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Dear Enemy

Page 19

Pressed veal is our cook's idea of an acceptable PIECE DE RESISTANCE

for a dinner party. In another month I am going to face the subject of

suitable nourishment for the executive staff.

Meanwhile there are so many things more important than our own comfort

that we shall have to worry along on veal.

A terrible bumping has just occurred outside my door. One little cherub

seems to be kicking another little cherub downstairs. But I write on

undisturbed. If I am to spend my days among orphans, I must cultivate a

cheerful detachment.

Did you get Leonora Fenton's cards? She's marrying a medical missionary

and going to Siam to live! Did you ever hear of anything so absurd as

Leonora presiding over a missionary's menage? Do you suppose she will

entertain the heathen with skirt dances?

It isn't any absurder, though, than me in an orphan asylum, or you as a

conservative settled matron, or Marty Keene a social butterfly in Paris.

Do you suppose she goes to embassy balls in riding clothes, and what on

earth does she do about hair? It couldn't have grown so soon; she must

wear a wig. Isn't our class turning out some hilarious surprises?

The mail arrives. Excuse me while I read a nice fat letter from

Washington.

Not so nice; quite impertinent. Gordon can't get over the idea that it

is a joke, S. McB. in conjunction with one hundred and thirteen orphans.

But he wouldn't think it such a joke if he could try it for a few days.

He says he is going to drop off here on his next trip North and watch

the struggle. How would it be if I left him in charge while I dashed to

New York to accomplish some shopping? Our sheets are all worn out, and

we haven't more than two hundred and eleven blankets in the house.

Singapore, sole puppy of my heart and home, sends his respectful love. I

also, S. McB.

THE JOHN GRIER HOME,

Friday. My dearest Judy:

You should see what your hundred dollars and Betsy Kindred did to that

dining room!

It's a dazzling dream of yellow paint. Being a north room, she thought

to brighten it; and she has. The walls are kalsomined buff, with a

frieze of little molly cottontails skurrying around the top. All of

the woodwork--tables and benches included--is a cheerful chrome yellow.

Instead of tablecloths, which we can't afford, we have linen runners,

with stenciled rabbits hopping along their length. Also yellow bowls,

filled at present with pussywillows, but looking forward to dandelions

and cowslips and buttercups. And new dishes, my dear--white, with yellow

jonquils (we think), though they may be roses; there is no botany expert

in the house. Most wonderful touch of all, we have NAPKINS, the first

we have seen in our whole lives. The children thought they were

handkerchiefs and ecstatically wiped their noses.

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