“Why it looked good enough to me last winter. But listen now. I’ll begin.”
“Dear Janet,” the letter commenced. “I’ll have to begin with apologies, of course, and I’m hoping that you’ve received the two picture post cards I sent. I meant to send some to all the girls and haven’t. But honestly, I’ve been so busy and it’s all been so mixy, if you know what I mean by that, that I just haven’t gotten at a letter that would give you any idea of how things are. It looks sort of hopeless now, to tell the truth, but I’m going to start in anyhow, even if I have to write at several different times. The longer I put it off the more there will be to tell. You haven’t any idea how much I’ve missed you and how I’ve almost started to tell you things; that is, I’d think ‘I must tell Janet that,’ and then I’d think again that you weren’t anywhere around!
“Talk about being lonesome! Of course I’ve had the family, but not a single girl at first. I have several friends now that I know more or less, but nobody that takes the place of the girls at home. You see I still call it home. I’m not sure that the city will ever seem like home, but it is very interesting and the place where we live is ever so nice. It is all on one floor, which makes it easy for Mother, and we have enough room, though we wouldn’t have if we hadn’t gotten rid of so much stuff before we moved. Still, there is a little room on the third floor where we can store some things, like our trunks and boxes. Mother likes it, though she has been lonesome, too, for all the friends. But of course Mother and Father used to live in a city, so it doesn’t seem so strange to them. Two people live on the floor above us, but there is a separate entrance and stairs and everything separate in the basement.
“There is a good church near enough to walk to it and Mother has been to some of the missionary meetings and suppers and all, and we have, too–to the suppers! So Mother and Father are beginning to be acquainted. I’m in a Sunday school class, but I haven’t had time to go to anything besides just Sunday morning, for there are too many lessons and school things that take my time. I just have to get a good start. But I’ll have time pretty soon. The class has monthly meetings. They wanted me to be in some kind of a pageant, but Mother said I’d better not try it, for I wouldn’t have time to practice.
“And now about the school. Honestly, girls, I don’t know where to begin. Not all the high schools are as fine as ours, for ours isn’t as old as some of them and Father says it is modern in every respect. They are so crowded that they simply have to build new schools, which Father says is a good thing. In some old schools they’ve been actually heating with stoves, not even a furnace. So Father said.
“Well, the building is big and the grounds are gorgeous, full of beautiful trees and shrubbery. I’m no architect, so I can’t tell you about the building except that it spreads out and up three stories, besides the basement floor, and Mother says we need wings! The basement floor isn’t under the ground or anything, and all the freshmen have their lockers there. We put our wraps and books there when we do not need them and get them out when we do. We have a ‘home room’ and a teacher in charge of it, and we go there the first thing in the morning and the last thing before we go home. She tells us things, the teacher, I mean. Some days we don’t do the same things. Sometimes we go to the ‘auditorium’ and hear somebody speak, or something happens there, but not much yet.
“At first I simply felt lost. Just imagine. Girls, there are twenty-eight hundred boys and girls that attend our high school and I don’t think that counts the pupils in the junior high. That is more than half as many people as are in our home town!
“Dick and Doris are very much set up over being in a ‘junior high school’–though I don’t mean that unkindly. But they think it as wonderful as possible and like their teachers. Dick is more interested in athletics than he is in his lessons and Father has to keep him at his lessons a while in the evenings after he has been outdoors enough, as Father thinks. Doris is working away to make good grades. She has her eye on things that the other girls do and wear but that is only natural, and I imagine that we need all the good advice Father and Mother give us. Mother says not to join anything until we get a good start in our lessons and learn more about living here. Oh, yes, I was to send some message to Billy, but I told Dick he could just as well write himself, and it may be possible that Billy will hear from him, though I couldn’t say positively. You know how much the boys like to write!
“By the way, I’m putting in a little picture of myself. Mother let me go down town with, one of the girls that lives not so very far from us; at least we take the same street car home from school. So we went down one day right after school. She invited me, and took me to a real good moving picture, and we stopped in at a cute little place where they take cheap photographs. We also had a grand sundae at a wonderful place and came home not a bit hungry for dinner. And that makes me think–we have dinner at night, for Father can’t come home very well, it is so far, and has a noon lunch down town. We children have one at school, and my, what grand lunches we do have! They give it to us at about what it costs, so it doesn’t quite break us up to buy it, enough for the time we have to eat it. But everything, street-car fare and all, costs more in a city. Father drives us to school, mostly, and then goes on down to his business.
“I think that I shall have to stop, though I’ve been scribbling as fast as I could, and I believe I’ll just send this right off, though I’m not half through with all there is to tell. I’ll try to write something about the folks we have met when I write again. More things will have happened, too, I suppose, but I’ve got to stop now. Give Sue my love and now I want you both to plan to come here for your Thanksgiving vacation. Mother invites you, too. She said it would do me good to see some of you. Auntie can’t come for she’s going to some family reunion or other, and we can make room for you. Please try to do it!”