Some weeks later she wrote to chronicle a painful scene in which she had participated.
“I quarreled with the ten Hutchinsons. I am very sorry. They laughed at me too much for being a little girl and a Cape Codder, but they could if they wanted to, but when they laughed at Aunt Margaret for adopting me and the tears came in her eyes I could not bare it. I did not let the cat out of the bag, but I made it jump out. The Grandfather asked me when I was going back to Cape Cod, and I said I hoped never, and then I said I was going to visit Uncle Peter and Aunt Gertrude and Uncle David next. They said ‘Uncle David—do you mean David Bolling?’ and I did, so I said ‘yes.’ Then all the Hutchinsons pitched into Aunt Margaret and kept laughing and saying, ‘Who is this mysterious child anyway, and how is it that her guardians intrust her to a crowd of scatter brain youngsters for so long?’ and then they said ‘Uncle David Bolling—what does his mother say?’ Then Aunt Margaret got very red in the face and the tears started to come, and I said ‘I am not a mysterious child, and my Uncle David is as much my Uncle David as they all are,’ 100 and then I said ‘My Aunt Margaret has got a perfect right to have me intrusted to her at any time, and not to be laughed at for it,’ and I went and stood in front of her and gave her my handkercheve.
“Well I am glad somebody has been told that I am properly adoptid, but I am sorry it is the ten Hutchinsons who know.”