I am ready, Carin, to prove myself. Here I am with my strong body, with my heart full to bursting with gratitude and love, with my waiting hands and brain. But I need direction. You couldn’t give me that, could you, dear yellow-headed one? Yes, I wish you might have come home this summer. It would have helped. Barbara Summers was away, too. She went home to see her people for the first time since she was married. You remember her people didn’t approve of her marriage. She had a very happy time, and all is well between her and them at last. Of Annie Laurie I see little. She is too busy. But we signal each other, she from her roof, I from the “Outlook.” Good-bye, dear. If I write you too much, forgive me. I need to write. It comforts me. You understand all I say—all I do not say, too. _Lovingly_, _always_, _Azalea_. CHAPTER II NEW RELATIONS “Little Windows,” Mount Hebron, N. C., October 20th. _Dearest Carin_: Yes, the letter is from Azalea, though she is in a place that neither you nor she ever heard of before. “Little Windows.” Are you wondering what they are, or what it is? It is the name of a cottage on the top of Mount Hebron. You have seen Hebron, looking like a cloud, from the top of our own Mount Tennyson. The cottage belongs to Mr. and Mrs. David Knox, and, Oh, Carin, they— But I must begin at the beginning. In my last letter I told you how wretched Father McBirney was feeling. Well, he grew worse and worse, till at last he did not know a moment when he was free from pain. Jim and I tried to keep things going, but it was hard. We began to grow anxious about money and the bare necessaries. Then I said: “I’m going out to see about the mountain chairs. I’m going to ride Paprika over the mountains and get up the contracts with the chair-makers. Then, if they’ll not haul them to market, Jim must.” Mother objected. So did Father. I reminded them how they had always said that a woman was perfectly safe in these mountains. But it was different, it seemed, when the woman was their own girl. However, I overcame their objections, and one rainy morning I set forth on my pony with my saddlebags well packed with food and clothing, and with carefully written directions from Father McBirney in my pocket. “Stick to them there orders,” said Pa, “and you can’t go wrong, Zalie. Except, maybe at the Trillers. I said for you to go to where the branch turns by the two black gums, but it might so be that Triller has cut down them gums. Seems as if he can’t take no rest while there’s a tree standin’ around his place. But anyhow, if you follow the branch after it takes a bend—that is to say, after you have taken the right-hand road turning off from the Session’s pike—then you can’t a-miss it.”