ause I wasn't
old enough--things that weren't suitable for children. Frieda's mother
has never let her read a love story, you know, and this man has the same
idea! He talked to me, the stiffest conversation lessons you ever heard.
It was like the dialogues in Ruskin. I wonder what he would think if he
should hear Karl and me sometimes. We jabber it all the time, he and
Mamma and I. Dad won't let us when he's around, so we talk English then,
and that instructs Karl. He's good except for his pronunciation. You
should hear him do the Harvard yell! He rolls the 'r's' so far he almost
loses them. They are even worse than you-ers, my western de-ar.

"We are going to have a hop to-night, a really hop, and I am going. They
can't put me off with the children because I haven't any nurse or
governess, and there aren't any other girls between infants and real
young ladies. The hop won't be very big, because there are only a few
families (it's not a fashionable place, you know), but we'll have a
perfectly good time all the same. I am so pleased to be going as a
_Herrschaft_, and I have a darling new frock for this and
everything. It's a soft rosy silk with tiny tight rosebuds all over it.
And I have a little wreath of buds to wear in my hair. There are two or
three awfully nice people coming over. One of Karl's classmates at
Harvard, and two boys from the Tech and a nice curly-haired freshman
from Dartmouth. And there is a Smith girl, perfectly charming, and a
rather frumpy one from Wellesley who knows your Polly Osgood, or rather
knows who she is. This girl's name is Violet, and I saw a letter
addressed to her and her middle initial was E, and I asked if her name
was Ethelyn, but she said it was Emma!

"I _wish_ you could see my little hop-gown. And the dear wreath. It
makes me think of Ivy-Planting Day at Dexter and the way the seniors
sang 'Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.' Wasn't Lilian the sweetest
thing? She is studying in Boston this year, you know, and I saw her
once. And weren't the little pig-tailed preps dear with their pink
doves, I mean pink-ribboned doves? That was your pretty idea, my
beautiful Catherine. I never could have thought of anything so lovely.

"I'm almost at the bottom of the inkstand, and I haven't told you yet
what I started to write about. But Mamma has written your mother, so
it's all right. Frieda is to land the last of July, and I'm going to
take her out to you as soon after that as your mother and