Mallowbanks, November thirtieth.

Bad, dear, bad Carin:

You didn’t come to my party! Oh, wretched, false friend, best and most cherished, why did you not come? Can it be that a mere desire to have higher marks than anyone else in school caused you to desert me in my hour of triumph? It was that, I know. You are trying to get that old Phi Beta Kappa key—which you’ll not wear after you do get it. I call it intellectual pride, I do indeed.

Keefe couldn’t come either. He had an order to do a portrait for some Great Lady. So he wouldn’t even think of coming. He said he was in the Right Mood for Work, and he expected me to tremble before those awful words, just as you expected me to tremble before your Phi Beta Kappa record. You two, doing your duty with all your might and leaving me alone in my frivolity! I call it shabby of you.

Well, anyway, Annie Laurie came and Barbara Summers with her. Barbara put little Jonathan in the care of Aunt Zillah Pace, and she kept saying that she felt perfectly all right about him, though one could see that she didn’t. It was the first time she ever had left him overnight, and so it was natural for her to feel nervous. Though, as you know, Jonathan is going to insist on being taken care of, and if there is anything he wants he is going to have it. He is such a dear that no one can refuse him anything, as I know to my cost! The treasures of mine that child has broken!

Yes, those two came, and I leave you to imagine how happy it made me. There was my little brown Barbara with her sweet voice and her shy-eager eyes, all dressed so quaintly, and being so desirous of pleasing everyone, and yet holding to her own ideas with that darling dignity of hers; and there was my big, glorious Annie Laurie Pace with her red hair and her definite ways, trying to be frivolous with the rest of us, and looking like a preoccupied Diana all the time. I had some fears that when the folk at Mallowbanks learned that what she really was preoccupied with was her own dairy, that they might cast her into the outer darkness where the vast company of people-the-Knoxes-do-not-know drag out their miserable lives. But no, the vast fields of Annie Laurie—they did not lose a rod in my description of them—the cattle on a thousand hills, more or less, and the well trained force of helpers appealed to their imagination. They regarded her as a Planter—or a Plantress. She was accepted. And she was accepted all the more because she really and truly didn’t care much whether she was or not. Annie Laurie came to Mallowbanks for the sole purpose of making me happy, and she certainly succeeded. I put her in my room, and I slept on a lounge in the dressing room. So we contrived to be together, and of course, just like the girls in the song, we let down our hair before the fire after the ball.

But I must come to the subject of the ball.

To begin with, Mallowbanks was full of guests who had come to stay for two nights, or four, or seven, as the case might be. They were kin or near-kin, or old neighbors who were as dear as kin, and they all called each other by their first names. All the men, or nearly all, had military or judicial titles; and the women were lovely and, in a way, willful—because they had been much loved, I suppose. From first to last it seemed to me like one of my old dreams and nothing else.

My coming-out party was in several parts.

To begin with, there was the afternoon reception. Ladies, mostly, came to that, though there were some men, too. This was preceded by a luncheon for forty. (There were little tables scattered all over the drawing-room, as well as the dining room.) The next day there was a ball. That was the culmination. And all week there have been rides and drives and dinners and breakfasts and teas. I have met hundreds of people. I like them all. I love none, save the people here in my own house, and Annie Laurie and my little Barbara. I met Ravanels and GrÉvys and Bryces, but one and all neglected to ask my hand in marriage. There was, indeed, only one I would think of marrying, and, Oh, you yellow-headed little Hun, I had not talked with him three minutes before I knew that he was your Southerner.“I have a great many messages for you from your friend Miss Carson,” said he to me.

“Oh,” I said right out, like the simple mountain person I am, “are you the—”

Then, of course, I stopped and turned a strange and beautiful red, something, I imagine, the color of a faded American beauty rose.

“Yes,” he said smiling, “I am. At least I hope I am. I’m not sure.”

“What, please,” I said, “is your name? I know all about your noble qualities, but I do not know your name.”

“My name,” he said, “is Vance GrÉvy.”

“Oh!” was all I could say, thinking how this was probably the particular person madam grandmother had picked out for me. Of course I couldn’t keep back my silly self-conscious grin, and he smiled in much the same way I did.

“May I present you,” I said, feeling very “heady,” the way Paprika used to on a cold morning, “to my madam grandmother?”

“Thank you,” he said, “I have just had the honor of talking with her. You were so surrounded that I waited for a moment before venturing to come to you.”He smiled more than ever. I summoned my courage. I think it was my courage. Perhaps it didn’t deserve so good a name.

“May I inquire what she said to you?”

“Do you really want to hear?”

“More than anything.”

“And you’ll not lay it up against me?” he badgered.

“On my honor!”

“Then she said: ‘My dear Mr. GrÉvy, you are, I take it, the grandson of my old friend.’ She put up her lorgnette and looked me over. ‘Yes, you are the living image of him! Ah, your grandfather and I were good friends indeed, at one time, I assure you.’ ‘How I regret,’ I said, ‘that he had two generations the advantage of me.’ The dear little thing let me kiss her hand. ‘You have his turns of speech, also,’ she said. Then she asked: ‘Have you seen my granddaughter, the only child of my dear Jack?’ ‘I am on my way to it,’ I declared. ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘we must see to it, we Knoxes and Ravanels, we Bryces and GrÉvys, that she makes no mistakes, must we not?’ She looked at me again through her lorgnette, appealing apparently to my chivalry. ‘We are a solid phalanx,’ said I, ‘to see that she comes to no harm.’ ‘We understand each other,’ she said with satisfaction. ‘Your family never did need superfluous words.’”

I laughed and laughed.

“I have a friend, Mr. Rowantree,” I said, “who likes to tell me about the comedy of manners. Isn’t that what madam grandmother plays all of the time?”

“Just! But isn’t she exquisite? A survival of a splendid old time.”

“Yes. Oh, you can’t think how I admire and love her.”

“Yes, I can. I can very easily think how you do. Shall you confine yourself in your associations, Miss Knox, to the Ravanels and the GrÉvys? Why not cut out the Ravanels?”

“There aren’t many of them left, are there?” I asked more gravely. “And you—shall I have many GrÉvy’s to choose from?”

“There’s my great aunt and my mother and my married brother and some second cousins—nice girls they are, too.”

“Oh, that’s quite a selection. Now tell me about my Carin.”

But just then, of course, we were interrupted, and the only other times I got a chance to talk with him was when we were dancing together. That was quite a number of times, because I had him put down three dances for you, and I acted as your substitute.

All joking aside, Carin, I saw as much of him as I could because I was determined to find out what he was like. He would have to be so very, very fine to be worthy of you. I can see, my dear, partly from what you say and still more from what you do not say, that this is a serious matter with you. So I dropped all my nonsense and was grave with him, and he was grave with me, and I liked him—Oh, tremendously. He is earnest and ambitious and full of the new time. He doesn’t care any more about family than is right and sensible, and he’s determined to be a fine and successful man on his own account. What is more, he appreciates you, Carin! He does! I wouldn’t rest till I had found out whether he did or not. It is unnecessary to say what a gentleman I think him; and though he is not exactly handsome, he has a manliness and a grace that is even better.

Yes, my blessings are all ready for you. Just let me know whenever I am to bestow them.

Annie Laurie has a tiny, beautiful little diamond on a thread of gold which she wears on the little finger of her left hand.

“Annie Laurie,” I said, “that ring looks as if it had a history. It has a kind of a we’d-better-wait-a-while-before-we-tell-our-friends look.”

“Does it, impudent one?” she laughed. “Well, then it looks to be just what it is. Sam gave it to me.”

“Good Sam Disbrow,” I said. “He’ll be a fine person to live with—not ashamed in the wrong place nor proud at the wrong time, nor too selfish nor too unselfish—just sensible and reliable and honest straight through.”

“He and I understand each other,” said Annie Laurie softly, “perfectly.”

“Of course you do. Why shouldn’t you? Haven’t you taken years and years to get acquainted? Tell me, does he ever hear anything of his adopted father, and his family?”

“Not a thing,” said she. “Not one thing.”

“They just ‘went west.’”

“Yes.”

“Have you any other news?”

Annie Laurie burst out laughing.“Haven’t I, just?”

“About whom, then?”

“Haystack Thompson. Did you know he was courting Hi Kitchell’s ‘ma’?”

“I did. I saw him with a collar on, and no violin. He had combed his hair; and she wore white cotton gloves.”

“Well, we all thought it was settled. The only thing that worried us was how Haystack was to care for a wife when he got one. He has always been more or less like Tommy Tucker, singing for his supper—or rather, playing on Betsy, his violin. But for a time the violin had to stay in the background, which made some of us feel rather sad. We hardly liked to have Haystack settle down like other folks and be domestic and regular. But we needn’t have worried.”

“No?”

“No. Little Mrs. Kitchell got a new gray Henrietta, and a gray velvet hat with a real plume, and made herself twelve new of everything, aprons included, and there was general excitement. The ladies about town began to give her presents and to insist that they should all be invited to the wedding, and to ask when it was to be. But Mrs. Kitchell didn’t quite know. ‘Very soon,’ she said. ‘In a week or two.’ She said that for quite a while. Then one morning, Haystack disappeared.”

“Oh, Annie Laurie!”

“Yes, he did. Just disappeared. He took Betsy the violin, and left all his new collars behind. Likewise his suit of blue diagonal that he was to have been married in. That was all, except a bunch of bittersweet berries tied with grass, which poor little Anne Kitchell found on her account book. Under it he had written the word ‘Good-bye.’”

“How did she take it?”

“Well, she sent for Aunt Zillah, and of course Aunt Zillah hurried right over to her and kept giving her dry handkerchiefs till she got over the worst of it. I think Aunt Zillah made the reason of his defection clear to her. ‘You couldn’t shut Mr. Thompson up in a house and keep him there any more than you could a catamount,’ she told her. ‘He’s a wander man and a music man. What would he be if he were to settle down and play a respectable part?’ Little Anne Kitchell admitted it. I liked him because he was so different from other folks,’ she said. ‘He didn’t seem to have no care nor trouble, but I suppose if I’d married him, he would have had.’ ‘Of course he would,’ said Aunt Zillah. ‘He would have had stepchildren, and they might not have liked him. And you would have wanted him to be proper and regular in his habits, and he would have fretted like a caged hawk.’ ‘I reckon it’s all for the best,’ said Anne Kitchell, and dried her tears. So no more has been heard from Haystack. He’s free again, drinking out of springs, sleeping in the woods, playing his violin to squirrels and children and lovers. As for Anne Kitchell, she is wearing her fine clothes and is setting her cap for a heavy-set man who has just come to town and set up a feed store.’”

Oh, Carin, isn’t that fun? And aren’t you glad Haystack Thompson got off? I’d hate to have civilization trap him, wouldn’t you?

Well, well, I started to tell you about my ball. It was a wonderful ball. We danced in the drawing-room under the luster candelabra, and we danced down the long corridor with the carved panels. We women were all shining in beautiful garments, but I haven’t any desire to describe them to you, except that my little grandmother wore a gown of cloth of silver and rose point lace and all of her diamonds; and I, to please her—and it almost drove poor Aunt Lorena wild—chose a queer old silk of hers striped like ribbon grass in white and greeny-white and faded lilac and mauve. Over it I draped the thinnest silken lace. Then grandmother gave me a necklace of darling little pearls, and I had white satin slippers with little butterflies embroidered on them in greeny-white and faded pink, and a fan of the same colors, painted with butterfly wings.

“I never saw a coming-out dress like that in all my life,” said Aunt Lorena.

“Lorena,” said grandmother magnificently, “the Knoxes can afford to do as they please.”

But for my afternoon reception, to please Aunt Lorena, I wore drifting white stuff—white everything—and carried Killarney roses, and was just as conventional as I could be. Aunt Lorena kept pointing to me and saying:

“This is the way I want the child to look,” and at the ball grandmother said to her old friends: “Wouldn’t you think she was one of us all over again? Don’t you like a young girl to dress like that?”

Everybody agreed with Aunt Lorena, and everybody agreed with grandmother. And I was very happy all of the time.

No, I find I’m not going to describe the ball.

Why not?

Oh, because it was vague, after all—just meeting strange people and dancing with strange people, and trying to think of the right thing to say when people complimented me—as, of course, they thought they had to do—and being looked over and being told I was a perfect Knox, and hearing the music always, always, and feeling the dance get into my toes, and knowing my cheeks were burning and my eyes flaming, and wanting to put my face down in the cool moss on the bench of the mountain where the three tulip trees grow, and drink and drink of my spring till I was cooled in body and spirit.

Azalea’s Coming Out Party

Yes, Carin, it was like that. I am not ungrateful. I like this life; a part of me answers to it completely. Yet, somehow, I believe it has come too late. I feel that sooner or later I shall go back to the mountain and stay there. I miss the red roads and the misty dawns and the still, still moonlights, with me answering the whippoorwill and the owl. I miss Ma McBirney and the little graves under the Pride of India tree. I am just Azalea the mountain girl after all, I am afraid, though they keep telling me how gay I am and how I fit into my present life, and congratulating me because I never seem to be tired.

But I was secretly very tired when at last the week of festivities was over. There had been a great company of us at Thanksgiving dinner, and we had seen and tasted all that was most splendid in the way of Mallowbanks ham and Mallowbanks turkey, and Mallowbanks artichokes and mince meat, and we had talked and laughed and sung and danced, and bowed and scraped, and shaken hands and kissed, and at last it was all over. Even my darling Annie Laurie and my little Barbara were gone. And then I went up to my own room and closed and bolted the door.

Carin, I wept and wept. I was happy, but I wept. For, someway, after all, this was not my life. It was not the silver web I meant to weave. It was something that was being woven for me, and I was only a quite nice little yellow spider sitting in the midst of it and being admired without doing a single bit of spinning.

It was not at all what I had planned for myself. I am doing a great deal of receiving and little or no giving, and it makes me dissatisfied.

Of course I give some happiness to grandmother, and a new responsibility to Uncle David and Aunt Lorena. But what of my vocation? What of all the things I learned to do with these two hands of mine? What of the friendships I made with humble people and needy ones? What of all the good I was going to do in the world?

Carin, I am very happy. You mustn’t think anything else. But I have cried a tremendous lot, and I’m going to cry when I feel like it. And by and by I shall do something. It will not be liked very well at Mallowbanks—at least, not at first. But we have to be our true selves, don’t we? Don’t we owe that to—well I don’t know just Whom or What we owe it to. But we are made so much ourselves that to be anything other than ourselves is to offend what Kipling calls the God of Things as They Are.

Dear me, am I too serious? I, who have been making an art of gayety? I can talk nonsense endlessly, and I rather like to do it. It excites me. I feel like a young colt when it gets the bit in its teeth and whips off down the road. Then, if the person I am talking with, feels the same way, and the two of us dare the other to see who can run away the hardest—as Mr. Vance GrÉvy does, for example—then I enjoy myself very much indeed. Running away is, I can see, very pleasant for a time.

But after all, I am not of a nature to run very far. I can always be trusted to come home and stand beside the hitching post. It’s my way. I’m dependable old Azalea after all, and however rattle-brained I may sound, you can count on me to sober down at the critical moment. I’m still, Carin, right beside the hitching post.

The only thing I insist on is being hitched up to my own post. And I don’t believe Mallowbanks is it. It’s a carved, historic, marvelous post. But is it mine? Well, I’ll not think any more just now.

Father and Mother McBirney write contented letters from Bethal Springs. People have been very nice to them and they are not lonely. Father is doing well and feels some loosening up of his “j’ints.” Mother is sewing for somebody’s baby. Trust her to find someone who needs her. If she was set down in a desert you’d probably find her nursing a sick scorpion. I’m going up to see them soon.

Jim is studying his head off at Rutherford Academy and has started a Young Men’s Christian Association there. Dear Jim! Who would have thought he could have turned so good? Jim who used to put little green snakes in my closet!

Carin, when I see you, if I ever do, I will tell you more about the ball. It was simply grand.

But don’t you just wish we were riding up old Mount Tennyson side by side, with the crickets singing in the grass, and the saddles going creak-creak?Carin, I believe I’m going to cry again.

Good-bye,

Azalea.

P. S. There, I told you! See that blob? That was the first tear. Keefe O’Connor writes me stately letters. He says he is glad I have come into friends and fortune. What does he mean by that? Is he going to drop me? Carin, he is. He’s that kind of a horrid person who can’t forgive one for prosperity. They’ll stand by you in adversity but not in prosperity. I’d just as soon be cut for one as the other, every bit, wouldn’t you?

A. McB. No, I mean A. K.