Christmas. It
doesn't seem like Christmas at all away from you--though, of course, I
try not to let Oliver see how I mind it. He has so much to bother him,
poor dear, that I keep all of my worries, big and little, in the
background. When anything goes wrong in the house I never tell him,
because he has so many important things on his mind that I don't think I
ought to trouble him about small ones. We have given up going to the
boarding-house for our meals, because neither of us could eat a morsel
of the food they had there--did you ever hear of such a thing as having
pie and preserves for breakfast?--and Oliver says it used to make him
sick to see me in the midst of all of those people. They came from all
over the country, and hardly anybody could speak a grammatical sentence.
The man who sat next to me always said "he don't" and "I ain't feeling
good to-day" and once even "I done it"--can you imagine such a thing?
Every other word was "guess," and yet they had the impertinence to laugh
at me when I said "reckon," which, I am sure father told me was
Shakespearian English. Well, we stood it as long as we could, and then
we started having our meals here, and it is so much nicer. Oliver says
the change from the boarding-house has given him a splendid appetite,
and he enjoys everything that I make so much--particularly the waffles
by Aunt Ailsey's recipe. Be sure to tell her. At first I had a servant,
but she was so dreadful that I let her go at the end of the month, and I
really get on ever so much better without her. She hadn't the faintest
idea how to cook, and had never made a piece of light bread in her life.
Besides, she was too untidy for anything, and actually swept the trash
under the bed except once a week when she pretended to give a thorough
cleaning. The first time she changed the sheets, I found that she had
simply put on one fresh one, and was going to use the bottom one on top.
She said she'd never heard of doing it any other way, and I had to laugh
when I thought of how your face would have looked if you could have
heard her. It really is the greatest relief to get rid of her, and I'd a
hundred times rather do the work myself than have another of that kind.
At first Oliver hated dreadfully to have me do everything about the
house, but he is beginning to get used to it now, because, of course, I
never let him see if anything happens to worry me or if I am tired when
he comes home. It takes every minute of my t