“It certainly was hard to keep up my work the first semester, but I concentrated on the main things, and then it did help having Chet Dorrance and the other boys we know so well busy with their freshman work in the university! Well, some of them went away to school, too—other colleges. There wasn’t much social life till the holidays—a few parties and meeting each other at games and so on. I am still on the honor roll. I wouldn’t dare drop down from that, or Father would have me drop some other things. Anyhow, there is only one way for me to study and that is to get the work. We still have Latin and Math and other clubs, but the meetings for the most part are in the class period, so that isn’t so bad. They are interesting, too. I shudder to think how many of my different activities will be listed in our year book that will be published the end of the year. I’m on that staff, too, but I haven’t much to do yet. A teacher has it in charge, for it is too important to trust it altogether to our ignorance!
“But oh, Janet, we are growing up! Yes, the report was true about Mathilde and Jack Huxley. Mathilde wears a big diamond and they are always together. Mathilde is very snippy to me, a little more so than ever, and I can’t imagine why, unless it is because Jack started out by being quite attentive to me last year, for just a little while, you know. I gave you a hint of that affair—which you must not breathe to any one—ever! Mathilde and Jack are both a little older than the average of our class and the latest is that they are to be married soon after they graduate, with a big wedding, and go abroad for their wedding trip. Jack has only part work with us this year and is doing something at the university, too. But he told me himself that he did not want ‘any more school.’
“You ask me about ‘love affairs,’ but I gasped when I read what you wrote about Jo’s being so attentive. Was it to prepare me? ‘Janet and Jo,’ I said to myself. I haven’t seen Jo for so long that I probably would not know him. If he is going so far away he will probably want a pledge from you before he leaves. It looks like a good opportunity for him. I couldn’t tell from what you wrote just how you felt about it yourself. If this keeps on you will have to decide whether you want to be engaged or not and whether you like Jo enough. As I read your letter, I could remember the row of heads in the family pew in church, toward the front, and Jo’s was the highest up, among the three Clark boys. He was ‘one of the big boys’ to me after we began to go to school.
“And now telling you ‘EVERYTHING’ doesn’t seem to be so much, after re-reading your letter again and thinking about how little I really have to tell. I was in what Mother calls an ‘expansive’ mood when I began this letter and as it’s been written in ‘hitches’ it seems to be more or less of a boiled down record of what has happened. And on second thoughts it seems silly to write down some things, that I should probably blather about if I saw you. You will probably like to hear about the boys that I wrote of last summer in my long letter from Maine. Chet was pretty nice. I do like him ever so much, Janet, but he knows that I’ll not stand for anything sentimental, at least yet, and all he does is to take as many dates as he has time for and, I imagine, keep an eye on me. I don’t really know, Janet, that Chet himself thinks of any permanent arrangement between us. I’d be very conceited, I think, to suppose that any boy is very much in earnest when he hasn’t said so—yet Chet has been a friend for so long that there may be a little excuse for being on guard to ward off anything else. I certainly haven’t the least idea how to handle it, if it needs handling at all—for Chet is going clear through college somewhere.
“Father says to me, ‘Please, daughter, no high school engagement.’ I suppose I agree with him that his ideas are always sensible. Probably I am too young to know how to choose a ‘life partner.’ Still, he and Mother weren’t awfully old. They can’t say much. And if a certain person should ask me—well, it might be a little hard to refuse! I’m ‘going on’ eighteen, after all. Father says, if I want to go, he will give me a year in a girls’ college somewhere. But that takes a long time to arrange ahead, so I think it will be the ‘home town’ university at first.
“Oh, yes, I started in to tell you about the boys. No, I can’t tell who that ‘certain person’ is. Besides, I might change my mind. Ted, the boy that impressed me so when I first came to the city, is still a dear but does not figure in my dreams any more at all. He is just as fine a boy as could be, but he likes too many girls and I have to be the one and only! I think that Chet is less—temperamental, as they say. But nobody can help loving Ted.
“Larry Waite, about whom I’ve told you a little at different times, is very much of a gentleman, adores the water, just as I do and seemed to find me a congenial spirit this summer. That doesn’t mean a thing, however. I had one little note from him after I came home and perhaps I’ll have a valentine from him and from Chet on Valentine’s day, coming so soon now. He is Marcella’s brother, you remember, but isn’t home much because he has been East to school. But like me, he will be graduated this June and I don’t know what he is to do after that. We didn’t talk about it last summer.
“Arthur Penrose is in art school and writes to me once in a while. Chet didn’t like it much when I showed him a letter from Arthur, so I never showed him any more! The Penroses live here, you know, so it’s perfectly natural for us girls to see Archie and Arthur once in a while. Gwen we see every school day and some more!
“I shall have to hurry this up, though I’m not half through. Yet it’s a book already! I’ll try not to be so long again in getting to a letter. Yes—we have a Valentine Party—well, I’ll write you a card at least after that is over. I want to mail this tomorrow morning on the way to school, or give it to Father to mail for me, and Mother says I positively must go to bed now!
“Please tell me if anything has happened in your young life and I will do better next time.”