See, Mr. Robert Haralson? as you New Yorkers say.
Bobby’s confident letter says:
As I write, at my left hand is a basket of letters. I have just taken from the basket the last nice one you wrote me and the awfully mean one you wrote afterward. The others run back a month or two and none are answered yet. My right arm is resting on a cushion, and I am writing with three fingers.
I have been away. In my accumulated mail there were a couple of letters from you, and the photo you sent in the lot. The next morning after I got back I had to send for a doctor. I had got a knock on my blamed old elbow and she swelled up as big as a prize beet at the Roseboro County Fair.
Well, old doc said it was cellulitis, which didn’t sound very reassuring. It comes from having the cellular tissues hurt. And every day he done that arm up in plaster and eight miles of bandages. And three or four times he brung along his knives and lancets and was going to carving at it, but I wouldn’t let him. I haven’t been able to write any more than a rabbit. I’m getting so I can use a small quantity of my fingers now, and this is the first answer to any letter in the basket.
And that is why I haven’t written to thank you for the photo, which I appreciate highly, and shall not return as you suggest in your P. M. (Particularly Mean) letter. What’s the matter with it? It looks all right to me. I can’t suggest any improvement in it. It has lots of your old expression in it, and although the fool photographer did all he could to spoil it by making you turn your head as if you were looking to see if your dress was buttoned all down the back, it’s a ripping nice picture, and you needn’t want to be “any better to look at than the picture.” (Can’t you say the mean things when you want to!)
Now, I wish you’d behave, and take your finger out of your mouth and stand right there—turn your toes out—and say you are sorry.
Lemme see!—there was another dig—oh, yes—if I “had been a pauper or a millionaire.”
You bet I’m a pauper now, Miss Carrie. Blowed all my money in on my trip, and ain’t made any to speak of since except what doc would carry away with him every day.
Getting along all right again, though, now. How’s your writing coming on?