Sallie is the most entertaining person in the world--and Julia Rutledge Pendleton the least so. It"s queer what a mixture the registrar can make in the matter of room-mates. Sallie thinks everything is funny--even flunking--and Julia is bored at everything. She never makes the slightest effort to be amiable. She believes that if you are a Pendleton, that fact alone admits you to heaven without any further examination. Julia and I were born to be enemies.
And now I suppose you"ve been waiting very impatiently to hear what I am learning?
I. Latin: Second Punic war. Hannibal and his forces pitched camp at Lake Trasimenus last night. They prepared an ambuscade for the Romans, and a battle took place at the fourth watch this morning. Romans in retreat.
II. French: 24 pages of the Three Musketeers and third conjugation, irregular verbs.
III. Geometry: Finished cylinders; now doing cones.
IV. English: Studying exposition. My style improves daily in clearness and brevity.
V. Physiology: Reached the digestive system. Bile and the pancreas next time. Yours, on the way to being educated,
Jerusha Abbott
PS. I hope you never touch alcohol, Daddy? It does dreadful things to your liver.
Wednesday
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
I"ve changed my name.
I"m still "Jerusha" in the catalogue, but I"m "Judy" everywhere else.
It"s really too bad, isn"t it, to have to give yourself the only pet name you ever had? I didn"t quite make up the Judy though. That"s what Freddy Perkins used to call me before he could talk plainly.
I wish Mrs. Lippett would use a little more ingenuity about choosing babies" names. She gets the last names out of the telephone book--you"ll find Abbott on the first page--and she picks the Christian names up anywhere; she got Jerusha from a tombstone. I"ve always hated it; but I rather like Judy. It"s such a silly name. It belongs to the kind of girl I"m not--a sweet little blue-eyed thing, petted and spoiled by all the family, who romps her way through life without any cares. Wouldn"t it be nice to be like that? Whatever faults I may have, no one can ever accuse me of having been spoiled by my family!
But it"s great fun to pretend I"ve been. In the future please always address me as Judy.
Do you want to know something? I have three pairs of kid gloves. I"ve had kid mittens before from the Christmas tree, but never real kid gloves with five fingers. I take them out and try them on every little while. It"s all I can do not to wear them to cla.s.ses.
(Dinner bell. Goodbye.)
Friday
What do you think, Daddy? The English instructor said that my last paper shows an unusual amount of originality. She did, truly. Those were her words. It doesn"t seem possible, does it, considering the eighteen years of training that I"ve had? The aim of the John Grier Home (as you doubtless know and heartily approve of) is to turn the ninety-seven orphans into ninety-seven twins.
The unusual artistic ability which I exhibit was developed at an early age through drawing chalk pictures of Mrs. Lippett on the woodshed door.
I hope that I don"t hurt your feelings when I criticize the home of my youth? But you have the upper hand, you know, for if I become too impertinent, you can always stop payment of your cheques. That isn"t a very polite thing to say--but you can"t expect me to have any manners; a foundling asylum isn"t a young ladies" finishing school.
You know, Daddy, it isn"t the work that is going to be hard in college.
It"s the play. Half the time I don"t know what the girls are talking about; their jokes seem to relate to a past that every one but me has shared. I"m a foreigner in the world and I don"t understand the language. It"s a miserable feeling. I"ve had it all my life. At the high school the girls would stand in groups and just look at me. I was queer and different and everybody knew it. I could FEEL "John Grier Home" written on my face. And then a few charitable ones would make a point of coming up and saying something polite. I HATED EVERY ONE OF THEM--the charitable ones most of all.
n.o.body here knows that I was brought up in an asylum. I told Sallie McBride that my mother and father were dead, and that a kind old gentleman was sending me to college which is entirely true so far as it goes. I don"t want you to think I am a coward, but I do want to be like the other girls, and that Dreadful Home looming over my childhood is the one great big difference. If I can turn my back on that and shut out the remembrance, I think, I might be just as desirable as any other girl. I don"t believe there"s any real, underneath difference, do you?
Anyway, Sallie McBride likes me!
Yours ever, Judy Abbott (Nee Jerusha.)
Sat.u.r.day morning
I"ve just been reading this letter over and it sounds pretty un-cheerful. But can"t you guess that I have a special topic due Monday morning and a review in geometry and a very sneezy cold?
Sunday
I forgot to post this yesterday, so I will add an indignant postscript.
We had a bishop this morning, and WHAT DO YOU THINK HE SAID?
"The most beneficent promise made us in the Bible is this, "The poor ye have always with you." They were put here in order to keep us charitable."
The poor, please observe, being a sort of useful domestic animal. If I hadn"t grown into such a perfect lady, I should have gone up after service and told him what I thought.
25th October
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
I"m in the basket-ball team and you ought to see the bruise on my left shoulder. It"s blue and mahogany with little streaks of orange. Julia Pendleton tried for the team, but she didn"t get in. Hooray!
You see what a mean disposition I have.
College gets nicer and nicer. I like the girls and the teachers and the cla.s.ses and the campus and the things to eat. We have ice-cream twice a week and we never have corn-meal mush.
You only wanted to hear from me once a month, didn"t you? And I"ve been peppering you with letters every few days! But I"ve been so excited about all these new adventures that I MUST talk to somebody; and you"re the only one I know. Please excuse my exuberance; I"ll settle pretty soon. If my letters bore you, you can always toss them into the wastebasket. I promise not to write another till the middle of November.
Yours most loquaciously, Judy Abbott
15th November