I like the Semples immensely; their practice is so superior to their
theory. They are better than their own God. I told them so--and they
are horribly troubled. They think I am blasphemous--and I think they
are! We've dropped theology from our conversation.
This is Sunday afternoon.
Amasai (hired man) in a purple tie and some bright yellow buckskin
gloves, very red and shaved, has just driven off with Carrie (hired
girl) in a big hat trimmed with red roses and a blue muslin dress and
her hair curled as tight as it will curl. Amasai spent all the morning
washing the buggy; and Carrie stayed home from church ostensibly to
cook the dinner, but really to iron the muslin dress.
In two minutes more when this letter is finished I am going to settle
down to a book which I found in the attic. It's entitled, On the
Trail, and sprawled across the front page in a funny little-boy hand: J
Jervis Pendleton
if this book should ever roam,
Box its ears and send it home.
He spent the summer here once after he had been ill, when he was about
eleven years old; and he left On the Trail behind. It looks well
read--the marks of his grimy little hands are frequent! Also in a
corner of the attic there is a water wheel and a windmill and some bows
and arrows. Mrs. Semple talks so constantly about him that I begin to
believe he really lives--not a grown man with a silk hat and walking
stick, but a nice, dirty, tousle-headed boy who clatters up the stairs
with an awful racket, and leaves the screen doors open, and is always
asking for cookies. (And getting them, too, if I know Mrs. Semple!) He
seems to have been an adventurous little soul--and brave and truthful.
I'm sorry to think he is a Pendleton; he was meant for something better.
We're going to begin threshing oats tomorrow; a steam engine is coming
and three extra men.
It grieves me to tell you that Buttercup (the spotted cow with one
horn, Mother of Lesbia) has done a disgraceful thing. She got into the
orchard Friday evening and ate apples under the trees, and ate and ate
until they went to her head. For two days she has been perfectly dead
drunk! That is the truth I am telling. Did you ever hear anything so
scandalous?
Sir,
I remain,
Your affectionate orphan,
Judy Abbott
PS. Indians in the first chapter and highwaymen in the second. I hold
my breath. What can the third contain? 'Red Hawk leapt twenty feet in
the air and bit the dust.' That is the subject of the frontispiece.
Aren't Judy and Jervie having fun?