Sunday, Nov. 2.Dear Margaret:
I was desperately jealous last week when all the English folk went off to Mount Holyoke. They came back with the loveliest reports, so enthusiastic about the place, the department, the charm of their entertainment, etc. Amy says you made "a love of a speech", and for Amy to whom proper speech-making is one of the ends of existence, that was a superlative remark. I understand that the meeting is to be here next year, and I hope you understand that you are bespoken for the Tower in all such occasions.
Dear, I am awfully sorry to miss a Tetherwold Thanksgiving but I am afraid I must. We have only the day itself, but I might have managed about my own classes, had I not undertaken some of Miss Tuell's. Poor soul, she has a frightful schedule and she is trying to get ready for her examination at Christmas time. She won't take money for a semester off, and as it is her almost no chance of getting through. So some of us have devised a plan of carrying two of her divisions from now till Christmas. It will give her several clear days and a real chance to work. Don't scold for it is the right thing to do, I am sure. She has never had a very fair deal here though it is no one's fault in particular, and this means a kind of spiritual encouragement as well as other things. But I do bemoan Thanksgiving and missing you. - Is there no chance that you could come down for a weekend before Christmas? Emily was talking so wistfully about it the other night. She thinks a lot even when she does not write.
We had a delicious time here the other night with Robert Frost. Always before he has come late in the year, when he was tired and beset, but this time he was fresh and perfectly inimitable. There was a dinner party first
,which was really gay and delightful, and then the charming talk and reading. But why should a soul so unspotted of the world, so fresh, so whimsical, have produced a daughter so blasé?What would n't I give for a chance to talk to you, Margaret? I never for one minute get over wanting and needing you.
Yours,
Laura[Robert Frost had several daughters that lived to adult age. "Robert Frosts's blasé daughter" was probably a reference to Lesley Frost Ballantine, who also lived in Pittsfield, Mass. for a time. Pittsfield is the town where Margaret's family lived.]