Well, of course I had guessed from the first that all the trouble came from some absurd idea like that!
So I wrote him that my friendships did not depend on the state of the money market. But I didn’t say, Carin, that I would rather talk with him than anyone I ever met (except you, sister of my heart). Perhaps he will never know that. He said he would love to come down and see me, but that, to be quite frank, he couldn’t afford it just now.
That reminded me of an old idea of mine. So that night I said to grandmother:
“Don’t you think, madam grandmother, that you ought to have a portrait painted of yourself as you are now?”
“I?” cried my grandmother. “At my age! Why, my dear, I am hideous! A wrinkled, white-headed, shriveled old woman! What do I want of a portrait?”
Then she arose and said as she often does: “Your arm, Azalea, if you please.”
So I gave her my arm, guessing that she was going once more to show me the portraits of herself in the paneled hall. And sure enough she did.
“This,” she said, stopping before the first one, “was by the greatest portrait painter in the South. At the time he painted me I was eighteen and already engaged to your father—your grandfather, I mean. I should not like to have you repeat it, but the painter fell desperately in love with me, my dear—desperately. Painters always fall in love with one, I fancy. That is why the picture has a slightly unfinished appearance. He left before he had quite completed it.”
“Poor man,” said I.
“Ah, I dare say he recovered. These loves that are founded on mere admiration amount to but little. We will proceed, if you please.”