The Shoals, December 26.

My dear, dear Uncle and Aunt:

A happy New Year! Was it a merry Christmas for you? Oh, I hope it was. You had many of your kith and kin with you, I know. I would have liked to have been there if only I could have been in two places at once. But you know how difficult that is.

And this year I had to be right here.

You still wonder why?

It is not easy to explain. But it had to be. I felt the need of it. I have been working my way back to the true, original Azalea, and she was to be found here and not amid all the luxury and quietude and tradition of Mallowbanks. But now, I think, at last, she is really found, and so she hopes that next year you may be able to include her in your Christmas celebration.Let me thank you and then thank you again for your beautiful Christmas gifts. A piano of my own, and a music cabinet and folios and folios of music! It was a royal gift and I do not see just how ordinary thanks are going to express my gratitude. All I can say is that it shall be the comfort of my lonely hours, and the joy of my bright ones, and that I promise now that never shall I sit down to this exquisite instrument without thinking of the two who gave it to me, and being thankful that my life met theirs. That my life and theirs could not, for reasons, run along in the same channel, makes the joy of the meeting no less. I look at this wonderful gift and find myself not quite believing that it is really mine. This morning I could hardly wait to dress to run into Carin’s studio to see if it really was there. Having no place of my own, I have had it put in her lovely room for the time being.

I have many things to tell you, and I am going to try to tell them with proper dignity as becomes your niece. I know I write dreadful nonsense at times, and I know, too, that I am too impulsive and enthusiastic. I remember that dear Father McBirney warned me against those faults in my character years ago, when I first came to him. I am afraid I have not improved very much, but at least I am aware that he was right, and that I ought to be a more sober and calm person than I am.

So, quite calmly and soberly, I am happier than I ever thought anybody could be. I have promised Keefe O’Connor to marry him. By Spring I shall have done it—and you two shall be here beside me, to deliver me with all possible conventionality into his hands.

There! Did I not tell that soberly enough?

And now to go back!

I did not write to Keefe nor he to me. We had promised you that we would not, and we kept our word. I did not even let him know that I was here at Lee, or that I had renounced all of my right to my grandmother’s splendid legacy in order to be free to weave my own silver web. No, I just worked and kept still.

But I confess that I knew that Annie Laurie had written to Keefe’s sister, Mrs. Rowantree, all about it, and that I was morally sure she would write to Keefe. But that, as you will plainly see, was something over which I had no control. Not, I will confess, that I tried to have.

Meantime, I tried to be content, and I was, really, but it was a contentment made up largely of expectation. You see how frank I am with you. Do you mind? It is Azalea’s way. You don’t want her to try to be any other way than is natural to her, do you?

Yes, I had a beautiful, deep-down, reassuring sense of expectation. I felt as if Happiness was journeying toward me.

“Maybe,” I often said to myself, “she will be a long while coming, but she is on the way. By putting my ear to the ground, I am sure I can hear her footsteps.”

So I kept on working and working, and the work thrived and I thrived. At night I slept the sleep of the very weary, and all day long I was playing the fine exciting game of building up the business of the Mountain Industries.

Then, when I had nothing else to do, I dreamed dreams.

There was only one thing in the world that bothered me, and that was the little house up on the mountain. It seemed too outrageous that anybody—a stranger at that—should have come down into the Blue Ridge and bought and built on the one spot of all the whole range that I had selected for myself. To add insult to injury, he was putting up precisely, identically, the sort of a house that I had designed for the place. There was only one way to account for that, and that was that both he and I had selected the most appropriate sort of a house for the place. Such a house, I finally decided, must be inevitable in such a spot. And yet, after all, that didn’t quite account for the strangeness of the fact that the place was such a materialization of my dream. It really annoyed me. I did not like that man. I was prepared to be disagreeable to him.

And then, one day, I saw him.

It was a Sunday, clear and crisp and cold, and I had been up to have dinner with Mother McBirney. Jim was home, too, for the holidays, and the four of us sat in the quaint, dear old room just as we used years ago. Only now it was Jim and not Father McBirney who said grace at table. It was he who carved the turkey too. For it was a feast, and we ate one of the turkeys which usually are kept for market. But nothing is too good for Jim, home from college. Or for Azalea, who is keeping him there.

Yes, turkey we had, and yams cooked in sugar and wild crab apple jelly and green tomato pickles and molasses bread and biscuits and gravy, and coffee and “stickies” for dessert. To make stickies, you make a pie crust and roll brown sugar in it. You are always glad when you see them and sorry after you have eaten them. Ma makes the best ones in the South. Oh, yes, we were very happy. The fire leaped in the old black fireplace, and the hounds curled up before it and whined with joy. Ma was a dream in her blue dress and white apron with her dear face shining with goodness and love, and Pa McBirney was a picture with his whitening hair. Outside the mountain dreamed and dreamed, and told us how long mountains lived, and what a little while mere folks had for enjoying themselves, and warned us to gather up all the sweetness we could while we have a chance.So we did. We ate and laughed and were glad together; we tidied the little house and then we sang and read. But all the time I noticed Mother looking at me in a new way, and sometimes the tears would come to her eyes, and it seemed as if she never passed me without dropping a hand on my head or my shoulder. And Jim was tender too. He neither teased me nor preached to me. He was just sweet. As for Pa, he asked me if I didn’t think all of our ways were laid out for us by One Who Knew What Was Best. Oh, yes, it surely was a day long to be remembered.

But it surprised me a little when they urged me to start on my way.

“You mustn’t be out after dark, my dear,” said Mother McBirney, patting my hand. “I want to think of you as safe at the Shoals before the twilight comes. So you’d better be on your way, honey-girl.”

“But I want to stay,” I pleaded.

“No, no,” she laughed, “you want to go. You may not know it, but you do.”

So among them they got me into my things and onto my horse. I miss my little Paprika when I ride these mountain roads, and sometimes wish I could buy her back again. The horse I ride is from the Carson stables, of course, and is a fine, gentle creature which Mrs. Carson often uses and which knows every inch of the way.

To my surprise, Jim insisted on coming along.

“But no,” I said. “What is the use, Jim? Stay with the folks.”

“I need exercise, sister,” he answered, still in that surprisingly gentle way. “You must let me do what I like when I am home so seldom. I get discipline enough at college.”

So off we went together, just as we used in the old days when we were boy and girl.

“Jim,” I said, “you aren’t at all sorry that you chose to be a minister?”

I never had had a chance to ask him this, seriously, and I was glad of the opportunity.

“Sis,” he said, “every day of my life I am more and more thankful that I decided to be one. It is only that—only living the best I can and giving all my heart and life to the service of the God who made this beautiful earth and our wonderful bodies and souls—that can satisfy me. I must do it. I live in the thought of it.”

I looked at him as he rode beside me and saw how his face had strengthened and beautified, and I wondered how such things happened; how it was that little commonplace teasing boys grew up to be men like the one beside me.

“Oh, Jim,” I cried, holding out my hand to him, “I congratulate you from my deepest heart. I feared that your taking up of the ministry might be a mood; that you might change. But now I see you never will. You will be a tower of strength, brother Jim, and in the years to come when I am troubled about life, I shall come to you for help.”

“It is you who always have helped me, Zalie,” he said. “It is you who are making it possible now for me to prepare for my great work.”

I write you all this, dear Uncle and Auntie, to show you how sweet he is and how interesting and peaceful my life is here, so you’ll not be sorry, thinking of all I let go from me.

Well, we went on down the road, looking at the purple valley with the shafts of smoke arising straight from the houses below and towering, silver bright, in the light of the lowering sun. I was so absorbed with it all that I did not realize how rapidly we were covering the road, till suddenly I saw we were beside the house on the bench.

And what do you think? There was a shaft of silvery smoke arising from that chimney, too, and it was shot through with little sparks like stars, as if the fire it came from had been newly lighted.

“Oh,” I cried, “the owner of the house has come!”

I had been so happy all day that I forgot to be disagreeable, and though I had quite made up my mind to dislike this person intensely, I neglected to do it at that moment, for thinking of how happy he must be to have come to his beautiful little house. I wondered too if his wife was with him, and what she was like. Then I remembered that I had heard he was not married, and I thought:

“He can never be lonely amid such beauty. To look off on a scene like this will be company enough.”

It was Keefe O’Connor who stood there holding out his hands to meBut I knew that wasn’t really so. No beauty, however great, can comfort one for a lonely hearth; no meal is delicious for which only one place is set.

Then, out of that purplish gloom and from the shadow of the porch at the side of the house I heard a voice saying lazily:

“Won’t you be pleased to ’light and come in?”

It had the mountain drawl and the mountain way, but there was something wrong with it, and it made me look inquiringly at Jim. He was wearing a broad grin—a perfectly wonderful, old-time-Jim grin.

“Shall we?” said he.

Curiosity got hold of me and flung me off that horse and sent me right up to the stranger on the porch.

“It is very kind of you,” I said in a fine Mallowbanks manner, “and we shall be delighted. We have so long been interested in the building of this beautiful little house, and we did not know its owner—”

Then I said no more.

It was Keefe O’Connor who stood there holding out his hands to me.“I’ll put up the horses, sis,” said Jim with a little funny break in his voice. And then Keefe drew me into the lighted room.

You two have been such true lovers for so many years, that I need tell you nothing about what that moment meant. No, I need not tell you anything at all.

After a while we went into the long room where the fire was leaping.

“Oh,” I cried, “it is perfect!”

For the room completely suited me.

“It is bare,” said Keefe. “But I left the furnishings to you.”

I said nothing. I laughed. It was different from any other laugh I ever had. I laughed and laughed.

“What is so amusing?” asked Keefe at last.

“Nothing is amusing,” I said. “I am not amused. I am happy.”

“Oh,” he said, and then he laughed too. By and by he asked:

“Ought I to have waited longer?”

“Why should you?”

“I shall paint here half the year or more,” he explained. “Then, when I must, I shall go to the cities. It will be necessary. I must hold my exhibits, visit the art academies, see what other men are doing—keep in touch with the world. But this shall be my home—our home.”

“Shall we give it a name?”

“I have thought of hundreds and rejected them.”

“Perhaps Jim can name it for us.”

We went to look for him and found him star-gazing. His teeth were beginning to chatter a little, I am afraid, with the sharp chill of the air.

“Jim,” I said, giving him a good hug and kiss, “I didn’t think you would keep a secret from your Zalie.”

Dear old Jim! He gave me such a squeeze and let loose a big, blundering kind of a laugh, and then we brought him in and we all sat around the fire and talked. I never knew just how much like a brother he seemed to me till that moment.

We asked him to name the cottage for us, but he could think of nothing, and then, quite suddenly it came to me. I would call it “Delight Cottage” in honor of my own dear Delight Ravanel.Don’t you agree with me that it is a good idea?

But I haven’t told her yet. I thought I would keep it a secret until she came to visit me, which will be in a few days now. Keefe said he would himself make the sign and place it at the gateway—the same gateway being nothing less than two of my beloved tulip trees.

Keefe told me he had come down to finish some paintings, and that he would go on living right there in the cottage, working on certain parts of the house himself, such as the staining of the wood, the making of fire screens and benches for the chimney side, and various other things. He said there was work enough to keep him busy in his odd moments for a year or two. Mrs. Babb is coming over to cook for him and to keep “Delight Cottage” tidy.

Well, a little later in the evening Jim started me on my way again, only this time both he and Keefe were my cavaliers, and I burst into the drawing-room at the Shoals expecting to give them the greatest sort of a surprise, but I was vastly disappointed. They only laughed at me. They had known all along that Keefe was building the house, and they had met him at the train and had taken him up to Delight Cottage themselves, I all the while toiling away in my shop. He wanted, it seems, to make the place look as well as it could in its incomplete state before I saw it.

Ah, what a happy, happy girl I am! Only one thing troubles me, and that is your possible disapproval. Keefe is writing you, I believe. He said to me more than once:

“I do hope your uncle and aunt are not going to think that I have done wrong. I have cared more for your happiness, Azalea, than for anything on earth, and if I had for one moment believed that you would have been happier if I had withdrawn myself entirely from your life, I would have done so without regard to my lifelong loneliness. But when I heard that you had resigned your inheritance and come back here, I was forced to conclude that it was a sign and token to me.”

“It was,” I confessed. “Just that.”

Well, my dear kinfolk, Christmas came with all its pleasures, and it brought me your beautiful gift, also my ring from Keefe, and lovely things from the Carsons and from many other friends. Even there were many remembrances from my mountain people.

There was one gift—or token, rather—which filled me with the greatest surprise. It was a copy of Delight Ravanel’s will, bequeathing to me all of her possessions when the day comes that she must go into the Other Land. Oh, I hope it will be many, many years till then!

Try to fancy my amazement. Truly, I never was more surprised in my life, although, as you know, I have had a good many surprises for a person of my age.

Moreover, she is coming to see me next week, and in preparation for her visit I have had Mrs. Kitchell’s old living rooms fitted up all fresh for us. There is a little sitting room, and a kitchen and two bedrooms. With the help of my always kind Mrs. Carson, the place has been made—or is being made—as cosy and dainty as you can imagine. Mrs. Wixon will help me keep house, and I shall be quite independent and settled. Of course Mrs. Carson and Carin beg me to stay with them, but I feel I have been their guest quite long enough. Now—only fancy—I shall be able to entertain them at times, and to return in some small measure the endless hospitality they have shown me. I think Cousin Delight will love this little experiment in housekeeping, and I wouldn’t be the least surprised to see her taking an interest in the weaving and basket-making and in the little shop. It would be the best thing in the world for her if she would, for life certainly is pretty drowsy at Monrepos, where she has lived so long alone, remembering and brooding and doing her little solitary tasks. If I have my way she shall stay with me or near me altogether.

So you see into what a shining and rapid current my little life has been swung. And you will forgive me for everything I did not do and for everything I am doing. I insist on being forgiven—and loved. You must love me when I love you so much.

When I am married you must be my first guests. Until you come, I shall have no one. I would never be satisfied if you did not dedicate my house for me by your presence.The wedding day is not yet set exactly. It will be in the early summer, after Keefe has finished some orders he has, and so is feeling quite rich, and after I have really got the Mountain Industries in such a condition that I can safely pass them on to others. Even after I am married I shall keep an overseeing eye on them, and Mrs. Carson and Carin will help me. Then, of course, there is my trousseau to make. I am so glad you let me have dear little madam grandmother’s chests. I think I can make over her wedding dress so that I can wear it, and of course I shall wear her veil.

If you will send on the portrait that she had painted for me, I can hang it above my new piano in my little sitting room. Or shall I hang it above my fireplace? I must try and see in which place it looks the best.

My heart is singing with joy, and I send you a thousand little carefully wrapped packages of love. Undo them one by one and think of

Azalea.