Dart begins with an ominous question: “Did you ever gargle with aspirin?” He finds the activity highly distasteful, but he must fight this bug that has descended on him. Oh, dear! Will he be ill during his final exams? After all his waiting, planning, hoping, will he be too sick to go to New Hampshire?

He had big plans for his three-day weekend; he was going to read two books from the psychology book list and write the required reports. But, alas! “Every time I’d look at a page of print, my right temple would start for my left ear, and the back of my neck would shake hands with my eyeballs.” (The bug doesn’t seem to have affected his sense of humor!)

He tried to make a schedule of all he must accomplish this week, and it’s too much. He tried to call Mrs. Carle to say he couldn’t make it for dinner on Saturday, but she wasn’t home. He did, however, manage to fill out his application for “terminal leave pay,” so Uncle Sam should be sending him $40 soon.

Today he ran into John Rousch at the downtown library. If my memory is in tact, he was involved somehow in that big group blind date in 1943 when Dart met Dot at Andrews School for Girls. Anyway, Dart reports that John hasn’t changed, but now Dart is able to give the wise cracks right back to John’s rude insinuations. The boy seems always able to rub Dart’s fur the wrong way.

Cleveland has been taken over by fly-boys, here for the National Air Races. The sky is laced with all sorts of planes, and Dart hopes he gets to see one of those “jet-propelled” jobs before the whole thing is over.

He talks a little politics, mostly regarding the situation with Russia. “I’m afraid that we’re going to have real trouble with them, and within a year. I can only hope that the regular Army and Navy can take care of them; that we, and not they, have enough atomic bombs; and that they, not we, strike the first blow. I think that maybe the newspapers started something they’ll regret when they became a party to the whispering campaign against Russia. Also that Russia is barking up a pretty tall tree this time. Of course, their armies are not demobilized to the extent ours have been, and their equipment is almost as good as ours, because it is ours. But I think that we can handle the situation. If we should fight Russia and win, we’d be in for plenty of trouble, for all the little nations who are even slightly aligned with Russian principles would be picking at us, even as they are now. I must be on the wrong track tonight, for all I can see is gloom in the future of world affairs. I hope I’m on the wrong track.”

He dreams a bit about how much fun it would be to go to a high school football game. Maybe they could go double, which would make it almost like old times, “only better, ’cause this time, I’m in love with my date.”

Uncle Guy is finally back home, still with a fever of unknown origin.

In response to Dot’s recent letter, Dart quips, “Next time you’re down in the dumps, will you bring me a couple of tires?”

“I get a big lump in my throat every time I read your sentence about how you like to lie awake awhile and think about me. Gee, I wish this were next June and I were preparing to go there and bring you back here permanently.”

#          #          #

It’s very late because Dot and Nancy went for a walk in the rain after seeing “Cluny Brown.” The movie wasn’t as good as Dot was hoping, but it was light and humorous.

“Well, tomorrow is my last day at the playground. I’ll miss the kids, but I feel as if I’ve been running all summer and I’ll be glad to stop. I wish I knew what I were going to do when I come back from Ohio. I won’t go unless I have a definite job lined up. Everyone has discouraged me from becoming a telephone operator but no one seems to have any better suggestions. I’d like to get a job that wouldn’t be too unbearable, pays pretty well, and one I’d be able to use in getting a job in Cleveland next year. I think I missed my calling somewhere along the line, ‘cuz at present I seem to be good for little more than nothing.”

She writes that there’s not much sense in starting another page, except that she needs more room to tell Dart how much she loves him. Even with more space, she can’t do much of a job with that, but in 168 hours, she’ll be able to give him a preview of things to come down the road.

She wishes him good night, and good luck on his exams.