“I wrote you after we moved, I’m sure, and told you how much we like the house. For fear I omitted something I’ll just say that it is a brick colonial, with a pretty approach and entrance, shrubbery and trees and flower beds and vines that will look wonderful again after winter is over. I’ve had one party in the big rooms downstairs and Mother has had a few teas and friends in to dinner. She likes to entertain in small numbers best, to visit.
“Doris had her party, too, and I thought I’d perish with mirth when I overheard Dick tell his best chum, as they clattered down from Dick’s room one day, that he ‘thought he’d sling a stag party pretty soon.’ He ‘slung’ it and we all pitched in to make the boys have a good time with especially good things to eat. But the twins want to entertain together, for the most part and most of their friends are in their class—sophomores, now!
“Best of all, Father is pretty sure that he will buy the place, and then we shall feel settled. It depends, naturally, on when the necessary SPONDULICS are at hand and Father does not speak of that. But it is pleasant to have a nice home, and though we’ll never try to live up the the MURCHISON MILLIONS, we are glad to have a whole house to ourselves, with plenty of room to spread out and somebody to help Mother. We girls still do little things and are supposed to take care of our own mending, etc.; but Mother gives us our time for lessons and other things and I’m sometimes in such a rush that I wish I had a maid, like Lucia, to pick up after me! Father does not seem to think that I am PERMANENT here and teases me a little sometimes. But more of that anon. You know how he is!
“Now to give you a bird’s eye view of what I am doing. First and foremost, I’m trying to run the G. A. A. The girls usually elect the spring before but it was put off and put off until it was not done at all. So several of us were nominated and I was elected, and although I was pleased with the honor my heart almost sank at the JOB! Still, it hasn’t been so bad because our class has always been greatly interested in athletics and I can head almost any committee with a capable senior girl and leave it to her to carry things out. We’ve had membership campaigns and pep squads and the usual games and contests. I must remember to send you copies of the Roar, from time to time. Sometimes the write-up is real cute.
“It would take me a week to write you about all the doings, from home room elections and meetings, Girl Reserve programs—under Kathryn as president this year—to the exciting football games of the boys’ teams. Our school won the championship and the boys are working hard to make the basketball record as good.
“Our senior hockey team, of which I was the captain, WON! I certainly was glad of that! I’m not on the basketball team because the folks don’t want me to be, but I’m almost as interested. Both Carolyn Gwynne and Kathryn Allen are playing. ‘Finny’ could not get on this time. Gwen Penrose turned out to be a wonderful player and is captain! We ought to win the inter-class contests, which are already posted. We play each class, of course—I’ll scribble off the schedule and enclose it. The seniors begin the games, playing the sophomores on February eleventh. We have the usual crazy names for our teams.
“But what is most interesting of all to me is the annual mileage swim, or MARATHON, and I hope to have chevrons and points and so on. I’ve told you all about honors before. That is one reason for this letter. I am supposed to be resting after swimming ‘lengths.’ Then we seniors want the class championship, and so many of us are good swimmers, easy swimmers, that we stand a good chance of getting it. All that is going on now and the last copy of the Roar calls us the mermaids. Can you realize, Janet, that it is actually February now, and of our senior year? When you write, tell me everything about all of them in our old class in Buxton High now, and some of them dropped out, I know, and some I don’t know at all that have come in since I left.
“To go back a little, we had all the lovely Christmas season as usual, with the customary carolling and gift making and looking after our poor. I’m glad to think that now ‘Ramona Rose’ and her mother are happy as they can be before they have Ramon back, all cosy at the Murchison’s. The new Mrs. Murchison had been very glad to have Rose, for there was a change of butler and everybody, almost, after the countess went away.
“I have seen a good deal of Lucia Coletti. She is more or less lonesome without her mother there, but both parents were here at Christmas time and now they are in South America. The count is a great traveler, but has his wife with him this time. Lucia is doing splendid work in her lessons and they are so proud of her!
“To tell the truth, I suppose the things we think about most are lessons, getting them and how to find time to get them! But I don’t know that they are the main objects in life! Wouldn’t you find it interesting to have me quote a page of Virgil, or give you extracts from my last English theme! After the Christmas parties we buckled down to work again, and we have recently survived the ‘mid years.’