第11章

11月19日

亲爱的长腿叔叔：

您都没回答我的问题，那是非常重要的。

您秃顶吗？

我画了您的画像——一切都很顺利——直到您的头顶，我就停住了。我没办法决定您是白发、黑发，还是在两者间的灰发，或者没有头发。

这是您的画像。

不过问题是，我该不该加点头发上去？（钟声响了！）晚上9:45。

我订了一条很严格的规定：绝对，绝对不在晚上学习，不管隔天是否有很多报告要交。相反，我只读一般的读物——我必须这么做，您知道的，我白白地浪费了18年。您无法相信，叔叔，我的脑中有多少空白的地方。我刚刚要开始了解我自己。一个正常的有家庭、有朋友、有图书馆陪伴的女孩子，她自然而然知道的事情，却是我从来没听说过的。例如：

我从没听过《鹅妈妈》《大卫·科波菲尔》《劫后英雄传》《灰姑娘》《蓝胡子》《鲁滨孙漂流记》《简·爱》或是《爱丽丝漫游记》，也没读过卢亚迪·吉卜林。我不知道亨利八世再婚，雪莱是个诗人。我不知道人类的祖先是猴子，伊甸园是个美丽的神话。我不知道R.L.S是罗伯特·路罗斯·斯蒂文森的缩写，也不知道乔治·艾略特是个女性。我从未看过一幅叫《蒙娜丽莎》的画，也从未听过福尔摩斯什么的，您或许不相信，但这是真的。

现在，这些东西我都知道了，还知道一大堆其他的东西，不过您瞧，我还需要跟上进度。哦，不过这是件乐事！我一整天都盼着黄昏，在门口挂上“读书中”的牌子，然后穿上我舒服的红睡袍，把枕头堆在椅背上，打开手边的台灯，然后一直读一直读，一本书根本不够。我同时找来四本书读。现在读的是丁尼生的诗歌、《名利场》和吉卜林的《平凡的故事》。此外还有《小妇人》，别笑我。我发现我是大学里唯一一个没有在《小妇人》的陪伴下长大的。不过我没告诉任何人，我只是悄悄地溜出去，用上个月剩的一块一毛二分的零用钱买了它。

（10点的钟声响了。）

19 th December

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

You never answered my question and it was very important.

ARE YOU BALD?

I have it planned exactly what you look like-very satisfactorily-until I reach the top of your head, and then I AM stuck. I can't decide whether you have white hair or black hair or sort of sprinkly grey hair or maybe none at all.

Here is your portrait:

But the problem is, shall I add some hair?(Chapel bell.)9:45 p. m.

I have a new unbreakable rule:never, never to study at night no matter how many written reviews are coming in the morning. Instead, I read just plain books-I have to, you know, because there are eighteen blank years behind me.You wouldn't believe, Daddy, what an abyss of ignorance my mind is;I am just realizing the depths myself.The things that most girls with a properly assorted family and a home and friends and a library know by absorption, I have never heard of.For example:

I never read Mother Goose or David Copperfeld or Ivanhoe or Cinderella or Blue Beard or Robinson Crusoe or Jane Eyre or Alice in Wonderland or a word of Rudyard Kipling. I didn't know that Henry the Eighth was married more than once or that Shelley was a poet.I didn't know that people used to be monkeys and that the Garden of Eden was a beautiful myth.I didn't know that R.L.S.stood for Robert Louis Stevenson or that George Eliot was a lady.I had never seen a picture of the"Mona Lisa"and(it's true but you won't believe it)I had never heard of Sherlock Holmes.

Now, I know all of these things and a lot of others besides, but you can see how much I need to catch up. And oh, but it's fun!I look forward all day to evening, and then I put an"engaged"on the door and get into my nice red bath robe and furry slippers and pile all the cushions behind me on the couch, and light the brass student lamp at my elbow, and read and read and read one book isn't enough.I have four going at once.Just now, they're Tennyson's poems and Vanity Fair and Kipling's Plain Tales and-don't laugh-Little Women.I find that I am the only girl in college who wasn't brought up on Little Women.I haven't told anybody though(that WOULD stamp me as queer).I just quietly went and bought it with＄1.12 of my last month's allowance.

(Ten o'clock bell.)