You’ve never heard about my clothes, have you, Daddy?  Six dresses, all new and beautiful and bought for me—­not handed down from somebody bigger.  Perhaps you don’t realize what a climax that marks in the career of an orphan?  You gave them to me, and I am very, very, very much obliged.  It’s a fine thing to be educated—­but nothing compared to the 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.

Latestwar 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.

Areyou bald?