My dear Nell,Here are the two dollars which I never touched after all. [no longer with the letter] I even had fifty-five cents left of my own lucre. However it was comforting to know that I was not quite strapped, "in case of fire", you know. I had a nice time at Grendell Hall. After dinner I packed & scrubbed and dressed and write Elizabeth a detailed account of our experiences and took a walk to hunt up something to take to Mamma, then spent the rest of the time reading until it grew dusky and then I had to feel a triple melancholy to think that the party was all over. But on the whole it wasn't a bit forlorn but only nice and restful.
My journey was very uneventful and not very tiresome. Mamma seems frightfully tired and Syd's gone to work so little Lucelet will have to buckle to now & sail into housework.
I slept nearly twelve hours last night & to-day feel ready for another hundred and twenty miles.
To-day I've been busy with all sorts of things. The young cousin came from Elmira. She's a nice little thing but I feel as though I had an elephant on my hands - we have so few points in common. I have put my leisure to-day on the Llamarada. Isn't it fine? I'm proud of '98. But to-morrow I mean to get the Anabasis started.
Now don't wait seventeen years but let me know right away how you found Reddy and whether you've at last got your possessions together and how your father is and everything else that's happened since we separated at Pittsfield.
What a good time it was! And what a grateful girl I should be! It was good to be together & to feel that those everlasting "new interests" hadn't spoiled the old comradeship, wasn't it? Miss R- was harrowing, but then, everything else was beautiful. I feel as thought I ought to be happy & contented now for a whole year in the memory of the Berkshires & the hope of another re-union next June. Remember me to all your family,
Your loving Fish.
20 West Fourth St.
Jamestown, N.Y.
Monday, July 12, 1897.