Contrary Mary

In Mid-Sea.

DEAR FRIEND O' MINE: You asked me to write, and you will think that I have more than kept my

promise when you get this journal of our days at sea. But it has

seemed to me that you might enjoy it all, just as if you were with us,

instead of down among your sand-hills, with your sad children (are they

really sad now?) and Cousin Patty's wedding cakes.

There's quite a party of us. Leila and her father and the Jeliffes and

Colin kept to their original plan of coming in May, and we decided it

would be best to cross at the same time, so there's Aunt Frances and

Grace and Aunt Isabelle, and Porter--and me--ten of us. If you and

Cousin Patty were here, you'd round out a dozen. I wish you were here.

How Cousin Patty would enjoy it--with her lovely enthusiasms, and her

interest in everything. Do give her much love. I shall write to her

when I reach London, for I know she will be traveling with us in

spirit; she said she was going to live in England by proxy this summer,

and I shall help her all I can by sending pictures, and you must tell

her the books to read.

To think that I am on my way to the London of your Dick Whittington! I

call him yours because you made me really see him for the first time.

"There was he an orphan, O, a little lad alone."

And I am to hear all the bells, and to see the things I have always

longed to see! Yet--and I haven't told this to any one but you, Roger

Poole, the thought doesn't bring one little bit of gladness--it isn't

London that I want, or England. I want my garden and my old big house,

and things as they used to be.

But I am sailing fast away from it--the old life into the new!

So far we have had fair weather. It is always best to speak of the

weather first, isn't it?--so that we can have our minds free for other

things. It hasn't been at all rough; even Leila, who isn't a good

sailor, has been able to stay on deck and people are so much interested

in her. She seems such a child for her widow's black. Oh, what

children they were, my boy Barry and his little wife, and yet they were

man and woman, too. Leila has been letting me see some of his letters;

he showed her a side which he never revealed to me, but I am not

jealous. I am only glad that, for her, my boy Barry became a man.