Dearest Mother:—
I am so bursting full of the good time that we have had during the past two days that I am going to dash a line off to you—an inconsequential line—even when I know that what you want is a letter full of statistics and answers to questions. (Funny thing, I always think that I am the one who is wonderful about answering everything that you ask!) I will be good to-morrow.
To-night, I am tired and dusty, but miles and miles of white French roads bordered by forests, and meadows, and houses, and towns, and children, and horses, and castles, and flags, are going round in my head.
“There ne’er were such thousands of leaves on a tree,
Or of people in church or the park....”
To-day is a holiday, being the day after Pentecost (Whit-Monday in England), and Marje and I decided to go off for two days somewhere in the country. Miss Curtis had planned to move a family to-day in the Association car,—forgetting that Mrs. Shurtleff had promised us that we could go out in it,—so she handed us over her Ford touring-car, which was perfectly wonderful for us.
Yesterday morning we started off in dazzling sunshine with a clear blue sky overhead. We took the road to Fontainebleau, which is long and straight and bordered all the way—fifty kilometres—with great evergreen trees. We took our hats off and talked, and laughed, and sang, and whistled, and watched the countryside go flying by; the trees and fields were the most luscious green, and everywhere were huge patches of mustard, growing dense and brilliant yellow. Little towns, red-roofed, with a single church spire and a few pointed haystacks, would huddle to themselves far off on the horizon, and always we kept tearing along between the trees, leaving Paris and carking care behind.
We stopped for luncheon under a particularly splendid tree and laid out our store on the thick grass. Sardines, fresh bread, cheese, preserved plums, strawberries, olives stuffed with anchovies, Cailler’s chocolate and orangeade. I never had anything taste so good, and no salt air any nearer than Havre to account for it. You can’t imagine what fun we had. Finally when we were replete, we lay down and looked up into the leaves and listened to the most heavenly birds.
We reached Fontainebleau at about two. The “New York Herald” had said something about its being American day at F. that Sunday, but we weren’t prepared for such an exhibition of American flags as greeted us on all the houses and shops, and on the palais itself. We knew, however, that all this demonstration meant that the hotels were full, so we looked to getting a room for the night before seeing anything. Not a thing to be had. Thank fortune we were in a car and could go on to the next town.
There was a special invitation for all Americans to visit the Fontainebleau golf course, so we made tracks out in that direction, as the palais and grounds were overrun with permissionnaires and the usual holiday crowds.