Otherwise all I have to do is wash dishes. Mrs. Tate cooks lunch and dinner and Allen gets breakfast! This routine plan is the only way for all of us to get each his work done--I mean our writing. Mrs. Tate is writing a novel (her second) and Allen is _supposed_ to be writing reviews, etc. Nothing much _yet_, however, has been done by any of us. There have been food supplies, appliances and sundries of all sorts to order--and then came Christmas with flocks of people visiting Brown’s place (about 1/2 mile away) and drinking and talking day and night. Allen also has dissipated terribly with a gun he bought (called “_The White Powder Wonder_”)! and has so far spent most of his time ranging over the hills shooting at sparrows. He did get a squirrel one day, however, and we had an exclamatory time over the stew it made. -- -- -- -- There are all kinds of game around here, even deer, and it’s a temptation to hunt, of course. Well, the expected results have already been noticed on my family! Long and ardurous letters from uncles, aunts, etc. (not Zell [Hart Deming], but she’s in Europe anyway), and a fat check from my father for Christmas. They all want me to come out and visit again--which I see no reason for doing at this time. I want to get into my work. My God, it’s the first time anyone paid me to do it or even encouraged it in any substantial way! Of course--to them the $2,000 seems like some kind of shower bath without any connection with any conceivable responsibilities. You can have responsibilities toward your time clock, your cow or your maiden aunt, but you can’t mean to say that poems or pictures demand anything but aimless dreaming! No. I’m not coming until spring--unless there is serious need of me. Mother, it seems, has been terribly ill in Miami, and did not even go to the Isle of Pines. As she was scheduled to leave for there on a certain day and, failing to, did not inform me I went on writing her there and as I got no word of her from _anywhere_ I finally gave up writing at all. Finally I got word through Mr. Curtis that he had been called to Miami to take care of them both--but I still didn’t understand her not writing me in all that time, and thought she must be angry about something. Everything was all mixed up. And I finally had a long letter from her rejoicing in my good luck and full of the harrowing details of how very ill she had been with all sorts of complications. Miami turned out to be more terrible than even I had predicted--and what this folly has cost those women in pain and in expense God only knows. Both in bed for weeks. Six doctors, nurses, compartments on trains, etc., etc., Grandma got back about 2 weeks before Grace was able to leave. The latter joined her finally and they are living at the Manor--where they should have been all the time, of course. I’m sure they would love to see you both, and believe me, there were no complications, as I had thought, between us.