dear daddy-long-legs,

i am a beast.

please forget about that dreadful letter i sent you last week--

i was feeling terribly lonely and miserable and sore-throaty the night

i wrote. i didn't know it, but i was just sickening for tonsillitis

and grippe and lots of things mixed. i'm in the infirmary now,

and have been here for six days; this is the first time they would let

me sit up and have a pen and paper. the head nurse is very bossy.

but i've been thinking about it all the time and i shan't get well

until you forgive me.

here is a picture of the way i look, with a bandage tied around

my head in rabbit's ears.

doesn't that arouse your sympathy? i am having sublingual

gland swelling. and i've been studying physiology all the year without

ever hearing of sublingual glands. how futile a thing is education!

i can't write any more; i get rather shaky when i sit up too long.

please forgive me for being impertinent and ungrateful. i was badly

brought up.

yours with love,

judy abbott