Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

How did your secretary come to know about Lock Willow?
(That isn\'t a rhetorical question. I am awfully curious to know.)
For listen to this: Mr. Jervis Pendleton used to own this farm,
but now he has given it to Mrs. Semple who was his old nurse.
Did you ever hear of such a funny coincidence? She still calls him
`Master Jervie\' and talks about what a sweet little boy he used to be.
She has one of his baby curls put away in a box, and it is red--
or at least reddish!

Since she discovered that I know him, I have risen very much
in her opinion. Knowing a member of the Pendleton family
is the best introduction one can have at Lock Willow.
And the cream of the whole family is Master Jervis--
I am pleased to say that Julia belongs to an inferior branch.

The farm gets more and more entertaining. I rode on a hay
wagon yesterday. We have three big pigs and nine little piglets,
and you should see them eat. They are pigs! We\'ve oceans
of little baby chickens and ducks and turkeys and guinea fowls.
You must be mad to live in a city when you might live on a farm.

It is my daily business to hunt the eggs. I fell off a beam in the
barn loft yesterday, while I was trying to crawl over to a nest that
the black hen has stolen. And when I came in with a scratched knee,
Mrs. Semple bound it up with witch-hazel, murmuring all the time,
`Dear! Dear! It seems only yesterday that Master Jervie fell off
that very same beam and scratched this very same............