Dart admits there’s not much to write about, but he manages to fill four pages anyway. He’s reading some of her old letters, looking for inspiration.

There has been a minor shake-up in his mess duties. He was assigned a new assistant on the “spud table,” to replace the world’s slowest man. The new guy wasn’t slow – he was stopped. So Dart asked for his former helper back. Things are back to “normal” on that front. “Very much irrelevant in a love letter, but it helps like mad to fill some space.”

It’s nice to know that way back in April he won top honors for the most consistant writer on Dot’s mailman’s route. He had a discussion today with five other guys who can’t understand how he can write to his sweetheart so often. Dart can’t explain it either, but he’s happy it comes naturally to him. His crewmates think he’s nuts – and Dart doesn’t deny it.

He assures her that he indeed likes her whistle. His mother whistles, and she has not come to a “bad end,” as Dot’s adage in her April 24 letter suggests. He relates a cute story about the one time he tried using that wolf whistle technique that Dot uses so well. He and John Angel were delivering Dart’s Sunday papers when they saw a girl approaching from a distance. They dared each other to whistle at her, and Dart did. She actually turned toward them. “What she saw was two very embarrassed urchins pulling a coaster wagon full of Sunday ‘Plain Dealers.’ Then she actually embarrassed us further by laughing out loud; and with a vicious swish of a bright skirt, she went on.” The only other time he’s tried that trick was on a date, and the girl nearly slugged him. Still, he likes to hear Dot whistle like that.

He writes again about the “IF” he used to refer to in his letters. He had a feeling it would be a big if. “But now that big if has dwindled to a very small and insignificant if. It took only a day or so for the if to decrease in stature. The if is so small now that I feel perfectly, or almost perfectly safe in doing what I’d frowned on before. Guess I explained that more or less in the letter I wrote around May 26 or 27. Further explanation is necessary, but it’s not wise or necessary to explain further now.” How cryptic he must be with thse censors reading every word!

He wonders how he and Dot will react when they see each other again after so long a separation. Dot once told him that El asked her how she would react on her wedding night if she was so excited the night before she met him at Grand Central Station. “Well — what will you do when you get married? There’ll be another very excited and extremely happy party there, too. Namely, the bridegroom, which I hope is me!” Considering the shyness and inexperience of these two, that statement must have caused Dot to blush like mad when she read it!

“That’s all for now, my Darling. When can it, when will it end so we can be together?”

Phew! Dot is warm. She’d like to spend the rest of the summer sitting in Long Island Sound, but as of today, she has yet to even get near water. It’s the latest she has ever had to wait to take a swim. She knows it’s probably twice as hot where Dart is so she shouldn’t complain. It’s just that Greenwich had frost two weeks ago, so there’s been little chance to get adjusted to the new extreme.

Her mother got a letter from one of Gordon’s buddies today with an explanation of Gordon’s injuries. He apparently got his arm/hand stuck in one of the pieces of machinery they use on ship. He required over 100 stitches and can’t use his hand at all for 6 to 8 weeks. As far as the family knows, he didn’t lose any fingers, for which they’re very grateful. They plan to flood him with letters to distract him during recovery. Now, I remember Uncle Gordon talking about taking shrapnel in his arm during the war. I don’t know if that’s what happened here, and he’s trying to keep his wife and parents from worrying (or avoiding the censor’s scissors), or if the shrapnel incident was a different time and place. I’ll ask Mom and see what she remembers.

Dot is currently babysitty with Elizabeth Henry, who lives next door to a church. She just heard the “tender stains of a very familiar march from Wagner’s opera ‘Lohengrin.'” She supposes there’s a wedding going on. “My heart skips a beat every time I hear that march, regardless of who it’s being played for.”

No news, except that she loves him, which isn’t really news at all.

She closes with “All my love, all my life,” and signs it with the rare “Dorothy,” because she knows Dart likes to see that name every so often.