Jean was quite moved by this letter, for her father was making her responsible for her own future. It made her feel quite different somehow, as though she was entrusted with the power to make or break her own career.
Last of all was Kit’s letter, two sheets of penciled scribbling, crowded together on both sides.
Hi, Jean,
I’m writing this the last thing at night when my brain is getting calm. Any old time the poet starts singing carelessly of the joys and beauties of the country in the wintertime, I hope he lands on this waste spot during a January blizzard. He’d change his mind in a hurry.
If you get your hands on any of the current fashion magazines, be sure to send them home to us. Even if we can’t indulge, we can dream, can’t we? I’m getting awfully tired of skirts and sweaters. It’s high time I was allowed to burst forth in something really stunning that would knock everybody cold.
I have a new friend, a dog. Jack says he’s just a stray, but he isn’t. He’s a shepherd dog, and very intelligent. I’ve named him Mac. He fights with Tommy, which is strange for that brother of ours usually has a way with animals. I guess he’s just a one-man dog, for he likes me alone.
I miss you in the evenings an awful lot. Doris goes around in a sort of moon ring of romance nowadays, so it’s no fun talking to her, and Tommy spends most of his time fooling around with those blasted airplanes of his. His attitude toward Jack is really wonderful, it’s almost fatherly. Did you ever wish we had another boy in the family? I do now and then. I’d like one about sixteen, just between us two, that I could be pals with. Tommy’s too little. Buzzy comes the nearest to being a big brother that I’ve ever had. That guy really had a marvelous sense of fairness, Jean, do you realize that? I hope being out West hasn’t changed him too much. I liked him the way he was. I am impatient for his return. Do you feel the same way about Ralph?
Well, my dear artistic close relative and beloved sister, it is almost ten, so it’s time for Kathleen to turn into her lonely cot. Give my love to Beth, and write to me personally. We can’t bear your inclusive family letters.
Yours,
Kit.
If it hadn’t been so late, Jean felt she could have sat down then and there, and answered every one of them. They took her straight back to Woodhow and all the daily round of fun there. In the morning she read parts of them to Aldo.
“Ah, but you are lucky,” Aldo said quietly when she had finished. “I am just myself, and it’s so monotonous. I wish I could meet your family and know them all.”
“They are a wonderful family, although I rather envy you in a way. Sometimes it seems as if one loses individuality in a large family.”
“You shouldn’t feel that way,” replied Aldo. “Why, look, here you are in New York about to start studying again. Isn’t that proof enough that there is room for individuality even in a big family?”
Jean thought of this later when she was getting ready for the next day at school and decided that Aldo was probably right. “I’ll work so hard these next two months, that the family will be convinced that the time was well spent. I’ll make them proud of me, or at least I’ll try.”