“The Junior year is in full swing now, and I find the work very interesting. Mr. Hardy has several of our classes, and I like him as a teacher better than any one since Mr. Carpenter. He was very much interested in my essay, The Woman Who Spanked the King. He gave it first place and commented on it specially in his class criticisms. Evelyn Blake is sure, naturally, that I copied it out of something, and feels certain she has read it somewhere before. Evelyn is wearing her hair in the new pompadour style this year and I think it is very unbecoming to her. But then, of course, the only part of Evelyn’s anatomy I like is her back.
“I understand that the Martin clan are furious with me. Sally Martin was married last week in the Anglican church here, and the Times editor asked me to report it. Of course, I went—though I hate reporting weddings. There are so many things I’d like to say sometimes that can’t be said. But Sally’s wedding was pretty and so was she, and I sent in quite a nice report of it, I thought, specially mentioning the bride’s beautiful bouquet of ‘roses and orchids’—the first bridal bouquet of orchids ever seen in Shrewsbury. I wrote as plain as print and there was no excuse whatever for that wretched typesetter on the Times turning ‘orchids’ into sardines. Of course, anybody with any sense would have known that it was only a printer’s error. But the Martin clan have taken into their heads the absurd notion that I wrote sardines on purpose for a silly joke—because, it seems, it has been reported to them that I said once I was tired of the conventional reports of weddings and would like to write just one along different lines. I did say it—but my craving for originality would hardly lead me to report the bride as carrying a bouquet of sardines! Nevertheless, the Martins do think it, and Stella Martin didn’t invite me to her thimble party—and Aunt Ruth says she doesn’t wonder at it—and Aunt Elizabeth says I shouldn’t have been so careless. I! Heaven grant me patience!
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