I started this, this morning, but had to stop. You see dear I have to be here from seven in the morning until nine at night, and eleven on Saturday night....
Yes, I pray for you every night before I go to bed, and for Tom also.
And then, at the end of autumn, Nell and Tom were married. In December, Lillian wrote:
Dear Brother and Sister: I am so glad you are so happy. How beautiful to have your heart’s desire, and to know that you will always have it.... My hours are shorter, now, from nine to six. Then I take long walks and talk to myself. Sometimes I pretend that you, Nell, are with me, and we have our heart talks once more; then I wake up.... I am lonesome, or homesick.
She was not very well, not equal to the long hours. That terrible ravage of typhoid had told on her. By the first of the year she was in Massillon again, always a haven in any stress. She busied herself with the housekeeping—added to her knowledge of cookery. “I must get dressed now, and make my bread down.”
Saint Cecilia making bread! And neat! Even for a saint; to her aunt it seemed that she spent most of her spare time pressing her clothes.
I had the club Wednesday eve—the girls seemed to enjoy themselves and stayed until 10:30.
Which was verging on dissipation. There were dances, too. Especially the Masons’ Washington’s Birthday Ball, an incident of which is still remembered in Massillon. Aunt Emily writes:
Among the guests was a man, David Atwater by name. He must have been seventy-five, at least. During the evening, somebody suggested that he dance the minuet. He said he would be glad to do it, if they could find a partner for him. No one seemed to be able to dance it but Lillian.
We often speak of it. It was a lovely sight to see this old man, courtly and handsome, with gray hair, and the slender, beautiful young girl, with golden hair, perfect manner and bright, youthful apparel, dancing the stately minuet. We called it “Winter and Spring.”
Dorothy was at a girls’ boarding-school, in Alderson, West Virginia. Lillian to Nell, in May: “I expect to leave here the 20th for Springfield and then Mother and I will go to Alderson, then the three of us will proceed to Baltimore—thence to New York—then it depends upon the wind.”