XXV

Dear Kate:

Billy is back! I don't know hardly how I can tell you all about it, it don't seem real to me yet. Two days out from New York the ship that they was on run into another ship in a fog and everybody was saved except eighteen people, and the Smiths was lost. An officer saw Billy and threw him in a boat and the Smiths was put in another boat that was swamped. I read it in the papers first, and it said the Smiths was drowned and of course I thought Billy was with them, and I was near crazy because I thought it was all my fault. If I had not of given him to the Smiths, he would be alive still. I went down to the dock where the people who was brought in by the other boat landed, and one of the first persons I see was Billy, standing with a man and woman, looking just as natural as ever, with his curls around his face and his eyes a laughing just as if nothing had happened. I near went nutty, and made an awful fool of myself, but I was so tickled, I didn't care.

I suppose it is wrong to be so glad as I am to have him back, and I feel so bad about the Smiths, that one minit I am crying about them and the next minit I am hugging the life out of Billy to have him again. I got him up in the room and I will never let him out of my sight a minit if I can help it. I leave him with Myrtle Williams when I am at work and I hurry right home as soon as I am through. He just makes the sun shine in the old room again. He is such a big strong boy, it is all I can do to lift him over to his own side of the bed at night. I take him out in the morning and we have a long walk. We went up to the park the other day and saw the animals. I think I was as tickled with them as much as Billy was, but I guess I made a mistake taking him up there because if he had his way he would board with Miss Murphy and her baby. He seems to take to hippopotamuses and elephants and things big. I bought him all new clothes, and he looks awful cunning. Oh, Kate, he sure is one kid. And talk, why, he has got Bryan beat to a finish. I have to watch him kinda close cause girls have no sense with babies. Myrtle took him out the other afternoon when I was at work and filled him up with ice cream and candy and all kinds of stuff till he nearly died. I gave her a call-down and she said, "Well, he wanted it." I said, "Of course, he wanted it, kids want everything they see, but that is no sign they should have it. Ain't you got nothing in your head but your rat?" She got sore and then I was sorry cause she has been awful good, and I gave her my best slipper buckles to make up. But I tell you it threw a scare into me. Billy got all blue and kinda swelled up and I chased her out for a doctor and he said it was all right, and gave him some stuff and the next day Billy was nearly all right. I gave Billy a talking to and told him that if he coaxed aunt Myrtle for everything he saw that I would spank him. It was hot air, and I think he knows it, cause I couldn't bear to spank him. I only did it once and then I was so mad that I did it before I thought. He and Paul had a fight, and he pulled a big handful of Paul's hair out and made Mrs. Smith mad, and I just up and gave him a good fat spanking where it did the most good and it helped a lot. I just can't whip him, but sometimes I set him down with a thud that jars his teeth. I don't know what I will do with him, as it ain't good for him to live in one room, but I am so glad to have him that I ain't worrying much.

Write me a long letter Kate. I have been scared to see a post man come my way since I sent you the letter about Billy going away, but now, you sure can't be sore, and I will give the old man a good fat hug when I see him ambling up my stairway.

Yours,
Nan.

XXVI

Dear Kate:

I have been house furnishing. No, not for myself, but for Charlie Haines who lives across the hall from me. He is an awful nice fellow and is working in the General Electric and doing real good. He told me he is getting seventy five a month now and was going to get married to a little girl he has been engaged to a long time, way off in Vermont where he used to live. We had a heart to heart talk and I asked him all about her and found she was just a nice little girl who goes to Sunday school and teaches the girls and has never been farther away from home than Brattleboro, wherever that is. He thought of taking a bigger room and rooming for a while, but I told him not to be a fool, and not to board neither. Take a little girl from the country that has always had something to do and put her in a room in a rooming house or a boarding house, and she would go crazy or get to chasing around with the lazy women who live in them places and if she was not a fine sort of girl you can't tell where she would land. A woman wants something to do, and then it ain't no life for a man to come home from work and have to chase out to a restaurant for his grub or down to a long table of folks. What he wants is to take off his coat and wash his face in the kitchen sink and put on a pair of straw slippers and set down smelling the beef steak and onions frying in his own kitchen. And they can talk without a lot of people rubbering and after supper he can help her wash the dishes, and water the geranium and then get in the morris chair and put his feet on the radiator or window sill and smoke and sing "Home sweet home." He fell for the stuff and got quite excited, but then he sort of shifted around and I tumbled to the fact that he hadn't saved much money and didn't know how to get the furniture. I said, "Now, you just trust your aunt Nancy, we will buy it on the installment plan." I found out he had only about $25 after he had payed their fare down here, cause her folks are poor, so I said, "Well, we will go look up a flat. Better get out a ways so you will get more for your money", and we found a pretty place at 207th Street for twenty dollars a month. Four rooms and bath on the fifth floor and there ain't no elevator, but they are both strong so it won't hurt them to climb the stairs, and he will be so tickled to get home nights that he won't think about them. He wanted to furnish it and have it all ready when they come back, he is going up to get her and be married at her folks', but I put the nix on that too. I said, "We will furnish the bed room and the kitchen so as you can have a place to stay, but let her pick out the fancy things like the parlor rug and the dining room table. It will make it seem more like her own," and so he done everything I said. They got back about five days ago and say, haven't we been the busy ladies! She is an awful nice little thing, has not got much sense and green—well, Kate. Believe me, we are the funniest looking pair. I guess she makes her own clothes and her hats—they must have been wished on her. But I like her and she is the happiest thing about the flat. She thinks it is the grandest place she ever seen. I was right about letting her pick her own things as it has given her something to do, the first few days when she was kinda lonesome for her mother and little bit afraid of Charlie. We went to a place on 125th Street and picked out the furniture, a real nice dining room table and a little side board that looks like real mahogany, and six chairs. Got a centre table and a nifty rug for the parlor and a morris chair and a rocking chair, and got the bed room furniture all white, and didn't we have fun buying kitchen things! We went to the ten-cent store and bought everything you ever heard of, from frying pans to egg beaters, and we packed them home in the subway looking like immigrants just landed. She got the grandest set of dishes, a hundred pieces for three ninety five. Each dish has got a wreath of pink roses around the edge and they would make even fried onions smell like Spring. I am going to help her make the curtains, cause lace ones don't look right in such a little place and we bought some white stuff with dots in it for six cents a yard. I can come up mornings once in a while and sew them. They didn't have money enough to pay all down, so I lent Charlie fifteen dollars and they have to pay ten dollars a month. They will get along fine. Alice is going to the market herself and I told them they ought to live for five dollars a week for the two of them, so they will save money.