Letters from Skye by Jessica Brockmole Read Free Book Online

Atlantic? At the risk of sounding horribly sentimental, I would quite miss your letters if they were to stop.
    Officially engaged? My, my, but you are growing up, dear boy. Though perhaps I should lend you my rock-and-mineral guide, as you seem to have mistaken your Diamond for a Pearl.
    I suppose we’ll have to add commitment to the list of things you approach without fear, wild boy. What does scare you? Certainly not the college administration. Perhaps your father?
    My fear at the moment is that I will run out of ink before I’ve finished this letter. Horrid old pen!
    It will likely be after Christmas when this reaches you, butI’ve made you one of my famous Christmas puddings (in miniature). Eat it in good cheer and have a marvellous holiday.
       Elspeth
    Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
    January 12, 1914
    A Happy New Year to you, Sue!
    You’re right, you
do
make a marvelous Christmas pudding! It’s similar to the fruitcake my mother insists on making for us each Christmas. The woman doesn’t set foot into the kitchen all year, unless it’s to make a last-minute change to the menu. But every year, as the Christmas season approaches, she dons a lace-edged apron about as effective as a paper cake doily and waves all the staff out of the kitchen. Mother emerges hours later, hair floured, a smear of molasses on her cheek, and a shine in her eyes that could only be brought about by “sampling” the brandy, but victoriously bearing a fruitcake. It generally has the appearance, texture, and taste of a paving stone, but we must all eat a hearty slice on Christmas Eve.
    The joy we had this year, Sue, was eating your delightful Christmas pudding. Both Evie and Hank insisted on examining the box you’d sent, to make sure I wasn’t holding out on them. Even my father begged for more. When my mother asked, with the air of a jealous mistress, how this pudding compared to her fruitcake, we were quick to reassure her, “Oh, the Christmas pudding is good, but it’s very … you know … 
British
.” We left it to her to interpret just what that meant.
    Did you have a peaceful holiday? Any more kettles this year? I regret to say that Santa Claus didn’t leave a kettle for me, but I did get a splendid new tennis racket. I can hardly wait until the snow thaws to go try it out. Evie stitched a beautiful bookmark that reads “A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.” And my father presented me with a watch, a gold number with a thick chain. He told me it was his father’s watch and his father’s before him. “Now that you’re a man, David,” says he, “and have some direction in your life, you’ll need something to help guide you. You know
where
to go, but now you will know
when
to go.” The whole speech was rather stodgy, but Mother was dabbing at her eyes and even Evie was sniffling. It’s a handsome watch but makes me think of my grandfather. I had been hoping for a wristwatch, something I could wear while driving, climbing, and cycling, without looking as if I had just stepped out of the nineteenth century.
    My dad has been quite pleasant over the holidays. But I think you might be right; if I have a fear, it would be my father. I eventually did stand up to him about not going into medicine, but if I hadn’t done as poorly as I did my last semesters, I wouldn’t have had such an easy time of it. Even after all of his talk about me “becoming a man,” I still live under his roof, like a child, obeying his rules. He doesn’t approve of anything I do or anyone I do it with.
    I’ve always found it funny that my friend Harry is the one person my dad
should
approve of but in actuality is the person he disapproves of the most. Harry has to be one of my oldest friends. We went to school together as children, pored over my father’s anatomy texts (more specifically poring over thosepages pertaining to the female anatomy), went on our first dates together under the philosophy of “safety in numbers.”