When I dream now, it is all about my grandmother. To think of an own grandmother! In my dreams she comes creeping softly into the room and strokes my hair. I do not believe a word they say about her being proud. I am sure she is gentle. At least, her dream-hand on my head is so. I am writing to Mary Cecily Rowantree, and she can send the letter on to Keefe O’Connor—to “brother” as she always calls him. Have you noticed that she almost never speaks his name? That is, I suppose, because he does not bear the one that was given him when he was christened. What a strange story is his! _Good-bye_, _yellow-haired one_, _Azalea_. * * * * * October 24th. _Dear old Carin_: Mother McBirney has come. I have been alone with her. Of course she had been told everything by Uncle David on the way over. “Mother-heart, mother-heart,” I said to her, “tell me what I shall do. Here we are alone, we two, and no one is listening. Whatever you decide on shall be done. No matter what anyone says, we shall do it.” “Zalie,” she said in that lovely drawling voice of hers, “I reckon the time has come for me and you to go our separate ways.” “Mother, do you know what I have been told? I am rich. I shall have money to spend. All at once, in one lump, right now, I can have the money that would have been mine all during the years since my father died. I have asked them, and they say that though I am not of age, I may do what I please with that money. So, mother-heart, you and Father McBirney can go to the Springs, and Jim can go to school. You can rent out the horses and the cattle or sell them. Perhaps Annie Laurie will add them to her stock. You can sell the chickens and the bees, or take them to Annie Laurie’s too.” “Oh, Zalie,” cried Ma, “how can you go on talking about chickens and bees?” “Because,” said I, “sooner or later that is what the three of you will sit up late at night talking about. I’m trying to arrange it so that you will not say ‘no.’ For I can’t stand it to have Father McBirney suffering the way he is, and you going sad and poor and Jim not having school. I knew all the time that I couldn’t stand it—that I’d have to do something about it. And now here, along comes Accident—whom I shall make my goddess—and she brings me among my own folk, and gives me a fortune.” “And parts us, Zalie.”