CHAPTER XI.
LETTERS AND SEVERAL KINDS OF FATHERS.
From Page Allison to Miss Sue Lee, Washington, D. C.
My dearest Cousin Sue:
You told me not to write to you until I had got real settled and could give you some decided opinions about the place and the people. I am settled now and feel as though I had been born and bred here. I just love it and am making loads and loads of friends.
First thing I must tell you how right my clothes are. It is splendid not to have to think about them, but just to put them on and know that they are suitable. Some of the girls here are great dressers, in spite of the endeavors of the directors to put them into a kind of uniform, but I can't see that their fine clothes make them any more popular than the others. Do you know, Cousin Sue, I'd rather be popular than be president?
My roommates, the Tucker twins, are awfully popular, but they don't care nearly so much about it as I do. You see, they have been knowing lots of people all their lives and I haven't. Sometimes I am afraid I'll get kind of mealy-mouthed in my anxiety to have people like me, and the only thing that saves me from it is my hatred of fools and snobs. I know I shouldn't hate fools because they can't help it, but I think snobs ought to be hated.
We have become acquainted with some boys from Hill-Top, the academy on the other side of the town. They are real nice and I find I am not at all embarrassed with them. They are not a bit beauy or lovery (the Tuckers and I would hate that), but they are just boys and have got lots more sense than I expected to find in the male sex.
The Juniors here at Gresham are lots of them beau crazy. They talk about boys from morning till night. I do hope when I get to be a Junior I won't go through that stage. Miss Sayre, a lovely girl and too nice to me for anything, a pupil teacher and at least nineteen, says she has never known but one girl in her life who arrived at her age without going through the stage of talking about boys all the time, and she says that poor girl was dumb and she took it out in making eyes. Dum and Dee and I told her we'd cut out our tongues before we'd make boys our sole topic of conversation, and Miss Sayre just laughed and asked us if we would gouge out our eyes, too.
I am doing very well in my studies, and working awfully hard. You see, we have to spend a certain time over our books and learn in spite of ourselves. French is coming easy to me and I believe it is because Father has drilled me so thoroughly in Latin. I am getting on top of Mathematics by the hardest kind of climbing. At first I felt as though I'd have to remove mountains ever to learn a thing, but now I realize I don't have to remove mountains, but just climb them; and certainly as you climb you get an outlook that you never dreamed of.
Father writes very cheerfully but I am afraid he is mighty lonesome. I feel very selfish to be off here having such a good time when I know how hard it is for him. I wish you would write him a nice long letter. Your letters always do him good.
I like Miss Peyton, our principal, ever and ever so much; she is so just. All of the teachers are pretty nice, but I am not getting quite as much from the English Literature teacher as I hoped I would. She is a good teacher, I have no doubt, but not interesting. I have the feeling that she likes what the textbooks tell her to, and has no taste of her own. Her knowledge of poetry, for instance, stops with the age of Tennyson.
You know Father's extravagance and relaxation is poetry, past, present and even future. He has been reading poetry to me since before I could talk, and a new poet is more interesting to him than a new disease. He had never told me that poetry had to arrive at a certain age, like veal or cheese, before it was worthy to be taken in; and I brought down the scorn and wrath of Miss Prince on my devoted head and came mighty near getting enough demerits to keep me in bounds a week, because I asked her if she did not think Masefield's poem of "The Dauber" had more atmosphere of the deep sea in it than "The Ancient Mariner." She looked at me very severely through her visible bi-focals and said: "Miss Allison, this is a class in English Literature; and matters foreign to the subject are not to be discussed."
I rather miss the reading I have always done. We study so hard there is no time to read, and the library is one of these donated ones. It has sets of Dickens and Scott in such fine print that you can't keep your place, a few odd volumes of Thackeray, Milton and Pope, and the rest of the shelves are crowded with books that some generous patron evidently has had no use for himself. They are the kind of books that Father says are good enough to keep the doors open with or to put under a rocker when you don't want to rock.
There is a good encyclopedia and dictionary and our textbooks are very complete. I believe it is good for me to have to confine myself to the textbooks for a while, but I shall be glad to be at Bracken again and curl up on the sofa with the dogs some dull old rainy day and read as long as I can see.
Some day I hope you will know my friends. I have told them all about you and they think you are splendid. The Tucker twins are going to stay a few days at Bracken during the holidays, and I am to be with them for a week-end in Richmond. It will be a more agreeable visit than the time I spent with Cousin Park Garnett, I fancy. By the way, Cousin Park sent me a present the other day. You could never guess what it is: a black and purple crocheted shoulder shawl! I'm real glad to have it because we are going to have a dicker party and it will be the very thing to contribute.
You don't know how much obliged I am to you for the huge box of marshmallows. We have not opened it yet, as we are saving up for a grand spread that Dum and Dee and I are going to give. Good-by, dear Cousin Sue.
Yours devotedly, PAGE.
Mr. Jeffry Tucker to the Misses Virginia and Caroline Tucker.
Richmond, Va. November 28, 19--
My dearest Tweedles:
How am I ever to get through Thanksgiving without you? Of course I'm going to the game to root for Virginia, but I'll be mighty lonesome. I've been invited to join several parties, but I believe I'll take old Brindle and go by my lonely. The only pleasure I take in Thanksgiving is that it is just a little nearer to Christmas, when I'll have my babies back with me for a delirious three weeks.
I miss you so much that I can't remember what my reason was for thinking it best for you to go to boarding school. I must have had some good reason, but it is swallowed up in misery over your absence. Could it have been that you needed training and to learn to control yourselves? Foolish notion! When you come home you can fight all over the shop if you've a mind; and sass your pa until he crawls under the bed with Brindle; and get late to your meals; and go around with holes in your stockings; do anything, in fact, that your fancy dictates. All I ask of you i
s to come home the same old Tweedles, loving your poor, lonesome, old Zebedee as much as ever.
I am delighted that you are making so many good friends. There is nothing in all the world like friends and the ones made in early years are worth all the others put together.
Please remember me to Miss Page Allison and tell her I saw her father the other day, and he was looking mighty fit, considering he has not had her to take care of him for so long. He had come up to Richmond for a medical convention. I am glad you are enjoying Miss Page so much. I liked her on short acquaintance better than any friend you have ever had. I am delighted that you have invited her to spend some of the holidays with us. I asked Dr. Allison if he could spare her to us for a few days, and he said of course he could. You girls seem to have a mutual admiration society. Miss Page, according to Dr. Allison, is as enthusiastic about my girls as my girls are about his girl.
I am intensely gratified that the three of you have kept up with the poor scared child we met on the train. Such a wholesome trio would be sure to be good for the timid, miserable little thing. You must ask her to come to see us in Richmond if you have not already done so.
I am sending you a box of goodies for your day-after-Thanksgiving spread. I am afraid some of the things are contraband, but people who make rules would not make them unless they expected schoolgirls and their outrageous young fathers to break them. I fancy I have concealed the true nature of the contents of the box, and unless the supervision is very thorough, it will pass muster and the contraband articles find the way to their destination--your little insides. Love to Jinny Cox.
Good-by, ZEBEDEE.
Dr. James Allison to Miss Page Allison.
Bracken, Sunday aft.
My dear little daughter:
I saw young Jeffry Tucker in Richmond last week and what he had to tell me of my girl gratified me greatly. I am not going to divulge to you what he said, but you may know it was something pretty nice.
I miss you very much, my dear Page, but poor old Mammy Susan is worse off than I am because she is at home all the time and I am off on my rounds, and when I am at home, thank God, I have books. I do not mean to say that books take the place of my girl, but I mean I can bury myself in them and for the time being be oblivious to everything else.
Sally Winn is still trying to die, poor woman. I was called out in the wee small hours this morning to help her cross the Styx. She has been more determined than ever since Mrs. Purdy passed over. She is very jealous and said this morning: "Betty Purdy always was a pushing thing. She made out all the time she didn't want to go but that's not so, I know. She's been getting ahead of me all her life. Pretended she married Purdy because he was so bent on it that she had to. Everybody knows it was just the other way, she was so bent on it, Purdy had to." Of course you must have heard that Mr. Purdy courted Sally first. I suggested that it would be well if she tried to live and perhaps she might console the widower; and do you know, I left her with a much stronger pulse.
I hope your Thanksgiving will go off finely. I cannot tell you how we long for you, my dear; but Christmas will soon be here, and in the meantime I am going to bury myself in a new book I got in Richmond last week.
I am so glad for you to make these good friends you write of. The Twins sound delightful. Tucker is one of the best fellows I know. He is ridiculously young to be the father of girls as old as you. He is one of the cleverest newspaper men in the South, so clever I wonder the South keeps him. New York newspapers seem to suck in all the bright men sooner or later.
I am so glad your friends will come to Bracken for a visit with you during the holidays, and I will of course let you go to them for a visit. I may run up to the city at the same time. Cousin Park Garnett has made me promise to stay with her the first time I go to Richmond, so I am afraid the trip will not be altogether hilarious for me.
The dogs send love to their mistress in yaps, yowls and whines. Mammy says she hopes "you ain't done wash all de meat off'n you in dem plumbin' tubs."
With much love, FATHER.
From Mr. Arthur Ponsonby Pore to Miss Annie de Vere Pore.
Price's Landing, Va.
My dear Annie:
I am most gratified at the account you give of the progress you are making in your studies. The authenticity of your account is verified by the report I have received from the principal of the institution.
I am surprised and grieved that you should find your wardrobe not sufficient for your needs. There is a vulgar tendency among all Americans to overdress which you must avoid. Remember that in your veins flows the blood of Ponsonby and de Vere and that is more to be considered than all the fine clothes in the world of the _nouveau riche_. I will send you the box containing some old lace and a white dress of your Mother's. If that is not suitable, I think you had better not appear at the concert of which you write.
I also wish to warn you against undue intimacies with persons of whom you know little or nothing. The sacrifice I am making in sending you to boarding school is not that you may amuse yourself with friends no doubt beneath you in birth and breeding but that you may perfect yourself in your studies and cultivate your voice, which may prove of material benefit to you.
General Price called on me yesterday and told me he had received a letter from his grandson, Harvie, in which he had mentioned the fact that he had met you at a football game. I hope you are not wasting much of your time in such frivolous pursuits.
Yours truly, ARTHUR PONSONBY PORE.