ime, but, then, there is
nothing else here that I care to do, and I never leave the house except
to take a little walk with Oliver on Sunday afternoon. Mrs. Midden says
that I make a mistake to give a spring cleaning every day, but I love to
keep the house looking perfectly spick and span, and I make hot bread
twice a day, because Oliver is so fond of it. He is just as sweet and
dear as he can be and wants to help about everything, but I hate to see
him doing housework. Somehow it doesn't seem to me to look manly. We
have had our first quarrel about who is to get up and make the fires in
the morning. Oliver insisted that he was to do it, but I wake so much
earlier than he does, because I've got the bread on my mind, that I
almost always have the wood burning before he gets up. The first few
times he was really angry about it, and he didn't seem to understand why
I hated so to wake him. He says he hates still worse to see my hands get
rough--but I am so thankful that I am not one of those girls (like Abby
Goode) who are forever thinking of how they look. But Oliver made such a
fuss about the fires that I didn't tell him that I went down to the
cellar one morning and brought up a basket of coal. The boy didn't come
the day before, so there wasn't any to start the kitchen fire with, and
I knew that by the time Oliver got up and dressed it would be too late
to have hot rolls for breakfast. By the way, could you have a bushel of
cornmeal sent to me from Dinwiddie? The kind they have here isn't the
least bit like the water-ground sort we have at home, and most of it is
yellow. Nobody ever has batterbread here. All the food is different from
ours. I suppose that is because most of the people are from the North
and West.

I have the table all set for our Christmas dinner, and in a few minutes
I must put the turkey into the oven. I was so glad to get the plum
pudding in the Christmas box, because I could never have made one half
so good as yours, and the fruit cake will last me forever--it is so big.
I wrote you about the box yesterday just as soon as it came, but after I
had sent my letter, I went back to it and found that rose point scarf of
grandmother's wrapped in tissue paper in the bottom. Darling mother, it
made me cry. You oughtn't to have given it to me. It always looked so
lovely on your black silk, and it was almost the last thing you had
left. I don't believe I shall ever make up my mind to wear it. I have on
my litt