ings. Do you play
golf or hunt or ride horseback or just sit in the sun and meditate?

Anyway, whatever it is, have a good time and don't forget Judy.

10th June

Dear Daddy,

This is the hardest letter I ever wrote, but I have decided what I must
do, and there isn't going to be any turning back. It is very sweet and
generous and dear of you to wish to send me to Europe this summer--for
the moment I was intoxicated by the idea; but sober second thoughts
said no. It would be rather illogical of me to refuse to take your
money for college, and then use it instead just for amusement! You
mustn't get me used to too many luxuries. One doesn't miss what one
has never had; but it's awfully hard going without things after one has
commenced thinking they are his--hers (English language needs another
pronoun) by natural right. Living with Sallie and Julia is an awful
strain on my stoical philosophy. They have both had things from the
time they were babies; they accept happiness as a matter of course.
The World, they think, owes them everything they want. Maybe the World
does--in any case, it seems to acknowledge the debt and pay up. But as
for me, it owes me nothing, and distinctly told me so in the beginning.
I have no right to borrow on credit, for there will come a time when
the World will repudiate my claim.

I seem to be floundering in a sea of metaphor--but I hope you grasp my
meaning? Anyway, I have a very strong feeling that the only honest
thing for me to do is to teach this summer and begin to support myself.

MAGNOLIA,
Four days later

I'd got just that much written, when--what do you think happened? The
maid arrived with Master Jervie's card. He is going abroad too this
summer; not with Julia and her family, but entirely by himself I told
him that you had invited me to go with a lady who is chaperoning a
party of girls. He knows about you, Daddy. That is, he knows that my
father and mother are dead, and that a kind gentleman is sending me to
college; I simply didn't have the courage to tell him about the John
Grier Home and all the rest. He thinks that you are my guardian and a
perfectly legitimate old family friend. I have never told him that I
didn't know you--that would seem too queer!

Anyway, he insisted on my going to Europe. He said that