I am all alone in this packing-box of a house, when I expected to be
at sea and sailing for Newport to say how d'you do on my way to New York.
I wanted to have the pleasure of seeing your kindly face and of having
you take that niece of yours in hand for a time. The girl is getting
beyond me, and when I want to bluster she looks at me just as her mother
used to and I get so weak that you could knock me over with a feather.
She looks so much like Dorothy that sometimes I have to pinch myself to
make sure it is not her mother sitting at the other end of the table.
When a man is sixty, and begins to think he owns his fair share of the
earth, or even a bit more, I daresay that it does him good to be humbled
a little, but it's a hard thing to become used to. Hitherto when Helen
wanted anything I always let her have it, for on the whole she has always
been sensible in her desires and requests, or maybe I have been an old
fool. Didn't some Frenchman say once that an old man is a fellow who
thinks himself wise because he's been a fool longer than other people?
Anyway, that's me! For the last few days I have been itching to scrap
with her, and I find she minds me about as much as the man in the moon.
Of course, Jennie, it is a disgruntled old brother-in-law who writes
this, and you will have to make allowances.
Would you believe that last night she went out and remained till after
midnight in a sailor's house, watching a sick child, after I had objected
to her doing so, as forcibly as I could? I had to send the queer female
native who looks after us to that shanty to bring her back, and the child
returned with swollen eyes and a drawn face that positively hurt me to
see.
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