Daddy-Long-Legs | Page 9

dizzying experience of owning six new dresses. Miss
Pritchard, who is on the visiting committee, picked them out-- not Mrs.
Lippett, thank goodness. I have an evening dress, pink mull over silk
(I'm perfectly beautiful in that), and a blue church dress, and a dinner
dress of red veiling with Oriental trimming (makes me look like a
Gipsy), and another of rose-coloured challis, and a grey street suit, and
an every-day dress for classes. That wouldn't be an awfully big
wardrobe for Julia Rutledge Pendleton, perhaps, but for Jerusha
Abbott--Oh, my!
I suppose you're thinking now what a frivolous, shallow little beast she
is, and what a waste of money to educate a girl?
But, Daddy, if you'd been dressed in checked ginghams all your life,
you'd appreciate how I feel. And when I started to the high school, I
entered upon another period even worse than the checked ginghams.
The poor box.
You can't know how I dreaded appearing in school in those miserable
poor-box dresses. I was perfectly sure to be put down in class next to
the girl who first owned my dress, and she would whisper and giggle
and point it out to the others. The bitterness of wearing your enemies'
cast-off clothes eats into your soul. If I wore silk stockings for the rest
of my life, I don't believe I could obliterate the scar.
LATEST WAR BULLETIN!

News from the Scene of Action.
At the fourth watch on Thursday the 13th of November, Hannibal
routed the advance guard of the Romans and led the Carthaginian
forces over the mountains into the plains of Casilinum. A cohort of
light armed Numidians engaged the infantry of Quintus Fabius
Maximus. Two battles and light skirmishing. Romans repulsed with
heavy losses. I have the honour of being, Your special correspondent
from the front, J. Abbott
PS. I know I'm not to expect any letters in return, and I've been warned
not to bother you with questions, but tell me, Daddy, just this once--are
you awfully old or just a little old? And are you perfectly bald or just a
little bald? It is very difficult thinking about you in the abstract like a
theorem in geometry.
Given a tall rich man who hates girls, but is very generous to one quite
impertinent girl, what does he look like?
R.S.V.P.
19th December Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
You never answered my question and it was very important.
ARE YOU BALD?
I have it planned exactly what you look like--very satisfactorily-- until I
reach the top of your head, and then I AM stuck. I can't decide whether
you have white hair or black hair or sort of sprinkly grey hair or maybe
none at all.
Here is your portrait:
But the problem is, shall I add some hair?
Would you like to know what colour your eyes are? They're grey, and
your eyebrows stick out like a porch roof (beetling, they're called in
novels), and your mouth is a straight line with a tendency to turn down

at the corners. Oh, you see, I know! You're a snappy old thing with a
temper. (Chapel bell.) 9.45 p.m.
I have a new unbreakable rule: never, never to study at night no matter
how many written reviews are coming in the morning. Instead, I read
just plain books--I have to, you know, because there are eighteen blank
years behind me. You wouldn't believe, Daddy, what an abyss of
ignorance my mind is; I am just realizing the depths myself. The things
that most girls with a properly assorted family and a home and friends
and a library know by absorption, I have never heard of. For example:
I never read Mother Goose or David Copperfield or Ivanhoe or
Cinderella or Blue Beard or Robinson Crusoe or Jane Eyre or Alice in
Wonderland or a word of Rudyard Kipling. I didn't know that Henry
the Eighth was married more than once or that Shelley was a poet. I
didn't know that people used to be monkeys and that the Garden of
Eden was a beautiful myth. I didn't know that R. L. S. stood for Robert
Louis Stevenson or that George Eliot was a lady. I had never seen a
picture of the `Mona Lisa' and (it's true but you won't believe it) I had
never heard of Sherlock Holmes.
Now, I know all of these things and a lot of others besides, but you can
see how much I need to catch up. And oh, but it's fun! I look forward
all day to evening, and then I put an `engaged' on the door and get into
my nice red bath robe and furry slippers and pile all the cushions
behind me on the couch, and light the brass student lamp at my elbow,
and read