bottle of blacking all for ten cents. That was an unusual bargain,
owing to the largeness of my order.

Also he tells us what is happening in the Great World.
Several people on the route take daily papers, and he reads them as he
jogs along, and repeats the news to the ones who don't subscribe.
So in case a war breaks out between the United States and Japan,
or the president is assassinated, or Mr. Rockefeller leaves a million
dollars to the John Grier Home, you needn't bother to write;
I'll hear it anyway.

No sign yet of Master Jervie. But you should see how clean our
house is--and with what anxiety we wipe our feet before we step in!

I hope he'll come soon; I am longing for someone to talk to.
Mrs. Semple, to tell you the truth, gets rather monotonous.
She never lets ideas interrupt the easy flow of her conversation.
It's a funny thing about the people here. Their world is just
this single hilltop. They are not a bit universal, if you know
what I mean. It's exactly the same as at the John Grier Home.
Our ideas there were bounded by the four sides of the iron fence,
only I didn't mind it so much because I was younger, and was so
awfully busy. By the time I'd got all my beds made and my babies'
faces washed and had gone to school and come home and had washed their
faces again and darned their stockings and mended Freddie Perkins's
trousers (he tore them every day of his life) and learned my lessons
in between--I was ready to go to bed, and I didn't notice any lack
of social intercourse. But after two years in a conversational college,
I do miss it; and I shall be glad to see somebody who speaks
my language.