Dart starts off answering the multiple letters he received from Dot, written while she was in Kent. He asks her about the little arrow she drew after the shorthand symbol at the end of one of her letters. Later in this letter, the light dawns on Dart and he realizes the arrow is her “shorthand” for his name!

He is perplexed by her latest initial code of I.L.Y.D.M.T.Y.E.K. He hopes it’s something nice, but he suspects it’s one of those slogans. I wonder if we’ll ever know.

He talks about listening to the Hour of Charm radio program on Sunday nights in Cleveland and mentions some of the great songs they played. “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” “Stardust,” and “Lover Come Back to Me” were some of his favorites. He used to love to sing those particular tunes in the Shaw High School choir.

He commented that his mother was delighted to get a letter from Dot and that he’s glad Dot doesn’t smoke. To her earlier comment that boys never look at her, he responded, “I don’t understand why boys don’t look. The minute I saw you the first time, I murmured ‘I hope she’s my date.'”

He told her how much he enjoyed her letters and how much her liked her. The last thing he would want is for either of them to get tired of each other before they had a chance to see each other again. He reluctantly suggested that maybe they should just write two or three times a week and see how that went. (Spoiler alert! It never really happened that way – neither could break their writing habit!) He says he has no need to, or intention of looking at another girl until he can see her again.

Another positive, funny and chatty letter from Dot in response to two letters from Dart. She enjoyed his story about the “sick bay shuffle.” And, she was tickled with his offer of a roll of film that he claimed was hanging around at his parent’s house with no one to use it. (I think he was probably hoping he could get some pictures of her if he provided the film.) It’s so hard to imagine a time when lack of film was a serious impediment to photography. I wonder if she had trouble getting her hands on some because it was so expensive, or was that another of the many shortages created by the war effort?

In an earlier letter, Dot had used the line, “Boy, you sure do get around! In fact, your picture is sitting on a bedside table in Kent, Ohio right this minute.” Apparently Dart took her comment to mean that a mutual acquaintance had been telling stories about Dart’s dating history. Dot assured him that she had heard no such stories, but she had noticed that he knew every girl they saw on their one date in Cleveland. Still, she told him that she has no objections to who he sees, writes to or talks to. This open and magnanimous attitude carried all the way through to Dot’s maternal advice to me during my dating years. She always believed there was no point in feeling jealous – it was a complete waste of energy. You either trusted the person you were with, or you didn’t. If it was the latter, why be in a relationship with them?

She thanked Dart for the complement of saying she was as mature as any 19-year old he know. She reminded him that her teachers and headmaster might dispute that theory. Case in point; the “roof” incident which had nearly gotten her expelled last year because she acted like such a child.

She’s in a Christmas frenzy, trying to get ready for her final exams and her visit home.  Finally, she wrote that in addition to the good grade on her chemistry test, she had received an “A” on her chemistry notebook. That fact seems to surprise her more than it does anyone who knows her.

She tells Dart his “shorthand” is getting much better and to keep up the good work.