My dear old room-mate;-The hands of the clock stand at 9.20 - time for the bell to announce "silent-time." Is it that I wonder that suddenly fills my heart with such a longing for a chat with you that I have thrown down and book and seized my fountain-pen for just a word? Or is it mental telegraphy or is it the storm that is raging out-doors that gives me this "feeling of sadness and longing that we sure can not resist"? At any rate your letter which I carried to school in my pocket and read before school called acted as such a potent charm that for fifteen minutes I sat in the hub-bub that only our two hundred and fifty young people can make, before the bell sounded for work, utterly oblivious of my surroundings - in fancy back in our little abode of 36D. "Lay my hand on anything in that room"? Why, I can write an itemized description of every single thing that was there even to the number & sizes of the blots on the blotter!
I am glad my New Year's letter struck an answering chord. Really did you think you had all the sentiments of our room? I can scarcely believe it for someway when we were Freshmen you gave me the idea that you couldn't stand sentiment and so I always kept my bountiful store of it carefully concealed. Can it be that after four years of constant intercourse we are thus to make new discoveries about each other?
The swellness of you with not only the coveted opera cloak but also a silver-backed brush and comb! The likes of that I never can equal. But oh for the pristine glory of the elephant! The top of my dresser, however, would strike you as very familiar.
Reddy had already written me of your visit with her and yet, you ungrateful dog, you say you are "forlorn." Think of me with no one within reach but Martha & Grace and neither of them as you exactly my style. Of course I am home & laboring in my own loved High School with the loving help of life-long friends for I have no right to complain and would be a perfect heathen if I did. But really you ought not speak & pine when so near Springfield and College and in lots of ways it is easier to be so isolated than to be at home. I am dragged into so many outside things that use up my resting-time and keep me hustling till I sometimes want to drop. However I manage to thrive for I weigh 119 and that's a lot for me, you know.
I wrote to Caroline to-day about the Berkshires. I have no idea that Elizabeth will go; at any rate she simply ignores the matter in her letters - old rat! Will you lay the scheme before Mollie? If Miss Hooker fails us, we must think up something else. For I simply must "re-une" someway next Summer.
I've been talking it over with a Wellesley grad. (by-the-way it is the one who goes to Middleboro' to visit that Gertrude Robinson) who is also desirous of going east right after school closes for her class has its fifteenth re-union and she says that with reports and things there's no likelihood of our being able to leave before Sunday evening and that would get us to Springfield at 7.30 or thereabouts Monday a.m. I would like to get in Sunday at that time and have the day with you - but it is all five months away! I had had some thoughts of going by way of New York to see Elizabeth but she will probably be in Carlisle any way. Never since the year before I entered College have I spent so much time in building air-castles. Some of them surely must materialize.
Now, do be good and answer right off. Just see how I've neglected Miss Slater and some other people who wrote me away back in October (even Nan Pomeroy!) to answer your letters promptly.
I hear Abbie eyes [sic] are cutting up again. I'm sorry. Give her my love. How do you find Alice?
Time for the tardy - we don't want Miss Flint, so good night
Your loving Lucy Fish.
Sunday evening.