The grocer’s boy, who arrived with the peas a little later, also brought the mail. He was devoted to Inga and enjoyed doing gratuitous favors for the doctor’s family for her sake. Inga brought in two letters to Catherine, who joyfully dropped her darning and tore them open.
“Belovedest Goldilocks;” the first began, in Hannah Eldred’s writing, not much improved in the two years she and Catherine had been corresponding.
65“We are here at the shore for the summer, or that part of it which must pass before I come flying out to you with Frieda. Mamma and I are here all the time and Dad and Herr Karl come out for Sundays.
“People are so puzzled about Karl. I say over and over: ‘No, not my tutor. No, not a cousin. Not even a ward of my father’s. Just a German boy we learned to know in Berlin, and now a student at Harvard. Yes, we met him quite simply. He lived in the apartment under us, and he had hurt his leg and couldn’t walk, and we used to entertain him. Frieda Lange and I did. It was at her house we were staying. His father is Herr Director Von Arndtheim, and they are very respectable!’ People at a summer resort, even a little one, are the curiousest in the world, I think!
“Who do you think is coming to spend a few days with us next week? Nice old Inez! I’m awfully glad she is coming, but honestly I do hope she has learned to put her clothes on straight and to keep her room tidy. She’s so good, and so faithful that I love her anyhow, but Mother does like neat guests dreadfully well! She would love you for a guest, Catherine. But there! You always are just ex-actly right, without the tiniest drawback,–unless Dexter has changed you. Has it?
“I feel as though I were having my second childhood. It was so nice to be at college that 66 term with the grown-up girls, and now I have to go with infants like little Hilda and Gertrude, only not so nice. I had first year Math in High School, you know, last year, and my German Prof regarded me as a babe and wouldn’t let me read things because I wasn’t old enough–things that weren’t suitable for children. Frieda’s mother has never let her read a love story, you know, and this man has the same idea! He talked to me, the stiffest conversation lessons you ever heard. It was like the dialogues in Ruskin. I wonder what he would think if he should hear Karl and me sometimes. We jabber it all the time, he and Mamma and I. Dad won’t let us when he’s around, so we talk English then, and that instructs Karl. He’s good except for his pronunciation. You should hear him do the Harvard yell! He rolls the ‘r’s’ so far he almost loses them. They are even worse than you-ers, my western de-ar.
“We are going to have a hop to-night, a really hop, and I am going. They can’t put me off with the children because I haven’t any nurse or governess, and there aren’t any other girls between infants and real young ladies. The hop won’t be very big, because there are only a few families (it’s not a fashionable place, you know), but we’ll have a perfectly good time all the same. I am so pleased to be going as a Herrschaft, and I have a darling new frock for this and everything. It’s 67 a soft rosy silk with tiny tight rosebuds all over it. And I have a little wreath of buds to wear in my hair. There are two or three awfully nice people coming over. One of Karl’s classmates at Harvard, and two boys from the Tech and a nice curly-haired freshman from Dartmouth. And there is a Smith girl, perfectly charming, and a rather frumpy one from Wellesley who knows your Polly Osgood, or rather knows who she is. This girl’s name is Violet, and I saw a letter addressed to her and her middle initial was E, and I asked if her name was Ethelyn, but she said it was Emma!
“I wish you could see my little hop-gown. And the dear wreath. It makes me think of Ivy-Planting Day at Dexter and the way the seniors sang ‘Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.’ Wasn’t Lilian the sweetest thing? She is studying in Boston this year, you know, and I saw her once. And weren’t the little pig-tailed preps dear with their pink doves, I mean pink-ribboned doves? That was your pretty idea, my beautiful Catherine. I never could have thought of anything so lovely.
“I’m almost at the bottom of the inkstand, and I haven’t told you yet what I started to write about. But Mamma has written your mother, so it’s all right. Frieda is to land the last of July, and I’m going to take her out to you as soon after that as your mother and mine think best. I think she will need a long time to get acquainted, don’t you? 68 I know you will love each other, but she must know you thoroughly before college opens. It is tantalizing to think of you and her and Alice all being together. I do think I ought to be there, too, since I was the one who introduced you to each other. I’d like to keep Frieda with me next year, but every one seems to think the best place for her is right in the dormitory with the other girls,–and of course, it will be easier for her out there than in any of the big colleges nearer us. She is so obstinate she wouldn’t learn English if she were near any one who could talk anything she would recognize for German. What most of the girls at college talk for that, she wouldn’t know from Choctaw.
“Lots of love to the dear doctors, and for yourself bushels and quarts and pecks. I had a card from Miss Lyndesay from the Isle of Wight yesterday.