My party is to be Thanksgiving Day. Say, Oh, say that you can come! To have you here, to have you see all I am so stupidly telling you about, to get off in my own room with you and laugh and talk as we used, would, perhaps, make this life seem real to me. Now, I confess, it seems like a dream.
You keep writing about that young Southerner. You say he is leaving the North and going home. He lives in Charleston? Is his name Bryce or Ravanel or Grévy? If so, I’ve got to marry him!
Aunt Lorena said, however, that the only unmarried Ravanel was at least seventy and deaf as an adder, and that she wouldn’t, if she were in my place, be so hackneyed as to marry a Grévy. As for the Bryces, they are my very own kin and out of the question. So you can imagine my distress! Tut, tut, no bridegroom. And me in long dresses with my hair up. How long must I wait?
As long, perhaps, as my coming-out party.
But it can’t be any sweeter than the birthday party Ma McBirney gave me when we danced till the moon came up—and after.
Carin, you must come!
Fondly
Azalea.
CHAPTER VI
MY BALL
Mallowbanks, November thirtieth.