Daddy Long Legs Part 5

Are you SURELY in a good humour? I failed in mathematics and Latin prose. I am tutoring in them, and will take another examination next month. I'm sorry if you're disappointed, but otherwise I don't care a bit because I've learned such a lot of things not mentioned in the catalogue. I've read seventeen novels and bushels of poetry--really necessary novels like Vanity Fair and Richard Feverel and Alice in Wonderland. Also Emerson's Essays and Lockhart's Life of Scott and the first volume of Gibbon's Roman Empire and half of Benvenuto Cellini's Life--wasn't he entertaining? He used to saunter out and casually kill a man before breakfast.

So you see, Daddy, I'm much more intelligent than if I'd just stuck to Latin. Will you forgive me this once if I promise never to fail again?

Yours in sackcloth, Judy

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

This is an extra letter in the middle of the month because I'm rather lonely tonight. It's awfully stormy. All the lights are out on the campus, but I drank black coffee and I can't go to sleep.

I had a supper party this evening consisting of Sallie and Julia and Leonora Fenton--and sardines and toasted m.u.f.fins and salad and fudge and coffee. Julia said she'd had a good time, but Sallie stayed to help wash the dishes.

I might, very usefully, put some time on Latin tonight but, there's no doubt about it, I'm a very languid Latin scholar. We've finished Livy and De Senectute and are now engaged with De Amicitia (p.r.o.nounced d.a.m.n Icitia).

Should you mind, just for a little while, pretending you are my grandmother? Sallie has one and Julia and Leonora each two, and they were all comparing them tonight. I can't think of anything I'd rather have; it's such a respectable relationship. So, if you really don't object--When I went into town yesterday, I saw the sweetest cap of Cluny lace trimmed with lavender ribbon. I am going to make you a present of it on your eighty-third birthday.

That's the clock in the chapel tower striking twelve. I believe I am sleepy after all.

Good night, Granny.

I love you dearly.

Judy

The Ides of March

Dear D.-L.-L.,

I am studying Latin prose composition. I have been studying it. I shall be studying it. I shall be about to have been studying it. My re-examination comes the 7th hour next Tuesday, and I am going to pa.s.s or BUST. So you may expect to hear from me next, whole and happy and free from conditions, or in fragments.

I will write a respectable letter when it's over. Tonight I have a pressing engagement with the Ablative Absolute.

Yours--in evident haste J. A.

26th March

Mr. D.-L.-L. Smith,

SIR: You never answer any questions; you never show the slightest interest in anything I do. You are probably the horridest one of all those horrid Trustees, and the reason you are educating me is, not because you care a bit about me, but from a sense of Duty.

I don't know a single thing about you. I don't even know your name.

It is very uninspiring writing to a Thing. I haven't a doubt but that you throw my letters into the waste-basket without reading them.

Hereafter I shall write only about work.

My re-examinations in Latin and geometry came last week. I pa.s.sed them both and am now free from conditions.

Yours truly, Jerusha Abbott

2nd April

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

I am a BEAST.

Please forget about that dreadful letter I sent you last week--I was feeling terribly lonely and miserable and sore-throaty the night I wrote. I didn't know it, but I was just sickening for tonsillitis and grippe and lots of things mixed. I'm in the infirmary now, and have been here for six days; this is the first time they would let me sit up and have a pen and paper. The head nurse is very bossy. But I've been thinking about it all the time and I shan't get well until you forgive me.

Here is a picture of the way I look, with a bandage tied around my head in rabbit's ears.

Doesn't that arouse your sympathy? I am having sublingual gland swelling. And I've been studying physiology all the year without ever hearing of sublingual glands. How futile a thing is education!

I can't write any more; I get rather shaky when I sit up too long.

Please forgive me for being impertinent and ungrateful. I was badly brought up.

Yours with love, Judy Abbott

THE INFIRMARY 4th April

Dearest Daddy-Long-Legs,

Yesterday evening just towards dark, when I was sitting up in bed looking out at the rain and feeling awfully bored with life in a great inst.i.tution, the nurse appeared with a long white box addressed to me, and filled with the LOVELIEST pink rosebuds. And much nicer still, it contained a card with a very polite message written in a funny little uphill back hand (but one which shows a great deal of character). Thank you, Daddy, a thousand times. Your flowers make the first real, true present I ever received in my life. If you want to know what a baby I am I lay down and cried because I was so happy.

Now that I am sure you read my letters, I'll make them much more interesting, so they'll be worth keeping in a safe with red tape around them--only please take out that dreadful one and burn it up. I'd hate to think that you ever read it over.

Thank you for making a very sick, cross, miserable Freshman cheerful.

Probably you have lots of loving family and friends, and you don't know what it feels like to be alone. But I do.

Goodbye--I'll promise never to be horrid again, because now I know you're a real person; also I'll promise never to bother you with any more questions.

Do you still hate girls?

Yours for ever, Judy