“You may sit down near me,” she said. “I want to talk to you about your coming-out party.”
So then she told me something about her friends; who had done this and who that, and every one she mentioned was at least sixty years of age and some, as nearly as I could reckon, were eighty or over. So at last I said:
“And may I also be permitted to invite some of my own friends, dear grandmother? Carin Carson who is now in the North at college, and Annie Laurie Pace, who lives at Lee, and Mr. and Mrs. Rowantree of Rowantree Hall, and their brother, Keefe O’Connor who is at the Academy of Design in New York? And of course the McBirneys and the Summers, and—and some others.”
I couldn’t help thinking how I would like to have Haystack Thompson play at my party, and how horrified grandmother would be if she knew my thought and what Haystack is like.
“Are you sure,” said my grandmother, “that these friends of yours would find congenial surroundings at Mallowbanks, my dear Azalea? There is such a thing as propriety to be considered.”
“Would it be proper for me to neglect the friends who were faithful to me for years and years?” I asked. “I was an orphan and poor as a beggar, and they took me in to sit beside their hearths. They gave me the best they had; hospitality and love and learning. If I know anything at all, it is owing to them.”
“My dear,” said my grandmother, “you speak poetically.”
“Yes, madam grandmother, I admit it. When I once love, I can never forget.”
“I shall be like you,” I declared boldly. “I wish to be like you and never to forget!”
She looked at me sideways. Then she tilted her delicate chin and faced me straight.
“Azalea—last night—did you know? Did you see?”
“Ah, Azalea, your father was my dearest! They almost killed me when they came between him and me. He was wayward, I know, but he didn’t have the same ideas of goodness and badness that others have. I always loved him. I love him still.”
“It is beautiful of you, madam grandmother. I hope to be just like that.”
“Very well, Azalea. You shall have your friends to your party if they will come. You shall ask the humblest if you choose.”
“Thank you, thank you, grandmother; you will be proud to know them. The humblest of them are very sweet, but some, I assure you, are not humble at all. They are accomplished enough to win even your approval.”