[Handwritten letter in Polish, on cheap writing paper, one sheet folded. Clipped to it, a typed English translation by Irena Nowak (undated, likely 1923 or 1924). Both versions kept in Halina Vasko's kitchen drawer, at 23 Korcza Street, Little Warsaw.]

English translation:

Dearest Halina,

I write from Mama's house where I have been since Thursday. I am safe and I am eating and I am not hurt. Mama has said I am to stay here until we know what to do next and I am glad.

I will tell you what happened because you are family and because you will not repeat it to people who do not need to know.

Mrs. Thorpe dismissed me on Thursday morning. She gave me a week's wages in cash and she said — I will write her words as close as I can remember them, though they were in English and my English is not Mrs. Nowak's — she said, "Anna, you are a good worker. I am not dismissing you for lack of work. There has been a piece of jewelry of Mr. Julian's that has gone missing. I do not wish to pursue the matter. I wish only that you should leave this house today. You will take the week's wages and you will not seek a reference from me. If you are asked, you may say that you left my employ by mutual agreement. You will not be arrested. You will not be charged. I ask only that you go."

I did not steal any piece of jewelry, Halina. I want you to know this. I have never in my life stolen anything and I am not about to begin.

What I did do, and what I think is the real reason Mrs. Thorpe dismissed me, is this. On Wednesday morning I was dusting the upstairs rooms of the house and I went into Mr. Julian's bedroom to do the furniture. Mr. Julian was at the office. I dusted the wardrobe and the nightstand and the writing desk and then I dusted the bureau. The top drawer of the bureau was not closed. It was open a little. I did not pull it open. I am telling you this precisely. I did not pull it open. I dusted the top of the bureau and as I moved my cloth across the front of the top drawer, my cloth — not my hand — snagged on the edge of the drawer and the drawer slid open by another inch or two.

In the drawer there was the ordinary things a gentleman keeps in a top drawer. Collar studs. A handkerchief. A pocket-knife. A leather wallet. And at the back of the drawer, against the rear wall, stood a small glass phial, empty, with a label on it I could read: "TINCTURA DIGITALIS — for Dr. D. Linden's use only."

I did not know what digitalis was. I closed the drawer without touching anything. I finished the dusting. I went down the back stairs and I helped in the kitchen with the lunch and I did not think about the phial any more until Thursday morning when Mrs. Thorpe called me into her sitting room.

Now I am thinking about it. I have been thinking about it for four days. I have not spoken of it to anyone but Mama. Mama said, "Anna, go to your cousin Halina tomorrow and ask her to see Mrs. Nowak and have Mrs. Nowak write this down in English and keep a copy for you. A girl who has seen a thing in a rich man's drawer and been dismissed for it had better have the thing written down in English somewhere a lawyer can one day read it." Mama is a wise woman in these things.

I do not know what I have seen, Halina. I do not know whether it matters. I do not know whether Mrs. Thorpe thinks I do know. I know only that I have lost my position and my reference, and that Mrs. Thorpe gave me a week's wages as though she were buying something that was not my work.

Please come to Mama's house this Sunday after mass and we will speak. Please bring Mrs. Nowak if you can. I would like someone to write this down in English for me, as Mama said, and to put the English copy somewhere safe that is not our house and not Mama's.

I miss you. I miss the children. I miss Mr. Vasko's memory although I did not know him well; he was always kind to me at our family dinners. I send my love.

Your cousin,

Anna

[pencil annotation at the foot, in Irena Nowak's hand:]

"I made this translation in December 1923 at Mrs. Vasko's kitchen table. The English copy was placed in the School's safe, not Mrs. Vasko's house, per the wisdom of Anna's mother. Anna herself has since taken a position as a seamstress at Mrs. Halvorsen's boarding house in the Ward. She has not been troubled further.

I record here, for my own memory: when Mrs. Vasko read the translation aloud to Anna, to check my English for accuracy against her Polish, Anna stopped at the line about the label on the phial and said — in Polish, but I understood — 'I cannot read English fluently but that label I could read. Latin words are the same in our schools.' Mrs. Vasko nodded. It was a brief moment in a kitchen. — I. Nowak."