Dear Milly,—I am rejoiced to know your first party was a success, and that you were spared the ignominious fate of "full many a flower born to blush unseen, and waste its sweetness on the"—ball-room wall.
Your dress must have been a beauty, but I do not envy you. "Fine clo'" I have forsworn, and I would not exchange my jolly school-days for all your festive parties.
Tell papa I must have some new boots—very thick, with broad soles and low heels—and entreat him not to send them C. O. D., for I truly can't pay the expressage.
We girls have formed a club for the "Abolition and Extirpation of Grotesque Idiotic Style."
Our initials, A, E, G, I, S, as you see, spell "Aegis," which is to be our shield (its literal meaning) from aristocratic scorn. I dare say I shall not be received in polite circles when I go home, but when I look at my ring, on which is engraved A E G I S, I shall gain such invulnerability that all sneers will glance aside ineffective.
There is a curious fact about our club and motto. Like the old English Cabal, we have five members whose initials form the name, viz.,
Anna Clifford,
Enid Evans,
Gertrude Wood,
Ida Langford,
Sallie Peterson.
I have given up curling my hair, and braid it. Of course it isn't becoming, but we Aegises stoop not to vanity. I have gained five pounds since Christmas; so when my spring suit is made, tell the dress-maker to put the extra material into the waist, and not waste it (a pun, but very poor) in puffs and paniers, for we have abolished them. We try to get along with the bare necessities of life.
I'd give a good deal to see you all, but I'm not the least bit homesick.
Good-by. Give my double-and-twisted love to everybody, and kiss the dear pink of a baby a hundred times for me.