Dot’s letter starts on a cheerful note. She raced home from work at two o’clock to find the mail had not yet been delivered. While she cleaned her way through the house, she kept an eye on the street, watching for the mailman. After an eternity of waiting, she saw him approaching the house and ran out the door to great him. When she saw him coming up the path, grinning from ear to ear, she knew it had been worth the wait. Two letters from Dart! Now there’s a postman who has his fingers on the pulse of the community!

Her next paragraph is about the weather. This time, she has high praise after days of griping. They had a high temperature of 82 with a cool breeze blowing all day. She hopes this pattern will stick around for a while.

In response to Dart’s tale of the crazy bird on Treasure Island, she has a brief retort – “A very interesting story about your feathered friend. No further comment.”

She also quips, “If you do decide to go to California on your honeymoon I hope you have as nice a time as I’m going to have in New Hampshire.”

She assures him she did not do her back dive off the high tower – just the diving board on the float in Long Island Sound.

She’s delighted by the news that he has sent some pictures (his official Navy portraits) and she promises she will place one in the front window so that all the passing girls will be jealous. She promises she’ll swoon when she sees them, but not from fear.

Regarding his unspecified dreams, she doesn’t know what to say, except she hopes they all come true. She also has a few dreams of her own. I suspect their dreams align rather closely.

She’s so glad he mentioned the sewing kit that he needed. She rushed right out and bought one she hopes will meet his needs. She assures him that it gives her great pleasure to do little things for him and she hopes he’ll keep the requests coming. I think I know exactly which sewing kit she sent him. I still have it today. It is about the size of a box of safety matches, covered in sturdy navy blue fabric. It holds about a half dozen tiny spools of thread in basic colors, a few needles, a thimble, a threader and some very small scissors. I had always assumed it was issued by the Navy as part of his equipment. Since the guys were expected to mend their own uniforms and stitch on their uniform insignia, I thought the Navy would provide the means to do so.

Dot confesses her ignorance of the word “muster,” which Dart used in a recent letter. “You don’t mean the stuff they put on hot-dogs, do you?”

She tells him that Doug called last night from Sunapee. He’s only been gone a couple of days, but he missed his dad and called to hear his voice. Dot can’t understand how anyone could be homesick for anyone or anything when they were sitting by such a perfect lake.

She comments that the news from France is encouraging. She hopes the war in Europe will be over by Christmas and the Japs will be defeated shortly thereafter. Reading this comment made me realize how seldom the war is mentioned in these letters. It seems like it would have been foremost on everyone’s mind. Had it gone on so long by this time that it faded to the back of folk’s consciousness, or was it left unmentioned out of courtesy?

She adds that another week has passed, meaning she’s one week closer to graduation. She knows he has no say in when or if he’ll get leave, but she prays he’ll be able to make it to her big day in February.