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Dear Enemy

Page 64

There's no use writing any more; I'll wait and talk.

ADDIO.

SALLIE.

P.S. Oh dear! just as I had begun to catch glimmerings of niceness in

Sandy, he broke out again and was ABOMINABLE. We unfortunately have five

cases of measles in this institution, and the man's manner suggests that

Miss Snaith and I gave the measles to the children on purpose to make

him trouble. There are many days when I should be willing to accept our

doctor's resignation.

Wednesday.

Dear Enemy:

Your brief and dignified note of yesterday is at hand. I have never

known anybody whose literary style resembled so exactly his spoken word.

And you will be greatly obliged if I will drop my absurd fashion of

calling you "Enemy"? I will drop my absurd fashion of calling you

Enemy just as soon as you drop your absurd fashion of getting angry and

abusive and insulting the moment any little thing goes wrong.

I am leaving tomorrow afternoon to spend four days in New York.

Yours truly,

S. McBRIDE.

CHEZ THE PENDLETONS, New York. My dear Enemy:

I trust that this note will find you in a more affable frame of mind

than when I saw you last. I emphatically repeat that it was not due to

the carelessness of the superintendent of our institution that those two

new cases of measles crept in, but rather to the unfortunate anatomy

of our old-fashioned building, which does not permit of the proper

isolation of contagious cases.

As you did not deign to visit us yesterday morning before I left, I

could not offer any parting suggestions. I therefore write to ask that

you cast your critical eye upon Mamie Prout. She is covered all over

with little red spots which may be measles, though I am hoping not.

Mamie spots very easily.

I return to prison life next Monday at six o'clock.

Yours truly,

S. McBRIDE.

P.S. I trust you will pardon my mentioning it, but you are not the kind

of doctor that I admire. I like them chubby and round and smiling.

THE JOHN GRIER HOME,

June 9.

Dear Judy:

You are an awful family for an impressionable young girl to visit.

How can you expect me to come back and settle down contentedly to

institution life after witnessing such a happy picture of domestic

concord as the Pendleton household presents?

All the way back in the train, instead of occupying myself with two

novels, four magazines, and one box of chocolates that your husband

thoughtfully provided, I spent the time in a mental review of the young

men of my acquaintance to see if I couldn't discover one as nice as

Jervis. I did! (A little nicer, I think.) From this day on he is the

marked-down victim, the destined prey.

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