Lucy Maria to William Henry.
Dear Billy,—
’T is a pity about that forefinger. Pray get it well enough to handle a pen, ’t is so long since you’ve written. So you want home matters reported. Eatable matters of course will be most interesting. Milk and butter, plenty. Gingerbread (plain), ditto. Gingerbread (fancy), scarce. Cookies, quiet. Plum-cake, in demand. Snaps, lively. Brown-bread, firm. White-bread (sliced), dull. Biscuits (hot), brisk. Custard, unsteady. Preserves not in the market.
What do we do, and what do we talk about? Why, we talk about our cousin William Henry, and what we do can’t be told within the bounds of one letter. Think of seven cows’ milk to churn into butter, besides a cheese now and then, and besides working for the extra hands we hire this time o’ year! I should have written to you before, when we first heard of your accident, if I could have got the time. Hannah Jane is away, and we’ve let Mattie go with Susie Snow to Grandma Snow’s again for a few days. Grandma Snow likes to have Mattie come with Susie, for ’t is rather a still, dull place. So you must think we are quite lonesome here now, and we are, especially mother. Father tells her she’d better advertise for a companion. I’ve a good mind to advertise to be a companion. What do companions do? The old lady might be cross, or the old gentleman, but that wouldn’t hurt me, so long as I kept clever myself. Don’t doubt I’d get fun out of it some way. There’s fun in about everything I think.
I’ve been trying to get father and mother to go to Aunt Lucy’s and stay all night. But father thinks there wouldn’t be anybody to shut the barn-door, and mother thinks there wouldn’t be anybody to do anything, though I’ve promised to scald the pans, and do up the starched things, and keep Tommy out of the sugar-bowl. He takes a lump every chance he can get. Takes after his father. Father puts sugar on sweetened puddings, if mother isn’t looking! We’ve made some verses to plague Tommy, and when Mattie gets her piano, they’re going to be set to music.
SONG.
A Sweet Tommy.
As turns the needle to the pole,
So Tommy to the sugar-bowl.
Tra la la, tra la la!
Sweet, sweet Tommy!
Tommy always takes a toll
Going by the sugar-bowl.
Tra la la, tra la la!
Sweet, sweet Tommy!