Daddy-Long-Legs and Dear Enemy by Jean Webster Read Free Book Online

in vacation; there’s another Freshman who lives in Texas staying behind, and we are planning to take long walks and—if there’s any ice—learn to skate. Then there is still the whole library to be read—and three empty weeks to do it in!
    Good-by, Daddy, I hope that you are feeling as happy as I am.
    Yours ever,
    JUDY.
    Â 
    P.S. Don’t forget to answer my question. If you don’t want the trouble of writing, have your secretary telegraph. He can just say:
    Mr. Smith is quite bald,
or
Mr. Smith is not bald,
or
Mr. Smith has white hair.
    And you can deduct the twenty-five cents out of my allowance.
    Good-by till January—and a merry Christmas!
    Toward the end of
the Christmas vacation.
Exact date unknown.
    Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
    Is it snowing where you are? All the world that I see from my tower is draped in white and the flakes are coming down as big as pop-corn. It’s late afternoon—the sun is just setting (a cold yellow color) behind some colder violet hills, and I am up in my window seat using the last light to write to you.
    Your five gold pieces were a surprise! I’m not used to receiving Christmas presents. You have already given me such lots of things—everything I have, you know—that I don’t quite feel that I deserve extras. But I like them just the same. Do you want to know what I bought with my money?
    I. A silver watch in a leather case to wear on my wrist and get me to recitations on time.
    II. Matthew Arnold’s poems. 17
    III. A hot water bottle.
    IV. A steamer rug. (My tower is cold.)
    V. Five hundred sheets of yellow manuscript paper. (I’m going to commence being an author pretty soon.)
    VI. A dictionary of synonyms. (To enlarge the author’s vocabulary.)
    VII. (I don’t much like to confess this last item, but I will.) A pair of silk stockings.
    And now, Daddy, never say I don’t tell all!
    It was a very low motive, if you must know it, that prompted the silk stockings. Julia Pendleton comes into my room to do geometry, and she sits cross legged on the couch and wears silk stockings every night. But just wait—as soon as she gets back from vacation I shall go in and sit on her couch in my silk stockings. You see, Daddy, the miserable creature that I am—but at least I’m honest; and you knew already, from my asylum record, that I wasn’t perfect, didn’t you?
    To recapitulate (that’s the way the English instructor begins every other sentence), I am very much obliged for my seven presents. I’m pretending to myself that they came in a box from my family in California. The watch is from father, the rug from mother, the hot water bottle from grandmother—who is always worrying for fear I shall catch cold in this climate—and the yellow paper from my little brother Harry. My sister Isobel gave me the silk stockings, and Aunt Susan the Matthew Arnold poems; Uncle Harry (little Harry is named for him) gave me the dictionary. He wanted to send chocolates, but I insisted on synonyms.
    You don’t object do you, to playing the part of a composite family?
    And now, shall I tell you about my vacation, or are you only interested in my education as such? I hope you appreciate the delicate shade of meaning in “as such.” It is the latest addition to my vocabulary.
    The girl from Texas is named Leonora Fenton. (Almost as funny as Jerusha, isn’t it?) I like her, but not so much as Sallie McBride; I shall never like any one so much as Sallie—except you. I must always like you the best of all, because you’re my whole family rolled into one. Leonora and I and two Sophomores have walked ’cross country every pleasant day and explored the whole neighborhood, dressed in short skirts and knit jackets and caps, and carrying shinny sticks to whack things with. Once we walked into town—four miles—and stopped at a restaurant where the college girls go for dinner. Broiled lobster