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[written] p. 35 30

[typed] Friday Night -
Dec. 11 - '96

My dearest Nannie -

The liberty scarf is a fleecy dream and I am perfectly delighted -
Can scarcely wait till next Friday night when I can wear it to the
Sigma Sigma party, except that is is such a cloud it ought to float
and blow instead of being worn. Thank you so much. It came Wednesday
and that night I put it under my pillow and waked up about a dozen
times to see whether it was light enough to open the package, but it
wasn't till about seven o'clock and then it was such fun! A letter
camefrom Theordora, saying that when we were in town she would get me
a pair of party slippers; and after dinner Thursday I found Gertrude
waiting for me in my room. She had waited nearly an hour as I had gone
to dinner without going to my room -(like a chump) she brought a
delicious birthday cake, and such good mince pie (cooked with sherry,
too) and some chickens & pickles & fruits so we had a jolly little
feed. And then what do you suppose that dear child brought besides!
And then what do you suppose that dear child brought besides! All the
useful things a person could think of and just the things I was out of.
A box of 4711 soap - and alchohol and shampoo and listerine, tooth
powder, hair pins, face powder partly from dear Miss McKinion & from
herself - Miss McKinnion sent a darling box of dress-up note paper( small
size) with oceans of stamps and top of all this Gertrude disclosed to
me her plan of making an eider down lounging robe for me. As I happen
to be out of a corset, however, I fancy it will turn into an equopoise
waisteinstead-- did you ever hear of such a practical birthday! And the
joke of it was that everything came in so pat! Wasn't Gertrude an old
darling?

The night before, Helen and I had been asked to dinner by Mrs.
Peasly the woman who keeps the Palo Alto Home Bakery. She is an excel-
lent cook and she is very anxious to get Roble Hall kitchen into her
her hands next year. So she asked us to come & try her potatoes and
her meat. We did so, all dressed in our best, and how we did eat & such
good things - just a simple plain dinner of some awfully good meat, &
potatoes & _____, pickles, jelly, celery, ice-cream & cake, but every-
thing so ecstaticly good. She boards a number of boys and three out
of the number came from San Jose & I had never heard of them. There
was also a Greelyyouth who spoke to me of the Tuckermans who was there.

After dinner, Mrs. Peasly said her husband could put a back seat
in the delivery wagon if we could wait till she did up the dishes &
they would take us home; so one of the boys who is studying for the
ministry & whom I always see in church, Helen in her silks, and I,
wiped while she washed, and her little curly-headed, adopted, orphan
boy sang us baby-songs. Then we came home in the back of their delivery
wagon & waited for her to do an errant at the Hutchinsins who are the
swellest people in Palo Alto and whose home life we had hardly dreamed,
we would ever watch thru their cheery windows from such a unique con-
veyance. Wasn't that a birthday dinner forever to be remembered though?

To-morrow night Mrs. _____ ( the vice-president's wife) has
invited all the upper classmen over to a card party - which I think will
be jolly.

To-morrow Mr. Peet calls, he is very grateful for some little
help I could do for him by getting up a bus to run from the Hall to the
church Sundays at very reduced rates which came under my official duty
as secretary & treasurer of St. Agnus guild.

I enjoy living alone so much, it is such an incentive to keep