But I was secretly very tired when at last the week of festivities was over. There had been a great company of us at Thanksgiving dinner, and we had seen and tasted all that was most splendid in the way of Mallowbanks ham and Mallowbanks turkey, and Mallowbanks artichokes and mince meat, and we had talked and laughed and sung and danced, and bowed and scraped, and shaken hands and kissed, and at last it was all over. Even my darling Annie Laurie and my little Barbara were gone. And then I went up to my own room and closed and bolted the door.
Carin, I wept and wept. I was happy, but I wept. For, someway, after all, this was not my life. It was not the silver web I meant to weave. It was something that was being woven for me, and I was only a quite nice little yellow spider sitting in the midst of it and being admired without doing a single bit of spinning.
It was not at all what I had planned for myself. I am doing a great deal of receiving and little or no giving, and it makes me dissatisfied.
Of course I give some happiness to grandmother, and a new responsibility to Uncle David and Aunt Lorena. But what of my vocation? What of all the things I learned to do with these two hands of mine? What of the friendships I made with humble people and needy ones? What of all the good I was going to do in the world?
Carin, I am very happy. You mustn’t think anything else. But I have cried a tremendous lot, and I’m going to cry when I feel like it. And by and by I shall do something. It will not be liked very well at Mallowbanks—at least, not at first. But we have to be our true selves, don’t we? Don’t we owe that to—well I don’t know just Whom or What we owe it to. But we are made so much ourselves that to be anything other than ourselves is to offend what Kipling calls the God of Things as They Are.
Dear me, am I too serious? I, who have been making an art of gayety? I can talk nonsense endlessly, and I rather like to do it. It excites me. I feel like a young colt when it gets the bit in its teeth and whips off down the road. Then, if the person I am talking with, feels the same way, and the two of us dare the other to see who can run away the hardest—as Mr. Vance Grévy does, for example—then I enjoy myself very much indeed. Running away is, I can see, very pleasant for a time.
But after all, I am not of a nature to run very far. I can always be trusted to come home and stand beside the hitching post. It’s my way. I’m dependable old Azalea after all, and however rattle-brained I may sound, you can count on me to sober down at the critical moment. I’m still, Carin, right beside the hitching post.
The only thing I insist on is being hitched up to my own post. And I don’t believe Mallowbanks is it. It’s a carved, historic, marvelous post. But is it mine? Well, I’ll not think any more just now.
Father and Mother McBirney write contented letters from Bethal Springs. People have been very nice to them and they are not lonely. Father is doing well and feels some loosening up of his “j’ints.” Mother is sewing for somebody’s baby. Trust her to find someone who needs her. If she was set down in a desert you’d probably find her nursing a sick scorpion. I’m going up to see them soon.
Jim is studying his head off at Rutherford Academy and has started a Young Men’s Christian Association there. Dear Jim! Who would have thought he could have turned so good? Jim who used to put little green snakes in my closet!