Dear Daddy-Long-Legs

I am a BEAST.

Please forget about that dreadful letter I sent you last week—I was feeling terribly lonely and miserable and sore-throaty the night I wrote. I didn’t know it, but I was just coming down with tonsilitis and grippe and lots of things mixed. I’m in the infirmary now, and have been here for six days; this is the first time they would let me sit up and have a pen and paper. The head nurse is very bossy. But I’ve been thinking about it all the time and I shan’t get well until you forgive me.

Here is a picture of the way I look, with a bandage tied around my head in rabbit’s ears.

Doesn’t that arouse your sympathy? I am having sublingual gland swelling. And I’ve been studying physiology all the year without ever hearing of sublingual glands. How futile a thing is education!

I can’t write any more; I get sort of shaky when I sit up too long. Please forgive me for being impertinent and ungrateful. I was badly brought up.

Yours with love,

Judy Abbott

The Infirmary

April 4th.

Dearest Daddy-Long-Legs,

Yesterday evening just toward dark, when I was sitting up in bed looking out at the rain and feeling awfully bored with life in a great institution, the nurse appeared with a long white box addressed to me, and filled with the loveliest pink rosebuds. And much nicer still, it contained a card with a very polite message written in a funny little uphill back hand (but one which shows a great deal of character). Thank you, Daddy, a thousand times. Your flowers make the first real, true present I ever received in my life. If you want to know what a baby I am, I lay down and cried because I was so happy.

Now that I am sure you read my letters, I’ll make them much more interesting, so they’ll be worth keeping in a safe with red tape around them—only please take out that dreadful one and burn it up. I’d hate to think that you ever read it over.

Thank you for making a very sick, cross, miserable Freshman cheerful. Probably you have lots of loving family and friends, and you don’t know what it feels like to be alone. But I do.

Good-by—I’ll promise never to be horrid again, because now I know you’re a real person; also I’ll promise never to bother you with any more questions.

Do you still hate girls?

Yours forever,

Judy

8th hour, Monday.