[The letter begins on page 9; the previous pages are missing.]You ask what was the matter with me last summer. I had forgotten that there was anything. It was just a chronic thing - intestinal fermentation that has troubled me ever since the flu (perhaps you remember the Dr. Hubbard ? whom you took me to see in Holyoke prescribing soda for it.). It gets gradually worse rather than better & so far no one has been able to help it. Last summer I tackled another doctor who believed it was due to chronic fatigue & put me to bed for a week with three raw eggs a day & two huge dishes of curds from B. lacticus Metchnikoff. But it didn't seem to have any effect except to get me rested a bit! I've about given up doing anything. It's not really serious at all, but I am sure that I could keep in much better physical tone if I could only get rid of it.
I've just returned from Christmas with my family. It will be their last in India. They are coming to spend next summer with me in Kodai & will then sail from Colombo, hoping to see my China sister, tho' it looks rather impossible. My nurse sister was married in Nov. to an ice-man (or what do you call one who owns & manages an ice establishment?) whom she met during her first job in Little Compton, R.I. Small Peggy is a senior at Wheaton & we believe will postpone matrimony at least until Mother & Father are home. She doesn't seem to have found anything in college that has really waked her up. I'm sorry - for she's such a very nice kid. I wish you might meet my family sometime, Miss Turner. They're looking for a furnished house somewhere - anywhere almost within range of Julia in R.I. Sometimes I despair of ever really knowing them. [Margin note with arrow pointing to next sentence: "Private, please."] It's nice to go home, but it's not really home. They are ready but I am not & it makes one very sad, to feel that they have given their lives to India & then when old & ready to retire have not their children's confidence. I hope they'll have my other sisters' more.
What an effusion this is! Please forgive. Much, much love to you, dear Miss Turner.