My party is to be Thanksgiving Day. Say, Oh, say that you can come! To have you here, to have you see all I am so stupidly telling you about, to get off in my own room with you and laugh and talk as we used, would, perhaps, make this life seem real to me. Now, I confess, it seems like a dream. You keep writing about that young Southerner. You say he is leaving the North and going home. He lives in Charleston? Is his name Bryce or Ravanel or Grévy? If so, I’ve got to marry him! Aunt Lorena said, however, that the only unmarried Ravanel was at least seventy and deaf as an adder, and that she wouldn’t, if she were in my place, be so hackneyed as to marry a Grévy. As for the Bryces, they are my very own kin and out of the question. So you can imagine my distress! Tut, tut, no bridegroom. And me in long dresses with my hair up. How long must I wait? As long, perhaps, as my coming-out party. But it can’t be any sweeter than the birthday party Ma McBirney gave me when we danced till the moon came up—and after. Carin, you _must_ come! _Fondly_ _Azalea_. CHAPTER VI MY BALL 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!