Chapter 2
Dear Kind-Trustee-Who-Sends-Orphans-to-College,
I reached the college. I know it is funny but I never travelled in a train before, so my journey was quite exciting.
College is the biggest, most perplexed place I’ve ever been to—Most of the times it is difficult to find my room whenever I leave it. I will write a description later when I’m feeling less muddled; also I will tell you about my lessons. I have my first class on Monday morning, and this is Saturday night. But I wanted to write a letter first just to get familiar.
Isn’t it strange to write a letter to somebody whose name is not even known to you? It seems queer for me to be writing letters at all—I’ve never written more than three or four in my life, so please overlook it if these are not a model kind.
I had a very serious talk with Mrs. Lippett yesterday morning. I was told by her that it is very important that I should conduct myself all the rest of my life, and especially how to behave towards the kind gentleman who cares to do so much for me. She told me that I must be Very Regardful. But it is very unusual to respect a person who wishes to be called John Smith. You could have picked out any other name. I might as well write letters to Dear Hitching-Post or Dear Clothes-Prop.
My mind is full of your thoughts these days. Having somebody take an interest in me after all these years makes me feel as though I had found a sort of family. It is a very peaceful feeling to eventually belong to someone. I must say, however, that when I think about you, my imagination has very little to work upon. There are just three things that I know :
(a) You are tall.
(b) You are rich.
(c) You hate girls.
Should I call you Dear Mr. Girl-Hater? That sounds rather insulting to me. Or Dear Mr. Rich-Man, but that’s seems offensive to you, as though money were the only prominent thing about you.
Moreover, being rich is such a very external quality. What if you won’t stay rich all your life? But I’m dead sure you’ll stay this tall all your life! So I am certain now to call you Dear Daddy-Long Legs. I hope you won’t mind. It’s just a private pet name and a secret between us, so we won’t tell Mrs. Lippett.
In next two minutes the ten o’clock bell is going to ring which is an indication to go to sleep. Several bells are ringed in a day. One for meals, another for study and then for sleep. It’s very enlivening; I feel like a fire horse all of the time. There it goes! Lights out. Good night.
You see I obey the rules so dutifully; and the credit goes to the training I got in the John Grier Home.
I am so much in live with this place and I am glad you sent me here—I’m very, very happy, and so excited every moment of the time that I can scarcely sleep. College is totally different from the John Grier Home. I never knew such a place existed in the world. I’m feeling sorry for everybody who isn’t a girl and who can’t come here; I am sure the college you attended when you were a boy couldn’t have been so nice.
My room is up in a tower that used to be the contagious ward before they built the new infirmary. I share the floor with three more girls—a Senior who always has a book in her hand, is all the time agitated, and now and then ask us please to be a little quieter, and two Freshmen named Sallie McBride and Julia Rutledge Pendleton. Sallie has red hair and a turn-up nose. She is sweet and quite friendly; while Julia belongs to one of the elite families of New York and has still not noticed me. They both share a room and the Senior and I have singles. Singles are usually not allotted to the Freshman; they are very scarce, but I got one without even asking. I think the registrar didn’t consider it right to ask a properly brought-up girl to room with a foundling. Sometimes there are benefits!
My room is on the north-west corner with two windows and a view. Sharing a room with no one is peaceful after living in a ward for eighteen years with twenty room-mates. I’m excited by the idea that I am now going to get acquainted with Jerusha Abbott. I’m surely going to like her. What about you?
Tuesday
Soon there will be a basketball team for Freshman and there’s a little chance that I might get in. Even though I am a bit short but I’m terribly quick and wiry and strong. While the others are hopping about in the air, it is easy to dodge under their feet and grab the ball. I love practising, it’s fun—out in the athletic field in the afternoon with the trees all red and yellow and the air full of the smell of burning leaves, and everybody laughing and shouting. I never saw girls this much happy in life, and now I am one of them!
I meant to write a long letter and tell you all the things I’m learning (Mrs. Lippett said you wanted to know), but 7th hour has just rung, and in ten minutes I’m due at the athletic field in gymnasium clothes. Don’t you hope I’ll get in the team?
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
Have you ever heard of Michael Angelo?
He was a renowned Italian artist of the Middle Ages. Everybody in English Literature seemed to know about him, and the whole class laughed because I thought he was an archangel. Well, he does sounds like an archangel. The only problem I am facing is that people here expect us to know a whole lot of things you’ve never learned. At times, it is embarrassing. But now, whenever unheard topics come up in the conversations of the, I just keep mum and later search them in the encyclopaedia.
I made an awful mistake the first day. Somebody mentioned Maurice Maeterlinck, and I asked if she was a freshman. That joke has gone all over college. But anyway, I’m just as bright in class as any of the others—and brighter than some of them!
Are you interested in knowing how I decorated my room? It is properly toned in brown and yellow. The wall was tinted buff, and I’ve bought yellow denim curtains and cushions and a mahogany desk (second hand for three dollars) and a rattan chair and a brown rug with an ink spot in the middle. I stand the chair over the spot.
The windows are up high; you can’t look out from an ordinary seat. But I unscrewed the looking-glass from the back of the bureau, upholstered the top and moved it up against the window. It’s just the right height for a window seat. You pull out the drawers like steps and walk up. Very comfortable!
Sallie McBride helped me choose the things at the Senior auction. She has lived in a house all her life and knows quite a lot about furnishing. I’ve never had more than few cents in my pocket all my life and now doing shopping and paying with a real five-dollar bill is something I never dreamed of. I assure you, Daddy dear, I do appreciate that allowance.
I’ve never met a person as entertaining as Sallie but Julia Rutledge Pendleton is completely opposite. It’s queer what a mixture the registrar can make in the matter of room-mates. Sallie finds a funny point in everything she experience in life—even flunking—and Julia is bored at everything. I’ve never seen a friendly gesture from her side. She believes that the name Pendleton is enough to get someone admitted to heaven. Julia and I were born to be enemies.
You must be waiting eagerly to know what I am learning. Here it is :
(a) Latin : Second Punic war. Hannibal and his forces pitched camp at Lake Trasimenus last night. They prepared an ambuscade for the Romans, and a battle took place at the fourth watch this morning. Romans in retreat.
(b) French : 24 pages of the Three Musketeers and third conjugation, irregular verbs.
(c) Geometry : Finished cylinders; now doing cones.
(d) English : Studying exposition. My style improves daily in clearness and conciseness.
(e) Physiology : Reached the digestive system. Bile and the pancreas next time.
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
I gave myself a new name.
I’m ‘Judy’ for everyone here and of course for you too but I’m still ‘Jerusha’ in the inventory. It’s the only pet name I ever had, so I had no choice but to choose this as my new name. Actually, this name wasn’t invented by me. It was Freddy Perkins, when he couldn’t even talk plainly he used to call me by this name.
Mrs. Lippett should be a little more natural about choosing babies’ names. She picked my last name from a tombstone and the first name from the telephone directory. She has the habit of picking up Christian names from anywhere she finds and I’ve always hated the idea. Judy is such a nice and senseless name. It is suitable for a girl who has sweet deep blue eyes, petted and pampered by all the family and lives her life carelessly. Leading such a life will be so exciting! Anyway, I’m glad for one thing atleast, no one can ever blame me of being spoiled by the family. But it’s great fun to pretend I’ve been. In the future please always address me as Judy.
Friday
Guess what, Daddy? The English instructor praised me and said that my last paper showed an unusual amount of originality. Yes, she did say that. Those were her words. It must be difficult for you to digest the news, right? Especially after keeping in mind my upbringing of eighteen years. John Grier Home has a sole motive, which is to turn the ninety-seven orphans into ninety-seven twins. I developed this unfamiliar skillful ability at an early age through drawing chalk pictures of Mrs. Lippett on the woodshed door.
Are you hurt when I criticise my childhood home? But you have the upper hand, you know, for if I become too impertinent, you can always stop payment of your cheques. I know I’m being impolite—but you cannot look forward for any kind of etiquettes from my side; a foundling asylum isn’t a young ladies’ finishing school.
So far, no one has any idea about my being brought up in an asylum. As a matter of fact, I told Sallie McBride that my parents were no more, and I was sent to college by a generous and big-hearted man, which is entirely true so far as it goes. Please don’t consider me a coward. All I want is to be like other girls, but the thing that makes me unlike is my youth in an orphanage. If at all I can snip off that part of my life, then I guess I can overcome the difference between me and the other girls. I don’t believe there’s any real, underneath difference, do you?
Anyway, Sallie McBride likes me!
I forgot to post this yesterday, so I will add an indignant postscript. We had a bishop this morning, and what do you think he said?
‘The most beneficent promise made us in the Bible is this, “The poor ye have always with you.” They were put here in order to keep us charitable.’
The poor, please observe, being a sort of useful domestic animal. If I hadn’t grown into such a perfect lady, I should have gone up after service and told him what I thought.
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
Daddy, there’s some really good news! I’m in the basket-ball team and you ought to see the bruise on my left shoulder. It’s blue and mahogany with little streaks of orange. Julia Pendleton tried for the team, but she didn’t get in. Hooray!
I was instructed to keep you informed every month about my progress and you were expecting the same, but funny me, I’ve been peppering you with letters every now and then! Since you are the only one i know; i wanted to share my excitement and all these new adventures with you. Kindly pardon my enthusiasm; I’ll settle pretty soon. If my letters bore you, you can always toss them into the wastebasket. I promise not to write another till the middle of November.
The area of the convex surface of the frustum of a regular pyramid is half the product of the sum of the perimeters of its bases by the altitude of either of its trapezoids. It sounds a bit bogus, but it’s not—I can verify it!
Have you ever heard about my clothes daddy? Six new and gorgeous dresses, bought for me and not given as a charity. Do you have any idea how much it matters for an orphan? You made that possible for me, and I appreciate that, so I’m very much grateful. It’s a fortunate thing to get educated but nothing can be compared to the whirling feeling of owning six new dresses. Miss Pritchard, who is on the visiting committee, picked them out—not Mrs. Lippett, thank goodness. I have an evening dress, pink mull over silk (I’m perfectly beautiful in that), and a blue church dress, and a dinner dress of red veiling with Oriental trimming (makes me look like a Gipsy), and another of rose-coloured challis, and a grey street suit, and an every-day dress for classes. Perhaps, for Julia Rutledge Pendleton, it isn’t an awfully big wardrobe but for Jerusha Abbott—Oh, my!
You can’t know how I dreaded appearing in school in those miserable poor-box dresses. I was perfectly sure to be put down in class next to the girl who first owned my dress, and she would whisper and giggle and point it out to the others. The bitterness of wearing your enemies’ cast-off clothes eats into your soul. If I wore silk stockings for the rest of my life, I don’t believe I could obliterate the scar.
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
I made a new indissoluble rule for myself: no matter how many written notes I have to receive in the morning, no matter what; I am never going to study at night. Instead, I will just read books—I have to, you know, to rise above the loss of eighteen blank years behind me. You wouldn’t believe, Daddy, what an abyss of ignorance my mind is; I am just realizing the depths myself. I have never heard of things that most girls with a properly assorted family and a home and friends and a library know by absorption.
For example: Mother Goose or David Copperfield or Ivanhoe or Cinderella or Blue Beard or Robinson Crusoe or Jane Eyre or Alice in Wonderland or Rudyard Kipling, leave the reading part, I never even heard of it. I didn’t know that Henry the Eighth was married more than once or that Shelley was a poet. I had no idea that we, the human beings, actually originated from monkeys and that the Garden of Eden was a beautiful myth. I didn’t know that R. L. S. stood for Robert Louis Stevenson or that George Eliot was a lady. I had never seen a picture of the ‘Mona Lisa’. I know you won’t believe any of it.
But now, I am aware of a lot of things (including all the above content), but I have to draw near to a whole lot of new stuff. And oh, it’s fun learning these things! All day I eagerly wait for the evening, and then I put an ‘engaged’ on the door and get into my nice red bath robe and furry slippers and pile all the cushions behind me on the couch, and light the brass student lamp at my elbow, and read and read and read. A single book at a time is not enough for me. I have four going at once. Just now, they’re Tennyson’s poems and Vanity Fair and Kipling’s Plain Tales and—don’t laugh—Little Women. I find that I am the only girl in college who wasn’t brought up on Little Women. I haven’t told anybody though (that would stamp me as queer). I just quietly went and bought it with $1.12 of my last month’s allowance; and the next time somebody mentions pickled limes, I’ll know what she is talking about!
Sunday
We have the Christmas holidays beginning from next week. The trunks are already filling up the hallways and there is hardly any space to get through. Everybody is so bubbling over with excitement that studying is getting left out. I’m surely going to have an exquisite time these holidays. There’s a Freshman who’s staying behind and will accompany me with long walks and if there’s any ice—learn to skate. Then there is still the whole library to be read—and three empty weeks to do it in!
Goodbye, Daddy, I hope that you are in best of your spirits and enjoying every moment of your life.
Towards the end of the Christmas vacation. Exact date unknown
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
Is it snowing where you are? The entire world that I see from my tower is draped in white and the flakes are coming down as big as pop-corns. It’s late afternoon—the sun is just setting (a cold yellow colour) behind some colder violet hills, and I am up in my window seat using the last light to write to you.
Daddy, thank you so much for the surprise! As you know I’m not habitual to receiving presents, but I love those five gold coins. All that I have now with me is just because of you, and I don’t deserve any extra perks. But I like them just the same. You must be wondering what I did with those coins. Well, I bought a few necessary things, like, a sliver plated watch to reach my lectures in time, a steamer rug, a hot water bottle (since my tower is a bit cold), Matthew Arnold’s poems, (I don’t much like to confess this item, but I will) a pair of silk stockings, and most importantly five hundred sheets of yellow manuscript paper and a dictionary of thesaurus, as I’m soon beginning my career of an author.
You see Daddy, I do give a lot of details!
Are you wondering why buying silk stockings were a necessary thing? Then I must tell you, yes it is important, indeed. There is a motive behind it, but very low. Julia Pendleton comes into my room to do geometry, and she sits cross-legged on the couch and wears silk stockings every night. So you see, she provoked me to buy silk stockings. But now, as soon as the session will start I will go and sit on her couch in my silk stockings. You see, Daddy, the miserable creature that I am but at least I’m honest; and you I guess you knew already, from my asylum record, that I wasn’t perfect, didn’t you?
To recapitulate (that’s the way the English instructor begins every other sentence), I truly appreciate your seven presents. It is fun pretending that my family sent me that box full of gifts. My father gifted the watch, my mother a rug, the hot water bottle from grandmother who is always worried that I might catch cold in this climate- and the yellow paper from my little brother Harry. My sister Isabel gave me the silk stockings, and Aunt Susan the Matthew Arnold poems; Uncle Harry (little Harry is named after him) gave me the dictionary. He wanted to send chocolates, but I insisted on synonyms. I hope you won’t mind playing the part of a composite family.
The classes will begin in two days and I’m eagerly waiting to meet the girls. My tower is just a trifle lonely; when nine people occupy a house that was built for four hundred, they do rattle around a bit.
Goodbye, and thank you for thinking of me and sharing my utter happiness. But there is a black cloud wandering above our heads. Examinations come in February.
Yours with love
Judy
PS. Maybe it isn’t proper to send love? If it isn’t, please excuse. But I must love somebody and there’s only you and Mrs. Lippett to choose between, so you see—you’ll have to put up with it, Daddy dear, because I can’t love her.
15th February
Dearest Daddy-Long-Legs,
There is some terrible news that I have to give you. But let us start with the good part first to get you in a content frame of mind.
Introducing you to the new author of our college—Jerusha Abbott. The February Monthly is printing on the first page my poem entitled, From my Tower, which is a very great honour for a Freshman. My English instructor stopped me on the way out from chapel last night, and said it was a fascinating piece of work except for the sixth line, which had too many feet. I will send you a copy in case you care to read it.
To make your mood even better I’ve some more cheerful news. I’m learning to skate, and can glide about quite respectably all by myself. Also I’ve learned how to slide down a rope from the roof of the gymnasium, and I can vault a bar three feet and six inches high—I hope shortly to pull up to four feet.
We had a very inspiring sermon this morning preached by the Bishop of Alabama. His text was: ‘Judge not that ye be not judged.’ It was about the necessity of overlooking mistakes in others, and not discouraging people by harsh judgments. I wish you might have heard it.
This is the sunniest, most blinding winter afternoon, with icicles dripping from the fir trees and the entire world bending under a weight of snow—except me, and I’m bending under a weight of sorrow.
Now for the news—courage, Judy!—you must tell.
Are you surely in a good humour? I failed in mathematics and Latin prose. I am taking tuitions and studying very hard. I will take another examination next month and I promise to pass them successfully. I’m sorry for disappointing you, but otherwise I don’t care a bit because I’ve learned a whole 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. And I assure you never to flunk again. Will you forgive me this time?
Yours in sackcloth,
Judy
26th March
Mr. D.-L.-L. Smith,
SIR: I never get any kind of response from your side to my questions; nor you are concerned about anything I do. You do not have a bit of care in your heart for me. One thing is clear to me; you are educating me out of sense of duty. I’m sure you are the horrible one of all those horrid Trustees.
It is very discouraging writing to a Thing, and not a human. It puts me off when I think whom does the letter I’m writing corresponds to. No wonder if you crush my letters and throw into a dustbin without even giving a look at it. From now onwards, I shall mention only relevant information.
My re-examinations in Latin and geometry came last week. I passed them both and am now free from conditions.
Yours truly
Jerusha Abbott
2nd April
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
Such a horrible creature I am.
Kindly forgive me for the awful letter I sent you last week. Please put it out of your mind for ever. I was lonely and depressed and felt sore-throaty the night I wrote it. I had no idea that I was just sickening for tonsillitis and grippe and a mixture of a few more things. 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.
Don’t you feel sympathetic towards me? I am suffering from sublingual gland swelling. And I studied physiology for one complete year without ever hearing of sublingual glands. Education is so unavailing!
It is difficult for me to write any more; I get rather shaky when I sit up too long. I was badly brought up and it reflects in my impolite and unappreciative nature.
Yours with love,
Judy Abbott
THE INFIRMARY
4th April
Dearest Daddy-Long-Legs,
Yesterday, when it was nearly dark, I was sitting up in bed looking out at the rain and feeling awfully bored with life in a great institution, the attendant came up to me holding a long white box. I was surprised to see the beautiful pink rosebuds. I wondered who would send me these roses. And there was another note of kind gesture; 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). I thank you Daddy, a thousand times. I am so grateful to you. Daddy, you are the first person to give me a real and true present in my life. I will treasure these flowers for ever. If you want to know what a baby I am I lay down and cried because I was so happy.
I am certain of one thing for sure. You definitely read my letters. Now I’ll try to make them as much engrossing as I can, so they’ll be worth a fortune and you’ll probably keep them in a safe with red tape around them—but first please take out that awful one and burn it up. I’d hate to think that you ever read it over.
I am highly obliged that you made a very sick, neurotic, pathetic freshman cheerful. You might be having loads of
friends and an adorable family; therefore you have no clue how it feels like to be alone. But I do. I assure you Daddy, I’ll never show a sign of unkindness, for now I know that you’re a real person. I promise never to irritate you with any more questions. Goodbye and take care.
By the way, are girls still not in your priority list?
Yours for ever,
Judy
30th May
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
Have you ever had a chance to view this campus? (That is merely a rhetorical question. Don’t let it annoy you.) In the days of May, this place has a divine look. The beauty is at its peak, all the shrubs are in blossom and the trees are the loveliest young green—even the old pines look fresh and new. The grass is dotted with yellow dandelions and hundreds of girls in blue and white and pink dresses. The upcoming vacations had made everybody even more cheerful and relaxed. And in this joyous environment, examinations don’t count.
I am in my highest spirits and the most content frame of mind. Because I’m not a part of the asylum anymore, and so I’m nobody’s care taker or typewriter or bookkeeper.
Accept my apologies for all my past badnesses, which by the way includes being impertinent to Mrs. Lippett, slapping Freddie Perkins, filling the sugar bowl with salt and making faces behind the Trustees’ backs.
But from now onwards I’m going to be good and sweet and kind to everybody because I’m so happy. And I’ll soon begin my journey to become a great author. Isn’t that an exalted stand to take? Oh, I’m developing a beautiful character! It droops a bit under cold and frost, but it does grow fast when the sun shines.
That’s the way with everybody. I don’t agree with the theory that misfortune and grief and regret develop moral strength. The happy people are the ones who are bubbling over with friendliness. I have no faith in misanthropes. (Fine word! Just learned it.) You are not a misanthrope are you, Daddy?
I was describing you the campus. I wish I could do it in real; I would show you around and say:
‘That is the library. This is the gas plant, Daddy dear. The Gothic building on your left is the gymnasium, and the Tudor Romanesque beside it is the new infirmary.’
Well, I’m quite good at showing people about. I’ve done it all my life at the asylum, and I’ve been doing it all day here. I have honestly.
And a Man, too!
That was a great thing to do. I never had a one-to-one conversation with a man before (except occasional Trustees, and they don’t count). Please excuse, Daddy; my motive is not to hurt your emotions when I disregard Trustees. For me, you are not among them. You just tumbled on to the Board by chance.
However—to resume:
I have been walking and talking and having tea with a man. He’s not an ordinary person but a very distinguished man—with Mr. Jervis Pendleton of the House of Julia; her uncle, in short (in long, perhaps I ought to say; he’s as tall as you). He came to the town for some business, and thought of paying a social call to his niece. He’s her father’s youngest brother, but she doesn’t know him very intimately. It seems as though he never noticed her after her childhood days.
Anyway, there he was, sitting in the reception room very proper with his hat and stick and gloves beside him; and Julia and Sallie with seventh-hour recitations that they couldn’t cut. So Julia pleaded me to take him for a walk around the campus and then deliver him to her when the seventh hour was over. I agreed in order to oblige her but was totally unenthusiastic, because I don’t care a bit for Pendletons.
But I was soon shocked when i discovered that he is such a sweet lamb. He’s a real human being with not even a single trait of a Pendleton. I spent the perfect time with him. I always wanted an uncle for I believe they’re superior to grandmothers.
Mr. Pendleton reminded me a little of you, Daddy, as you were twenty years ago. You see I know you intimately, even if we haven’t ever met!
He’s tall and thinnish with a dark face all over lines, and the funniest underneath smile that never quite comes through but just wrinkles up the corners of his mouth. And his company is so relieving that he immediately makes you feel comfortable and I felt as though I knew him from a very long time. He’s very congenial.
We took a view of the entire campus from the quadrangle to the athletic grounds; then he said he felt weak and must have some tea. He proposed that we go to College Inn—it’s just off the campus by the pine walk. I said that we should go back for Julia and Sallie, but he said he didn’t like his nieces to drink too much tea; it made them nervous. So we just ran away and had tea and muffins and marmalade and ice-cream and cake at a nice little table out on the balcony. The inn was quite conveniently empty, this being the end of the month and allowances low.
Like I mentioned before I had the perfect time with him! But he was running out of time and he had to catch his train back to Newyork, so he barely saw Julia at all. She was furious with me for taking him off; it seems he’s an unusually rich and desirable uncle. It relieved my mind to find he was rich, for the tea and things cost sixty cents apiece.
Its Monday morning, we received three boxes of chocolates that came by express for Julia and Sallie and me. Getting candy from a man! What do you think of it now?
It is a good feeling to be a girl, rather than a foundling.
9th June
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
Hooray! Finally the happy day arrived! I’ve just completed my last examination, Physiology. And now:
Three months of vacations on a farm!
I’ve never heard a place named farm before, because I’ve never been on one in my life. I’ve never even looked at one (except from the car window), but I’m sure I’m going to love it, and I’m going to love being free.
I never stepped outside the John Grier Home. Whenever I think of it excited little thrills chase up and down my back. I feel as though I must run faster and faster and keep looking over my shoulder to make sure that Mrs. Lippett isn’t after me with her arm stretched out to grab me back.
I believe there are no rules and restrictions there. The positive point is that you are too far away to do any harm and I suppose Mrs. Lippett is dead for ever. I am entirely grown up. Hooray!
I leave you now to pack a trunk, and three boxes of teakettles and dishes and sofa cushions and books.
Yours ever, Judy
This is a heavenly, heavenly, heavenly spot! It stands on the top of a hill and looks way off over miles of green meadows to another line of hills.
LOCK WILLOW FARM
Saturday night
Dearest Daddy-Long-Legs,
I’ve just arrived and haven’t even unpacked, but I couldn’t stop myself to write to you and tell you how much I like farms. This is a heavenly, heavenly, heavenly spot! The house is a square. And old. A hundred years or so. It has a veranda on the side and a sweet porch in front. It stands on the top of a hill and looks way off over miles of green meadows to another line of hills.
That is the way Connecticut goes, in a series of Marcelle waves; and Lock Willow Farm is just on the crest of one wave. The barns used to be across the road where they obstructed the view, but a kind flash of lightning came from heaven and burnt them down.
There is an old couple staying here, Mr. and Mrs. Semple and a hired girl and two hired men. The hired people have their meals in the kitchen, and the Semples and Judy in the dining-room. We had ham and eggs and biscuits and honey and jelly-cake and pie and pickles and cheese and tea for supper—and a great deal of conversation. I never knew I was so entertaining. I tickle their funny bone every now and then.
I’m staying in a big and square and empty room, with adorable old-fashioned furniture and windows that have to be propped up on sticks and green shades trimmed with gold that fall down if you touch them. And a big square mahogany table—my summer will be spent there writing a novel with my elbows all stretched out.
Ah, Daddy, I’m in a complete whirl of excitement! It is getting hard for me to wait till daylight to explore. It’s 8.30 now, and I am about to blow out my candle and try to go to sleep. We have to wake up at five. Have you ever experienced such pleasure? I can’t believe this is really Judy. You and the Good Lord granted me a lot of things which I never deserved. I must be a very, very, very good person to pay. I’m going to be. You’ll see.
Good night,
Judy
PS. You should hear the frogs sing and the little pigs squeal and you should see the new moon! I saw it over my right shoulder.
LOCK WILLOW
12th July
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
From where did your secretary heard about Lock Willow? (That isn’t a rhetorical question. I am awfully curious to know). You remember Mr. Jervis Pendleton? Julia’s Uncle. This farm was his property once, but now he has given it to Mrs. Semple who was his old nurse. This is such a funny coincidence. He is still ‘Master Jervie’ for Mrs. Semple and often tells me his childhood tales and what a sweet little boy he used to be. She has one of his baby curls put away in a box, and it is red—or at least reddish!
From the day when I told her that I know him, I have risen very much in her opinion. The best introduction one can give at Lock Willow is to know a member of Pendleton family. And on top of it knowing Master Jervis serves as icing on the cake.
There are so much exciting things to do here. It is my daily business to hunt the eggs. I fell off a beam in the barn loft yesterday, while I was trying to crawl over to a nest that the black hen has stolen. And when I came in with a scratched knee, Mrs. Semple bound it up with witch-hazel, murmuring all the time, ‘Dear! Dear! It seems only yesterday that Master Jervie fell off that very same beam and scratched this very same knee.’
One must be mad to leave this beautiful place and settle in a city. There’s a valley and a river and a lot of wooded hills, and way in the distance a tall blue mountain that simply melts in your mouth.
We churn twice a week; and we keep the cream in the spring house which is made of stone with the brook running underneath. Some of the farmers around here have a separator, but we don’t care for these new-fashioned ideas. It may be a little harder to separate the cream in pans, but it’s sufficiently better to pay.
There is so much work to do here that I haven’t had a sole moment to think about my immortal novel.
Yours always,
Judy
This is Sunday afternoon.
Daddy, I found quite an interesting book in the attic. It’s entitled, On the Trail, and sprawled across the front page in a funny little-boy hand:
Jervis Pendleton
If this book should ever roam,
Box its ears and send it home.
When he was nearly eleven years old, he stayed here for a summer; and he left On the Trail behind. It looks well read—the marks of his grimy little hands are frequent! Also in a corner of the attic there is a water wheel and
a windmill and some bows and arrows. Mrs. Semple talks so constantly about him that I begin to believe he really lives—not a grown man with a silk hat and walking stick, but a nice, dirty, tousle-headed boy who clatters up the stairs with an awful racket, and leaves the screen doors open, and is always asking for cookies. (And getting them, too, if I know Mrs. Semple!) From her stories, he seems to have been an adventurous little soul—and brave and truthful. I’m sorry to think he is a Pendleton; he was meant for something better.
Sir,
I remain,
Your affectionate orphan,
Judy Abbott
PS. I was weighed yesterday on the flour scales in the general store at the Comers. I’ve gained nine pounds! Let me recommend Lock Willow as a health resort.
