Sallie McBride helped me choose the things at the Senior auction. She
has lived in a house all her life and knows about furnishing. You
can't imagine what fun it is to shop and pay with a real five-dollar
bill and get some change--when you've never had more than a few cents
in your life. I assure you, Daddy dear, I do appreciate that allowance.
Sallie is the most entertaining person in the world--and Julia Rutledge
Pendleton the least so. It's queer what a mixture the registrar can
make in the matter of room-mates. Sallie thinks everything is
funny--even flunking--and Julia is bored at everything. She never
makes the slightest effort to be amiable. She believes that if you are
a Pendleton, that fact alone admits you to heaven without any further
examination. Julia and I were born to be enemies.
And now I suppose you've been waiting very impatiently to hear what I
am learning?
I. Latin: Second Punic war. Hannibal and his forces pitched camp at
Lake Trasimenus last night. They prepared an ambuscade for the Romans,
and a battle took place at the fourth watch this morning. Romans in
retreat.
II. French: 24 pages of the Three Musketeers and third conjugation,
irregular verbs.
III. Geometry: Finished cylinders; now doing cones.
IV. English: Studying exposition. My style improves daily in
clearness and brevity.
V. Physiology: Reached the digestive system. Bile and the pancreas
next time.
Yours, on the way to being educated, Jerusha Abbott
PS. I hope you never touch alcohol, Daddy? It does dreadful things to
your liver.
Wednesday
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
I've changed my name.
I'm still 'Jerusha' in the catalogue, but I'm 'Judy' everywhere else.
It's really too bad, isn't it, to have to give yourself the only pet
name you ever had? I didn't quite make up the Judy though. That's
what Freddy Perkins used to call me before he could talk plainly.
I wish Mrs. Lippett would use a little more ingenuity about choosing
babies' names. She gets the last names out of the telephone
book--you'll find Abbott on the first page--and she picks the Christian
names up anywhere; she got Jerusha from a tombstone. I've always hated
it; but I rather like Judy. It's such a silly name. It belongs to the
kind of girl I'm not--a sweet little blue-eyed thing, petted and
spoiled by all the family, who romps her way through life without any
cares. Wouldn't it be nice to be like that? Whatever faults I may
have, no one can ever accuse me of having been spoiled by my family!
But it's great fun to pretend I've been. In the future please always
address me as Judy.