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 OFF TO EGYPT

May twenty-seventh. Granny Dear:

"The force of example" was a dry old phrase to me not longer than twenty-one days ago. But since Scrapple's coming has moved the generations in our family back one whole cog, I have been thinking about that phrase as some- thing vital. If I continue to call you "Mother," Scrappie will call you that. Must I also begin now to call Herbert "father" move him back a generation, too?

I feel as if I had always had Scrappie. We are not yet at the end of May. But April seems ages ago. The mail from America is just coming with stories of the massacres, and what I read seems unreal. Most of it is. The stories about us are absurd. We never "fled [183]

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