Although Dot’s letter was the only one he received today, Dart says he won’t write much. First, he must write to his folks because he didn’t yesterday. Second, there’s not much news to report.

The little news he does have is that he is free of his ice bag and allowed to get out of bed for a few minutes at a time. He claims that if the blonde witch nurse tries to make him do physical labor too soon, she’ll be in for a little resistance.

He relates a “tragic incident” in his ward last night. Around 2:00 a.m. he rolled over in bed and ruptured his ice bag. Frigid water and ice cubes all over his bed and himself! The corpsman who came to dry him off, flip the mattress and change the sheets turned on all the overheard lights to accomplish his task. Dart’s ward mates were none too happy and made several nasty comments about “wetting the bed at his age.”

He intends to keep trying to spoil Dot with long and frequent letters until he’s back on active duty and likely unable to write as much.

He assures her that he will never write anything in a letter to anyone that he wouldn’t want Dot to see. He also assures her that his folks have never, and will never read any of the letters he sends home. He ties them with string and his mother packs them away with the strings intact.

He trusts she’ll let him know her decision when she has chosen a college to attend. Again, he affirms that he loves her and will forever.

Poor Dot! It’s 11:00 p.m. when she finally sits down to write this letter, and she has had quite a day. She takes Dart through it step by step, starting with breakfast for Chuck at 6:30. She gets through hours at the store, painstakingly folding and re-folding stacks of rayon bathing suits while customers wantonly scatter them again, helter-skelter. Finally Mr. Pecsok picks her up and she goes off to cook dinner, clean house, bathe Chuck and send him off to bed while Mr. Pecsok visits his wife in the hospital. At last Dot can take a quiet moment to write to her beloved, but, alas! The phone rings. It is her sister Harriet. She and husband George would like to come visit with their good friend Mr. Pecsok and they would like her to watch their little Toni Gale. Off Dot traipses to babysit for her niece, with a promise from Harriet that they’ll be home “early.” Dot’s mother calls to say that several other couples have joined the “party” at the Pecsok’s, so it looks as though Harriet and George may be a little later than expected. Phew! Did I mention that she made the beds and did the dishes at the Pecsok home this morning before walking a mile to Chuck’s nursery school in time to catch a bus and get to work? No wonder this girl’s exhausted. Well, at least she’s making a whopping 25 cents per hour!

Regarding Dart’s query about his letters possibly going through the sterilizer, she responds that the blue lining of his airmail stationery does look like it ran a little. “However, having no place to go, it didn’t run far.”

She agrees that he is quite right to assume her family is a pack of kidders. She assures him, however, that she can give as good as she gets, and she just teases them right back.

She thought she heard Harriet coming home, but it was a false alarm. Asking Dart’s indulgence, she signs off to take a late-night nap on the sofa.