Again I knew that I must mention a good price to make her respect him, so I said:
“I think he would paint your portrait, grandmother, for a thousand dollars. And we could entertain him, I suppose? That would make it so much more agreeable, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh, we would entertain him, certainly,” said grandmother. “We have a room built especially for studio purposes. I believe you never have seen it. It is in the west wing, and faces north. There is a bedroom attached. It always has been the custom of the Knoxes to have their portraits painted in the house and by someone with whom they were in daily association. Such intercourse assists in the understanding so necessary to the production of a good likeness.”
So I asked her if I had her permission to write to Keefe, and she said yes. I have written him.
No more for the present, Carin.
By the way, was I rather down-in-the-mouth in my last letter? Please forget about it. I suppose it was only a spell of homesickness. Seeing so many strangers and being expected to like them all, and to act as if I always had known them, rather upset me.
But as I said, no more at present.
I do wish you could see the room I call my Christmas room. It used to be a sort of morning room, but no one sits in it any more, so I have a work table in there, and my sewing machine and embroidery frame and my pyrography outfit, and my photographic stuff, and I am working early and late. Of course I interrupt myself to do whatever Aunt Lorena or grandmother wish me to. And people call, and I return calls, and there are little parties. But I like best to be working. Outside the window are honey locust trees, and they are very lovely even when stripped of their leaves. In the distance, on a hill, is a group of dark hemlock, and now that the sky is gray, they look particularly solemn. I have a fireplace in my Christmas room, and young James keeps it so that I need never be without a blazing hearth. My wood box is simply heaped. There are apples on my table, and a funny old writing desk stands in the corner. It is a terribly messed up room, and I love it. Not that I’m really disorderly. You wouldn’t say I was disorderly, would you, Carin? Come, now! No, I believe I like it because I have made it myself. I have in it what I can use. I am living in it. In the other rooms I only look on; and that, emphatically, is not living.
No more for the present! I mean it!
Azalea.