親愛的長腿叔叔：

    我是個壞孩子。 

    請原諒我上禮拜那封蠻不講理的信―那天晚上我感覺好孤獨、好悲悽，喉嚨又痛。我不知道自己生病了，得了流行性感冒，扁桃腺發炎，還有好多事都交雜在一起。現在，我住在學校醫院，已經六天了。今天，他們第一次讓我坐起來，給了我紙筆。護理長凶極了。但我老是想著這事，不得到你的諒解我的病是不會好的。

     下面的畫像是我現在的模樣，頭上纏著繃帶，像兔子的耳朵。

     這樣還不到你的同情嗎？我的舌下腺腫起來了。學了一年生理學，還沒聽過舌下腺，教育多麼無用啊！

      不能再寫了；坐太久，就會一直發抖。請原諒我的魯莽和忘恩負義。我從小缺乏教養。

愛你的朱蒂•艾博特

4月2日

April 2nd

Dear Daddy-Long-legs,

      I am a BEAST.

     Please forget about that dreadful letter I sent you last week―I was feeling terribly lonely and miserable and sore-throaty the night I wrote.  I didn’t know it, but I was just coming down with tonsillitis and grippe and lots of things mixed.  I’m in the infirmary now, and have been here for six days; this is the first time they would let me sit up and have a pen and paper.  The head nurse is very bossy.  But I’ve been thinking about it all the time and I shan’t get well until you forgive me.

     Here is a picture of the way I look, with a bandage tied around my head in rabbit’s ears.

     Doesn’t that arouse your sympathy?  I am having sublingual gland swelling.  And I’ve been studying physiology all the year without ever hearing of sublingual glands.  How futile a thing is education!

     I can’t write any more; I get sort of shaky when I sit up too long.  Please forgive me for being impertinent and ungrateful.  I was badly brought up.

Yours with love,

 Judy Abbott