Daddy-Long-Legs and Dear Enemy (15 page)

It's the silliest thing I ever heard of, not to know your name. Mrs. Lippett warned me that you were eccentric. I should think so!

Affectionately,
JUDY.

 

P.S. On reading this over, I find that it isn't all Stevenson. There are one or two glancing references to Master Jervie.

 

 

September 10th.

He has gone, and we are missing him! When you get accustomed to people or places or ways of living, and then have them suddenly snatched away, it does leave an awfully empty, gnawing sort of sensation. I'm finding Mrs. Semple's conversation pretty unseasoned food.

College opens in two weeks and I shall be glad to begin work again. I have worked quite a lot this summer though—six short stories and seven poems. Those I sent to the magazines all came back with the most courteous promptitude. But I don't mind. It's good practice. Master Jervie read them—he brought in the mail, so I couldn't help his knowing—and he said they were
dreadful.
They showed that I didn't have the slightest idea of what I was talking about. (Master Jervie doesn't let politeness interfere with truth.) But the last one I did—just a little sketch laid in college—he said wasn't bad; and he had it typewritten, and I sent it to a magazine. They've had it two weeks; maybe they're thinking it over.

You should see the sky! There's the queerest orange-colored light over everything. We're going to have a storm.

It commenced just that moment with drops as big as quarters and all the shutters banging. I had to run to close windows, while Carrie flew to the attic with an armful of milk pans to put under the places where the roof leaks—and then, just as I was resuming my pen, I remembered that I'd left a cushion and rug and hat and Matthew Arnold's poems under a tree in the orchard, so I dashed out to get them, all quite soaked. The red cover of the poems had run into the inside; “Dover Beach” in the future will be washed by pink waves.

A storm is awfully disturbing in the country. You are always having to think of so many things that are out of doors and getting spoiled.

 

 

Thursday.

Daddy! Daddy! What do you think? The postman has just come with two letters.

1st.—My story is accepted. $50.

Alors!
I'm an AUTHOR.

2d.—A letter from the college secretary. I'm to have a scholarship for two years that will cover board and tuition. It was founded by an alumna for “marked proficiency in English with general excellency in other lines.” And I've won it! I applied for it before I left, but I didn't have an idea I'd get it, on account of my Freshman bad work in math. and Latin. But it seems I've made it up. I am awfully glad, Daddy, because now I won't be such a burden to you. The monthly allowance will be all I'll need, and maybe I can earn that with writing or tutoring or something.

I'm
crazy
to go back and begin work.

Yours ever,
JERUSHA ABBOTT,
AUTHOR OF, “WHEN THE
SOPHOMORES WON THE GAME.”
FOR SALE AT ALL NEWS
STANDS, PRICE TEN CENTS.

 

 

 

September 26th.

Back at college again and an upper classman. Our study is better than ever this year—faces the South with two huge windows—and oh! so furnished. Julia, with an unlimited allowance, arrived two days early and was attacked with a fever of settling.

We have new wall paper and Oriental rugs and mahogany chairs—not painted mahogany which made us sufficiently happy last year, but real. It's very gorgeous, but I don't feel as though I belonged in it; I'm nervous all the time for fear I'll get an ink spot in the wrong place.

And, Daddy, I found your letter waiting for me—pardon—I mean your secretary's.

Will you kindly convey to me a comprehensible reason why I should not accept that scholarship? I don't understand your objection in the least. But anyway, it won't do the slightest good for you to object, for I've already accepted it—and I am not going to change! That sounds a little impertinent, but I don't mean it so.

I suppose you feel that when you set out to educate me, you'd like to finish the work, and put a neat period, in the shape of a diploma, at the end.

But look at it just a second from my point of view. I shall owe my education to you just as much as though I let you pay for the whole of it, but I won't be quite so much indebted. I know that you don't want me to return the money, but nevertheless, I am going to want to do it, if I possibly can; and winning this scholarship makes it so much easier. I was expecting to spend the rest of my life in paying my debts, but now I shall only have to spend one-half of the rest of it.

I hope you understand my position and won't be cross. The allowance I shall still most gratefully accept. It requires an allowance to live up to Julia and her furniture! I wish that she had been reared to simpler tastes, or else that she were not my room-mate.

This isn't much of a letter; I meant to have written a lot—but I've been hemming four window curtains and three portières (I'm glad you can't see the length of the stitches) and polishing a brass desk set with tooth powder (very uphill work) and sawing off picture wire with manicure scissors, and unpacking four boxes of books, and putting away two trunkfuls of clothes (it doesn't seem believable that Jerusha Abbott owns two trunks full of clothes, but she does!) and welcoming back fifty dear friends in between.

Opening day is a joyous occasion!

Good night, Daddy dear, and don't be annoyed because your chick is wanting to scratch for herself. She's growing up into an awfully energetic little hen—with a very determined cluck and lots of beautiful feathers (all due to you).

Affectionately,
JUDY.

September 30th.

Are you still harping on that scholarship? I never knew a man so obstinate and stubborn and unreasonable, and tenacious, and bull-doggish, and unable-to-see-other-people's-points-of-view as you.

You prefer that I should not be accepting favors from strangers.

Strangers!—And what are you, pray?

Is there any one in the world that I know less? I shouldn't recognize you if I met you on the street. Now, you see, if you had been a sane, sensible person and had written nice, cheering, fatherly letters to your little Judy, and had come occasionally and patted her on the head, and had said you were glad she was such a good girl—Then, perhaps, she wouldn't have flouted you in your old age, but would have obeyed your slightest wish like the dutiful daughter she was meant to be.

Strangers indeed! You live in a glass house, Mr. Smith.

And besides, this isn't a favor; it's like a prize—I earned it by hard work. If nobody had been good enough in English, the committee wouldn't have awarded the scholarship; some years they don't. Also—But what's the use of arguing with a man? You belong, Mr. Smith, to a sex devoid of a sense of logic. To bring a man into line, there are just two methods: one must either coax or be disagreeable. I scorn to coax men for what I wish. Therefore, I must be disagreeable.

I refuse, sir, to give up the scholarship; and if you make any more fuss, I won't accept the monthly allowance either, but will wear myself into a nervous wreck tutoring stupid Freshmen.

That is my ultimatum!

And listen—I have a further thought. Since you are so afraid that by taking this scholarship, I am depriving some one else of an education, I know a way out. You can apply the money that you would have spent for me, toward educating some other little girl from the John Grier Home. Don't you think that's a nice idea? Only, Daddy,
educate
the new girl as much as you choose, but please don't
like
her any better than me.

I trust that your secretary won't be hurt because I pay so little attention to the suggestions offered in his letter, but I can't help it if he is. He's a spoiled child, Daddy. I've meekly given in to his whims heretofore, but this time I intend to be FIRM.

Yours,
With a Mind,
Completely and Irrevocably and
World-without-End Made-up.

JERUSHA ABBOTT.

 

 

 

 

 

November 9th.

I started down to-day to buy a bottle of shoe blacking and some collars and the material for a new blouse and a jar of violet cream
⁴⁶
and a cake of Castile soap—all very necessary; I couldn't be happy another day without them—and when I tried to pay the car fare, I found that I had left my purse in the pocket of my other coat. So I had to get out and take the next car, and was late for gymnasium.

It's a dreadful thing to have no memory and two coats!

Julia Pendleton has invited me to visit her for the Christmas holidays. How does that strike you, Mr. Smith? Fancy Jerusha Abbott, of the John Grier Home, sitting at the tables of the rich. I don't know why Julia wants me—she seems to be getting quite attached to me of late. I should, to tell the truth, very much prefer going to Sallie's, but Julia asked me first, so if I go anywhere, it must be to New York instead of to Worcester. I'm rather awed at the prospect of meeting Pendletons
en masse,
and also I'd have to get a lot of new clothes—so, Daddy dear, if you write that you would prefer having me remain quietly at college, I will bow to your wishes with my usual sweet docility.

I'm engaged at odd moments with the “Life and Letters of Thomas Huxley”
⁴⁷
—it makes nice, light reading to pick up between times. Do you know what an archæopteryx
⁴⁸
is? It's a bird. And a stereognathus?
⁴⁹
I'm not sure myself but I think it's a missing link, like a bird with teeth or a lizard with wings. No, it isn't either; I've just looked in the book. It's a mesozoic mammal.

I've elected economics this year—very illuminating subject. When I finish that I'm going to take Charity and Reform; then, Mr. Trustee, I'll know just how an orphan asylum ought to be run. Don't you think I'd make an admirable voter if I had my rights? I was twenty-one last week. This is an awfully wasteful country to throw away such an honest, educated, conscientious, intelligent citizen as I would be.

Yours always,
JUDY.

 

 

 

December 7th.

Thank you for permission to visit Julia—I take it that silence means consent.

Such a social whirl as we've been having! The Founder's dance came last week—this was the first year that any of us could attend; only upper classmen being allowed.

I invited Jimmie McBride, and Sallie invited his room-mate at Princeton, who visited them last summer at their camp—an awfully nice man with red hair—and Julia invited a man from New York, not very exciting, but socially irreproachable. He is connected with the De la Mater Chichesters. Perhaps that means something to you? It doesn't illuminate me to any extent.

However—our guests came Friday afternoon in time for tea in the senior corridor, and then dashed down to the hotel for dinner. The hotel was so full that they slept in rows on the billiard tables, they say. Jimmie McBride says that the next time he is bidden to a social event in this college, he is going to bring one of their Adirondack tents and pitch it on the campus.

At seven-thirty they came back for the President's reception and dance. Our functions commence early! We had the men's cards all made out ahead of time, and after every dance, we'd leave them in groups under the letter that stood for their names, so that they could be readily found by their next partners. Jimmie McBride, for example, would stand patiently under “M” until he was claimed. (At least, he ought to have stood patiently, but he kept wandering off and getting mixed with “R's” and “S's” and all sorts of letters.) I found him a very difficult guest; he was sulky because he had only three dances with me. He said he was bashful about dancing with girls he didn't know!