Daddy-Long-Legs (Webster)/Letter 43
September 30th.
Dear Daddy,
Are you still harping on that scholarship? I never knew a man so obstinate and stubborn and unreasonable, and tenacious, and bull-doggish, and unable-to-see-other-people's-point-of-view as you.
You prefer that I should not be accepting favors from strangers.
Strangers!—And what are you, pray?
Is there any one in the world that I know less? I shouldn't recognize you if I met you on the street. Now, you see, if you had been a sane, sensible person and had written nice, cheering, fatherly letters to your little Judy, and had come occasionally and patted her on the head, and had said you were glad she was such a good girl—Then, perhaps, she wouldn't have flouted you in your old age, but would have obeyed your slightest wish like the dutiful daughter she was meant to be.
Strangers indeed! You live in a glass house, Mr. Smith.
And besides, this isn't a favour; it's like a prize—I earned it by hard work. If nobody had been good enough in English, the committee wouldn't have awarded the scholarship; some years they don't. Also—But what's the use of arguing with a man? You belong, Mr. Smith, to a sex devoid of a sense of logic. To bring a man into line, there are just two methods: one must either coax or be disagreeable. I scorn to coax men for what I wish. Therefore, I must be disagreeable.
I refuse, sir, to give up the scholarship; and if you make any more fuss, I won't accept the monthly allowance either, but will wear myself into a nervous wreck tutoring stupid Freshmen.
That is my ultimatum!
And listen—I have a further thought. Since you are so afraid that by taking this scholarship, I am depriving some one else of an education, I know a way out. You can apply the money that you would have spent for me, toward educating some other little girl from the John Grier Home. Don't you think that's a nice idea? Only, Daddy, educate the new girl as much as you choose, but please don't like her any better than me.
I trust that your secretary won't be hurt because I pay so little attention to the suggestions offered in his letter, but I can't help it if he is. He's a spoiled child, Daddy. I've meekly given in to his whims heretofore, but this time I intend to be FIRM.
Yours,
With a mind,
Completely and Irrevocably and
World-without-End Made-up.
Jerusha Abbott.