“I wish you could come down here. Uncle Jimmie is coming and then I don’t know what Albertina will say.

“About teaching me. Aunt Gertrude’s idea of getting me cultivated is to read to me from the great Masters of literature and funny books too, like Mark Twain and the Nonsense Thology. Then I say what I think of them, and she just lets me develop along those lines, which is pretty good for summer.

“Here is a poem I wrote. I love you best.

“The sun and wind are on the sea,
The waves are clear and blue,
This is the place I like to be,
If I could just have you.
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“The insects chirrup in the grass,
The birds sing in the tree,
And oh! how quick the time would pass
If you were here with me.”

“What do you think of slapping, Aunt Gertrude?” Eleanor asked one evening when they were walking along the hard beach that the receding tide had left cool and firm for their pathway, and the early moon had illumined for them. “Do you think it’s awfully bad to slap any one?”

“I wouldn’t slap you, if that’s what you mean, Eleanor.”

“Would you slap somebody your own size and a little bigger?”

“I might under extreme provocation.”

“I thought perhaps you would,” Eleanor sighed with a gasp of relieved satisfaction.

“I don’t believe in moral suasion entirely, Eleanor,” Gertrude tried to follow Eleanor’s leads, until she had in some way satisfied the child’s need for enlightenment on the subject under discussion. It was not always simple to discover just what Eleanor wanted to know, but Gertrude had come to believe that there was always some excellent 128 reason for her wanting to know it. “I think there are some quarrels that have to be settled by physical violence.”