But I am still out in the rain on Sally McLean’s back, in a bad fit of homesickness, am I not? These homesick spells do not come as often as they did and they are not as bad as they were, but still I have them, and while they last I am miserable enough. I could feel my tears trickling down my cold nose, but I was having such work to keep Sally on her feet that I couldn’t wipe them away. I suppose we made a pathetic pair, struggling along in the sodden afternoon in that friendless, forsaken way. (I’m not sure but Sally was crying too. I think I heard her sniffle.) Then, just as we were in the worst of our dumps, who should appear on the landscape but “a solitary horseman”! He was riding Wellington, a tall, elegant looking horse belonging to Uncle David, and he himself—of course it was Keefe—looked tall and elegant, too, though he had on a raincoat and a little cap which fitted close to his head. He didn’t seem to mind the rain, but rode with his face turned up to it as if he liked it. When he saw me he stopped riding that way and tried to look as commonplace as he could. “How do you do?” he said as if we were not very well acquainted neighbors meeting by chance on the road. “Very well, thank you, Rain-in-the-Face.” “You are angry with me! You have been away all day because you were angry with me.” “I fled, Rain-in-the-Face, from the Arctic chilliness of Mallowbanks. I have in my time lived among strangers, I have danced and sung to stupid audiences, I have been hungry and wet through with the rain, I have slept on mouldy straw in a wretched tent, but never was I so chilled as to-day.” “Azalea!” He seemed shocked. “Do you mean,” I asked him, angry, Carin, for one of the few times in my life, “that I ought not to mention that I was once a poor little waif, a show girl, a sad-hearted dancer? Yes, I was an ill-cared for, shamed little Infant Phenomenon, and I don’t care who knows it. And then I was poor Ma McBirney’s beloved child, and I took the place to her of her little dead daughter; that warmed and saved me and taught me love and faith, and I don’t care who knows that, either. Then I was Carin Carson’s friend, and we worked and learned together, and you saw us, and you liked me as I was then. Now I’m Azalea Knox of Mallowbanks, with such relatives and acquaintances as Fate has given me, and I’m grateful and proud of that, too. I take all as it comes, Rain-in-the-Face, and I cannot for the life of me understand what you are sulking about.”