(NEXT DAY)
St. Malo.
Dearest Mama: Why didn't you write me that Mrs. Whalen was coming abroad? She arrived last night on the Jersey boat, and saw Uncle and Miss Clara Emily on the ramparts through her marine glasses. She hunted us up at once, for she says that affair must stop right where it is. She asked if you approved of Lee, and when I told her that you did, she said then she had nothing to say. Lee introduced her to Mr. Peters, and she sent him straight to bed and had them poultice his chest and mustard-plaster his back, for she says his cold may run into anything. I took her up to Clara, and she sent out for sweet oil, and stopped the china straw, and set her to gargling. She says it's awful the amount she finds to do everywhere she goes, and she was in a train accident before she came to the steamer, and you ought to hear how she chopped people out. The shade in my room didn't work, and she put a chair on a wash-stand, and fixed it with a screw-driver that she carries in her pocket. Jim Freeman wants her to go under the automobile with him; but she says since she's a widow she never goes anywhere alone with one man. Uncle and Miss Clara Emily came in just then, and the effect was paralyzing. Uncle turned red, and poor Miss Clara Emily nearly sank to the floor. Mrs. Whalen advanced toward them as if she were a general leading a cavalry charge afoot, and said: "Well, so the old folks have been out sunning themselves!" Did you ever hear of anything more cruel? Miss Clara Emily looked blue with rage, and said she must go to Clara, and Mrs. Whalen said: "John, come with me," and took Uncle off behind some palms, and Lee and I went away so as not to be anywhere when he came out.
We didn't come back until nearly six, and Lee said he supposed we'd find Uncle and Mr. Peters learning to play "old maid"; but when we came in, Uncle was reading a New York paper about a month old, and Mrs. Whalen had gone out with Scott McCarthy to buy Clara a hot-water bag. Miss Clara Emily was upstairs packing, to take Clara to a specialist somewhere else. Mrs. Whalen came to my room after dinner, and said I must rub kerosene or vaseline into my hair every night for a month. I don't want to, but I'm so grateful about Uncle that I'll pour a lamp over myself if she wants me to. Uncle came to my room a while later and said: "Hum!" and shook his watch, and held it to his ear. I don't think he liked being broken up with Miss Clara Emily, but he only said that he was going out on the yacht to-morrow (that's to-day), and for me to consider myself in Mrs. Whalen's charge for the time being.
He went away early this morning with Mr. Peters and Jim Freeman and Lee, and Mrs. Whalen and I saw the Kingsleys off for Rennes at noon. I'm sure Miss Clara Emily felt dreadfully over Uncle, and Emily says she's more than ever ashamed of having such an aunt. Emily told me that if an Englishman came on this afternoon's boat from Jersey, to tell him they'd gone to Dol. She didn't want him in Rennes, because she knows two French officers in Rennes. It was not a very nice day for traveling, for there is such a wind they won't be able to have the windows down at all, and you know it's only fun when you have the windows down. Mrs. Whalen says she'd have the windows down anyway; she says she'd like to see the Frenchman that she wouldn't put a window down in his face, if she felt like it. I asked her where she was going next, and she said she had no idea, but she thought to Dol and Mont-Saint-Michel, as long as she is so near. She says it was a stroke of luck her happening here just in time to save Uncle; she's positive he was holding her hand through the marine glasses. She says it's good she came about Mr. Peters, too, not to speak of Clara.
"Mrs. Whalen has just come in to say she's going to Dol"