JUNE 9TH

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

Happy day! I've just finished my last examination Physiology. And now:

Three months on a farm!

I don't know what kind of a thing a farm is. I've never been on one in my life. I've never even looked at one (except from the car window), but I know I'm going to love it, and I'm going to love being free.

I am not used even yet to being outside the John Grier Home. Whenever I think of it excited little thrills go up and down my back. I feel as though I must run faster and faster and keep looking over my shoulder to make sure that Mrs. Lippett isn't after me with her arm stretched out to grab me back.

I don't have to mind any one this summer, do I? No, I am sure not. I am entirely grown up. Hooray!

I leave you now to pack a trunk, and three boxes of teakettles and dishes and sofa cushions and books.

Yours ever,

Judy

21.

LOCK WILLOW FARM,

SATURDAY NIGHT

Dearest Daddy-Long-Legs,

I've only just come and I'm not unpacked, but I can't wait to tell you how much I like farms. This is a heavenly, heavenly, heavenly spot! The house is square and old. A hundred years or so. It has a veranda on the side and a sweet porch in front. It stands on the top of a hill and looks way off over miles of green meadows to another line of hills.

The people are Mr. and Mrs. Semple and a hired girl and two hired men. The hired people eat in the kitchen, and the Semples and Judy in the dining-room. We had ham and eggs and biscuits and honey and jelly-cake and pie and pickles and cheese and tea for supper – and a great deal of conversation. I have never been so entertaining in my life; everything I say appears to be funny. I suppose it is, because I've never been in the country before, and my questions seem very funny to them.

The room I occupy is big and square and empty, with adorable old-fashioned furniture. And a big square mahogany table – I'm going to spend the summer with my elbows spread out on it, writing a novel.

Good night,

Judy

22.

LOCK WILLOW,

JULY 12TH

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

How did your secretary come to know about Lock Willow? (That isn't a rhetorical question. I am awfully curious to know.) For listen to this: Mr. Jervis Pendleton used to own this farm, but now he has given it to Mrs. Semple who was his old nurse. Did you ever hear of such a funny coincidence? She still calls him `Master Jervie' and talks about what a sweet little boy he used to be. She has one of his baby curls put away in a box, and it is red – or at least reddish!

Since she discovered that I know him, I have risen very much in her opinion. Knowing a member of the Pendleton family is the best introduction one can have at Lock Willow. And the cream of the whole family is Master Jervis – I am pleased to say that Julia belongs to an inferior branch.

The farm gets more and more entertaining. I rode on a hay wagon yesterday. We have three big pigs and nine little piglets, and you should see them eat. They are pigs! We've oceans of little baby chickens and ducks and turkeys and guinea fowls. You must be mad to live in a city when you might live on a farm.

It is my daily business to hunt the eggs. I fell off a beam in the barn loft yesterday, while I was trying to crawl over to a nest that the black hen has stolen. And when I came in with a scratched knee, Mrs. Semple bound it up with witch-hazel, murmuring all the time, `Dear! Dear! It seems only yesterday that Master Jervie fell off that very same beam and scratched this very same knee.'

The scenery around here is perfectly beautiful. There's a valley and a river and a lot of wooded hills, and way in the distance a tall blue mountain.

I haven't had time yet to begin my immortal novel; the farm keeps me too busy.

Yours always,

Judy

23.

SUNDAY

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

Isn't it funny? I started to write to you yesterday afternoon, but as far as I got was the heading, `Dear Daddy-Long-Legs', and then I remembered I'd promised to pick some blackberries for supper, so I went off and left the sheet lying on the table, and when I came back today, what do you think I found sitting in the middle of the page? A real true Daddy-Long-Legs!

I picked him up very gently by one leg, and dropped him out of the window. I wouldn't hurt one of them for the world. They always remind me of you.

This is Sunday afternoon.

In two minutes more when this letter is finished I’m going to settle down to a book which I found in the attic. It’s entitled, ‘On the Trail’, and sprawled across the front page in a funny little-boy hand:

Jervis Pendleton

If this book should ever roam,

Box its ears and send it home.

He spent the summer here once after he had been ill, when he was about eleven years old; and he left ‘On the Trail’ behind. It looks well read – the marks of his grimy little hands are frequent! Also in a corner of the attic there is a water wheel and a windmill and some bows and arrows. Mrs Semple talks so constantly about him that I begin to believe he really lives – not a grown man with a silk hat and walking stick, but a nice, dirty, tousle-headed boy who clatters up the stairs with a awful racket, and leaves the screen doors open, and is always asking for cookies. (And getting them, too, if I know Mrs Semple!) He seems to have been an adventurous little soul – and brave and truthful. I’m sorry to think he is a Pendleton; he was meant for something better.

Sir,

I remain,

Your affectionate orphan,