notary public and then have the county clerk's
certificate attached. (Don't I know a lot of law?) And even then I
doubt if we could have had our tea if the Dean had chanced to see how
youngish and good-looking Uncle Jervis is.

Anyway, we had it, with brown bread Swiss cheese sandwiches. He helped
make them and then ate four. I told him that I had spent last summer
at Lock Willow, and we had a beautiful gossipy time about the Semples,
and the horses and cows and chickens. All the horses that he used to
know are dead, except Grover, who was a baby colt at the time of his
last visit--and poor Grove now is so old he can just limp about the
pasture.

He asked if they still kept doughnuts in a yellow crock with a blue
plate over it on the bottom shelf of the pantry--and they do! He
wanted to know if there was still a woodchuck's hole under the pile of
rocks in the night pasture--and there is! Amasai caught a big, fat,
grey one there this summer, the twenty-fifth great-grandson of the one
Master Jervis caught when he was a little boy.

I called him 'Master Jervie' to his face, but he didn't appear to be
insulted. Julia says she has never seen him so amiable; he's usually
pretty unapproachable. But Julia hasn't a bit of tact; and men, I
find, require a great deal. They purr if you rub them the right way
and spit if you don't. (That isn't a very elegant metaphor. I mean it
figuratively.)

We're reading Marie Bashkirtseff's journal. Isn't it amazing? Listen
to this: 'Last night I was seized by a fit of despair that found
utterance in moans, and that finally drove me to throw the dining-room
clock into the sea.'

It makes me almost hope I'm not a genius; they must be very wearing to
have about--and awfully destructive to the furniture.

Mercy! how it keeps Pouring. We shall have to swim to chapel tonight.

Yours ever,
Judy

20th Jan.

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

Did you ever have a sweet baby girl who was stolen from the cradle in
infancy?

Maybe I am she! If we were in a novel, that would be the denouement,
wouldn't it?

It's really awfully queer not to know what one is--sort of exciting and
romantic. There are such a lot of possibilities. Maybe I'm not
American; lots of people aren't. I may be straight descended from the
ancient Romans, or I may be a Viking's daughter, o