Dear Enemy

Page 33

Isn't it pathetic? Ordinary children of ten or twelve automatically know

so many things that our little incubator chicks have never dreamed of.

But I have a variety of plans on foot. Just give me time, and you

will see. One of these days I'll be turning out some nearly normal

youngsters.

LATER.

I've an empty evening ahead, so I'll settle to some further gossip with

you.

You remember the peanuts that Gordon Hallock sent? Well, I was so

gracious when I thanked him that it incited him to fresh effort. He

apparently went into a toy shop, and placed himself unreservedly in the

hands of an enterprising clerk. Yesterday two husky expressmen deposited

in our front hall a crate full of expensive furry animals built to be

consumed by the children of the rich. They are not exactly what I should

have purchased had I been the one to disburse such a fortune, but my

babies find them very huggable. The chicks are now taking to bed with

them lions and elephants and bears and giraffes. I don't know what the

psychological effect will be. Do you suppose when they grow up they will

all join the circus?

Oh, dear me, here is Miss Snaith, coming to pay a social call.

Good-by.

P.S. The prodigal has returned. He sends his respectful regards, and

three wags of the tail.

THE JOHN GRIER HOME,

April 7. My dear Judy:

I have just been reading a pamphlet on manual training for girls,

and another on the proper diet for institutions--right proportions of

proteins, fats, starches, etc. In these days of scientific charity, when

every problem has been tabulated, you can run an institution by chart.

I don't see how Mrs. Lippett could have made all the mistakes she did,

assuming, of course,that she knew how to read. But there is one quite

important branch of institutional work that has not been touched upon,

and I myself am gathering data. Some day I shall issue a pamphlet on the

"Management and Control of Trustees."

I must tell you the joke about my enemy--not the Hon. Cy, but my first,

my original enemy. He has undertaken a new field of endeavor. He says

quite soberly (everything he does is sober; he has never smiled yet)

that he has been watching me closely since my arrival, and though I am

untrained and foolish and flippant (sic), he doesn't think that I am

really so superficial as I at first appeared. I have an almost masculine

ability of grasping the whole of a question and going straight to the

point.

Aren't men funny? When they want to pay you the greatest compliment in

their power, they naively tell you that you have a masculine mind. There

is one compliment, incidentally, that I shall never be paying him.

I cannot honestly say that he has a quickness of perception almost

feminine.