Dear Enemy [35]
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
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