Of course I could go away somewhere else and perhaps find some other place where the mountain industries are being developed. But ought I to leave home now? I seem to be very much needed. As you know, sometimes our sweet, unselfish Mother McBirney gets melancholy. She has lived so long away up here on the mountain that her thoughts get to turning inward, and she remembers about Molly’s death, and then for days she is silent and brooding, and we all tremble for her. She looks far, far away and pays almost no attention to what we say to her. This is a very real danger, and if I were not here to shake her out of these moods, who knows what might happen?
So there I am, I who wanted to do such wonderful independent things, I who thought I had learned so much, about as useless as anyone could be. At least, as a money-earner. Of course I am not sitting about, beating my breast and throwing dust on my head. I hope you don’t think that. No, I have Mother McBirney’s loom in good working order, and have set it up not too far away from the fireplace, and I am throwing that shuttle like mad, weaving some perfectly fascinating counterpanes. You ought to see the one in red and black in the Tudor rose pattern. Truly, it’s a beauty. I know I can sell it easily enough, and I’m going to charge a good price for it, too. I’m a greedy pig.
But you see, I must have money.
By rights, Father McBirney ought to have a change. He should go down to Bethal Springs. The waters there are said to cure some terrible cases of rheumatism. But he couldn’t go without Mother; and Mother wouldn’t go without Jim. So there you are. Such a puzzle!
Jim is dreadfully on my mind, too. What do you think has happened to him? He has “got religion.” Yes, I know you are laughing. Jim, the tease of the world, Jim with freckles and warts and funny words, and the very dickens in him. But it is true. Mr. Summers did it—talked to him in the woods, and Jim “saw the light.” And now he wants to be a preacher like Mr. Summers. You ought to hear him preaching to the horses when he combs them down. I listen. Perhaps I ought not to. I don’t do it to make fun, you may be sure. I do it because the poor boy is so earnest and surprising. You can’t think what beautiful things he says. Nights he studies the Bible and some books Mr. Summers gives him. He drives away to town once every week to help with the Epworth League meeting, and he has got up some sort of a society among the boys, and has induced the members to pledge themselves not to drink whiskey or chew tobacco, or use profane words, or do any other horrid thing.
Our Jim!
Carin, we’re all growing up, aren’t we?
You with your long dresses and touch-me-not air, and Annie Laurie, one of our leading business persons! And Sam Disbrow buying stock in Annie Laurie’s dairy, and Hi Kitchell doing draying, and Dick Heller going in the bank, and Keefe O’Connor sending me the catalogue of his “Autumn Exhibit.” You can fancy how Keefe played up Sunset Gap in his pictures! I could tell from the names where he had painted about half of them. I’ll send you the catalogue. But return it, won’t you? It seems like a memento of that queer, wild, happy summer at the Gap.
That was the last summer we really spent together. To be sure I have had glimpses of you, but usually you have been away on your wonderful journeys with your father and mother, and I have had to go about the mountain roads alone. But I haven’t minded, Carin, and you mustn’t think that I have. I tried to picture the beautiful places you were in, and the parties you were going to, and the pictures and palaces you were seeing, and I knew that if I was thinking of you, that you were thinking of me, too. It kept my heart warm; it peopled the lonely mountain roads.
I’ll tell you this, my Carin: Next to a well-loved human face, a well-loved road is the best thing. The sight of a familiar clump of grass can be as dear as a threshold. Twists of tree trunks, odd embankments, colors of the road, above all, the turns of a road, get to be like a part of one’s life. The little smells that come up from earth and grass and flower, rising over and over again from the same place, affect one almost like the voices of “home folk.” Even the wind on the face, though the wind is so wild and strange a thing, makes one feel at ease in one’s world; and the burst of the sun over a hill, or the going down of it at the close of a busy day—busy both for you and the sun—can make you realize as few things can, that you are the child of God—of the great Father, so silent, so unknowable, who has made suns and birds, mountains and little friendly crickets.