I knew the people who really cared for me would come, and as for the others, it would be better for them to visit their chosen friends and not bother with me.
Well, why don’t you come to visit me and to help me with the Christmas trade? Wouldn’t it be the joy of the world to see the exclusive Miss Delight Ravanel waiting on people and wearing a pleasant saleslady’s smile? It would fill me with great glee. Please come down here and let me see you doing it.
Do you miss me? I miss you very, very much. Evenings, when I leave the drawing-room and go up to my own quiet room, I think of you sitting by yourself, so lady-fine and peaceful beside your lamp, your busy needles and thoughts going, and outside the trees sighing and the wind whistling. How still you can be, dear friend. Is it hard to learn to be as still as that?
I have been telling Barbara Summers all about you. Of course she had met you at the time of my coming-out party, but she couldn’t possibly know you—or even guess you—until she had sat with you evening after evening as I have, in so pleasant a “solitude of two” and mined for your treasures of brain and heart. For you hide your virtues as other people do their faults.
Dear Delight R., I have had occasion whenever I went to Mother McBirney’s, to go by the place I used to call mine. I mean that little, out-looking bench on the mountain-side where the tulip trees rustle and the spring of cold water whispers. I have already told you that a house is going up there. Well, it is beginning really to look like a house now, and I cannot resist dismounting every time I pass it, and looking it over.
It is going to be a bewitching house, nothing less. There is a covered porch which in winter is to be made into a sun room, that literally hangs over the blue abyss, but so firmly is it supported with its foundations of cement and its huge beams of oak, that it is as firm and enduring as the mountain-side itself. There is a long, fine living room; the mantel is to be of blue tile—yes, and the chimney piece, too. It will be curious, will it not? But I think I shall like it. There are two bedrooms on the first floor, and there is, of course, the kitchen and a small dining room. The wood is chestnut, which takes on a beautiful color when it is oiled.
Upstairs there is a bedroom which reminds me of my dear little loft at Mother McBirney’s only that it is, of course, to be very nicely finished off. It looks up the mountain-side, too, and it opens on a sleeping porch. Then there is a long room beside it, the use of which I do not know. Perhaps it is being left undivided merely because it is not needed for present use. I have asked a number of persons who is building this house, but no one seems to know. The contractor is a friend of mine, but even he professes to know nothing. He says that a man at Rutherford is doing all the business with him, but that he understands it is for some gentleman who wishes to have a quiet spot to come to now and then, and who once visited Lee and saw this beautiful building site.
Well, if he had taken any other spot in the whole county except the particular one that he did, he would be welcome. But as it is, he annoys me.
Haven’t I chattered about enough? Mind, I am looking for you. I want you to come down and play at being a “rich merchant” with me.
If you see the good people at Mallowbanks, give them my love, please.