Letters and the Post Office

Jeanie Dear:

Your letter was lovely. I forget what you are like between times a little, and then I look at your picture or get a letter from you, and know. I can hardly believe you love me, after all you know about me, but I guess you do. I wish I could see you, but I am glad you are at the Point again this summer. I tried out Mother about my coming to visit you, without asking in so many words, but her idea is that she would like to have me stay put. My brother may get well enough to come down here at any time, and when he does I want to be chief nurse and bottle washer—medicine bottles.

I've been doing quite a lot of things. I spend a great deal of time with Peggy Farraday. She is very nice. Nicer than I am, but not as nice as you, Jeanne of Arc. She is as nice as a Peggy Farraday can be. She has a sister Ruth, who is as sweet as peaches. She is about nineteen and a half, and blonde, with big blue eyes and long golden lashes, and one of those soft voices low in the throat, with a kind of thrill in it. You know—like contralto singing. You would love her. I am wild about her, and Buddy knows her. Don't mention that to any one. It's a secret. If you were here I think I could hint to you some things about it, but I can't on paper. Somebody might read a letter some time that you didn't expect. Buddy is very unhappy, and writes me one cross letter to every pleasant one. He is afraid I shall not be discreet, but discreet is my middle name, to use slang. Oh, I long to tell you what I mean. He won't write to her and she won't to him, and I am trying to make them. You can see how exciting it is.

Well, I must give you a brief rÉsumÉ of what I have been doing, before I close. Monday we went in swimming, and afterwards, in the Farraday car, to Wianno, which is a very attractive summer colony farther up the Cape. We stopped at Hyannis and had ice-cream with a frozen pudding sauce. Tuesday, after swimming, Grandfather took us to Chatham in the noble Ford—me and Peggy—and we stopped at an attractive little tea room, where we had chocolate ice-cream. Wednesday we went swimming and then we walked to the adjoining town where we got some wonderful ice-cream sodas, three apiece. Peggy and I have each got over thirty Negroes. I told you how we were counting them in order to find out our fate. I am glad you have begun, too. I love you dearly.

Your own Elizabeth-Elspeth.

(Peggy calls me that. She sends her love even though she doesn't know you.)

Elizabeth was in a letter-writing mood, and sealing Jean's letter with her favourite sky-blue sealing wax, stamped with her monogram signet ring, she opened her letter-case again. She began:

Dear Daddy:

We don't write very many letters to each other this summer. At least, I don't write many separate ones to you, but all the letters that go to Mother are meant for you, too. My special particular efforts go to Buddy. Poor Buddy! I hope you will soon be able to bring him to his own grandmother's hunting ground. He keeps writing me about going to Russia. I guess I should want to go to Russia if my health was as discouraging as Buddy's. I worry about him, and, Daddy, dear, I worry about you. I have made the great discovery that a Daddy is a Daddy, and that it has to work pretty hard buying wardrobe trunks and Japanese kimonas and almond nut bars for its female offspring.

When I think of you sweltering in that hot city whether you want to or not, I get quite upset. You have to work every day, don't you, whether you feel like it or not? I never thought of that before till last evening, and it made me a little bit ill, it struck me with such force. I have just never happened to think of it in that light. I can tell you, Daddy, it made me love you harder than ever, and that's pretty hard. Well, all I can say is that I respect you more than anybody, and I hope you are never sorry you got married and got this family on your hands.

Now for a few words to cheer you up. Monday we went in swimming, Peggy and I, and afterwards in the Farraday car to Wianno. I guess you know all about Wianno. We stopped at Hyannis and had some ice-cream with frozen pudding sauce. Tuesday we swam and Grandfather took us to Chatham in the Grand Old Ford, and we had chocolate ice-cream there. Wednesday we went in swimming and then walked to Harwich and got three ice-cream sodas. Also we counted quite a lot of Negroes. I wrote Mother that we had to get ninety-nine Negroes etc. for a stunt we are doing. Portuguese count, if they are dark enough.

I love you more than my old scratchy pen can tell. There goes the station barge, with the morning mail. So here goes I after it.

Your Baby.

"You write an awful lot of letters, Elizabeth," said Peggy, as the two met at the post-office steps. "You get a lot, too. I'm not much good at correspondence. Did you ever write to a boy, Elizabeth?"

"No, not really. Only thank-you letters and answering invitations and things like that."

"Well, don't you ever tell, Elizabeth, because I might get teased, but I'm writing to a boy right now. That is, I am going to be when I've answered his letter. It isn't a silly boy, though, it's a sensible boy—a boy that knows a lot of things I want to learn about. Chester Reynolds, you know, that I've told you about winning the tennis cups. I got a letter from him last night. It isn't supposed to be very nice to show letters, but if you'd like to see this one, I'll bring it around to-morrow, and then I'll bring my answer to it, and let you see what you think of that."

"All right," Elizabeth agreed.

"Isn't it a funny thing, he is the only boy that I ever thought I'd like to correspond with, and now he has just sat himself down and written to me."

"I think that's very nice." Elizabeth said. "There's a boy in New York that I felt that same way about. He sort of offered to send me a copy of 'Prometheus Bound,' but I knew if he did that I should have to write and thank him, and I didn't know whether Mother would approve of my writing him like that when I was away from home, so I didn't say anything more about it."

"What is 'Prometheus Bound,' anyway?" Peggy inquired.

"Well, I think it is a kind of a blank verse poem or book, something like Whittier's 'Snow Bound,' but I'm not sure. That was one reason that I wanted him to send it—so I could find out. He was quite a literary boy, one of Jeanie's friends. He's very good looking, though."

"I don't like literary boys as a rule, though, do you?" Peggy asked. "They usually wear rubbers and horn rims, and have to mind their mothers."

"Not any friend of Jeanie's. Her friends are always all-around boys. They must have brains, too."

"Oh!" Peggy said, impressed.

The crowd on the post-office steps was beginning to thicken. The big bags, bulging with mail, had been passed behind the glass faÇade of the mail-box section, and behind the closed wicket that indicated the distribution was taking place the silent postmaster and his assistant worked with grim, accustomed rapidity.

"Let's go and watch them put the things into the boxes," Elizabeth said. "It's the most exciting thing to see the letters go in. Ours is 178. See, here it is," she cried, as Peggy followed her into the stuffy office. "There's a card from Buddy already, and one for Grandfather from the Bass River Savings Bank, and one fat one that I can't see the face of that I hope is from Jean. She doesn't always wait to get answers, you know. She writes when the spirit moves and so do I. I've just been writing her."

"When you go back to New York, let's write to each—I mean one another—like that, only I'm afraid you'll get the worst of the bargain. When the spirit moves me to write a letter, it mostly only moves me to say, 'Dear Elspeth,' or whoever it is, 'Hello! Yours frantically fondly, Peggy.' It's funny, when I like to talk so much, that I don't like to write more."

"There's my thirty-first," Elizabeth whispered, as a solemn black chauffeur made his appearance in the post office.

"My thirty-third," Peggy said, "and outside is a white horse. What a pity we have got to get the white horses in sequence. They are so hard to find, especially when you are looking for them. But when we do get them all, I am going to keep my hands behind me all the time, until I find somebody I am willing to shake hands with!"

"It would be awful, after all this trouble, if we didn't shake hands with the right one, wouldn't it, Peggy? There goes a postcard right into my box. It's for Judidy. She has a young man. Did you know it? He's almost as fat as she is, and not nearly so good looking."

"I hope she gets somebody very nice, and marries them, and has a whole backyard full of fat pink babies, though I don't know what Grandmummy would do."

"Grandfather says she'd get the work done quicker if she didn't have Judidy to look out for, and I think perhaps she would. Isn't it funny, when I first came, Judidy just seemed to me like a kind of queer person that I felt not quite right about eating at the table with, and now she's my friend."

The gate in the wicket flew up, and in an instant it was surrounded.

"See all the mail-hungry fiends," Peggy said. "Oh, goody, Mother's got a letter from my cousin in Rome—and Ruth has a letter from that Chambers fellow."

"What Chambers fellow?" Elizabeth asked, quickly.

"Piggy Chambers I call him. He's got loads of money and he is very good looking, and he just pesters Ruthie to death."

"What does she do?"

"She lets him. She likes it, rather."

"Oh, dear!" Elizabeth said.

"You don't have to worry. She's my sister. Piggy Chambers isn't so bad. He's just kind of a bore, you know, and awfully fond of writing letters to Piggy Chambers, Esquire. Lots of grown-up fellows are like that."

"She's your sister, but I love her, too."

"Shouldn't think much of you if you didn't."

They were on their way home by this time, and the post-office crowd had begun to melt away, streaming up and down the street, and into all the cross roads.

"I wish my grandmother would let me come after the mail at night," Elizabeth said. "I have to wait till Judidy or Zeke are ready to come, or Grandfather will take me. As if I wasn't old enough to go out after six o'clock alone."

"It isn't your being old enough, it's the general reputation of the post office being a place where the crowd goes in the evening to—start something. You know yourself that lots of things that go on there don't look very well. It's such a mixed crowd, too."

"As long as you behave yourself, I don't see what difference it makes."

"I've thought a lot about going to the post office at night," Peggy said, "and I've argued a lot about it with Ruthie and Mother, and the conclusion that I've come to is that it's just as well to keep away. All the girls that aren't nice hang around there. Some of the girls that are nice stay away. When I grow up, my niceness is going to be so much a matter of course that I won't have to look out for it so hard. Just now I am going to obey Grandmummy's rule to 'avoid the appearance of evil'."

"I guess you are just about right, Peggy," Elizabeth said after reflection. "Sometimes you talk a lot like Jeanie. Would you like to hear some of her letter?"

"I should say I would, but don't read it to me unless you really want to."

"I do," Elizabeth said, "and the reason I do is that I think you are like Jean in some ways. You are both of you way beyond me in the way you look at things."

"The way I look at things is better than the way I act sometimes."

"I'm inclined to be just the other way around. The way I look at things is worse than the way I act most generally."

"I'm disobedient," Peggy said, "and sloppy weather, and always late to places. I do as I'm told about things like going to the post office at night, but not about trying to run the car or getting home on time."

"I'm just the other way," Elizabeth reflected. "I wouldn't monkey with anything I was told not to touch, but I'd make a big fuss, if only in my own mind, about obeying a grown-up rule that I didn't understand."

"Either way gets you into trouble at times," Peggy said, sagely. "Don't look round, but there are two boys trailing behind us."

"What kind of boys?"

"Two of the boys that were down at the Aviation Camp all last summer."

"Are they all right?"

"Yes, but I don't know them."

"They are speaking to us. Don't look round."

"Oh, girls!"

"I suppose they'll get tired and go away."

"Don't look round."

"Oh, girls!"

"Now, look here," Peggy suddenly wheeled on the two followers. "We haven't met you. We're not going to have you trailing around after us."

The older of the two boys whipped off his hat.

"I—I beg your pardon," he said, colouring. "We were only joking. We—we——"

"It puts us in an embarrassing position," Elizabeth contributed.

"Well, some of the girls, they—we——" the other boy also found explanation more difficult than he had anticipated.

"There's a difference in girls," Peggy said, severely.

"We were only going to ask you the way to the beach." The first boy's hair was a blazing, splendid red. Elizabeth liked red-headed boys.

"I've seen you there almost every day this summer," Peggy challenged.

"So've I seen you." The second boy had a wide, ingratiating grin. "We want to get acquainted, that's all," he admitted, "so we were pursuing what seems to be the usual way down here."

"That isn't the way to get acquainted with us," Elizabeth said.

"What is the way, then?"

"Don't ask us." Peggy gathered Elizabeth's arm under hers, and hurried her along.

"They are sort of nice," she admitted, when they had put several yards between them and the objects of their encounter. "If they are really nice, I suppose they will get introduced the way they ought to. If they aren't, well, we won't see them."

"It's a sort of strain waiting to find out such things," Elizabeth said.

"Read me Jean's letter, and that will take our minds off them," Peggy demanded, practically. "One reason that I don't like to have much to do with boys is that when you get thinking about them it's hard to get your mind on other things. If they are silly, they aren't any fun."

"On the other hand," Elizabeth argued, "if they aren't just a little bit—silly or—something—they aren't so much fun."

"Well, they have to be interested in you some," Peggy admitted.

"Now I'll read you Jean's letter. We'll sit down under this tree by the gate. See how pretty her handwriting is. Doesn't she make fascinating E's and R's?"

"I think there is a lot of character in handwriting," Peggy said, bending her head over the letter. "See this one from Piggy Chambers. He writes like a pig and he is one."

"See this card from my brother Buddy. He writes like a perfect gentleman, and he is one, though I say it as shouldn't."

"Oh, I've seen your brother's handwriting before, but not for a long time. Why don't you write him to write Ruthie? I'd a whole lot rather she was hearing from him regularly than from Piggy."

"Has she a friendship with Mr.—Mr. Piggy?"

"No, she hasn't. He just wants her to marry him, and that's all there is about it. If your brother is her friend, it would be the part of a good friend to stick around just now, if only by correspondence."

"There are things about my brother that you don't understand, Peggy," Elizabeth said, solemnly.

"Thirty-four," Peggy said, her gaze diverted to the street, "count that one, Elizabeth. It may be that same chauffeur, but never mind. We don't know positively that it is."

"Well, now for Jean," Elizabeth said, after these formalities were finished.

Elspeth-Elizabeth dear:

I've had your long letter, the one that told about the Steppe children (and how I laughed!), for a week, and your two postcards I wrote you one serious letter in answer to a serious one from you, and now I'll just tell you about the way things are going here. It's just the same thing—sailing, teas, dances, bathing, and then begin all over and do it again. I like it all—especially the sailing—"a wet sheet and a flowing sea," you know, is one of my ideals. Another ideal is getting realized, too. I'm learning to drive the car. I bogged it yesterday, and a farmer with whiskers to his knees, and a long rope, like the funny papers, came and pulled us out. The chauffeur was with me. He ought to have prevented it, but he said I was too quick for him. Anyhow, won't it be wonderful when I learn? Then you and I can "ride together, forever ride," as Browning says.

I went into New York on Thursday, and what do you think, I went to see your brother Buddy. I called up your mother from the station and she suggested it, so I did, as we had the car and were going out of New York from his end of the town, anyway. I felt two ways about doing so. One way was, that it was hard on you for me to see him first, and the other way was that if you couldn't see him, I could represent you. He is quite a sick-looking Buddy, but very, very sweet and dear. I hope you can get him down to the Cape and take care of him. They won't discharge him, will they, until they get good and ready to? He looks a lot like you and a lot like some of those Rembrandt portraits of himself. I suppose it's his beard that makes him look so sort of shady and shadowy. He said he didn't think he would ever be any better, but that if he did, he hoped he could go to Russia. He seemed to want me to think that this and everything else he said was a joke. I must interrupt myself now, and say au revoir, because the car is waiting, and Mother is being very polite in it. I can see her back getting politer every minute.

'bye—

Jean.

P. S. I love you.

"I didn't know that your brother was as sick as all that," Peggy said. "Why haven't you told me so?"

"He doesn't want anybody told. He doesn't want to appear like a confirmed invalid."

"I'd like to tell Ruthie."

"I—I'll tell you what you do. You take Jeanie's letter and read it to her. That won't be either of us telling her."

"All right, I will."

"I don't know what excuse you can give for having a strange girl's letter with you."

"I won't need any excuse. I'll just say to Ruth that I've got a letter from a friend of yours about John Swift. She'll just grab the letter—that's all. I'll say you were willing."

"You come around and tell me what she says afterwards."

"All right." Peggy was making a prolonged departure, kicking at the turf as she stood at the gate. "I'll come around this afternoon, anyway, and we'll go and get some tutti-frutti ice-cream."

"All right, and if you hear anything more about who those boys were, you can tell me then."

"All right, and I'll bring around that letter I was telling you about, from Chester Reynolds."

"All right. I guess my dinner's ready. I heard the bell when we first got in sight of the house."

At this point Grandfather appeared at the door and seeing Elizabeth still looking in the direction of her departing friend, he approached firmly and grasped her by the ear, and led her, protesting, into the house.