I tell you, I’m eating too much, I’m sleeping too much. I’m moping too much! I wish I could get on Paprika’s back and go scurrying down the valley, whooping as I go. Well, let’s talk of something else. You say that Mrs. Kitchell is really going to marry the feed store man. That is fine. I must think what to send her for a wedding present. I shall make it something quite gorgeous—nothing sensible at all. She has had so much good sense in her life that she must be nearly dead of it. I think I’ll get her a table lamp with a rose-colored shade, and perhaps a rose silk table cover to go with it. Dear Anne Kitchell! I’m so glad some rose color is coming into her life. What about the Mountain Industries? Is she going to give up the superintendence of them? If so, who is to take her place? You say someone has bought the little bench on Mount Tennyson that I loved so much. Can it really be so? Of course I might have expected it, for it was the best building place on the whole mountain. But, Oh, my spring of sweet water, and my darling tulip trees—which it appears aren’t mine, after all, and now never will be. That was where I was going to build my little shack and hold open house. Everyone who went by was to be at liberty to stop there, and I was going to share with them whatever I had, and to listen to their stories, and to give them comfort. Now I share nothing. No one tells me anything. I give comfort to no one. But there I am, mooning again and making myself sound very ungrateful in the bargain. But I’ll tell you, Carin, Uncle David and Aunt Lorena do not really need me. They are as kind as they can be, and of course we have some very social and happy hours together, but the whole truth of it is that they are quite bound up in each other and do not really need anyone else at all in their lives. Never having had any children, and having found each other so satisfying, the presence of another person in the house is more of an interruption than a satisfaction to them. No, I know I am not needed here. That realization is growing on me. Perhaps it is my fault. Maybe I have not made myself needed. But at any rate, this is the rather melancholy truth. Yet _is_ it a melancholy truth? Why not cheerfully face the fact? Why not look the whole situation in the face?