I just talked to your mother, she says you don't think the show will run another month and she says you took two dozen pairs of nylons over there, so do me a favor. As soon as the closing notice goes up take four pairs of nylons around to the bookshop for me, give them to Frank Doel, tell him they're for the three girls and Nora (his wife).

Now listen, Maxine

Wait'll you see what the shop sent me for Christmas. It's an Irish linen tablecloth, the color of thick cream, hand-embroidered in an old-fashioned pattern of leaves and flowers, every flower worked in a different color and shaded from very pale to very deep, you never saw anything like it. My junk-shop dropleaf table certainly never saw anything like it, I get this urge to shake out my flowing Victorian sleeve and lift a graceful arm to pour tea from an imaginary Georgian teapot, we're gonna play Stanislavski with it the minute you get home.

Your mother says I am NOT to enclose any money for them, she got them last summer at a close-out sale at Saks, they were very cheap and she'll donate them to the shop, she's feeling pro-British.

I fail to see why you did not understand that grocery man, he didn't call it "ground ground nuts," he called it "ground ground~nuts" which is the only really sensible thing to call it. Peanuts grow in the GROUND and are therefore GROUND nuts, and after you take them out of the ground you grind them up and you have ground ground-nuts, which is a much more accurate name than peanut butter, you just don't understand English.

Ellery raised me to $250 a script, if it keeps up till June. I may get to England and browse around my bookshop myself. If I have the nerve. I write them the most outrageous letters from a safe 3,000 miles away. I'll probably walk in there one day and walk right out again without telling them who I am.

h. hanff girl etymologist

p. s. Your mother is setting out bravely this morning to look at an apartment for you on 8th Avenue in the 50's because you told her to look in the theatre district. Maxine you know perfectly well your mother is not equipped to look at ANYTHING on 8th Avenue.

xxx