The Juniors here at Gresham are lots of them beau crazy. They talk about boys from morning till night. I do hope when I get to be a Junior I won't go through that stage. Miss Sayre, a lovely girl and too nice to me for anything, a pupil teacher and at least nineteen, says she has never known but one girl in her life who arrived at her age without going through the stage of talking about boys all the time, and she says that poor girl was dumb and she took it out in making eyes. Dum and Dee and I told her we'd cut out our tongues before we'd make boys our sole topic of conversation, and Miss Sayre just laughed and asked us if we would gouge out our eyes, too.

I am doing very well in my studies, and working awfully hard. You see, we have to spend a certain time over our books and learn in spite of ourselves. French is coming easy to me and I believe it is because Father has drilled me so thoroughly in Latin. I am getting on top of Mathematics by the hardest kind of climbing. At first I felt as though I'd have to remove mountains ever to learn a thing, but now I realize I don't have to remove mountains, but just climb them; and certainly as you climb you get an outlook that you never dreamed of.

Father writes very cheerfully but I am afraid he is mighty lonesome. I feel very selfish to be off here having such a good time when I know how hard it is for him. I wish you would write him a nice long letter. Your letters always do him good.

I like Miss Peyton, our principal, ever and ever so much; she is so just. All of the teachers are pretty nice, but I am not getting quite as much from the English Literature teacher as I hoped I would. She is a good teacher, I have no doubt, but not interesting. I have the feeling that she likes what the textbooks tell her to, and has no taste of her own. Her knowledge of poetry, for instance, stops with the age of Tennyson.

You know Father's extravagance and relaxation is poetry, past, present and even future. He has been reading poetry to me since before I could talk, and a new poet is more interesting to him than a new disease. He had never told me that poetry had to arrive at a certain age, like veal or cheese, before it was worthy to be taken in; and I brought down the scorn and wrath of Miss Prince on my devoted head and came mighty near getting enough demerits to keep me in bounds a week, because I asked her if she did not think Masefield's poem of "The Dauber" had more atmosphere of the deep sea in it than "The Ancient Mariner." She looked at me very severely through her visible bi-focals and said: "Miss Allison, this is a class in English Literature; and matters foreign to the subject are not to be discussed."

I rather miss the reading I have always done. We study so hard there is no time to read, and the library is one of these donated ones. It has sets of Dickens and Scott in such fine print that you can't keep your place, a few odd volumes of Thackeray, Milton and Pope, and the rest of the shelves are crowded with books that some generous patron evidently has had no use for himself. They are the kind of books that Father says are good enough to keep the doors open with or to put under a rocker when you don't want to rock.

There is a good encyclopedia and dictionary and our textbooks are very complete. I believe it is good for me to have to confine myself to the textbooks for a while, but I shall be glad to be at Bracken again and curl up on the sofa with the dogs some dull old rainy day and read as long as I can see.

Some day I hope you will know my friends. I have told them all about you and they think you are splendid. The Tucker twins are going to stay a few days at Bracken during the holidays, and I am to be with them for a week-end in Richmond. It will be a more agreeable visit than the time I spent with Cousin Park Garnett, I fancy. By the way, Cousin Park sent me a present the other day. You could never guess what it is: a black and purple crocheted shoulder shawl! I'm real glad to have it because we are going to have a dicker party and it will be the very thing to contribute.

You don't know how much obliged I am to you for the huge box of marshmallows. We have not opened it yet, as we are saving up for a grand spread that Dum and Dee and I are going to give. Good-by, dear Cousin Sue.

Yours devotedly,
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