6.30, Saturday
Dear Daddy,
We started to walk to town today, but mercy! how it poured. I likewinter to be winter with snow instead of rain.
Julia's desirable uncle called again this afternoon--and brought afive-pound box of chocolates. There are advantages, you see, aboutrooming with Julia.
Our innocent prattle appeared to amuse him and he waited for a latertrain in order to take tea in the study. We had an awful lot oftrouble getting permission. It's hard enough entertaining fathers andgrandfathers, but uncles are a step worse; and as for brothers andcousins, they are next to impossible. Julia had to swear that he washer uncle before a notary public and then have the county clerk'scertificate attached. (Don't I know a lot of law?) And even then Idoubt if we could have had our tea if the Dean had chanced to see howyoungish and good-looking Uncle Jervis is.
Anyway, we had it, with brown bread Swiss cheese sandwiches. He helpedmake them and then ate four. I told him that I had spent last summerat Lock Willow, and we had a beautiful gossipy time about the Semples,and the horses and cows and chickens. All the horses that he used toknow are dead, except Grover, who was a baby colt at the time of hislast visit--and poor Grove now is so old he can just limp about thepasture.
He asked if they still kept doughnuts in a yellow crock with a blueplate over it on the bottom shelf of the pantry--and they do! Hewanted to know if there was still a woodchuck's hole under the pile ofrocks in the night pasture--and there is! Amasai caught a big, fat,grey one there this summer, the twenty-fifth great-grandson of the oneMaster Jervis caught when he was a little boy.
I called him 'Master Jervie' to his face, but he didn't appear to beinsulted. Julia says she has never seen him so amiable; he's usuallypretty unapproachable. But Julia hasn't a bit of tact; and men, Ifind, require a great deal. They purr if you rub them the right wayand spit if you don't. (That isn't a very elegant metaphor. I mean itfiguratively.)
We're reading Marie Bashkirtseff's journal. Isn't it amazing? Listento this: 'Last night I was seized by a fit of despair that foundutterance in moans, and that finally drove me to throw the dining-roomclock into the sea.'
It makes me almost hope I'm not a genius; they must be very wearing tohave about--and awfully destructive to the furniture.
Mercy! how it keeps Pouring. We shall have to swim to chapel tonight.
Yours ever, Judy