"Father took charge."

In September 1904, Ima, ever the good big sister, settled Mike and Tom once again at the Lawrenceville school in New Jersey. Perhaps because of her father’s finances (oil prices were down), Ima, ever the good daughter, did not resume her music studies in New York, but returned to Texas.

After a summer dutifully supervising Tom and Mike in Massachusetts, she was now happily socializing in Houston,  Austin, and San Antonio. In Houston on November 23, Thanksgiving Eve, she attended the traditional festive ball honoring "King Nottoc" [King Cotton] and his queen. In early December she visited her friend Nellie Paschal in San Antonio and returned to Houston on December 15. The San Antonio Light reported that Ima was planning a "house party at 'Columbia,' commencing on the 22nd."

But the Christmas house party at Varner did not take place.

By December, Mike and Tom were eager to come to Texas for Christmas. They had not spent Christmas at home since 1902. Tom wrote a gloomy letter to Ima:

My dear Sister:—

Yours was received yesterday.

It is very cold up here and there is some snow on the ground.

For about three or four weeks, I have had a very bad cold and still have it as bad as ever.

This fooling doctor up here could not cure a bruised finger. . . .

As you would naturly expect, I want to come home Xmas.

As the December days passed, Tom’s “very bad cold” turned into pneumonia, and Ima and her father rushed to Tom’s bedside. There, as Ima wrote later, “Father took charge with the nurse to follow orders. This treatment was the same as he used when mother had pneumonia each winter. . . . Hot poultices were constantly applied to chest back and sides. All parts were greased with lard & to prevent burning, poultices were made of cornmeal saturated with kerosene and turpentine put in soft cotton bags. He sat up all night doing the work, giving orders to the assistant nurse.”

That was how Christmas 1904 came and went.