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Dear Enemy

Page 112

I would like to feel that we're friends again.

SALLIE McBRIDE.

THE JOHN GRIER HOME,

Sunday.

Dear Dr. MacRae:

I am in receipt of your calling card with an eleven-word answer to my

letter on the back. I didn't mean to annoy you by my attentions. What

you think and how you behave are really matters of extreme indifference

to me. Be just as impolite as you choose.

S. McB.

December 14.

Dear Judy:

PLEASE pepper your letters with stamps, inside and out. I have thirty

collectors in the family. Since you have taken to travel, every day

about post time an eager group gathers at the gate, waiting to snatch

any letters of foreign design, and by the time the letters reach me

they are almost in shreds through the tenacity of rival snatchers. Tell

Jervis to send us some more of those purple pine trees from Honduras;

likewise some green parrots from Guatemala. I could use a pint of them!

Isn't it wonderful to have got these apathetic little things so

enthusiastic? My children are getting to be almost like real children.

B dormitory started a pillow fight last night of its own accord; and

though it was very wearing to our scant supply of linen, I stood by and

beamed, and even tossed a pillow myself.

Last Saturday those two desirable friends of Percy's spent the whole

afternoon playing with my boys. They brought up three rifles, and each

man took the lead of a camp of Indians, and passed the afternoon in a

bottle shooting contest, with a prize for the winning camp. They brought

the prize with them--an atrocious head of an Indian painted on leather.

Dreadful taste; but the men thought it lovely, so I admired it with all

the ardor I could assume.

When they had finished, I warmed them up with cookies and hot chocolate,

and I really think the men enjoyed it as much as the boys; they

undoubtedly enjoyed it more than I did. I couldn't help being in a

feminine twitter all the time the firing was going on for fear somebody

would shoot somebody else. But I know that I can't keep twenty-four

Indians tied to my apron strings, and I never could find in the whole

wide world three nicer men to take an interest in them.

Just think of all that healthy, exuberant volunteer service going to

waste under the asylum's nose! I suppose the neighborhood is full of

plenty more of it, and I am going to make it my business to dig it out.

What I want most are about eight nice, pretty, sensible young women to

come up here one night a week, and sit before the fire and tell stories

while the chicks pop corn. I do so want to contrive a little individual

petting for my babies. You see, Judy, I am remembering your own

childhood, and am trying hard to fill in the gaps.

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