"But I must not spend all my time telling you of my cousins and the cats when there is so much terribly exciting to write about. This is the most different place I ever knew. It is all sand and the houses look like doll's houses most of them and come right out to the funniest little streets that are not much wider that our sidewalks at home and all the nice houses have flowers around them somewhere. And they are mostly a lovely shiny gray that is pinky in the sun. Mr. Dugald says they get that way from the salt in the air and that most of the old houses were shingled from the wood that was in old masts. And he says the reason flowers grow brighter and bigger here is because years ago the ships used plain earth for ballast and changed it when they got into the harbor and that there is soil right here in Provincetown from almost every corner of the world. I held a handful from Cousin Achsa's garden and pretended I knew it was from Algiers. There are a lot of stores on the Main street and some are like the stores home and Mr. Dugald says they are a shame. It is hard to walk on the sidewalk because it is so narrow and most of the time you have to walk in the street. And everybody talks to everybody else whether they know them or not or if they do not talk they smile. There are lots of Portuguese and they have beautiful eyes and lovely voices like Isolde's. I think Mr. Dugald means it's them who have crowded out the solid aristocracy, but they are nice for they make it seem just like I was in a foreign land. But most, most of all, I like the docks. Mr. Dugald laughs at me when I call them docks; but I always forget to call them wharves. They are all gray and crookedy, as though they were leaning against one another and when the tide goes out it leaves the posts all shiny and green. And there are funny little houses all along the edge of the beach that are something like the boathouses of Cascade Lake, only more interesting and people live right in them and have flower boxes all around them and fix up weeny verandas over the water and go in bathing right out of their front doors. And some of them are fish lofts only Mr. Dugald says that consolidated companies (I do not exactly know what he means but will write it because he said it) have bought out all the small fish companies and that means that the men do not get enough for their 'catch' to pay for the expense and danger of their going out to sea. He says the Portuguese are satisfied to only get a little. Everyone knows Lavender and they let him go anywhere and on to the boats and everything and I follow him, though at first the little rowboats which Mr. Dugald calls dorys smelled so that it made me sick. But I did not want even Lavender to think I was afraid so I held my nose inside and went wherever he did. I cannot wear anything but my old clothes--but no one dresses up here like Pola probably does, which is a disappointment, for Vick let me bring her cherry crêpe de chine for she is very sure