Dart didn’t write last night because he’d been sitting in a draft at school and it triggered back problems – “ached like somebody’d given me a foul punch.”

Although a VA check has still not arrived, today’s mail brought three letters from Dot. All of them were short, but swell.

He asks Dot if she’d been crying around 7:30 this morning. He awoke to what he thought were sobs, but no one in the house was crying. “If you were crying, it must have been because you knew the grade I was going to get on my Industry test. It was a low, mellow C-. How I dislike that class!”

Big news!!! “Beginning Saturday this week, the guy who writes you all my letters is supposed to become a newspaper man. And what’s more, I’m getting paid for it! The job is that of “copy boy” in the city room of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The job will run on Saturday and Sunday nights, getting me home around 2:00 AM. That’s okay because my Monday classes don’t start until 11:45, so I think I’ll be able to do it. I start work at 6:00 PM and the rate is $.55 per  hour. Mr. Barnett, the Managing Editor, said I’d be making about $8.00 per week. I got the job through Mr. Dildine, my Journalism prof who works in the same room for the same hours.”

It sounded in her letters as though she was about to have a great Sunday. He’s sure, with her and El providing the supper, that church meeting must have gone over very well.

He wishes she’d written to him the night she was too lonely to write. He feels like reading a lonely letter tonight. He’s not sure why he got the impression she’s good with finances, except she never appears to worry about it, nor does she struggle with managing her money.

That’s all he can write tonight because, as usual, bed is calling. He sends his love, of course.

#          #          #

“See here, Pot, let’s not go calling the kettle black!,” says Dot. “You say you get mad at me for not telling the whole truth about my very limited abilities, yet you are guilty of the same thing! You never think (or, at least you won’t admit it) that you’ll get more than a C on a test, yet you rarely get below a B+.”

She goes on to explain her dancing prize. Just before leaving Greenwich High School for Andrews, she was in a dancing contest by mistake. “We went out on the floor during a dance contest and the judges thought we were in it. I think my partner was Ray Harrington (son of the man who does some arrangements for Fred Waring), but I can’t remember. Anyway, all we did was dance – a fox trot I guess – and we were chosen as the best dancers on the floor. That was due, no doubt, to the fact that there were few couples on the floor and Ray was a good dancer.”

She adds that she wasn’t exactly fibbing when she said she didn’t like doing the jitterbug. “I don’t like to be thrown all over the place like some people do, but I think it’s kind of fun to work out a fast step now and then.” She promises that sometime, in the privacy of their own living room, she will teach him all she knows about dancing. That’ll take about 10 minutes, she claims. The short version of this story is that she is not too bright about dancing. With all the lessons she’s had, she should be another Arthur Murray now, but she is most certainly not!

She apologizes if her letters seem absent-minded lately. She admits that she has not proof-read most of them because she finds it too boring to re-read all the boring drivel she’s just written. Besides, it’s usually 1:30 in the morning when she finishes her letters.

Perhaps part of the issue is that there is a radio program on every night at midnight, while she’s writing to Dart. She gets caught up in the beautiful music and wishing she could write equally beautiful words to tell him how much she loves him. “Oh Dart, if you knew how disgusted I get with myself and the letters I write, you wouldn’t ask me to read them over.”

While it’s sweet of him to worry about her, she thinks that’s where he’ll find the biggest difference between them. There’s not much that bothers her to the point that she worries about it to the extent that he does. “The most I ever worried about you was when you were overseas, but even then I didn’t worry too much then because I knew you’d come back.  She describes her philosophy as “stoic”; What will be, will be, and worry can’t change it. She also thinks it’s selfish to worry over little things when so many people live through real problems. “Why take time to worry when I could spend that time doing something to make the situation better?”

Now she realizes Dart may take the previous statement as criticism, but it isn’t meant that way. He surely has very real things to worry about, but her life is worry-free, so why stir things up?

She hopes he won’t object, but she read his “dissertation” about the recent election to her father, who wants her to tell Dart that he’s very glad his daughter is marrying someone with such sound reasoning. “He agrees with you 100% on all the men you mentioned, and the fact that you never even mentioned the name ‘Roosevelt’ makes you practically perfect in his eyes. Maybe it’s a good thing we’re moving to Ohio after we’re married. My family is fast falling in love with you as much as I already have. I’d never be able to call you my husband. You’d belong to the whole crowd, and I’m not sure I like that.”

She passed  his best wishes on to the whole Meyerink family on the arrival of Gretchen. She’s sad his check hasn’t arrived yet, so she’s sending him a quarter to buy lunch. That leaves her with a quarter between now and payday, but she gets her lunches for free!  “Think how much more I’ll enjoy your lunch if I help you pay for it.” She also suggests that he borrow from the penny account, if he’s sure he could pay it back before June.

She tells him she’ll wait until tomorrow to review that typewritten “book” he sent.

After choral practice tonight, she and the new roomer, Virginia, sang duets for quite some time. Virginia played the piano and sang while Dot chimed in with the harmony. “Her voice is pretty and loud enough to drown me out, so we didn’t sound too bad. Mom was in the kitchen ironing and applauded after every piece.”

Tonight she was bragging to the family that at work today she was told she was a pretty good operator. Her dad, with a devilish twinkle in his eye said, “Well, did you tell ’em who your father was?” She replied, “Oh yes, but they didn’t hold that against me.”

She tells him this is the kind of night she’d like to take a walk with him. It reminds her of the night they walked through the park and came out by the car barns on Euclid. He looked so cute that night. “I love you, Darling.”

P.S. “By the way, I did read this over, and I still can’t write a decent letter.”