Dart hopes Dot’s birthday has been a happy one. He’s glad they were able to celebrate it together yesterday, and in the spirit of the day, he ate the remainder of her cake tonight.
He had intended to write a big letter today, but it is now actually 1:00 in the morning tomorrow and he has yet to begin his psych homework. He’s behind schedule because he had to take his Aunt Mary home, then he had to delay the start of his 90 minutes of typing practice so that his father could listen to Joe Lewis get whipped. (He was disappointed when Joe won.) Now, the typing practice is behind him and psychology awaits.
Dart’s plan for a “standard day” calls for bedtime to be around 11:30, or at the very least, homework done and a letter to Dot begun by that time. His psychology professor gave a short lecture today on study habits and Dart plans to follow his recommendations.
Still no poli sci text books available, so that course may become a problem. He struggles with typing and today’s practice doesn’t look much better than yesterday’s.
“I hope you didn’t cry on the train. …I won’t say how very much I miss you, Dot, for that’s beyond comprehension and expression. I must fill my life with all sorts of artifices to forget that you’re away, and that way I might not succumb to the gnawing longing within me.”
# # #
Dot types this letter from her dad’s fix-it shop while she waits for her mother, Harriet and Eleanor to get back from New York. They went into the city to welcome her train, but the ticket master in Greenwich gave them the wrong arrival time, so Dot got back to Greenwich as they were traveling into NYC.
Her trip was uneventful and she managed to have a seat to herself from Buffalo to Grand Central. She even thinks she slept about six hours while aboard.
“Less than 24 hours since I saw you and it seems like years. But I wasn’t going to start that, was I? At least give me credit for not crying when I got on the train. I had a mighty big lump in my throat but I managed to control myself. Now that I’m an old lady, I’ve got to learn to act like one, even if it kills me, and I know it will.”
She asks that Dart thank his mother for the nice lunch she’d pack. Dot ate the chicken sandwiches at Albany, and even though she’s not used to eating chicken sandwiches at 6:00 a.m., they tasted delicious.
She hopes he’s practicing his typing because someone in the family will have to type all his manuscripts, and judging from the looks of this letter, it won’t be her. She asks that he try not to flirt with all the cuties on campus – to leave some for the other guys.
She warned him that this wouldn’t be a very long letter, and she doesn’t want to disappoint him, so she’ll end it now.