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a swell of the Faubourg St. Germain, with a chateau in Normandy, family ghost, devoted peasantry and what not. I fancy your mother has told you of her. It will be great fun to meet some of the nobility, I think.
I am enrolled at the Julien Academy for the winter and am going to put in some months of hard drawing before I jump into color. I work only in the morning and spend the afternoons looking at pictures. I am such a sober person pacing the long galleries of the Louvre studying the wonderful paintings that no one would dream I am the harum-scarum I really am. Papa gave me a very serious talking to about how to conduct myself in Paris and I find, as usual, his advice is excellent. His theory is that any grown woman can go anywhere she wants to alone in Paris, provided she has some business to attend to and attends to it.
Of course Mrs. Pace is merely a nominal chaperone for me until your mother comes. She really seldom sees me, and when she does she is so full of her own affairs that she hardly remembers I have any; and then when she recalls that she is supposed to be my chaperone, she feels called upon to tell me to do my hair differently, or she does not like my best hat, or something else equally out of her province. But I am not going to tell you any more about her, as you can judge for yourself when you see her.
I am sorry your brother, Kent, cannot carry out his plan of studying at the Beaux Arts, but maybe something will turn up and he can come after all. I might have known Aunt Clay would obstruct, all she had in her power, but thank goodness, her power is limited and your mother will finally get the full amount of money for her oil lands that Papa thought she should have. As for being in Paris without much money, it really is a grand place to be poor in; and one can have more fun here on a franc than in New York on a dollar.
Hug your darling mother for me, and tell Kent that I refuse to answer his letters unless he gets some thin paper to write on. I am tired of paying double extra postage on his bulky epistles.
Let me know in plenty of time when to expect you and your mother, so I can engage the room of Mrs. Pace and meet you at the station. I wish I could go to Antwerp to be there when you arrive or even meet you halfway in Brussels, but I must put the temptation from me and await you quietly in Paris. Good-by, my darling old Molly Brown,
Your own devoted, ever loving
JUDY.
* * * * *
Steamer letter from Professor Edwin Green of Wellington College to Miss Molly Brown of Kentucky, sailing on S. S. Laurens.
Wellington College.
My dear Miss Molly:
Surely the "best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft aglee." I feel more like a mouse caught in a trap than a man, just now. I have been thinking of nothing else all summer but the delightful time I should have with you and your mother in Paris. It is my sabbatical year at Wellington, which means a fine long holiday, one much needed and looked forward to by all hard-worked professors. But just as I began to prepare for this delightful trip, I found that my substitute had in the most unaccountable manner, disappointed the President, Miss Walker, and Wellington was in a fair way to open without a professor of English. Of course I had to rush to the rescue and here I am in the old grind again.
I really do not mind teaching, enjoy it, in fact, but oh, my holiday and those walks and jaunts I have been dreaming of in Paris! Miss Walker is deeply grateful to me for helping her out of this difficulty, and is doing all in her power to find a suitable person to take my place; and of course, I, too, am reaching out in every direction for help.
One thing, I do not intend to be like poor Jacob: serve seven years more before I get my reward. I feel in a way that this is making up to the College for the long, enforced holiday two years ago, when I was so ill with typhoid fever.
My sister Grace had made her plans to spend the winter in New York as she did not expect to be needed by me as housekeeper, so I am "baching" again; and very lonesome it is after being so spoiled and looked after by Grace.
The place seems sad and gloomy to me