Part 36

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.