They call it a lonely city. Lonely! with every masterpiece of art, music, and beautiful things within a block of you! Say, Carrie, chop down the tomato vines and come on. I can get you into every editorial office in town (where you are not already appreciated), and you will make a success. Attend, oh, Princess of the Bluest Ridge, these are not the words of one D. Hudson the adolescent, but of Bob the Perspicacious, who has seen and who knows. If I didn’t think you had the genius to win the game I’d never advise you to try. There’s a line in your letter—“I couldn’t know what the boy had developed into.” I can only say into one surely no better, unsatisfied, and always remembering the little girl next door. Please, Carrie, write to me soon, and if you don’t like my letter say you condone it, for there ain’t nobody up here like you, and I’m awfully lonesome to-night. And so, may I sign myself, Yours as ever, BOB. P.S. I’m awfully glad to see by the weather reports that there’s a freeze coming. I hope the gent that rows you on the lake will have to buy tacks to put in his oars. P.P.S. I was in a thanksgiving party where we had a flashlight photo taken. I’ll send you one when they are printed. Do I condone Bobby’s letter? The wicked, contraband little joy grows and _grows_. _Christmas Eve. Midnight._ It is snowing—a real snow. The night outside my windows is one soft whirling blur. At dusk John came in from the twenty-mile-away town. He shook the snow from his clothes like the traditional Santa Claus, and he was just as full of bundles. Two express packages for me in the big, bold hand grown so familiar set my heart to beating and my cheeks to blushing furiously under John’s scalpel eyes. Since nine o’clock, when John went to bed tired out with his hard day’s journey, I have sat here in my bedroom, dim save for the light of the leaping flames and silent save for the sift of the snow piling high and higher on the window-panes. Luxuriously I dive again into the most wonderful box of candy I ever dreamed of; luxuriously I sniff the perfume of the most exquisite flowers I ever saw, across the snow-filled air the village bells ring their faint, “Peace on earth, good-will to men.” To-morrow when I wear my flowers to church, I’ll feel like a princess—orchids and lilies of the valley—your princess, Bobby. _Christmas Day. Afternoon._