Dear Enemy

Lots more news,--I could run into a second volume,--but I am going to

send this letter to town by Mr. Witherspoon, who, in a very high collar

and the blackest of evening clothes, is on the point of departure for a

barn dance at the country club. I told him to pick out the nicest girls

he danced with to come and tell stories to my children.

It is dreadful, the scheming person I am getting to be. All the time I

am talking to any one, I am silently thinking, "What use can you be to

my asylum?"

There is grave danger that this present superintendent will become so

interested in her job that she will never want to leave. I sometimes

picture her a white-haired old lady, propelled about the building in

a wheeled chair, but still tenaciously superintending her fourth

generation of orphans.

PLEASE discharge her before that day!

Yours,

SALLIE.

Friday.

Dear Judy:

Yesterday morning, without the slightest warning, a station hack drove

up to the door and disgorged upon the steps two men, two little boys, a

baby girl, a rocking horse, and a Teddy bear, and then drove off!

The men were artists, and the little ones were children of another

artist, dead three weeks ago. They had brought the mites to us because

they thought "John Grier" sounded solid and respectable, and not like a

public institution. It had never entered their unbusinesslike heads that

any formality is necessary about placing a child in an asylum.

I explained that we were full, but they seemed so stranded and aghast,

that I told them to sit down while I advised them what to do. So the

chicks were sent to the nursery, with a recommendation of bread and

milk, while I listened to their history. Those artists had a fatally

literary touch, or maybe it was just the sound of the baby girl's laugh,

but, anyway, before they had finished, the babes were ours.

Never have I seen a sunnier creature than the little Allegra (we don't

often get such fancy names or such fancy children). She is three years

old, is lisping funny baby talk and bubbling with laughter. The tragedy

she has just emerged from has never touched her. But Don and Clifford,

sturdy little lads of five and seven, are already solemn-eyed and

frightened at the hardness of life.

Their mother was a kindergarten teacher who married an artist on a

capital of enthusiasm and a few tubes of paint. His friends say that he

had talent, but of course he had to throw it away to pay the milkman.

They lived in a haphazard fashion in a rickety old studio, cooking

behind screens, the babies sleeping on shelves.