The Carter Girls' Week-End Camp

From Douglas Carter to her mother, Mrs. Robert Carter Greendale, Va., August —, 19—.


My darling Mother:


Words cannot express the joy and gratitude all of us feel that father is really getting well. I shall never forget the miserable time last spring when Dr. Wright came into the library where Helen and Nan and Lucy and I were sitting and told us of his very serious condition. I had felt he was in a very bad way but did not realize it was quite so dreadful. I am sure you did not, either. And when Dr. Wright said that you must take him on a long sea voyage and we understood that we were to be left behind, the bottom seemed to drop out of the universe.


And now, dear mother, I have a confession to make: You took for granted we were going to the springs when we wrote we were to spend the summer in the mountains, and we thought with all the worry you had about father, perhaps it was best to let you go on thinking it. Of course you did not dream of the necessity of our doing anything to make money as father had never told you much about his finances.