Will you kindly convey to me a comprehensible reason why I should
not accept that scholarship? I don't understand your objection
in the least. But anyway, it won't do the slightest good for you
to object, for I've already accepted it and I am not going to change!
That sounds a little impertinent, but I don't mean it so.

I suppose you feel that when you set out to educate me, you'd like to
finish the work, and put a neat period, in the shape of a diploma,
at the end.

But look at it just a second from my point of view. I shall owe my
education to you just as much as though I let you pay for the whole of it,
but I won't be quite so much indebted. I know that you don't want me
to return the money, but nevertheless, I am going to want to do it,
if I possibly can; and winning this scholarship makes it so much easier.
I was expecting to spend the rest of my life in paying my debts,
but now I shall only have to spend one-half of the rest of it.

I hope you understand my position and won't be cross. The allowance
I shall still most gratefully accept. It requires an allowance
to live up to Julia and her furniture! I wish that she had been
reared to simpler tastes, or else that she were not my room-mate.

This isn't much of a letter; I meant to have written a lot--but I've
been hemming four window curtains and three portieres (I'm glad you
can't see the length of the stitches), and polishing a brass desk
set with tooth powder (very uphill work), and sawing off picture
wire with manicure scissors, and unpacking four boxes of books,
and putting away two trunkfuls of clothes (it doesn't seem believable
that Jerusha Abbott owns two trunks full of clothes, but she does!)