know which is
the bigger piece to burst on you first. Would you be more interested in
knowing that Peter Morrison has bought three acres on the other side of
the valley from us and up quite a way, or in the astonishing fact that I
have a new dress, a perfect love of a dress, really too good for school?
You know there was blood in my eye when you left, and I didn't wait long
to start action. I have managed to put the fear of God into Eileen's
heart so that she has agreed to a reasonable allowance for me from the
first of next month; but she must have felt at least one small wave of
contrition when I told her about a peculiarly enticing dress I had seen
at The Mode. She sent it up right away, and Katy, blessed be her loving
footprints, loaned me money to buy a blouse and some shoes to match,
so I went to school today looking very like the Great General Average,
minus rouge, lipstick, hairdress, and French heels.

I do hope you will approve of two things I have done.

Then Linda recounted the emptying of the billiard room, the inroads in
the library, the listing of the technical books, and what she proposed
to do with the money. And then, her face slightly pale and her fingers
slightly trembling, she wrote:

And, Marian dear, I hope you won't be angry with me when I tell you
that I have put the Bear Cat into commission and driven it three times
already. It is running like the feline it is, and I am being as careful
as I can. I know exactly how you will feel. It is the same feeling that
has held me all these months, when I wouldn't even let myself think
of it. But something happened at school one day, Marian. You know the
Whitings? Mary Louise Whiting's brother is in the senior class. He is
a six-footer, and while he is not handsome he is going to be a real man
when he is fully developed, and steadied down to work. One day last
week he made it his business to stop me in the hall and twit me about
my shoes, and incidentally to ask me why I didn't dress like the other
girls; and some way it came rougher than if it had been one of the
girls. The more I thought about it the more wronged I felt, so I ended
in a young revolution that is to bring me an income, a suitable place to
work in and has brought me such a pretty dress. I think it has brought
Eileen to a sense of at least partial justice about money, and it
brought me back the Bear Cat. You know the proudest moment of my life
was when Father would let me drive the little