"He says he's going to get out and come down here right away."
"I thought 'twas about time."
"He's so sweet and dear and handsome, and he was so brave, and oh, I love him so!"
"That don't seem to me to be anything to sob over."
"I—I can't help it."
"I always cried more tears of joy than I ever cried of sorrow. It runs in the family."
"I guess I can read Mother's letter aloud. It's longer than Buddy's."
Elizabeth Dear:
The strangest thing has happened to your brother. He has suddenly taken a new lease of life. Night before last I left him just as dull and discouraged and apathetic as ever, and this morning when I went to see him, at about ten o'clock, he was another boy. The nurse said he had been that way ever since he got a letter from you in the morning mail. I suppose that was merely a coincidence. I don't mean to say that I found him in any seraphic mood. He was literally fighting mad at the hospital authorities, and his whole mind seemed concentrated on getting out. At first I thought his fever had risen, but the doctor assures me that the subtle cloud that has been resting over his mind has lifted. He says he has never known a case where the patient provided his own stimulus before, that usually it has come from the outside in the form of some kind of shock, pleasant or unpleasant.
It hasn't been entirely a nervous case, you understand. He would probably have less trouble in getting away, if it had been just a matter of mind, but his mind has kept his body sick. It's been a vicious circle. He has believed, it now develops, that the physical matter was incurable. His old job was gone, you know, and that seemed to depress him. Your father was perfectly willing to keep him at home indefinitely, and we kept telling him so, but in his poor, tortured mind he had construed our doing so into an admission that we never expected him to get well.
At any rate, the worst is over now. I believe we'll have our boy restored in mind and body very soon. I don't dare to hope we'll all get down to Cape Cod as soon as he thinks we shall but I am inclined to think that he is too lively a character for the United States Government to hold very much longer.
You have been my brave, darling daughter, and I love you more than I can tell you. I am sending your shoes by this post.
Mother.
"I hope he'll get here while it's still cucumber season," Grandmother said. "My, how that boy used to eat herrings and cucumbers! I cooked a whole half dozen once, and I vow he et the whole lot, and I don't know how many cucumbers. He was a dretful one to eat. He used to like to climb up in the pear tree in pear season, and pick the topmost pear on the tree and eat his way down."
"Do you mind if I cry a little more, Grandma? I can stop, but I don't want to," Elizabeth sniffled.