“You are doing very well indeed, my dear. Really, I could ask nothing more of you.”
What a pity grandmother could not have passed on her charm as well as her money to me!
But I am thankful for the money, though money can never play a tremendously large part in my life, because it is so much less interesting than some other things. But as I said, I have been out shopping, and you ought to see what I bought Annie Laurie—a picture of the sea that I know she will love. And I got a watch for Paralee Panther—a wrist watch. She’s really a school-teacher at last, as I think I told you, so the watch will be useful. But I have presents for everybody. Buying these things for the people dear to me keeps me from feeling homesick.
Good night, Carin. It is time to dress for dinner. And after that comes the theater, and I am glad. I do love the theater! And best of all I enjoy the moment when the curtain begins to rise. It is such a throbbing moment. What will one see? What story is to be told? Will one forget that it is a play and believe it all to be true? Will one like life better for having seen it? Will one go out dancing or weeping?
Oh, it’s a great moment when the curtain begins to rise.
I meant to have sent you a dozen letters between my last one and this, but we have been so busy that I simply could not write. I thought I was a particularly strong person, but I give you my word, Carin, that at the end of a day of sight-seeing I am glad to eat my dinner and slip into my bed. However, there is usually something required of me between the eating of the dinner and the seeking of my couch, for we have been entertaining much, and have been much entertained.
We left London late in May and sailed to Genoa, and since then we have been seeing Italy. As it chanced, Aunt Lorena fell in with some old friends who have been living for years near Fiesole, and they decided to journey with us. This has given us the entrée to many homes which we should otherwise not have seen, and it has all been very gay and diverting.
Never have I loved any place as I do Italy. Such beauty, such pathos! I cannot express all I feel, though my diary shall some day show you that I have tried. But more of that some other time, dear girl. I insist that we must be together this winter for a while. Am I right in thinking you will go home for the winter, and that you are to have the delicious experience of preparing your trousseau there in your own dear old home? I want to help with that. I have hunted out a few little things that may find a place in it, and I want to use my needle in your service.