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Towards the end of the Christmas vacation. Exact date unknown

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

Is it snowing where you are? 

All the world that I see from my tower is draped in white and the flakes are coming down as big as pop-corns. 

It's late afternoon— the sun is just setting (a cold yellow colour) behind some colder violet hills, and I am up in my window seat using the last light to write to you.

Your five gold pieces were a surprise! I'm not used to receiving Christmas presents. 

You have already given me such lots of things— everything I have, you know— that I don't quite feel that I deserve extras. 

But I like them just the same. 

Do you want to know what I bought with my money?

I. A silver watch in a leather case to wear on my wrist and get me to recitations in time.

II. Matthew Arnold's poems.

III. A hot water bottle.

IV. A steamer rug. (My tower is cold.)

V. Five hundred sheets of yellow manuscript paper. (I'm going to commence being an author pretty soon.)

VI. A dictionary of synonyms. (To enlarge the author's vocabulary.)

VII. (I don't much like to confess this last item, but I will.) A pair of silk stockings.

And now, Daddy, never say I don't tell all! It was a very low motive, if you must know it, that prompted the silk stockings. 

Julia Pendleton comes into my room to do geometry, and she sits cross-legged on the couch and wears silk stockings every night. 

But just wait— as soon as she gets back from vacation I shall go in and sit on her couch in my silk stockings. 

You see, Daddy, the miserable creature that I am but at least I'm honest; and you knew already, from my asylum record, that I wasn't perfect, didn't you?

To recapitulate (that's the way the English instructor begins every other sentence), I am very much obliged for my seven presents. 

I'm pretending to myself that they came in a box from my family in California. 

The watch is from father, the rug from mother, the hot water bottle from grandmother who is always worrying for fear I shall catch cold in this climate— and the yellow paper from my little brother Harry. 

My sister Isabel gave me the silk stockings, and Aunt Susan the Matthew Arnold poems; 

Uncle Harry (little Harry is named after him) gave me the dictionary. 

He wanted to send chocolates, but I insisted on synonyms.

You don't object, do you, to playing the part of a composite family?