dear daddy,

we started to walk to town today, but mercy! how it poured.

i like winter to be winter with snow instead of rain.

julia's desirable uncle called again this afternoon--and brought

a five-pound box of chocolates. there are advantages, you see,

about rooming with julia.

our innocent prattle appeared to amuse him and he waited for a later

train in order to take tea in the study. we had an awful lot of

trouble getting permission. it's hard enough entertaining fathers

and grandfathers, but uncles are a step worse; and as for brothers

and cousins, they are next to impossible. julia had to swear

that he was her uncle before a notary public and then have the

county clerk's certificate attached. (don't i know a lot of law?)

and even then i doubt if we could have had our tea if the dean

had chanced to see how youngish and good-looking uncle jervis is.

anyway, we had it, with brown bread swiss cheese sandwiches.

he helped make them and then ate four. i told him that i had

spent last summer at 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 to know are dead, except grover,

who was a baby colt at the time of his last visit--and poor grove

now is so old he can just limp about the pasture.

he asked if they still kept doughnuts in a yellow crock with a blue

plate over it on the bottom shelf of the pantry--and they do!

he wanted to know if there was still a woodchuck's hole under the pile

of rocks in the night pasture--and there is! amasai caught a big,

fat, grey one there this summer, the twenty-fifth great-grandson

of the one master jervis caught when he was a little boy.

i called him `master jervie' to his face, but he didn't appear

to be insulted. julia says she has never seen him so amiable;

he's usually pretty unapproachable. but julia hasn't a bit of tact;

and men, i find, require a great deal. they purr if you rub them the

right way and spit if you don't. (that isn't a very elegant metaphor.

i mean it figuratively.)

we're reading marie bashkirtseff's journal. isn't it amazing?

listen to this: `last night i was seized by a fit of despair

that found utterance in moans, and that finally drove me to throw

the dining-room clock into the sea.'

it makes me almost hope i'm not a genius; they must be very wearing

to have about--and awfully destructive to the furniture.

mercy! how it keeps pouring. we shall have to swim to chapel tonight.

yours ever,

judy