“I’m glad you’re to that hospital, where that Sophy girl is; and ’twon’t do you a mite of harm to rest up a little from that studying. Too much book learning never did set well on a Trent’s digesters and Ephraim Ma’sh, he wrote John that you’d been kind of peaked. So ’twon’t hurt you. Tell them hospital folks that if they’d admire to have one my rising-sun or log-cabin quilts I’d admire just as much to send ’em. And I’ll piece as many more as they’ll furnish the patches for. I spoke of that to Mis’ Dalrymple and all she did was laugh in that slow, ladylike way of hern. She’s real nice, Mis’ Dalrymple is. Me and her has real good times a-comparin’ notes about what used to be and isn’t no more. I can see, easy as fiddlin’, where ’tis your Ma gets her politeness. She was raised by Margaret Dalrymple; and you was raised by your Ma; and I do hope to goodness, Jessie Trent, that you’ll try to do them credit. Neither don’t you go flinging yourself against them ortymobeels, that fool folks have hatched out of their brains, these last years. I seen one. If you’ll believe me, girlie, one of ’em come whizzing onto this very ranch of Sobrante only last week that ever was. It was chock full of towerists and it scared the ranch horses into fits. But, worse and more of it. They fair set Ninian Sharp wild to own one hisself. He’s makin’ real good wages now, Ninian is, a-managin’ the mines; and he seems to want every new-fangled thing a-going. Him with a world full of horses, and I thought he had more sense.
“Well, I’m sending you by express—John pays the cost—a box of home-made guava jelly, some fresh figs, some oranges, some—Well, I reckon a little of ‘some’ everything ’t I could think of that would keep on so long a road. John, he says you could buy ’em all better and cheaper right there in that New York city than it’ll cost to send this box. But I know better. Anyhow I know none bought there would begin to taste as nice to you as these right from Sobrante. You may be gettin’ a terrible smart scholard, as Ephraim Ma’sh he wrote, but you’ll never get to be anything except a girl that loves her home and her folk better than anything else in the world. Bless you, my lamb! there ain’t a night nor day that I don’t go down on my old hunkies—I mean knees—and ask the Good Father to take special care of you, His fatherless child. There’s many a heart aches for you, deary, and many an eye will shine—and cry, too—when that day comes that fetches you home. I’ve made up my mind to quit ‘Boston,’ to coax my silly, sick cousin to come out here and we’ll build her a little bungalow to live in. ‘Bungalow’ is the new-fangled name they’re getting here in Californy for just plain house, or cottage. The world thinks it’s growin’ powerful smart, don’t it? There’s doin’s here, too, I tell you. We’ve got a regular village of houses for the miners, started already. You won’t know Sobrante when you get back to it.
“Never mind. It won’t be more’n three or four years, now, for you have been gone one already. Just think! A whole endurin’ year, and you’ve been burned to death, and ortymobeeled to death, and got lost on the streets, and land knows what hasn’t happened. But I’m thankful for the good word that come to-day; how you’ll soon be back to that big school. Your Ma says that the teacher is going to take you and some the other scholards to camp out in the Airondacks this summer. I’m glad of it. I don’t justly know what Airondacks, or Airydondacks, or whatever ’tis are. But I sort of sense that they’re partly woods and partly water and partly mountings. Them three parts put together, and you sleeping right outdoors in a tent—What do they do when it rains?—will make it seem most like Californy.
“Now no more till next time. I’d admire to put a bottle or so of picry or somethin’ in the box but John he won’t hear to it. He says—No, I shan’t repeat what he says. Not to a girl like you, ’cause it’s so sort of onrespectful. I know you’ll be glad to know I’ve got four more quilts ready pieced and fit to put on the quiltin’-frames. When them are done and I get two—three more done I’ll nigh have reached my hundred limit, what I set for myself. John says what in—I mean he says what does anybody want of a hundred quilts, here in Californy with a summer climate all the year round. But John, he don’t know everything, even if he thinks he does.
“It is ‘good-by’ for sure, this time. I’ve got to stop writin’ and talkin’ to you—as it seems like—’cause there’s some sort of goings-on out in Wunny’s kitchen. I cal’late them childern has been into some his messes and I can’t let Gabriell’ hear ’em, for it would make her fidget. Everybody sends love, and don’t forget to tell the hospital folks about the rising-sun and log-cabin.
“Your loving, foolish, hungry-for-you,
“Aunt Sally.”
This letter was duly read by the nurse who had charge of Jessica to her convalescent, and as attentively listened to by Sophy, Ephraim, and even Granny Briggs, herself. It was visitors’ day and “Little Captain” was so far recovered that these now happy, cheerful callers could not harm her by the fatigue of conversation. The others laughed over it, enjoyed it, and even the sharpshooter somewhat ridiculed it.
Upon which, quoth “Sophia Badger, that was:”
“Now Ephraim Marsh, you ain’t half as smart as you think. I take that letter for just what it’s worth—right out of the heart of one the best women the Lord ever made. From all you’ve told me about her before, and what her own letter tells itself, I’d ‘admire’ myself to know her. She may be queer—so are you. I’m like the old Quaker who said: ‘All the world’s queer except thee and me, Hannah, and even thee’s a little queer sometimes.’ We can’t see ourselves and our own queernesses. A good thing, too; but I wish there were a lot more ‘Aunt Sallies’ scattered around the world, brightening it and dosing it and keeping it wholesome. Think what a difference ’twould have made to Sophy and me if there’d been an ‘Aunt Sally’ living in Avenue A when we were starving there. No, Ephraim Marsh, you always were a light-headed kind of boy and you never have grown up. So, don’t let me hear no more fun-making of that good woman in Californy, that I’d admire to know.”
Thus strictly corrected the dame, who had fully assumed charge of her old playmate’s mind and morals.