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Nat. Museum,Wash.D.C.
12 March 1948.

Dear Doris:

Dolores said that she had only one day, Good Friday, for her Easter vacation, but she said that she wanted to see you and would take more. I think it a pity, since she needs all the money she can earn. She said she wanted to take some course this summer, too, and wished you could with her. She seems to be enjoying herself more this second half. We must try to arrange for her to stay over night over at the house, so that you will see something of each other. 

It is cold here again, and I listened in to W.B.Z. at 6.30 and heard that you have 4 more inches of snow. Poor Grandma. One morning I went into her room and she was sitting up in bed looking out the window and seeing the snow come down, and she was shaking her old fist at it. Dad couldn't start the car again after laying out $10 to have it fixed, only last week. He was pretty mad at having to go off on the bus. My car, the Baptists, didn't do any too well, and we were afraid of stopping before we could get in town, and then Sue let me out away over by the Pan American bldg so to drive to her dealer's, and I tramped along Constitution ave in the cold wind. There were great flocks of hundreds of white ring-billed gulls swooping and lighting on the Ellipse and around the Monument grounds, a wonderful sight. They are migrating thru. And we passed a flock of around 20 robins sitting on the grassy lawns near the Lincoln memorial with their brick red breasts shining in the morning sun. Spring is on the way, tho mighty long in reaching us.

I rode home with the Navy retired captain last night. His son is a Soph at the Univ of Illinois, and he said he was so afraid that he couldn't get thru before another war started, and was all unsettled in his mind because of the apparent imminence. Sue said that Patty is afraid, - she works in the Pentagon and must see the course of events better than most of us. This time if war comes I shan't get caught with only 2 pairs of stockings and so on. But no doubt I shan't be around to wear any more! Sue said, "It is one consolation, - we shan't ever know what struck us."

Rehder's young asst. who came down from Harvard last year, Abbott, told me that Bequaert had just turned in for publication in the M.Z.C. Bulletin a 2-inch thick volume on mollusks. Bequaert is very broad in his learning. - he is a good botanist, has done lots of work on hymenoptera, and has as much knowledge of shells as of entomology. Abbott asked of Remington, the tall young entomologist who was at the tea who publishes the Lepidopterist up there. 

Time for lunch -- up in my Dome, wish you were here to share my bread and butter, but you will be soon.

Love,

Mother.