n't know yet if Miss North will allow me to have any love
stories; but, if she won't, Aunt Lucinda will keep it for me. I
wouldn't part with it for anything. We had such fun getting the
books; only Aunt Lucinda kept fussing about modern bookstores,
and wishing that I might have seen the 'Old Corner Book Store,'
where she used to come when she was a girl. She says she used to
spend whole days there browsing around--she really said
that--and poking under the counters and behind things for what
she wanted. Just fancy! I think a nice polite clerk that comes
up to you with a pleasant smile and says, 'What can I do for
you, Madam?' is much nicer, don't you?

"I've saved the worst of my news for the last. I hope it won't
make you unhappy, for there will be some way out of it, I
reckon. It's this: I hate the room-mate I've got to have. She's
perfectly horrid--you wouldn't like her a bit, Uncle Cliff; and
the way she shakes hands--well, it makes you feel as if you were
going to have to support her until she got through with the
ordeal--so limp, and lack-a-daisy. She's tall and thin, with
straw-colored hair and white eyelashes and cold blue eyes, and
she's from Bangor, Maine. I tried to talk with her for a minute
while Aunt Lucinda and the house-mother were making
arrangements about me, but all I could gather was that she was a
Senior, and from the State of Maine. Why do you suppose these
Easterners always say from the State of something? Seems so much
easier to just say Maine.

"There was another girl that I sat next to at dinner (we stayed
to dinner) who was real nice and so pretty. Her name is Annabel
Jackson, and she's from Tennessee. She had on such sweet
clothes. I didn't talk to her much, for I couldn't get the other
one off my mind--Joy Cross, from the State of Maine. Such a
name! Joy! If it could only have been Patience or Hope or
Faith--even Dolores, but I suppose it couldn't.

"Uncle Cliff, I've been wishing so that Carita Judson could go
to school here at Miss North's with me. She has such a hard time
with all those babies to tend. I told Aunt Lucinda that I wished
I could send her out of some of my money, but she said to wait
until you got here and then talk it over. I don't know whether
she could get a room now or not, the school is so full this
year--that's why