This is a brief note Dart writes from a hotel room in Oakland, where he and Spiegler have come on liberty. They visited the model railroad club, did a little shopping and are now looking forward to a good night’s sleep in real beds before heading back to Shoemaker tomorrow.

He feels guilty that he’s not spent enough time with Dot in recent days. He’s thought about her. He’s talked about her; just ask Spiegler and Chuck and the girls he danced with at the YWCA how much he’s talked about her!

He misses her terribly and hopes to get back to writing a decent letter soon.

Dot makes up for not writing yesterday by sending a six-pager today. I’m a little stumped about the content, but I’ll clarify what I can. A few days ago, although I didn’t mention it here, Dot sent Dart a little piece of string that she’d glued to a small card. Her caption said something about “dropping him a line.” Well, he apparently had a snappy come back for that, maybe written on the envelope, but it’s lost to time.

Unfortunately, she devotes nearly the entire first page of this letter going on about his clever retort. It seems she has shown it to the whole town of Greenwich and everyone has “practically gone into convulsions over it.” She’s told everyone how incredibly witty and clever he is, so she warns him that if his line was not original, he should plan on being on non-speaking terms with her for the rest of her natural life.  Now she must stop raving about how funny it was or there will be no hat in the US Navy large enough to fit his swelled head.

She feels the same way he does that the phone call makes it seem as though they are even farther away than before. But she confesses that even if she saw him every day, she couldn’t love him any more than she does right now.

In case he has doubts, she wants him to know that she gets the biggest kick out of his letters. Today at work she was thinking about something he wrote and the way he said it and she began to smile without knowing it. She was about 3,000 miles away when her manager walked in and found her grinning to herself. He brought her back to Earth when he said, “I bet that radiant beam on your face means you got a letter from ‘the one’ today. Am I right?” Because it’s so obvious, she’s decided there’s no use trying to hide how she feels from anyone.

In that vein, she thinks she should tell him that he’s more than a little okay. In fact, he’s so doggone nice that all she can think about is how lucky she is to have met him.

She hereby grants permission for him to open the Christmas package as soon as he reads this letter. She instructs him to keep what he wants and send the rest back. She really wants to get him something he wants and needs. Speaking of Christmas presents, she reminds him that he ignored her previous instructions to call her collect as his gift to her. She thinks it’s important to inform him that she controls 51% of their partnership, so she has the final say and he must obey. When she says to call collect and he ends up paying for the call, he has not obeyed her! To correct the error, she implores him to call again before he leaves the country and to do it by reversing the charges!

She’s impressed that the Navy lets him take civilian work at the winery. Maybe he’ll want to make a life of the Navy with rules like that. She just heard a story on the radio about an 83-year old man who had been with the merchant marine for 70 years and was still on active duty! She asks that he banish that thought from his head.

She confesses to a little scheme she has going on at work. About three times a week, Mr. Goldstein sends her to the tailor to deliver or pick up alterations for customers. As soon as she puts her coat on, word spreads throughout the store, and she is inundated with requests for errands. Today she went to the tailor, the grocer, cigar store, drugist and even stopped by her home to see if there were any letters from Dart. She fears that someday, someone will see her in the wrong place during work hours and her fun will have to stop, but for now, she enjoys the freedom.

It’s taken her several hours to write this letter, with all her daydreaming about a certain sailor, so she must get some shut-eye.