And after all I love my little fire “that goes in and out with me.” And I feel so settled here. I never wake up in the morning any more and say like the bewildered little darky, “Whar me!” and when I open the front door at night I feel that I never really belonged anywhere else.
What I look forward to all day is getting into bed at night. I slide in between the icy sheets and find the tin bed-warmer that Olive gave me, and then way down at the bottom a hot, squashy, hot-water bag. I tuck the comforter in tight, and pull my fur coat up over my head and stay there suffocated until I’m sure my nose is warm enough not to keep me awake, then I uncover cautiously and slowly go off to sleep. When once asleep nothing could wake me up—not the Allies victorious or the Heavenly trump. But before I go to sleep I have a fine chance to think over happy things of the past and I do love it. I think of what fun we used to have at Northampton, especially those two years at the Lodge. It seems too wonderful to be true now, to think of living not merely with people who were girls your own age and spoke English, but your very own best friends that you would pick out from all the world. All living together under one roof!
When it was cold like this there was skating on Paradise, and after giving three looks at our history in the evening, a bunch of us would go down to the boat-house and put on our skates and go out and skate by the electric light and moonlight combined. Then when we were frozen, we’d come in and warm ourselves by the huge fireplace, leave our skates, and go down town to Kingsley’s for some hot chocolate and whipped cream. When the moon shone full on the white snow it gave the luster of midday all right. I can just hear how our footsteps crunched and the snow squeaked, it was so cold. As we’d be drinking our chocolate some one would look down the street at the town clock and cry, “It’s quarter of ten!!” and we’d dash out of the place and run like mad up Main Street, turn to the left at the watering-trough, up West Street, down Arnold Avenue, and pound up the kitchen steps of the Lodge. Usually we got there just as the college clock was striking ten. We’d fly up the back stairs and undress in the dark and jump into bed. “Nothing on our minds but our hair!” It seems so long ago.
This letter is going very slowly, I’m afraid. If I could only write with my left hand, it wouldn’t be so bad, but I have to keep stopping to put my right on the hot-water bag to keep my fingers going. They look like carrots, anyway. Please tell Aunt Esther that I have become a mad devotee of hot water as a beverage. This ought to put new life into her, for I have always felt that she never quite recovered from the obstinate way I used to take the pitcher of hot water, regularly delivered to me on a tray flanked conspicuously with a cup and saucer, dump the contents into the bowl and bathe comfortably and leisurely. This at the age of eight. Now all is changed. I drink what is brought piping hot for me to use to bathe in, and bathe in the dispirited contents of my night-blooming hot-water bag. Such is age—and Paris.
Now the results of this constant warfare between man and the elements are twofold. I first might say that my flesh is brilliantly branded by the various applications, too arduously embraced, so that it looks as though giant postage stamps had been applied promiscuously over my huge gaunt frame. Secondly, I am a bit done up. With my room fairly uninhabitable it has been against nature to refuse as many of the cordial (and warm) invitations that have been given me as would have been consistent with wisdom—certainly ag’in’ my nature, and I have tired myself with trotting back and forth from one fireside to another on top of the new forms of work that I have been adapting myself to. I have gone out a great deal to tea, and sometimes in the evening, too, and haven’t rested very much. Yet it’s little comfort to come home and rest when you’re shivering!
However, I’m not a bit discouraged about anything—one must find out one’s strength somehow—and please don’t worry. By the time you get this I shall probably be blooming.
I heard “Faust,” with Mary Aiken and her mother a week ago Saturday—the only time since Mother took Olive and Franklin and me eleven years ago, when it was my first opera. It was glorious! I seemed to know it all and what I didn’t know was lovely too. We had dandy seats in the parterre—only seven francs seventy centimes, the seventy centimes being a tax for the poor, imposed on all theater and opera seats. Do you remember when we used to struggle and squeak through “Anges purs, anges radieux”?—where it goes up a key each time? I find myself singing, “Salut, demeure chaste et pure,” as I turn my chilled footsteps toward Place Denfert-Rochereau sometimes—so chaste and pure that there is no sybaritic allurement even in the fireplace.
I must tell you how wonderful that child Gile Davies has been to me. Every week since I’ve been gone I’ve had a note, sometimes a long letter from her; and not a word did I write until Christmas-time. To cap the climax, I received a package a day or two ago—a Christmas present. It was a baby blue satin handkerchief bag that she had made herself, with a handkerchief and a sachet inside. It seemed great to see anything so pretty and useless after so many flannel waists and boots and trousers and all the homely things that are so indispensable. In the bottom of the box was the most precious of all—an enlargement of the picture Martha took of Gile one morning when she was putting up the flag at Bailey’s—Gile in a middy blouse with the sun full on her, just turning to smile as she’s pulling the ropes; and Harpswell and the Sound in the distance.
When I found that, on top of the handkerchief and the sachet, I just opened the bag and risked all the blue satin lining by crying into it. Oh, I never saw anything look so sweet.
I think I was even gladder about what you wrote of wearing my circle scarf-pin for my sake, than about the Ford; though maybe it’s wicked. I can forgive with abandon, and picture with tenderness the cruel and unusual neckties in which it probably nestles. My one fear is that you may waste too much affection on me when I’m away, thinking that I have changed. I haven’t at all, malheureusement. It’s just that blessings apparently seem to brighten immediately after taking flight. I never do anything wonderful at all. I sometimes get tired clear through and wish there were some one to manage things for me—some one to take me out—some one else to buy the tickets—some one else to order the taxi—some one else to decide what to do. I just long to get all dressed up and go out somewhere and see people in evening clothes. Sometimes I feel that I’d rather put on a pair of long white gloves than put off the old man! You can see from that.