“I’m grateful to you, Zalie,” Pa told me, shaking my hand till it ached. “You’ve given me comfort and peace, girl, and there ain’t a day or a night I don’t thank you.”
“Pa,” said I, “it’s hard getting even with you and Ma, but I’m going to do it if I can.”
Jim took me down to the station and told me he hoped to be a credit to me, and that he never forgot that he owed his education to me, and he hoped I wouldn’t become worldly.
“Jim, you old silly,” I said to him, “I’m just as worldly as I can be. I simply love the old world.”
“That, Zalie, is not what I mean, and you know it.”
“Don’t lecture me, Jim,” I warned him, “or it will make me more and more frivolous. Just leave me alone and I’ll work out my own salvation.”
But he said he would pray for me. He looked so dignified that I didn’t dare remind him of those little green snakes he used to put in my closet. There’s no doubt about it; Jim is getting ministerial already. Growing up is a queer thing, isn’t it, Carin? Little freckled Jim trying to make a foreign missionary out of me!
To-morrow we shall have a great celebration at Mallowbanks. There are to be some “kin” present, of course, and we are to have a tree and a great dinner and in the evening a sing around the fire. I am to sing for them, alone, at grandmother’s request, and I have been rehearsing. I wish I had a voice like Annie Laurie, rich and full like a robin, or a thrush-like voice such as your mother has. I don’t think much of my voice, and I wish they wouldn’t ask me to sing. But I’ll do my best, and I have some lovely songs. Aunt Lorena plays my accompaniments.
There, I hear the train coming!
How good it will be to get out of this stuffy little station. The light is so dim I can hardly see. But why should I fret? In two hours I shall be in Mallowbanks, my own home. My own! And I know now, Carin, that it will be a pretty fine thing to go up to my own room and feel that I possess it, and to sit at supper with my own people. Yes, Carin, I realize it more to-night than ever before.