A happy New Year! Was it a merry Christmas for you? Oh, I hope it was. You had many of your kith and kin with you, I know. I would have liked to have been there if only I could have been in two places at once. But you know how difficult that is.

And this year I had to be right here.

You still wonder why?

It is not easy to explain. But it had to be. I felt the need of it. I have been working my way back to the true, original Azalea, and she was to be found here and not amid all the luxury and quietude and tradition of Mallowbanks. But now, I think, at last, she is really found, and so she hopes that next year you may be able to include her in your Christmas celebration.

Let me thank you and then thank you again for your beautiful Christmas gifts. A piano of my own, and a music cabinet and folios and folios of music! It was a royal gift and I do not see just how ordinary thanks are going to express my gratitude. All I can say is that it shall be the comfort of my lonely hours, and the joy of my bright ones, and that I promise now that never shall I sit down to this exquisite instrument without thinking of the two who gave it to me, and being thankful that my life met theirs. That my life and theirs could not, for reasons, run along in the same channel, makes the joy of the meeting no less. I look at this wonderful gift and find myself not quite believing that it is really mine. This morning I could hardly wait to dress to run into Carin’s studio to see if it really was there. Having no place of my own, I have had it put in her lovely room for the time being.

I have many things to tell you, and I am going to try to tell them with proper dignity as becomes your niece. I know I write dreadful nonsense at times, and I know, too, that I am too impulsive and enthusiastic. I remember that dear Father McBirney warned me against those faults in my character years ago, when I first came to him. I am afraid I have not improved very much, but at least I am aware that he was right, and that I ought to be a more sober and calm person than I am.

So, quite calmly and soberly, I am happier than I ever thought anybody could be. I have promised Keefe O’Connor to marry him. By Spring I shall have done it—and you two shall be here beside me, to deliver me with all possible conventionality into his hands.

There! Did I not tell that soberly enough?

And now to go back!

I did not write to Keefe nor he to me. We had promised you that we would not, and we kept our word. I did not even let him know that I was here at Lee, or that I had renounced all of my right to my grandmother’s splendid legacy in order to be free to weave my own silver web. No, I just worked and kept still.