This is the picture of the girl who sat by your fire and ate some of your soup. It is the first time she ever helped herself to anything, but she enjoyed it so much that she means to stop again the next time she is passing and see if there is some more of that delicious soup and to ask how it is made. Here are some little presents, which please accept.
Azalea McBirney.
Well, this is just an incident, and I only mention it to show you what a happy time I had at the beginning. I could not dream how things would change with me.
In the early afternoon I visited two of the houses to which I was to go, and arranged about the number and kinds of chairs the men were to furnish. I drew up contracts for them to sign, for I thought that would be businesslike. Anyway, it pleased me to do it, and I think the chair-makers liked it too. It gave both of us a nice efficient feeling. They wanted me to stay at the last house I visited, and there was such a darling little baby there that I almost did, but I decided that I’d better be getting on and try to reach the Triller’s before sundown. Paprika was getting a bit fagged, but I know how quickly she rests up, so I hurried her along, getting, I confess, just a trifle worried as I found myself on strange roads, with the mist settling all about me.
It was very still. The mist seemed to muffle everything. No birds were singing, and I could not hear any creature in the woods, nor any falling water, and as there was no wind, the trees were motionless. Everything rested under a gray enchantment, and it gave me a very strange feeling. Yet I liked it. I felt as if something were going to happen.
And something did. But, Carin, it was not in the least what I would have imagined or wished for. It was as different as it could possibly be.
I have said that everything was very still—Oh, perfectly still. Then came a noise from afar, like a gathering wind, yet not a leaf stirred on the trees. The sound grew louder and louder. It seemed like a tempest. I trembled and so did Paprika. A moment later around the turn of the gray road came a sort of monster—an awful thing, all snout and flaming eyes. I knew in one terrible second what it was, of course.
An automobile—the first I ever had seen, face to face and eye to eye. Paprika, who had not looked at pictures to any great extent—except, perhaps, those on bill boards—did not know at all what it was. She gave one wild scream like a wounded horse and dashed straight up the bank. Then she looked back over her shoulder as if doubting her senses, saw the horrible thing again, heard its roaring and snuffling, and plunged on. There in the thick of the woods, with the mist still gathering, I could not see how to guide her, and anyway, she was beyond management. So, in a moment more I felt myself—I who never had been thrown in my life—going over her head.
And that was all, Carin dear, for four days, so they tell me. Four days.
You will wonder where I was when I opened my eyes. This letter paper will tell you. I was, and I am, at “Little Windows,” which is the name, as I have already explained, of a cottage on the top of Mount Hebron. Of course I can not say for sure that it is the loveliest place in the world, for I have seen but few places, not being like you, Carin, darling, forever going to beautiful spots. But at any rate it is lovely beyond my power to describe, with its great valleys and gulches, and its near acquaintance with stars and sun risings and moon settings.
When first I opened my eyes I was in a quiet bedroom. The walls were silver gray, and of wood. There were no pictures. The little windows were without curtains and looked right out at the wonderful world. It was sunset and from where I lay I could see it, crimson as the banners of a king. I could hear a fire leaping and rejoicing in some room beyond, and voices—two voices. A man and a woman were talking together, rather anxiously, I thought.