“Dearest Uncle Ned:—
“Grandmother is well and so am I. O, I am so glad you came to see me. Please come again soon. School is most over and I am sorry for I shall miss seeing my little girl friends. Grandmother does not like to have little girls come to see me. She lets me go to the Club though. Miss Ruth is lovely. I take a red rose to her most every day and she puts it in to a tall green glass vase in her window so I see it when I go to bed and it doesent make me feel so lonesum. I shall be sorry when school closes because it will seem lonesummer to eat breakfast and supper alone. It is a very nice nayborhood. Miss Ruth is busy most of the time taking care of her poor sick aunt who doesent like children I guess because she told us to go right away children one day she had asked the club to go up stairs to see her. Betty White has the beautifulest nursery to sleep in you ever saw it makes me think of very interesting picture book or a Jacobs coat of many colors. Bettys mother lets her decide things. I wish grandmother would let me. I wish grandmother would let me have some pink or blue paper on my room. It is all so white. I feels if I slept out doors in snow.
“I am reading David Copperfield. I think it is a very good and interesting book and it is so real and true. I like Agnes W. better than any caracter and I think D. C. is sorry he fell in love with Dora and I wish he had more courage when he is with Urriah H and tell U. H. that he is a sneak and coward and give him a blow or two. I like Mr. Peggotty and Ham and Peggotty and Aunt Bettesy Trotwood and I also like Mr. Dick and all two gether it is a fine book. Will you tell me the name of a book to read next because when school closes I will have to read to keep from being lonesum like September when I first came. This is four pages and I wish you would come to see your poor lonesum
“Elsa.
“P. S. dont forget about the hut.
“P. S. David was so crushed and frightened when he was little and had no good times. I think he hasent got over it yet.”
Mr. Danforth had decided from this and just such another long letter, that his little niece was leading a lonely and repressed life with her grandmother, and that it was this fact which was making the child pale-faced and hollow-eyed, rather than the school-life, as Mrs. Danforth had suggested. So when the head of the banking-house to which he belonged decided to establish a branch office in the large city near Berkeley, Mr. Danforth at once agreed to take charge of it. What were New York clubs and big dinners in comparison with the welfare and happiness of one little pathetic, gray-eyed, “lonesum” girl?
And this was the reason of Mr. Ned Danforth’s being in Berkeley, although he had not as yet told Elsa that he would soon come to stay permanently.
Thursday had been the last day of the school term, and this Friday would be the last meeting of the Club before Christmas. Ben and Alice had called for Betty at half-past two o’clock. Mrs. White had with difficulty kept them and Betty from starting for Ruth Warren’s before three o’clock.
The moment Elsa, watching from the hall window, saw the little group leave Betty’s house, she sped like an arrow to join them, having been ready for the last half-hour.