There’s a lot more of it—­but perhaps you know it.  I think I have always done nice little churchly things, and charitable things, but I haven’t thought as much, perhaps, about my fellow man and woman as I might.  We come to things slowly here in Washington.  We are conservative, and we have no great industrial problems, no strikes and unions and things like that.  Grace says that there is plenty here to reform, but the squalor doesn’t stick right out before your eyes as it does in some of the dreadful tenements in the bigger cities.  So we forget—­and I have forgotten.  Until your letter came about that boy in the pines.

Everything that you tell me about him is like a fairy tale.  I can shut my eyes and see you two in that circle of young pines.  I can hear your voice ringing in the stillness.  You don’t tell me of yourself, but I know this, that in that boy you’ve found an audience—­and he is doing things for you while you are doing them for him.  You are living once more, aren’t you?

And the little sad children.  I was so glad to pick out the books with the bright pictures.  Weren’t the Cinderella illustrations dear?  With all the gowns as pink as they could be and the grass as green as green, and the sky as blue as blue.  And the yellow frogs in “The frog he would a wooing go,” and the Walter Crane illustrations for the little book of songs.

You must make them sing “Oh, What Have You Got for Dinner, Mrs. Bond?” and “Oranges and Lemons” and “Lavender’s blue, Diddle-Diddle.”

Do you know what Aunt Isabelle is making for the little girls?  She is so interested.  Such rosy little aprons of pink and white checked gingham—­with wide strings to tie behind.  And my contribution is pink hair ribbons.  Now won’t your garden bloom?

You must tell me how their little garden plots come on.  Surely that was an inspiration.  I told Porter about them the other night, and he said, “For Heaven’s sake, who ever heard of beginning with gardens in the education of ignorant children?”

But you and I begin and end with gardens, don’t we?  Were the seeds all right, and did the bulbs come up?  Aunt Isabelle almost cried over your description of the joy on the little faces when the crocuses they had planted appeared.

I am eager to hear more of them, and of you.  Oh, yes, and of Cousin Patty.  I simply love her.

There’s so much more to say, but I mustn’t.  I must go to bed, and be fresh for my work in the morning.

Ever sincerely,

MARY BALLARD.

Among the Pines.

I shall have to begin at the last of your letter, and work toward the beginning, for it is of my sad children that I must speak first—­although my pen is eager to talk about you, and what your letter has meant to me.

The sad children are no longer sad.  Against the sand-hills they are like rose petals blown by the wind.  Their pink aprons tied in the back with great bows, and the pink ribbons have transformed them, so that, except for their blank eyes, they might be any other little girls in the world.