September 21st.

 

We had hardly got here when father received a telegram saying he would have to come right back to New York.  It was for something about his business—I don’t know exactly what; you know I never understand those things, never want to.  We had just got settled at the hotel, in some charming rooms, and mother and I, as you may imagine, were greatly annoyed.  Father is extremely fussy¹, as you know, and his first idea, as soon as he found he should have to go back, was that we should go back with him.  He declared he would never leave us in Paris alone, and that we must return and come out again.  I don’t know what he thought would happen to us; I suppose he thought we should be too extravagant².  It’s father’s theory that we are always running up bills, whereas a little observation would show him that we wear the same old rags FOR MONTHS.  But father has no observation; he has nothing but theories.  Mother and I, however, have, fortunately, a great deal of practice, and we succeeded in making him understand that we wouldn’t budge³ from Paris, and that we would rather be chopped into small pieces than cross that dreadful ocean again.  So, at last, he decided⁴ to go back alone, and to leave us here for three months.  But, to show you how fussy he is, he refused to let us stay at the hotel, and insisted that we should go into a family.  I don’t know what put such an idea into his head, unless it was some advertisement that he saw in one of the American papers that are published here.

 

There are families here who receive American and English people to live with them, under the pretence⁵ of teaching them French.  You may imagine what people they are—I mean the families themselves.  But the Americans who choose this peculiar⁶ manner of seeing Paris must be actually just as bad.  Mother and I were

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