stefansson-wrangel-09-15-044-009

- 9 -

I bought her a bunch of violets to-night. We walked up to
the ferry building to send the wire to you and she saw the florists window.
She could hardly be moved away from it, so I gave her some. "Are they for me?"
she asked so surprised. There is something quite childlike and pathetic about
the way she takes little things like that, while larger things she takes for
granted.

I think what she said about her mother, "not being able to
express herself", just sit still and say nothing" - expressed Ada very well.
She seems to sit still and absorb. Last night I brought her on deck to see a
masquerade dance and when the maskers came marching down the deck she stood
just as close to me as she could stand until I explained what it all meant.
She watched a girl in an Oriental costume, very thin (georgette and beads).
Finally she said smiling "if I have a dress like that on Wrangell Island, I
think I freeze to death very quick."

10 P.M.

I have just come up from Ada's cabin and I told her I was
going to write to you and asked if she had any message for you. She said
"please tell him I think him for trip."

I don't know whether you will think any of the things I
write you about her of any value. Still out of them you may get something
you want. This I know, the whole feeling toward you is changing, you are quite
real to her now and a different person than the man she imagined sometime ago.
Perhaps that is enough and if she stays out here until May and you talk to her
yourself it will be the thing.

However, I have told her that whenever she wants to go
back to Seattle she can go - and if she knows that, she can do as she pleases.

February 12.

It grows warmer and warmer and the calmest laziest sea