ilfu' man maun hae his way.

S. McB.

March 22.

Dear Judy:

Asylum life has looked up a trifle during the past few days--since the
great Cod-Liver Oil War has been raging. The first skirmish occurred on
Tuesday, and I unfortunately missed it, having accompanied four of
my children on a shopping trip to the village. I returned to find the
asylum teeming with hysterics. Our explosive doctor had paid us a visit.

Sandy has two passions in life: one is for cod-liver oil and the other
for spinach, neither popular in our nursery. Some time ago--before I
came, in fact--he had ordered cod-liver oil for all {aenemic} of the{
}--Heavens! there's that word again! {aneamic} --children, and had given
instructions as to its application to Miss Snaith. Yesterday, in his
suspicious Scotch fashion, he began nosing about to find out why the
poor little rats weren't fattening up as fast as he thought they ought,
and he un earthed a hideous scandal. They haven't received a whiff of
cod-liver oil for three whole weeks! At that point he exploded, and all
was joy and excitement and hysterics.

Betsy says that she had to send Sadie Kate to the laundry on an
improvised errand, as his language was not fit for orphan ears. By the
time I got home he had gone, and Miss Snaith had retired, weeping, to
her room, and the whereabouts of fourteen bottles of cod-liver oil was
still unexplained. He had accused her at the top of his voice of taking
them herself. Imagine Miss Snaith,--she who looks so innocent and
chinless and inoffensive--stealing cod-liver oil from these poor
helpless little orphans and guzzling it in private!

Her defense consisted in hysterical assertions that she loved the
children, and had done her duty as she saw it. She did not believe in
giving medicine to babies; she thought drugs bad for their poor little
stomachs. You can imagine Sandy! Oh, dear! oh, dear! To think I missed
it!

Well, the tempest raged for three days, and Sadie Kate nearly ran her
little legs off carrying peppery messages back and forth between us
and the doctor. It is only under stress that I communicate with him by
telephone, as he has an interfering old termagant of a housekeeper who
"listens in" on the down-stairs switch. I don't wish the scandalous
secrets of the John Grier spread abroad. The doctor demanded Miss
Snaith's instant dismissal, and I refused. Of course she is a vague,
unfocused, inefficient old thing, but she does love the children