Chapter VIII: Letters

To Dr. James Allison from Page Allison.

Willoughby Beach,
July--, 191--.

My Dearest Father:

We are having the grandest time that ever was and
all we want now is for you to take a little
holiday and come down to see us. It would do you
worlds of good and surely your patients can let
you go for a little while. Sometimes I think you
should get an assistant or try to persuade some
young doctor to settle in the neighbourhood. You
never have any fun. I feel very selfish to have
gone off and left you and Mammy Susan when I have
been away all winter, but I promise to come back
the first of next month and not to budge from
Bracken until it is time to go to school the
middle of September. I hope Cousin Sue Lee will be
with us then, as I should hate to miss her visit,
one moment of it. On the other hand I devoutly
hope that Cousin Park Garnett will pay her yearly
visitation while I am away. I heard a rumor that a
Mrs. Garnett was expected at the hotel here, but I
am trusting in my hitherto lucky stars that it is
not Cousin Park. If she comes to Willoughby, I am
going to bury my head in the sand, like an
ostrich, and pretend I'm somebody else.

There is a camp of boys near us and they are just
as nice as can be and seem to think it is their
affair to give all of us girls a good time. They
rented this cottage for last month and liked
Willoughby so much that when their time was up
they started a camp. They are James Hart, Stephen
White, George Massie and Ben Raglan. They are
called Jim, Wink, Sleepy and Rags, and as we have
come to know them pretty well and they are not the
kind of boys one stands on ceremony with, we call
them by their nicknames, too. Wink White is
studying medicine and so is Sleepy, when he is not
playing foot-ball or sleeping. Wink is very clever
and intensely interested in his work.

Mr. Tucker (only I call him Zebedee now) is
teaching me how to swim. He says I am a very apt
pupil because I am not a bit afraid; although he
teases me a great deal because one day, the very
first time I went in, I politely went to the
bottom, and he says I made the biggest bubbles he
ever saw. He calls me "Sis Mud Turkle," but I
don't mind a bit. There is some kind of joke on
all of us, even Annie Pore, who is so touchy we
have to be careful. But Zebedee just has to tease
and he says he can't leave out Annie, as it might
make her feel bad.

Of course Mary Flannagan has a joke on everybody
and everybody has a joke on her. She is a
delightful person to be on a house party with,
always so full of fun and always starting
something.

Dum and Dee are the same old Tweedles, the very
most charming and agreeable persons in the world.
I have saved up the most important to the
last:--our chaperone, Miss Cox, has gone and got
herself engaged! It is an old lover she used to
have when she was a girl and he has turned up in
the most unexpected and romantic way, and all of
us girls are so excited over it we can hardly eat
and sleep. We are going to miss her terribly at
Gresham. She can make me understand mathematics,
which is going some, and how I am to proceed into
quadratic equations without her, I cannot see. We
do not know when they are to be married, but
rather think it will be soon. Zebedee bids to be
flower girl.

You may be sure that Miss Cox and Mr. Gordon come
in for their share of teasing. I used to think
Miss Cox was very old but since she got engaged
she does not seem to be any older than we are, and
while Mr. Gordon has very grey hair, he is really
not old at all, not much older than Zebedee, who
is the youngest person of my acquaintance.

All the old girls at Willoughby run after Zebedee,
much to Tweedles' disgust. I believe it would
about kill the twins if their father should ever
marry again, and indeed I think it would be hard
on them and I hope he never will, certainly not
any of these society girls who are down here at
the beach. I don't believe they would any of them
make him happy.

Tell Mammy Susan that her great niece is doing
very well and everyone likes her. Do not tell her
that she is a perfect scream, using the longest,
most ridiculous words in the world, never by any
accident pronounced properly or in the right
place. She is certainly proof positive of a little
learning being a dangerous thing; but she is a
kindly, sweet-tempered creature and as soon as we
persuaded her to cook as she did before she went
to school, we found her very capable.

Good-bye, my dearest Father, and please come see
us. We are one and all longing for you. Give my
best love to Mammy Susan and the dogs.

Your devoted daughter,
PAGE.

From Blanche Johnson to Mammy Susan.

Willerbay beech.

Dere ant Susen--

i Take my pen in han to enform you that this leves
me in pore helth and hopes it finds You in the
same. The son of the C show is very hard on my
complexshun and i think the endsewing yer i will
spind my vocation in the montings. the yung ladys
my hostages is most kind and considerable to me
and Mis page tretes me like her own sister. Our
shapperoon is in the throws of coarting and all of
us maidens is very rheumatic in consequince
thereof. Mis page and the other young female ladys
who is engaged in this visitation declares they is
got little if no use for the opposition sect but
that is one thing i do not give very cerus
credentials to as our pieazzer is one mask of
yuths who no doubt would be spry to leve if they
did not suspicion they was welcum. My kind
empoyerer is now taken what he designs as his
much kneaded rest but I cannot see that he rests
none as he keeps up with all the other boys and
dances and frolix just like he was the parient of
nothin. I ask Mis page if he want her bow and she
took on so dignifidedly that i done see i ain't
made no mistake, ennybody ken see that Mis page is
the favoright of the party, The twinses is plum
crazzy about her but i dont bleive they suspicion
that they pa is so intrusted. They keeps
theyselves quite busy shoein off some fine ladys
what is most attentave to they pa and never seems
to see what is under they feet, uv cose i no Mis
page is yung yit but evy day she is making out to
grow a little older and it looks lak mister Tucker
is standin still or even gittin some younger. i
bleive they will meet in this path of life (as a
pote done said) and then proceed together. No more
from yose at presence. Mis page has done invitided
me to stop at Bracken to pay you a visitation
before i return to the cemetary of learning and if
nothin ocurs to prevint me i will take gret
plesure in compiling with her request.

your gret nease,
BLANCHE JOHNSON.

From Annie Pore to her father, Mr. Arthur
Ponsonby Pore, of Price's Landing.

My Dear Father:

I should have written you immediately on my
arrival at Willoughby Beach, but we had so many
delightful pleasures planned for us by our kind
host that I found very little time for
correspondence.

I can never thank you enough for permitting me to
join this charming house party. Everyone is so
very kind to me, I find myself gradually
overcoming my habit of extreme shyness and now
endeavour to join in the gaieties and to make
myself as agreeable as possible, feeling that that
is the way I can repay my friends for their
hospitality.

I am learning to swim but am not so quick at it as
Page Allison. Already she is able to keep up for
many strokes. Mr. Tucker himself is teaching us
and his patience is wonderful. He first taught us
to float, as he says if we are in an accident and
can float we will surely be saved, as anyone can
tow a floating person to safety. The Tucker twins
and Mary Flannagan are fine swimmers and Miss Cox
is the strongest swimmer on the beach.

We are all quite excited over the fact that Miss
Cox is to be married. I am very glad of her
happiness but very sorry that she will not be at
Gresham next year as she was so interested in my
voice and encouraged me so kindly. Page feels
badly, too, as Miss Cox is the only teacher she
has ever had who could make her comprehend
mathematics.

Mr. Tucker sends you many messages and repeats his
invitation for you to come to Willoughby for a
week-end. I do sincerely hope you will do so. It
would be a pleasant change for you and no doubt
your assistant could take care of the shop in your
absence. Harvie Price is to be here next week,
also another boy who attended Hill Top, Thomas
Hawkins. The cottage is quite roomy so there is no
danger of crowding, and I can assure you it would
be splendid if you could come.

Your devoted daughter,
ANNIE DE VERE PORE.

Miss Josephine Barr from Miss Caroline Tucker.

Willoughby Beach,
July -- ----.

My dear old Jo:

If you only could have come! We are having such
times and such heaps of them. In the first place,
all five of us girls are sleeping on the same
porch with our cots so close together the cover
hasn't room to slip. We go in the water twice a
day, although every day Zebedee says it must be
the last day, but every day he is the first one in
and the last one out. Our before-breakfast swim is
nothing more than just in and out, and such
appetite as it gives us! I am dying to tell you
the great news, and Miss Cox says I may tell you.
She is going to be married!!! A lovely man that
used to be stuck on her ages and ages ago! I tell
you he is stuck still, all right, all right. He
goes by the name of Robert Gordon and looks like a
_vrai_ hero of romance, iron-grey hair and
moustache and the most languishing gaze you ever
beheld. We are right silly about him because he
certainly does know how to make love. As for Coxy,
she is simply great and rises to the occasion in
fine shape. She looks real young here lately and
has given up looking as though she were trying not
to smile. Instead of that, she laughs outright,
which is certainly much more becoming.

I wish you could see your little room-mate, Annie
Pore. She has bloomed forth into a regular English
rose! I never saw anything like the way the boys
swarm around her, just like bees! She is not
nearly so shy as she used to be, but she is still
very quiet and demure and has a kind of
sympathetic way of listening that surely fetches
the hemales. She is really beautiful and is always
so anxious to help and is so considerate of
others. I fancy her selfish old father has been
good for her disposition in a way. We are rather
expecting Mr. Pore to come see us. I hope if he
does come he will not cast a damper over Annie's
spirits.

Mary Flannagan is simply splendid. Page calls her
our clown dog, and the name suits her to a T. She
is the funniest girl in the world and her good
nature is catching. She is a good swimmer and how
she does it in the bathing suit she wears, I
cannot see. Fancy swimming with three yards of
heavy serge gathered around your waist! I think
Mary and Annie will room together next year at
Gresham since you are not to be there. They will
be good for one another, but no one could do for
Annie what you did.

I have not told you anything about Page, but you
know what Page always is--just Page. She is still
busy making her million friends, but she never
gives up her old friends for the new ones.

Guess who is here at Willoughby! That Mabel
Binks! She arrived yesterday and is stopping at
the hotel. I hope she will keep herself to herself
but I 'most know she won't. She is bent on getting
in with Zebedee and he is so dead polite where
girls are concerned that he is sure to submit. She
is kin to one of the boys in the camp near us and
is pushing the relationship for all it is worth.
Poor Stephen White (Wink for short) is the cousin
and I have an idea he is not very proud of the
connection, but is too much of a gentleman to say
so. Wink and Page are great friends, have been
from the first minute they met, and I bet you a
hat Mabel Binks butts in on that friendship and
tries to break it up. She has had it in for Page
ever since the time the caramel cake gave all of
us fever blisters and Page used the blisters, of
which Mabel boasted a huge one, as circumstantial
evidence that Mabel had stolen a hunk of our cake.

Good bye, dear Jo. All the girls send you lots of
love and Dum says she will write next time.

Very affectionately,
DEE TUCKER.