Daddy-Long-Legs
I started to tell you about the campus. I wish you’d come for a
little visit and let me walk you about and say:
“That is the library. This is the gas plant, Daddy dear. The Gothic
building on your left is the gymnasium, and the Tudor Romanesque
beside it is the new infirmary.”
Oh, I’m fine at showing people about. I’ve done it all my life at
the asylum, and I’ve been doing it all day here. I have honestly.
And a Man, too!
That’s a great experience. I never talked to a man before (except
occasional Trustees, and they don’t count). Pardon, Daddy. I don’t
mean to hurt your feelings when I abuse Trustees. I don’t consider
that you really belong among them. You just tumbled onto the Board
by chance. The Trustee, as such, is fat and pompous and benevolent.
He pats one on the head and wears a gold watch chain.
That looks like a June bug, but is meant to be a portrait of any
Trustee except you.
However--to resume:
I have been walking and talking and having tea with a man. And with
a very superior man--with Mr. Jervis Pendleton of the House of
Julia; her uncle, in short (in long, perhaps I ought to say; he’s
as tall as you). Being in town on business, he decided to run out to
the college and call on his niece. He’s her father’s youngest
brother, but she doesn’t know him very intimately. It seems he
glanced at her when she was a baby, decided he didn’t like her,
and has never noticed her since.
Anyway, there he was, sitting in the reception room very proper with
his hat and stick and gloves beside him; and Julia and Sallie with
seventh-hour recitations that they couldn’t cut. So Julia dashed
into my room and begged me to walk him about the campus and then
deliver him to her when the seventh hour was over. I said I would,
obligingly but unenthusiastically, because I don’t care much for
Pendletons.
But he turned out to be a sweet lamb. He’s a real human being--not
a Pendleton at all. We had a beautiful time; I’ve longed for an
uncle ever since. Do you mind pretending you’re my uncle? I believe
they’re superior to grandmothers.
Mr. Pendleton reminded me a little of you, Daddy, as you were twenty
years ago. You see I know you intimately, even if we haven’t ever
met!
He’s tall and thinnish with a dark face all over lines, and the
funniest underneath smile that never quite comes through but just
wrinkles up the corners of his mouth. And he has a way of making you
feel right off as though you’d known him a long time. He’s very
companionable.
We walked all over the campus from the quadrangle to the athletic
grounds; then he said he felt weak and must have some tea. He
proposed that we go to College Inn--it’s just off the campus by the
pine walk. I said we ought to go back for Julia and Sallie, but he
said he didn’t like to have his nieces drink too much tea; it made
them nervous. So we just ran away and had tea and muffins and
marmalade and ice-cream and cake at a nice little table out on the
balcony. The inn was quite conveniently empty, this being the end of
the month and allowances low.
We had the jolliest time! But he had to run for his train the minute
he got back and he barely saw Julia at all. She was furious with me
for taking him off; it seems he’s an unusually rich and desirable
uncle. It relieved my mind to find he was rich, for the tea and
things cost sixty cents apiece.
This morning (it’s Monday now) three boxes of chocolates came by
express for Julia and Sallie and me. What do you think of that? To
be getting candy from a man!
I begin to feel like a girl instead of a foundling.
I wish you’d come and take tea some day and let me see if I like
you. But wouldn’t it be dreadful if I didn’t? However, I know I
should.
_Bien!_ I make you my compliments.
“_Jamais je ne t’oublierai._”
JUDY.
P. S. I looked in the glass this morning and found a perfectly new
dimple that I’d never seen before. It’s very curious. Where do you
suppose it came from?
June 9th.
_Dear Daddy-Long-Legs_,
Happy day! I’ve just finished my last examination--Physiology.
And now:
Three months on a farm!
I don’t know what kind of a thing a farm is. I’ve never been on one
in my life. I’ve never even looked at one (except from the car
window), but I know I’m going to love it, and I’m going to love
being _free_.
I am not used even yet to being outside the John Grier Home.
Whenever I think of it excited little thrills chase up and down my
back. I feel as though I must run faster and faster and keep looking
over my shoulder to make sure that Mrs. Lippett isn’t after me with
her arm stretched out to grab me back.
I don’t have to mind any one this summer, do I?
Your nominal authority doesn’t annoy me in the least; you are too
far away to do any harm. Mrs. Lippett is dead forever, so far as I
am concerned, and the Semples aren’t expected to overlook my moral
welfare, are they? No, I am sure not. I am entirely grown up.
Hooray!
I leave you now to pack a trunk, and three boxes of teakettles and
dishes and sofa cushions and books.
Yours ever,
JUDY.
P. S. Here is my physiology exam. Do you think you could have
passed?
LOCK WILLOW FARM,
Saturday night.
_Dearest Daddy-Long-Legs_,
I’ve only just come and I’m not unpacked, but I can’t wait to tell
you how much I like farms. This is a heavenly, heavenly, _heavenly_
spot! The house is square like this:
And _old_. A hundred years or so. It has a veranda on the side which
I can’t draw and a sweet porch in front. The picture really doesn’t
do it justice--those things that look like feather dusters are maple
trees, and the prickly ones that border the drive are murmuring
pines and hemlocks. It stands on the top of a hill and looks way off
over miles of green meadows to another line of hills.
That is the way Connecticut goes, in a series of Marcelle waves; and
Lock Willow Farm is just on the crest of one wave. The barns used to
be across the road where they obstructed the view, but a kind flash
of lightning came from heaven and burnt them down.
The people are Mr. and Mrs. Semple and a hired girl and two hired
men. The hired people eat in the kitchen, and the Semples and Judy
in the dining-room. We had ham and eggs and biscuits and honey and
jelly-cake and pie and pickles and cheese and tea for supper--and a
great deal of conversation. I have never been so entertaining in my
life; everything I say appears to be funny. I suppose it is, because
I’ve never been in the country before, and my questions are backed
by an all-inclusive ignorance.
The room marked with a cross is not where the murder was committed,
but the one that I occupy. It’s big and square and empty, with
adorable old-fashioned furniture and windows that have to be propped
up on sticks and green shades trimmed with gold that fall down if
you touch them. And a big square mahogany table--I’m going to spend
the summer with my elbows spread out on it, writing a novel.
Oh, Daddy, I’m so excited! I can’t wait till daylight to explore.
It’s 8.30 now, and I am about to blow out my candle and try to go
to sleep. We rise at five. Did you ever know such fun? I can’t
believe this is really Judy. You and the Good Lord give me more than
I deserve. I must be a very, very, _very_ good person to pay. I’m
going to be. You’ll see.
Good night,
JUDY.
P. S. You should hear the frogs sing and the little pigs squeal--and
you should see the new moon! I saw it over my right shoulder.
LOCK WILLOW,
July 12th.
_Dear Daddy-Long-Legs_,
How did your secretary come to know about Lock Willow? (That isn’t
a rhetorical question. I am awfully curious to know.) For listen to
this: Mr. Jervis Pendleton used to own this farm, but now he has
given it to Mrs. Semple who was his old nurse. Did you ever hear of
such a funny coincidence? She still calls him “Master Jervie” and
talks about what a sweet little boy he used to be. She has one of
his baby curls put away in a box, and it’s red--or at least
reddish!
Since she discovered that I know him, I have risen very much in her
opinion. Knowing a member of the Pendleton family is the best
introduction one can have at Lock Willow. And the cream of the whole
family is Master Jervie--I am pleased to say that Julia belongs to
an inferior branch.
The farm gets more and more entertaining. I rode on a hay wagon
yesterday. We have three big pigs and nine little piglets, and you
should see them eat. They _are_ pigs! We’ve oceans of little baby
chickens and ducks and turkeys and guinea fowls. You must be mad to
live in a city when you might live on a farm.
It is my daily business to hunt the eggs. I fell off a beam in the
barn loft yesterday, while I was trying to crawl over to a nest that
the black hen has stolen. And when I came in with a scratched knee,
Mrs. Semple bound it up with witch-hazel, murmuring all the time,
“Dear! Dear! It seems only yesterday that Master Jervie fell off
that very same beam and scratched this very same knee.”
The scenery around here is perfectly beautiful. There’s a valley
and a river and a lot of wooded hills, and way in the distance,
a tall blue mountain that simply melts in your mouth.
We churn twice a week; and we keep the cream in the spring house
which is made of stone with the brook running underneath. Some of
the farmers around here have a separator, but we don’t care for
these new-fashioned ideas. It may be a little harder to take care of
cream raised in pans, but it’s enough better to pay. We have six
calves; and I’ve chosen the names for all of them.
1. Sylvia, because she was born in the woods.
2. Lesbia, after the Lesbia in Catullus.
3. Sallie.
4. Julia--a spotted, nondescript animal.
5. Judy, after me.
6. Daddy-Long-Legs. You don’t mind, do you, Daddy? He’s pure Jersey
and has a sweet disposition. He looks like this--you can see how
appropriate the name is.
I haven’t had time yet to begin my immortal novel; the farm keeps
me too busy.
Yours always,
JUDY.
P. S. I’ve learned to make doughnuts.
P. S. (2) If you are thinking of raising chickens, let me recommend
Buff Orpingtons. They haven’t any pin feathers.
P. S. (3) I wish I could send you a pat of the nice, fresh butter I
churned yesterday. I’m a fine dairy-maid!
P. S. (4) This is a picture of Miss Jerusha Abbott, the future great
author, driving home the cows.
Sunday.
_Dear Daddy-Long-Legs_,
Isn’t it funny? I started to write to you yesterday afternoon, but
as far as I got was the heading, “Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,” and then I
remembered I’d promised to pick some blackberries for supper, so I
went off and left the sheet lying on the table, and when I came back
to-day, what do you think I found sitting in the middle of the page?
A real true Daddy-Long-Legs!
I picked him up very gently by one leg, and dropped him out of the
window. I wouldn’t hurt one of them for the world. They always
remind me of you.
We hitched up the spring wagon this morning and drove to the Center
to church. It’s a sweet little white frame church with a spire and
three Doric columns in front (or maybe Ionic--I always get them
mixed).
A nice, sleepy sermon with everybody drowsily waving palm-leaf fans,
and the only sound aside from the minister, the buzzing of locusts
in the trees outside. I didn’t wake up till I found myself on my
feet singing the hymn, and then I was awfully sorry I hadn’t
listened to the sermon; I should like to know more of the psychology
of a man who would pick out such a hymn. This was it:
Come, leave your sports and earthly toys
And join me in celestial joys.