There are all the Carsons and all the McBirneys and all the Summerses and all the Kitchells and all the Paces and all the Rowantrees, to make things for. Of course I count Keefe in with the Rowantrees, though I’m not sure he would like to have me. Speaking of Keefe, I wrote him a letter and told him what I thought of him. “Keefe,” I wrote, “you are haughty. How have I come to fall in your esteem? Why am I suddenly ‘Miss Knox’ instead of Azalea. Do you think I ought to suffer a steady average of trouble, and because I have found my people and my fortune, are you going to make me miserable by turning against me? What harm does it do the world if I am happy?” He wrote back at once, of course. If he hadn’t, I never should have written to him again. Never. He said he had no idea he had the power to make me unhappy. I wrote back and asked him since when had he stopped telling the truth. And I said I could see he was looking around for ways of discontinuing our friendship, and that at first I had been rather stupid and hadn’t seen what he was trying to do. But now I understood, and naturally, I would protest no more. Then I got a letter from him which—well, which changed everything. He said he had not been sure but that I meant to enter upon a new life altogether, and if I had, he did not mean to stand in the way. He said we had been thrown together by accident and that he had forced his acquaintance upon you and me, and that we had been endlessly kind to him, but he did not mean to take advantage of that kindness, but that if I wished to continue our friendship upon the old basis that it would make all the difference in the world to him; that he had had no heart for work or life since the idea had come to him that he ought to let our friendship go in justice to me. Well, of course I had guessed from the first that all the trouble came from some absurd idea like that! So I wrote him that my friendships did not depend on the state of the money market. But I didn’t say, Carin, that I would rather talk with him than anyone I ever met (except you, sister of my heart). Perhaps he will never know that. He said he would love to come down and see me, but that, to be quite frank, he couldn’t afford it just now. That reminded me of an old idea of mine. So that night I said to grandmother: “Don’t you think, madam grandmother, that you ought to have a portrait painted of yourself as you are now?” “I?” cried my grandmother. “At my age! Why, my dear, I am hideous! A wrinkled, white-headed, shriveled old woman! What do I want of a portrait?” Then she arose and said as she often does: “Your arm, Azalea, if you please.” So I gave her my arm, guessing that she was going once more to show me the portraits of herself in the paneled hall. And sure enough she did.