So here I am, and like to be for a month. Tell Mac theres four votes
shut up here, and I can get them for him, if he can stop this monkey
business.
Then go over to the Dago Church on Webster Avenue and put a dollar in
Saint Anthony's box. He'll see me out of this scrape, right enough. Do
it at once. Now remember, go to Mac first; maybe you can get the dollar
from him, and mind what you tell him.
Your husband, Tim Flannigan FROM ME TO MOTHER--MRS. THEODORE McNAIR, HOTEL HAMILTON, BERMUDA.
Dearest Mother: I hope you will get this before you read the papers, and when you DO
read them, you are not to get excited and worried. I am as well as can
be, and a great deal safer than I ever remember to have been in my life.
We are quarantined, a lot of us, in Jim Wilson's house, because his
irreproachable Jap did a very reproachable thing--took smallpox. Now
read on before you get excited. HIS ROOM HAS BEEN FUMIGATED, and we have
been vaccinated. I am well and happy. I can't be killed in a railway
wreck or smashed when the car skids. Unless I drown myself in my bath,
or jump through a window, positively nothing can happen to me. So gather
up all your maternal anxieties and cast them to the Bermuda sharks.
Anne Brown is here--see the papers for list--and if she can not play
propriety, Jimmy's Aunt Selina can. In fact, she doesn't play at it; she
works. I have telephoned Lizette for some clothes--enough for a couple
of weeks, although Dallas promises to get us out sooner. Now, dear, do
go ahead and have a nice time, and on no account come home. You could
only have the carriage to stop in front of the house, and wave to me
through a window.
Mother, I want you to do something for me. You know who is down there,
and--this is awfully delicate, Mumsy--but he's a nice boy, and I thought
I liked him. I guess you know he has been rather attentive. Now, I
DO like him, Mumsy, but not the way I thought I did, and I want you
to--very gently, of course--to discourage him a little. You know how
I mean. He's a dear boy, but I am so tired of people who don't know
anything but horses and motors.
And, oh, yes,--do you remember a girl named Lucille Mellon who was at
school with you in Rome? And that she married a man named Harbison?
Well, her son is here! He builds railroads and bridges and things, and
he even built himself an automobile down in South America, because he
couldn't afford to buy one, and burned wood in it! Wood! Think of it!