you'd understand that that is _her_ way of
showing sentiment. But as to Aunt Sabrina--I am not so sure!

"Things have changed since I wrote to you--there was an awful clashing
of wills in Happy House and Aunt Sabrina came out on the bottom and
since then she has an air of 'having washed her hands of me.' And
she's stopped the lessons on Leavitts, too, just when we'd gotten to
Ezekiel. But I've learned more than she wanted me to--I've found out
about the mystery, as I wrote before, only I can't explain until our
own Anne says I may--because it's about her grandfather!

"I believe in my last letter I said, too, that I hated Happy House.
Well, I don't believe I do. It's a funny place--just when you think
its dismal and prisony you see something you just love--like one of
Jonathan's rose ramblers, all pinky, climbing up an old gray tree
trunk. I can't explain it, there's a sort of an appeal about the whole
place that's spooky, as though it was something human and--wanted me!
Isn't that a silly notion, especially when I'm just here acting Anne's
part so that she can go off to Russia?

"And this whole village is just like Happy House--it is proudly
clinging to what it has been in the past and defying the advance of the
new things of the present. When I walk along the main street (and only
street) of the village I stare at the shutup houses, for, bless me, no
one would dream of opening any blinds, and I wonder if there's a
marble-topped table in every one of those best-parlors and a family
Bible on every table filled with pages of ancestors. I suppose I'm
wickedly disrespectful--when I see my dear Dad, and oh, how I want,
want, want to see him--I shall tell him that now I know he didn't bring
me up right.

"I am a 'honery' member of a club--and now I'm approaching the exciting
part of my letter. It is called Cove's Club and has rules that forbid
my swearing, talking back, smoking, lying, stealing bird's eggs,
hurting dumb animals, and that make me fight (and lick) every enemy to
the club (which, alas, seem to be mostly mothers) kill pirates and
defend my country. Isn't that heavenly? It meets whenever Liz
Hopworth has to clean the 'meetin' house' which is always on Mondays
and after there's a social. And to attend the meetings you have to
slide down thirty feet of bank to what is known around here as Falling
Water Cove, though I don't believe water ever fell there. Anyway, it
is a historic spot for reasons besi