Elizabeth Dear.
It is getting harder and harder to be away from you, especially since there is no immediate hope of Buddy's release. The poor boy doesn't get better. It is difficult to understand all the intricacies of the doctor's diagnosis. New conditions of warfare and of life breed new conditions of disease, physical and mental, he says, as well as new kinds of wounds and injuries, to be patiently handled by the new medicine and surgery. To a mother's eye, Buddy seems to be suffering from an old-fashioned set of causes and effects. But I don't know. All I know is that Buddy is not getting better, and that he has to be handled more carefully than ever. Elizabeth, dear, let me warn you again to be careful what you write him. He looks forward to your letters with the greatest interest, and yet when they come, to be perfectly frank, they often seem to fret him or to make him irritable. Perhaps you had best not mention your friends the Farradays. He used to know Ruth Farraday quite well, and sometimes the mention of these boys and girls that he used to have so many gay times with seems to make him morose. At other times he likes to look back at things he used to do. He is only a little boy, after all. Twenty-three doesn't seem much more to me than fourteen does, in spite of that stern look he has that all the men who have done any real fighting seem to come back with.
My darling, take care of your health. Don't go out in all weathers without being suitably attired for cold or wet, as the case may be. Your letters are a great comfort to me. You are good to help Grandmother so much. She appreciates it, and so does
Mother.
P. S. I wish I might have tasted that cake you made.
"Oh, Mother," Elizabeth cried. "Oh, you can't help me the least little bit in this, can you? What is the best thing for me to do for my Buddy?"
She tried to talk with her grandmother, very carefully, for fear of betraying Buddy's confidence, but for once her grandmother did not help her.
"It isn't a very good idea for little girls to think too much about such things," she said. "Love is a mystery. One heart kinder gets clinging to another heart, and nobody knows how it all come about, or how to stop it. When your time comes it is about like your time coming to die or be born, and you can only pray that it ain't going to be too hard, with anybody concerned in it."
"But, Grandmother, if you loved anybody and you were a man, and—and didn't tell her so because you were poor or anything, and she was all mixed up with somebody else, and——"
"Well, I ain't going to be called on to be a man just at present," Grandmother said, "and I guess that's just as well, for anybody that's got to make blueberry cake and biscuits for supper. Your grandfather is going to Hyannis to get a watermelon, perhaps you'd like to go with him for the ride."
"I would, only I've got to write a letter to Buddy. He—he wants me to write him right away about something."
"Well, give him Grandma's love and tell him to come down to the old place and get well."
"I'm going to write Buddy just the way I would want to be written to if I was in love with Ruth Farraday," Elizabeth decided, "only I am going to remember that he is sick. Supposing I was sick and supposing I was in trouble about something that was making me sicker, how would I want to be written to? Oh, dear Lord," she said, closing her eyes, suddenly, "help me to write that kind of a letter and to get it right."
She climbed the stairs slowly and opened the desk in her little room. The sisters Faith, Hope, and Charity smiled benignly down at her, as she began to write: