Then presently I felt someone putting something between my lips. It was soup. And that made me laugh. I thought about the house where I had helped myself to the soup. I had liked it better than this—it had had more flavor. “What are you laughing about?” asked the lady. I felt terribly silly. I remembered something from “Alice.” “Soup of the evening, beautiful soup,” I said. Then I laughed some more. I couldn’t quit. Suddenly I heard a voice roaring: “Stop that!” So I stopped and looked to see who had spoken to me that way. It was a tall man—a terribly tall man. The shadow of him ran along the floor for yards and doubled up on the ceiling. “Who are you?” I asked. I was quite angry. Then he bowed—and you ought to have seen that shadow bow at the same time. It was the funniest thing, and it nearly set me off again, but I crumpled up the sheet in my hands and squeezed it as hard as I could to keep from giggling. “David Knox,” said the gentleman, “who was unfortunate enough to be the cause of all of your trouble.” “I am glad to meet you,” I said politely. His bow was so nice I forgave him for yelling: “Stop that!” “Lorena,” he said under his voice, “I think everything is going to be all right.” Now you wouldn’t think that remark would make me laugh, would you? Oh, Carin, I’m so ashamed of it, now I remember. But I began to sing: “‘The years roll slowly by, Lorena,’” and then when I couldn’t think of the next line I cried: “Why doesn’t somebody tell me what comes next?” Well, they told me if I didn’t keep still they would go out and leave me alone. I didn’t want to be left alone, because just then I took a sort of turn and was afraid to sink down into that gray, still place where I had been. So I said: “Oh, please stay, please stay, and I will tell you why I laughed at the soup.” So before they could stop me I had told them about it. “Some day,” I said, “I am going back and call on that woman. I will give her some patterns for weaving, and maybe she will have some old, old ones that she will give me.” “Can you weave?” asked the lady. “You are very young and—and not a mountain girl, are you?” “Oh, I’m a mountain girl,” I said, remembering back just as far as dear Mother McBirney and the cabin with my bedroom in the loft. “I’m Azalea McBirney of Tennyson Mountain, and I’m—I’m a weaver.” “Azalea,” murmured the lady. “That was the name of poor Jack’s wife, wasn’t it? I always thought it a sweet name.” Something shot through my brain. It was like a stroke of lightning. It was the strangest thing that ever happened to me. In a second, by some power I can’t explain, I began to know things. I saw them as if they were a vision. I sat right up in bed, and pushed my hair back from my face. I recollect that I kept pushing it back and pushing it back, as if it got in between me and what I wanted to understand. “What Jack? What Jack?” I demanded.