'P.S.--I'm not quite sure about the m's in lammenting; it looks rum somehow, but there isn't a dictionary, so I must leave it. C.'
His other letter was much longer, and had evidently been written straight off without the elaborate care that he had given to the composition of the first one. As Babs read it, she pictured him sitting as he always did, perched on a high chair at the writing-table, with his legs curled under him and his nose very close to the paper; and suddenly, the deadly feeling of home-sickness she had been battling with for days came over her again.
'This is the true account,' she read, through a suspicious mist in her eyes, 'of how Jill ragged the doctor, when he came to dine with us, the day after the boys went back. Of course, Auntie Anna didn't know he was a beast, so she couldn't be blamed for asking him; but Jill and I much regretted the circumstance. Robin grumbled and said he wished he was old enough to sit up to dinner and have courses and courses and courses, but that's his beastly greediness, as I pointed out to him, and he doesn't know what it is to get a white tie under a filthy clean collar and then an Eton coat under that and to wash your teeth extra instead of only in the morning. But Jill came in and tied it, which was something, and she even did it better than Nurse, who used to make you feel sick by grinding her knuckles into your throat all the time. Having prepared ourselves for the awful holocaust we then proceeded downstairs. (Perhaps you won't be able to understand all the words in this letter, but it's too good a joke to be spoilt by making it easy for you, so you must do your best.) Jill had an awfully decent pink sort of thing on, and it had rows of fringe that you could tie into knots without her rotting you for doing it. Well, to come to the real matter of my discourse, we found the doctor in the drawing-room, also the old Rector, who is called Barnaby and is too old to count much, and besides Auntie Anna likes him so we mean to extend to him the charm of our companionship. And the Rector took in Auntie Anna, and the Beast took in Jill, and I followed behind feeling rotten. You don't know how rotten it is, when you are an odd one like that and nobody wants you in their conversation. You see there were two conversations all the time, Auntie's conversation with the old boy about tithes and rent charges and things that are not suited to my intellect, and Jill's conversation with the doctor which wasn't a conversation at all because he wouldn't talk. He sat and glowered at his plate like a cat would, and if he lifted his eyes by accident and caught one of us staring at him, he looked down again as if he'd been shot. His conduct was most unaccountable and reprehensible as I pointed out to Jill afterwards, and she said, "Yes," and grinned. I was greatly incensed with him for giving her so much bother, because she worked hard at him and never got cross once, and she asked him about the village and about the poor people and about abroad, and all those grown-up things, and the Beast said "Yes" and "No" and "Certainly," till I wanted to kick him. I tried to help Jill once or twice by tossing off one of my polite rejoinders, but he only behaved as if I wasn't there and looked more like a poker than ever. That was what put Jill's monkey up. She couldn't stand his indifference and acidity to me, so she began to rag him and that shows that she is in reality a brick though forced to maskerade as a girl. (That's another word you don't know perhaps but it's in the dictionary.) She smiled at him as perky as you please and she said in that soft-cotton-wolly voice of hers, "Is there anything that _does_ interest you, Dr. Hurst?" And when the Beast was so bowled over that he nearly dropped his knife and fork, she just went on and explained how funny it was to sit all the evening with some one who didn't want to talk, and didn't he think so too? I wanted to break out into paeons of triumph in order to express my satisfaction at the turn matters were taking, but I restrained my impetuosity in time and waited for the Beast to speak. He stuttered rather and began chopping up the pear on his plate as if it was for Christmas puddings, and then he said he didn't suppose any young people were interested in what he was interested in (which shows that all the while he lumped Jill and me together as _kids_ and not fit to associate with him).