I am glad you are having some good times. That young man who sent you flowers is a Southerner, is he? From Charleston? Why didn’t you tell me his name? Perhaps I shall be meeting him. For I am to meet people. I mean, I am to meet them the way you do. Aunt Lorena will give a “coming out” party for me. It rather amuses me. Poor Azalea, with her boots covered with red mud and her hands scratched with briars and burned with cooking and pricked with sewing, and her hair tumbled every which way, Azalea who can whistle through her fingers as well as Jim or Hi or any of the boys, who can climb a fence in a jiffy and shin up a tree if necessary, to stand all perfumed and proper, in a wonderful old drawing-room, saying: “Thank you, madam, you are very good to say so.” “Thank you, sir, indeed I am very much honored to meet my grandmother’s old friends.” Can you hear me? I wish you could in reality. Perhaps I can get my aunt to put off the party till Thanksgiving. If so, could you dash down to Mallowbanks? It is not far from Charleston. You could take a few extra days from college, couldn’t you? The very thought of it puts new courage into me. You will find my new address within. Write me at once. I shall insist that Annie Laurie come to my party also. What a reunion that would be! To have the old friends and the new together would be something to remember always. Maybe the young-man-who-sent-the-roses will be home for Thanksgiving. Then he could come too, and I would see if he was nice enough to—to be allowed to send you roses. Do you suppose Keefe could come? But he wouldn’t, would he? At least, not unless I got an order for him to paint a portrait. And how could I do that? But maybe I can insist that he shall paint a portrait of my grandmother for me. My own grandmother! There, Uncle David is cranking that terrible machine. I must go. Carin, we who go to die salute thee! I will you my amber beads. _Tremblingly_, _Azalea_. CHAPTER IV MADAM GRANDMOTHER Mallowbanks, Brent County, S. C., November first. _Poor neglected Carin_: I know it, Carin. I know I have treated you badly. I know that you have been expecting and wondering and scolding because I have not written. But when you say that I have forgotten you because of my new friends, well—I haven’t any answer to that. Nothing pleasant ever happens to me that I do not wish you were with me to share it, and nothing bad ever happens that I do not think in the midst of all my trouble: “I will make a story out of that to tell to Carin and—well, Annie Laurie or any other person whom I love.” But you first, Carin.