Dart uses stationery supplied by the Oakland Hospitality House to write this brief note to Dot. He and a buddy came into Oakland on liberty today before mail call. That same buddy received a telegram from his wife today, a Wave, announcing that he was going to be a papa. He’s very, very happy. His wife will get a discharge and he’s trying for one, too. He has some sort of nervous condition (unrelated to his wife’s pregnancy).
Before coming into town today Dart had an interview with the Lieutenant in charge of his battalion. He’s pleased to tell Dot that he’s been assigned a temporary job in the office. While it lasts, it’ll keep Dart off ditch-digging and kitchen details, so he’s happy.
He tells Dot he did a couple of things in Oakland today that he thinks she’d enjoy. He says there’s no point in her asking what they were because she’ll know soon enough. Perhaps on a related note, he relates that he still has no idea what to get his folks for Christmas.
Now he bids her a fond farewell and wishes it could be as fond as one he remembers about a month ago.
Dot is tickled pink to have received a letter from both Dart and his parents today. She got a laugh out of a little note Dart, Sr. wrote on his wife’s letter, thanking Dot for the Pall Malls. “Never before in all of my seventy-three winters has Christmas come in November. Thank you, Mrs. Claus!” Dot liked the first part of the sentence because she says she would never have guessed he was a day over seventy-two. In fact, he was actually only 54 on this date!
She tells Dart how pleased she was to read his father’s opinion of her from a recent letter. She’s liked his folks from the first time she met them and has always hoped they liked her as well. Now she’ll have to spend the rest of her life trying to be the kind of person Dart’s father already thinks she is! She agrees with him when he says that the day when these two kids can begin their lives together seems very far away right now, but when it finally gets here, it won’t seem so long. She thinks anything as important as that is worth waiting for – not unlike the bike she had to save her money to buy. (I wonder how Dart will feel about being compared to a bicycle!)
A warm bed awaits and since she has nearly perished from the cold, she can no longer resist.
