Father and Mother McBirney write contented letters from Bethal Springs. People have been very nice to them and they are not lonely. Father is doing well and feels some loosening up of his “j’ints.” Mother is sewing for somebody’s baby. Trust her to find someone who needs her. If she was set down in a desert you’d probably find her nursing a sick scorpion. I’m going up to see them soon. Jim is studying his head off at Rutherford Academy and has started a Young Men’s Christian Association there. Dear Jim! Who would have thought he could have turned so good? Jim who used to put little green snakes in my closet! Carin, when I see you, if I ever do, I will tell you more about the ball. It was simply grand. But don’t you just wish we were riding up old Mount Tennyson side by side, with the crickets singing in the grass, and the saddles going creak-creak? Carin, I believe I’m going to cry again. _Good-bye_, _Azalea_. P. S. There, I told you! See that blob? That was the first tear. Keefe O’Connor writes me stately letters. He says he is glad I have come into friends and fortune. What does he mean by that? Is he going to drop me? Carin, he is. He’s that kind of a horrid person who can’t forgive one for prosperity. They’ll stand by you in adversity but not in prosperity. I’d just as soon be cut for one as the other, every bit, wouldn’t you? _A. McB._ _No_, _I mean A. K._ CHAPTER VII GETTING SETTLED Mallowbanks, December 10th. _Carin_, _my love_: I hear you are to go home for Christmas and that all of your family will be together at the Shoals. I wish I could be with you, but I must be here, of course, and I suppose that if I were to be with you, I should be longing to be at Mallowbanks. That isn’t because I am discontented, but only that there are so many beautiful places in the world where I would like to be, that I find it difficult to choose. I often think what a lucky thing it is that a person is born in a certain spot and is under the impression that she has to stay there. If we were allowed to flutter around over the earth before we were born, trying to decide whom we would have for parents and where we would live, what a state of indecision we should be in! But here I am, with my own grandmother, in the home of my ancestors, making Christmas presents, and having—Oh, astonishing fact!—all the money I want to spend on them. But I’m not buying things. I mean I’m not buying already-done things to any great extent. I am making them. I want my loved ones to realize that it is still love that I am sending them, and not just a sign and token of my prosperity.