N THE CONVENT
SCHOOL AT NEUILLY

_Kidd's Pines, Long Island,_
_April 3d._

MA CHERIE:

_J'ai beaucoup de choses a dire_--oh no, I forgot--you asked me to write
in English, because it would help your spelling. That was a large
compliment, _mon petit choux_, but _do_ look up the most difficult words
in the dictionary. It would be more safe. I am trying to think in
English, but I find I think faster in French still; and I need to think
extremely fast now, as fast as heat lightning. _Aussi_ I dream in
French, about American people, which mixes me up; and one laughs when I
don't get my sentences right. You must not take me for a model, though I
will do all my possible, and improve as the time passes on.

As I promised, I begin a letter to you on the ship, but I cannot finish,
for too many things happening and the times--I mean the weather--being
so bad. Perhaps it is better I did not, for everything is different now
from what we thought. Darling Larry has lost all his money, and we are
in the soup. But it is a superb soup, because we have a _chef_ the most
famous of the world. I have almost fear to tell you his name! It is the
same as yours, only that naturally he has not the "de," though he has
the grand air and is richer than we when we were rich. It will look
strange to you, this, that we should have an employe so wonderful when
we are in ruins. But he is not an employe like others. We are as his
servants. And we have him because he helps us make our house a hotel for
the high world. He is not alone in helping us, my father and me. There
is, besides, a band who helps. Not a band that plays music, you
comprehend, but a ring--a circle of people. I have made their
acquaintance on the ship, all but one who came on the _quai_ when we
arrived, and broke the truth of Larry. I did not cry, though I saw all
my happy days we have talked of so much, you and me, fly away in smoke.
I thought not of them, but of Larry, which was worse, for I had a cold
fear in my heart like the lumps of raspberry ice we sometimes swallowed
too large and fast on the fete days. I feared he might have suffered too
much and made himself die. I can speak of that now when I know he is
saved. But he did not even wish to be dead. He is brave and wonderful
and has earned some of the money back at roulette. I hoped he would earn
more like that, it was so easy