he pulled a big
handful of Paul's hair out and made Mrs. Smith mad, and I just up and
gave him a good fat spanking where it did the most good and it helped a
lot. I just can't whip him, but sometimes I set him down with a thud
that jars his teeth. I don't know what I will do with him, as it ain't
good for him to live in one room, but I am so glad to have him that I
ain't worrying much.

Write me a long letter Kate. I have been scared to see a post man come
my way since I sent you the letter about Billy going away, but now, you
sure can't be sore, and I will give the old man a good fat hug when I
see him ambling up my stairway.

Yours,
_Nan_.

XXVI

_Dear Kate_:

I have been house furnishing. No, not for myself, but for Charlie Haines
who lives across the hall from me. He is an awful nice fellow and is
working in the General Electric and doing real good. He told me he is
getting seventy five a month now and was going to get married to a
little girl he has been engaged to a long time, way off in Vermont where
he used to live. We had a heart to heart talk and I asked him all about
her and found she was just a nice little girl who goes to Sunday school
and teaches the girls and has never been farther away from home than
Brattleboro, wherever that is. He thought of taking a bigger room and
rooming for a while, but I told him not to be a fool, and not to board
neither. Take a little girl from the country that has always had
something to do and put her in a room in a rooming house or a boarding
house, and she would go crazy or get to chasing around with the lazy
women who live in them places and if she was not a fine sort of girl you
can't tell where she would land. A woman wants something to do, and then
it ain't no life for a man to come home from work and have to chase out
to a restaurant for his grub or down to a long table of folks. What he
wants is to take off his coat and wash his face in the kitchen sink and
put on a pair of straw slippers and set down smelling the beef steak and
onions frying in his own kitchen. And they can talk without a lot of
people rubbering and after supper he can help her wash the dishes, and
water the geranium and then get in the morris chair and put his feet on
the radiator or window sill and smoke and sing "Home sweet home." He
fell for the stuff and got quite excited, but then he sort of shifted
around and I tumbled to the fact that he hadn't saved much money and
didn't