Dear Enemy

And now especially since you've bought Shadywell, and are going to be

here every summer, I resent having to leave. Next year, when I'm far

away, I'll be consumed with homesickness, thinking of all the busy,

happy times at the John Grier, with you and Betsy and Percy and our

grumbly Scotchman working away cheerfully without me. How can anything

ever make up to a mother for the loss of 107 children?

I trust that Judy, junior, stood the journey into town without upsetting

her usual poise. I am sending her a bit giftie, made partly by myself

and chiefly by Jane. But two rows, I must inform you, were done by the

doctor. One only gradually plumbs the depths of Sandy's nature. After a

ten-months' acquaintance with the man, I discover that he knows how to

knit, an accomplishment he picked up in his boyhood from an old shepherd

on the Scotch moors.

He dropped in three days ago and stayed for tea, really in almost his

old friendly mood. But he has since stiffened up again to the same man

of granite we knew all summer. I've given up trying to make him out. I

suppose, however, that any one might be expected to be a bit down with

a wife in an insane asylum. I wish he'd talk about it once. It's awful

having such a shadow hovering in the background of your thoughts and

never coming out into plain sight.

I know that this letter doesn't contain a word of the kind of news that

you like to hear. But it's that beastly twilight hour of a damp November

day, and I'm in a beastly uncheerful mood. I'm awfully afraid that I

am developing into a temperamental person, and Heaven knows Gordon can

supply all the temperament that one family needs! I don't know where

we'll land if I don't preserve my sensibly stolid, cheerful nature.

Have you really decided to go South with Jervis? I appreciate your

feeling (to a slight extent) about not wanting to be separated from a

husband; but it does seem sort of hazardous to me to move so young a

daughter to the tropics.

The children are playing blind man's buff in the lower corridor. I think

I'll have a romp with them, and try to be in a more affable mood before

resuming my pen.

A BIENTOT!

SALLIE.

P.S. These November nights are pretty cold, and we are getting ready to

move the camps indoors. Our Indians are very pampered young savages at

present, with a double supply of blankets and hot-water bottles. I shall

hate to see the camps go; they have done a lot for us. Our lads will be

as tough as Canadian trappers when they come in.