親愛的叔叔：

    今天我們步行進城，不過，真糟糕！遇上了傾盆大雨。我喜歡冬天就要像冬天―應該下雪才對，而不是下雨。

    今天下午，朱麗雅我討人喜歡我叔叔又來了―帶來一盒五磅重的巧克力。你瞧，和朱麗雅住在一起也有好處。

    看來他喜歡聽我們天真而又孩子氣的談話。為了在我們的書房吃茶點，仔延遲了一班火車。我們費了好大勁才得到校方我同意。接待爸爸和祖父吃茶點已經夠難了，接待叔叔則難上加難，而接待哥哥和表兄弟就幾乎不可能了。他們要朱麗雅在公證處發誓說他真是她叔叔，再把公證帶回來(我還知道黠法律吧？)。即使是這樣，我想一旦院長看見傑維叔叔那麼年輕、英俊，恐怕也不會同意我們在一起吃茶點的。

    無論如何，我們還是喝了茶，還有黑麵包和瑞士乳酪做的三明治。他幫助我們做三明治，隨後吃了四份。我告訴他夏天我在洛克威洛度假。我們高興地聊起了森普爾夫婦、馬、牛和雞。他知道我那些馬除了格魯夫外都得只能在牧場上蹣跚了。

    他問我森普爾夫婦是否還用一個黃色罐子裝甜甜圈，上面蓋個藍盤子，放在儲藏室的最下面一層。真的，一點也沒有錯！他問我在夜間牧場的一堆岩石下，是否還有一個土撥鼠的洞。是的，真的有一個！夏天，阿馬薩抓到一隻又肥又大的灰色土撥鼠，是傑維斯少爺小時候抓到的那隻的第二十五代子孫。

    我當面叫仔「傑維少爺」，他也不生氣。朱麗雅說從未見過他那麼和藹可親，通常他很難接近。但是朱麗雅不懂得訣竅，我發現男人要求很多。如果你撫摸得當，他們就會喵喵叫；要不然就呼嚕嚕睡著了(這個比喻不文雅，只是象徵性的借喻)。

    我們在讀瑪麗˙巴斯格謝夫[(1860-1884)瑪麗˙巴斯格謝夫，俄羅斯畫家，寫有一本日記。]的日記。真叩人驚人訝。請看：「昨天，失望籠罩著我的身心，使我發出痛苦的呻吟。我無法自制，最後把餐廳的掛鐘丟入了大海。」

    這讓我幾乎希望自己不是天才。他們一定很惹人厭，而且，只會破壞家具。

    天哪！雨還下個不停。今晚要游泳去教堂了。

永遠是你的朱蒂˙艾博特

星期六，6時30分

6:30 Saturday

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

     We started to walk to town today, but mercy!  How it poured.  I like winter to be with snow instead of rain.    

     Julia’s desirable uncle called again this afternoon―and brought a five-pound box of chocolates.  There are advantages you see about rooming with Julia.

     Our innocent prattle appeared to amuse him and he waited over a train in order a train in order to take tea in the study.  And an awful lot of trouble we had getting permission.  It’s hard enough entertaining fathers and grandfather but uncles are a step worse; and as for brothers and cousins. They are next to impossible.  Julia had to swear that he was her uncle before a notary public and then have the county clerk’s certificate attached.  (Don’t I know a lot of law?)  And even then I doubt if we could have had our tea if the dean had chanced to see how youngish and good-looking Uncle Jervis is.

     Anyway, we had it, with brown bread Swiss cheese sandwiches.  He helped make them and then ate four.  I told him that I had spent last summer at lock Willow, and we had a beautiful gossipy time about the Semples, and the horses and cows and chickens.  All the horses that he used to know are dead, except Grover, who was a baby colt at the time of his last visit―and poor Grove now is so old he can just limp about the pasture.

     He asked if they still kept doughnuts in a yellow crock with a blue plate over it on the bottom shelf of the pantry―and they do!  He wanted to know if there was still a woodchuck’s hole under the pile of rocks in the night pasture―and there is !  Amasai caught a big, fat, gray one there this summer, the twenty-fifth great-grandson of the one Master Jervie caught when he was a little boy.

     I called him “Master Jervie” to his face, nut he didn’t appear to be insulted.  Julia says that she has never seen him so amiable:  he’s usually pretty unapproachable.  But Julia hasn’t a bit of tact; and men, I find, require a great deal. They purr if you rub hem the right way and spit if you don’t.  (That isn’t a very elegant metaphor.  I mean it figuratively.)

     We’re reading Marie Bashkirtseff’s [(1860-1884)瑪麗˙巴斯格謝夫，俄羅斯畫家，寫有一本日記。] journal.  Isn’t it amazing?  Listen to this:  “Last night I was seized by[被……種情緒支配。] a fit of despair that found utterance in moans, and that finally drove me to throw the dining room clock into the sea.”

     It make me almost hope I’m not a genius; they must be very wearing to have about―and awfully destructive to the furniture.

     Mercy!  How it keeps pouring.  We shall have to swim to chapel to night.

Yours ever,

Judy