Dear Enemy by Jean Webster (best large ebook reader TXT) 📖

good in life. But I suppose this pessimistic view is natural if you eat three meals a day with a tableful of melancholics. He goes up and down the world looking for signs of degeneracy, and finds them everywhere. I expected, after half an hour's conversation, that he would ask to look down my throat to see if I had a cleft palate. Sandy's taste in friends seems to resemble his taste in literature. Gracious! this is a letter!

Good-by.

SALLIE.

Thursday, May 2.

Dear Judy:

Such a bewildering whirl of events! The J. G. H. is breathless. Incidentally, I am on the way toward solving my problem of what to do with the children while the carpenters and plumbers and masons are here. Or, rather, my precious brother has solved it for me.

This afternoon I went over my linen supply, and made the shocking discovery that we have only sheets enough to change the children's beds every two weeks, which, it appears, is our shiftless custom. While I was still in the midst of my household gear, with a bunch of keys at my girdle, looking like the chatelaine of a medieval chateau, who should be ushered in but Jimmie?

Being extremely occupied, I dropped a slanting kiss on his nose, and sent him off to look over the place in charge of my two oldest urchins. They collected six friends and organized a baseball game. Jimmie came back blown, but enthusiastic, and consented to prolong his visit over the week end, though after the dinner I gave him he has decided to take his future meals at the hotel. As we sat with our coffee before the fire, I confided to him my anxiety as to what should be done with the chicks while their new brooder is building. You know Jimmie. In one half a minute his plan was formulated.

"Build an Adirondack camp on that little plateau up by the wood lot. You can make three open shacks, each holding eight bunks, and move the twenty-four oldest boys out there for the summer. It won't cost two cents."

"Yes," I objected, "but it will cost more than two cents to engage a man to look after them."

"Perfectly easy," said Jimmie, grandly. "I'll find you a college fellow who'll be glad to come during the vacation for his board and a mere pittance, only you'll have to set up more filling board than you gave me tonight."

Dr. MacRae dropped in about nine o'clock, after visiting the hospital ward. We've got three cases of whooping cough, but all isolated, and no more coming. How those three got in is a mystery. It seems there is a little bird that brings whooping cough to orphan asylums.

Jimmie fell upon him for backing in his camp scheme, and the doctor gave it enthusiastically. They seized pencil and paper and drew up plans. And before the evening was over, the last nail was hammered. Nothing would satisfy those two men but to go to the telephone at ten o'clock and rouse a poor carpenter from his sleep. He and some lumber are ordered for eight in the morning.

I finally got rid of them at ten-thirty, still talking uprights and joists and drainage and roof slants.

The excitement of Jimmie and coffee and all these building operations induced me to sit down immediately and write a letter to you; but I think, by your leave, I'll postpone further details to another time. Yours ever,

SALLIE.

Saturday.

Dear Enemy:

Will you be after dining with us at seven tonight? It's a real dinner party; we're going to have ice-cream.

My brother has discovered a promising young man to take charge of the boys,—maybe you know him,—Mr. Witherspoon, at the bank. I wish to introduce him to asylum circles by easy steps, so PLEASE don't mention insanity or epilepsy or alcoholism or any of your other favorite topics.

He is a gay young society leader, used to very fancy things to eat. Do you suppose we can ever make him happy at the John Grier Home? Yours in evident haste,

SALLIE McBRIDE.

Sunday.

Dear Judy:

Jimmie was back at eight Friday morning, and the doctor at a quarter past. They and the carpenter and our new farmer and Noah and our two horses and our eight biggest boys have been working ever since. Never were building operations set going in faster time. I wish I had a dozen Jimmies on the place, though I will say that my brother works faster if you catch him before the first edge of his enthusiasm wears away. He would not be much good at chiseling out a medieval cathedral.

He came back Saturday morning aglow with a new idea. He had met at the hotel the night before a friend who belongs to his hunting club in Canada, and who is cashier of our First (and only) National Bank.

"He's a bully good sport," said Jimmie, "and exactly the man you want to camp out with those kids and lick 'em into shape. He'll be willing to come for his board and forty dollars a month, because he's engaged to a girl in Detroit and wants to save. I told him the food was rotten, but if he kicked enough, you'd probably get a new cook."

"What's his name?" said I, with guarded interest.

"He's got a peach of a name. It's Percy de Forest Witherspoon."

I nearly had hysterics. Imagine a Percy de Forest Witherspoon in charge of those twenty-four wild little savages!

But you know Jimmie when he has an idea. He had already invited Mr. Witherspoon to dine with me on Saturday evening, and had ordered oysters and squabs and ice-cream from the village caterer to help out my veal. It ended by my giving a very formal dinner party, with Miss Matthews and Betsy and the doctor included.

I almost asked the Hon. Cy and Miss Snaith. Ever since I have known those two, I have felt that there ought to be a romance between them. Never have I known two people who matched so perfectly. He's a widower with five children. Don't you suppose it might be arranged? If he had a wife to take up his attention, it might deflect him a little from us. I'd be getting rid of them both at one stroke. It's to be considered among our future improvements.

Anyway, we had our dinner. And during the course of the evening my anxiety grew, not as to whether Percy would do for us, but as to whether we should do for Percy. If I searched the world over, I never could find a young man more calculated to win the affection of those boys. You know, just by looking at him, that he does everything well, at least everything vigorous. His literary and artistic accomplishments I suspect a bit, but he rides and shoots and plays golf and football and sails a boat. He likes to sleep out of doors and he likes boys. He has always wanted to know some orphans; often read about 'em in books, he says, but never met any face to face. Percy does seem too good to be true.

Before they left, Jimmie and the doctor hunted up a lantern, and in their evening clothes conducted Mr. Witherspoon across a plowed field to inspect his future dwelling.

And such a Sunday as we passed! I had absolutely to forbid their carpentering. Those men would have put in a full day, quite irrespective of the damage done to one hundred and four little moral natures. As it is, they have just stood and looked at those shacks and handled their hammers, and thought about where they would drive the first nail tomorrow morning. The more I study men, the more I realize that they are nothing in the world but boys grown too big to be spankable.

I am awfully worried as to how to feed Mr. Witherspoon. He looks as though he had a frightfully healthy appetite, and he looks as though he couldn't swallow his dinner unless he had on evening clothes. I've made Betsy send home for a trunkful of evening gowns in order to keep up our social standing. One thing is fortunate: he takes his luncheon at the hotel, and I hear their luncheons are very filling.

Tell Jervis I am sorry he is not with us to drive a nail for the camp. Here comes the Hon. Cy up the path. Heaven save us!

Ever your unfortunate,

S. McB.

THE JOHN GRIER HOME,

May 8.

Dear Judy:

Our camp is finished, our energetic brother has gone, and our twenty-four boys have passed two healthful nights in the open. The three bark-covered shacks add a pleasant rustic touch to the grounds. They are like those we used to have in the Adirondacks, closed on three sides and open in the front, and one larger than the rest to allow a private pavilion for Mr. Percy Witherspoon. An adjacent hut, less exposed to the weather, affords extremely adequate bathing facilities, consisting of a faucet in the wall and three watering-cans. Each camp has a bath master who stands on a stool and sprinkles each little shiverer as he trots under. Since our trustees WON'T give us enough bathtubs, we have to use our wits.

The three camps have organized into three tribes of Indians, each with a chief of its own to answer for its conduct, Mr. Witherspoon high chief of all, and Dr. MacRae the medicine man. They dedicated their lodges Tuesday evening with appropriate tribal ceremonies. And though they politely invited me to attend, I decided that it was a purely masculine affair, so I declined to go, but sent refreshments, a very popular move. Betsy and I walked as far as the baseball field in the course of the evening, and caught a glimpse of the orgies. The braves were squatting in a circle about a big fire, each decorated with a blanket from his bed and a rakish band of feathers. (Our chickens seem very scant as to tail, but I have asked no unpleasant questions.) The doctor, with a Navajo blanket about his shoulders, was executing a war dance, while Jimmie and Mr. Witherspoon beat on war drums—two of our copper kettles, now permanently dented. Fancy Sandy! It's the first youthful glimmer I have ever caught in the man.

After ten o'clock, when the braves were safely stowed for the night, the three men came in and limply dropped into comfortable chairs in my library, with the air of having made martyrs of themselves in the great cause of charity. But they did not deceive me. They originated all that tomfoolery for their own individual delectation.

So far Mr. Percy Witherspoon appears fairly happy. He is presiding at one end of the officers' table under the special protection of Betsy, and I am told that he instills considerable life into that sedate assemblage. I have endeavored to run up their menu a trifle, and he accepts what is put before him with a perfectly good appetite, irrespective of the absence of such accustomed trifles as oysters and quail and soft-shell crabs.

There was no sign of a private sitting room that I could put at this young man's disposal, but he himself has solved the difficulty by proposing to occupy our new laboratory. So he spends his evenings with a book and a pipe, comfortably stretched in the dentist's chair. There are not many society men who would be willing to spend their evenings so harmlessly. That girl in Detroit is a lucky young thing.

Mercy! An automobile full of people has just arrived to look over the institution, and Betsy, who usually does the honors, not here. I fly.

ADDIO! SALLIE.

My dear Gordon:

This is not a letter,—I don't owe you one,—it's a receipt for sixty-five pairs of roller skates.

Many thanks.

S. McB.

Friday.

Dear Enemy:

I hear that I missed a call today, but Jane delivered your message, together with the "Genetic Philosophy of Education." She says that you will call in a few days for my opinion of the book. Is it to be a written or an oral