Baptist Ladies' Aid Society. Where on earth do you suppose those
+children picked up such a religion? I didn't want to take them, but the
+poor ladies were very persuasive, and they pay the princely sum of four
+dollars and fifty cents per week per child. This makes 113, which makes
+us very crowded. I have half a dozen babies to give away. Find me some
+kind families who want to adopt.
+
+You know it's very embarrassing not to be able to remember offhand how
+large your family is, but mine seems to vary from day to day, like the
+stock market. I should like to keep it at about par. When a woman
+has more than a hundred children, she can't give them the individual
+attention they ought to have.
+
+
+Monday.
+
+
+This letter has been lying two days on my desk, and I haven't found the
+time to stick on a stamp. But now I seem to have a free evening ahead,
+so I will add a page or two more before starting it on a pleasant
+journey to Florida.
+
+I am just beginning to pick out individual faces among the children.
+It seemed at first as though I could never learn them, they looked so
+hopelessly cut out of one pattern, with those unspeakably ugly uniforms.
+Now please don't write back that you want the children put into new
+clothes immediately. I know you do; you've already told me five times.
+In about a month I shall be ready to consider the question, but just now
+their insides are more important than their outsides.
+
+There is no doubt about it--orphans in the mass do not appeal to me. I
+am beginning to be afraid that this famous mother instinct which we hear
+so much about was left out of my character. Children as children are
+dirty, spitty little things, and their noses all need wiping. Here
+and there I pick out a naughty, mischievous little one that awakens a
+flicker of interest; but for the most part they are just a composite
+blur of white face and blue check.
+
+With one exception, though. Sadie Kate Kilcoyne emerged from the mass
+the first day, and bids fair to stay out for all time. She is my special
+little errand girl, and she furnishes me with all my daily amusement.
+No piece of mischief has been launched in this institution for the last
+eight years that did not originate in her abnormal brain. This young
+person has, to me, a most unusual history, though I understand it's
+common enough in foundling circles. She was discovered eleven years
+ago on the bottom step of a Thirty-ninth Street house, asleep in a
+pasteboard box labeled, "Altman & Co."
+
+"Sadie Kate Kilcoyne, aged five weeks. Be kind to her," was neatly
+printed on the cover.
+
+The policeman who picked her up took her to Bellevue where the
+foundlings are pronounced, in the order of their arrival, "Catholic,
+Protestant, Catholic, Protestant," with perfect impartiality. Our Sadie
+Kate, despite her name and blue Irish eyes, was made a Protestant. And
+here she is growing Irisher and Irisher every day, but, true to her
+christening, protesting loudly against every detail of life.
+
+Her two little black braids point in opposite directions; her little
+monkey face is all screwed up with mischief; she is as active as a
+terrier, and you have to keep her busy every moment. Her record of
+badnesses occupies pages in the Doomsday Book. The last item reads:
+
+"For stumping Maggie Geer to get a doorknob into her mouth--punishment,
+the afternoon spent in bed, and crackers for supper."
+
+It seems that Maggie Geer, fitted with a mouth of unusual stretching
+capacity, got the doorknob in, but couldn't get it out. The doctor
+was called, and cannily solved the problem with a buttered shoe-horn.
+"Muckle-mouthed Meg," he has dubbed the patient ever since.
+
+You can understand that my thoughts are anxiously occupied in filling
+every crevice of Sadie Kate's existence.
+
+There are a million subjects that I ought to consult with the president
+about. I think it was very unkind of you and him to saddle me with your
+orphan asylum and run off South to play. It would serve you right if I
+did everything wrong. While you are traveling about in private cars, and
+strolling in the moonlight on palm beaches, please think of me in the
+drizzle of a New York March, taking care of 113 babies that by rights
+are yours--and be grateful.
+
+I remain (for a limited time),
+
+S. McBRIDE.
+
+
+SUP'T JOHN GRIER HOME.
+
+Dear Enemy:
+
+I am sending herewith (under separate cover) Sammy Speir, who got
+mislaid when you paid your morning visit. Miss Snaith brought him to
+light after you had gone. Please scrutinize his thumb. I never saw a
+felon, but I have diagnosed it as such. Yours truly, S. McBRIDE.
+
+
+SUP'T JOHN GRIER HOME,
+
+March 6.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+I don't know yet whether the children are going to love me or not, but
+they DO love my dog. No creature so popular as Singapore ever entered
+these gates. Every afternoon three boys who have been perfect in
+deportment are allowed to brush and comb him, while three other good
+boys may serve him with food and drink. But every Saturday morning the
+climax of the week is reached, when three superlatively good boys give
+him a nice lathery bath with hot water and flea soap. The privilege of
+serving as Singapore's valet is going to be the only incentive I shall
+need for maintaining discipline.
+
+But isn't it pathetically unnatural for these youngsters to be living
+in the country and never owning a pet? Especially when they, of all
+children, do so need something to love. I am going to manage pets for
+them somehow, if I have to spend our new endowment for a menagerie.
+Couldn't you bring back some baby alligators and a pelican? Anything
+alive will be gratefully received.
+
+This should by rights be my first "Trustees' Day." I am deeply grateful
+to Jervis for arranging a simple business meeting in New York, as we
+are not yet on dress parade up here; but we are hoping by the first
+Wednesday in April to have something visible to show. If all of the
+doctor's ideas, and a few of my own, get themselves materialized, our
+trustees will open their eyes a bit when we show them about.
+
+I have just made out a chart for next week's meals, and posted it in the
+kitchen in the sight of an aggrieved cook. Variety is a word hitherto
+not found in the lexicon of the J.G.H. You would never dream all of
+the delightful surprises we are going to have: brown bread, corn pone,
+graham muffins, samp, rice pudding with LOTS of raisins, thick vegetable
+soup, macaroni Italian fashion, polenta cakes with molasses, apple
+dumplings, gingerbread--oh, an endless list! After our biggest girls
+have assisted in the manufacture of such appetizing dainties, they will
+almost be capable of keeping future husbands in love with them.
+
+Oh, dear me! Here I am babbling these silly nothings when I have some
+real news up my sleeve. We have a new worker, a gem of a worker.
+
+Do you remember Betsy Kindred, 1910? She led the glee club and was
+president of dramatics. I remember her perfectly; she always had lovely
+clothes. Well, if you please, she lives only twelve miles from here. I
+ran across her by chance yesterday morning as she was motoring through
+the village; or, rather, she just escaped running across me.
+
+I never spoke to her in my life, but we greeted each other like the
+oldest friends. It pays to have conspicuous hair; she recognized me
+instantly. I hopped upon the running board of her car and said:
+
+"Betsy Kindred, 1910, you've got to come back to my orphan asylum and
+help me catalogue my orphans."
+
+And it astonished her so that she came. She's to be here four or five
+days a week as temporary secretary, and somehow I must manage to keep
+her permanently. She's the most useful person I ever saw. I am hoping
+that orphans will become such a habit with her that she won't be able to
+give them up. I think she might stay if we pay her a big enough salary.
+She likes to be independent of her family, as do all of us in these
+degenerate times.
+
+In my growing zeal for cataloguing people, I should like to get our
+doctor tabulated. If Jervis knows any gossip about him, write it to me,
+please; the worse, the better. He called yesterday to lance a felon on
+Sammy Speir's thumb, then ascended to my electric-blue parlor to
+give instructions as to the dressing of thumbs. The duties of a
+superintendent are manifold.
+
+It was just teatime, so I casually asked him to stay, and he did! Not
+for the pleasure of my society,--no, indeed,--but because Jane appeared
+at the moment with a plate of toasted muffins. He hadn't had any
+luncheon, it seems, and dinner was a long way ahead. Between muffins
+(he ate the whole plateful) he saw fit to interrogate me as to my
+preparedness for this position. Had I studied biology in college? How
+far had I gone in chemistry? What did I know of sociology? Had I visited
+that model institution at Hastings?
+
+To all of which I responded affably and openly. Then I permitted myself
+a question or two: just what sort of youthful training had been required
+to produce such a model of logic, accuracy, dignity, and common sense
+as I saw sitting before me? Through persistent prodding I elicited a
+few forlorn facts, but all quite respectable. You'd think, from his
+reticence, there'd been a hanging in the family. The MacRae PERE was
+born in Scotland, and came to the States to occupy a chair at Johns
+Hopkins; son Robin was shipped back to Auld Reekie for his education.
+His grandmother was a M'Lachlan of Strathlachan (I am sure she sounds
+respectable), and his vacations were spent in the Hielands a-chasing the
+deer.
+
+So much could I gather; so much, and no more. Tell me, I beg, some
+gossip about my enemy--something scandalous by preference.
+
+Why, if he is such an awfully efficient person does he bury himself in
+this remote locality? You would think an up-and-coming scientific man
+would want a hospital at one elbow and a morgue at the other. Are you
+sure that he didn't commit a crime and isn't hiding from the law?
+
+I seem to have covered a lot of paper without telling you much. VIVE LA
+BAGATELLE! Yours as usual,
+
+SALLIE.
+
+P.S. I am relieved on one point. Dr. MacRae does not pick out his own
+clothes. He leaves all such unessential trifles to his housekeeper, Mrs.
+Maggie McGurk.
+
+Again, and irrevocably, good-by!
+
+
+
+THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
+
+Wednesday.
+
+Dear Gordon:
+
+Your roses and your letter cheered me for an entire morning, and it's
+the first time I've approached cheerfulness since the fourteenth of
+February, when I waved good-by to Worcester.
+
+Words can't tell you how monotonously oppressive the daily round of
+institution life gets to be. The only glimmer in the whole dull affair
+is the fact that Betsy Kindred spends four days a week with us. Betsy
+and I were in college together, and we do occasionally find something
+funny to laugh about.
+
+Yesterday we were having tea in my HIDEOUS parlor when we suddenly
+determined to revolt against so much unnecessary ugliness. We called in
+six sturdy and destructive orphans, a step-ladder, and a bucket of hot
+water, and in two hours had every vestige of that tapestry paper off
+those walls. You can't imagine what fun it is ripping paper off walls.
+
+Two paperhangers are at work this moment hanging the best that our
+village affords, while a German upholsterer is on his knees measuring my
+chairs for chintz slip covers that will hide every inch of their plush
+upholstery.
+
+Please don't get nervous. This doesn't mean that I'm preparing to spend
+my life in the asylum. It means only that I'm preparing a cheerful
+welcome for my successor. I haven't dared tell Judy how dismal I find
+it, because I don't want to cloud Florida; but when she returns to New
+York she will find my official resignation waiting to meet her in the
+front hall.
+
+I would write you a long letter in grateful payment for seven pages, but
+two of my little dears are holding a fight under the window. I dash to
+separate them.
+
+Yours as ever,
+
+S. McB.
+
+
+THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
+
+March 8.
+
+My dear Judy:
+
+I myself have bestowed a little present upon the John Grier Home--the
+refurnishing of the superintendent's private parlor. I saw the first
+night here that neither I nor any future occupant could be happy
+with Mrs. Lippett's electric plush. You see, I am planning to make my
+successor contented and willing to stay.
+
+Betsy Kindred assisted in the rehabilitation of the Lippett's chamber
+of horrors, and between us we have created a symphony in dull blue and
+gold. Really and truly, it's one of the loveliest rooms you've ever
+seen. The sight of it will be an artistic education to any orphan.
+New paper on the wall, new rugs on the floor (my own prized Persians
+expressed from Worcester by an expostulating family). New casement
+curtains at my three windows, revealing a wide and charming view,
+hitherto hidden by Nottingham lace. A new big table, some lamps and
+books and a picture or so, and a real open fire. She had closed the
+fireplace because it let in air.
+
+I never realized what a difference artistic surroundings make in the
+peace of one's soul. I sat last night and watched my fire throw nice
+highlights on my new old fender, and purred with contentment. And I
+assure you it's the first purr that has come from this cat since she
+entered the gates of the John Grier Home.
+
+But the refurnishing of the superintendent's parlor is the slightest
+of our needs. The children's private apartments demand so much basic
+attention that I can't decide where to begin. That dark north playroom
+is a shocking scandal, but no more shocking than our hideous dining room
+or our unventilated dormitories or our tubless lavatories.
+
+If the institution is very saving, do you think it can ever afford to
+burn down this smelly old original building, and put up instead some
+nice, ventilated modern cottages? I cannot contemplate that wonderful
+institution at Hastings without being filled with envy. It would be some
+fun to run an asylum if you had a plant like that to work with. But,
+anyway, when you get back to New York and are ready to consult the
+architect about remodeling, please apply to me for suggestions. Among
+other little details I want two hundred feet of sleeping porch running
+along the outside of our dormitories.
+
+You see, it's this way: our physical examination reveals the fact that
+about half of our children are aenemic--aneamic--anaemic (Mercy! what
+a word!), and a lot of them have tubercular ancestors, and more have
+alcoholic. Their first need is oxygen rather than education. And if the
+sickly ones need it, why wouldn't it be good for the well ones? I should
+like to have every child, winter and summer, sleeping in the open air;
+but I know that if I let fall such a bomb on the board of trustees, the
+whole body would explode.
+
+Speaking of trustees, I have met up with the Hon. Cyrus Wykoff, and
+I really believe that I dislike him more than Dr. Robin MacRae or
+the kindergarten teacher or the cook. I seem to have a genius for
+discovering enemies!
+
+Mr. Wykoff called on Wednesday last to look over the new superintendent.
+
+Having lowered himself into my most comfortable armchair, he proceeded
+to spend the day. He asked my father's business, and whether or not he
+was well-to-do. I told him that my father manufactured overalls, and
+that, even in these hard times, the demand for overalls was pretty
+steady.
+
+He seemed relieved. He approves of the utilitarian aspect of overalls.
+He had been afraid that I had come from the family of a minister or
+professor or writer, a lot of high thinking and no common sense. Cyrus
+believes in common sense.
+
+And what had been my training for this position?
+
+That, as you know, is a slightly embarrassing question. But I produced
+my college education and a few lectures at the School of Philanthropy,
+also a short residence in the college settlement (I didn't tell him
+that all I had done there was to paint the back hall and stairs). Then
+I submitted some social work among my father's employees and a few
+friendly visits to the Home for Female Inebriates.
+
+To all of which he grunted.
+
+I added that I had lately made a study of the care of dependent
+children, and casually mentioned my seventeen institutions.
+
+He grunted again, and said he didn't take much stock in this new-fangled
+scientific charity.
+
+At this point Jane entered with a box of roses from the florist's.
+That blessed Gordon Hallock sends me roses twice a week to brighten the
+rigors of institution life.
+
+Our trustee began an indignant investigation. He wished to know where I
+got those flowers, and was visibly relieved when he learned that I had
+not spent the institution's money for them. He next wished to know who
+Jane might be. I had foreseen that question and decided to brazen it
+out.
+
+"My maid," said I.
+
+"Your what?" he bellowed, quite red in the face.
+
+"My maid."
+
+"What is she doing here?"
+
+I amiably went into details. "She mends my clothes, blacks my boots,
+keeps my bureau drawers in order, washes my hair."
+
+I really thought the man would choke, so I charitably added that I paid
+her wages out of my own private income, and paid five dollars and fifty
+cents a week to the institution for her board; and that, though she was
+big, she didn't eat much.
+
+He allowed that I might make use of one of the orphans for all
+legitimate service.
+
+I explained--still polite, but growing bored--that Jane had been in my
+service for many years, and was indispensable.
+
+He finally took himself off, after telling me that he, for one,
+had never found any fault with Mrs. Lippett. She was a common-sense
+Christian woman, without many fancy ideas, but with plenty of good solid
+work in her. He hoped that I would be wise enough to model my policy
+upon hers!
+
+And what, my dear Judy, do you think of that?
+
+The doctor dropped in a few minutes later, and I repeated the Hon.
+Cyrus's conversation in detail. For the first time in the history of our
+intercourse the doctor and I agreed.
+
+"Mrs. Lippett indeed!" he growled. "The blethering auld gomerel! May the
+Lord send him mair sense!"
+
+When our doctor really becomes aroused, he drops into Scotch. My latest
+pet name for him (behind his back) is Sandy.
+
+Sadie Kate is sitting on the floor as I write, untangling sewing-silks
+and winding them neatly for Jane, who is becoming quite attached to the
+little imp.
+
+"I am writing to your Aunt Judy," say I to Sadie Kate. "What message
+shall I send from you?"
+
+"I never heard of no Aunt Judy."
+
+"She is the aunt of every good little girl in this school."
+
+"Tell her to come and visit me and bring some candy," says Sadie Kate.
+
+I say so, too.
+
+My love to the president,
+
+SALLIE.
+
+
+
+March 13.
+
+MRS. JUDY ABBOTT PENDLETON,
+
+Dear Madam:
+
+Your four letters, two telegrams, and three checks are at hand, and
+your instructions shall be obeyed just as quickly as this overworked
+superintendent can manage it.
+
+I delegated the dining room job to Betsy Kindred. One hundred dollars
+did I allow her for the rehabilitation of that dreary apartment. She
+accepted the trust, picked out five likely orphans to assist in the
+mechanical details, and closed the door.
+
+For three days the children have been eating from the desks in the
+schoolroom. I haven't an idea what Betsy is doing; but she has a lot
+better taste than I, so there isn't much use in interfering.
+
+It is such a heaven-sent relief to be able to leave something to
+somebody else, and be sure it will be carried out! With all due respect
+to the age and experience of the staff I found here, they are not very
+open to new ideas. As the John Grier Home was planned by its noble
+founder in 1875, so shall it be run today.
+
+Incidentally, my dear Judy, your idea of a private dining room for the
+superintendent, which I, being a social soul, at first scorned, has
+been my salvation. When I am dead tired I dine alone, but in my live
+intervals I invite an officer to share the meal; and in the expansive
+intimacy of the dinner-table I get in my most effective strokes. When it
+becomes desirable to plant the seeds of fresh air in the soul of Miss
+Snaith, I invite her to dinner, and tactfully sandwich in a little
+oxygen between her slices of pressed veal.
+
+Pressed veal is our cook's idea of an acceptable PIECE DE RESISTANCE
+for a dinner party. In another month I am going to face the subject of
+suitable nourishment for the executive staff.
+
+Meanwhile there are so many things more important than our own comfort
+that we shall have to worry along on veal.
+
+A terrible bumping has just occurred outside my door. One little cherub
+seems to be kicking another little cherub downstairs. But I write on
+undisturbed. If I am to spend my days among orphans, I must cultivate a
+cheerful detachment.
+
+Did you get Leonora Fenton's cards? She's marrying a medical missionary
+and going to Siam to live! Did you ever hear of anything so absurd as
+Leonora presiding over a missionary's menage? Do you suppose she will
+entertain the heathen with skirt dances?
+
+It isn't any absurder, though, than me in an orphan asylum, or you as a
+conservative settled matron, or Marty Keene a social butterfly in Paris.
+Do you suppose she goes to embassy balls in riding clothes, and what on
+earth does she do about hair? It couldn't have grown so soon; she must
+wear a wig. Isn't our class turning out some hilarious surprises?
+
+The mail arrives. Excuse me while I read a nice fat letter from
+Washington.
+
+
+Not so nice; quite impertinent. Gordon can't get over the idea that it
+is a joke, S. McB. in conjunction with one hundred and thirteen orphans.
+But he wouldn't think it such a joke if he could try it for a few days.
+He says he is going to drop off here on his next trip North and watch
+the struggle. How would it be if I left him in charge while I dashed to
+New York to accomplish some shopping? Our sheets are all worn out, and
+we haven't more than two hundred and eleven blankets in the house.
+
+Singapore, sole puppy of my heart and home, sends his respectful love. I
+also, S. McB.
+
+
+
+
+THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
+
+Friday. My dearest Judy:
+
+You should see what your hundred dollars and Betsy Kindred did to that
+dining room!
+
+It's a dazzling dream of yellow paint. Being a north room, she thought
+to brighten it; and she has. The walls are kalsomined buff, with a
+frieze of little molly cottontails skurrying around the top. All of
+the woodwork--tables and benches included--is a cheerful chrome yellow.
+Instead of tablecloths, which we can't afford, we have linen runners,
+with stenciled rabbits hopping along their length. Also yellow bowls,
+filled at present with pussywillows, but looking forward to dandelions
+and cowslips and buttercups. And new dishes, my dear--white, with yellow
+jonquils (we think), though they may be roses; there is no botany expert
+in the house. Most wonderful touch of all, we have NAPKINS, the first
+we have seen in our whole lives. The children thought they were
+handkerchiefs and ecstatically wiped their noses.
+
+To honor the opening of the new room, we had ice-cream and cake for
+dessert. It is such a pleasure to see these children anything but cowed
+and apathetic, that I am offering prizes for boisterousness--to every
+one but Sadie Kate. She drummed on the table with her knife and fork and
+sang, "Welcome to dem golden halls."
+
+You remember that illuminated text over the dining-room door--"The Lord
+Will Provide." We've painted it out, and covered the spot with rabbits.
+It's all very well to teach so easy a belief to normal children, who
+have a proper family and roof behind them; but a person whose only
+refuge in distress will be a park bench must learn a more militant creed
+than that.
+
+"The Lord has given you two hands and a brain and a big world to use
+them in. Use them well, and you will be provided for; use them ill, and
+you will want," is our motto, and that with reservations.
+
+In the sorting process that has been going on I have got rid of eleven
+children. That blessed State Charities Aid Association helped me dispose
+of three little girls, all placed in very nice homes, and one to be
+adopted legally if the family likes her. And the family will like her;
+I saw to that. She was the prize child of the institution, obedient and
+polite, with curly hair and affectionate ways, exactly the little girl
+that every family needs. When a couple of adopting parents are choosing
+a daughter, I stand by with my heart in my mouth, feeling as though I
+were assisting in the inscrutable designs of Fate. Such a little thing
+turns the balance! The child smiles, and a loving home is hers for life;
+she sneezes, and it passes her by forever.
+
+Three of our biggest boys have gone to work on farms, one of them out
+West to a RANCH! Report has it that he is to become a cowboy and Indian
+fighter and grizzly-bear hunter, though I believe in reality he is to
+engage in the pastoral work of harvesting wheat. He marched off, a hero
+of romance, followed by the wistful eyes of twenty-five adventurous
+lads, who turned back with a sigh to the safely monotonous life of the
+J. G. H.
+
+Five other children have been sent to their proper institutions. One of
+them is deaf, one an epileptic, and the other three approaching
+idiocy. None of them ought ever to have been accepted here. This as an
+educational institution, and we can't waste our valuable plant in caring
+for defectives.
+
+Orphan asylums have gone out of style. What I am going to develop is a
+boarding school for the physical, moral, and mental growth of children
+whose parents have not been able to provide for their care.
+
+"Orphans" is merely my generic term for the children; a good many
+of them are not orphans in the least. They have one troublesome and
+tenacious parent left who won't sign a surrender, so I can't place them
+out for adoption. But those that are available would be far better off
+in loving foster-homes than in the best institution that I can ever
+make. So I am fitting them for adoption as quickly as possible, and
+searching for the homes.
+
+You ought to run across a lot of pleasant families in your travels;
+can't you bully some of them into adopting children? Boys by preference.
+We've got an awful lot of extra boys, and nobody wants them. Talk about
+anti-feminism! It's nothing to the anti-masculinism that exists in the
+breasts of adopting parents. I could place out a thousand dimpled little
+girls with yellow hair, but a good live boy from nine to thirteen is a
+drug on the market. There seems to be a general feeling that they track
+in dirt and scratch up mahogany furniture.
+
+Shouldn't you think that men's clubs might like to adopt boys, as a sort
+of mascot? The boy could be boarded in a nice respectable family, and
+drawn out by the different members on Saturday afternoons. They could
+take him to ball games and the circus, and then return him when they
+had had enough, just as you do with a library book. It would be very
+valuable training for the bachelors. People are forever talking about
+the desirability of training girls for motherhood. Why not institute a
+course of training in fatherhood, and get the best men's clubs to take
+it up? Will you please have Jervis agitate the matter at his various
+clubs, and I'll have Gordon start the idea in Washington. They both
+belong to such a lot of clubs that we ought to dispose of at least a
+dozen boys.
+
+I remain,
+
+The ever-distracted mother of 113.
+
+S. McB.
+
+
+THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
+
+March 18.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+I have been having a pleasant respite from the 113 cares of motherhood.
+
+Yesterday who should drop down upon our peaceful village but Mr. Gordon
+Hallock, on his way back to Washington to resume the cares of the
+nation. At least he said it was on his way, but I notice from the map in
+the primary room that it was one hundred miles out of his way.
+
+And dear, but I was glad to see him! He is the first glimpse of the
+outside world I have had since I was incarcerated in this asylum. And
+such a lot of entertaining businesses he had to talk about! He knows the
+inside of all the outside things you read in the newspapers; so far as I
+can make out, he is the social center about which Washington revolves.
+I always knew he would get on in politics, for he has a way with him;
+there's no doubt about it.
+
+You can't imagine how exhilarated and set-up I feel, as though I'd come
+into my own again after a period of social ostracism. I must confess
+that I get lonely for some one who talks my kind of nonsensical talk.
+Betsy trots off home every week end, and the doctor is conversational
+enough, but, oh, so horribly logical! Gordon somehow seems to stand for
+the life I belong to,--of country clubs and motors and dancing and sport
+and politeness,--a poor, foolish, silly life, if you will, but mine own.
+And I have missed it. This serving society business is theoretically
+admirable and compelling and interesting, but deadly stupid in its
+working details. I am afraid I was never born to set the crooked
+straight.
+
+I tried to show Gordon about and make him take an interest in the
+babies, but he wouldn't glance at them. He thinks I came just to spite
+him, which, of course, I did. Your siren call would never have lured me
+from the path of frivolity had Gordon not been so unpleasantly hilarious
+at the idea of my being able to manage an orphan asylum. I came here to
+show him that I could; and now, when I can show him, the beast refuses
+to look.
+
+I invited him to dinner, with a warning about the pressed veal; but he
+said no, thanks, that I needed a change. So we went to Brantwood Inn and
+had broiled lobster. I had positively forgotten that the creatures were
+edible.
+
+This morning at seven o'clock I was wakened by the furious ringing of
+the telephone bell. It was Gordon at the station, about to resume his
+journey to Washington. He was in quite a contrite mood about the asylum,
+and apologized largely for refusing to look at my children. It was not
+that he didn't like orphans, he said; it was just that he didn't like
+them in juxtaposition to me. And to prove his good intentions, he would
+send them a bag of peanuts.
+
+I feel as fresh and revivified after my little fling as though I'd had a
+real vacation. There's no doubt about it, an hour or so of exciting talk
+is more of a tonic to me than a pint of iron and strychnine pills.
+
+You owe me two letters, dear Madam. Pay them TOUT DE SUITE, or I lay
+down my pen forever.
+
+Yours, as usual,
+
+S. McB.
+
+
+Tuesday, 5 P.M. My dear Enemy:
+
+I am told that during my absence this afternoon you paid us a call and
+dug up a scandal. You claim that the children under Miss Snaith are not
+receiving their due in the matter of cod-liver oil.
+
+I am sorry if your medicinal orders have not been carried out, but you
+must know that it is a difficult matter to introduce that abominably
+smelling stuff into the inside of a squirming child. And poor Miss
+Snaith is a very much overworked person. She has ten more children to
+care for than should rightly fall into the lot of any single woman, and
+until we find her another assistant, she has very little time for the
+fancy touches you demand.
+
+Also, my dear Enemy, she is very susceptible to abuse. When you feel in
+a fighting mood, I wish you would expend your belligerence upon me. I
+don't mind it; quite the contrary. But that poor lady has retired to her
+room in a state of hysterics, leaving nine babies to be tucked into bed
+by whomever it may concern.
+
+If you have any powders that would be settling to her nerves, please
+send them back by Sadie Kate.
+
+Yours truly,
+
+S. McBRIDE.
+
+
+Wednesday Morning.
+
+Dear Dr. MacRae:
+
+I am not taking an unintelligent stand in the least; I am simply asking
+that you come to me with all complaints, and not stir up my staff in any
+such volcanic fashion as that of yesterday.
+
+I endeavor to carry out all of your orders--of a medical nature--with
+scrupulous care. In the present case there seems to have been
+some negligence; I don't know what did become of those fourteen
+unadministered bottles of cod-liver oil that you have made such a fuss
+about, but I shall investigate.
+
+And I cannot, for various reasons, pack off Miss Snaith in the summary
+fashion you demand. She may be, in certain respects, inefficient;
+but she is kind to the children, and with supervision will answer
+temporarily.
+
+Yours truly,
+
+S. McBRIDE.
+
+
+Thursday.
+
+Dear Enemy:
+
+SOYEZ TRANQUILLE. I have issued orders, and in the future the children
+shall receive all of the cod-liver oil that by rights is theirs. A
+wilfu' man maun hae his way.
+
+S. McB.
+
+
+March 22.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+Asylum life has looked up a trifle during the past few days--since the
+great Cod-Liver Oil War has been raging. The first skirmish occurred on
+Tuesday, and I unfortunately missed it, having accompanied four of
+my children on a shopping trip to the village. I returned to find the
+asylum teeming with hysterics. Our explosive doctor had paid us a visit.
+
+Sandy has two passions in life: one is for cod-liver oil and the other
+for spinach, neither popular in our nursery. Some time ago--before I
+came, in fact--he had ordered cod-liver oil for all of the
+{aenemic} --Heavens! there's that word again! {aneamic}--children, and
+had given instructions as to its application to Miss Snaith. Yesterday,
+in his suspicious Scotch fashion, he began nosing about to find out why
+the poor little rats weren't fattening up as fast as he thought they
+ought, and he unearthed a hideous scandal. They haven't received a whiff
+of cod-liver oil for three whole weeks! At that point he exploded, and
+all was joy and excitement and hysterics.
+
+Betsy says that she had to send Sadie Kate to the laundry on an
+improvised errand, as his language was not fit for orphan ears. By the
+time I got home he had gone, and Miss Snaith had retired, weeping, to
+her room, and the whereabouts of fourteen bottles of cod-liver oil was
+still unexplained. He had accused her at the top of his voice of taking
+them herself. Imagine Miss Snaith,--she who looks so innocent and
+chinless and inoffensive--stealing cod-liver oil from these poor
+helpless little orphans and guzzling it in private!
+
+Her defense consisted in hysterical assertions that she loved the
+children, and had done her duty as she saw it. She did not believe in
+giving medicine to babies; she thought drugs bad for their poor little
+stomachs. You can imagine Sandy! Oh, dear! oh, dear! To think I missed
+it!
+
+Well, the tempest raged for three days, and Sadie Kate nearly ran her
+little legs off carrying peppery messages back and forth between us
+and the doctor. It is only under stress that I communicate with him by
+telephone, as he has an interfering old termagant of a housekeeper who
+"listens in" on the down-stairs switch. I don't wish the scandalous
+secrets of the John Grier spread abroad. The doctor demanded Miss
+Snaith's instant dismissal, and I refused. Of course she is a vague,
+unfocused, inefficient old thing, but she does love the children, and
+with proper supervision is fairly useful.
+
+At least, in the light of her exalted family connections, I can't
+pack her off in disgrace like a drunken cook. I am hoping in time to
+eliminate her by a process of delicate suggestion; perhaps I can make
+her feel that her health requires a winter in California. And also, no
+matter what the doctor wants, so positive and dictatorial is his manner
+that just out of self-respect one must take the other side. When he
+states that the world is round, I instantly assert it to be triangular.
+
+Finally, after three pleasantly exhilarating days, the whole business
+settled itself. An apology (a very dilute one) was extracted from him
+for being so unkind to the poor lady, and full confession, with promises
+for the future, was drawn from her. It seems that she couldn't bear
+to make the little dears take the stuff, but, for obvious reasons, she
+couldn't bear to cross Dr. MacRae, so she hid the last fourteen bottles
+in a dark corner of the cellar. Just how she was planning to dispose of
+her loot I don't know. Can you pawn cod-liver oil?
+
+LATER.
+
+
+Peace negotiations had just ended this afternoon, and Sandy had made a
+dignified exit, when the Hon. Cyrus Wykoff was announced. Two enemies in
+the course of an hour are really too much!
+
+The Hon. Cy was awfully impressed with the new dining room, especially
+when he heard that Betsy had put on those rabbits with her own
+lily-white hands. Stenciling rabbits on walls, he allows, is a fitting
+pursuit for a woman, but an executive position like mine is a trifle out
+of her sphere. He thinks it would be far wiser if Mr. Pendleton did not
+give me such free scope in the spending of his money.
+
+While we were still contemplating Betsy's mural flight, an awful crash
+came from the pantry, and we found Gladiola Murphy weeping among the
+ruins of five yellow plates. It is sufficiently shattering to my nerves
+to hear these crashes when I am alone, but it is peculiarly shattering
+when receiving a call from an unsympathetic trustee.
+
+I shall cherish that set of dishes to the best of my ability, but if you
+wish to see your gift in all its uncracked beauty, I should advise you
+to hurry North, and visit the John Grier Home without delay.
+
+Yours as ever,
+
+SALLIE.
+
+
+March 26. My dear Judy:
+
+I have just been holding an interview with a woman who wants to take
+a baby home to surprise her husband. I had a hard time convincing her
+that, since he is to support the child, it might be a delicate attention
+to consult him about its adoption. She argued stubbornly that it was
+none of his business, seeing that the onerous work of washing and
+dressing and training would fall upon her. I am really beginning to feel
+sorry for men. Some of them seem to have very few rights.
+
+Even our pugnacious doctor I suspect of being a victim of domestic
+tyranny, and his housekeeper's at that. It is scandalous the way Maggie
+McGurk neglects the poor man. I have had to put him in charge of an
+orphan. Sadie Kate, with a very housewifely air, is this moment sitting
+cross-legged on the hearth rug sewing buttons on his overcoat while he
+is upstairs tending babies.
+
+You would never believe it, but Sandy and I are growing quite
+confidential in a dour Scotch fashion. It has become his habit, when
+homeward bound after his professional calls, to chug up to our door
+about four in the afternoon, and make the rounds of the house to
+make sure that we are not developing cholera morbus or infanticide or
+anything catching, and then present himself at four-thirty at my library
+door to talk over our mutual problems.
+
+Does he come to see me? Oh, no, indeed; he comes to get tea and toast
+and marmalade. The man hath a lean and hungry look. His housekeeper
+doesn't feed him enough. As soon as I get the upper hand of him a little
+more, I am going to urge him on to revolt.
+
+Meanwhile he is very grateful for something to eat, but oh, so funny in
+his attempts at social grace! At first he would hold a cup of tea in
+one hand, a plate of muffins in the other, and then search blankly for a
+third hand to eat them with. Now he has solved the problem. He turns in
+his toes and brings his knees together; then he folds his napkin into
+a long, narrow wedge that fills the crack between them, thus forming a
+very workable pseudo lap; after that he sits with tense muscles
+until the tea is drunk. I suppose I ought to provide a table, but the
+spectacle of Sandy with his toes turned in is the one gleam of amusement
+that my day affords.
+
+The postman is just driving in with, I trust, a letter from you. Letters
+make a very interesting break in the monotony of asylum life. If you
+wish to keep this superintendent contented, you'd better write often.
+
+. . . . . . . .
+
+Mail received and contents noted.
+
+Kindly convey my thanks to Jervis for three alligators in a swamp.
+He shows rare artistic taste in the selection of his post cards. Your
+seven-page illustrated letter from Miami arrives at the same time. I
+should have known Jervis from the palm tree perfectly, even without the
+label, as the tree has so much the more hair of the two. Also, I have a
+polite bread-and-butter letter from my nice young man in Washington,
+and a book from him, likewise a box of candy. The bag of peanuts for the
+kiddies he has shipped by express. Did you ever know such assiduity?
+
+Jimmie favors me with the news that he is coming to visit me as soon
+as father can spare him from the factory. The poor boy does hate that
+factory so! It isn't that he is lazy; he just simply isn't interested in
+overalls. But father can't understand such a lack of taste. Having built
+up the factory, he of course has developed a passion for overalls,
+which should have been inherited by his eldest son. I find it awfully
+convenient to have been born a daughter; I am not asked to like
+overalls, but am left free to follow any morbid career I may choose,
+such as this.
+
+To return to my mail: There arrives an advertisement from a wholesale
+grocer, saying that he has exceptionally economical brands of oatmeal,
+rice, flour, prunes, and dried apples that he packs specially for
+prisons and charitable institutions. Sounds nutritious, doesn't it?
+
+I also have letters from a couple of farmers, each of whom would like
+to have a strong, husky boy of fourteen who is not afraid of work, their
+object being to give him a good home. These good homes appear with great
+frequency just as the spring planting is coming on. When we investigated
+one of them last week, the village minister, in answer to our usual
+question, "Does he own any property?" replied in a very guarded manner,
+"I think he must own a corkscrew."
+
+You would hardly credit some of the homes that we have investigated. We
+found a very prosperous country family the other day, who lived huddled
+together in three rooms in order to keep the rest of their handsome
+house clean. The fourteen-year girl they wished to adopt, by way of a
+cheap servant, was to sleep in the same tiny room with their own three
+children. Their kitchen-dining-parlor apartment was more cluttered up
+and unaired than any city tenement I ever saw, and the thermometer at
+eighty-four. One could scarcely say they were living there; they were
+rather COOKING. You may be sure they got no girl from us!
+
+I have made one invariable rule--every other is flexible. No child is
+to be placed out unless the proposed family can offer better advantages
+than we can give. I mean than we are going to be able to give in the
+course of a few months, when we get ourselves made over into a model
+institution. I shall have to confess that at present we are still pretty
+bad.
+
+But anyway, I am very CHOOSEY in regard to homes, and I reject
+three-fourths of those that offer.
+
+LATER.
+
+
+Gordon has made honorable amends to my children. His bag of peanuts is
+here, made of burlap and three feet high.
+
+Do you remember the dessert of peanuts and maple sugar they used to
+give us at college? We turned up our noses, but ate. I am instituting it
+here, and I assure you we don't turn up our noses. It is a pleasure to
+feed children who have graduated from a course of Mrs. Lippett; they are
+pathetically grateful for small blessings.
+
+You can't complain that this letter is too short.
+
+Yours,
+
+On the verge of writer's cramp,
+
+S. McB.
+
+
+THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
+
+Off and on, all day Friday.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+You will be interested to hear that I have encountered another
+enemy--the doctor's housekeeper. I had talked to the creature several
+times over the telephone, and had noted that her voice was not
+distinguished by the soft, low accents that mark the caste of "Vere de
+Vere"; but now I have seen her. This morning, while returning from the
+village, I made a slight detour, and passed our doctor's house. Sandy
+is evidently the result of environment--olive green, with a mansard roof
+and the shades pulled down. You would think he had just been holding a
+funeral.
+
+I don't wonder that the amenities of life have somewhat escaped the
+poor man. After studying the outside of his house, I was filled with
+curiosity to see if the inside matched.
+
+Having sneezed five times before breakfast this morning, I decided to
+go in and consult him professionally. To be sure, he is a children's
+specialist, but sneezes are common to all ages. So I boldly marched up
+the steps and rang the bell.
+
+Hark! What sound is that that breaks upon our revelry? The Hon. Cy's
+voice, as I live, approaching up the stairs. I've letters to write, and
+I can't be tormented by his blether, so I am rushing Jane to the door
+with orders to look him firmly in the eye and tell him I am out.
+
+. . . . . . . .
+
+On with the dance! Let joy be unconfined. He's gone.
+
+But those eight stars represent eight agonizing minutes spent in the
+dark of my library closet. The Hon. Cy received Jane's communication
+with the affable statement that he would sit down and wait. Whereupon
+he entered and sat. But did Jane leave me to languish in the closet? No;
+she enticed him to the nursery to see the AWFUL thing that Sadie Kate
+has done. The Hon. Cy loves to see awful things, particularly when done
+by Sadie Kate. I haven't an idea what scandal Jane is about to disclose;
+but no matter, he has gone.
+
+Where was I? Oh, yes; I had rung the doctor's bell.
+
+The door was opened by a large, husky person with her sleeves rolled up.
+She looked very businesslike, with a hawk's nose and cold gray eyes.
+
+"Well?" said she, her tone implying that I was a vacuum-cleaning agent.
+
+"Good morning." I smiled affably, and stepped inside. "Is this Mrs.
+McGurk?"
+
+"It is," said she. "An' ye'll be the new young woman in the orphan
+asylum?"
+
+"I am that," said I. "Is himself at home?"
+
+"He is not," said she.
+
+"But this is his office hour."
+
+"He don't keep it regular'."
+
+"He ought," said I, sternly. "Kindly tell him that Miss McBride called
+to consult him, and ask him to look in at the John Grier Home this
+afternoon."
+
+"Ump'!" grunted Mrs. McGurk, and closed the door so promptly that she
+shut in the hem of my skirt.
+
+When I told the doctor this afternoon, he shrugged his shoulders, and
+observed that that was Maggie's gracious way.
+
+"And why do you put up with Maggie?" said I.
+
+"And where would I find any one better?" said he. "Doing the work for
+a lone man who comes as irregularly to meals as a twenty-four-hour day
+will permit is no sinecure. She furnishes little sunshine in the home,
+but she does manage to produce a hot dinner at nine o'clock at night."
+
+Just the same, I am willing to wager that her hot dinners are neither
+delicious nor well served. She's an inefficient, lazy old termagant, and
+I know why she doesn't like me. She imagines that I want to steal away
+the doctor and oust her from a comfortable position, something of a
+joke, considering. But I am not undeceiving her; it will do the old
+thing good to worry a little. She may cook him better dinners, and
+fatten him up a trifle. I understand that fat men are good-natured.
+
+TEN O'CLOCK.
+
+
+I don't know what silly stuff I have been writing to you off and on all
+day, between interruptions. It has got to be night at last, and I am too
+tired to do so much as hold up my head. Your song tells the sad truth,
+"There is no joy in life but sleep."
+
+I bid you good night.
+
+S. McB.
+
+
+Isn't the English language absurd? Look at those forty monosyllables in
+a row!
+
+
+J. G. H.,
+
+April 1.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+I have placed out Isador Gutschneider. His new mother is a Swedish
+woman, fat and smiling, with blue eyes and yellow hair. She chose him
+out of the whole nurseryful of children because he was the brunettest
+baby there. She has always loved brunettes, but in her most ambitious
+dreams has never hoped to have one of her own. His name is going to be
+changed to Oscar Carlson, after his new dead uncle.
+
+My first trustees' meeting is to occur next Wednesday. I confess that I
+am not looking forward to it with impatience--especially as an inaugural
+address by me will be its chief feature. I wish our president were here
+to back me up! But at least I am sure of one thing. I am never going to
+adopt the Uriah Heepish attitude toward trustees that characterized Mrs.
+Lippett's manners. I shall treat "first Wednesdays" as a pleasant social
+diversion, my day at home, when the friends of the asylum gather for
+discussion and relaxation; and I shall endeavor not to let our pleasures
+discommode the orphans. You see how I have taken to heart the unhappy
+experiences of that little Jerusha.
+
+Your last letter has arrived, and no suggestion in it of traveling
+North. Isn't it about time that you were turning your faces back toward
+Fifth Avenue? Hame is hame, be 't ever sae hamely. Don't you marvel at
+the Scotch that flows so readily from my pen? Since being acquent' wi'
+Sandy, I hae gathered a muckle new vocabulary. The dinner gong! I leave
+you, to devote a revivifying half-hour to mutton hash. We eat to live in
+the John Grier Home.
+
+SIX O'CLOCK.
+
+
+The Hon. Cy has been calling again. He drops in with great frequency,
+hoping to catch me IN DELICTU. How I do not like that man! He is a pink,
+fat, puffy old thing, with a pink, fat, puffy soul. I was in a very
+cheery, optimistic frame of mind before his arrival, but now I shall do
+nothing but grumble for the rest of the day.
+
+He deplores all of the useless innovations that I am endeavoring to
+introduce, such as a cheerful playroom, prettier clothes, baths, and
+better food and fresh air and play and fun and ice-cream and kisses.
+He says that I will unfit these children to occupy the position in life
+that God has called them to occupy.
+
+At that my Irish blood came to the surface, and I told him that if
+God had planned to make all of these 113 little children into useless,
+ignorant, unhappy citizens, I was going to fool God! That we weren't
+educating them out of their class in the least. We were educating them
+INTO their natural class much more effectually than is done in the
+average family. We weren't trying to force them into college if they
+hadn't any brains, as happens with rich men's sons; and we weren't
+putting them to work at fourteen if they were naturally ambitious,
+as happens with poor men's sons. We were watching them closely and
+individually and discovering their level. If our children showed an
+aptitude to become farm laborers and nurse-maids, we were going to teach
+them to be the best possible farm laborers and nurse-maids; and if they
+showed a tendency to become lawyers, we would turn them into honest,
+intelligent, open-minded lawyers. (He's a lawyer himself, but certainly
+not an open-minded one.)
+
+He grunted when I had finished my remarks, and stirred his tea
+vigorously. Whereupon I suggested that perhaps he needed another lump of
+sugar, and dropped it in, and left him to absorb it.
+
+The only way to deal with trustees is with a firm and steady hand. You
+have to keep them in their places.
+
+Oh, my dear! that smudge in the corner was caused by Singapore's black
+tongue. He is trying to send you an affectionate kiss. Poor Sing thinks
+he's a lap dog--isn't it a tragedy when people mistake their vocations?
+I myself am not always certain that I was born an orphan asylum
+superintendent.
+
+Yours, til deth,
+
+S. McB.
+
+
+SUPERINTENDENT'S OFFICE,
+
+JOHN GRIER HOME,
+
+April 4.
+
+THE PENDLETON FAMILY,
+
+Palm Beach, Florida.
+
+Dear Sir and Madam:
+
+I have weathered my first visitors' day, and made the trustees a
+beautiful speech. Everybody said it was a beautiful speech--even my
+enemies.
+
+Mr. Gordon Hallock's recent visit was exceptionally opportune; I gleaned
+from him many suggestions as to how to carry an audience.
+
+"Be funny."--I told about Sadie Kate and a few other cherubs that you
+don't know.
+
+"Keep it concrete and fitted to the intelligence of your audience."--I
+watched the Hon. Cy, and never said a thing that he couldn't understand.
+
+"Flatter your hearers."--I hinted delicately that all of these new
+reforms were due to the wisdom and initiative of our peerless trustees.
+
+"Give it a high moral tone, with a dash of pathos."--I dwelt upon the
+parentless condition of these little wards of Society. And it was very
+affecting--my enemy wiped away a tear!
+
+Then I fed them up on chocolate and whipped cream and lemonade and
+tartar sandwiches, and sent them home, expansive and beaming, but
+without any appetite for dinner.
+
+I dwell thus at length upon our triumph, in order to create in you a
+happy frame of mind, before passing to the higeous calamity that so
+nearly wrecked the occasion.
+
+     "Now follows the dim horror of my tale,
+     And I feel I'm growing gradually pale,
+          For, even at this day,
+          Though its smell has passed away,
+     When I venture to remember it, I quail!"
+
+
+You never heard of our little Tammas Kehoe, did you? I simply haven't
+featured Tammas because he requires so much ink and time and vocabulary.
+He's a spirited lad, and he follows his dad, a mighty hunter of
+old--that sounds like more Bab Ballads, but it isn't; I made it up as I
+went along.
+
+We can't break Tammas of his inherited predatory instincts. He shoots
+the chickens with bows and arrows and lassoes the pigs and plays
+bull-fight with the cows--and oh, is very destructive! But his crowning
+villainy occurred an hour before the trustees' meeting, when we wanted
+to be so clean and sweet and engaging.
+
+It seems that he had stolen the rat trap from the oat bin, and had set
+it up in the wood lot, and yesterday morning was so fortunate as to
+catch a fine big skunk.
+
+Singapore was the first to report the discovery. He returned to the
+house and rolled on the rugs in a frenzy of remorse over his part of the
+business. While our attention was occupied with Sing, Tammas was busily
+skinning his prey in the seclusion of the woodshed. He buttoned the pelt
+inside his jacket, conveyed it by a devious route through the length
+of this building, and concealed it under his bed where he thought it
+wouldn't be found.
+
+Then he went--per schedule--to the basement to help freeze the ice-cream
+for our guests. You notice that we omitted ice-cream from the menu.
+
+In the short time that remained we created all the counter-irritation
+that was possible. Noah (negro furnace man) started smudge fires at
+intervals about the grounds. Cook waved a shovelful of burning coffee
+through the house. Betsy sprinkled the corridors with ammonia. Miss
+Snaith daintily treated the rugs with violet water. I sent an emergency
+call to the doctor who came and mixed a gigantic solution of chlorid
+of lime. But still, above and beneath and through every other odor, the
+unlaid ghost of Tammas's victim cried for vengeance.
+
+The first business that came up at the meeting, was whether we should
+dig a hole and bury, not only Tammas, but the whole main building. You
+can see with what finesse I carried off the shocking event, when I tell
+you that the Hon. Cy went home chuckling over a funny story, instead of
+grumbling at the new superintendent's inability to manage boys.
+
+We've our ain bit weird to dree!
+
+As ever,
+
+S. McBRIDE.
+
+
+THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
+
+Friday, likewise Saturday.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+Singapore is still living in the carriage house, and receiving a daily
+carbolic-scented bath from Tammas Kehoe. I am hoping that some day, in
+the distant future, my darling will be fit to return.
+
+You will be pleased to hear that I have instituted a new method of
+spending your money. We are henceforth to buy a part of our shoes and
+drygoods and drug store comestibles from local shops, at not quite such
+low prices as the wholesale jobbers give, but still at a discount,
+and the education that is being thrown in is worth the difference. The
+reason is this: I have made the discovery that half of my children know
+nothing of money or its purchasing power. They think that shoes and corn
+meal and red-flannel petticoats and mutton stew and gingham shirts just
+float down from the blue sky.
+
+Last week I dropped a new green dollar bill out of my purse, and an
+eight-year-old urchin picked it up and asked if he could keep that
+picture of a bird. (American eagle in the center.) That child had never
+seen a bill in his life! I began an investigation, and discovered that
+dozens of children in this asylum have never bought anything or have
+ever seen anybody buy anything. And we are planning to turn them out
+at sixteen into a world governed entirely by the purchasing power of
+dollars and cents! Good heavens! just think of it! They are not to lead
+sheltered lives with somebody eternally looking after them; they have
+got to know how to get the very most they can out of every penny they
+can manage to earn.
+
+I pondered the question all one night, at intervals, and went to the
+village at nine o'clock the next morning. I held conferences with seven
+storekeepers; found four open-minded and helpful, two doubtful, and
+one actively stupid. I have started with the four--drygoods, groceries,
+shoes, and stationery. In return for somewhat large orders from us, they
+are to turn themselves and their clerks into teachers for my children,
+who are to go to the stores, inspect the stocks, and do their own
+purchasing with real money.
+
+For example, Jane needs a spool of blue sewing-silk and a yard of
+elastic; so two little girls, intrusted with a silver quarter, trot
+hand in hand to Mr. Meeker's. They match the silk with anxious care, and
+watch the clerk jealously while he measures the elastic, to make sure
+that he doesn't stretch it. Then they bring back six cents change,
+receive my thanks and praise, and retire to the ranks tingling with a
+sense of achievement.
+
+Isn't it pathetic? Ordinary children of ten or twelve automatically know
+so many things that our little incubator chicks have never dreamed of.
+But I have a variety of plans on foot. Just give me time, and you
+will see. One of these days I'll be turning out some nearly normal
+youngsters.
+
+
+LATER.
+
+
+I've an empty evening ahead, so I'll settle to some further gossip with
+you.
+
+You remember the peanuts that Gordon Hallock sent? Well, I was so
+gracious when I thanked him that it incited him to fresh effort. He
+apparently went into a toy shop, and placed himself unreservedly in the
+hands of an enterprising clerk. Yesterday two husky expressmen deposited
+in our front hall a crate full of expensive furry animals built to be
+consumed by the children of the rich. They are not exactly what I should
+have purchased had I been the one to disburse such a fortune, but my
+babies find them very huggable. The chicks are now taking to bed with
+them lions and elephants and bears and giraffes. I don't know what the
+psychological effect will be. Do you suppose when they grow up they will
+all join the circus?
+
+Oh, dear me, here is Miss Snaith, coming to pay a social call.
+
+
+Good-by.
+
+S.
+
+P.S. The prodigal has returned. He sends his respectful regards, and
+three wags of the tail.
+
+
+THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
+
+April 7. My dear Judy:
+
+I have just been reading a pamphlet on manual training for girls,
+and another on the proper diet for institutions--right proportions of
+proteins, fats, starches, etc. In these days of scientific charity, when
+every problem has been tabulated, you can run an institution by chart.
+I don't see how Mrs. Lippett could have made all the mistakes she did,
+assuming, of course,that she knew how to read. But there is one quite
+important branch of institutional work that has not been touched upon,
+and I myself am gathering data. Some day I shall issue a pamphlet on the
+"Management and Control of Trustees."
+
+I must tell you the joke about my enemy--not the Hon. Cy, but my first,
+my original enemy. He has undertaken a new field of endeavor. He says
+quite soberly (everything he does is sober; he has never smiled yet)
+that he has been watching me closely since my arrival, and though I am
+untrained and foolish and flippant (sic), he doesn't think that I am
+really so superficial as I at first appeared. I have an almost masculine
+ability of grasping the whole of a question and going straight to the
+point.
+
+Aren't men funny? When they want to pay you the greatest compliment in
+their power, they naively tell you that you have a masculine mind. There
+is one compliment, incidentally, that I shall never be paying him.
+I cannot honestly say that he has a quickness of perception almost
+feminine.
+
+So, though Sandy quite plainly sees my faults, still, he thinks that
+some of them may be corrected; and he has determined to carry on my
+education from the point where the college dropped it. A person in
+my position ought to be well read in physiology, biology, psychology,
+sociology, and eugenics; she should know the hereditary effects of
+insanity, idiocy, and alcohol; should be able to administer the Binet
+test; and should understand the nervous system of a frog. In pursuance
+whereof, he has placed at my disposal his own scientific library of four
+thousand volumes. He not only fetches in the books he wants me to read,
+but comes and asks questions to make sure I haven't skipped.
+
+We devoted last week to the life and letters of the Jukes family.
+Margaret, the mother of criminals, six generations ago, founded a
+prolific line, and her progeny, mostly in jail, now numbers some twelve
+hundred. Moral: watch the children with a bad heredity so carefully that
+none of them can ever have any excuse for growing up into Jukeses.
+
+So now, as soon as we have finished our tea, Sandy and I get out
+the Doomsday Book, and pore over its pages in an anxious search for
+alcoholic parents. It's a cheerful little game to while away the
+twilight hour after the day's work is done.
+
+QUELLE VIE! Come home fast and take me out of it. I'm wearying for the
+sight of you.
+
+SALLIE.
+
+
+
+J. G. H.,
+
+Thursday morning. My dear Pendleton Family:
+
+I have received your letter, and I seize my pen to stop you. I don't
+wish to be relieved. I take it back. I change my mind. The person you
+are planning to send sounds like an exact twin of Miss Snaith. How can
+you ask me to turn over my darling children to a kind, but ineffectual,
+middle-aged lady without any chin? The very thought of it wrings a
+mother's heart.
+
+Do you imagine that such a woman can carry on this work even
+temporarily? No! The manager of an institution like this has got to be
+young and husky and energetic and forceful and efficient and red-haired
+and sweet-tempered, like me. Of course I've been discontented,--anybody
+would be with things in such a mess,--but it's what you socialists call
+a holy discontent. And do you think that I am going to abandon all of
+the beautiful reforms I have so painstakingly started? No! I am not
+to be moved from this spot until you find a superintendent superior to
+Sallie McBride.
+
+That does not mean, though, that I am mortgaging myself forever. Just
+for the present, until things get on their feet. While the face washing,
+airing, reconstructing period lasts, I honestly believe you chose the
+right person when you hit upon me. I LOVE to plan improvements and order
+people about.
+
+This is an awfully messy letter, but I'm dashing it off in three minutes
+in order to catch you before you definitely engage that pleasant,
+inefficient middle-aged person without a chin.
+
+Please, kind lady and gentleman, don't do me out of me job! Let me stay
+a few months longer. Just gimme a chance to show what I'm good for, and
+I promise you won't never regret it.
+
+S. McB.
+
+
+J. G. H.,
+
+Thursday afternoon.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+I've composed a poem--a paean of victory.
+
+Robin MacRae Smiled today.
+
+It's the truth! S. McB.
+
+
+
+THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
+
+April 13.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+I am gratified to learn that you were gratified to learn that I am going
+to stay. I hadn't realized it, but I am really getting sort of attached
+to orphans.
+
+It's an awful disappointment that Jervis has business which will keep
+you South so much longer. I am bursting with talk, and it is such a
+laborious nuisance having to write everything I want to say.
+
+Of course I am glad that we are to have the building remodeled, and I
+think all of your ideas good, but I have a few extra good ones myself.
+It will be nice to have the new gymnasium and sleeping-porches, but,
+oh, my soul does long for cottages! The more I look into the internal
+workings of an orphan asylum, the more I realize that the only type
+of asylum that can compete with a private family is one on the cottage
+system. So long as the family is the unit of society, children should be
+hardened early to family life.
+
+The problem that is keeping me awake at present is, What to do with the
+children while we are being made over? It is hard to live in a house and
+build it at the same time. How would it be if I rented a circus tent and
+pitched it on the lawn?
+
+Also, when we plunge into our alterations, I want a few guest rooms
+where our children can come back when ill or out of work. The great
+secret of our lasting influence in their lives will be our watchful care
+afterward. What a terrible ALONE feeling it must give a person not to
+have a family hovering in the background! With all my dozens of aunts
+and uncles and mothers and fathers and cousins and brothers and sisters,
+I can't visualize it. I'd be terrified and panting if I didn't have lots
+of cover to run to. And for these forlorn little mites, somehow or other
+the John Grier Home must supply their need. So, dear people, send me
+half a dozen guest rooms, if you please.
+
+Good-by, and I'm glad you didn't put in the other woman. The very
+suggestion of somebody else taking over my own beautiful reforms before
+they were even started, stirred up all the opposition in me. I'm afraid
+I'm like Sandy--I canna think aught is dune richt except my ain hand is
+in 't.
+
+Yours, for the present,
+
+SALLIE McBRIDE.
+
+
+THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
+
+Sunday.
+
+Dear Gordon:
+
+I know that I haven't written lately; you have a perfect right to
+grumble, but oh dear! oh dear! you can't imagine what a busy person an
+orphan asylum superintendent is. And all the writing energy I possess
+has to be expended upon that voracious Judy Abbott Pendleton. If three
+days go by without a letter she telegraphs to know if the asylum has
+burned; whereas, if you--nice man--go letterless, you simply send us a
+present to remind us of your existence. So, you see, it's distinctly to
+our advantage to slight you often.
+
+You will probably be annoyed when I tell you that I have promised to
+stay on here. They finally did find a woman to take my place, but she
+wasn't at all the right type and would have answered only temporarily.
+And, my dear Gordon, it's true, when I faced saying good-by to this
+feverish planning and activity, Worcester somehow looked rather
+colorless. I couldn't bear to let my asylum go unless I was sure of
+substituting a life packed equally full of sensation.
+
+I know the alternative you will suggest, but please don't--just now. I
+told you before that I must have a few months longer to make up my mind.
+And in the meantime I like the feeling that I'm of use in the world.
+There's something constructive and optimistic about working with
+children; that is, if you look at it from my cheerful point of view,
+and not from our Scotch doctor's. I've never seen anybody like that man;
+he's always pessimistic and morbid and down. It's best not to be too
+intelligent about insanity and dipsomania and all the other hereditary
+details. I am just about ignorant enough to be light-hearted and
+effective in a place like this.
+
+The thought of all of these little lives expanding in every direction
+eternally thrills me. There are so many possibilities in our
+child garden for every kind of flower. It has been planted rather
+promiscuously, to be sure, but though we undoubtedly shall gather
+a number of weeds, we are also hoping for some rare and beautiful
+blossoms. Am I not growing sentimental? It is due to hunger--and there
+goes the dinner-gong! We are going to have a delicious meal: roast beef
+and creamed carrots and beet greens, with rhubarb pie for dessert. Would
+you not like to dine with me? I should love to have you.
+
+Most cordially yours,
+
+S. McB.
+
+P.S. You should see the number of poor homeless cats that these children
+want to adopt. We had four when I came, and they have all had kittens
+since. I haven't taken an exact census, but I think the institution
+possesses nineteen.
+
+
+April 15. My dear Judy:
+
+You'd like to make another slight donation to the J. G. H. out of
+the excess of last month's allowance? BENE! Will you kindly have the
+following inserted in all low-class metropolitan dailies:
+
+                Notice!
+     To Parents Planning to Abandon their Children:
+     Please do it before they have reached their third year.
+
+
+I can't think of any action on the part of abandoning parents that would
+help us more effectually. This having to root up evil before you begin
+planting good is slow, discouraging work.
+
+We have one child here who has almost floored me; but I WILL NOT
+acknowledge myself beaten by a child of five. He alternates between
+sullen moroseness, when he won't speak a word, and the most violent
+outbursts of temper, when he smashes everything within reach. He has
+been here only three months, and in that time he has destroyed nearly
+every piece of bric-a-brac in the institution--not, by the way, a great
+loss to art.
+
+A month or so before I came he pulled the tablecloth from the officers'
+table while the girl in charge was in the corridor sounding the gong.
+The soup had already been served. You can imagine the mess! Mrs. Lippett
+half killed the child on that occasion, but the killing did nothing to
+lessen the temper, which was handed on to me intact.
+
+His father was Italian and his mother Irish; he has red hair and
+freckles from County Cork and the most beautiful brown eyes that ever
+came out of Naples. After the father was stabbed in a fight and the
+mother had died of alcoholism, the poor little chap by some chance or
+other got to us. I suspect that he belongs in the Catholic Protectory.
+As for his manners--oh dear! oh dear! They are what you would expect. He
+kicks and bites and swears. I have dubbed him Punch.
+
+Yesterday he was brought squirming and howling to my office, charged
+with having knocked down a little girl and robbed her of her doll. Miss
+Snaith plumped him into a chair behind me, and left him to grow quiet,
+while I went on with my writing. I was suddenly startled by an awful
+crash. He had pushed that big green jardiniere off the window-sill and
+broken it into five hundred pieces. I jumped with a suddenness that
+swept the ink-bottle to the floor, and when Punch saw that second
+catastrophe, he stopped roaring with rage and threw back his head and
+roared with laughter. The child is DIABOLICAL.
+
+I have determined to try a new method of discipline that I don't believe
+in the whole of his forlorn little life he has ever experienced. I am
+going to see what praise and encouragement and love will do. So, instead
+of scolding him about the jardiniere, I assumed that it was an accident.
+I kissed him and told him not to feel bad; that I didn't mind in the
+least. It shocked him into being quiet; he simply held his breath and
+stared while I wiped away his tears and sopped up the ink.
+
+The child just now is the biggest problem that the J. G. H. affords.
+He needs the most patient, loving, individual care--a proper mother
+and father, likewise some brothers and sisters and a grandmother. But I
+can't place him in a respectable family until I make over his language
+and his propensity to break things. I separated him from the other
+children, and kept him in my room all the morning, Jane having removed
+to safe heights all destructible OBJETS D'ART. Fortunately, he loves
+to draw, and he sat on a rug for two hours, and occupied himself with
+colored pencils. He was so surprised when I showed an interest in a
+red-and-green ferryboat, with a yellow flag floating from the mast, that
+he became quite profanely affable. Until then I couldn't get a word out
+of him.
+
+In the afternoon Dr. MacRae dropped in and admired the ferryboat, while
+Punch swelled with the pride of creation. Then, as a reward for being
+such a good little boy, the doctor took him out in his automobile on a
+visit to a country patient.
+
+Punch was restored to the fold at five o'clock by a sadder and wiser
+doctor. At a sedate country estate he had stoned the chickens, smashed
+a cold frame, and swung the pet Angora cat by its tail. Then when the
+sweet old lady tried to make him be kind to poor pussy, he told her to
+go to hell.
+
+I can't bear to consider what some of these children have seen and
+experienced. It will take years of sunshine and happiness and love to
+eradicate the dreadful memories that they have stored up in the far-back
+corners of their little brains. And there are so many children and so
+few of us that we can't hug them enough; we simply haven't arms or laps
+to go around.
+
+MAIS PARLONS D'AUTRES CHOSES! Those awful questions of heredity and
+environment that the doctor broods over so constantly are getting into
+my blood, too; and it's a vicious habit. If a person is to be of any
+use in a place like this, she must see nothing but good in the world.
+Optimism is the only wear for a social worker.
+
+"'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock"--do you know where that
+beautiful line of poetry comes from? "Cristabel," of English K. Mercy!
+how I hated that course! You, being an English shark, liked it; but
+I never understood a word that was said from the time I entered the
+classroom till I left it. However, the remark with which I opened this
+paragraph is true. It IS the middle of night by the mantelpiece clock,
+so I'll wish you pleasant dreams. ADDIO!
+
+SALLIE.
+
+
+Tuesday.
+
+
+Dear Enemy:
+
+You doctored the whole house, then stalked past my library with your
+nose in the air, while I was waiting tea with a plate of Scotch scones
+sitting on the trivet, ordered expressly for you as a peace-offering.
+
+If you are really hurt, I will read the Kallikak book; but I must tell
+you that you are working me to death. It takes almost all of my energy
+to be an effective superintendent, and this university extension course
+that you are conducting I find wearing. You remember how indignant you
+were one day last week because I confessed to having stayed up until one
+o'clock the night before? Well, my dear man, if I were to accomplish all
+the vicarious reading you require, I should sit up until morning every
+night.
+
+However, bring it in. I usually manage half an hour of recreation after
+dinner, and though I had wanted to glance at Wells's latest novel, I
+will amuse myself instead with your feeble-minded family.
+
+Life of late is unco steep. Obligingly yours,
+
+S. McB.
+
+
+THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
+
+April 17.
+
+Dear Gordon:
+
+Thank you for the tulips, likewise the lilies of the valley. They are
+most becoming to my blue Persian bowls.
+
+Have you ever heard of the Kallikaks? Get the book and read them up.
+They are a two-branch family in New Jersey, I think, though their
+real name and origin is artfully concealed. But, anyway,--and this is
+true,--six generations ago a young gentleman, called for convenience
+Martin Kallikak, got drunk one night and temporarily eloped with a
+feeble-minded barmaid, thus founding a long line of feeble-minded
+Kallikaks,--drunkards, gamblers, prostitutes, horse thieves,--a scourge
+to New Jersey and surrounding States.
+
+Martin later straightened up, married a normal woman, and founded a
+second line of proper Kallikaks,--judges, doctors, farmers, professors,
+politicians,--a credit to their country. And there the two branches
+still are, flourishing side by side. You can see what a blessing it
+would have been to New Jersey if something drastic had happened to that
+feeble-minded barmaid in her infancy.
+
+It seems that feeblemindedness is a very hereditary quality, and
+science isn't able to overcome it. No operation has been discovered for
+introducing brains into the head of a child who didn't start with them.
+And the child grows up with, say, a nine-year brain in a thirty-year
+body, and becomes an easy tool for any criminal he meets. Our prisons
+are one-third full of feeble-minded convicts. Society ought to segregate
+them on feeble-minded farms, where they can earn their livings in
+peaceful menial pursuits, and not have children. Then in a generation or
+so we might be able to wipe them out.
+
+Did you know all that? It's very necessary information for a politician
+to have. Get the book and read it, please; I'd send my copy only that
+it's borrowed.
+
+It's also very necessary information for me to have. There are eleven of
+these chicks that I suspect a bit, and I am SURE of Loretta Higgins. I
+have been trying for a month to introduce one or two basic ideas into
+that child's brain, and now I know what the trouble is: her head is
+filled with a sort of soft cheesy substance instead of brain.
+
+I came up here to make over this asylum in such little details as fresh
+air and food and clothes and sunshine, but, heavens! you can see what
+problems I am facing. I've got to make over society first, so that it
+won't send me sub-normal children to work with. Excuse all this
+excited conversation; but I've just met up with the subject of
+feeble-mindedness, and it's appalling--and interesting. It is your
+business as a legislator to make laws that will remove it from the
+world. Please attend to this immediately, And oblige,
+
+S. McBRIDE,
+
+Sup't John Grier Home.
+
+
+Friday.
+
+Dear Man of Science:
+
+You didn't come today. Please don't skip us tomorrow. I have finished
+the Kallikak family and I am bursting with talk. Don't you think we
+ought to have a psychologist examine these children?
+
+We owe it to adopting parents not to saddle them with feeble-minded
+offspring.
+
+You know, I'm tempted to ask you to prescribe arsenic for Loretta's
+cold. I've diagnosed her case; she's a Kallikak. Is it right to let her
+grow up and found a line of 378 feeble-minded people for society to care
+for? Oh dear! I do hate to poison the child, but what can I do?
+
+S. McB.
+
+
+
+Dear Gordon:
+
+You aren't interested in feeble-minded people, and you are shocked
+because I am? Well, I am equally shocked because you are not. If you
+aren't interested in everything of the sort that there unfortunately is
+in this world, how can you make wise laws?
+
+You can't.
+
+However, at your request, I will converse upon a less morbid subject.
+I've just bought fifty yards of blue and rose and green and corn-colored
+hair-ribbon as an Easter present for my fifty little daughters. I am
+also thinking of sending you an Easter present. How would a nice fluffy
+little kitten please you? I can offer any of the following patterns:--
+
+
+Number 3 comes in any color, gray, black, or yellow. If you will let me
+know which you would rather have, I will express it at once.
+
+I would write a respectable letter, but it's teatime, and I see that a
+guest approaches.
+
+ADDIO!
+
+SALLIE.
+
+P.S. Don't you know some one who would like to adopt a desirable baby
+boy with seventeen nice new teeth?
+
+
+April 20. My dear Judy:
+
+One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns! We've had a Good Friday
+present of ten dozen, given by Mrs. De Peyster Lambert, a high church,
+stained-glass-window soul whom I met at a tea a few days ago. (Who
+says now that teas are a silly waste of time?) She asked me about my
+"precious little waifs," and said I was doing a noble work and would be
+rewarded. I saw buns in her eye, and sat down and talked to her for half
+an hour.
+
+Now I shall go and thank her in person, and tell her with a great deal
+of affecting detail how much those buns were appreciated by my precious
+little waifs--omitting the account of how precious little Punch threw
+his bun at Miss Snaith and plastered her neatly in the eye. I think,
+with encouragement, Mrs. De Peyster Lambert can be developed into a
+cheerful giver.
+
+Oh, I'm growing into the most shocking beggar! My family don't dare
+to visit me, because I demand BAKSHISH in such a brazen manner. I
+threatened to remove father from my calling list unless he shipped
+immediately sixty-five pairs of overalls for my prospective gardeners.
+A notice from the freight office this morning asks me to remove two
+packing cases consigned to them by the J. L. McBride Co. of Worcester;
+so I take it that father desires to continue my acquaintance. Jimmie
+hasn't sent us anything yet, and he's getting a huge salary. I write him
+frequently a pathetic list of our needs.
+
+But Gordon Hallock has learned the way to a mother's heart. I was so
+pleasant about the peanuts and menagerie that now he sends a present of
+some sort every few days, and I spend my entire time composing thank-you
+letters that aren't exact copies of the ones I've sent before. Last week
+we received a dozen big scarlet balls. The nursery is FULL of them;
+you kick them before you as you walk. And yesterday there arrived a
+half-bushel of frogs and ducks and fishes to float in the bathtubs.
+
+Send, O best of trustees, the tubs in which to float them!
+
+I am, as usual,
+
+S. McBRIDE.
+
+
+Tuesday. My dear Judy:
+
+Spring must be lurking about somewhere; the birds are arriving from the
+South. Isn't it time you followed their example?
+
+Society note from the BIRD O' PASSAGE NEWS:
+
+"Mr. and Mrs. First Robin have returned from a trip to Florida. It is
+hoped that Mr. and Mrs. Jervis Pendleton will arrive shortly."
+
+Even up here in our dilatory Dutchess County the breeze smells green.
+It makes you want to be out and away, roaming the hills, or else down on
+your knees grubbing in the dirt. Isn't it funny what farmering instincts
+the budding spring awakens in even the most urban souls?
+
+I have spent the morning making plans for little private gardens for
+every child over nine. The big potato field is doomed. That is the only
+feasible spot for sixty-two private gardens. It is near enough to be
+watched from the north windows, and yet far enough away, so that their
+messing will not injure our highly prized landscape lawn. Also the earth
+is rich, and they have some chance of success. I don't want the poor
+little chicks to scratch all summer, and then not turn up any treasure
+in the end. In order to furnish an incentive, I shall announce that
+the institution will buy their produce and pay in real money, though I
+foresee we shall be buried under a mountain of radishes.
+
+I do so want to develop self-reliance and initiative in these children,
+two sturdy qualities in which they are conspicuously lacking (with the
+exception of Sadie Kate and a few other bad ones). Children who have
+spirit enough to be bad I consider very hopeful. It's those who are good
+just from inertia that are discouraging.
+
+The last few days have been spent mainly in charming the devil out of
+Punch, an interesting task if I could devote my whole time to it.
+But with one hundred and seven other little devils to charm away, my
+attention is sorely deflected.
+
+The awful thing about this life is that whatever I am doing, the other
+things that I am not doing, but ought to be, keep tugging at my skirts.
+There is no doubt but Punch's personal devil needs the whole attention
+of a whole person,--preferably two persons,--so that they could spell
+each other and get some rest.
+
+Sadie Kate has just flown in from the nursery with news of a scarlet
+goldfish (Gordon's gift) swallowed by one of our babies. Mercy! the
+number of calamities that can occur in an orphan asylum!
+
+9 P.M.
+
+
+My children are in bed, and I've just had a thought. Wouldn't it be
+heavenly if the hibernating system prevailed among the human young?
+There would be some pleasure in running an asylum if one could just tuck
+the little darlings into bed the first of October and keep them there
+until the twenty-second of April.
+
+I'm yours, as ever,
+
+SALLIE.
+
+
+
+April 24.
+
+Dear Jervis Pendleton, Esq.:
+
+This is to supplement a night telegram which I sent you ten minutes
+ago. Fifty words not being enough to convey any idea of my emotions, I
+herewith add a thousand.
+
+As you will know by the time you receive this, I have discharged the
+farmer, and he has refused to be discharged. Being twice the size of me,
+I can't lug him to the gate and chuck him out. He wants a notification
+from the president of the board of trustees written in vigorous language
+on official paper in typewriting. So, dear president of the board of
+trustees, kindly supply all of this at your earliest convenience.
+
+Here follows the history of the case:
+
+The winter season still being with us when I arrived and farming
+activities at a low ebb, I have heretofore paid little attention to
+Robert Sterry except to note on two occasions that his pigpens needed
+cleaning; but today I sent for him to come and consult with me in regard
+to spring planting.
+
+Sterry came, as requested, and seated himself at ease in my office with
+his hat upon his head. I suggested as tactfully as might be that he
+remove it, an entirely necessary request, as little orphan boys were
+in and out on errands, and "hats off in the house" is our first rule in
+masculine deportment.
+
+Sterry complied with my request, and stiffened himself to be against
+whatever I might desire.
+
+I proceeded to the subject in hand, namely, that the diet of the
+John Grier Home in the year to come is to consist less exclusively of
+potatoes. At which our farmer grunted in the manner of the Hon. Cyrus
+Wykoff, only it was a less ethereal and gentlemanly grunt than a trustee
+permits himself. I enumerated corn and beans and onions and peas and
+tomatoes and beets and carrots and turnips as desirable substitutes.
+
+Sterry observed that if potatoes and cabbages was good enough for him,
+he guessed they was good enough for charity children.
+
+I proceeded imperturbably to say that the two-acre potato field was to
+be plowed and fertilized, and laid out into sixty individual gardens,
+the boys assisting in the work.
+
+At that Sterry exploded. The two-acre field was the most fertile and
+valuable piece of earth on the whole place. He guessed if I was to break
+that up into play gardens for the children to mess about in, I'd be
+hearing about it pretty danged quick from the board of trustees. That
+field was fitted for potatoes, it had always raised potatoes, and it was
+going to continue to raise them just as long as he had anything to say
+about it.
+
+"You have nothing whatever to say about it," I amiably replied. "I
+have decided that the two-acre field is the best plot to use for the
+children's gardens, and you and the potatoes will have to give way."
+
+Whereupon he rose in a storm of bucolic wrath, and said he'd be gol
+darned if he'd have a lot of these danged city brats interfering with
+his work.
+
+I explained--very calmly for a red-haired person with Irish
+forebears--that this place was run for the exclusive benefit of these
+children; that the children were not here to be exploited for the
+benefit of the place, a philosophy which he did not grasp, though my
+fancy city language had a slightly dampening effect. I added that what
+I required in a farmer was the ability and patience to instruct the
+boys in gardening and simple outdoor work; that I wished a man of
+large sympathies whose example would be an inspiring influence to these
+children of the city streets.
+
+Sterry, pacing about like a caged woodchuck, launched into a tirade
+about silly Sunday-school notions, and, by a transition which I did not
+grasp, passed to a review of the general subject of woman's suffrage.
+I gathered that he is not in favor of the movement. I let him argue
+himself quiet, then I handed him a check for his wages, and told him to
+vacate the tenant house by twelve o'clock next Wednesday.
+
+Sterry says he'll be danged if he will. (Excuse so many DANGEDS. It
+is the creature's only adjective.) He was engaged to work for this
+institution by the president of the board of trustees, and he will not
+move from that house until the president of the board of trustees tells
+him to go. I don't think poor Sterry realizes that since his arrival a
+new president has come to the throne.
+
+ALORS you have the story. I make no threats, but Sterry or McBride--take
+your choice, dear sir.
+
+I am also about to write to the head of the Massachusetts Agricultural
+College, at Amherst, asking him to recommend a good, practical man with
+a nice, efficient, cheerful wife, who will take the entire care of our
+modest domain of seventeen acres, and who will be a man with the right
+personality to place over our boys.
+
+If we get the farming end of this institution into running shape, it
+ought to furnish not only beans and onions for the table, but education
+for our hands and brains.
+
+
+I remain, sir, Yours most truly, S. McBRIDE, Superintendent of the John
+Grier Home.
+
+P.S. I think that Sterry will probably come back some night and throw
+rocks through the windows. Shall I have them insured?
+
+
+
+My dear Enemy:
+
+You disappeared so quickly this afternoon that I had no chance to thank
+you, but the echoes of that discharge penetrated as far as my library.
+Also, I have viewed the debris. What on earth did you do to poor Sterry?
+Watching the purposeful set of your shoulders as you strode toward the
+carriage house, I was filled with sudden compunction. I did not want the
+man murdered, merely reasoned with. I am afraid you were a little harsh.
+
+However, your technic seems to have been effective. Report says that he
+has telephoned for a moving wagon and that Mrs. Sterry is even now on
+her hands and knees ripping up the parlor carpet.
+
+For this relief much thanks.
+
+SALLIE McBRIDE.
+
+
+
+April 26.
+
+Dear Jervis:
+
+Your vigorous telegram was, after all, not needed. Dr. Robin MacRae, who
+is a grand PAWKY mon when it comes to a fight, accomplished the business
+with beautiful directness. I was so bubbling with rage that immediately
+after writing to you I called up the doctor on the telephone, and
+rehearsed the whole business over again. Now, our Sandy, whatever his
+failings (and he has them), does have an uncommon supply of common
+sense. He knows how useful those gardens are going to be, and how worse
+than useless Sterry was. Also says he, "The superintendent's authority
+must be upheld." (That, incidentally, is beautiful, coming from him.)
+But anyway, those were his words. And he hung up the receiver, cranked
+up his car, and flew up here at lawless speed. He marched straight to
+Sterry, impelled by a fine Scotch rage, and he discharged the man with
+such vigor and precision, that the carriage house window was shattered
+to fragments.
+
+Since this morning at eleven, when Sterry's wagonload of furniture
+rumbled out of the gates, a sweet peace has reigned over the J. G. H.
+A man from the village is helping us out while we hopefully await the
+farmer of our dreams.
+
+I am sorry to have troubled you with our troubles. Tell Judy that she
+owes me a letter, and won't hear from me until she has paid it. Your ob'd't
+servant,
+
+S. McBRIDE.
+
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+In my letter of yesterday to Jervis I forgotted (Punch's word) to convey
+to you our thanks for three tin bathtubs. The skyblue tub with poppies
+on the side adds a particularly bright note to the nursery. I do love
+presents for the babies that are too big to be swallowed.
+
+You will be pleased to hear that our manual training is well under way.
+The carpenter benches are being installed in the old primary room,
+and until our schoolhouse gets its new addition, our primary class
+is meeting on the front porch, in accordance with Miss Matthew's able
+suggestion.
+
+The girls' sewing classes are also in progress. A circle of benches
+under the copper beech tree accommodates the hand sewers, while the big
+girls take turns at our three machines. Just as soon as they gain
+some proficiency we will begin the glorious work of redressing the
+institution. I know you think I'm slow, but it's really a task to
+accomplish one hundred and eighty new frocks. And the girls will
+appreciate them so much more if they do the work themselves.
+
+I may also report that our hygiene system has risen to a high level. Dr.
+MacRae has introduced morning and evening exercises, and a glass of milk
+and a game of tag in the middle of school hours. He has instituted a
+physiology class, and has separated the children into small groups, so
+that they may come to his house, where he has a manikin that comes apart
+and shows all its messy insides. They can now rattle off scientific
+truths about their little digestions as fluently as Mother Goose rhymes.
+We are really becoming too intelligent for recognition. You would never
+guess that we were orphans to hear us talk; we are quite like Boston
+children.
+
+2 P.M.
+
+
+O Judy, such a calamity! Do you remember several weeks ago I told you
+about placing out a nice little girl in a nice family home where I
+hoped she would be adopted? It was a kind Christian family living in
+a pleasant country village, the foster-father a deacon in the church.
+Hattie was a sweet, obedient, housewifely little body, and it looked
+as though we had exactly fitted them to each other. My dear, she was
+returned this morning for STEALING. Scandal piled on scandal: SHE HAD
+STOLEN A COMMUNION CUP FROM CHURCH!
+
+Between her sobs and their accusations it took me half an hour to gather
+the truth. It seems that the church they attend is very modern and
+hygienic, like our doctor, and has introduced individual communion cups.
+Poor little Hattie had never heard of communion in her life. In fact,
+she wasn't very used to church, Sunday-school having always sufficed for
+her simple religious needs. But in her new home she attended both, and
+one day, to her pleased surprise, they served refreshments. But they
+skipped her. She made no comment, however; she is used to being skipped.
+
+But as they were starting home she saw that the little silver cup had
+been casually left in the seat, and supposing that it was a souvenir
+that you could take if you wished, she put it into her pocket.
+
+It came to light two days later as the most treasured ornament of her
+doll's-house. It seems that Hattie long ago saw a set of doll's dishes
+in a toy shop window, and has ever since dreamed of possessing a set of
+her own. The communion cup was not quite the same, but it answered.
+Now, if our family had only had a little less religion and a little more
+sense, they would have returned the cup, perfectly unharmed, and have
+marched Hattie to the nearest toy shop and bought her some dishes. But
+instead, they bundled the child and her belongings into the first train
+they could catch, and shoved her in at our front door, proclaiming
+loudly that she was a thief.
+
+I am pleased to say that I gave that indignant deacon and his wife such
+a thorough scolding as I am sure they have never listened to from the
+pulpit. I borrowed some vigorous bits from Sandy's vocabulary, and sent
+them home quite humbled. As for poor little Hattie, here she is back
+again, after going out with such high hopes. It has an awfully bad moral
+effect on a child to be returned to the asylum in disgrace, especially
+when she wasn't aware of committing a crime. It gives her a feeling that
+the world is full of unknown pitfalls, and makes her afraid to take
+a step. I must bend all my energies now toward finding another set of
+parents for her, and ones that haven't grown so old and settled and good
+that they have entirely forgotten their own childhood.
+
+Sunday.
+
+
+I forgot to tell you that our new farmer is here, Turnfelt by name; and
+his wife is a love, yellow hair and dimples. If she were an orphan,
+I could place her in a minute. We can't let her go to waste. I have
+a beautiful plan of building an addition to the farmer's cottage, and
+establishing under her comfortable care a sort of brooding-house where
+we can place our new little chicks, to make sure they haven't anything
+contagious and to eliminate as much profanity as possible before turning
+them loose among our other perfect chicks.
+
+How does that strike you? It is very necessary in an institution as full
+of noise and movement and stir as this to have some isolated spot where
+we can put cases needing individual attention. Some of our children
+have inherited nerves, and a period of quiet contemplation is indicated.
+Isn't my vocabulary professional and scientific? Daily intercourse with
+Dr. Robin MacRae is extremely educational.
+
+Since Turnfelt came, you should see our pigs. They are so clean and pink
+and unnatural that they don't recognize one another any more as they
+pass.
+
+Our potato field is also unrecognizable. It has been divided with string
+and pegs into as many squares as a checker-board, and every child has
+staked out a claim. Seed catalogues form our only reading matter.
+
+Noah has just returned from a trip to the village for the Sunday papers
+to amuse his leisure. Noah is a very cultivated person; he not only
+reads perfectly, but he wears tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles while he
+does it. He also brought from the post office a letter from you, written
+Friday night. I am pained to note that you do not care for "Gosta
+Berling" and that Jervis doesn't. The only comment I can make is, "What
+a shocking lack of literary taste in the Pendleton family!"
+
+Dr. MacRae has another doctor visiting him, a very melancholy gentleman
+who is at the head of a private psychopathic institution, and thinks
+there's no good in life. But I suppose this pessimistic view is natural
+if you eat three meals a day with a tableful of melancholics. He goes
+up and down the world looking for signs of degeneracy, and finds them
+everywhere. I expected, after half an hour's conversation, that he would
+ask to look down my throat to see if I had a cleft palate. Sandy's taste
+in friends seems to resemble his taste in literature. Gracious! this is
+a letter!
+
+Good-by.
+
+SALLIE.
+
+
+Thursday, May 2.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+Such a bewildering whirl of events! The J. G. H. is breathless.
+Incidentally, I am on the way toward solving my problem of what to do
+with the children while the carpenters and plumbers and masons are here.
+Or, rather, my precious brother has solved it for me.
+
+This afternoon I went over my linen supply, and made the shocking
+discovery that we have only sheets enough to change the children's beds
+every two weeks, which, it appears, is our shiftless custom. While I
+was still in the midst of my household gear, with a bunch of keys at my
+girdle, looking like the chatelaine of a medieval chateau, who should be
+ushered in but Jimmie?
+
+Being extremely occupied, I dropped a slanting kiss on his nose, and
+sent him off to look over the place in charge of my two oldest urchins.
+They collected six friends and organized a baseball game. Jimmie came
+back blown, but enthusiastic, and consented to prolong his visit over
+the week end, though after the dinner I gave him he has decided to take
+his future meals at the hotel. As we sat with our coffee before the
+fire, I confided to him my anxiety as to what should be done with the
+chicks while their new brooder is building. You know Jimmie. In one half
+a minute his plan was formulated.
+
+"Build an Adirondack camp on that little plateau up by the wood lot.
+You can make three open shacks, each holding eight bunks, and move the
+twenty-four oldest boys out there for the summer. It won't cost two
+cents."
+
+"Yes," I objected, "but it will cost more than two cents to engage a man
+to look after them."
+
+"Perfectly easy," said Jimmie, grandly. "I'll find you a college fellow
+who'll be glad to come during the vacation for his board and a mere
+pittance, only you'll have to set up more filling board than you gave me
+tonight."
+
+Dr. MacRae dropped in about nine o'clock, after visiting the hospital
+ward. We've got three cases of whooping cough, but all isolated, and no
+more coming. How those three got in is a mystery. It seems there is a
+little bird that brings whooping cough to orphan asylums.
+
+Jimmie fell upon him for backing in his camp scheme, and the doctor gave
+it enthusiastically. They seized pencil and paper and drew up plans. And
+before the evening was over, the last nail was hammered. Nothing would
+satisfy those two men but to go to the telephone at ten o'clock and
+rouse a poor carpenter from his sleep. He and some lumber are ordered
+for eight in the morning.
+
+I finally got rid of them at ten-thirty, still talking uprights and
+joists and drainage and roof slants.
+
+The excitement of Jimmie and coffee and all these building operations
+induced me to sit down immediately and write a letter to you; but I
+think, by your leave, I'll postpone further details to another time.
+Yours ever,
+
+SALLIE.
+
+
+Saturday.
+
+Dear Enemy:
+
+Will you be after dining with us at seven tonight? It's a real dinner
+party; we're going to have ice-cream.
+
+My brother has discovered a promising young man to take charge of the
+boys,--maybe you know him,--Mr. Witherspoon, at the bank. I wish to
+introduce him to asylum circles by easy steps, so PLEASE don't mention
+insanity or epilepsy or alcoholism or any of your other favorite topics.
+
+He is a gay young society leader, used to very fancy things to eat. Do
+you suppose we can ever make him happy at the John Grier Home? Yours in
+evident haste,
+
+SALLIE McBRIDE.
+
+
+Sunday.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+Jimmie was back at eight Friday morning, and the doctor at a quarter
+past. They and the carpenter and our new farmer and Noah and our two
+horses and our eight biggest boys have been working ever since. Never
+were building operations set going in faster time. I wish I had a dozen
+Jimmies on the place, though I will say that my brother works faster
+if you catch him before the first edge of his enthusiasm wears away. He
+would not be much good at chiseling out a medieval cathedral.
+
+He came back Saturday morning aglow with a new idea. He had met at
+the hotel the night before a friend who belongs to his hunting club in
+Canada, and who is cashier of our First (and only) National Bank.
+
+"He's a bully good sport," said Jimmie, "and exactly the man you want
+to camp out with those kids and lick 'em into shape. He'll be willing to
+come for his board and forty dollars a month, because he's engaged to a
+girl in Detroit and wants to save. I told him the food was rotten, but
+if he kicked enough, you'd probably get a new cook."
+
+"What's his name?" said I, with guarded interest.
+
+"He's got a peach of a name. It's Percy de Forest Witherspoon."
+
+I nearly had hysterics. Imagine a Percy de Forest Witherspoon in charge
+of those twenty-four wild little savages!
+
+But you know Jimmie when he has an idea. He had already invited Mr.
+Witherspoon to dine with me on Saturday evening, and had ordered oysters
+and squabs and ice-cream from the village caterer to help out my veal.
+It ended by my giving a very formal dinner party, with Miss Matthews and
+Betsy and the doctor included.
+
+I almost asked the Hon. Cy and Miss Snaith. Ever since I have known
+those two, I have felt that there ought to be a romance between them.
+Never have I known two people who matched so perfectly. He's a widower
+with five children. Don't you suppose it might be arranged? If he had
+a wife to take up his attention, it might deflect him a little from us.
+I'd be getting rid of them both at one stroke. It's to be considered
+among our future improvements.
+
+Anyway, we had our dinner. And during the course of the evening my
+anxiety grew, not as to whether Percy would do for us, but as to whether
+we should do for Percy. If I searched the world over, I never could
+find a young man more calculated to win the affection of those boys.
+You know, just by looking at him, that he does everything well, at least
+everything vigorous. His literary and artistic accomplishments I suspect
+a bit, but he rides and shoots and plays golf and football and sails a
+boat. He likes to sleep out of doors and he likes boys. He has always
+wanted to know some orphans; often read about 'em in books, he says, but
+never met any face to face. Percy does seem too good to be true.
+
+Before they left, Jimmie and the doctor hunted up a lantern, and in
+their evening clothes conducted Mr. Witherspoon across a plowed field to
+inspect his future dwelling.
+
+And such a Sunday as we passed! I had absolutely to forbid their
+carpentering. Those men would have put in a full day, quite irrespective
+of the damage done to one hundred and four little moral natures. As it
+is, they have just stood and looked at those shacks and handled their
+hammers, and thought about where they would drive the first nail
+tomorrow morning. The more I study men, the more I realize that they are
+nothing in the world but boys grown too big to be spankable.
+
+I am awfully worried as to how to feed Mr. Witherspoon. He looks as
+though he had a frightfully healthy appetite, and he looks as though he
+couldn't swallow his dinner unless he had on evening clothes. I've made
+Betsy send home for a trunkful of evening gowns in order to keep up our
+social standing. One thing is fortunate: he takes his luncheon at the
+hotel, and I hear their luncheons are very filling.
+
+Tell Jervis I am sorry he is not with us to drive a nail for the camp.
+Here comes the Hon. Cy up the path. Heaven save us!
+
+Ever your unfortunate,
+
+S. McB.
+
+
+THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
+
+May 8.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+Our camp is finished, our energetic brother has gone, and our
+twenty-four boys have passed two healthful nights in the open. The three
+bark-covered shacks add a pleasant rustic touch to the grounds. They are
+like those we used to have in the Adirondacks, closed on three sides
+and open in the front, and one larger than the rest to allow a private
+pavilion for Mr. Percy Witherspoon. An adjacent hut, less exposed to the
+weather, affords extremely adequate bathing facilities, consisting of a
+faucet in the wall and three watering-cans. Each camp has a bath master
+who stands on a stool and sprinkles each little shiverer as he trots
+under. Since our trustees WON'T give us enough bathtubs, we have to use
+our wits.
+
+The three camps have organized into three tribes of Indians, each with
+a chief of its own to answer for its conduct, Mr. Witherspoon high chief
+of all, and Dr. MacRae the medicine man. They dedicated their lodges
+Tuesday evening with appropriate tribal ceremonies. And though they
+politely invited me to attend, I decided that it was a purely masculine
+affair, so I declined to go, but sent refreshments, a very popular move.
+Betsy and I walked as far as the baseball field in the course of the
+evening, and caught a glimpse of the orgies. The braves were squatting
+in a circle about a big fire, each decorated with a blanket from his bed
+and a rakish band of feathers. (Our chickens seem very scant as to tail,
+but I have asked no unpleasant questions.) The doctor, with a Navajo
+blanket about his shoulders, was executing a war dance, while Jimmie
+and Mr. Witherspoon beat on war drums--two of our copper kettles, now
+permanently dented. Fancy Sandy! It's the first youthful glimmer I have
+ever caught in the man.
+
+After ten o'clock, when the braves were safely stowed for the night,
+the three men came in and limply dropped into comfortable chairs in my
+library, with the air of having made martyrs of themselves in the great
+cause of charity. But they did not deceive me. They originated all that
+tomfoolery for their own individual delectation.
+
+So far Mr. Percy Witherspoon appears fairly happy. He is presiding at
+one end of the officers' table under the special protection of Betsy,
+and I am told that he instills considerable life into that sedate
+assemblage. I have endeavored to run up their menu a trifle, and
+he accepts what is put before him with a perfectly good appetite,
+irrespective of the absence of such accustomed trifles as oysters and
+quail and soft-shell crabs.
+
+There was no sign of a private sitting room that I could put at this
+young man's disposal, but he himself has solved the difficulty by
+proposing to occupy our new laboratory. So he spends his evenings with a
+book and a pipe, comfortably stretched in the dentist's chair. There
+are not many society men who would be willing to spend their evenings so
+harmlessly. That girl in Detroit is a lucky young thing.
+
+Mercy! An automobile full of people has just arrived to look over the
+institution, and Betsy, who usually does the honors, not here. I fly.
+
+ADDIO!
+
+SALLIE.
+
+
+My dear Gordon:
+
+This is not a letter,--I don't owe you one,--it's a receipt for
+sixty-five pairs of roller skates.
+
+Many thanks.
+
+S. McB.
+
+
+Friday.
+
+Dear Enemy:
+
+I hear that I missed a call today, but Jane delivered your message,
+together with the "Genetic Philosophy of Education." She says that
+you will call in a few days for my opinion of the book. Is it to be a
+written or an oral examination?
+
+And doesn't it ever occur to you that this education business is rather
+one-sided? It often strikes me that Dr. Robin MacRae's mental attitude
+would also be the better for some slight refurbishing. I will promise to
+read your book, provided you read one of mine. I am sending herewith the
+"Dolly Dialogues," and shall ask for an opinion in a day or so.
+
+It's uphill work making a Scotch Presbyterian frivolous, but persistency
+accomplishes wonders.
+
+S. McB.
+
+
+May 12. My dear, dear Judy:
+
+Talk about floods in Ohio! Right here in Dutchess County we are the
+consistency of a wet sponge. Rain for five days, and everything wrong
+with this institution.
+
+The babies have had croup, and we have been up o' nights with them. Cook
+has given notice, and there's a dead rat in the walls. Our three camps
+leaked, and in the early dawn, after the first cloudburst, twenty-four
+bedraggled little Indians, wrapped in damp bedding, came shivering to
+the door and begged for admission. Since then every clothesline, every
+stair-railing has been covered with wet and smelly blankets that steam,
+but won't dry. Mr. Percy de Forest Witherspoon has returned to the hotel
+to wait until the sun comes out.
+
+After being cooped up for four days with no exercise to speak of, the
+children's badness is breaking out in red spots, like the measles. Betsy
+and I have thought of every form of active and innocent occupation that
+could be carried on in such a congested quarter as this: blind man's
+buff and pillow fights and hide-and-go-seek, gymnastics in the dining
+room, and bean-bags in the school room. (We broke two windows.) The boys
+played leapfrog up and down the hall, and jarred all the plaster in the
+building. We have cleaned energetically and furiously. All the woodwork
+has been washed, and all of the floors polished. But despite everything,
+we have a great deal of energy left, and we are getting to that point of
+nerves where we want to punch one another.
+
+Sadie Kate has been acting like a little deil--do they have feminine
+deils? If not, Sadie Kate has originated the species. And this afternoon
+Loretta Higgins had--well, I don't know whether it was a sort of fit or
+just a temper. She lay down on the floor and howled for a solid hour,
+and when any one tried to approach her, she thrashed about like a little
+windmill and bit and kicked.
+
+By the time the doctor came she had pretty well worn herself out.
+He picked her up, limp and drooping, and carried her to a cot in the
+hospital room; and after she was asleep he came down to my library and
+asked to look at the archives.
+
+Loretta is thirteen; in the three years she has been here she has had
+five of these outbreaks, and has been punished good and hard for them.
+The child's ancestral record is simple: "Mother died of alcoholic
+dementia, Bloomingdale Asylum. Father unknown."
+
+He studied the page long and frowningly and shook his head.
+
+"With a heredity like that, is it right to punish the child for having a
+shattered nervous system?"
+
+"It is not," said I, firmly. "We will mend her shattered nervous
+system."
+
+"If we can."
+
+"We'll feed her up on cod-liver oil and sunshine, and find a nice kind
+foster mother who will take pity on the poor little--"
+
+But then my voice trailed off into nothing as I pictured Loretta's face,
+with her hollow eyes and big nose and open mouth and no chin and stringy
+hair and sticking-out ears. No foster mother in the world would love a
+child who looked like that.
+
+"Why, oh, why," I wailed, "doesn't the good Lord send orphan children
+with blue eyes and curly hair and loving dispositions? I could place a
+million of that sort in kind homes, but no one wants Loretta."
+
+"I'm afraid the good Lord doesn't have anything to do with bringing our
+Lorettas into the world. It is the devil who attends to them."
+
+Poor Sandy! He gets awfully pessimistic about the future of the
+universe; but I don't wonder, with such a cheerless life as he leads. He
+looked today as though his own nervous system was shattered. He had been
+splashing about in the rain since five this morning, when he was called
+to a sick baby case. I made him sit down and have some tea, and we had a
+nice, cheerful talk on drunkenness and idiocy and epilepsy and insanity.
+He dislikes alcoholic parents, but he ties himself into a knot over
+insane parents.
+
+Privately, I don't believe there's one thing in heredity, provided you
+snatch the babies away before their eyes are opened.
+
+We've got the sunniest youngster here you ever saw; his mother and
+Aunt Ruth and Uncle Silas all died insane, but he is as placid and
+unexcitable as a cow.
+
+Good-by, my dear. I am sorry this is not a more cheerful letter, though
+at this moment nothing unpleasant seems to be happening. It's eleven
+o'clock, and I have just stuck my head into the corridor, and all is
+quiet except for two banging shutters and leaking eaves. I promised Jane
+I would go to bed at ten. Good night, and joy be wi' ye baith!
+
+SALLIE.
+
+P.S. There is one thing in the midst of all my troubles that I have to
+be grateful for: the Hon. Cy has been stricken with a lingering attack
+of grippe. In a burst of thankfulness I sent him a bunch of violets.
+P.S. 2. We are having an epidemic of pinkeye.
+
+
+May 16. Good morning, my dear Judy!
+
+Three days of sunshine, and the J. G. H. is smiling.
+
+I am getting my immediate troubles nicely settled. Those beastly
+blankets have dried at last, and our camps have been made livable again.
+They are floored with wooden slats and roofed with tar paper. (Mr.
+Witherspoon calls them chicken coops.) We are digging a stone-lined
+ditch to convey any further cloudbursts from the plateau on which they
+stand to the cornfield below. The Indians have resumed savage life, and
+their chief is back at his post.
+
+The doctor and I have been giving Loretta Higgins's nerves our most
+careful consideration. We think that this barrack life, with its
+constant movement and stir, is too exciting, and we have decided that
+the best plan will be to board her out in a private family, where she
+will receive a great deal of individual attention.
+
+The doctor, with his usual resourcefulness, has produced the family.
+They live next door to him and are very nice people; I have just
+returned from calling. The husband is foreman of the casting room at the
+iron works, and the wife is a comfortable soul who shakes all over
+when she laughs. They live mostly in their kitchen in order to keep the
+parlor neat; but it is such a cheerful kitchen that I should like to
+live in it myself. She has potted begonias in the window and a nice
+purry tiger cat asleep on a braided rug in front of the stove. She bakes
+on Saturday--cookies and gingerbread and doughnuts. I am planning to pay
+my weekly call upon Loretta every Saturday morning at eleven o'clock.
+Apparently I made as favorable an impression on Mrs. Wilson as she made
+on me. After I had gone, she confided to the doctor that she liked me
+because I was just as common as she was.
+
+Loretta is to learn housework and have a little garden of her own, and
+particularly play out of doors in the sunshine. She is to go to bed
+early and be fed up on nice nourishing food, and they are to pet her and
+make her happy. All this for three dollars a week!
+
+Why not find a hundred such families, and board out all the children?
+Then this building could be turned into an idiot asylum, and I, not
+knowing anything about idiots, could conscientiously resign and go back
+home and live happily ever after.
+
+Really, Judy, I am growing frightened. This asylum will get me if I stay
+long enough. I am becoming so interested in it that I can't think or
+talk or dream of anything else. You and Jervis have blasted all my
+prospects in life.
+
+Suppose I should retire and marry and have a family. As families go
+nowadays, I couldn't hope for more than five or six children at the
+most, and all with the same heredity. But, mercy! such a family appears
+perfectly insignificant and monotonous. You have institutionalized me.
+
+Reproachfully yours,
+
+SALLIE McBRIDE.
+
+P.S. We have a child here whose father was lynched. Isn't that a piquant
+detail to have in one's history?
+
+
+Tuesday.
+
+Dearest Judy:
+
+What shall we do? Mamie Prout does not like prunes. This antipathy to a
+cheap and healthful foodstuff is nothing but imagination, and ought
+not to be countenanced among the inmates of a well-managed institution.
+Mamie must be made to like prunes. So says our grammar teacher, who
+spends the noonday hour with us and overlooks the morals of our charges.
+About one o'clock today she marched Mamie to my office charged with the
+offense of refusing, ABSOLUTELY refusing, to open her mouth and put in
+a prune. The child was plumped down on a stool to await punishment from
+me.
+
+Now, as you know, I do not like bananas, and I should hate awfully to be
+forced to swallow them; so, by the same token, why should I force Mamie
+Prout to swallow prunes?
+
+While I was pondering a course that would seem to uphold Miss Keller's
+authority, but would at the same time leave a loophole for Mamie, I was
+called to the telephone.
+
+"Sit there until I come back," I said, and went out and closed the door.
+
+The message was from a kind lady wishing to motor me to a committee
+meeting. I didn't tell you that I am organizing local interest in our
+behalf. The idle rich who possess estates in this neighborhood are
+beginning to drift out from town, and I am laying my plans to catch
+them before they are deflected by too many garden parties and tennis
+tournaments. They have never been of the slightest use to this asylum,
+and I think it's about time they woke up to a realization of our
+presence.
+
+Returning at teatime, I was waylaid in the hall by Dr. MacRae, who
+demanded some statistics from my office. I opened the door, and there
+sat Mamie Prout exactly where she had been left four hours before.
+
+"Mamie darling!" I cried in horror. "You haven't been here all this
+time?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am," said Mamie; "you told me to wait until you came back."
+
+That poor patient little thing was fairly swaying with weariness, but
+she never uttered a whimper.
+
+I will say for Sandy that he was SWEET. He gathered her up in his arms
+and carried her to my library, and petted her and caressed her back to
+smiles. Jane brought the sewing table and spread it before the fire,
+and while the doctor and I had tea, Mamie had her supper. I suppose,
+according to the theory of some educators, now, when she was thoroughly
+worn out and hungry, would have been the psychological moment to ply her
+with prunes. But you will be pleased to hear that I did nothing of the
+sort, and that the doctor for once upheld my unscientific principles.
+Mamie had the most wonderful supper of her life, embellished with
+strawberry jam from my private jar and peppermints from Sandy's pocket.
+We returned her to her mates happy and comforted, but still possessing
+that regrettable distaste for prunes.
+
+Did you ever know anything more appalling than this soul-crushing
+unreasoning obedience which Mrs. Lippett so insistently fostered? It's
+the orphan asylum attitude toward life, and somehow I must crush it out.
+Initiative, responsibility, curiosity, inventiveness, fight--oh dear! I
+wish the doctor had a serum for injecting all these useful virtues into
+an orphan's circulation.
+
+LATER.
+
+
+I wish you'd come back to New York. I've appointed you press agent
+for this institution, and we need some of your floweriest writing
+immediately. There are seven tots here crying to be adopted, and it's
+your business to advertise them.
+
+Little Gertrude is cross-eyed, but dear and affectionate and generous.
+Can't you write her up so persuasively that some loving family will
+be willing to take her even if she isn't beautiful? Her eyes can be
+operated on when she's older; but if it were a cross disposition she
+had, no surgeon in the world could remove that. The child knows there is
+something missing, though she has never seen a live parent in her life.
+She holds up her arms persuasively to every person who passes. Put in
+all the pathos you are capable of, and see if you can't fetch her a
+mother and father.
+
+Maybe you can get one of the New York papers to run a Sunday feature
+article about a lot of different children. I'll send some photographs.
+You remember what a lot of responses that "Smiling Joe" picture brought
+for the Sea Breeze people? I can furnish equally taking portraits of
+Laughing Lou and Gurgling Gertrude and Kicking Karl if you will just add
+the literary touch.
+
+And do find me some sports who are not afraid of heredity. This wanting
+every child to come from one of the first families of Virginia is
+getting tiresome.
+
+Yours, as usual,
+
+SALLIE.
+
+
+Friday. My dear, dear Judy:
+
+Such an upheaval! I've discharged the cook and the housekeeper, and in
+delicate language conveyed the impression to our grammar teacher that
+she needn't come back next year. But, oh, if I could only discharge the
+Honorable Cy!
+
+I must tell you what happened this morning. Our trustee, who has had a
+dangerous illness, is now dangerously well again, and dropped in to
+pay a neighborly call. Punch was occupying a rug on my library floor,
+virtuously engaged with building blocks. I am separating him from the
+other kindergarten children, and trying the Montessori method of a
+private rug and no nervous distraction. I was flattering myself that it
+was working well; his vocabulary of late has become almost prudish.
+
+After half an hour's desultory visit, the Hon. Cy rose to go. As the
+door closed behind him (I am at least thankful the child waited for
+that), Punch raised his appealing brown eyes to mine and murmured, with
+a confiding smile:
+
+"Gee! ain't he got de hell of a mug?"
+
+If you know a kind Christian family where I can place out a sweet little
+five-year boy, please communicate at once with
+
+S. McBRIDE,
+
+Sup't John Grier Home.
+
+
+
+
+Dear Pendletons:
+
+I've never known anything like you two snails. You've only just reached
+Washington, and I have had my suitcase packed for days, ready to spend
+a rejuvenating week end CHEZ VOUS. Please hurry! I've languished in this
+asylum atmosphere as long as humanely possible. I shall gasp and die if
+I don't get a change.
+
+Yours,
+
+on the point of suffocation,
+
+S. McB.
+
+P.S. Drop a card to Gordon Hallock, telling him you are there. He will
+be charmed to put himself and the Capitol at your disposal. I know
+that Jervis doesn't like him, but Jervis ought to get over his baseless
+prejudices against politicians. Who knows? I may be entering politics
+myself some day.
+
+
+My dear Judy:
+
+We do receive the most amazing presents from our friends and
+benefactors. Listen to this. Last week Mr. Wilton J. Leverett (I quote
+from his card) ran over a broken bottle outside our gate, and came in
+to visit the institution while his chauffeur was mending the tire. Betsy
+showed him about. He took an intelligent interest in everything he saw,
+particularly our new camps. That is an exhibit which appeals to men.
+He ended by removing his coat, and playing baseball with two tribes
+of Indians. After an hour and a half he suddenly looked at his watch,
+begged for a glass of water, and bowed himself off.
+
+We had entirely forgotten the episode until this afternoon, when the
+expressman drove up to the door with a present for the John Grier
+Home from the chemical laboratories of Wilton J. Leverett. It was a
+barrel--well, anyway, a good sized keg--full of liquid green soap!
+
+Did I tell you that the seeds for our garden came from Washington?
+A polite present from Gordon Hallock and the U. S. Government. As an
+example of what the past regime did not accomplish, Martin Schladerwitz,
+who has spent three years on this pseudo farm, knew no more than to dig
+a grave two feet deep and bury his lettuce seeds!
+
+Oh, you can't imagine the number of fields in which we need making over;
+but of course you, of all people, can imagine. Little by little I am
+getting my eyes wide open, and things that just looked funny to me at
+first, now--oh dear! It's very disillusionizing. Every funny thing that
+comes up seems to have a little tragedy wrapped inside it.
+
+Just at present we are paying anxious attention to our manners--not
+orphan asylum manners, but dancing school manners. There is to be
+nothing Uriah Heepish about our attitude toward the world. The little
+girls make curtseys when they shake hands, and the boys remove caps and
+rise when a lady stands, and push in chairs at the table. (Tommy Woolsey
+shot Sadie Kate into her soup yesterday, to the glee of all observers
+except Sadie, who is an independent young damsel and doesn't care for
+these useless masculine attentions.) At first the boys were inclined to
+jeer, but after observing the politeness of their hero, Percy de Forest
+Witherspoon, they have come up to the mark like little gentlemen.
+
+Punch is paying a call this morning. For the last half-hour, while I
+have been busily scratching away to you, he has been established in the
+window seat, quietly and undestructively engaged with colored pencils.
+Betsy, EN PASSANT, just dropped a kiss upon his nose.
+
+"Aw, gwan!" said Punch, blushing quite pink, and wiping off the caress
+with a fine show of masculine indifference. But I notice he has resumed
+work upon his red-and-green landscape with heightened ardor and an
+attempt at whistling. We'll succeed yet in conquering that young man's
+temper.
+
+
+Tuesday.
+
+
+The doctor is in a very grumbly mood today. He called just as the
+children were marching in to dinner, whereupon he marched, too, and
+sampled their food, and, oh, my dear! the potatoes were scorched! And
+such a clishmaclaver as that man made! It is the first time the potatoes
+ever have been scorched, and you know that scorching sometimes happens
+in the best of families. But you would think from Sandy's language that
+the cook had scorched them on purpose, in accordance with my orders.
+
+As I have told you before, I could do very nicely without Sandy.
+
+
+Wednesday.
+
+
+Yesterday being a wonderful sunny day, Betsy and I turned our backs upon
+duty and motored to the very fancy home of some friends of hers, where
+we had tea in an Italian garden. Punch and Sadie Kate had been SUCH good
+children all day that at the last moment we telephoned for permission to
+include them, too.
+
+"Yes, indeed, do bring the little dears," was the enthusiastic response.
+
+But the choice of Punch and Sadie Kate was a mistake. We ought to have
+taken Mamie Prout, who has demonstrated her ability to sit. I shall
+spare you the details of our visit; the climax was reached when Punch
+went goldfishing in the bottom of the swimming pool. Our host pulled him
+out by an agitated leg, and the child returned to the asylum swathed in
+that gentleman's rose-colored bathrobe.
+
+What do you think? Dr. Robin MacRae, in a contrite mood for having been
+so intensely disagreeable yesterday, has just invited Betsy and me
+to take supper in his olive-green house next Sunday evening at seven
+o'clock in order to look at some microscopic slides. The entertainment,
+I believe, is to consist of a scarlet-fever culture, some alcoholic
+tissue, and a tubercular gland. These social attentions bore him
+excessively; but he realizes that if he is to have free scope in
+applying his theories to the institution he must be a little polite to
+its superintendent.
+
+I have just read this letter over, and I must admit that it skips
+lightly from topic to topic. But though it may not contain news of any
+great moment, I trust you will realize that its writing has consumed
+every vacant minute during the last three days. I am,
+
+Most fully occupied,
+
+SALLIE McBRIDE.
+
+P.S. A blessed woman came this morning and said she would take a child
+for the summer--one of the sickest, weakest, neediest babies I could
+give her. She had just lost her husband, and wanted something HARD to
+do. Isn't that really very touching?
+
+
+Saturday afternoon.
+
+Dear Judy and Jervis:
+
+Brother Jimmie (we are very alliterative!), spurred on by sundry begging
+letters from me, has at last sent us a present; but he picked it out
+himself.
+
+WE HAVE A MONKEY! His name is Java. The children no longer hear the
+school bell ring. On the day the creature came, this entire institution
+formed in line and filed past and shook his paw. Poor Sing's nose is out
+of joint. I have to PAY to have him washed.
+
+Sadie Kate is developing into my private secretary. I have her answer
+the thank-you letters for the institution, and her literary style is
+making a hit among our benefactors. She invariably calls out a second
+gift. I had hitherto believed that the Kilcoyne family sprang from
+the wild west of Ireland, but I begin to suspect that their source was
+nearer Blarney Castle. You can see from the inclosed copy of the letter
+she sent to Jimmie what a persuasive pen the young person has. I
+trust that in this case at least, it will not bear the fruit that she
+suggests.
+
+
+Dear Mr. Jimie
+
+We thank you very much for the lovly monkey you give. We name him java
+because that's a warm iland across the ocian where he was born up in a
+nest like a bird only big the doctor told us.
+
+The first day he come every boy and girl shook his hand and said good
+morning java his hand feels funny he holds so tite. I was afraid to
+touch him but now I let him sit on my shoulder and put his arms around
+my kneck if he wants to. He makes a funny noise that sounds like swering
+and gets mad when his tale is puled.
+
+We love him dearly and we love you two.
+
+The next time you have to give a present, please send an elifant. Well I
+guess Ill stop.
+
+Yours truly,
+
+SADIE KATE KILCOYNE.
+
+
+
+Percy de Forest Witherspoon is still faithful to his little followers,
+though I am so afraid he will get tired that I urge him to take frequent
+vacations. He has not only been faithful himself, but has brought in
+recruits. He has large social connections in the neighborhood, and last
+Saturday evening he introduced two friends, nice men who sat around the
+campfire and swapped hunting stories.
+
+One of them was just back from around the world, and told hair-raising
+anecdotes of the head hunters of Sarawak, a narrow pink country on the
+top of Borneo. My little braves pant to grow up and get to Sarawak, and
+go out on the war-path after head hunters. Every encyclopedia in this
+institution has been consulted, and there isn't a boy here who cannot
+tell you the history, manners, climate, flora, and fungi of Borneo.
+I only wish Mr. Witherspoon would introduce friends who had been head
+hunting in England, France, and Germany, countries not quite so CHIC as
+Sarawak, but more useful for general culture.
+
+We have a new cook, the fourth since my reign began. I haven't bothered
+you with my cooking troubles, but institutions don't escape any
+more than families. The last is a negro woman, a big, fat, smiling,
+chocolate-colored creature from Souf Ca'lina. And ever since she came
+on honey dew we've fed! Her name is--what do you guess? SALLIE, if you
+please. I suggested that she change it.
+
+"Sho, Miss, I's had dat name Sallie longer'n you, an' I couldn't get
+used nohow to answerin' up pert-like when you sings out `Mollie!' Seems
+like Sallie jest b'longs to me."
+
+So "Sallie" she remains; but at least there is no danger of our getting
+our letters mixed, for her last name is nothing so plebeian as McBride.
+It's Johnston-Washington, with a hyphen.
+
+Sunday.
+
+
+Our favorite game of late is finding pet names for Sandy. His austere
+presence lends itself to caricature. We have just originated a new
+batch. The "Laird o' Cockpen" is Percy's choice.
+
+The Laird o' Cockpen he's proud and he's great; His mind is ta'en up wi'
+the things of the state.
+
+Miss Snaith disgustedly calls him "that man," and Betsy refers to him
+(in his absence) as "Dr. Cod-Liver." My present favorite is "Macphairson
+Clon Glocketty Angus McClan." But for real poetic feeling, Sadie Kate
+beats us all. She calls him "Mister Someday Soon." I don't believe that
+the doctor ever dropped into verse but once in his life, but every child
+in this institution knows that one poem by heart.
+
+Someday soon something nice is going to happen;
+
+Be a good little girl and take this hint: Swallow with a smile your
+cod-liver ile,
+
+And the first thing you know you will have a peppermint.
+
+
+It's this evening that Betsy and I attend his supper party, and I
+confess that we are looking forward to seeing the interior of his gloomy
+mansion with gleeful eagerness. He never talks about himself or his past
+or anybody connected with himself. He appears to be an isolated figure
+standing on a pedestal labeled S C I E N C E, without a glimmer of any
+ordinary affections or emotions or human frailties except temper. Betsy
+and I are simply eaten up with curiosity to know what sort of past he
+came out of; but just let us get inside his house, and to our detective
+senses it will tell its own story. So long as the portal was guarded
+by a fierce McGurk, we had despaired of ever effecting an entrance; but
+now, behold! The door has opened of its own accord.
+
+To be continued.
+
+S. McB.
+
+
+Monday.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+We attended the doctor's supper party last night, Betsy and Mr.
+Witherspoon and I. It turned out a passably cheerful occasion, though I
+will say that it began under heavy auspices.
+
+His house on the inside is all that the outside promises. Never in my
+life have I seen such an interior as that man's dining room. The walls
+and carpets and lambrequins are a heavy dark green. A black marble
+mantelpiece shelters a few smoking black coals. The furniture is
+as nearly black as furniture comes. The decorations are two steel
+engravings in shiny black frames--the "Monarch of the Glen," and the
+"Stag at Bay."
+
+We tried hard to be light and sparkling, but it was like eating supper
+in the family vault. Mrs. McGurk, in black alpaca with a black silk
+apron, clumped around the table, passing cold, heavy things to eat, with
+a step so firm that she rattled the silver in the sideboard drawers. Her
+nose was up, and her mouth was down. She clearly does not approve of the
+master's entertaining, and she wishes to discourage all guests from ever
+accepting again.
+
+Sandy sort of dimly knows that there is something the matter with his
+house, and in order to brighten it up a bit in honor of his guests,
+he had purchased flowers,--dozens of them,--the most exquisite pink
+Killarney roses and red and yellow tulips. The McGurk had wedged them
+all together as tight as they would fit into a peacock-blue jardiniere,
+and plumped it down in the center of the table. The thing was as big as
+a bushel-basket. Betsy and I nearly forgot our manners when we saw
+that centerpiece; but the doctor seemed so innocently pleased at
+having obtained a bright note in his dining room that we suppressed our
+amusement and complimented him warmly upon his happy color scheme.
+
+The moment supper was over, we hastened with relief to his own part of
+the house, where the McGurk's influence does not penetrate. No one in a
+cleaning capacity ever enters either his library or office or laboratory
+except Llewelyn, a short, wiry, bow-legged Welshman, who combines to a
+unique degree the qualities of chambermaid and chauffeur.
+
+The library, though not the most cheerful room I have ever seen,
+still, for a man's house, is not so bad--books all around from floor to
+ceiling, with the overflow in piles on floor and table and mantelpiece;
+half a dozen abysmal leather chairs and a rug or so, with another black
+marble mantelpiece, but this time containing a crackling wood fire. By
+way of bric-a-brac, he has a stuffed pelican and a crane with a frog in
+its mouth, also a raccoon sitting on a log, and a varnished tarpon. A
+faint suggestion of iodoform floats in the air.
+
+The doctor made the coffee himself in a French machine, and we dismissed
+his housekeeper from our spirits. He really did do his best to be a
+thoughtful host and I have to report that the word "insanity" was not
+once mentioned. It seems that Sandy, in his moments of relaxation, is a
+fisherman. He and Percy began swapping stories of salmon and trout, and
+he finally got out his case of fishing flies, and gallantly presented
+Betsy and me with a "silver doctor" and a "Jack Scott" out of which
+to make hatpins. Then the conversation wandered to sport on the Scotch
+moors, and he told about one time when he was lost, and spent the night
+out in the heather. There is no doubt about it, Sandy's heart is in the
+highlands.
+
+I am afraid that Betsy and I have wronged him. Though it is hard to
+relinquish the interesting idea, he may not, after all, have committed a
+crime. We are now leaning to the belief that he was crossed in love.
+
+It's really horrid of me to make fun of poor Sandy, for, despite his
+stern bleakness of disposition, he's a pathetic figure of a man. Think
+of coming home after an anxious day's round to eat a solitary dinner in
+that grim dining room!
+
+Do you suppose it would cheer him up a little if I should send my
+company of artists to paint a frieze of rabbits around the wall?
+
+With love, as usual,
+
+SALLIE.
+
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+Aren't you ever coming back to New York? Please hurry! I need a new hat,
+and am desirous of shopping for it on Fifth Avenue, not on Water Street.
+Mrs. Gruby, our best milliner, does not believe in slavishly following
+Paris Fashions; she originates her own styles. But three years ago, as
+a great concession to convention, she did make a tour of the New York
+shops, and is still creating models on the uplift of that visit.
+
+Also, besides my own hat, I must buy 113 hats for my children, to say
+nothing of shoes and knickerbockers and shirts and hair-ribbons and
+stockings and garters. It's quite a task to keep a little family like
+mine decently clothed.
+
+Did you get that big letter I wrote you last week? You never had the
+grace to mention it in yours of Thursday, and it was seventeen pages
+long, and took me DAYS to write.
+
+Yours truly,
+
+S. McBRIDE.
+
+P.S. Why don't you tell me some news about Gordon? Have you seen him,
+and did he mention me? Is he running after any of those pretty Southern
+girls that Washington is so full of? You know that I want to hear. Why
+must you be so beastly uncommunicative?
+
+
+Tuesday, 4:27 P.M.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+Your telegram came two minutes ago by telephone.
+
+Yes, thank you, I shall be delighted to arrive at 5:49 on Thursday
+afternoon. And don't make any engagements for that evening, please, as
+I intend to sit up until midnight talking John Grier gossip with you and
+the president.
+
+Friday and Saturday and Monday I shall have to devote to shopping. Oh,
+yes, you're right; I already possess more clothes than any jailbird
+needs, but when spring comes, I must have new plumage. As it is, I wear
+an evening gown every night just to wear them out--no, not entirely
+that; to make myself believe that I'm still an ordinary girl despite
+this extraordinary life that you have pushed me into.
+
+The Hon. Cy found me yesterday arrayed in a Nile-green crepe (Jane's
+creation, though it looked Parisian). He was quite puzzled when he found
+I wasn't going to a ball. I invited him to stay and dine with me, and
+he accepted! We got on very affably. He expands over his dinner. Food
+appears to agree with him. If there's any Bernard Shaw in New York just
+now, I believe that I might spare a couple of hours Saturday afternoon
+for a matinee. G. B. S.'s dialogue would afford such a life-giving
+contrast to the Hon. Cy's.
+
+There's no use writing any more; I'll wait and talk.
+
+ADDIO.
+
+SALLIE.
+
+P.S. Oh dear! just as I had begun to catch glimmerings of niceness in
+Sandy, he broke out again and was ABOMINABLE. We unfortunately have five
+cases of measles in this institution, and the man's manner suggests that
+Miss Snaith and I gave the measles to the children on purpose to make
+him trouble. There are many days when I should be willing to accept our
+doctor's resignation.
+
+
+Wednesday.
+
+Dear Enemy:
+
+Your brief and dignified note of yesterday is at hand. I have never
+known anybody whose literary style resembled so exactly his spoken word.
+
+And you will be greatly obliged if I will drop my absurd fashion of
+calling you "Enemy"? I will drop my absurd fashion of calling you
+Enemy just as soon as you drop your absurd fashion of getting angry and
+abusive and insulting the moment any little thing goes wrong.
+
+I am leaving tomorrow afternoon to spend four days in New York.
+
+Yours truly,
+
+S. McBRIDE.
+
+
+CHEZ THE PENDLETONS, New York. My dear Enemy:
+
+I trust that this note will find you in a more affable frame of mind
+than when I saw you last. I emphatically repeat that it was not due to
+the carelessness of the superintendent of our institution that those two
+new cases of measles crept in, but rather to the unfortunate anatomy
+of our old-fashioned building, which does not permit of the proper
+isolation of contagious cases.
+
+As you did not deign to visit us yesterday morning before I left, I
+could not offer any parting suggestions. I therefore write to ask that
+you cast your critical eye upon Mamie Prout. She is covered all over
+with little red spots which may be measles, though I am hoping not.
+Mamie spots very easily.
+
+I return to prison life next Monday at six o'clock.
+
+Yours truly,
+
+S. McBRIDE.
+
+P.S. I trust you will pardon my mentioning it, but you are not the kind
+of doctor that I admire. I like them chubby and round and smiling.
+
+
+THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
+
+June 9.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+You are an awful family for an impressionable young girl to visit.
+How can you expect me to come back and settle down contentedly to
+institution life after witnessing such a happy picture of domestic
+concord as the Pendleton household presents?
+
+All the way back in the train, instead of occupying myself with two
+novels, four magazines, and one box of chocolates that your husband
+thoughtfully provided, I spent the time in a mental review of the young
+men of my acquaintance to see if I couldn't discover one as nice as
+Jervis. I did! (A little nicer, I think.) From this day on he is the
+marked-down victim, the destined prey.
+
+I shall hate to give up the asylum after getting so excited over it,
+but unless you are willing to move it to the capital, I don't see any
+alternative.
+
+The train was awfully late. We sat and smoked on a siding while two
+accommodations and a freight dashed past. I think we must have broken
+something, and had to tinker up our engine. The conductor was soothing,
+but uncommunicative.
+
+It was 7:30 when I descended, the only passenger, at our insignificant
+station in the pitch darkness and RAIN, without an umbrella, and wearing
+that precious new hat. No Turnfelt to meet me; not even a station hack.
+To be sure, I hadn't telegraphed the exact time of my arrival, but,
+still, I did feel rather neglected. I had sort of vaguely expected all
+ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN to be drawn up by the platform, scattering
+flowers and singing songs of welcome. Just as I was telling the station
+man that I would watch his telegraph instrument while he ran across
+to the corner saloon and telephoned for a vehicle, there came whirling
+around the corner two big searchlights aimed straight at me. They
+stopped nine inches before running me down, and I heard Sandy's voice
+saying:
+
+"Weel, weel, Miss Sallie McBride! I'm thinking it's ower time you came
+back to tak' the bit bairns off my hands."
+
+That man had come three times to meet me on the off chance of the
+train's getting in some time. He tucked me and my new hat and bags and
+books and chocolates all in under his waterproof flap, and we splashed
+off. Really, I felt as if I was getting back home again, and quite sad
+at the thought of ever having to leave. Mentally, you see, I had already
+resigned and packed and gone. The mere idea that you are not in a place
+for the rest of your life gives you an awfully unstable feeling. That's
+why trial marriages would never work. You've got to feel you're in a
+thing irrevocably and forever in order to buckle down and really put
+your whole mind into making it a success.
+
+It's astounding how much news can accrue in four days. Sandy just
+couldn't talk fast enough to tell me everything I wanted to hear.
+Among other items, I learned that Sadie Kate had spent two days in the
+infirmary, her malady being, according to the doctor's diagnosis, half a
+jar of gooseberry jam and Heaven knows how many doughnuts. Her work had
+been changed during my absence to dishwashing in the officers' pantry,
+and the juxtaposition of so many exotic luxuries was too much for her
+fragile virtue.
+
+Also, our colored cook Sallie and our colored useful man Noah have
+entered upon a war of extermination. The original trouble was over a
+little matter of kindling, augmented by a pail of hot water that Sallie
+threw out of the window with, for a woman, unusual accuracy of aim. You
+can see what a rare character the head of an orphan asylum must
+have. She has to combine the qualities of a baby nurse and a police
+magistrate.
+
+The doctor had told only the half when we reached the house, and as
+he had not yet dined, owing to meeting me three times, I begged him
+to accept the hospitality of the John Grier. I would get Betsy and Mr.
+Witherspoon, and we would hold an executive meeting, and settle all our
+neglected businesses.
+
+Sandy accepted with flattering promptness. He likes to dine outside of
+the family vault.
+
+But Betsy, I found, had dashed home to greet a visiting grandparent,
+and Percy was playing bridge in the village. It's seldom the young thing
+gets out of an evening, and I'm glad for him to have a little cheerful
+diversion.
+
+So it ended in the doctor's and my dining tete-a-tete on a hastily
+improvised dinner,--it was then close upon eight, and our normal dinner
+hour is 6:30,--but it was such an improvised dinner as I am sure
+Mrs. McGurk never served him. Sallie, wishing to impress me with her
+invaluableness, did her absolutely Southern best. And after dinner we
+had coffee before the fire in my comfortable blue library, while the
+wind howled outside and the shutters banged.
+
+We passed a most cordial and intimate evening. For the first time
+since our acquaintance I struck a new note in the man. There really is
+something attractive about him when you once come to know him. But the
+process of knowing him requires time and tact. He's no' very gleg at the
+uptak. I've never seen such a tantalizing inexplicable person. All the
+time I'm talking to him I feel as though behind his straight line of a
+mouth and his half-shut eyes there were banked fires smoldering inside.
+Are you sure he hasn't committed a crime? He does manage to convey the
+delicious feeling that he has.
+
+And I must add that Sandy's not so bad a talker when he lets himself go.
+He has the entire volume of Scotch literature at his tongue's end.
+
+"Little kens the auld wife as she sits by the fire what the wind is
+doing on Hurly-Burly-Swire," he observed as a specially fierce blast
+drove the rain against the window. That sounds pat, doesn't it? I
+haven't, though, the remotest idea what it means. And listen to this:
+between cups of coffee (he drinks far too much coffee for a sensible
+medical man) he casually let fall the news that his family knew the R.
+L. S. family personally, and used to take supper at 17 Heriot Row! I
+tended him assiduously for the rest of the evening in a Did you once see
+Shelley plain, And did he stop and speak to you? frame of mind.
+
+When I started this letter, I had no intention of filling it with a
+description of the recently excavated charms of Robin MacRae; it's just
+by way of remorseful apology. He was so nice and companionable last
+night that I have been going about today feeling conscience-smitten at
+the thought of how mercilessly I made fun of him to you and Jervis. I
+really didn't mean quite all of the impolite things that I said. About
+once a month the man is sweet and tractable and engaging.
+
+Punch has just been paying a social call, and during the course of it
+he lost three little toadlings an inch long. Sadie Kate recovered one of
+them from under the bookcase, but the other two hopped away; and I'm so
+afraid they've taken sanctuary in my bed! I do wish that mice and snakes
+and toads and angleworms were not so portable. You never know what is
+going on in a perfectly respectable-looking child's pocket.
+
+I had a beautiful visit in Casa Pendleton. Don't forget your promise to
+return it soon.
+
+Yours as ever,
+
+SALLIE.
+
+P.S. I left a pair of pale-blue bedroom slippers under the bed. Will
+you please have Mary wrap them up and mail them to me? And hold her
+hand while she writes the address. She spelt my name on the place cards
+"Mackbird."
+
+
+Tuesday.
+
+Dear Enemy:
+
+As I told you, I left an application for an accomplished nurse with the
+employment bureau of New York.
+
+
+Wanted! A nurse maid with an ample lap suitable for the accommodation of
+seventeen babies at once.
+
+
+She came this afternoon, and this is the fine figure of a woman that I
+drew!
+
+We couldn't keep a baby from sliding off her lap unless we fastened him
+firmly with safety pins.
+
+Please give Sadie Kate the magazine. I'll read it tonight and return it
+tomorrow.
+
+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 ownership 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 institution 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
+ACCOMPLISHING 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
+furnishings 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
+fashion, 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 fashion,
+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
+accomplishing housework. They are then to pay the institution (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, cashier, and paying teller ready to be
+placed by this time next year.
+
+
+Saturday.
+
+
+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
+assure 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 pass 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,
+
+Saturday.
+
+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 bump. 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 Association for luncheon. Supervised children's menus for
+next ten days. Dictated five letters to families who have our children.
+Visited our little feeble-minded Loretta Higgins (pardon the reference;
+I know you don't like me to mention the feeble-minded), who is being
+boarded out in a nice comfortable family, where she is learning to work.
+Came back to tea and a conference with the doctor about sending a child
+with tubercular glands to a sanatorium. Read an article on cottage
+VERSUS congregate system for housing dependent children. (We do need
+cottages! I wish you'd send us a few for a Christmas present.) And now
+at nine o'clock I'm sleepily beginning a letter to you. Do you know many
+young society girls who can point to such a useful day as that?
+
+Oh, I forgot to say that I stole ten minutes from my accounts this
+morning to install a new cook. Our Sallie Washington-Johnston, who
+cooked fit for the angels had a dreadful, dreadful temper and terrorized
+poor Noah, our super-excellent furnace man, to the point of giving
+notice. We couldn't spare Noah. He's more useful to the institution than
+its superintendent, and so Sallie Washington-Johnston is no more.
+
+When I asked the new cook her name, she replied, "Ma name is Suzanne
+Estelle, but ma friends call me Pet." Pet cooked the dinner tonight,
+but I must say that she lacks Sallie's delicate touch. I am awfully
+disappointed that you didn't visit us while Sallie was still here. You
+would have taken away an exalted opinion of my housekeeping.
+
+
+Drowsiness overcame me at that point, and it's now two days later.
+
+Poor neglected Gordon! It has just occurred to me that you never got
+thanked for the modeling clay which came two weeks ago, and it was
+such an unusually intelligent present that I should have telegraphed my
+appreciation. When I opened the box and saw all that nice messy putty
+stuff, I sat down on the spot and created a statue of Singapore. The
+children love it; and it is very good to have the handicraft side of
+their training encouraged.
+
+After a careful study of American history, I have determined that
+nothing is so valuable to a future president as an early obligatory
+unescapable performance of CHORES.
+
+Therefore I have divided the daily work of this institution into a
+hundred parcels, and the children rotate weekly through a succession of
+unaccustomed tasks. Of course they do everything badly, for just as they
+learn how, they progress to something new. It would be infinitely easier
+for us to follow Mrs. Lippett's immoral custom of keeping each child
+sentenced for life to a well-learned routine; but when the temptation
+assails me, I recall the dreary picture of Florence Henty, who polished
+the brass doorknobs of this institution for seven years--and I sternly
+shove the children on.
+
+I get angry every time I think of Mrs Lippett. She had exactly the
+point of view of a Tammany politician--no slightest sense of service to
+society. Her only interest in the John Grier Home was to get a living
+out of it.
+
+
+Wednesday.
+
+
+What new branch of learning do you think I have introduced into my
+asylum? Table manners!
+
+I never had any idea that it was such a lot of trouble to teach children
+how to eat and drink. Their favorite method is to put their mouths down
+to their mugs and lap their milk like kittens. Good manners are not
+merely snobbish ornaments, as Mrs. Lippett's regime appeared to believe.
+They mean self-discipline and thought for others, and my children have
+got to learn them.
+
+That woman never allowed them to talk at their meals, and I am having
+the most dreadful time getting any conversation out of them above a
+frightened whisper. So I have instituted the custom of the entire staff,
+myself included, sitting with them at the table, and directing the talk
+along cheerful and improving lines.
+
+Also I have established a small, very strict training table, where
+the little dears, in relays, undergo a week of steady badgering. Our
+uplifting table conversations run like this:
+
+"Yes, Tom, Napoleon Bonaparte was a very great man--elbows off the
+table. He possessed a tremendous power of concentrating his mind on
+whatever he wanted to have; and that is the way to accomplish--don't
+snatch, Susan; ask politely for the bread, and Carrie will pass it to
+you.--But he was an example of the fact that selfish thought just for
+oneself, without considering the lives of others, will come to disaster
+in the--Tom! Keep your mouth shut when you chew--and after the battle
+of Waterloo--let Sadie's cooky alone--his fall was all the greater
+because--Sadie Kate, you may leave the table. It makes no difference
+what he did. Under no provocation does a lady slap a gentleman."
+
+
+Two more days have passed; this is the same kind of meandering letter I
+write to Judy. At least, my dear man, you can't complain that I haven't
+been thinking about you this week! I know you hate to be told all about
+the asylum, but I can't help it, for it's all I know. I don't have five
+minutes a day to read the papers. The big outside world has dropped
+away. My interests all lie on the inside of this little iron inclosure.
+
+I am at present,
+
+S. McBRIDE,
+
+Superintendent of the
+
+John Grier Home.
+
+
+Thursday.
+
+Dear Enemy:
+
+"Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in." Hasn't that a very
+philosophical, detached, Lord of the Universe sound? It comes from
+Thoreau, whom I am assiduously reading at present. As you see, I have
+revolted against your literature and taken to my own again. The last
+two evenings have been devoted to "Walden," a book as far removed as
+possible from the problems of the dependent child.
+
+Did you ever read old Henry David Thoreau? You really ought. I think
+you'd find him a congenial soul. Listen to this: "Society is commonly
+too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to
+acquire any new value for each other. It would be better if there were
+but one habitation to a square mile, as where I live." A pleasant,
+expansive, neebor-like man he must have been! He minds me in some ways
+o' Sandy.
+
+This is to tell you that we have a placing-out agent visiting us. She is
+about to dispose of four chicks, one of them Thomas Kehoe. What do you
+think? Ought we to risk it? The place she has in mind for him is a farm
+in a no-license portion of Connecticut, where he will work hard for
+his board, and live in the farmer's family. It sounds exactly the right
+thing, and we can't keep him here forever; he'll have to be turned out
+some day into a world full of whisky.
+
+I'm sorry to tear you away from that cheerful work on "Dementia Precox,"
+but I'd be most obliged if you'd drop in here toward eight o'clock for a
+conference with the agent.
+
+I am, as usual,
+
+S. McBRIDE.
+
+
+June 17. My dear Judy:
+
+Betsy has perpetrated a most unconscionable trick upon a pair of
+adopting parents. They have traveled East from Ohio in their touring car
+for the dual purpose of seeing the country and picking up a daughter.
+They appear to be the leading citizens of their town, whose name at
+the moment escapes me; but it's a very important town. It has electric
+lights and gas, and Mr. Leading Citizen owns the controlling interest
+in both plants. With a wave of his hand he could plunge that entire town
+into darkness; but fortunately he's a kind man, and won't do anything so
+harsh, not even if they fail to reelect him mayor. He lives in a brick
+house with a slate roof and two towers, and has a deer and fountain and
+lots of nice shade trees in the yard. (He carries its photograph in his
+pocket.) They are good-natured, generous, kind-hearted, smiling people,
+and a little fat; you can see what desirable parents they would make.
+
+Well, we had exactly the daughter of their dreams, only, as they came
+without giving us notice, she was dressed in a flannellet nightgown, and
+her face was dirty. They looked Caroline over, and were not impressed;
+but they thanked us politely, and said they would bear her in mind. They
+wanted to visit the New York Orphanage before deciding. We knew well
+that, if they saw that superior assemblage of children, our poor little
+Caroline would never have a chance.
+
+Then Betsy rose to the emergency. She graciously invited them to motor
+over to her house for tea that afternoon and inspect one of our little
+wards who would be visiting her baby niece. Mr. and Mrs. Leading Citizen
+do not know many people in the East, and they haven't been receiving the
+invitations that they feel are their due; so they were quite innocently
+pleased at the prospect of a little social diversion. The moment they
+had retired to the hotel for luncheon, Betsy called up her car, and
+rushed baby Caroline over to her house. She stuffed her into baby
+niece's best pink-and-white embroidered frock, borrowed a hat of Irish
+lace, some pink socks and white slippers, and set her picturesquely
+upon the green lawn under a spreading beech tree. A white-aproned nurse
+(borrowed also from baby niece) plied her with bread and milk and gaily
+colored toys. By the time prospective parents arrived, our Caroline,
+full of food and contentment, greeted them with cooes of delight. From
+the moment their eyes fell upon her they were ravished with desire.
+Not a suspicion crossed their unobservant minds that this sweet little
+rosebud was the child of the morning. And so, a few formalities having
+been complied with, it really looks as though baby Caroline would live
+in the Towers and grow into a leading citizen.
+
+I must really get to work, without any further delay, upon the burning
+question of new clothes for our girls.
+
+With the highest esteem, I am, D'r Ma'am, Y'r most ob'd't and h'mble
+serv't,
+
+SAL. McBRIDE.
+
+
+June 19th. My dearest Judy:
+
+Listen to the grandest innovation of all, and one that will delight your
+heart.
+
+NO MORE BLUE GINGHAM!
+
+
+Feeling that this aristocratic neighborhood of country estates might
+contain valuable food for our asylum, I have of late been moving in
+the village social circles, and at a luncheon yesterday I dug out a
+beautiful and charming widow who wears delectable, flowing gowns that
+she designs herself. She confided to me that she would have loved to
+have been a dressmaker, if she had only been born with a needle in her
+mouth instead of a golden spoon. She says she never sees a pretty girl
+badly dressed but she longs to take her in hand and make her over. Did
+you ever hear anything so apropos? From the moment she opened her lips
+she was a marked man.
+
+"I can show you fifty-nine badly dressed girls," said I to her, "and you
+have got to come back with me and plan their new clothes and make them
+beautiful."
+
+She expostulated; but in vain. I led her out to her automobile, shoved
+her in, and murmured, "John Grier Home" to the chauffeur. The first
+inmate our eyes fell upon was Sadie Kate, just fresh, I judge, from
+hugging the molasses barrel; and a shocking spectacle she was for any
+esthetically minded person. In addition to the stickiness, one stocking
+was coming down, her pinafore was buttoned crookedly, and she had lost a
+hair-ribbon. But--as always--completely at ease, she welcomed us with a
+cheery grin, and offered the lady a sticky paw.
+
+"Now," said I, in triumph, "you see how much we need you. What can you
+do to make Sadie Kate beautiful?"
+
+"Wash her," said Mrs. Livermore.
+
+Sadie Kate was marched to my bathroom. When the scrubbing was finished
+and the hair strained back and the stocking restored to seemly heights,
+I returned her for a second inspection--a perfectly normal little
+orphan. Mrs. Livermore turned her from side to side, and studied her
+long and earnestly.
+
+Sadie Kate by nature is a beauty, a wild, dark, Gypsyish little colleen.
+She looks fresh from the wind-swept moors of Connemara. But, oh, we
+have managed to rob her of her birthright with this awful institution
+uniform!
+
+After five minutes' silent contemplation, Mrs. Livermore raised her eyes
+to mine.
+
+"Yes, my dear, you need me."
+
+And then and there we formed our plans. She is to head the committee
+on C L O T H E S. She is to choose three friends to help her. And they,
+with the two dozen best sewers among the girls and our sewing-teacher
+and five sewing machines, are going to make over the looks of this
+institution. And the charity is all on our side. We are supplying Mrs.
+Livermore with the profession that Providence robbed her of. Wasn't it
+clever of me to find her? I woke this morning at dawn and crowed!
+
+Lots more news,--I could run into a second volume,--but I am going to
+send this letter to town by Mr. Witherspoon, who, in a very high collar
+and the blackest of evening clothes, is on the point of departure for a
+barn dance at the country club. I told him to pick out the nicest girls
+he danced with to come and tell stories to my children.
+
+It is dreadful, the scheming person I am getting to be. All the time I
+am talking to any one, I am silently thinking, "What use can you be to
+my asylum?"
+
+There is grave danger that this present superintendent will become so
+interested in her job that she will never want to leave. I sometimes
+picture her a white-haired old lady, propelled about the building in
+a wheeled chair, but still tenaciously superintending her fourth
+generation of orphans.
+
+PLEASE discharge her before that day!
+
+Yours,
+
+SALLIE.
+
+
+Friday.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+Yesterday morning, without the slightest warning, a station hack drove
+up to the door and disgorged upon the steps two men, two little boys, a
+baby girl, a rocking horse, and a Teddy bear, and then drove off!
+
+The men were artists, and the little ones were children of another
+artist, dead three weeks ago. They had brought the mites to us because
+they thought "John Grier" sounded solid and respectable, and not like a
+public institution. It had never entered their unbusinesslike heads that
+any formality is necessary about placing a child in an asylum.
+
+I explained that we were full, but they seemed so stranded and aghast,
+that I told them to sit down while I advised them what to do. So the
+chicks were sent to the nursery, with a recommendation of bread and
+milk, while I listened to their history. Those artists had a fatally
+literary touch, or maybe it was just the sound of the baby girl's laugh,
+but, anyway, before they had finished, the babes were ours.
+
+Never have I seen a sunnier creature than the little Allegra (we don't
+often get such fancy names or such fancy children). She is three years
+old, is lisping funny baby talk and bubbling with laughter. The tragedy
+she has just emerged from has never touched her. But Don and Clifford,
+sturdy little lads of five and seven, are already solemn-eyed and
+frightened at the hardness of life.
+
+Their mother was a kindergarten teacher who married an artist on a
+capital of enthusiasm and a few tubes of paint. His friends say that he
+had talent, but of course he had to throw it away to pay the milkman.
+They lived in a haphazard fashion in a rickety old studio, cooking
+behind screens, the babies sleeping on shelves.
+
+But there seems to have been a very happy side to it--a great deal of
+love and many friends, all more or less poor, but artistic and congenial
+and high-thinking. The little lads, in their gentleness and fineness,
+show that phase of their upbringing. They have an air which many of
+my children, despite all the good manners I can pour into them, will
+forever lack.
+
+The mother died in the hospital a few days after Allegra's birth, and
+the father struggled on for two years, caring for his brood and painting
+like mad--advertisements, anything--to keep a roof over their heads.
+
+He died in St. Vincent's three weeks ago,--overwork, worry, pneumonia.
+His friends rallied about the babies, sold such of the studio fittings
+as had escaped pawning, paid off the debts, and looked about for the
+best asylum they could find. And, Heaven save them! they hit upon us!
+
+Well, I kept the two artists for luncheon,--nice creatures in soft
+hats and Windsor ties, and looking pretty frayed themselves,--and then
+started them back to New York with the promise that I would give the
+little family my most parental attention.
+
+So here they are, one little mite in the nursery, two in the
+kindergarten room, four big packing cases full of canvases in the
+cellar, and a trunk in the store room with the letters of their
+father and mother. And a look in their faces, an intangible spiritual
+SOMETHING, that is their heritage.
+
+I can't get them out of my mind. All night long I was planning their
+future. The boys are easy. They have already been graduated from
+college, Mr. Pendleton assisting, and are pursuing honorable business
+careers. But Allegra I don't know about; I can't think what to wish for
+the child. Of course the normal thing to wish for any sweet little girl
+is that two kind foster parents will come along to take the place of the
+real parents that Fate has robbed her of. But in this case it would be
+cruel to steal her away from her brothers. Their love for the baby is
+pitiful. You see, they have brought her up. The only time I ever hear
+them laugh is when she has done something funny.
+
+The poor little fellows miss their father horribly. I found Don, the
+five-year-old one, sobbing in his crib last night because he couldn't
+say good night to "daddy."
+
+But Allegra is true to her name, the happiest young miss of three I have
+ever seen. The poor father managed well by her, and she, little ingrate,
+has already forgotten that she has lost him.
+
+Whatever can I do with these little ones? I think and think and think
+about them. I can't place them out, and it does seem too awful to bring
+them up here; for as good as we are going to be when we get ourselves
+made over, still, after all, we are an institution, and our inmates are
+just little incubator chicks. They don't get the individual, fussy care
+that only an old hen can give.
+
+There is a lot of interesting news that I might have been telling you,
+but my new little family has driven everything out of my mind.
+
+Bairns are certain joy, but nae sma' care.
+
+Yours ever,
+
+SALLIE. P.S. Don't forget that you are coming to visit me next week.
+
+P.S. II. The doctor, who is ordinarily so scientific and unsentimental,
+has fallen in love with Allegra. He didn't so much as glance at her
+tonsils; he simply picked her up in his arms and hugged her. Oh, she is
+a little witch! Whatever is to become of her?
+
+
+
+June 22. My dear Judy:
+
+I may report that you need no longer worry as to our inadequate fire
+protection. The doctor and Mr. Witherspoon have been giving the
+matter their gravest attention, and no game yet devised has proved so
+entertaining and destructive as our fire drill.
+
+The children all retire to their beds and plunge into alert slumber.
+Fire alarm sounds. They spring up and into their shoes, snatch the top
+blanket from their beds, wrap it around their imaginary nightclothes,
+fall into line, and trot to the hall and stairs.
+
+Our seventeen little tots in the nursery are each in charge of an
+Indian, and are bundled out, shrieking with delight. The remaining
+Indians, so long as there is no danger of the roof falling, devote
+themselves to salvage. On the occasion of our first drill, Percy in
+command, the contents of a dozen clothes lockers were dumped into sheets
+and hurled out of the windows. I usurped dictatorship just in time to
+keep the pillows and mattresses from following. We spent hours resorting
+those clothes, while Percy and the doctor, having lost all interest
+strolled up to the camp with their pipes.
+
+Our future drills are to be a touch less realistic. However, I am
+pleased to tell you that, under the able direction of Fire Chief
+Witherspoon, we emptied the building in six minutes and twenty-eight
+seconds.
+
+That baby Allegra has fairy blood in her veins. Never did this
+institution harbor such a child, barring one that Jervis and I know of.
+She has completely subjugated the doctor. Instead of going about his
+visits like a sober medical man, he comes down to my library hand in
+hand with Allegra, and for half an hour at a time crawls about on a rug,
+pretending he's a horse, while the bonnie wee lassie sits on his back
+and kicks. You know, I am thinking of putting a card in the paper:
+
+Characters neatly remodeled. S. McBride.
+
+
+Sandy dropped in two nights ago to have a bit of conversation with Betsy
+and me, and he was FRIVOLOUS. He made three jokes, and he sat down at
+the piano and sang some old Scotch, "My luve's like a red, red rose,"
+and "Come under my plaidie," and "Wha's at the window? Wha? Wha?" not in
+the least educational, and then danced a few steps of the strathspey!
+
+I sat and beamed upon my handiwork, for it's true, I've done it all
+through my frivolous example and the books I've given him and the
+introducing of such lightsome companions as Jimmie and Percy and Gordon
+Hallock. If I have a few more months in which to work, I shall get the
+man human. He has given up purple ties, and at my tactful suggestion has
+adopted a suit of gray. You have no idea how it sets him off. He will
+be quite distinguished looking as soon as I can make him stop carrying
+bulgy things in his pockets.
+
+Good-by; and remember that we're expecting you on Friday.
+
+SALLIE.
+
+P.S. Here is a picture of Allegra, taken by Mr. Witherspoon. Isn't she
+a love? Her present clothes do not enhance her beauty, but in the course
+of a few weeks she will move into a pink smocked frock.
+
+Wednesday, June 24, 10 A.M. MRS. JERVIS PENDLETON.
+
+Madam:
+
+Your letter is at hand, stating that you cannot visit me on Friday per
+promise, because your husband has business that keeps him in town. What
+clishmaclaver is this! Has it come to such a pass that you can't leave
+him for two days?
+
+I did not let 113 babies interfere with my visit to you, and I see no
+reason why you should let one husband interfere with your visit to me. I
+shall meet the Berkshire express on Friday as agreed. S. McBRIDE.
+
+
+June 30. My dear Judy:
+
+That was a very flying visit you paid us; but for all small favors we
+are grateful. I am awfully pleased that you were so delighted with the
+way things are going, and I can't wait for Jervis and the architect to
+get up here and really begin a fundamental ripping-up.
+
+You know, I had the queerest feeling all the time that you were here. I
+can't make it seem true that you, my dear, wonderful Judy, were actually
+brought up in this institution, and know from the bitter inside what
+these little tots need. Sometimes the tragedy of your childhood fills
+me with an anger that makes me want to roll up my sleeves and fight the
+whole world and force it into making itself over into a place more fit
+for children to live in. That Scotch-Irish ancestry of mine seems to
+have deposited a tremendous amount of FIGHT in my character.
+
+If you had started me with a modern asylum, equipped with nice, clean,
+hygienic cottages and everything in running order, I couldn't have stood
+the monotony of its perfect clockwork. It's the sight of so many things
+crying to be done that makes it possible for me to stay. Sometimes, I
+must confess, I wake up in the morning and listen to these institution
+noises, and sniff this institution air, and long for the happy, carefree
+life that by rights is mine.
+
+You my dear witch, cast a spell over me, and I came. But often in
+the night watches your spell wears thin, and I start the day with the
+burning decision to run away from the John Grier Home. But I postpone
+starting until after breakfast. And as I issue into the corridor, one
+of these pathetic tots runs to meet me, and shyly slips a warm, crumpled
+little fist into my hand, and looks up with wide baby eyes, mutely
+asking for a little petting, and I snatch him up and hug him. And then,
+as I look over his shoulder at the other forlorn little mites, I long
+to take all 113 into my arms and love them into happiness. There is
+something hypnotic about this working with children. Struggle as you
+may, it gets you in the end.
+
+Your visit seems to have left me in a broadly philosophical frame of
+mind; but I really have one or two bits of news that I might convey. The
+new frocks are marching along, and, oh, but they are going to be sweet!
+Mrs. Livermore was entranced with those parti-colored bales of cotton
+cloth you sent,--you should see our workroom, with it all scattered
+about,--and when I think of sixty little girls, attired in pink and blue
+and yellow and lavender, romping upon our lawn of a sunny day, I feel
+that we should have a supply of smoked eye glasses to offer visitors.
+Of course you know that some of those brilliant fabrics are going to be
+very fadeable and impractical. But Mrs. Livermore is as bad as you--she
+doesn't give a hang. She'll make a second and a third set if necessary.
+DOWN WITH CHECKED GINGHAM!
+
+I am glad you liked our doctor. Of course we reserve the right to say
+anything about him we choose, but our feelings would be awfully hurt if
+anybody else should make fun of him.
+
+He and I are still superintending each other's reading. Last week he
+appeared with Herbert Spencer's "System of Synthetic Philosophy" for
+me to glance at. I gratefully accepted it, and gave him in return the
+"Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff." Do you remember in college how we used to
+enrich our daily speech with quotations from Marie? Well, Sandy took her
+home and read her painstakingly and thoughtfully.
+
+"Yes," he acknowledged today when he came to report, "it is a truthful
+record of a certain kind of morbid, egotistical personality that
+unfortunately does exist. But I can't understand why you care to
+read it; for, thank God! Sally Lunn, you and Bash haven't anything in
+common."
+
+That's the nearest to a compliment he ever came, and I feel extremely
+flattered. As to poor Marie, he refers to her as "Bash" because he can't
+pronounce her name, and is too disdainful to try.
+
+We have a child here, the daughter of a chorus girl, and she is a
+conceited, selfish, vain, posing, morbid, lying little minx, but she has
+eyelashes! Sandy has taken the most violent dislike to that child.
+And since reading poor Marie's diary, he has found a new comprehensive
+adjective for summing up all of her distressing qualities. He calls her
+BASHY, and dismisses her.
+
+Good-by and come again.
+
+SALLIE.
+
+P.S. My children show a distressing tendency to draw out their entire
+bank accounts to buy candy.
+
+
+
+Tuesday night. My dear Judy:
+
+What do you think Sandy has done now? He has gone off on a pleasure trip
+to that psychopathic institution whose head alienist visited us a month
+or so ago. Did you ever know anything like the man? He is fascinated by
+insane people, and can't let them alone.
+
+When I asked for some parting medical instructions, he replied:
+
+"Feed a cowld and hunger a colic and put nae faith in doctors."
+
+With that advice, and a few bottles of cod-liver oil we are left to our
+own devices. I feel very free and adventurous. Perhaps you had better
+run up here again, as there's no telling what joyous upheaval I may
+accomplish when out from under Sandy's dampening influence.
+
+S.
+
+
+THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
+
+Friday.
+
+Dear Enemy:
+
+Here I stay lashed to the mast, while you run about the country
+disporting yourself with insane people. And just as I was thinking that
+I had nicely cured you of this morbid predilection for psychopathic
+institutions! It's very disappointing. You had seemed almost human of
+late.
+
+May I ask how long you are intending to stay? You had permission to go
+for two days, and you've already been away four.
+
+Charlie Martin fell out of a cherry tree yesterday and cut his head
+open, and we were driven to calling in a foreign doctor. Five stitches.
+Patient doing well. But we don't like to depend on strangers. I wouldn't
+say a word if you were away on legitimate business, but you know very
+well that, after associating with melancholics for a week, you will come
+back home in a dreadful state of gloom, dead sure that humanity is going
+to the dogs; and upon me will fall the burden of getting you decently
+cheerful again.
+
+Do leave those insane people to their delusions, and come back to the
+John Grier Home, which needs you.
+
+I am most fervent' Your friend and servant, S. McB.
+
+P.S. Don't you admire that poetical ending? It was borrowed from Robert
+Burns, whose works I am reading assiduously as a compliment to a Scotch
+friend.
+
+
+July 6.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+That doctor man is still away. No word; just disappeared into space.
+I don't know whether he is ever coming back or not, but we seem to be
+running very happily without him.
+
+I lunched yesterday CHEZ the two kind ladies who have taken our Punch to
+their hearts. The young man seems to be very much at home. He took me
+by the hand, and did the honors of the garden, presenting me with the
+bluebell of my choice. At luncheon the English butler lifted him into
+his chair and tied on his bib with as much manner as though he were
+serving a prince of the blood. The butler has lately come from the
+household of the Earl of Durham, Punch from a cellar in Houston Street.
+It was a very uplifting spectacle.
+
+My hostesses entertained me afterward with excerpts from their table
+conversations of the last two weeks. (I wonder the butler hasn't given
+notice; he looked like a respectable man.) If nothing more comes of it,
+at least Punch has furnished them with funny stories for the rest of
+their lives. One of them is even thinking of writing a book. "At least,"
+says she, wiping hysterical tears from her eyes, "we have lived!"
+
+The Hon. Cy dropped in at 6:30 last night, and found me in an evening
+gown, starting for a dinner at Mrs. Livermore's house. He mildly
+observed that Mrs. Lippett did not aspire to be a society leader, but
+saved her energy for her work. You know I'm not vindictive, but I never
+look at that man without wishing he were at the bottom of the duck pond,
+securely anchored to a rock.
+
+Otherwise he'd pop up and float.
+
+Singapore respectfully salutes you, and is very glad that you can't see
+him as he now appears. A shocking calamity has befallen his good looks.
+Some bad child--and I don't think she's a boy--has clipped that poor
+beastie in spots, until he looks like a mangy, moth-eaten checkerboard.
+No one can imagine who did it. Sadie Kate is very handy with the
+scissors, but she is also handy with an alibi! During the time when the
+clipping presumably occurred, she was occupying a stool in the corner of
+the schoolroom with her face to the wall, as twenty-eight children can
+testify. However, it has become Sadie Kate's daily duty to treat those
+spots with your hair tonic.
+
+I am, as usual,
+
+SALLIE.
+
+P.S. This is a recent portrait of the Hon. Cy drawn from life. The man,
+in some respects, is a fascinating talker; he makes gestures with his
+nose.
+
+
+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 Japan. 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 sanctity 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 accomplishing 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 accomplishing
+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
+institution 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 muffins 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 assertion, 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 sunshine, 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
+institution, 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.
+
+While there, she investigated a family who had applied for a child. Of
+course we haven't a proper investigating plant, but once in a while,
+when a family drops right into our arms, we do like to put the business
+through. As a usual thing, we work with the State Charities' Aid
+Association. They have a lot of trained agents traveling about the
+State, keeping in touch with families who are willing to take children,
+and with asylums that have them to give. Since they are willing to
+work for us, there is no slightest use in our going to the expense
+of peddling our own babies. And I do want to place out as many as are
+available, for I firmly believe that a private home is the best thing
+for the child, provided, of course, that we are very fussy about the
+character of the homes we choose. I don't require rich foster parents,
+but I do require kind, loving, intelligent parents. This time I think
+Betsy has landed a gem of a family. The child is not yet delivered or
+the papers signed, and of course there is always danger that they may
+give a sudden flop, and splash back into the water.
+
+Ask Jervis if he ever heard of J. F. Bretland of Philadelphia. He seems
+to move in financial circles. The first I ever heard of him was a
+letter addressed to the "Supt. John Grier Home, Dear Sir,"--a curt,
+typewritten, businesslike letter, from an AWFULLY businesslike lawyer,
+saying that his wife had determined to adopt a baby girl of attractive
+appearance and good health between the ages of two and three years. The
+child must be an orphan of American stock, with unimpeachable heredity,
+and no relatives to interfere. Could I furnish one as required and
+oblige, yours truly, J. F. Bretland?
+
+By way of reference he mentioned "Bradstreets." Did you ever hear of
+anything so funny? You would think he was opening a charge account at a
+nursery, and inclosing an order from our seed catalogue.
+
+We began our usual investigation by mailing a reference blank to a
+clergyman in Germantown, where the J. F. B.'s reside.
+
+Does he own any property?
+
+Does he pay his bills?
+
+Is he kind to animals?
+
+Does he attend church?
+
+Does he quarrel with his wife? And a dozen other impertinent questions.
+
+We evidently picked a clergyman with a sense of humor. Instead of
+answering in laborious detail, he wrote up and down and across the
+sheet, "I wish they'd adopt me!"
+
+This looked promising, so B. Kindred obligingly dashed out to Germantown
+as soon as the wedding breakfast was over. She is developing the most
+phenomenal detective instinct. In the course of a social call she can
+absorb from the chairs and tables a family's entire moral history.
+
+She returned from Germantown bursting with enthusiastic details.
+
+Mr. J. F. Bretland is a wealthy and influential citizen, cordially loved
+by his friends and deeply hated by his enemies (discharged employees,
+who do not hesitate to say that he is a HAR-RD man). He is a little
+shaky in his attendance at church, but his wife seems regular, and he
+gives money.
+
+She is a charming, kindly, cultivated gentlewoman, just out of a
+sanatorium after a year of nervous prostration. The doctor says that
+what she needs is some strong interest in life, and advises adopting
+a child. She has always longed to do it, but her hard husband has
+stubbornly refused. But finally, as always, it is the gentle, persistent
+wife who has triumphed, and hard husband has been forced to give in.
+Waiving his own natural preference for a boy, he wrote, as above, the
+usual request for a blue-eyed girl.
+
+Mrs. Bretland, with the firm intention of taking a child, has been
+reading up for years, and there is no detail of infant dietetics
+that she does not know. She has a sunny nursery, with a southwestern
+exposure, all ready. And a closet full of surreptitiously gathered
+dolls! She has made the clothes for them herself,--she showed them to
+Betsy with the greatest pride,--so you can understand the necessity for
+a girl.
+
+She has just heard of an excellent English trained nurse that she can
+secure, but she isn't sure but that it would be better to start with a
+French nurse, so that the child can learn the language before her vocal
+cords are set. Also, she was extremely interested when she heard that
+Betsy was a college woman. She couldn't make up her mind whether to
+send the baby to college or not. What was Betsy's honest opinion? If the
+child were Betsy's own daughter, would Betsy send her to college?
+
+All this would be funny if it weren't so pathetic; but really I can't
+get away from the picture of that poor lonely woman sewing those doll
+clothes for the little unknown girl that she wasn't sure she could have.
+She lost her own two babies years ago, or, rather, she never had them;
+they were never alive.
+
+You can see what a good home it's going to be. There's lots of love
+waiting for the little mite, and that is better than all the wealth
+which, in this case, goes along.
+
+But the problem now is to find the child, and that isn't easy. The J. F.
+Bretlands are so abominably explicit in their requirements. I have
+just the baby boy to give them; but with that closetful of dolls, he is
+impossible. Little Florence won't do--one tenacious parent living. I've
+a wide variety of foreigners with liquid brown eyes--won't do at all.
+Mrs. Bretland is a blonde, and daughter must resemble her. I have
+several sweet little mites with unspeakable heredity, but the Bretlands
+want six generations of church-attending grandparents, with a colonial
+governor at the top. Also I have a darling little curly-headed girl (and
+curls are getting rarer and rarer), but illegitimate. And that seems to
+be an unsurmountable barrier in the eyes of adopting parents, though,
+as a matter of fact, it makes no slightest difference in the child.
+However, she won't do. The Bretlands hold out sternly for a marriage
+certificate.
+
+There remains just one child out of all these one hundred and seven that
+appears available. Our little Sophie's father and mother were killed in
+a railroad accident, and the only reason she wasn't killed was because
+they had just left her in a hospital to get an abscess cut out of her
+throat. She comes from good common American stock, irreproachable and
+uninteresting in every way. She's a washed-out, spiritless, whiney
+little thing. The doctor has been pouring her full of his favorite
+cod-liver oil and spinach, but he can't get any cheerfulness into her.
+
+However, individual love and care does accomplish wonders in institution
+children, and she may bloom into something rare and beautiful after a
+few months' transplanting. So I yesterday wrote a glowing account of her
+immaculate family history to J. F. Bretland, offering to deliver her in
+Germantown.
+
+This morning I received a telegram from J. F. B. Not at all! He does not
+purpose to buy any daughter sight unseen. He will come and inspect the
+child in person at three o'clock on Wednesday next.
+
+Oh dear, if he shouldn't like her! We are now bending all our energies
+toward enhancing that child's beauty--like a pup bound for the dog
+show. Do you think it would be awfully immoral if I rouged her cheeks a
+suspicion? She is too young to pick up the habit.
+
+Heavens! what a letter! A million pages written without a break. You can
+see where my heart is. I'm as excited over little Sophie's settling in
+life as though she were my own darling daughter.
+
+Respectful regards to the president.
+
+SAL. McB.
+
+
+Dear Gordon:
+
+That was an obnoxious, beastly, low-down trick not to send me a cheering
+line for four weeks just because, in a period of abnormal stress I once
+let you go for three. I had really begun to be worried for fear you'd
+tumbled into the Potomac. My chicks would miss you dreadfully; they love
+their uncle Gordon. Please remember that you promised to send them a
+donkey.
+
+Please also remember that I'm a busier person than you. It's a lot
+harder to run the John Grier Home than the House of Representatives.
+Besides, you have more efficient people to help.
+
+This isn't a letter; it's an indignant remonstrance. I'll write
+tomorrow--or the next day.
+
+S.
+
+P.S. On reading your letter over again I am slightly mollified, but
+dinna think I believe a' your saft words. I ken weel ye only flatter
+when ye speak sae fair.
+
+
+July 17.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+I have a history to recount.
+
+This, please remember, is Wednesday next. So at half-past two o'clock
+our little Sophie was bathed and brushed and clothed in fine linen, and
+put in charge of a trusty orphan, with anxious instructions to keep her
+clean.
+
+At three-thirty to the minute--never have I known a human being so
+disconcertingly businesslike as J. F. Bretland--an automobile of
+expensive foreign design rolled up to the steps of this imposing
+chateau. A square-shouldered, square-jawed personage, with a chopped-off
+mustache and a manner that inclines one to hurry, presented himself
+three minutes later at my library door. He greeted me briskly as "Miss
+McKosh." I gently corrected him, and he changed to "Miss McKim." I
+indicated my most soothing armchair, and invited him to take some light
+refreshment after his journey. He accepted a glass of water (I admire a
+temperate parent), and evinced an impatient desire to be done with the
+business. So I rang the bell and ordered the little Sophie to be brought
+down.
+
+"Hold on, Miss McGee!" said he to me. "I'd rather see her in her own
+environment. I will go with you to the playroom or corral or wherever
+you keep your youngsters."
+
+So I led him to the nursery, where thirteen or fourteen mites in gingham
+rompers were tumbling about on mattresses on the floor. Sophie, alone
+in the glory of feminine petticoats, was ensconced in the blue-ginghamed
+arms of a very bored orphan. She was squirming and fighting to get down,
+and her feminine petticoats were tightly wound about her neck. I took
+her in my arms, smoothed her clothes, wiped her nose, and invited her to
+look at the gentleman.
+
+That child's whole future hung upon five minutes of sunniness, and
+instead of a single smile, she WHINED!
+
+Mr. Bretland shook her hand in a very gingerly fashion and chirruped to
+her as you might to a pup. Sophie took not the slightest notice of him,
+but turned her back, and buried her face in my neck. He shrugged his
+shoulders, supposed that they could take her on trial. She might suit
+his wife; he himself didn't want one, anyway. And we turned to go out.
+
+Then who should come toddling straight across his path but that little
+sunbeam Allegra! Exactly in front of him she staggered, threw her arms
+about like a windmill, and plumped down on all fours. He hopped aside
+with great agility to avoid stepping on her, and then picked her up and
+set her on her feet. She clasped her arms about his leg, and looked up
+at him with a gurgling laugh.
+
+"Daddy! Frow baby up!"
+
+He is the first man, barring the doctor, whom the child has seen for
+weeks, and evidently he resembles somewhat her almost forgotten father.
+
+J. F. Bretland picked her up and tossed her in the air as handily as
+though it were a daily occurrence, while she ecstatically shrieked her
+delight. Then when he showed signs of lowering her, she grasped him by
+an ear and a nose, and drummed a tattoo on his stomach with both feet.
+No one could ever accuse Allegra of lacking vitality!
+
+J. F. disentangled himself from her endearments, and emerged, rumpled as
+to hair, but with a firm-set jaw. He set her on her feet, but retained
+her little doubled-up fist.
+
+"This is the kid for me," he said. "I don't believe I need to look any
+further."
+
+I explained that we couldn't separate little Allegra from her brothers;
+but the more I objected, the stubborner his jaw became. We went back to
+the library, and argued about it for half an hour.
+
+He liked her heredity, he liked her looks, he liked her spirit, he liked
+HER. If he was going to have a daughter foisted on him, he wanted one
+with some ginger. He'd be hanged if he'd take that other whimpering
+little thing. It wasn't natural. But if I gave him Allegra, he would
+bring her up as his own child, and see that she was provided for for the
+rest of her life. Did I have any right to cut her out from all that just
+for a lot of sentimental nonsense? The family was already broken up; the
+best I could do for them now was to provide for them individually. "Take
+all three," said I, quite brazenly.
+
+But, no, he couldn't consider that; his wife was an invalid, and one
+child was all that she could manage.
+
+Well, I was in a dreadful quandary. It seemed such a chance for the
+child, and yet it did seem so cruel to separate her from those two
+adoring little brothers. I knew that if the Bretlands adopted her
+legally, they would do their best to break all ties with the past, and
+the child was still so tiny she would forget her brothers as quickly as
+she had her father.
+
+Then I thought about you, Judy, and of how bitter you have always been
+because, when that family wanted to adopt you, the asylum wouldn't let
+you go. You have always said that you might have had a home, too, like
+other children, but that Mrs. Lippett stole it away from you. Was I
+perhaps stealing little Allegra's home from her? With the two boys it
+would be different; they could be educated and turned out to shift for
+themselves. But to a girl a home like this would mean everything. Ever
+since baby Allegra came to us, she has seemed to me just such another
+child as baby Judy must have been. She has ability and spirit. We must
+somehow furnish her with opportunity. She, too, deserves her share
+of the world's beauty and good--as much as nature has fitted her to
+appreciate. And could any asylum ever give her that? I stood and thought
+and thought while Mr. Bretland impatiently paced the floor.
+
+"You have those boys down and let me talk to them," Mr. Bretland
+insisted. "If they have a spark of generosity, they'll be glad to let
+her go."
+
+I sent for them, but my heart was a solid lump of lead. They were still
+missing their father; it seemed merciless to snatch away that darling
+baby sister, too.
+
+They came hand in hand, sturdy, fine little chaps, and stood solemnly at
+attention, with big, wondering eyes fixed on the strange gentleman.
+
+"Come here, boys. I want to talk to you." He took each by a hand. "In
+the house I live in we haven't any little baby, so my wife and I
+decided to come here, where there are so many babies without fathers and
+mothers, and take one home to be ours. She will have a beautiful house
+to live in, and lots of toys to play with, and she will be happy all her
+life--much happier than she could ever be here. I know that you will be
+very glad to hear that I have chosen your little sister."
+
+"And won't we ever see her any more?" asked Clifford.
+
+"Oh, yes, sometimes."
+
+Clifford looked from me to Mr. Bretland, and two big tears began rolling
+down his cheeks. He jerked his hand away and came and hurled himself
+into my arms.
+
+"Don't let him have her! Please! Please! Send him away!"
+
+"Take them all!" I begged.
+
+But he's a hard man.
+
+"I didn't come for an entire asylum," said he, shortly.
+
+By this time Don was sobbing on the other side. And then who should
+inject himself into the hubbub but Dr. MacRae, with baby Allegra in his
+arms!
+
+I introduced them, and explained. Mr. Bretland reached for the baby, and
+Sandy held her tight.
+
+"Quite impossible," said Sandy, shortly. "Miss McBride will tell you
+that it's one of the rules of this institution never to separate a
+family."
+
+"Miss McBride has already decided," said J. F. B., stiffly. "We have
+fully discussed the question."
+
+"You must be mistaken," said Sandy, becoming his Scotchest, and turning
+to me. "You surely had no intention of performing any such cruelty as
+this?"
+
+Here was the decision of Solomon all over again, with two of the
+stubbornest men that the good Lord ever made wresting poor little
+Allegra limb from limb.
+
+I despatched the three chicks back to the nursery and returned to the
+fray. We argued loud and hotly, until finally J. F. B. echoed my own
+frequent query of the last five months: "Who is the head of this asylum,
+the superintendent or the visiting physician?"
+
+I was furious with the doctor for placing me in such a position before
+that man, but I couldn't quarrel with him in public; so I had ultimately
+to tell Mr. Bretland with finality and flatness, that Allegra was out of
+the question. Would he not reconsider Sophie?
+
+No, he'd be darned if he'd reconsider Sophie. Allegra or nobody. He
+hoped that I realized that I had weakly allowed the child's entire
+future to be ruined. And with that parting shot he backed to the door.
+"Miss MacRae, Dr. McBride, good afternoon." He achieved two formal bows
+and withdrew.
+
+And the moment the door closed Sandy and I fought it out. He said that
+any person who claimed to have any modern, humane views on the subject
+of child-care ought to be ashamed to have considered for even a moment
+the question of breaking up such a family. And I accused him of keeping
+her for the purely selfish reason that he was fond of the child and
+didn't wish to lose her.
+
+(And that, I believe, is the truth.) Oh, we had the battle of our
+career, and he finally took himself off with a stiffness and politeness
+that excelled J. F. B.'s.
+
+Between the two of them I feel as limp as though I'd been run through
+our new mangling machine. And then Betsy came home, and reviled me for
+throwing away the choicest family we have ever discovered!
+
+So this is the end of our week of feverish activity; and both Sophie and
+Allegra are, after all, to be institution children. Oh dear! oh dear!
+Please remove Sandy from the staff, and send me, instead, a German, a
+Frenchman, a Chinaman, if you choose--anything but a Scotchman.
+
+Yours wearily,
+
+SALLIE.
+
+
+P.S. I dare say that Sandy is also passing a busy evening in writing
+to have me removed. I won't object if you wish to do it. I am tired of
+institutions.
+
+
+Dear Gordon:
+
+You are a captious, caviling, carping, crabbed, contentious,
+cantankerous chap. Hoot mon! an' why shouldna I drap into Scotch gin I
+choose? An' I with a Mac in my name.
+
+Of course the John Grier will be delighted to welcome you on Thursday
+next, not only for the donkey, but for your sweet sunny presence as
+well. I was planning to write you a mile-long letter to make up for past
+deficiencies, but wha's the use? I'll be seeing you the morn's morn, an'
+unco gude will be the sight o' you for sair een.
+
+Dinna fash yoursel, Laddie, because o'my language. My forebears were
+from the Hielands.
+
+McBRIDE.
+
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+All's well with the John Grier--except for a broken tooth, a sprained
+wrist, a badly scratched knee, and one case of pinkeye. Betsy and I are
+being polite, but cool, toward the doctor. The annoying thing is that
+he is rather cool, too. And he seems to be under the impression that the
+drop in temperature is all on his side. He goes about his business in a
+scientific, impersonal way, entirely courteous, but somewhat detached.
+
+However, the doctor is not disturbing us very extensively at present.
+We are about to receive a visit from a far more fascinating person than
+Sandy. The House of Representatives again rests from its labors, and
+Gordon enjoys a vacation, two days of which he is planning to spend at
+the Brantwood Inn.
+
+I am delighted to hear that you have had enough seaside, and are
+considering our neighborhood for the rest of the summer. There are
+several spacious estates to be had within a few miles of the John Grier,
+and it will be a nice change for Jervis to come home only at week ends.
+After a pleasantly occupied absence, you will each have some new ideas
+to add to the common stock.
+
+I can't add any further philosophy just now on the subject of married
+life, having to refresh my memory on the Monroe Doctrine and one or two
+other political topics.
+
+I am looking eagerly forward to August and three months with you.
+
+As ever,
+
+SALLIE.
+
+
+Friday.
+
+Dear Enemy:
+
+It's very forgiving of me to invite you to dinner after that volcanic
+explosion of last week. However, please come. You remember our
+philanthropic friend, Mr. Hallock, who sent us the peanuts and goldfish
+and other indigestible trifles? He will be with us tonight, so this is
+your chance to turn the stream of his benevolence into more hygienic
+channels.
+
+We dine at seven.
+
+As ever,
+
+SALLIE McBRIDE.
+
+
+
+Dear Enemy:
+
+You should have lived in the days when each man inhabited a separate
+cave on a separate mountain.
+
+S. McBRIDE.
+
+
+Friday, 6:30.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+Gordon is here, and a reformed man so far as his attitude toward my
+asylum goes. He has discovered the world-old truth that the way to a
+mother's heart is through praise of her children, and he had nothing but
+praise for all 107 of mine. Even in the case of Loretta Higgins he found
+something pleasant to say. He thinks it nice that she isn't cross-eyed.
+
+He went shopping with me in the village this afternoon, and was very
+helpful about picking out hair-ribbons for a couple of dozen little
+girls. He begged to choose Sadie Kate's himself, and after many
+hesitations he hit upon orange satin for one braid and emerald green for
+the other.
+
+While we were immersed in this business I became aware of a neighboring
+customer, ostensibly engaged with hooks and eyes, but straining every
+ear to listen to our nonsense.
+
+She was so dressed up in a picture hat, a spotted veil, a feather boa,
+and a NOUVEAU ART parasol that I never dreamed she was any acquaintance
+of mine till I happened to catch her eye with a familiar malicious gleam
+in it. She bowed stiffly, and disapprovingly; and I nodded back. Mrs.
+Maggie McGurk in her company clothes!
+
+That is a pleasanter expression than she really has. Her smile is due to
+a slip of the pen.
+
+Poor Mrs. McGurk can't understand any possible intellectual interest in
+a man. She suspects me of wanting to marry every single one that I meet.
+At first she thought I wanted to snatch away her doctor; but now, after
+seeing me with Gordon, she considers me a bigamous monster who wants
+them both.
+
+Good-by; some guests approach.
+
+
+11:30 P.M.
+
+
+I have just been giving a dinner for Gordon, with Betsy and Mrs.
+Livermore and Mr. Witherspoon as guests. I graciously included the
+doctor, but he curtly declined on the ground that he wasn't in a social
+mood. Our Sandy does not let politeness interfere with truth!
+
+There is no doubt about it, Gordon is the most presentable man that ever
+breathed. He is so good looking and easy and gracious and witty, and his
+manners are so impeccable--Oh, he would make a wonderfully decorative
+husband! But after all, I suppose you do live with a husband. You don't
+just show him off at dinners and teas.
+
+He was exceptionally nice tonight. Betsy and Mrs. Livermore both fell in
+love with him--and I just a trifle. He entertained us with a speech in
+his best public manner, apropos of Java's welfare. We have been having
+a dreadful time finding a sleeping place for that monkey, and Gordon
+proved with incontestable logic that, since he was presented to us by
+Jimmie, and Jimmie is Percy's friend, he should sleep with Percy. Gordon
+is a natural talker, and an audience affects him like champagne. He can
+argue with as much emotional earnestness on the subject of a monkey as
+on the greatest hero that ever bled for his country.
+
+I felt tears coming to my eyes when he described Java's loneliness as he
+watched out the night in our furnace cellar, and pictured his brothers
+at play in the far-off tropical jungle.
+
+A man who can talk like that has a future before him. I haven't a doubt
+but that I shall be voting for him for President in another twenty
+years.
+
+We all had a beautiful time, and entirely forgot--for a space of three
+hours--that 107 orphans slumbered about us. Much as I love the little
+dears, it is pleasant to get away from them once in a while.
+
+My guests left at ten, and it must be midnight by now. (This is the
+eighth day, and my clock has stopped again; Jane forgets to wind it as
+regularly as Friday comes around.) However, I know it's late; and as a
+woman, it's my duty to try for beauty sleep, especially with an eligible
+young suitor at hand.
+
+I'll finish tomorrow. Good night.
+
+
+Saturday.
+
+
+Gordon spent this morning playing with my asylum and planning some
+intelligent presents to be sent later. He thinks that three neatly
+painted totem poles would add to the attractiveness of our Indian camps.
+He is also going to make us a present of three dozen pink rompers for
+the babies. Pink is a color that is very popular with the superintendent
+of this asylum, who is deadly tired of blue! Our generous friend is
+likewise amusing himself with the idea of a couple of donkeys and
+saddles and a little red cart. Isn't it nice that Gordon's father
+provided for him so amply, and that he is such a charitably inclined
+young man? He is at present lunching with Percy at the hotel, and, I
+trust, imbibing fresh ideas in the field of philanthropy.
+
+Perhaps you think I haven't enjoyed this interruption to the monotony
+of institution life! You can say all you please, my dear Mrs. Pendleton,
+about how well I am managing your asylum, but, just the same, it isn't
+natural for me to be so stationary. I very frequently need a change.
+That is why Gordon, with his bubbling optimism and boyish spirits, is so
+exhilarating especially as a contrast to too much doctor.
+
+
+Sunday morning.
+
+
+I must tell you the end of Gordon's visit. His intention had been to
+leave at four, but in an evil moment I begged him to stay over till
+9:30, and yesterday afternoon he and Singapore and I took a long
+'cross-country walk, far out of sight of the towers of this asylum,
+and stopped at a pretty little roadside inn, where we had a satisfying
+supper of ham and eggs and cabbage. Sing stuffed so disgracefully that
+he has been languid ever since.
+
+The walk and all was fun, and a very grateful change from this
+monotonous life I lead. It would have kept me pleasant and contented
+for weeks if something most unpleasant hadn't happened later. We had
+a beautiful, sunny, carefree afternoon, and I'm sorry to have had
+it spoiled. We came back very unromantically in the trolley car, and
+reached the J. G. H. before nine, just in good time for him to run on
+to the station and catch his train. So I didn't ask him to come in, but
+politely wished him a pleasant journey at the porte-cochere.
+
+A car was standing at the side of the drive, in the shadow of the house.
+I recognized it, and thought the doctor was inside with Mr. Witherspoon.
+(They frequently spend their evenings together in the laboratory.) Well,
+Gordon, at the moment of parting, was seized with an unfortunate impulse
+to ask me to abandon the management of this asylum, and take over the
+management of a private house instead.
+
+Did you ever know anything like the man? He had the whole afternoon and
+miles of empty meadow in which to discuss the question, but instead he
+must choose our door mat!
+
+I don't know just what I did say. I tried to turn it off lightly and
+hurry him to his train. But he refused to be turned off lightly. He
+braced himself against a post and insisted upon arguing it out. I knew
+that he was missing his train, and that every window in this institution
+was open. A man never has the slightest thought of possible overhearers.
+It is always the woman who thinks of convention.
+
+Being in a nervous twitter to get rid of him, I suppose I was pretty
+abrupt and tactless. He began to get angry, and then by some unlucky
+chance his eye fell on that car. He recognized it, too, and, being in
+a savage mood, he began making fun of the doctor. "Old Goggle-eyes"
+he called him, and "Scatchy," and oh, the awfullest lot of unmannerly,
+silly things!
+
+I was assuring him with convincing earnestness that I didn't care a rap
+about the doctor, that I thought he was just as funny and impossible as
+he could be, when suddenly the doctor rose out of his car and walked up
+to us.
+
+I could have evaporated from the earth very comfortably at that moment!
+
+Sandy was quite clearly angry, as well he might be, after the things
+he'd heard, but he was entirely cold and collected. Gordon was hot, and
+bursting with imaginary wrongs. I was aghast at this perfectly foolish
+and unnecessary muddle that had suddenly arisen out of nothing. Sandy
+apologized to me with unimpeachable politeness for inadvertently
+overhearing, and then turned to Gordon and stiffly invited him to get
+into his car and ride to the station.
+
+I begged him not to go. I didn't wish to be the cause of any silly
+quarrel between them. But without paying the slightest attention to
+me, they climbed into the car, and whirled away, leaving me placidly
+standing on the door mat.
+
+I came in and went to bed, and lay awake for hours, expecting to hear--I
+don't know what kind of explosion. It is now eleven o'clock, and the
+doctor hasn't appeared. I don't know how on earth I shall meet him when
+he does. I fancy I shall hide in the clothes closet.
+
+Did you ever know anything as unnecessary and stupid as this whole
+situation? I suppose now I've quarreled with Gordon,--and I positively
+don't know over what,--and of course my relations with the doctor are
+going to be terribly awkward. I said horrid things about him,--you know
+the silly way I talk,--things I didn't mean in the least.
+
+I wish it were yesterday at this time. I would make Gordon go at four.
+
+SALLIE.
+
+
+
+Sunday afternoon.
+
+Dear Dr. MacRae:
+
+That was a horrid, stupid, silly business last night. But by this time
+you must know me well enough to realize that I never mean the foolish
+things I say. My tongue has no slightest connection with my brain; it
+just runs along by itself. I must seem to you very ungrateful for
+all the help you have given me in this unaccustomed work and for the
+patience you have (occasionally) shown.
+
+I do appreciate the fact that I could never have run this asylum by
+myself without your responsible presence in the background. And though
+once in a while, as you yourself must acknowledge, you have been pretty
+impatient and bad tempered and difficult, still I have never held it up
+against you, and I really didn't mean any of the ill-mannered things I
+said last night. Please forgive me for being rude. I should hate very
+much to lose your friendship. And we are friends, are we not? I like to
+think so.
+
+S. McB.
+
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+I am sure I haven't an idea whether or not the doctor and I have made up
+our differences. I sent him a polite note of apology, which he received
+in abysmal silence. He didn't come near us until this afternoon, and
+he hasn't by the blink of an eyelash referred to our unfortunate
+contretemps. We talked exclusively about an ichthyol salve that will
+remove eczema from a baby's scalp; then, Sadie Kate being present, the
+conversation turned to cats. It seems that the doctor's Maltese cat has
+four kittens, and Sadie Kate will not be silenced until she has
+seen them. Before I knew what was happening I found myself making an
+engagement to take her to see those miserable kittens at four o'clock
+tomorrow afternoon.
+
+Whereupon the doctor, with an indifferently polite bow, took himself
+off. And that apparently is the end.
+
+Your Sunday note arrives, and I am delighted to hear that you have taken
+the house. It will be beautiful having you for a neighbor for so long.
+Our improvements ought to march along, with you and the president at
+our elbow. But it does seem as though, you ought to get out here before
+August 7. Are you sure that city air is good for you just now? I have
+never known so devoted a wife.
+
+My respects to the president.
+
+S. McB.
+
+
+July 22.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+Please listen to this!
+
+At four o'clock I took Sadie Kate to the doctor's house to look at
+those cats. But Freddy Howland just twenty minutes before had fallen
+downstairs, so the doctor was at the Howland house occupying himself
+with Freddy's collarbone. He had left word for us to sit down and wait,
+that he would be back shortly.
+
+Mrs. McGurk ushered us into the library; and then, not to leave us
+alone, came in herself on a pretense of polishing the brass. I don't
+know what she thought we'd do! Run off with the pelican perhaps.
+
+I settled down to an article about the Chinese situation in the Century,
+and Sadie Kate roamed about at large examining everything she found,
+like a curious little mongoose.
+
+She commenced with his stuffed flamingo and wanted to know what made
+it so tall and what made it so red. Did it always eat frogs, and had it
+hurt its other foot? She ticks off questions with the steady persistency
+of an eight-day clock.
+
+I buried myself in my article and left Mrs. McGurk to deal with Sadie.
+Finally, after she had worked half-way around the room, she came to a
+portrait of a little girl occupying a leather frame in the center of the
+doctor's writing desk--a child with a queer elf-like beauty, resembling
+very strangely our little Allegra. This photograph might have been a
+portrait of Allegra grown five years older. I had noticed the picture
+the night we took supper with the doctor, and had meant to ask which of
+his little patients she was. Happily I didn't!
+
+"Who's that?" said Sadie Kate, pouncing upon it.
+
+"It's the docthor's little gurrl."
+
+"Where is she?"
+
+"Shure, she's far away wit' her gran'ma."
+
+"Where'd he get her?"
+
+"His wife give her to him."
+
+I emerged from my book with electric suddenness.
+
+"His wife!" I cried.
+
+The next instant I was furious with myself for having spoken, but I was
+so completely taken off my guard. Mrs. McGurk straightened up and became
+volubly conversational at once.
+
+"And didn't he never tell you about his wife? She went insane six years
+ago. It got so it weren't safe to keep her in the house, and he had to
+put her away. It near killed him. I never seen a lady more beautiful
+than her. I guess he didn't so much as smile for a year. It's funny he
+never told you nothing, and you such a friend!"
+
+"Naturally it's not a subject he cares to talk about," said I dryly, and
+I asked her what kind of brass polish she used.
+
+Sadie Kate and I went out to the garage and hunted up the kittens
+ourselves; and we mercifully got away before the doctor came back.
+
+But will you tell me what this means? Didn't Jervis know he was
+married? It's the queerest thing I ever heard. I do think, as the McGurk
+suggests, that Sandy might casually have dropped the information that he
+had a wife in an insane asylum.
+
+But of course it must be a terrible tragedy and I suppose he can't bring
+himself to talk about it. I see now why he's so morbid over the question
+of heredity--I dare say he fears for the little girl. When I think of
+all the jokes I've made on the subject, I'm aghast at how I must have
+hurt him, and angry with myself and angry with him.
+
+I feel as though I never wanted to see the man again. Mercy! did you
+ever know such a muddle as we are getting ourselves into?
+
+Yours, SALLIE.
+
+P.S. Tom McCoomb has pushed Mamie Prout into the box of mortar that the
+masons use. She's parboiled. I've sent for the doctor.
+
+
+July 24. My dear Madam:
+
+I have a shocking scandal to report about the superintendent of the John
+Grier Home. Don't let it get into the newspapers, please. I can picture
+the spicy details of the investigation prior to her removal by the
+"Cruelty."
+
+I was sitting in the sunshine by my open window this morning reading
+a sweet book on the Froebel theory of child culture--never lose your
+temper, always speak kindly to the little ones. Though they may appear
+bad, they are not so in reality. It is either that they are not feeling
+well or have nothing interesting to do. Never punish; simply deflect
+their attention. I was entertaining a very loving, uplifted attitude
+toward all this young life about me when my attention was attracted by a
+group of little boys beneath the window.
+
+"Aw--John--don't hurt it!"
+
+"Let it go!"
+
+"Kill it quick!"
+
+And above their remonstrances rose the agonized squealing of some animal
+in pain. I dropped Froebel and, running downstairs, burst upon them
+from the side door. They saw me coming, and scattered right and left,
+revealing Johnnie Cobden engaged in torturing a mouse. I will spare you
+the grisly details. I called to one of the boys to come and drown the
+creature quick! John I seized by the collar; and dragged him squirming
+and kicking in at the kitchen door. He is a big, hulking boy of
+thirteen, and he fought like a little tiger, holding on to posts and
+doorjambs as we passed. Ordinarily I doubt if I could have handled him,
+but that one sixteenth Irish that I possess was all on top, and I was
+fighting mad. We burst into the kitchen, and I hastily looked about for
+a means of chastisement. The pancake turner was the first utensil that
+met my eyes. I seized it and beat that child with all my strength, until
+I had reduced him to a cowering, whimpering mendicant for mercy, instead
+of the fighting little bully he had been four minutes before.
+
+And then who should suddenly burst into the midst of this explosion but
+Dr. MacRae! His face was blank with astonishment. He strode over and
+took the pancake turner out of my hand and set the boy on his feet.
+Johnnie got behind him and clung! I was so angry that I really couldn't
+talk. It was all I could do not to cry.
+
+"Come, we will take him up to the office," was all the doctor said. And
+we marched out, Johnnie keeping as far from me as possible and limping
+conspicuously. We left him in the outer office, and went into my library
+and shut the door.
+
+"What in the world has the child done?" he asked.
+
+At that I simply laid my head down on the table and began to cry! I was
+utterly exhausted both emotionally and physically. It had taken all the
+strength I possessed to make the pancake turner effective.
+
+I sobbed out all the bloody details, and he told me not to think about
+it; the mouse was dead now. Then he got me some water to drink, and told
+me to keep on crying till I was tired; it would do me good. I am
+not sure that he didn't pat me on the head! Anyway, it was his best
+professional manner. I have watched him administer the same treatment a
+dozen times to hysterical orphans. And this was the first time in a week
+that we had spoken beyond the formality of "good morning"!
+
+Well, as soon as I had got to the stage where I could sit up and laugh,
+intermittently dabbing my eyes with a wad of handkerchief, we began
+a review of Johnnie's case. The boy has a morbid heredity, and may be
+slightly defective, says Sandy. We must deal with the fact as we would
+with any other disease. Even normal boys are often cruel. A child's
+moral sense is undeveloped at thirteen.
+
+Then he suggested that I bathe my eyes with hot water and resume
+my dignity. Which I did. And we had Johnnie in. He stood--by
+preference--through the entire interview. The doctor talked to him, oh,
+so sensibly and kindly and humanely! John put up the plea that the mouse
+was a pest and ought to be killed. The doctor replied that the welfare
+of the human race demanded the sacrifice of many animals for its own
+good, not for revenge, but that the sacrifice must be carried out with
+the least possible hurt to the animal. He explained about the mouse's
+nervous system, and how the poor little creature had no means of defense.
+It was a cowardly thing to hurt it wantonly. He told John to try to
+develop imagination enough to look at things from the other person's
+point of view, even if the other person was only a mouse. Then he went
+to the bookcase and took down my copy of Burns, and told the boy what a
+great poet he was, and how all Scotchmen loved his memory.
+
+"And this is what he wrote about a mouse," said Sandy, turning to the
+"Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, timorous beastie," which he read and explained
+to the lad as only a Scotchman could.
+
+Johnnie departed penitent, and Sandy redirected his professional
+attention to me. He said I was tired and in need of a change. Why not
+go to the Adirondacks for a week? He and Betsy and Mr. Witherspoon would
+make themselves into a committee to run the asylum.
+
+You know, that's exactly what I was longing to do! I need a shifting of
+ideas and some pine-scented air. My family opened the camp last week,
+and think I'm awful not to join them. They won't understand that
+when you accept a position like this you can't casually toss it aside
+whenever you feel like it. But for a few days I can easily manage. My
+asylum is wound up like an eight-day clock, and will run until a week
+from next Monday at 4 P.M., when my train will return me. Then I shall
+be comfortably settled again before you arrive, and with no errant
+fancies in my brain.
+
+Meanwhile Master John is in a happily chastened frame of mind and body.
+And I rather suspect that Sandy's moralizing had the more force because
+it was preceded by my pancake turner! But one thing I know--Suzanne
+Estelle is terrified whenever I step into her kitchen. I casually picked
+up the potato-masher this morning while I was commenting upon last
+night's over-salty soup, and she ran to cover behind the woodshed door.
+
+Tomorrow at nine I set out on my travels, after preparing the way with
+five telegrams. And, oh! you can't imagine how I'm looking forward to
+being a gay, carefree young thing again--to canoeing on the lake and
+tramping in the woods and dancing at the clubhouse. I was in a state of
+delirium all night long at the prospect. Really, I hadn't realized how
+mortally tired I had become of all this asylum scenery.
+
+"What you need," said Sandy to me, "is to get away for a little and sow
+some wild oats."
+
+That diagnosis was positively clairvoyant. I can't think of anything in
+the world I'd rather do than sow a few wild oats. I'll come back with
+fresh energy, ready to welcome you and a busy summer.
+
+As ever,
+
+SALLIE.
+
+P.S. Jimmie and Gordon are both going to be up there. How I wish you
+could join us! A husband is very discommoding.
+
+
+CAMP McBRIDE,
+
+July 29.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+This is to tell you that the mountains are higher than usual, the woods
+greener, and the lake bluer.
+
+People seem late about coming up this year. The Harrimans' camp is the
+only other one at our end of the lake that is open. The clubhouse is
+very scantily supplied with dancing men, but we have as house guest an
+obliging young politician who likes to dance, so I am not discommoded by
+the general scarcity.
+
+The affairs of the nation and the rearing of orphans are alike delegated
+to the background while we paddle about among the lily pads of this
+delectable lake. I look forward with reluctance to 7:56 next Monday
+morning, when I turn my back on the mountains. The awful thing about a
+vacation is that the moment it begins your happiness is already clouded
+by its approaching end.
+
+I hear a voice on the veranda asking if Sallie is to be found within or
+without.
+
+
+ADDIO!
+
+S.
+
+
+August 3.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+Back at the John Grier, reshouldering the burdens of the coming
+generation. What should meet my eyes upon entering these grounds but
+John Cobden, of pancake turner memory, wearing a badge upon his sleeve.
+I turned it to me and read "S. P. C. A." in letters of gold! The doctor,
+during my absence, has formed a local branch of the Cruelty to Animals,
+and made Johnnie its president.
+
+I hear that yesterday he stopped the workmen on the foundation for the
+new farm cottage and scolded them severely for whipping their horses up
+the incline! None of all this strikes any one but me as funny.
+
+There's a lot of news, but with you due in four days, why bother to
+write? Just one delicious bit I am saving for the end.
+
+So hold your breath. You are going to receive a thrill on page 4. You
+should hear Sadie Kate squeal! Jane is cutting her hair.
+
+Instead of wearing it in two tight braids like this--our little colleen
+will in the future look like this--
+
+
+"Them pigtails got on my nerves," says Jane.
+
+You can see how much more stylish and becoming the present coiffure is.
+I think somebody will be wanting to adopt her. Only Sadie Kate is such
+an independent, manly little creature; she is eminently fitted by nature
+to shift for herself. I must save adopting parents for the helpless
+ones.
+
+You should see our new clothes! I can't wait for this assemblage
+of rosebuds to burst upon you. And you should have seen those blue
+ginghamed eyes brighten when the new frocks were actually given
+out--three for each girl, all different colors, and all perfectly
+private personal property, with the owner's indelible name inside the
+collar. Mrs. Lippett's lazy system of having each child draw from the
+wash a promiscuous dress each week, was an insult to feminine nature.
+
+Sadie Kate is squealing like a baby pig. I must go to see if Jane has by
+mistake clipped off an ear.
+
+
+Jane hasn't. Sadie's excellent ears are still intact. She is just
+squealing on principle; the way one does in a dentist's chair, under the
+belief that it is going to hurt the next instant.
+
+I really can't think of anything else to write except my news,--so here
+it is,--and I hope you'll like it.
+
+I am engaged to be married.
+
+My love to you both.
+
+S. McB.
+
+
+THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
+
+November 15.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+
+Betsy and I are just back from a GIRO in our new motor car. It
+undoubtedly does add to the pleasure of institution life. The car of its
+own accord turned up Long Ridge Road, and stopped before the gates of
+Shadywell. The chains were up, and the shutters battened down, and the
+place looked closed and gloomy and rain-soaked. It wore a sort of fall
+of the House of Usher air, and didn't in the least resemble the cheerful
+house that used to greet me hospitably of an afternoon.
+
+I hate to have our nice summer ended. It seems as though a section of
+my life was shut away behind me, and the unknown future was pressing
+awfully close. Positively, I'd like to postpone that wedding another six
+months, but I'm afraid poor Gordon would make too dreadful a fuss. Don't
+think I'm getting wobbly, for I'm not. It's just that somehow I need
+more time to think about it, and March is getting nearer every day. I
+know absolutely that I'm doing the most sensible thing. Everybody,
+man or woman, is the better for being nicely and appropriately and
+cheerfully married. But oh dear! oh dear! I do hate upheavals, and this
+is going to be such a world-without-end upheaval! Sometimes when the
+day's work is over, and I'm tired, I haven't the spirit to rise and meet
+it.
+
+And now especially since you've bought Shadywell, and are going to be
+here every summer, I resent having to leave. Next year, when I'm far
+away, I'll be consumed with homesickness, thinking of all the busy,
+happy times at the John Grier, with you and Betsy and Percy and our
+grumbly Scotchman working away cheerfully without me. How can anything
+ever make up to a mother for the loss of 107 children?
+
+I trust that Judy, junior, stood the journey into town without upsetting
+her usual poise. I am sending her a bit giftie, made partly by myself
+and chiefly by Jane. But two rows, I must inform you, were done by the
+doctor. One only gradually plumbs the depths of Sandy's nature. After a
+ten-months' acquaintance with the man, I discover that he knows how to
+knit, an accomplishment he picked up in his boyhood from an old shepherd
+on the Scotch moors.
+
+He dropped in three days ago and stayed for tea, really in almost his
+old friendly mood. But he has since stiffened up again to the same man
+of granite we knew all summer. I've given up trying to make him out. I
+suppose, however, that any one might be expected to be a bit down with
+a wife in an insane asylum. I wish he'd talk about it once. It's awful
+having such a shadow hovering in the background of your thoughts and
+never coming out into plain sight.
+
+I know that this letter doesn't contain a word of the kind of news that
+you like to hear. But it's that beastly twilight hour of a damp November
+day, and I'm in a beastly uncheerful mood. I'm awfully afraid that I
+am developing into a temperamental person, and Heaven knows Gordon can
+supply all the temperament that one family needs! I don't know where
+we'll land if I don't preserve my sensibly stolid, cheerful nature.
+
+Have you really decided to go South with Jervis? I appreciate your
+feeling (to a slight extent) about not wanting to be separated from a
+husband; but it does seem sort of hazardous to me to move so young a
+daughter to the tropics.
+
+The children are playing blind man's buff in the lower corridor. I think
+I'll have a romp with them, and try to be in a more affable mood before
+resuming my pen.
+
+A BIENTOT!
+
+SALLIE.
+
+P.S. These November nights are pretty cold, and we are getting ready to
+move the camps indoors. Our Indians are very pampered young savages at
+present, with a double supply of blankets and hot-water bottles. I shall
+hate to see the camps go; they have done a lot for us. Our lads will be
+as tough as Canadian trappers when they come in.
+
+
+November 20.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+Your motherly solicitude is sweet, but I didn't mean what I said.
+
+Of course it's perfectly safe to convey Judy, junior, to the temperately
+tropical lands that are washed by the Caribbean. She'll thrive as
+long as you don't set her absolutely on top of the equator. And your
+bungalow, shaded by palms and fanned by sea breezes, with an ice machine
+in the back yard and an English doctor across the bay, sounds made for
+the rearing of babies.
+
+My objections were all due to the selfish fact that I and the John Grier
+are going to be lonely without you this winter. I really think it's
+entrancing to have a husband who engages in such picturesque pursuits
+as financing tropical railroads and developing asphalt lakes and rubber
+groves and mahogany forests. I wish that Gordon would take to life
+in those picturesque countries; I'd be more thrilled by the romantic
+possibilities of the future. Washington seems awfully commonplace
+compared with Honduras and Nicaragua and the islands of the Caribbean.
+
+I'll be down to wave good-by.
+
+ADDIO!
+
+SALLIE.
+
+
+
+November 24.
+
+Dear Gordon:
+
+Judy has gone back to town, and is sailing next week for Jamaica, where
+she is to make her headquarters while Jervis cruises about adjacent
+waters on these entertaining new ventures of his. Couldn't you engage in
+traffic in the South Seas? I think I'd feel pleasanter about leaving my
+asylum if you had something romantic and adventurous to offer instead.
+And think how beautiful you'd be in those white linen clothes! I really
+believe I might be able to stay in love with a man quite permanently if
+he always dressed in white.
+
+You can't imagine how I miss Judy. Her absence leaves a dreadful hole in
+my afternoons. Can't you run up for a week end soon? I think the sight
+of you would be very cheering, and I'm feeling awfully down of late.
+You know, my dear Gordon, I like you much better when you're right here
+before my eyes than when I merely think about you from a distance. I
+believe you must have a sort of hypnotic influence. Occasionally, after
+you've been away a long time, your spell wears a little thin. But when I
+see you, it all comes back. You've been away now a long, long time; so,
+please come fast and bewitch me over again!
+
+S.
+
+
+December 2.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+Do you remember in college, when you and I used to plan our favorite
+futures, how we were forever turning our faces southward? And now to
+think it has really come true, and you are there, coasting around those
+tropical isles! Did you ever have such a thrill in the whole of your
+life, barring one or two connected with Jervis, as when you came up on
+deck in the early dawn and found yourself riding at anchor in the harbor
+of Kingston, with the water so blue and the palms so green and the beach
+so white?
+
+I remember when I first woke in that harbor. I felt like a heroine of
+grand opera surrounded by untruly beautiful painted scenery. Nothing
+in my four trips to Europe ever thrilled me like the queer sights and
+tastes and smells of those three warm weeks seven years ago. And ever
+since, I've panted to get back. When I stop to think about it, I can
+hardly bring myself to swallow our unexciting meals; I wish to be dining
+on curries and tamales and mangos. Isn't it funny? You'd think I must
+have a dash of Creole or Spanish or some warm blood in me somewhere,
+but I'm nothing on earth but a chilly mixture of English and Irish and
+Scotch. Perhaps that is why I hear the South calling. "The palm dreams
+of the pine, and the pine of the palm."
+
+After seeing you off, I turned back to New York with an awful
+wander-thirst gnawing at my vitals. I, too, wanted to be starting off
+on my travels in a new blue hat and a new blue suit with a big bunch
+of violets in my hand. For five minutes I would cheerfully have said
+good-by forever to poor dear Gordon in return for the wide world
+to wander in. I suppose you are thinking they are not entirely
+incompatible--Gordon and the wide world--but I don't seem able to get
+your point of view about husbands. I see marriage as a man must, a good,
+sensible workaday institution; but awfully curbing to one's liberty.
+Somehow, after you're married forever, life has lost its feeling of
+adventure. There aren't any romantic possibilities waiting to surprise
+you around each corner.
+
+The disgraceful truth is that one man doesn't seem quite enough for me.
+I like the variety of sensation that you get only from a variety of men.
+I'm afraid I've spent too flirtatious a youth, and it isn't easy for me
+to settle.
+
+I seem to have a very wandering pen. To return: I saw you off, and took
+the ferry back to New York with a horribly empty feeling. After our
+intimate, gossipy three months together, it seems a terrible task to
+tell you my troubles in tones that will reach to the bottom of the
+continent. My ferry slid right under the nose of your steamer, and
+I could see you and Jervis plainly leaning on the rail. I waved
+frantically, but you never blinked an eyelash. Your gaze was fixed in
+homesick contemplation upon the top of the Woolworth Building.
+
+Back in New York, I took myself to a department store to accomplish
+a few trifles in the way of shopping. As I was entering through their
+revolving doors, who should be revolving in the other direction but
+Helen Brooks! We had a terrible time meeting, as I tried to go back out,
+and she tried to come back in; I thought we should revolve eternally.
+But we finally got together and shook hands, and she obligingly helped
+me choose fifteen dozen pairs of stockings and fifty caps and sweaters
+and two hundred union suits, and then we gossiped all the way up to
+Fifty-second Street, where we had luncheon at the Women's University
+Club.
+
+I always liked Helen. She's not spectacular, but steady and dependable.
+Will you ever forget the way she took hold of that senior pageant
+committee and whipped it into shape after Mildred had made such a mess
+of it? How would she do here as a successor to me? I am filled with
+jealousy at the thought of a successor, but I suppose I must face it.
+
+"When did you last see Judy Abbott?" was Helen's first question.
+
+"Fifteen minutes ago," said I. "She has just set sail for the Spanish
+main with a husband and daughter and nurse and maid and valet and dog."
+
+"Has she a nice husband?"
+
+"None better."
+
+"And does she still like him?"
+
+"Never saw a happier marriage."
+
+It struck me that Helen looked a trifle bleak, and I suddenly remembered
+all that gossip that Marty Keene told us last summer; so I hastily
+changed the conversation to a perfectly safe subject like orphans.
+
+But later she told me the whole story herself in as detached and
+impersonal a way as though she were discussing the characters in a book.
+She has been living alone in the city, hardly seeing any one, and she
+seemed low in spirits and glad to talk. Poor Helen appears to have made
+an awful mess of her life. I don't know any one who has covered so much
+ground in such a short space of time. Since her graduation she has been
+married, has had a baby and lost him, divorced her husband, quarreled
+with her family, and come to the city to earn her own living. She is
+reading manuscript for a publishing house.
+
+There seems to have been no reason for her divorce from the ordinary
+point of view; the marriage just simply didn't work. They weren't
+friends. If he had been a woman, she wouldn't have wasted half an hour
+talking with him. If she had been a man, he would have said: "Glad
+to see you. How are you?" and gone on. And yet they MARRIED. Isn't it
+dreadful how blind this sex business can make people?
+
+She was brought up on the theory that a woman's only legitimate
+profession is homemaking. When she finished college, she was naturally
+eager to start on her career, and Henry presented himself. Her family
+scanned him closely, and found him perfect in every respect--good
+family, good morals, good financial position, good looking. Helen was in
+love with him. She had a big wedding and lots of new clothes and dozens
+of embroidered towels. Everything looked propitious.
+
+But as they began to get acquainted, they didn't like the same books
+or jokes or people or amusements. He was expansive and social and
+hilarious, and she wasn't. First they bored, and then they irritated,
+each other. Her orderliness made him impatient, and his disorderliness
+drove her wild. She would spend a day getting closets and bureau drawers
+in order, and in five minutes he would stir them into chaos. He would
+leave his clothes about for her to pick up, and his towels in a messy
+heap on the bathroom floor, and he never scrubbed out the tub. And she,
+on her side, was awfully unresponsive and irritating,--she realized it
+fully,--she got to the point where she wouldn't laugh at his jokes.
+
+I suppose most old-fashioned, orthodox people would think it awful to
+break up a marriage on such innocent grounds. It seemed so to me at
+first; but as she went on piling up detail on detail each trivial in
+itself, but making a mountainous total, I agreed with Helen that it was
+awful to keep it going. It wasn't really a marriage; it was a mistake.
+
+So one morning at breakfast, when the subject of what they should do for
+the summer came up, she said quite casually that she thought she would
+go West and get a residence in some State where you could get a divorce
+for a respectable cause; and for the first time in months he agreed with
+her.
+
+You can imagine the outraged feelings of her Victorian family. In all
+the seven generations of their sojourn in America they have never had
+anything like this to record in the family Bible. It all comes from
+sending her to college and letting her read such dreadful modern people
+as Ellen Key and Bernard Shaw.
+
+"If he had only got drunk and dragged me about by the hair," Helen
+wailed, "it would have been legitimate; but because we didn't actually
+throw things at each other, no one could see any reason for a divorce."
+
+The pathetic part of the whole business is that both she and Henry were
+admirably fitted to make some one else happy. They just simply didn't
+match each other; and when two people don't match, all the ceremonies in
+the world can't marry them.
+
+Saturday morning.
+
+
+I meant to get this letter off two days ago; and here I am with volumes
+written, but nothing mailed.
+
+We've just had one of those miserable deceiving nights--cold and frosty
+when you go to bed, and warm and lifeless when you wake in the dark,
+smothered under a mountain of blankets. By the time I had removed my own
+extra covers and plumped up my pillow and settled comfortably, I thought
+of those fourteen bundled-up babies in the fresh-air nursery. Their
+so-called night nurse sleeps like a top the whole night through. (Her
+name is next on the list to be expunged.) So I roused myself again, and
+made a little blanket removing tour, and by the time I had finished I
+was forever awake. It is not often that I pass a NUIT BLANCHE; but when
+I do, I settle world problems. Isn't it funny how much keener your mind
+is when you are lying awake in the dark?
+
+I began thinking about Helen Brooks, and I planned her whole life over
+again. I don't know why her miserable story has taken such a hold over
+me. It's a disheartening subject for an engaged girl to contemplate.
+I keep saying to myself, what if Gordon and I, when we really get
+acquainted, should change our minds about liking each other? The fear
+grips my heart and wrings it dry. But I am marrying him for no reason in
+the world except affection. I'm not particularly ambitious. Neither his
+position nor his money ever tempted me in the least. And certainly I am
+not doing it to find my life work, for in order to marry I am having
+to give up the work that I love. I really do love this work. I go about
+planning and planning their baby futures, feeling that I'm constructing
+the nation. Whatever becomes of me in after life, I am sure I'll be
+the more capable for having had this tremendous experience. And it IS a
+tremendous experience, the nearness to humanity that an asylum brings.
+I am learning so many new things every day that when each Saturday night
+comes I look back on the Sallie of last Saturday night, amazed at her
+ignorance.
+
+You know I am developing a funny old characteristic; I am getting to
+hate change. I don't like the prospect of having my life disrupted. I
+used to love the excitement of volcanoes, but now a high level plateau
+is my choice in landscape. I am very comfortable where I am. My desk
+and closet and bureau drawers are organized to suit me; and, oh, I dread
+unspeakably the thought of the upheaval that is going to happen to me
+next year! Please don't imagine that I don't care for Gordon quite as
+much as any man has a right to be cared for. It isn't that I like him
+any the less, but I am getting to like orphans the more.
+
+I just met our medical adviser a few minutes ago as he was emerging
+from the nursery--Allegra is the only person in the institution who is
+favored by his austere social attentions. He paused in passing to make a
+polite comment upon the sudden change in the weather, and to express the
+hope that I would remember him to Mrs. Pendleton when I wrote.
+
+This is a miserable letter to send off on its travels, with scarcely
+a word of the kind of news that you like to hear. But our bare little
+orphan asylum up in the hills must seem awfully far away from the palms
+and orange groves and lizards and tarantulas that you are enjoying.
+
+Have a good time, and don't forget the John Grier Home
+
+and
+
+SALLIE.
+
+
+December 11.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+Your Jamaica letter is here, and I'm glad to learn that Judy, Junior,
+enjoys traveling. Write me every detail about your house, and send some
+photographs, so I can see you in it. What fun it must be to have a boat
+of your own that chugs about those entertaining seas! Have you worn all
+of your eighteen white dresses yet? And aren't you glad now that I made
+you wait about buying a Panama hat till you reached Kingston?
+
+We are running along here very much as usual without anything exciting
+to chronicle. You remember little Maybelle Fuller, don't you--the chorus
+girl's daughter whom our doctor doesn't like? We have placed her out.
+I tried to make the woman take Hattie Heaphy instead,--the quiet little
+one who stole the communion cup,--but no, indeed! Maybelle's eyelashes
+won the day. After all, as poor Marie says, the chief thing is to be
+pretty. All else in life depends on that.
+
+When I got home last week, after my dash to New York, I made a brief
+speech to the children. I told them that I had just been seeing Aunt
+Judy off on a big ship, and I am embarrassed to have to report that the
+interest--at least on the part of the boys--immediately abandoned Aunt
+Judy and centered upon the ship. How many tons of coal did she burn a
+day? Was she long enough to reach from the carriage house to the Indian
+camp? Were there any guns aboard, and if a privateer should attack her,
+could she hold her own? In case of a mutiny, could the captain shoot
+down anybody he chose, and wouldn't he be hanged when he got to shore?
+
+I had ignominiously to call upon Sandy to finish my speech. I realize
+that the best-equipped feminine mind in the world can't cope with the
+peculiar class of questions that originate in a thirteen-year boy's
+brain.
+
+As a result of their seafaring interest, the doctor conceived the idea
+of inviting seven of the oldest and most alert lads to spend the day
+with him in New York and see with their own eyes an oceanliner. They
+rose at five yesterday morning, caught the 7:30 train, and had the most
+wonderful adventure that has happened in all their seven lives. They
+visited one of the big liners (Sandy knows the Scotch engineer),
+and were conducted from the bottom of the hold to the top of the
+crow's-nest, and then had luncheon on board. And after luncheon they
+visited the aquarium and the top of the Singer Building, and took
+the subway uptown to spend an hour with the birds of America in their
+habitats. Sandy with great difficulty pried them away from the
+Natural History Museum in time to catch the 6:15 train. Dinner in the
+dining-car. They inquired with great particularity how much it was
+costing, and when they heard that it was the same, no matter how much
+you ate, they drew deep breaths and settled quietly and steadily to the
+task of not allowing their host to be cheated. The railroad made nothing
+on that party, and all the tables around stopped eating to stare. One
+traveler asked the doctor if it was a boarding school he had in charge;
+so you can see how the manners and bearing of our lads have picked up.
+I don't wish to boast, but no one would ever have asked such a question
+concerning seven of Mrs. Lippett's youngsters. "Are they bound for a
+reformatory?" would have been the natural question after observing the
+table manners of her offspring.
+
+My little band tumbled in toward ten o'clock, excitedly babbling a
+mess of statistics about reciprocating compound engines and watertight
+bulkheads, devil-fish and sky-scrapers and birds of paradise. I thought
+I should never get them to bed. And, oh, but they had had a glorious
+day! I do wish I could manage breaks in the routine oftener. It gives
+them a new outlook on life and makes them more like normal children.
+Wasn't it really nice of Sandy? But you should have seen that man's
+behavior when I tried to thank him. He waved me aside in the middle of
+a sentence, and growlingly asked Miss Snaith if she couldn't economize a
+little on carbolic acid. The house smelt like a hospital.
+
+I must tell you that Punch is back with us again, entirely renovated as
+to manners. I am looking for a family to adopt him.
+
+I had hoped those two intelligent spinsters would see their way to
+keeping him forever, but they want to travel, and they feel he's too
+consuming of their liberty. I inclose a sketch in colored chalk of your
+steamer, which he has just completed. There is some doubt as to the
+direction in which it is going; it looks as though it might progress
+backward and end in Brooklyn. Owing to the loss of my blue pencil, our
+flag has had to adopt the Italian colors.
+
+The three figures on the bridge are you and Jervis and the baby. I am
+pained to note that you carry your daughter by the back of her neck, as
+if she were a kitten. That is not the way we handle babies in the J. G.
+H. nursery. Please also note that the artist has given Jervis his full
+due in the matter of legs. When I asked Punch what had become of the
+captain, he said that the captain was inside, putting coal on the fire.
+Punch was terribly impressed, as well he might be, when he heard that
+your steamer burned three hundred wagonloads a day, and he naturally
+supposed that all hands had been piped to the stokehole.
+
+BOW! WOW!
+
+That's a bark from Sing. I told him I was writing to you, and he
+responded instantly.
+
+We both send love.
+
+Yours,
+
+SALLIE.
+
+
+THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
+
+Saturday.
+
+Dear Enemy:
+
+You were so terribly gruff last night when I tried to thank you for
+giving my boys such a wonderful day that I didn't have a chance to
+express half of the appreciation I felt.
+
+What on earth is the matter with you, Sandy? You used to be a tolerably
+nice man--in spots, but these last three or four months you have only
+been nice to other people, never to me. We have had from the first a
+long series of misunderstandings and foolish contretemps, but after each
+one we seemed to reach a solider basis of understanding, until I had
+thought our friendship was on a pretty firm foundation, capable of
+withstanding any reasonable shock.
+
+And then came that unfortunate evening last June when you overheard some
+foolish impolitenesses, which I did not in the slightest degree mean;
+and from then on you faded into the distance. Really, I have felt
+terribly bad about it, and have wanted to apologize, but your manner
+has not been inviting of confidence. It isn't that I have any excuse or
+explanation to offer; I haven't. You know how foolish and silly I am on
+occasions, but you will just have to realize that though I'm flippant
+and foolish and trivial on top, I am pretty solid inside; and you've got
+to forgive the silly part. The Pendletons knew that long ago, or they
+wouldn't have sent me up here. I have tried hard to pull off an honest
+job, partly because I wanted to justify their judgment, partly because
+I was really interested in giving the poor little kiddies their share of
+happiness, but mostly, I actually believe, because I wanted to show
+you that your first derogatory opinion of me was ill founded. Won't you
+please expunge that unfortunate fifteen minutes at the porte-cochere
+last June, and remember instead the fifteen hours I spent reading the
+Kallikak Family?
+
+I would like to feel that we're friends again.
+
+SALLIE McBRIDE.
+
+
+THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
+
+Sunday.
+
+Dear Dr. MacRae:
+
+I am in receipt of your calling card with an eleven-word answer to my
+letter on the back. I didn't mean to annoy you by my attentions. What
+you think and how you behave are really matters of extreme indifference
+to me. Be just as impolite as you choose.
+
+S. McB.
+
+
+December 14.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+PLEASE pepper your letters with stamps, inside and out. I have thirty
+collectors in the family. Since you have taken to travel, every day
+about post time an eager group gathers at the gate, waiting to snatch
+any letters of foreign design, and by the time the letters reach me
+they are almost in shreds through the tenacity of rival snatchers. Tell
+Jervis to send us some more of those purple pine trees from Honduras;
+likewise some green parrots from Guatemala. I could use a pint of them!
+
+Isn't it wonderful to have got these apathetic little things so
+enthusiastic? My children are getting to be almost like real children.
+B dormitory started a pillow fight last night of its own accord; and
+though it was very wearing to our scant supply of linen, I stood by and
+beamed, and even tossed a pillow myself.
+
+Last Saturday those two desirable friends of Percy's spent the whole
+afternoon playing with my boys. They brought up three rifles, and each
+man took the lead of a camp of Indians, and passed the afternoon in a
+bottle shooting contest, with a prize for the winning camp. They brought
+the prize with them--an atrocious head of an Indian painted on leather.
+Dreadful taste; but the men thought it lovely, so I admired it with all
+the ardor I could assume.
+
+When they had finished, I warmed them up with cookies and hot chocolate,
+and I really think the men enjoyed it as much as the boys; they
+undoubtedly enjoyed it more than I did. I couldn't help being in a
+feminine twitter all the time the firing was going on for fear somebody
+would shoot somebody else. But I know that I can't keep twenty-four
+Indians tied to my apron strings, and I never could find in the whole
+wide world three nicer men to take an interest in them.
+
+Just think of all that healthy, exuberant volunteer service going to
+waste under the asylum's nose! I suppose the neighborhood is full of
+plenty more of it, and I am going to make it my business to dig it out.
+
+What I want most are about eight nice, pretty, sensible young women to
+come up here one night a week, and sit before the fire and tell stories
+while the chicks pop corn. I do so want to contrive a little individual
+petting for my babies. You see, Judy, I am remembering your own
+childhood, and am trying hard to fill in the gaps.
+
+The trustees' meeting last week went beautifully. The new women are most
+helpful, and only the nice men came. I am happy to announce that the
+Hon. Cy Wykoff is visiting his married daughter in Scranton. I wish she
+would invite father to live with her permanently.
+
+
+Wednesday.
+
+
+I am in the most childish temper with the doctor, and for no very
+definite reason. He keeps along his even, unemotional way without paying
+the slightest attention to anything or anybody. I have swallowed more
+slights during these last few months than in the whole of my life
+before, and I'm developing the most shockingly revengeful nature. I
+spend all my spare time planning situations in which he will be
+terribly hurt and in need of my help, and in which 1, with the utmost
+callousness, will shrug my shoulders and turn away. I am growing into
+a person entirely foreign to the sweet, sunny young thing you used to
+know.
+
+
+Evening.
+
+
+Do you realize that I am an authority on the care of dependent children?
+Tomorrow I and other authorities visit officially the Hebrew Sheltering
+Guardian Society's Orphan Asylum at Pleasantville. (All that's its
+name!) It's a terribly difficult and roundabout journey from this point,
+involving a daybreak start and two trains and an automobile. But if I'm
+to be an authority, I must live up to the title. I'm keen about looking
+over other institutions and gleaning as many ideas as possible against
+our own alterations next year. And this Pleasantville asylum is an
+architectural model.
+
+I acknowledge now, upon sober reflection, that we were wise to postpone
+extensive building operations until next summer. Of course I was
+disappointed, because it meant that I won't be the center of the
+ripping-up, and I do so love to be the center of ripping-ups! But,
+anyway, you'll take my advice, even though I'm no longer an official
+head? The two building details we did accomplish are very promising. Our
+new laundry grows better and better; it has removed from us that steamy
+smell so dear to asylums. The farmer's cottage will finally be ready
+for occupancy next week. All it now lacks is a coat of paint and some
+doorknobs.
+
+But, oh dear! oh dear! another bubble has burst! Mrs Turnfelt, for all
+her comfortable figure and sunny smile, hates to have children messing
+about. They make her nervous. And as for Turnfelt himself, though
+industrious and methodical and an excellent gardener, still, his mental
+processes are not quite what I had hoped for. When he first came, I made
+him free of the library. He began at the case nearest the door, which
+contains thirty-seven volumes of Pansy's works. Finally, after he had
+spent four months on Pansy, I suggested a change, and sent him home with
+"Huckleberry Finn." But he brought it back in a few days, and shook his
+head. He says that after reading Pansy, anything else seems tame. I
+am afraid I shall have to look about for some one a little more
+up-and-coming. But at least, compared with Sterry, Turnfelt is a
+scholar!
+
+And speaking of Sterry, he paid us a social call a few days ago, in
+quite a chastened frame of mind. It seems that the "rich city feller"
+whose estate he has been managing no longer needs his services; and
+Sterry has graciously consented to return to us and let the children
+have gardens if they wish. I kindly, but convincingly, declined his
+offer.
+
+
+Friday.
+
+
+I came back from Pleasantville last night with a heart full of envy.
+Please, Mr. President, I want some gray stucco cottages, with Luca
+della Robbia figures baked into the front. They have nearly 700 children
+there, and all sizable youngsters. Of course that makes a very different
+problem from my hundred and seven, ranging from babyhood up. But
+I borrowed from their superintendent several very fancy ideas. I'm
+dividing my chicks into big and little sisters and brothers, each big
+one to have a little one to love and help and fight for. Big sister
+Sadie Kate has to see that little sister Gladiola always has her hair
+neatly combed and her stockings pulled up and knows her lessons and gets
+a touch of petting and her share of candy--very pleasant for Gladiola,
+but especially developing for Sadie Kate.
+
+Also I am going to start among our older children a limited form of
+self-government such as we had in college. That will help fit them to
+go out into the world and govern themselves when they get there. This
+shoving children into the world at the age of sixteen seems terribly
+merciless. Five of my children are ready to be shoved, but I can't bring
+myself to do it. I keep remembering my own irresponsible silly young
+self, and wondering what would have happened to me had I been turned out
+to work at the age of sixteen!
+
+I must leave you now to write an interesting letter to my politician in
+Washington, and it's hard work. What have I to say that will interest a
+politician? I can't do anything any more but babble about babies, and
+he wouldn't care if every baby was swept from the face of the earth. Oh,
+yes, he would, too! I'm afraid I'm slandering him. Babies--at least boy
+babies--grow into voters.
+
+Good-by,
+
+SALLIE.
+
+
+Dearest Judy:
+
+If you expect a cheerful letter from me the day, don't read this.
+
+The life of man is a wintry road. Fog, snow, rain, slush, drizzle,
+cold--such weather! such weather! And you in dear Jamaica with the
+sunshine and the orange blossoms!
+
+We've got whooping cough, and you can hear us whoop when you get off
+the train two miles away. We don't know how we got it--just one of the
+pleasures of institution life. Cook has left,--in the night,--what the
+Scotch call a "moonlight flitting." I don't know how she got her trunk
+away, but it's gone. The kitchen fire went with her. The pipes are
+frozen. The plumbers are here, and the kitchen floor is all ripped
+up. One of our horses has the spavin. And, to crown all, our cheery,
+resourceful Percy is down, down, down in the depths of despair. We have
+not been quite certain for three days past whether we could keep him
+from suicide. The girl in Detroit,--I knew she was a heartless little
+minx,--without so much as going through the formality of sending
+back his ring, has gone and married herself to a man and a couple of
+automobiles and a yacht. It is the best thing that could ever have
+happened to Percy, but it will be a long, long time before he realizes
+it.
+
+We have our twenty-four Indians back in the house with us. I was sorry
+to have to bring them in, but the shacks were scarcely planned for
+winter quarters. I have stowed them away very comfortably, however,
+thanks to the spacious iron verandas surrounding our new fire-escape.
+It was a happy idea of Jervis's having them glassed in for sleeping
+porches. The babies' sun parlor is a wonderful addition to our nursery.
+We can fairly see the little tots bloom under the influence of that
+extra air and sunshine.
+
+With the return of the Indians to civilized life, Percy's occupation was
+ended, and he was supposed to remove himself to the hotel. But he didn't
+want to remove himself. He has got used to orphans, he says, and he
+would miss not seeing them about. I think the truth is that he is
+feeling so miserable over his wrecked engagement that he is afraid to be
+alone. He needs something to occupy every waking moment out of banking
+hours. And goodness knows we're glad enough to keep him! He has been
+wonderful with those youngsters, and they need a man's influence.
+
+But what on earth to do with the man? As you discovered last summer,
+this spacious chateau does not contain a superabundance of guest rooms.
+He has finally fitted himself into the doctor's laboratory, and the
+medicines have moved themselves to a closet down the hall. He and the
+doctor fixed it up between them, and if they are willing to be mutually
+inconvenienced, I have no fault to find.
+
+Mercy! I've just looked at the calendar, and it's the eighteenth, with
+Christmas only a week away. However shall we finish all our plans in a
+week? The chicks are making presents for one another, and something like
+a thousand secrets have been whispered in my ear.
+
+Snow last night. The boys have spent the morning in the woods, gathering
+evergreens and drawing them home on sleds; and twenty girls are spending
+the afternoon in the laundry, winding wreaths for the windows. I don't
+know how we are going to do our washing this week. We were planning to
+keep the Christmas tree a secret, but fully fifty children have been
+boosted up to the carriage house window to take a peep at it, and I am
+afraid the news has spread among the remaining fifty.
+
+At your insistence, we have sedulously fostered the Santa Claus myth,
+but it doesn't meet with much credence. "Why didn't he ever come
+before?" was Sadie Kate's skeptical question. But Santa Claus is
+undoubtedly coming this time. I asked the doctor, out of politeness, to
+play the chief role at our Christmas tree; and being certain ahead of
+time that he was going to refuse, I had already engaged Percy as an
+understudy. But there is no counting on a Scotchman. Sandy accepted with
+unprecedented graciousness, and I had privately to unengage Percy!
+
+
+Tuesday.
+
+
+Isn't it funny, the way some inconsequential people have of pouring out
+whatever happens to be churning about in their minds at the moment? They
+seem to have no residue of small talk, and are never able to dismiss a
+crisis in order to discuss the weather.
+
+This is apropos of a call I received today. A woman had come to deliver
+her sister's child--sister in a sanatorium for tuberculosis; we to keep
+the child until the mother is cured, though I fear, from what I hear,
+that will never be. But, anyway, all the arrangements had been made, and
+the woman had merely to hand in the little girl and retire. But having a
+couple of hours between trains, she intimated a desire to look about, so
+I showed her the kindergarten rooms and the little crib that Lily will
+occupy, and our yellow dining room, with its frieze of bunnies, in order
+that she might report as many cheerful details as possible to the poor
+mother. After this, as she seemed tired, I socially asked her to walk
+into my parlor and have a cup of tea. Doctor MacRae, being at hand and
+in a hungry mood (a rare state for him; he now condescends to a cup of
+tea with the officers of this institution about twice a month), came,
+too, and we had a little party.
+
+The woman seemed to feel that the burden of entertainment rested upon
+her, and by way of making conversation, she told us that her husband had
+fallen in love with the girl who sold tickets at a moving picture show
+(a painted, yellow-haired thing who chewed gum like a cow, was her
+description of the enchantress), and he spent all of his money on the
+girl, and never came home except when he was drunk. Then he smashed the
+furniture something awful. An easel, with her mother's picture on it,
+that she had had since before she was married, he had thrown down just
+for the pleasure of hearing it crash. And finally she had just got too
+tired to live, so she drank a bottle of swamp root because somebody had
+told her it was poison if you took it all at once. But it didn't kill
+her; it only made her sick. And he came back, and said he would choke
+her if she ever tried that on him again; so she guessed he must still
+care something for her. All this quite casually while she stirred her
+tea.
+
+I tried to think of something to say, but it was a social exigency that
+left me dumb. But Sandy rose to the occasion like a gentleman. He talked
+to her beautifully and sanely, and sent her away actually uplifted. Our
+Sandy, when he tries, can be exceptionally nice, particularly to people
+who have no claim upon him. I suppose it is a matter of professional
+etiquette--part of a doctor's business to heal the spirit as well as the
+body. Most spirits appear to need it in this world. My caller has left
+me needing it. I have been wondering ever since what I should do if I
+married a man who deserted me for a chewing gum girl, and who came home
+and smashed the bric-a-brac. I suppose, judging from the theaters this
+winter, that it is a thing that might happen to any one, particularly in
+the best society.
+
+You ought to be thankful you've got Jervis. There is something awfully
+certain about a man like him. The longer I live, the surer I am that
+character is the only thing that counts. But how on earth can you ever
+tell? Men are so good at talking! Good-by, and a merry Christmas to
+Jervis and both Judies.
+
+S. McB.
+
+P.S. It would be a pleasant attention if you would answer my letters a
+little more promptly.
+
+
+JOHN GRIER HOME,
+
+December 29.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+Sadie Kate has spent the week composing a Christmas letter to you,
+and it leaves nothing for me to tell. Oh, we've had a wonderful time!
+Besides all the presents and games and fancy things to eat, we have had
+hayrides and skating parties and candy pulls. I don't know whether
+these pampered little orphans will ever settle down again into normal
+children.
+
+Many thanks for my six gifts. I like them all, particularly the picture
+of Judy, junior; the tooth adds a pleasant touch to her smile.
+
+You'll be glad to hear that I've placed out Hattie Heaphy in a
+minister's family, and a dear family they are. They never blinked an
+eyelash when I told them about the communion cup. They've given her
+to themselves for a Christmas present, and she went off so happily,
+clinging to her new father's hand!
+
+I won't write more now, because fifty children are writing thank-you
+letters, and poor Aunt Judy will be buried beneath her mail when this
+week's steamer gets in.
+
+My love to the Pendletons.
+
+S. McB.
+
+P.S. Singapore sends his love to Togo, and is sorry he bit him on the
+ear.
+
+
+JOHN GRIER HOME,
+
+December 30.
+
+O DEAR, Gordon, I have been reading the most upsetting book!
+
+I tried to talk some French the other day, and not making out very well,
+decided that I had better take my French in hand if I didn't want to
+lose it entirely. That Scotch doctor of ours has mercifully abandoned
+my scientific education, so I have a little time at my own disposal. By
+some unlucky chance I began with "Numa Roumestan," by Daudet. It is
+a terribly disturbing book for a girl to read who is engaged to a
+politician. Read it, Gordon dear, and assiduously train your character
+away from Numa's. It's the story of a politician who is disquietingly
+fascinating (like you). Who is adored by all who know him (like you).
+Who has a most persuasive way of talking and makes wonderful speeches
+(again like you). He is worshiped by everybody, and they all say to
+his wife, "What a happy life you must lead, knowing so intimately that
+wonderful man!"
+
+But he wasn't very wonderful when he came home to her--only when he had
+an audience and applause. He would drink with every casual acquaintance,
+and be gay and bubbling and expansive; and then return morose and sullen
+and down. "Joie de rue, douleur de maison," is the burden of the book.
+
+I read it till twelve last night, and honestly I didn't sleep for being
+scared. I know you'll be angry, but really and truly, Gordon dear,
+there's just a touch too much truth in it for my entire amusement. I
+didn't mean ever to refer again to that unhappy matter of August 20,--we
+talked it all out at the time,--but you know perfectly that you need a
+bit of watching. And I don't like the idea. I want to have a feeling of
+absolute confidence and stability about the man I marry. I never could
+live in a state of anxious waiting for him to come home.
+
+Read "Numa" for yourself, and you'll see the woman's point of view.
+I'm not patient or meek or long-suffering in any way, and I'm a little
+afraid of what I'm capable of doing if I have the provocation. My heart
+has to be in a thing in order to make it work, and, oh, I do so want our
+marriage to work!
+
+Please forgive me for writing all this. I don't mean that I really think
+you'll be a "joy of the street, and sorrow of the home." It's just that
+I didn't sleep last night, and I feel sort of hollow behind the eyes.
+
+May the year that's coming bring good counsel and happiness and
+tranquillity to both of us!
+
+As ever,
+
+S.
+
+January 1.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+Something terribly sort of queer has happened, and positively I don't
+know whether it did happen or whether I dreamed it. I'll tell you
+from the beginning, and I think it might be as well if you burned this
+letter; it's not quite proper for Jervis's eyes.
+
+You remember my telling you the case of Thomas Kehoe, whom we placed
+out last June? He had an alcoholic heredity on both sides, and as a baby
+seems to have been fattened on beer instead of milk. He entered the
+John Grier at the age of nine, and twice, according to his record in
+the Doomsday Book, he managed to get himself intoxicated, once on beer
+stolen from some workmen, and once (and thoroughly) on cooking brandy.
+You can see with what misgivings we placed him out. But we warned the
+family (hard-working temperate farming people) and hoped for the best.
+
+Yesterday the family telegraphed that they could keep him no longer.
+Would I please meet him on the six o'clock train? Turnfelt met the six
+o'clock train. No boy. I sent a night message telling of his non-arrival
+and asking for particulars.
+
+I stayed up later than usual last night putting my desk in order
+and--sort of making up my mind to face the New Year. Toward twelve I
+suddenly realized that the hour was late and that I was very tired. I
+had begun getting ready for bed when I was startled by a banging on
+the front door. I stuck my head out of the window and demanded who was
+there.
+
+"Tommy Kehoe," said a very shaky voice.
+
+I went down and opened the door, and that lad, sixteen years old,
+tumbled in, dead drunk. Thank Heaven! Percy Witherspoon was within call,
+and not away off in the Indian camp.
+
+I roused him, and together we conveyed Thomas to our guest room, the
+only decently isolated spot in the building. Then I telephoned for the
+doctor, who, I am afraid, had already had a long day. He came, and we
+put in a pretty terrible night. It developed afterward that the boy had
+brought along with his luggage a bottle of liniment belonging to his
+employer. It was made half of alcohol and half of witch hazel; and
+Thomas had refreshed his journey with this!
+
+He was in such shape that positively I didn't think we'd pull him
+through--and I hoped we wouldn't. If I were a physician, I'd let such
+cases gently slip away for the good of society; but you should have seen
+Sandy work! That terrible lifesaving instinct of his was aroused, and he
+fought with every inch of energy he possessed.
+
+I made black coffee, and helped all I could, but the details were pretty
+messy, and I left the two men to deal with him alone and went back to
+my room. But I didn't attempt to go to bed; I was afraid they might be
+wanting me again. Toward four o'clock Sandy came to my library with
+word that the boy was asleep and that Percy had moved up a cot and would
+sleep in his room the rest of the night. Poor Sandy looked sort of ashen
+and haggard and done with life. As I looked at him, I thought about how
+desperately he worked to save others, and never saved himself, and about
+that dismal home of his, with never a touch of cheer, and the horrible
+tragedy in the background of his life. All the rancor I've been saving
+up seemed to vanish, and a wave of sympathy swept over me. I stretched
+my hand out to him; he stretched his out to me. And suddenly--I don't
+know--something electric happened. In another moment we were in each
+other's arms. He loosened my hands, and put me down in the big armchair.
+
+"My God! Sallie, do you think I'm made of iron?" he said and walked out.
+I went to sleep in the chair, and when I woke the sun was shining in my
+eyes and Jane was standing over me in amazed consternation.
+
+This morning at eleven he came back, looked me coldly in the eye without
+so much as the flicker of an eyelash, and told me that Thomas was to
+have hot milk every two hours and that the spots in Maggie Peters's
+throat must be watched.
+
+Here we are back on our old standing, and positively I don't know but
+what I dreamed that one minute in the night!
+
+But it would be a piquant situation, wouldn't it, if Sandy and I
+should discover that we were falling in love with each other, he with a
+perfectly good wife in the insane asylum and I with an outraged fiance
+in Washington? I don't know but what the wisest thing for me to do is to
+resign at once and take myself home, where I can placidly settle down
+to a few months of embroidering "S McB" on table-cloths, like any other
+respectable engaged girl.
+
+I repeat very firmly that this letter isn't for Jervis's consumption.
+Tear it into little pieces and scatter them in the Caribbean.
+
+S.
+
+
+
+January 3.
+
+Dear Gordon:
+
+You are right to be annoyed. I know I'm not a satisfactory love letter
+writer. I have only to glance at the published correspondence of
+Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning to realize that the warmth of my
+style is not up to standard. But you know already--you have known a long
+time--that I am not a very emotional person. I suppose I might write a
+lot of such things as: "Every waking moment you are in my thoughts." "My
+dear boy, I only live when you are near." But it wouldn't be absolutely
+true. You don't fill all my thoughts; 107 orphans do that. And I really
+am quite comfortably alive whether you are here or not. I have to be
+natural. You surely don't want me to pretend more desolation than I
+feel. But I do love to see you,--you know that perfectly,--and I am
+disappointed when you can't come. I fully appreciate all your charming
+qualities, but, my dear boy, I CAN'T be sentimental on paper. I am
+always thinking about the hotel chambermaid who reads the letters you
+casually leave on your bureau. You needn't expostulate that you carry
+them next your heart, for I know perfectly well that you don't.
+
+Forgive me for that last letter if it hurt your feelings. Since I came
+to this asylum I am extremely touchy on the subject of drink. You would
+be, too, if you had seen what I have seen. Several of my chicks are the
+sad result of alcoholic parents, and they are never going to have a fair
+chance all their lives. You can't look about a place like this without
+"aye keeping up a terrible thinking."
+
+You are right, I am afraid, about its being a woman's trick to make a
+great show of forgiving a man, and then never letting him hear the end
+of it. Well, Gordon, I positively don't know what the word "forgiving"
+means. It can't include "forgetting," for that is a physiological
+process, and does not result from an act of the will. We all have a
+collection of memories that we would happily lose, but somehow those are
+just the ones that insist upon sticking. If "forgiving" means promising
+never to speak of a thing again, I can doubtless manage that. But it
+isn't always the wisest way to shut an unpleasant memory inside you. It
+grows and grows, and runs all through you like a poison.
+
+Oh dear! I really didn't mean to be saying all this. I try to be the
+cheerful, carefree (and somewhat light-headed) Sallie you like best; but
+I've come in touch with a great deal of REALNESS during this last year,
+and I'm afraid I've grown into a very different person from the girl you
+fell in love with. I'm no longer a gay young thing playing with life.
+I know it pretty thoroughly now, and that means that I can't be always
+laughing.
+
+I know this is another beastly uncheerful letter,--as bad as the last,
+and maybe worse,--but if you knew what we've just been through! A
+boy--sixteen--of unspeakable heredity has nearly poisoned himself with
+a disgusting mixture of alcohol and witch hazel. We have been working
+three days over him, and are just sure now that he is going to
+recuperate sufficiently to do it again! "It's a gude warld, but they're
+ill that's in 't."
+
+Please excuse that Scotch--it slipped out. Please excuse everything.
+
+SALLIE.
+
+
+January 11.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+I hope my two cablegrams didn't give you too terrible a shock. I would
+have waited to let the first news come by letter, with a chance for
+details, but I was so afraid you might hear it in some indirect way.
+The whole thing is dreadful enough, but no lives were lost, and only one
+serious accident. We can't help shuddering at the thought of how much
+worse it might have been, with over a hundred sleeping children in this
+firetrap of a building. That new fire escape was absolutely useless. The
+wind was blowing toward it, and the flames simply enveloped it. We saved
+them all by the center stairs--but I'll begin at the beginning, and tell
+the whole story.
+
+It had rained all day Friday, thanks to a merciful Providence, and the
+roofs were thoroughly soaked. Toward night it began to freeze, and the
+rain turned to sleet. By ten o'clock, when I went to bed the wind was
+blowing a terrible gale from the northwest, and everything loose about
+the building was banging and rattling. About two o'clock I suddenly
+started wide awake, with a bright light in my eyes. I jumped out of bed
+and ran to the window. The carriage house was a mass of flames, and
+a shower of sparks was sweeping over our eastern wing. I ran to the
+bathroom and leaned out of the window. I could see that the roof over
+the nursery was already blazing in half a dozen places.
+
+Well, my dear, my heart just simply didn't beat for as much as a minute.
+I thought of those seventeen babies up under that roof, and I couldn't
+swallow. I finally managed to get my shaking knees to work again, and I
+dashed back to the hall, grabbing my automobile coat as I ran.
+
+I drummed on Betsy's and Miss Matthews' and Miss Snaith's doors, just as
+Mr. Witherspoon, who had also been wakened by the light, came tumbling
+upstairs three steps at a time, struggling into an overcoat as he ran.
+
+"Get all the children down to the dining room, babies first," I gasped.
+"I'll turn in the alarm."
+
+He dashed on up to the third floor while I ran to the telephone--and oh,
+I thought I'd never get Central! She was sound asleep.
+
+"The John Grier Home is burning! Turn in the fire alarm and rouse the
+village. Give me 505," I said.
+
+In one second I had the doctor. Maybe I wasn't glad to hear his cool,
+unexcited voice!
+
+"We're on fire!" I cried. "Come quick, and bring all the men you can!"
+
+"I'll be there in fifteen minutes. Fill the bathtubs with water and put
+in blankets." And he hung up.
+
+I dashed back to the hall. Betsy was ringing our fire bell, and Percy
+had already routed out his Indian tribes in dormitories B and C.
+
+Our first thought was not to stop the fire, but to get the children to a
+place of safety. We began in G, and went from crib to crib, snatching a
+baby and a blanket, and rushing them to the door, and handing them out
+to the Indians, who lugged them downstairs. Both G and F were full of
+smoke, and the children so dead asleep that we couldn't rouse them to a
+walking state.
+
+Many times during the next hour did I thank Providence--and Percy
+Witherspoon--for those vociferous fire drills we have suffered weekly.
+The twenty-four oldest boys, under his direction, never lost their heads
+for a second. They divided into four tribes, and sprang to their posts
+like little soldiers.
+
+Two tribes helped in the work of clearing the dormitories and keeping
+the terrified children in order. One tribe worked the hose from the
+cupola tank until the firemen came, and the rest devoted themselves to
+salvage. They spread sheets on the floor, dumped the contents of lockers
+and bureau drawers into them, and bundled them down the stairs. All of
+the extra clothes were saved except those the children had actually been
+wearing the day before, and most of the staff's things. But clothes,
+bedding--everything belonging to G and F went. The rooms were too full
+of smoke to make it safe to enter after we had got out the last child.
+
+By the time the doctor arrived with Luellen and two neighbors he had
+picked up, we were marching the last dormitory down to the kitchen, the
+most remote corner from the fire. The poor chicks were mainly barefooted
+and wrapped in blankets. We told them to bring their clothes when we
+wakened them, but in their fright they thought only of getting out.
+
+By this time the halls were so full of smoke we could scarcely breathe.
+It looked as though the whole building would go, though the wind was
+blowing away from my west wing.
+
+Another automobile full of retainers from Knowltop came up almost
+immediately, and they all fell to fighting the fire. The regular fire
+department didn't come for ten minutes after that. You see, they have
+only horses, and we are three miles out, and the roads pretty bad. It
+was a dreadful night, cold and sleety, and such a wind blowing that you
+could scarcely stand up. The men climbed out on the roof, and worked in
+their stocking feet to keep from slipping off. They beat out the sparks
+with wet blankets, and chopped, and squirted that tankful of water, and
+behaved like heroes.
+
+The doctor meanwhile took charge of the children. Our first thought was
+to get them away to a place of safety, for if the whole building should
+go, we couldn't march them out of doors into that awful wind, with only
+their night clothes and blankets for protection. By this time several
+more automobiles full of men had come, and we requisitioned the cars.
+
+Knowltop had providentially been opened for the week end in order to
+entertain a house party in honor of the old gentleman's sixty-seventh
+birthday. He was one of the first to arrive, and he put his entire
+place at our disposal. It was the nearest refuge, and we accepted it
+instantaneously. We bundled our twenty littlest tots into cars, and ran
+them down to the house. The guests, who were excitedly dressing in order
+to come to the fire, received the chicks and tucked them away into their
+own beds. This pretty well filled up all the available house room, but
+Mr. Reimer (Mr. Knowltop's family name) has just built a big new stucco
+barn, with a garage hitched to it, all nicely heated, and ready for us.
+
+After the babies were disposed of in the house, those helpful guests
+got to work and fixed the barn to receive the next older kiddies. They
+covered the floor with hay, and spread blankets and carriage robes over
+it, and bedded down thirty of the children in rows like little calves.
+Miss Matthews and a nurse went with them, administered hot milk all
+around, and within half an hour the tots were sleeping as peacefully as
+in their little cribs.
+
+But meanwhile we at the house were having sensations. The doctor's first
+question upon arrival had been:
+
+"You've counted the children? You know they're all here?"
+
+"We've made certain that every dormitory was empty before we left it," I
+replied.
+
+You see, they couldn't be counted in that confusion. Twenty or so of the
+boys were still in the dormitories, working under Percy Witherspoon
+to save clothing and furniture, and the older girls were sorting over
+bushels of shoes and trying to fit them to the little ones, who were
+running about underfoot and wailing dismally.
+
+Well, after we had loaded and despatched about seven car loads of
+children, the doctor suddenly called out:
+
+"Where's Allegra?"
+
+There was a horrified silence. No one had seen her. And then Miss Snaith
+stood up and SHRIEKED. Betsy took her by the shoulders, and shook her
+into coherence.
+
+It seems that she had thought Allegra was coming down with a cough, and
+in order to get her out of the cold, had moved her crib from the fresh
+air nursery into the store room--and then forgotten it.
+
+Well, my dear, you know where the store room is! We simply stared at one
+another with white faces. By this time the whole east wing was gutted
+and the third-floor stairs in flames. There didn't seem a chance that
+the child was still alive. The doctor was the first to move. He snatched
+up a wet blanket that was lying in a soppy pile on the floor of the
+hall and sprang for the stairs. We yelled to him to come back. It simply
+looked like suicide; but he kept on, and disappeared into the smoke. I
+dashed outside and shouted to the firemen on the roof. The store room
+window was too little for a man to go through, and they hadn't opened it
+for fear of creating a draft.
+
+I can't describe what happened in the next agonizing ten minutes. The
+third-floor stairs fell in with a crash and a burst of flame about five
+seconds after the doctor passed over them. We had given him up for lost
+when a shout went up from the crowd on the lawn, and he appeared for an
+instant at one of those dormer windows in the attic, and called for the
+firemen to put up a ladder. Then he disappeared, and it seemed to us
+that they'd never get that ladder in place; but they finally did, and
+two men went up. The opening of the window had created a draft, and they
+were almost overpowered by the volume of smoke that burst out at the
+top. After an eternity the doctor appeared again with a white bundle in
+his arms. He passed it out to the men, and then he staggered back and
+dropped out of sight!
+
+I don't know what happened for the next few minutes; I turned away and
+shut my eyes. Somehow or other they got him out and halfway down the
+ladder, and then they let him slip. You see, he was unconscious from
+all the smoke he'd swallowed, and the ladder was slippery with ice and
+terribly wobbly. Anyway, when I looked again he was lying in a heap on
+the ground, with the crowd all running, and somebody yelling to give him
+air. They thought at first he was dead. But Dr. Metcalf from the village
+examined him, and said his leg was broken, and two ribs, and that aside
+from that he seemed whole. He was still unconscious when they put him on
+two of the baby mattresses that had been thrown out of the windows and
+laid him in the wagon that brought the ladders and started him home.
+
+And the rest of us, left behind, kept right on with the work as though
+nothing had happened. The queer thing about a calamity like this is that
+there is so much to be done on every side that you don't have a moment
+to think, and you don't get any of your values straightened out until
+afterward. The doctor, without a moment's hesitation, had risked his
+life to save Allegra. It was the bravest thing I ever saw, and yet the
+whole business occupied only fifteen minutes out of that dreadful night.
+At the time, it was just an incident.
+
+And he saved Allegra. She came out of that blanket with rumpled hair
+and a look of pleased surprise at the new game of peek-a-boo. She was
+smiling! The child's escape was little short of a miracle. The fire had
+started within three feet of her wall, but owing to the direction of the
+wind, it had worked away from her. If Miss Snaith had believed a little
+more in fresh air and had left the window open, the fire would have
+eaten back. But fortunately Miss Snaith does not believe in fresh air,
+and no such thing happened. If Allegra had gone, I never should have
+forgiven myself for not letting the Bretlands take her, and I know that
+Sandy wouldn't.
+
+Despite all the loss, I can't be anything but happy when I think of the
+two horrible tragedies that have been averted. For seven minutes, while
+the doctor was penned in that blazing third floor, I lived through
+the agony of believing them both gone, and I start awake in the night
+trembling with horror.
+
+But I'll try to tell you the rest. The firemen and the
+volunteers--particularly the chauffeur and stablemen from
+Knowltop--worked all night in an absolute frenzy. Our newest negro cook,
+who is a heroine in her own right, went out and started the laundry
+fire and made up a boilerful of coffee. It was her own idea. The
+non-combatants served it to the firemen when they relieved one another
+for a few minutes' rest, and it helped.
+
+We got the remainder of the children off to various hospitable houses,
+except the older boys, who worked all night as well as any one. It was
+absolutely inspiring to see the way this entire township turned out and
+helped. People who haven't appeared to know that the asylum existed came
+in the middle of the night and put their whole houses at our disposal.
+They took the children in, gave them hot baths and hot soup, and tucked
+them into bed. And so far as I can make out, not one of my one hundred
+and seven chicks is any the worse for hopping about on drenched floors
+in their bare feet, not even the whooping cough cases.
+
+It was broad daylight before the fire was sufficiently under control
+to let us know just what we had saved. I will report that my wing is
+entirely intact, though a little smoky, and the main corridor is pretty
+nearly all right up to the center staircase; after that everything is
+charred and drenched. The east wing is a blackened, roofless shell.
+Your hated Ward F, dear Judy, is gone forever. I wish that you could
+obliterate it from your mind as absolutely as it is obliterated from the
+earth. Both in substance and in spirit the old John Grier is done for.
+
+I must tell you something funny. I never saw so many funny things in my
+life as happened through that night. When everybody there was in extreme
+negligee, most of the men in pajamas and ulsters, and all of them
+without collars, the Hon. Cyrus Wykoff put in a tardy appearance,
+arrayed as for an afternoon tea. He wore a pearl scarf pin and white
+spats! But he really was extremely helpful. He put his entire house
+at our disposal, and I turned over to him Miss Snaith in a state of
+hysterics; and her nerves so fully occupied him that he didn't get in
+our way the whole night through.
+
+I can't write any more details now; I've never been so rushed in the
+whole of my life. I'll just assure you that there's no slightest reason
+for you to cut your trip short. Five trustees were on the spot early
+Saturday morning, and we are all working like mad to get affairs into
+some semblance of order. Our asylum at the present moment is scattered
+over the entire township; but don't be unduly anxious. We know where
+all the children are. None of them is permanently mislaid. I didn't know
+that perfect strangers could be so kind. My opinion of the human race
+has gone up.
+
+I haven't seen the doctor. They telegraphed to New York for a surgeon,
+who set his leg. The break was pretty bad, and will take time. They
+don't think there are any internal injuries, though he is awfully
+battered up. As soon as we are allowed to see him I will send more
+detailed particulars. I really must stop if I am to catch tomorrow's
+steamer.
+
+Good-by. Don't worry. There are a dozen silver linings to this cloud
+that I'll write about tomorrow.
+
+SALLIE.
+
+
+Good heavens! here comes an automobile with J. F. Bretland in it!
+
+
+THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
+
+January 14.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+Listen to this! J. F. Bretland read about our fire in a New York paper
+(I will say that the metropolitan press made the most of details), and
+he posted up here in a twitter of anxiety. His first question as he
+tumbled across our blackened threshold was,
+
+"Is Allegra safe?"
+
+"Yes," said I.
+
+"Thank God!" he cried, and dropped into a chair. "This is no place for
+children," he said severely, "and I have come to take her home. I want
+the boys, too," he added hastily before I had a chance to speak. "My
+wife and I have talked it over, and we have decided that since we are
+going to the trouble of starting a nursery, we might as well run it for
+three as for one."
+
+I led him up to my library, where our little family has been domiciled
+since the fire, and ten minutes later, when I was called down to confer
+with the trustees, I left J. F. Bretland with his new daughter on his
+knee and a son leaning against each arm, the proudest father in the
+United States.
+
+So, you see, our fire has accomplished one thing: those three children
+are settled for life. It is almost worth the loss.
+
+But I don't believe I told you how the fire started. There are so many
+things I haven't told you that my arm aches at the thought of writing
+them all. Sterry, we have since discovered, was spending the week end
+as our guest. After a bibulous evening passed at "Jack's Place," he
+returned to our carriage house, climbed in through a window, lighted
+a candle, made himself comfortable, and dropped asleep. He must have
+forgotten to put out the candle; anyway, the fire happened, and Sterry
+just escaped with his life. He is now in the town hospital, bathed in
+sweet oil, and painfully regretting his share in our troubles.
+
+I am pleased to learn that our insurance was pretty adequate, so the
+money loss won't be so tremendous, after all. As for other kinds of
+loss, there aren't any! Actually, nothing but gain so far as I can make
+out, barring, of course, our poor smashed-up doctor. Everybody has been
+wonderful; I didn't know that so much charity and kindness existed in
+the human race. Did I ever say anything against trustees? I take it
+back. Four of them posted up from New York the morning after the fire,
+and all of the local people have been wonderful. Even the Hon. Cy has
+been so occupied in remaking the morals of the five orphans quartered
+upon him that he hasn't caused any trouble at all.
+
+The fire occurred early Saturday morning, and Sunday the ministers in
+all the churches called for volunteers to accept in their houses one or
+two children as guests for three weeks, until the asylum could get its
+plant into working order again.
+
+It was inspiring to see the response. Every child was disposed of within
+half an hour. And consider what that means for the future: every one of
+those families is going to take a personal interest in this asylum from
+now on. Also, consider what it means for the children. They are finding
+out how a real family lives, and this is the first time that dozens of
+them have ever crossed the threshold of a private house.
+
+As for more permanent plans to take us through the winter, listen to all
+this. The country club has a caddies' clubhouse which they don't use in
+winter and which they have politely put at our disposal. It joins our
+land on the back, and we are fitting it up for fourteen children, with
+Miss Matthews in charge. Our dining room and kitchen still being intact,
+they will come here for meals and school, returning home at night all
+the better for half a mile walk. "The Pavilion on the Links" we are
+calling it.
+
+Then that nice motherly Mrs. Wilson, next door to the doctor's,--she who
+has been so efficient with our little Loretta,--has agreed to take in
+five more at four dollars a week each. I am leaving with her some of the
+most promising older girls who have shown housekeeping instincts, and
+would like to learn cooking on a decently small scale. Mrs. Wilson and
+her husband are such a wonderful couple, thrifty and industrious and
+simple and loving, I think it would do the girls good to observe them. A
+training class in wifehood!
+
+I told you about the Knowltop people on the east of us, who took in
+forty-seven youngsters the night of the fire, and how their entire house
+party turned themselves into emergency nursemaids? We relieved them of
+thirty-six the next day, but they still have eleven. Did I ever call Mr.
+Knowltop a crusty old curmudgeon? I take it back. I beg his pardon.
+He's a sweet lamb. Now, in the time of our need, what do you think that
+blessed man has done? He has fitted up an empty tenant house on the
+estate for our babies, has himself engaged an English trained baby nurse
+to take charge, and furnishes them with the superior milk from his own
+model dairy. He says he has been wondering for years what to do with
+that milk. He can't afford to sell it, because he loses four cents on
+every quart!
+
+The twelve older girls from dormitory A I am putting into the farmer's
+new cottage. The poor Turnfelts, who had occupied it just two days,
+are being shoved on into the village. But they wouldn't be any good
+in looking after the children, and I need their room. Three or four of
+these girls have been returned from foster homes as intractable, and
+they require pretty efficient supervision. So what do you think I've
+done? Telegraphed to Helen Brooks to chuck the publishers and take
+charge of my girls instead. You know she will be wonderful with
+them. She accepted provisionally. Poor Helen has had enough of this
+irrevocable contract business; she wants everything in life to be on
+trial!
+
+For the older boys something particularly nice has happened; we have
+received a gift of gratitude from J. F. Bretland. He went down to thank
+the doctor for Allegra. They had a long talk about the needs of the
+institution, and J. F. B. came back and gave me a check for $3000 to
+build the Indian camps on a substantial scale. He and Percy and the
+village architect have drawn up plans, and in two weeks, we hope, the
+tribes will move into winter quarters.
+
+What does it matter if my one hundred and seven children have been
+burned out, since they live in such a kind-hearted world as this?
+
+Friday.
+
+
+I suppose you are wondering why I don't vouchsafe some details about the
+doctor's condition. I can't give any first-hand information, since he
+won't see me. However, he has seen everybody except me--Betsy, Allegra,
+Mrs. Livermore, Mr. Bretland, Percy, various trustees. They all report
+that he is progressing as comfortably as could be expected with two
+broken ribs and a fractured fibula. That, I believe, is the professional
+name of the particular leg bone he broke. He doesn't like to have a
+fuss made over him, and he won't pose gracefully as a hero. I myself, as
+grateful head of this institution, called on several different occasions
+to present my official thanks, but I was invariably met at the door with
+word that he was sleeping and did not wish to be disturbed. The first
+two times I believed Mrs. McGurk; after that--well, I know our doctor!
+So when it came time to send our little maid to prattle her unconscious
+good-bys to the man who had saved her life, I despatched her in charge
+of Betsy.
+
+I haven't an idea what is the matter with the man. He was friendly
+enough last week, but now, if I want an opinion from him, I have to
+send Percy to extract it. I do think that he might see me as the
+superintendent of the asylum, even if he doesn't wish our acquaintance
+to be on a personal basis. There is no doubt about it, our Sandy is
+Scotch!
+
+
+LATER.
+
+
+It is going to require a fortune in stamps to get this letter to
+Jamaica, but I do want you to know all the news, and we have never had
+so many exhilarating things happen since 1876, when we were founded.
+This fire has given us such a shock that we are going to be more alive
+for years to come. I believe that every institution ought to be
+burned to the ground every twenty-five years in order to get rid of
+old-fashioned equipment and obsolete ideas. I am superlatively glad
+now that we didn't spend Jervis's money last summer; it would have been
+intensively tragic to have had that burn. I don't mind so much about
+John Grier's, since he made it in a patent medicine which, I hear,
+contained opium.
+
+As to the remnant of us that the fire left behind, it is already boarded
+up and covered with tar-paper, and we are living along quite comfortably
+in our portion of a house. It affords sufficient room for the staff and
+the children's dining room and kitchen, and more permanent plans can be
+made later.
+
+Do you perceive what has happened to us? The good Lord has heard my
+prayer, and the John Grier Home is a cottage institution!
+
+
+I am,
+
+The busiest person north of the equator,
+
+S. McBRIDE.
+
+
+THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
+
+January 16.
+
+Dear Gordon:
+
+Please, please behave yourself, and don't make things harder than they
+are. It's absolutely out of the question for me to give up the asylum
+this instant. You ought to realize that I can't abandon my chicks just
+when they are so terribly in need of me. Neither am I ready to drop
+this blasted philanthropy. (You can see how your language looks in my
+handwriting!)
+
+You have no cause to worry. I am not overworking. I am enjoying it;
+never was so busy and happy in my life. The papers made the fire out
+much more lurid than it really was. That picture of me leaping from
+the roof with a baby under each arm was overdrawn. One or two of the
+children have sore throats, and our poor doctor is in a plaster cast.
+But we're all alive, thank Heaven! and are going to pull through without
+permanent scars.
+
+I can't write details now; I'm simply rushed to death. And don't
+come--please! Later, when things have settled just a little, you and
+I must have a talk about you and me, but I want time to think about it
+first.
+
+S.
+
+
+January 21.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+Helen Brooks is taking hold of those fourteen fractious girls in a most
+masterly fashion. The job is quite the toughest I had to offer, and she
+likes it. I think she is going to be a valuable addition to our staff.
+
+And I forgot to tell you about Punch. When the fire occurred, those two
+nice women who kept him all summer were on the point of catching a train
+for California--and they simply tucked him under their arms, along
+with their luggage, and carried him off. So Punch spends the winter in
+Pasadena and I rather fancy he is theirs for good. Do you wonder that I
+am in an exalted mood over all these happenings?
+
+LATER.
+
+
+Poor bereaved Percy has just been spending the evening with me, because
+I am supposed to understand his troubles. Why must I be supposed to
+understand everybody's troubles? It's awfully wearing to be pouring out
+sympathy from an empty heart. The poor boy at present is pretty low,
+but I rather suspect--with Betsy's aid--that he will pull through. He is
+just on the edge of falling in love with Betsy, but he doesn't know it.
+He's in the stage now where he's sort of enjoying his troubles. He feels
+himself a tragic hero, a man who has suffered deeply. But I notice that
+when Betsy is about, he offers cheerful assistance in whatever work is
+toward.
+
+Gordon telegraphed today that he is coming tomorrow. I am dreading the
+interview, for I know we are going to have an altercation. He wrote the
+day after the fire and begged me to "chuck the asylum" and get married
+immediately, and now he's coming to argue it out. I can't make him
+understand that a job involving the happiness of one hundred or so
+children can't be chucked with such charming insouciance. I tried my
+best to keep him away, but, like the rest of his sex, he's stubborn. Oh
+dear, I don't know what's ahead of us! I wish I could glance into next
+year for a moment.
+
+The doctor is still in his plaster cast, but I hear is doing well,
+after a grumbly fashion. He is able to sit up a little every day and to
+receive a carefully selected list of visitors. Mrs. McGurk sorts them
+out at the door, and repudiates the ones she doesn't like.
+
+Good-by. I'd write some more, but I'm so sleepy that my eyes are
+shutting on me. (The idiom is Sadie Kate's.) I must go to bed and get
+some sleep against the one hundred and seven troubles of tomorrow.
+
+With love to the Pendletons,
+
+S. McB.
+
+
+January 22.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+This letter has nothing to do with the John Grier Home. It's merely from
+Sallie McBride.
+
+Do you remember when we read Huxley's letters our senior year? That book
+contained a phrase which has stuck in my memory ever since: "There is
+always a Cape Horn in one's life that one either weathers or wrecks
+oneself on." It's terribly true; and the trouble is that you can't
+always recognize your Cape Horn when you see it. The sailing is
+sometimes pretty foggy, and you're wrecked before you know it.
+
+I've been realizing of late that I have reached the Cape Horn of my own
+life. I entered upon my engagement to Gordon honestly and hopefully, but
+little by little I've grown doubtful of the outcome. The girl he loves
+is not the ME I want to be. It's the ME I've been trying to grow away
+from all this last year. I'm not sure she ever really existed. Gordon
+just imagined she did. Anyway, she doesn't exist any more, and the only
+fair course both to him and to myself was to end it.
+
+We no longer have any interests in common; we are not friends. He
+doesn't comprehend it; he thinks that I am making it up, that all I have
+to do is to take an interest in his life, and everything will turn out
+happily. Of course I do take an interest when he's with me. I talk about
+the things he wants to talk about, and he doesn't know that there's a
+whole part of me--the biggest part of me--that simply doesn't meet him
+at any point. I pretend when I am with him. I am not myself, and if we
+were to live together in constant daily intercourse, I'd have to keep on
+pretending all my life. He wants me to watch his face and smile when he
+smiles and frown when he frowns. He can't realize that I'm an individual
+just as much as he is.
+
+I have social accomplishments. I dress well, I'm spectacular, I would
+be an ideal hostess in a politician's household--and that's why he likes
+me.
+
+Anyway, I suddenly saw with awful distinctness that if I kept on I'd
+be in a few years where Helen Brooks is. She's a far better model of
+married life for me to contemplate just this moment than you, dear Judy.
+I think that such a spectacle as you and Jervis is a menace to society.
+You look so happy and peaceful and companionable that you induce
+a defenseless onlooker to rush off and snap up the first man she
+meets--and he's always the wrong man.
+
+Anyway, Gordon and I have quarreled definitely and finally. I
+should rather have ended without a quarrel, but considering his
+temperament,--and mine, too, I must confess,--we had to go off in a big
+smoky explosion. He came yesterday afternoon, after I'd written him not
+to come, and we went walking over Knowltop. For three and a half hours
+we paced back and forth over that windy moor and discussed ourselves
+to the bottommost recesses of our beings. No one can ever say the break
+came through misunderstanding each other!
+
+It ended by Gordon's going, never to return. As I stood there at the
+end and watched him drop out of sight over the brow of the hill, and
+realized that I was free and alone and my own master well, Judy, such a
+sense of joyous relief, of freedom, swept over me! I can't tell you;
+I don't believe any happily married person could ever realize how
+wonderfully, beautifully ALONE I felt. I wanted to throw my arms out and
+embrace the whole waiting world that belonged suddenly to me. Oh, it
+is such a relief to have it settled! I faced the truth the night of
+the fire when I saw the old John Grier go, and realized that a new John
+Grier would be built in its place and that I wouldn't be here to do it.
+A horrible jealousy clutched at my heart. I couldn't give it up, and
+during those agonizing moments while I thought we had lost our doctor,
+I realized what his life meant, and how much more significant than
+Gordon's. And I knew then that I couldn't desert him. I had to go on and
+carry out all of the plans we made together.
+
+I don't seem to be telling you anything but a mess of words, I am so
+full of such a mess of crowding emotions. I want to talk and talk and
+talk myself into coherence. But, anyway, I stood alone in the winter
+twilight, and I took a deep breath of clear cold air, and I felt
+beautifully, wonderfully, electrically free.
+
+And then I ran and leaped and skipped down the hill and across the
+pastures toward our iron confines, and I sang to myself. Oh, it was a
+scandalous proceeding, when, according to all precedent, I should have
+gone trailing home with a broken wing. I never gave one thought to
+poor Gordon, who was carrying a broken, bruised, betrayed heart to the
+railroad station.
+
+As I entered the house I was greeted by the joyous clatter of the
+children trooping to their supper. They were suddenly MINE, and lately,
+as my doom became more and more imminent, they had seemed fading away
+into little strangers. I seized the three nearest and hugged them hard.
+I have suddenly found such new life and exuberance, I feel as though I
+had been released from prison and were free. I feel,--oh, I'll stop,--I
+just want you to know the truth. Don't show Jervis this letter, but tell
+him what's in it in a decently subdued and mournful fashion.
+
+It's midnight now, and I'm going to try to go to sleep. It's wonderful
+not to be going to marry some one you don't want to marry. I'm glad of
+all these children's needs, I'm glad of Helen Brooks, and, yes, of the
+fire, and everything that has made me see clearly. There's never been a
+divorce in my family, and they would have hated it.
+
+I know I'm horribly egotistical and selfish; I ought to be thinking
+of poor Gordon's broken heart. But really it would just be a pose if I
+pretended to be very sorrowful. He'll find some one else with just as
+conspicuous hair as mine, who will make just as effective a hostess, and
+who won't be bothered by any of these damned modern ideas about public
+service and woman's mission and all the rest of the tomfoolery the
+modern generation of women is addicted to. (I paraphrase, and soften our
+young man's heartbroken utterances.)
+
+Good-by, dear people. How I wish I could stand with you on your beach
+and look across the blue, blue sea! I salute the Spanish main.
+
+ADDIO!
+
+SALLIE.
+
+
+January 27.
+
+Dear Dr. MacRae:
+
+I wonder if this note will be so fortunate as to find you awake? Perhaps
+you are not aware that I have called four times to offer thanks and
+consolation in my best bed-side manner? I am touched by the news that
+Mrs. McGurk's time is entirely occupied in taking in flowers and jelly
+and chicken broth, donated by the adoring ladies of the parish to
+the ungracious hero in a plaster cast. I know that you find a cap of
+homespun more comfortable than a halo, but I really do think that you
+might have regarded me in a different light from the hysterical ladies
+in question. You and I used to be friends (intermittently), and though
+there are one or two details in our past intercourse that might better
+be expunged, still I don't see why we should let them upset our entire
+relationship. Can't we be sensible and expunge them?
+
+The fire has brought out such a lot of unexpected kindliness and
+charity, I wish it might bring out a little from you. You see, Sandy,
+I know you well. You may pose to the world as being gruff and curt and
+ungracious and scientific and inhuman and S C O T C H, but you can't
+fool me. My newly trained psychological eye has been upon you for ten
+months, and I have applied the Binet test. You are really kind and
+sympathetic and wise and forgiving and big, so please be at home the
+next time I come to see you, and we will perform a surgical operation
+upon Time and amputate five months.
+
+Do you remember the Sunday afternoon we ran away, and what a nice time
+we had? It is now the day after that.
+
+SALLIE McBRIDE.
+
+P.S. If I condescend to call upon you again, please condescend to see
+me, for I assure you I won't try more than once! Also, I assure you that
+I won't drip tears on your counterpane or try to kiss your hand, as I
+hear one admiring lady did.
+
+
+THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
+
+Thursday.
+
+Dear Enemy:
+
+You see, I'm feeling very friendly toward you this moment. When I call
+you "MacRae" I don't like you, and when I call you "Enemy" I do.
+
+Sadie Kate delivered your note (as an afterthought). And it's a very
+creditable production for a left-handed man; I thought at first glance
+it was from Punch.
+
+You may expect me tomorrow at four, and mind you're awake! I'm glad that
+you think we're friends. Really, I feel that I've got back something
+quite precious which I had carelessly mislaid.
+
+S. McB.
+
+P.S. Java caught cold the night of the fire and he has the toothache. He
+sits and holds his cheek like a poor little kiddie.
+
+
+Thursday, January 29.
+
+Dear Judy:
+
+Those must have been ten terribly incoherent pages I dashed off to you
+last week. Did you respect my command to destroy that letter? I should
+not care to have it appear in my collected correspondence. I know that
+my state of mind is disgraceful, shocking, scandalous, but one really
+can't help the way one feels. It is usually considered a pleasant
+sensation to be engaged, but, oh, it is nothing compared with the
+wonderful untrammeled, joyous, free sensation of being unengaged! I have
+had a terribly unstable feeling these last few months, and now at last
+I am settled. No one ever looked forward to spinsterhood more thankfully
+than I.
+
+Our fire, I have come to believe, was providential. It was sent from
+heaven to clear the way for a new John Grier. We are already deep in
+plans for cottages. I favor gray stucco, Betsy leans to brick, and
+Percy, half-timber. I don't know what our poor doctor would prefer;
+olive green with a mansard roof appears to be his taste.
+
+With ten different kitchens to practice in, won't our children learn how
+to cook! I am already looking about for ten loving house mothers to put
+in charge. I think, in fact, I'll search for eleven, in order to have
+one for Sandy. He's as pathetically in need of a little mothering as
+any of the chicks.
+
+It must be pretty dispiriting to come home every night to the
+ministrations of Mrs. McGur-rk.
+
+How I do not like that woman! She has with complacent firmness told me
+four different times that the dochther was ashleep and not wantin' to be
+disturbed. I haven't set eyes on him yet, and I have just about finished
+being polite. However, I waive judgment until tomorrow at four, when
+I am to pay a short, unexciting call of half an hour. He made the
+appointment himself, and if she tells me again that he is ashleep,
+I shall give her a gentle push and tip her over (she's very fat and
+unstable) and, planting a foot firmly on her stomach, pursue my way
+tranquilly in and up. Luellen, formerly chauffeur, chambermaid, and
+gardener, is now also trained nurse. I am eager to see how he looks in a
+white cap and apron.
+
+The mail has just come, with a letter from Mrs. Bretland, telling
+how happy they are to have the children. She inclosed their first
+photograph--all packed in a governess cart, with Clifford proudly
+holding the reins, and a groom at the pony's head. How is that for three
+late inmates of the John Grier Home?
+
+It's all very inspiring when I think of their futures, but a trifle sad
+when I remember their poor father, and how he worked himself to death
+for those three chicks who are going to forget him. The Bretlands
+will do their best to accomplish that. They are jealous of any outside
+influence and want to make the babies wholly theirs. After all, I think
+the natural way is best--for each family to produce its own children,
+and keep them.
+
+Friday.
+
+
+I saw the doctor today. He's a pathetic sight, consisting mostly of
+bandages. Somehow or other we got our misunderstandings all made up.
+Isn't it dreadful the way two human beings, both endowed with fair
+powers of speech, can manage to convey nothing of their psychological
+processes to each other?
+
+I haven't understood his mental attitude from the first, and he even
+yet doesn't understand mine. This grim reticence that we Northern
+people struggle so hard to maintain! I don't know after all but that the
+excitable Southern safety valve method is the best.
+
+But, Judy, such a dreadful thing--do you remember last year when he
+visited that psychopathic institution, and stayed ten days, and I made
+such a silly fuss about it? Oh, my dear, the impossible things I do! He
+went to attend his wife's funeral. She died there in the institution.
+Mrs. McGurk knew it all the time, and might have added it to the rest of
+her news, but she didn't.
+
+He told me all about her, very sweetly. The poor man for years and years
+has undergone a terrible strain, and I fancy her death is a blessed
+relief. He confesses that he knew at the time of his marriage that he
+ought not to marry her, he knew all about her nervous instability;
+but he thought, being a doctor, that he could overcome it, and she was
+beautiful! He gave up his city practice and came to the country on her
+account. And then after the little girl's birth she went all to pieces,
+and he had to "put her away," to use Mrs. McGurk's phrase. The child is
+six now, a sweet, lovely little thing to look at, but, I judge from what
+he said, quite abnormal. He has a trained nurse with her always. Just
+think of all that tragedy looming over our poor patient good doctor, for
+he is patient, despite being the most impatient man that ever lived!
+
+Thank Jervis for his letter. He's a dear man, and I'm glad to see him
+getting his deserts. What fun we are going to have when you get back to
+Shadywell, and we lay our plans for a new John Grier! I feel as though I
+had spent this past year learning, and am now just ready to begin. We'll
+turn this into the nicest orphan asylum that ever lived. I'm so absurdly
+happy at the prospect that I start in the morning with a spring, and go
+about my various businesses singing inside.
+
+The John Grier Home sends its blessing to the two best friends it ever
+had!
+
+ADDIO!
+
+SALLIE.
+
+
+THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
+
+Saturday at half-past six in the morning!
+
+My dearest Enemy:
+
+"Some day soon something nice is going to happen."
+
+Weren't you surprised when you woke up this morning and remembered the
+truth? I was! I couldn't think for about two minutes what made me so
+happy.
+
+It's not light yet, but I'm wide awake and excited and having to write
+to you. I shall despatch this note by the first to-be-trusted little
+orphan who appears, and it will go up on your breakfast tray along with
+your oatmeal.
+
+I shall follow VERY PROMPTLY at four o'clock this afternoon. Do you
+think Mrs. McGurk will ever countenance the scandal if I stay two hours,
+and no orphan for a chaperon?
+
+It was in all good faith, Sandy, that I promised not to kiss your hand
+or drip tears on the counterpane, but I'm afraid I did both--or worse!
+Positively, I didn't suspect how much I cared for you till I crossed the
+threshold and saw you propped up against the pillows, all covered with
+bandages, and your hair singed off. You are a sight! If I love you now,
+when fully one third of you is plaster of Paris and surgical dressing,
+you can imagine how I'm going to love you when it's all you!
+
+But my dear, dear Robin, what a foolish man you are! How should I ever
+have dreamed all those months that you were caring for me when you acted
+so abominably S C O T C H? With most men, behavior like yours would
+not be considered a mark of affection. I wish you had just given me a
+glimmering of an idea of the truth, and maybe you would have saved us
+both a few heartaches.
+
+But we mustn't be looking back; we must look forward and be grateful.
+The two happiest things in life are going to be ours, a FRIENDLY
+marriage and work that we love.
+
+Yesterday, after leaving you, I walked back to the asylum sort of dazed.
+I wanted to get by myself and THINK, but instead of being by myself,
+I had to have Betsy and Percy and Mrs. Livermore for dinner (already
+invited) and then go down and talk to the children. Friday night-social
+evening. They had a lot of new records for the victrola, given by
+Mrs. Livermore, and I had to sit politely and listen to them. And, my
+dear--you'll think this funny--the last thing they played was "John
+Anderson, my jo John," and suddenly I found myself crying! I had to
+snatch up the earnest orphan and hug her hard, with my head buried in
+her shoulder, to keep them all from seeing.
+
+     John Anderson, my jo John,
+     We clamb the hill thegither,
+     And monie a canty day, John,
+     We've had wi' ane anither;
+     Now we maun totter down, John,
+     But hand in hand we'll go,
+     And sleep thegither at the foot,
+     John Anderson, my jo.
+
+I wonder, when we are old and bent and tottery, can you and I look back,
+with no regrets, on monie a canty day we've had wi' ane anither? It's
+nice to look forward to, isn't it--a life of work and play and little
+daily adventures side by side with somebody you love? I'm not afraid of
+the future any more. I don't mind growing old with you, Sandy. "Time is
+but the stream I go a-fishing in."
+
+The reason I've grown to love these orphans is because they need me so,
+and that's the reason--at least one of the reasons--I've grown to love
+you. You're a pathetic figure of a man, my dear, and since you won't
+make yourself comfortable, you must be MADE comfortable.
+
+We'll build a house on the hillside just beyond the asylum--how does a
+yellow Italian villa strike you, or preferably a pink one? Anyway, it
+won't be green. And it won't have a mansard roof. And we'll have a big
+cheerful living room, all fireplace and windows and view, and no McGURK.
+Poor old thing! won't she be in a temper and cook you a dreadful dinner
+when she hears the news! But we won't tell her for a long, long time--or
+anybody else. It's too scandalous a proceeding right on top of my own
+broken engagement. I wrote to Judy last night, and with unprecedented
+self-control I never let fall so much as a hint. I'm growing Scotch
+mysel'!
+
+Perhaps I didn't tell you the exact truth, Sandy, when I said I hadn't
+known how much I cared. I think it came to me the night the John Grier
+burned. When you were up under that blazing roof, and for the half hour
+that followed, when we didn't know whether or not you would live, I
+can't tell you what agonies I went through. It seemed to me, if you did
+go, that I would never get over it all my life; that somehow to have
+let the best friend I ever had pass away with a dreadful chasm of
+misunderstanding between us--well--I couldn't wait for the moment when I
+should be allowed to see you and talk out all that I have been shutting
+inside me for five months. And then--you know that you gave strict
+orders to keep me out; and it hurt me dreadfully. How should I suspect
+that you really wanted to see me more than any of the others, and that
+it was just that terrible Scotch moral sense that was holding you back?
+You are a very good actor, Sandy. But, my dear, if ever in our lives
+again we have the tiniest little cloud of a misunderstanding, let's
+promise not to shut it up inside ourselves, but to TALK.
+
+Last night, after they all got off,--early, I am pleased to say, since
+the chicks no longer live at home,--I came upstairs and finished my
+letter to Judy, and then I looked at the telephone and struggled with
+temptation. I wanted to call up 505 and say good night to you. But I
+didn't dare. I'm still quite respectably bashful! So, as the next best
+thing to talking with you, I got out Burns and read him for an hour. I
+dropped asleep with all those Scotch love songs running in my head, and
+here I am at daybreak writing them to you.
+
+Good-by, Robin lad, I lo'e you weel.
+
+SALLIE.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Dear Enemy, by Jean Webster
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