Daddy Long-Legs - Джин Уэбстер 2 стр.

My room is up in a tower that used to be the contagious ward before they built the new infirmary. There are three other girls on the same floor of the towera Senior who wears spectacles and is always asking us please to be a little more quiet, and two Freshmen named Sallie McBride and Julia Rutledge Pendleton. Sallie has red hair and a turn-up nose and is quite friendly; Julia comes from one of the first families in New York and has nt noticed me yet. They room together and the Senior and I have singles. Usually Freshmen cant get singles; they are very scarce, but I got one without even asking. I suppose the registrar did nt think it would be right to ask a properly brought-up girl to room with a foundling. You see there are advantages!

My room is on the northwest corner with two windows and a view. After you ve lived in a ward for eighteen years with twenty room-mates, it is restful to be alone. This is the first chance I ve ever had to get acquainted with Jerusha Abbott. I think I m going to like her.

Do you think you are?

They are organizing the Freshman basket-ball team and there s just a chance that I shall make it. I m little of course, but terribly quick and wiry and tough. While the others are hopping about in the air, I can dodge under their feet and grab the ball. It s loads of fun practisingout in the athletic field in the afternoon with the trees all red and yellow and the air full of the smell of burning leaves, and everybody laughing and shouting. These are the happiest girls I ever sawand I am the happiest of all!

I meant to write a long letter and tell you all the things I m learning (Mrs. Lippett said you wanted to know) but 7th hour has just rung, and in ten minutes I m due at the athletic field in gymnasium clothes. Dont you hope I ll make the team?

P. S. (9 oclock.)

Sallie McBride just poked her head in at my door. This is what she said:

I m so homesick that I simply cant stand it. Do you feel that way?

I smiled a little and said no, I thought I could pull through. At least homesickness is one disease that I ve escaped! I never heard of anybody being asylumsick, did you?

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

Did you ever hear of Michael Angelo?

He was a famous artist who lived in Italy in the Middle Ages. Everybody in English Literature seemed to know about him and the whole class laughed because I thought he was an archangel. He sounds like an archangel, does nt he? The trouble with college is that you are expected to know such a lot of things you ve never learned. It s very embarrassing at times. But now, when the girls talk about things that I never heard of, I just keep still and look them up in the encyclopedia.

I made an awful mistake the first day. Somebody mentioned Maurice Maeterlinck, and I asked if she was a Freshman. That joke has gone all over college. But anyway, I m just as bright in class as any of the othersand brighter than some of them!

Do you care to know how I ve furnished my room? It s a symphony in brown and yellow. The wall was tinted buff, and I ve bought yellow denim curtains and cushions and a mahogany desk (second hand for three dollars) and a rattan chair and a brown rug with an ink spot in the middle. I stand the chair over the spot.

The windows are up high; you cant look out from an ordinary seat. But I unscrewed the looking-glass from the back of the bureau, upholstered the top, and moved it up against the window. It s just the right height for a window seat. You pull out the drawers like steps and walk up. Very comfortable!

Sallie McBride helped me choose the things at the Senior auction. She has lived in a house all her life and knows about furnishing. You cant imagine what fun it is to shop and pay with a real five-dollar bill and get some changewhen you ve never had more than a nickel in your life. I assure you, Daddy dear, I do appreciate that allowance.

Sallie is the most entertaining person in the worldand Julia Rutledge Pendleton the least so. It s queer what a mixture the registrar can make in the matter of room-mates. Sallie thinks everything is funnyeven flunkingand Julia is bored at everything. She never makes the slightest effort to be amiable. She believes that if you are a Pendleton, that fact alone admits you to heaven without any further examination. Julia and I were born to be enemies.

And now I suppose you ve been waiting very impatiently to hear what I am learning?

I. Latin: Second Punic war. Hannibal and his forces pitched camp at Lake Trasimenus last night. They prepared an ambuscade for the Romans, and a battle took place at the fourth watch this morning. Romans in retreat.

II. French: 24 pages of the Three Musketeers and third conjugation, irregular verbs.

III. Geometry: Finished cylinders; now doing cones.

IV. English: Studying exposition. My style improves daily in clearness and brevity.

V. Physiology: Reached the digestive system. Bile and the pancreas next time. Yours, on the way to being educated,

P. S. I hope you never touch alcohol, Daddy?

It does dreadful things to your liver.

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

I ve changed my name.

I m still Jerusha in the catalogue, but I m Judy every place else. It s sort of too bad, is nt it, to have to give yourself the only pet name you ever had? I did nt quite make up the Judy though. That s what Freddie Perkins used to call me before he could talk plain.

I wish Mrs. Lippett would use a little more ingenuity about choosing babies names. She gets the last names out of the telephone bookyou ll find Abbott on the first pageand she picks the Christian names up anywhere; she got Jerusha from a tombstone. I ve always hated it; but I rather like Judy. It s such a silly name. It belongs to the kind of girl I m nota sweet little blue-eyed thing, petted and spoiled by all the family, who romps her way through life without any cares. Would nt it be nice to be like that? Whatever faults I may have, no one can ever accuse me of having been spoiled by my family! But it s sort of fun to pretend I ve been. In the future please always address me as Judy.

Do you want to know something? I have three pairs of kid gloves. I ve had kid mittens before from the Christmas tree, but never real kid gloves with five fingers. I take them out and try them on every little while. It s all I can do not to wear them to classes.

(Dinner bell. Good-by.)

JUDY AND THE ORPHANS AT JOHN GRIER HOME.

What do you think, Daddy? The English instructor said that my last paper shows an unusual amount of originality. She did, truly. Those were her words. It does nt seem possible, does it, considering the eighteen years of training that I ve had? The aim of the John Grier Home (as you doubtless know and heartily approve of) is to turn the ninety-seven orphans into ninety-seven twins.

The unusual artistic ability which I exhibit, was developed at an early age through drawing chalk pictures of Mrs. Lippett on the woodshed door.

The unusual artistic ability which I exhibit, was developed at an early age through drawing chalk pictures of Mrs. Lippett on the woodshed door.

I hope that I dont hurt your feelings when I criticize the home of my youth? But you have the upper hand, you know, for if I become too impertinent, you can always stop payment on your checks. That is nt a very polite thing to saybut you cant expect me to have any manners; a foundling asylum is nt a young ladies finishing school.

You know, Daddy, it is nt the work that is going to be hard in college. It s the play. Half the time I dont know what the girls are talking about; their jokes seem to relate to a past that every one but me has shared. I m a foreigner in the world and I dont understand the language. It s a miserable feeling. I ve had it all my life. At the high school the girls would stand in groups and just look at me. I was queer and different and everybody knew it. I could feel John Grier Home written on my face. And then a few charitable ones would make a point of coming up and saying something polite. I hated every one of themthe charitable ones most of all.

Nobody here knows that I was brought up in an asylum. I told Sallie McBride that my mother and father were dead, and that a kind old gentleman was sending me to collegewhich is entirely true so far as it goes. I dont want you to think I am a coward, but I do want to be like the other girls, and that Dreadful Home looming over my childhood is the one great big difference. If I can turn my back on that and shut out the remembrance, I think I might be just as desirable as any other girl. I dont believe there s any real, underneath difference, do you?

Anyway, Sallie McBride likes me!

I ve just been reading this letter over and it sounds pretty un-cheerful. But cant you guess that I have a special topic due Monday morning and a review in geometry and a very sneezy cold?

I forgot to mail this yesterday so I will add an indignant postscript. We had a bishop this morning, and what do you think he said?

The most beneficent promise made us in the Bible is this, The poor ye have always with you. They were put here in order to keep us charitable.

The poor, please observe, being a sort of useful domestic animal. If I had nt grown into such a perfect lady, I should have gone up after service and told him what I thought.

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

I ve made the basket-ball team and you ought to see the bruise on my left shoulder. It s blue and mahogany with little streaks of orange. Julia Pendleton tried for the team, but she did nt make it. Hooray!

You see what a mean disposition I have.

College gets nicer and nicer. I like the girls and the teachers and the classes and the campus and the things to eat. We have ice-cream twice a week and we never have corn-meal mush.

You only wanted to hear from me once a month, did nt you? And I ve been peppering you with letters every few days! But I ve been so excited about all these new adventures that I must talk to somebody; and you re the only one I know. Please excuse my exuberance; I ll settle pretty soon. If my letters bore you, you can always toss them into the waste-basket. I promise not to write another till the middle of November.

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

Listen to what I ve learned to-day:

The area of the convex surface of the frustum of a regular pyramid is half the product of the sum of the perimeters of its bases by the altitude of either of its trapezoids.

It does nt sound true, but it isI can prove it!

You ve never heard about my clothes, have you, Daddy? Six dresses, all new and beautiful and bought for menot handed down from somebody bigger. Perhaps you dont realize what a climax that marks in the career of an orphan? You gave them to me, and I am very, very, very much obliged. It s a fine thing to be educatedbut nothing compared to the dizzying experience of owning six new dresses. Miss Pritchard who is on the visiting committee picked them outnot Mrs. Lippett, thank goodness. I have an evening dress, pink mull over silk (I m perfectly beautiful in that), and a blue church dress, and a dinner dress of red veiling with Oriental trimming (makes me look like a Gipsy) and another of rose-colored challis, and a gray street suit, and an every-day dress for classes. That would nt be an awfully big wardrobe for Julia Rutledge Pendleton, perhaps, but for Jerusha AbbottOh, my!

I suppose you re thinking now what a frivolous, shallow, little beast she is, and what a waste of money to educate a girl?

But Daddy, if you d been dressed in checked ginghams all your life, you d appreciate how I feel. And when I started to the high school, I entered upon another period even worse than the checked ginghams.

The poor box.

You cant know how I dreaded appearing in school in those miserable poor-box dresses. I was perfectly sure to be put down in class next to the girl who first owned my dress, and she would whisper and giggle and point it out to the others. The bitterness of wearing your enemies cast-off clothes eats into your soul. If I wore silk stockings for the rest of my life, I dont believe I could obliterate the scar.

At the fourth watch on Thursday the 13th of November, Hannibal routed the advance guard of the Romans and led the Carthaginian forces over the mountains into the plains of Casilinum. A cohort of light armed Numidians engaged the infantry of Quintus Fabius Maximus. Two battles and light skirmishing. Romans repulsed with heavy losses.

P. S. I know I m not to expect any letters in return, and I ve been warned not to bother you with questions, but tell me, Daddy, just this onceare you awfully old or just a little old? And are you perfectly bald or just a little bald? It is very difficult thinking about you in the abstract like a theorem in geometry.

Given a tall rich man who hates girls, but is very generous to one quite impertinent girl, what does he look like?

R.S.V.P.

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

You never answered my question and it was very important.

ARE YOU BALD?

I have it planned exactly what you look likevery satisfactorilyuntil I reach the top of your head, and then I am stuck. I cant decide whether you have white hair or black hair or sort of sprinkly gray hair or maybe none at all.

Here is your portrait:

But the problem is, shall I add some hair?

Would you like to know what color your eyes are? They re gray, and your eyebrows stick out like a porch roof (beetling, they re called in novels) and your mouth is a straight line with a tendency to turn down at the corners. Oh, you see, I know! You re a snappy old thing with a temper.