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Nat.Museum.Wash.D.C.
18 March 1948.

Dear Doris:

Only a little more than a week and you will be down here too. Dolores called up last night -- her mother said she thought you would come the 23rd, and Dolores was disappointed that she had another week or 10 days yet to wait, but she was going to write you a note instead, she said. You may not get it - Dolores' intentions are the best but she has lots to do, poor child.  She said that she was hoping to get a job this summer at the Pentagon, - it looks now as if there would be plenty to do in that great war building.

Miss Colcord has just appeared -- she was talking with Barber and Fisher when I came in with a drawer of insects, and setting those old boys to laughing in her usual little droll fashion.   She is working on the bibliography of Teredo, ship worms, and will probably be in and out for some time.  It too is part of national defense.  I proposed that we lunch together and we are going over to the Mellon. As Dad is going to meet me at 2 to go over to see the pictures, I shall spend most of my day rushing back and forth to the Mellon, I foresee, but it is a nice day out and I don't often have the chance to see them both down here. Helen comes down tomorrow. By the time you arrive I ought to have a good idea of the German masterpieces!

Dad and I drove up to Chain Bridge last night to see the ice-pack. It extends over a mile in that low land between the river and canal, and is packed from 15 to 20 feet deep, solid ice cakes, and not a bush or tree in that area is visible. What the effect of such a delayed refrigeration will be on the foliage will be interesting to note. I think it will be a month before that ice is gone.     Dad thought it seemed like the glacial moraines that we saw in Switzerland years ago.

I haven't told Dolores a word about the lawyer and your N.Y. plans, and shan't, but she is anxiously awaiting the time you come and I shall have to tell her you will not arrive till after her bedtime, I expect -- I hope that your hour exams are over and that you did all right with them, I expect you did.    Now I must get to work, my beetle that I set to boiling is bubbling merrily.

Love,
Mother.