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Dear Enemy

Page 15

So much could I gather; so much, and no more. Tell me, I beg, some

gossip about my enemy--something scandalous by preference.

Why, if he is such an awfully efficient person does he bury himself in

this remote locality? You would think an up-and-coming scientific man

would want a hospital at one elbow and a morgue at the other. Are you

sure that he didn't commit a crime and isn't hiding from the law?

I seem to have covered a lot of paper without telling you much. VIVE LA

BAGATELLE! Yours as usual,

SALLIE.

P.S. I am relieved on one point. Dr. MacRae does not pick out his own

clothes. He leaves all such unessential trifles to his housekeeper, Mrs.

Maggie McGurk.

Again, and irrevocably, good-by!

THE JOHN GRIER HOME,

Wednesday.

Dear Gordon:

Your roses and your letter cheered me for an entire morning, and it's

the first time I've approached cheerfulness since the fourteenth of

February, when I waved good-by to Worcester.

Words can't tell you how monotonously oppressive the daily round of

institution life gets to be. The only glimmer in the whole dull affair

is the fact that Betsy Kindred spends four days a week with us. Betsy

and I were in college together, and we do occasionally find something

funny to laugh about.

Yesterday we were having tea in my HIDEOUS parlor when we suddenly

determined to revolt against so much unnecessary ugliness. We called in

six sturdy and destructive orphans, a step-ladder, and a bucket of hot

water, and in two hours had every vestige of that tapestry paper off

those walls. You can't imagine what fun it is ripping paper off walls.

Two paperhangers are at work this moment hanging the best that our

village affords, while a German upholsterer is on his knees measuring my

chairs for chintz slip covers that will hide every inch of their plush

upholstery.

Please don't get nervous. This doesn't mean that I'm preparing to spend

my life in the asylum. It means only that I'm preparing a cheerful

welcome for my successor. I haven't dared tell Judy how dismal I find

it, because I don't want to cloud Florida; but when she returns to New

York she will find my official resignation waiting to meet her in the

front hall.

I would write you a long letter in grateful payment for seven pages, but

two of my little dears are holding a fight under the window. I dash to

separate them.

Yours as ever,

S. McB.

THE JOHN GRIER HOME,

March 8.

My dear Judy:

I myself have bestowed a little present upon the John Grier Home--the

refurnishing of the superintendent's private parlor. I saw the first

night here that neither I nor any future occupant could be happy

with Mrs. Lippett's electric plush. You see, I am planning to make my

successor contented and willing to stay.

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