She sits with her hands folded, a picture of patient resignation, while the daughter kills herself with overwork and responsibility and worry; she doesn't see how they are going to get through the rest of the winter—and I don't either.
One hundred dollars would buy some coal and some shoes for three children so that they could go to school, and give a little margin so that she needn't worry herself to death when a few days pass and she doesn't get work.
You are the richest man I know.
Don't you suppose you could spare one hundred dollars?
That girl deserves help a lot more than I ever did.
I wouldn't ask it except for the girl; I don't care much what happens to the mother—she is such a jelly-fish.
The way people are for ever rolling their eyes to heaven and saying,
'Perhaps it's all for the best,' when they are perfectly dead sure it's not, makes me enraged.
Humility or resignation or whatever you choose to call it, is simply impotent inertia.
I'm for a more militant religion!
We are getting the most dreadful lessons in philosophy—all of Schopenhauer for tomorrow.
The professor doesn't seem to realize that we are taking any other subject.
He's a queer old duck; he goes about with his head in the clouds and blinks dazedly when occasionally he strikes solid earth.
He tries to lighten his lectures with an occasional witticism—and we do our best to smile, but I assure you his jokes are no laughing matter.
He spends his entire time between classes in trying to figure out whether matter really exists or whether he only thinks it exists.
I'm sure my sewing girl hasn't any doubt but that it exists!
Where do you think my new novel is?
In the waste-basket.
I can see myself that it's no good on earth, and when a loving author realizes that, what WOULD be the judgment of a critical public?
Later
I address you, Daddy, from a bed of pain.
For two days I've been laid up with swollen tonsils; I can just swallow hot milk, and that is all.
'What were your parents thinking of not to have those tonsils out when you were a baby?' the doctor wished to know.
I'm sure I haven't an idea, but I doubt if they were thinking much about me.
Yours, J.
A.
Next morning
I just read this over before sealing it.
I don't know WHY I cast such a misty atmosphere over life.
I hasten to assure you that I am young and happy and exuberant; and I trust you are the same.
Youth has nothing to do with birthdays, only with ALIVEDNESS of spirit, so even if your hair is grey, Daddy, you can still be a boy.
Affectionately, Judy
12th Jan.
Dear Mr. Philanthropist,
Your cheque for my family came yesterday.
Thank you so much!
I cut gymnasium and took it down to them right after luncheon, and you should have seen the girl's face!
She was so surprised and happy and relieved that she looked almost young; and she's only twenty-four.
Isn't it pitiful?
Anyway, she feels now as though all the good things were coming together.
She has steady work ahead for two months—someone's getting married, and there's a trousseau to make.
'Thank the good Lord!' cried the mother, when she grasped the fact that that small piece of paper was one hundred dollars.
'It wasn't the good Lord at all,' said I, 'it was Daddy-Long-Legs.' (Mr. Smith, I called you.)
'But it was the good Lord who put it in his mind,' said she.
'Not at all!
I put it in his mind myself,' said I.
But anyway, Daddy, I trust the good Lord will reward you suitably.
You deserve ten thousand years out of purgatory.
Yours most gratefully, Judy Abbott
15th Feb.