Peele Manor, Friday.

Oh my dear darling little girl, how I wish, how I wish I were with you and my work once more. I ought to be happy because they are all so kind, but I’m not. I feel as if I were throwing away one of the few precious weeks I have left to give to the Lord (arrange for a prayer meeting on Wednesday, the day of my return, and we’ll have a regular feast of manna). Do you miss me? I think of you every moment. You should have seen dear Cousin Honora’s face when I came down to dinner in the black satin. She didn’t say anything, she just looked at the bow, and I felt sorry for her. But I know I am right. Hal giggled and winked at me. (I do love Hal!) Honora Mairs said so sweetly after Cousin Honora had left the room: “Dear Cousin Harriet, I think you are so brave and consistent to wear the little white bow of your cause. It is so like you.” Was not that sweet of her? Beverly has very heavy eyebrows, and he raised them at my ribbon, and turned away his head as if it hurt his eyes. He is a very elegant young gentleman, and his mother says he is a great stickler for form, whatever that may mean. (They speak a different language here anyway. I don’t understand half what they say. Hal talks slang all the time.) I don’t like Beverly as much as I did, although he’s quite the handsomest young man I ever saw and very polite; but he smokes cigarettes all the time and big black cigars. When I told him that five hundred million dollars were spent annually on tobacco, he got up and went off in a huff. May is just a talkative child—I never heard any one talk so much in my life,—and about nothing but gowns and young men and balls and the opera. Beverly talks about horses all the time, and Hal thinks a great deal of society, although she listens to me very sweetly when I talk to her about my work. Yesterday she said: “Why, Cousin Harriet, you’re a regular steam engine. It must be jolly good fun to carry a lot of sinners to heaven on an express train.” I told her it was a freight train, and it certainly is, as you know, Patience dear. She replied: “Well, if you get there all the same, a century more or less doesn’t make any difference. You must be right in it with the Lord.” That was the only time I’d heard the dear Lord’s name mentioned since I arrived, so I didn’t scold her. But Patience, dear, I hope you’ll never use slang. I’ve talked to Hal about you, and she says she’s coming to see you.

Honora doesn’t use slang. She is very stately and dignified, and Cousin Honora (it’s very awkward when you’re writing for two people to have the same name, isn’t it?) holds her up as a model for the girls. Hal and she fight. I can’t call it anything else, although Honora doesn’t lose her temper and Hal does. Hal said to me (of Honora) yesterday (I use her own words, although they’re awful; but if I didn’t I couldn’t give you the same idea of her): “She’s a d—— hypocrite: and she wants to marry Beverly, but she won’t,—not if I have to turn matchmaker and marry him to a variety actress. She makes me wild. I wish she’d elope with the priest, but she’s too confoundedly clever.” Isn’t it dreadful—Honora is a Catholic. She became converted last year. Perhaps that’s the reason I can’t like her. But even the Catholic religion teaches charity, for she said to me this morning: “Poor Hal is really a good-hearted child, but she’s worldly and just a little superficial.”

They haven’t any company this week—how kind of Cousin Honora to ask me when they are alone! I wish you were here to enjoy the library. It is a great big room overlooking the river, and the walls are covered with books—three or four generations of them. Mr. Peele is intellectual, and so is Honora; but the others don’t read much, except Hal, who reads dreadful-looking yellow paper books written in the French language which she says are “corkers,” whatever that may mean. I do wish the dear child would read her Bible. I asked her if I gave her a copy if she’d promise me to read a little every day, and she said she would, as some of the stories were as good as a French novel. So I shall buy her one.

We sit in the library every evening. In the morning we sit in the Tea House on the slope and Honora embroiders Catholic Church things, Cousin Honora knits (she says it’s all the fashion), May talks, and Hal reads her yellow books and tells May to “let up.” I sew for my poor, and they don’t seem to mind that as much as the white ribbon. They say that they always sew for the poor in Lent. Hal says it is the “swagger thing.” In the afternoon we drive, and I do think it such a waste of time to be going, going nowhere for two hours.

Well, Patience, I shall be with you on Wednesday, praise the Lord. Come to the train and meet me, and be sure to write me about everything. How is Polly Jones, and old Mrs. Murphy, and Belinda Greggs? Have you read to Maria Twist, and taken the broth to old Jonas Hobb? Give my love to dear sister Beale, and tell her I pray for her. With a kiss from your old auntie, God bless you,

Harriet Tremont.