Grandmother says, “Yes, indeed! bring Dorry, and let him stay a week if he wants to.” Bless her soul! She’ll always keep her welcome warm, so never mind her memory. And Bubby Short, too. Pray bring Bubby Short. I want to see his black eyes shine. Don’t Benjie want to come? I’ve got beds enough, and girls enough to work, and a great batch of poor mince-pies that I want eaten up. Don’t see how I came to make such a miss in my pies this baking. Your uncle J. thinks I skinched on plums. There never was such a man for plums. I do believe if they were put into his biscuits he’d think he’d got no more than his rights.
Your uncle J. says: “Tell the boys to come on. I’ve got apples to gather, and husking to do.” They’d better bring some old clothes to wear. This is such a tearing place. I’ve put my Tommy into jacket and trousers. He used to hitch his clothes upon every rail. Such a climber! I don’t know what that boy’ll be when he grows up.
I send you a good warm comforter, knit in stripes; and all the family are knit into it, especially Tommy. The pink stripes are his good-boy days, and the black ones are his naughty actions. I showed him where I knit ’em in. That clouded gray and black stripe is for my two great girls quarrelling together about whose work ’t was to do some little trifle. I told ’em they should be knit in, big as they are, if they couldn’t behave and be accommodating. That bright red stripe is for Hannah Jane’s school report, all perfect. That blue stripe is for your sister Georgianna when she made a sheet. It matches her eyes as near as I could get the yarn. My blue dye is weak this fall. Indigo is high. Your uncle J. says it’s on account of the Rebs feeling so blue. That gray stripe, dotted with yellow, means a funny crying spell Tommy had at table. I came home, and there he sat in his high chair, with his two hands on the arms of it, his mouth wide open, eyes shut, and the tears streaming down, making the dolefullest noise,—“O-oh, a-ah; o-oh, a-ah.” Lucy Maria said he’d been going on in that strain almost half an hour, because we didn’t have mince-meat for supper. That green stripe is for the day we all took the hay-cart and went to ride in the woods. The orange-colored one is for the box of oranges your uncle J. fetched home. “A waste of money,” says I. “Please the children,” says he; “and the peel will save spice.” Makes me laugh when your uncle J. sets out to save. My girls and Tommy have got the very best of fathers, only they don’t realize it. But young folks can’t realize. The pale rose-colored stripe is for the travelling doctor’s curing your grandmother’s rheumatics, and promising she never should have another touch of ’em if she was careful. The dark red stripe is for the red cow’s getting choked to death with a turnip. She was a prime butter cow. Any man but your uncle J. would look sober for a month about it. But he says, “O, there’s butter enough in the world, Phebe. And the calf will soon be a cow on its own hook.” That’s your uncle J.
The plain dark purple stripe is for my Matilda’s speaking disrespectfully to grandmother. She was sorry enough afterwards, but I told her it should go in. That bright yellow stripe is for the day your father went to market and got such a great price for his colt. The bright fringe, mixed colors, is for us all in both houses, when we got news of your coming home, and felt so glad. There’s a stitch dropped in one place. That may go for a tear-drop,—a tear of mine, dear, if you please. Do you think we grown-up women, we jolly, busy women, never shed tears? O, but we do sometimes, in an out-of-the-way corner, or when the children are all gone to school, or everybody is in bed. Bitterer tears they are, Billy, than boys’ tears. One more stripe, that plain white one in the centre, is for the little Tommy that died. I couldn’t bear to leave him out, Billy. He had such little loving ways. You don’t remember him.
There’s your uncle J.’s whistle. He always whistles when he gets to the bars, to let me know it’s time to begin to take up dinner.
From your loving
Aunt Phebe.
I will insert here two of Dorry Baker’s letters to his sister. When they were written Dorry and Bubby Short were making William Henry a visit.
Dorry to his Sister.
Dear Sis,—