rkins used to call me before he could talk plainly.

I wish Mrs. Lippett would use a little more ingenuity about choosing
babies' names. She gets the last names out of the telephone
book--you'll find Abbott on the first page--and she picks the Christian
names up anywhere; she got Jerusha from a tombstone. I've always hated
it; but I rather like Judy. It's such a silly name. It belongs to the
kind of girl I'm not--a sweet little blue-eyed thing, petted and
spoiled by all the family, who romps her way through life without any
cares. Wouldn't it be nice to be like that? Whatever faults I may
have, no one can ever accuse me of having been spoiled by my family!
But it's great fun to pretend I've been. In the future please always
address me as Judy.

Do you want to know something? I have three pairs of kid gloves. I've
had kid mittens before from the Christmas tree, but never real kid
gloves with five fingers. I take them out and try them on every little
while. It's all I can do not to wear them to classes.

(Dinner bell. Goodbye.)

Friday

What do you think, Daddy? The English instructor said that my last
paper shows an unusual amount of originality. She did, truly. Those
were her words. It doesn't seem possible, does it, considering the
eighteen years of training that I've had? The aim of the John Grier
Home (as you doubtless know and heartily approve of) is to turn the
ninety-seven orphans into ninety-seven twins.

The unusual artistic ability which I exhibit was developed at an early
age through drawing chalk pictures of Mrs. Lippett on the woodshed door.

I hope that I don't hurt your feelings when I criticize the home of my
youth? But you have the upper hand, you know, for if I become too
impertinent, you can always stop payment of your cheques. That isn't a
very polite thing to say--but you can't expect me to have any manners;
a foundling asylum isn't a young ladies' finishing school.

You know, Daddy, it isn't the work that is going to be hard in college.
It's the play. Half the time I don't know what the girls are talking
about; their jokes seem to relate to a past that every one but me has
shared. I'm a foreigner in the world and I don't understand the
language. It's a miserable feeling. I've had it all my life. At the
high school the girls would stand in groups and just look at me. I was
queer and different and everybody knew it.