Kiss yourself for me.
Your affectionate grandchild,
William Henry.
P. S. If you send a cake, send quite a large one. I like the kind that Uncle Jacob does. Aunt Phebe knows.
My dear Grandmother,—
I was going to tell you about “Gapper Skyblue.” “Gapper” means grandpa. He wears all the time blue overalls, faded out, and a jacket like them. That’s why they call him “Gapper Skyblue.” He’s a very poor old man. He saws wood. We found him leaning up against a tree. Benjie and I were together. His hair is all turned white, and his back is bent. He had great patches on his knees. His hat was an old hat that he had given him, and his shoes let in the mud. I wish you would please to be so good as to send me both your old-fashioned india-rubbers, to make balls of, as quick as holes come. Most all the boys have lost their balls. And please to send some shoe-strings next time, for I have to tie mine up all the time now with some white cord that I found, and it gets into hard knots, and I have to stoop my head way down and untie ’em with my teeth, because I cut my thumb whittling, and jammed my fingers in the gate.
Old Gapper Skyblue’s nose is pretty long, and he looked so funny leaning up against a tree, that I was just going to laugh. But then I remembered what you said a real gentleman would do. That he would be polite to all people, no matter what clothes they had on, or whether they were rich people or poor people. He had a big basket with two covers to it, and we offered to carry it for him.
He said, “Yes, little boys, if you won’t lift up the covers.”
We found ’t was pretty heavy. And I wondered what was in it, and so did Benjie. The basket was going to “The Two Betseys.”
When we had got half-way there, Dorry and Tom Cush came along, and called out: “Hallo! there, you two. What are you lugging off so fast?”