I curtsied again—twice—once to grandmother and once to him. They both looked sulky. I got into my riding habit, called for Sally McLean, the darling little mare they let me use, and went off for the rest of the morning. At noon I found myself at the house of a Ravanel—Delight Ravanel. She is a spinster, quite wrinkled and rather depressed, but she got her Christian name when she gave promise, I suppose, of other things. She asked me to stay to luncheon. I did, and found her a dear. She told me stories about who married whom and why. She proved to me that I was some sort of a cousin of hers. It was the middle of the afternoon before I started for home. A rain had set in and the roads were very muddy, so Sally McLean had a bad time of it. She is such a dainty thing that mud makes her miserable. Besides, she was shivering with cold and nervousness, though I can’t quite see what made her nervous. But Sally has her moods, like the rest of us. I made up my mind, however, that Paprika was the last horse that was ever going to throw me, and so I gentled poor Sally, and made my way along the road in the best spirit I could command. I fell to thinking about little Paprika, and Jim’s Mustard, and how we used to scamper down the long mountain road to school, and about the times when you and Annie Laurie and I used to race down the valley; and then I thought over the excursion Haystack Thompson and Miss Pace and Keefe and you and I made with Paralee Panther away over the nag road to the Panther’s, and how we dug them out of their cave, so to speak. I hear from Paralee quite often, by the way. She is teaching now in the Industrial School. Yes, she is really a teacher, just as she said she would be. Of course that is owing to the start you gave her, Carin; but I’m very proud to think how she has got on. She has been independent of all help for two years at least, hasn’t she? Perhaps she has written you about her teacher’s position, but I mention it, thinking she might not have ventured to write. She always stood in some awe of you, you were so beautiful and so far removed from her. She, reminds me, someway, of those people I did not meet in the little cabin that lay between Mount Tennyson and Mount Hebron—the cabin, I mean, where I went in and helped myself to soup and firewood, and where I left the cake and sugar and things in exchange. I told you Mother McBirney met them afterward and learned their name. Wixon, it was, by the way. Well, just for fun, I sent them some Christmas presents—nothing really sensible and necessary, but something perfectly luxurious—a talking machine with a lot of records of various kinds. Also a year’s subscription to a good magazine which has many illustrations. I thought these things might help them to become alive. Oh, it certainly is glorious to have money!