中学生―Ｄ部門

Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster
同志社中学校２年

田麻里子

My Very Dearest Master-Jervie-Daddy-Long-Legs Pendleton-Smith,

Did you sleep last night? I didn’t. Not a single wink. I was too amazedand excited and bewildered and happy. I don’t believe I ever shall sleep
again--or eat either. But I hope you slept; you must, you know, because then
you will get well faster and can come to me.
Yesterday was the most wonderful day that could ever happen. If I live tobe ninety-nine I shall never forget the tiniest detail. The girl that left Lock
Willow at dawn was a very different person from the one who came back atnight.
When I came to the house on Madison Avenue it looked so big andbrown and forbidding that I didn’t dare go in, so I walked around the blockto get up my courage. But I needn’t have been a bit afraid; your butler issuch a nice, fatherly old man that he made me feel at home at once. ‘Is thisMiss Abbott?’ he said to me, and I said, ‘Yes,’ so I didn’t have to ask for Mr.
Smith after all. He told me to wait in the drawing-room. It was a very sombre,magnificent, man’s sort of room. I sat down on the edge of a big upholsteredchair and kept saying to myself:‘I’m going to see Daddy-Long-Legs! I’m going to see Daddy-Long-Legs!’
Then presently the man came back and asked me please to step up tothe library. I was so excited that really and truly my feet would hardly takeme up. Outside the door he turned and whispered, ‘He’s been very ill, Miss.
This is the first day he’s been allowed to sit up. You’ll not stay long enoughto excite him?’ I knew from the way he said it that he loved you--and I thinkhe’s an old dear!
Then he knocked and said, ‘Miss Abbott,’ and I went in and the door
closed behind me.
It was so dim coming in from the brightly lighted hall that for a moment10

fire and a shining tea table with a smaller chair beside it. And I realized thata man was sitting in the big chair propped up by pillows with a rug over hisknees. Before I could stop him he rose--rather shakily--and steadied himself by
the back of the chair and just looked at me without a word. And then--andthen--I saw it was you! But even with that I didn’t understand. I thought
Daddy had had you come there to meet me for a surprise.

Then you laughed and held out your hand and said, ‘Dear little Judy,
couldn’t you guess that I was Daddy-Long-Legs?’
In an instant it flashed over me. Oh, but I have been stupid! A hundred
little things might have told me, if I had had any wits. I wouldn’t make avery good detective, would I, Daddy? --Jervie? What must I call you? Just plain
Jervie sounds disrespectful, and I can’t be disrespectful to you!
I drove back to Lock Willow in the dark-- but oh, how the stars wereshining! And this morning I’ve been out with Colin visiting all the places thatyou and I went to together, and remembering what you said and how youlooked. I am missing you dreadfully, Jervie dear, but it’s a happy kind of
missing; we’ll be together soon. We belong to each other now really and truly,
no make-believe. Doesn’t it seem queer for me to belong to someone at last?
It seems very, very sweet.
And I shall never let you be sorry for a single instant.

Yours, for ever and ever,JudyPS. This is the first love-letter I ever wrote. Isn’t it funny that I know how?

The End

出典：Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster, Puffin Books (1912).

11

中学生―Ｄ部門

I could scarcely make out anything; then I saw a big easy chair before the