“Oh, we’ve been to school this morning,” she said smilingly. “And we’ve learned a hard lesson, too. Now we’re on our way back again.”
But they had got no more than half the way to The Shoals when the familiar surrey of the Carsons appeared, with Mrs. Carson sitting in it.
“Goodness,” cried Annie Laurie, “she’s coming for me! What trouble I have put everybody to.”
But Mrs. Carson didn’t seem to think that anybody was making her trouble. She wore that pleasant, dreamy smile of hers—her “moonlight” smile, as Carin called it, and her voice was as even and low as ever as she bade Benjamin turn the horses, and invited the girls to get in beside her.
“I thought I’d come to meet you,” she said blandly, and quite as if nothing had happened. They rode along together in silence for a while,almost wondering if anything unpleasant really had occurred, Mrs. Carson seemed so unconscious of it. But when they got out of the carriage at the house door she said:
“I’m so glad you’ve talked everything out. You’ll find it much better always, I believe—to talk things out. By the way, Carin is up in her studio. Lessons are to be up there this morning, for a change. Azalea, will you kindly show Annie Laurie the way? Your luncheon will be served there too. We thought we’d celebrate the formation of the Triple Alliance.
“What, ma’am?” said Azalea.
“The Three Girls’ Alliance,” smiled Mrs. Carson. “Drive back to town, please Ben. I must do my marketing.”
As she rode off, Annie Laurie looked at Azalea in a puzzled way.
“How quiet she is,” she said. “I can’t make her out. Nothing seems to matter to her, yet she’s always doing good. I never heard of anyone who did so much good. Can you understand her?”
Azalea shook her head.
“No—and yet a great sorrow, such as hers—it makes you still, I reckon. My mother—I callMrs. McBirney my mother, you know—is still. Yet she has lost only one child, and little Molly died right in her arms. But Mrs. Carson lost her three sons in a theatre fire in Chicago, and it did something to her, I suppose. The heart went out of her, though not the goodness.”
“Oh, dear no,” agreed Annie Laurie, “not the goodness.”
They left their outer wraps in the vacant schoolroom, and then made their way up the wide mahogany stairs, with the gleaming white banisters and mahogany rail. Curious old prints lined the side of the wall, and Annie Laurie wanted to pause and look at them, but Azalea urged her on.
“If you stopped to look at every interesting thing in this house,” she said, “you’d never get anywhere.”
They went on past the floor where the bedrooms were, and then up a narrower flight of stairs to the third story.
“Half of this story is Carin’s,” explained Azalea. “The servants sleep in the other half.”
A tall, curious door, much paneled, with a shining brass knob, stood before them. Therewas also a knocker of brass, shaped like a lyre. Azalea rapped with it.
“Come in,” said the voice of Carin, and Azalea threw wide the door and motioned Annie Laurie to enter.
What she saw then she was never to forget. It was as bright to her, as different from anything she ever had seen, as the green Azores are to one who has ridden long upon the gray Atlantic. The room was paneled high in white, and above it, decorations of tropical flowers and parokeets made the wall gay. Muslin curtains hung at the dormer windows, beneath draperies of delicate green. Near the north window was Carin’s easel, with the unfinished portrait of Azalea upon it. Chairs of green wicker stood about; a huge divan was piled with dainty pillows; in the white wooden fireplace, with its tiles of parrots, palms and pagodas, a bright fire burned. Japanese rugs of gray and white lay on the floor, and in jars of pale green, or gray, were beautiful blossoming plants.
But exquisite as the room was, and deeply as it satisfied Annie Laurie’s beauty-starved heart, it was as nothing to the girl who was the center of it.
Carin stood awaiting them, her hands outstretched
In her crimson school frock, soft andgraceful, her golden hair shining on her shapely head, her eyes full of tears of repentance, Carin stood awaiting them, her hands outstretched. It all seemed so different from what Annie Laurie knew of her, that at first she hesitated to go forward, but Carin came on, still with that look of solicitude in her face.
“Oh, Annie Laurie,” she said, “I see everything now. I see how I acted and how I made you feel. You’ll have to forgive me. I never was like that before. It was as if imps got inside me, and the worst of it was that I seemed to want to hang on to them. I knew I was wicked, but I liked to be that way. I just wouldn’t give up, though I was unhappy all the time. I told mother all about it, and she said that was the way it was when you got perverse. You liked it. Perversity seemed sweeter than anything. She said it was like being a drunkard. You enjoyed the thing that ruined you. I can see just what she meant. I’ll tell you now, Annie Laurie, that after the first day or two I found myself liking you, and I hated to admit it. I tried not to as hard as I could. I didn’t like mamma’s putting a girl in with us without talking it over, do you see? But I do like you—I had to. The wholetrouble was that I couldn’t bear to give up. But you’ve made me, and now I’m well again. For it’s just like a spell of sickness, having a horrid, wicked idea like mine and holding on to it. Do you understand?”
Annie Laurie’s face had flushed softly; her eyes were misty, her handsome, large mouth slightly tremulous. She withdrew her hands from Carin’s, and put her arms close about her.
“When I say I forgive,” she said, “I do.”
“And do you say it?”
Annie Laurie laughed deep in her throat—and again her voice reminded one of an oriole’s.
“I do say it,” she said. “Your mother called it the Triple Alliance—the Three Girls’ Alliance.”
“We must swear fealty!” cried Azalea. She ran to the table and brought back Howard Pyle’s “Robin Hood,” in which the story of the forester and his faithful crew is told in equally beautiful words and pictures.
“Swear!” she commanded. Carin, laughing somewhat uncertainly, dropped her slender white hand on it. Annie Laurie laid her firm brown one over it; Azalea placed on top hersensitive, odd hand, which always quivered when she cared about anything.
“We swear,” they said in chorus.
The door opened and Miss Parkhurst entered, her arms full of books.
After that, the short days of winter passed as happily for the three girls as days can be expected to pass in a world which some discouraged person called “a vale of tears.” Alert as their minds were, each was decidedly different from the other, and they had the effect of spurring each other on. Carin was, of course, really more interested in her drawing and painting than in anything else, although she was a good student, too. Annie Laurie simply devoured books, and her happiest diversion was music. A good teacher came weekly from Rutherford, a town near by, to give her instruction. But Azalea took neither drawing nor singing lessons. She had much housework to do before and after school, and her long ride down the mountain each morning and back again at night, with the fatigue it entailed, had to be taken into account. Then she helped with the sewing and with the weaving, and so had neither time nor strength foranything else. Once Mrs. Carson said to her husband:
“Perhaps we were wrong not to insist on having Azalea live with us. It is true that few children have so much love and care given them as she has there with the dear McBirneys. But she has to share their poverty too, and their hard work. Do you think she will be worn out, Charles? Children seem so precious to me. I can’t bear to see their strength wasted.”
“My dear, she is being made into a very capable girl,” Mr. Carson answered reassuringly. “She is having the sort of training our pioneer ancestors had, and they grew stronger for their tasks and hardships. You and I are not going to live forever, you know, and our Carin will never want to take up the work we’re doing here among the mountain people. She’ll be off to Paris or Rome, I suppose, picture seeing and making. But here’s Azalea, in the most practical arts and crafts school possible. She sees the mountain handicrafts made every day right before her eyes, and when she’s grown she’ll be able to teach others. She’ll come in here and take up the work where we leave off.”
“Charles Carson,” cried his wife indignantly,shocked for once out of her sweet placidity, “what do you mean by speaking of us as if we were old? Why, we’re hardly middle-aged.”
“Aren’t we?” said Mr. Carson rather wearily, yet smiling too. “I didn’t know, Lucy. Sometimes it seems to me as if I had lived a long time.”
His wife was silent. She knew what he meant. Who could know better? The day of blight that took from them their three fine sons had left them disinclined to go on playing the game of life. They had tried many things, and at length had come into this quiet valley, where there was so much uncomplaining poverty, where the people had latent talents that only needed encouragement to make them bread-winning forces, and they had endeavored to make themselves necessary.
They had bought the beautiful old home that long years before had belonged to Azalea’s grandfather, Colonel Atherton, and they had showered their favors right and left and tried to make their influence felt in all parts of the county. Their love of doing something, of building up, was as a fresh wind blowing in a sultry plain. For a lassitude had hung over thebeautiful valley of Lee—a lassitude born of long years of loneliness, lack of opportunity and monotony. Too little had happened; there had been too few ways of earning money; too few strangers had come that way. One day was so like another that a spell lay upon the people, and they moved as in a long dream. But it was different now. There was some use in making the strong, hand-woven cloth, the durable, quaint chairs and the curious baskets, for Mr. Carson saw that they were profitably marketed.
Mr. Carson had induced the mother of Hi Kitchell, a little worn woman with three children to support, to come down from the mountains and oversee his industries for him. He had given her a little home on the level spot known as the Field of Arrows, an ancient Indian camping ground, and here the young women came to learn the weaving of baskets and of cloth. The front room was the shop, where the people came to buy these interesting wares.
Here, too, the three girls came sometimes after school for a cup of tea and some homemade cake—for Mrs. Kitchell served these comforts to all who wished them—and sitting around her fire, they listened to her stories and told tales of theirown adventures. Sometimes there would be a dozen or more in the tea room, whiling away the tedium of a winter afternoon. Hi and the other children helped with the serving, and now and then “for the fun of it” Jim McBirney or Sam Disbrow took a hand. There always was plenty to do at the Mountain Industries, it seemed, however slack work might be elsewhere.
One day of cold rain, Azalea and Annie Laurie had stopped in at Mrs. Kitchell’s for a cup of tea before they made their way to their distant homes. There was no one there that afternoon, save the sharp-eyed, busy Mrs. Kitchell, and she, having served them, went back to the loom-room and left them to themselves. The girls were excellent friends now. They trusted and admired each other—counted on each other, as true friends should.
“Azalea,” said Annie Laurie, “I never understood rightly about your ‘cousin Barbara.’ I’ve heard you speak of her, but I’m not quite clear as to who she is.”
Azalea laughed lightly.
“She isn’t really my cousin at all,” she said. “I have no kin, Annie Laurie. But I have told you, have I not, how my poor mamma and Iwere traveling with a dreadful show when she died; and how we had got as far as the McBirney’s cottage, and Ma McBirney—as Jim calls her—had my dear mamma buried right there near the house, where her own little Molly’s grave is? Then she asked the show people to let her take me, and they wouldn’t. And so the dear, brave thing took me anyway, and ran away up into the mountains with me and hid with me in a cave. And Pa McBirney and some of his friends stayed down at the house, with shotguns, and scared the show folk away. Well, Sisson, Hi Kitchell’s uncle, who was at the head of the show, was terribly angry, and he made up his mind he would have me back again. So one time, when we all went off to a ‘Singing,’ he managed to get me, and to carry me away, and for weeks I was taken from one place to another in the mountains, away off the beaten tracks, always hiding. Oh, it was such a time, Annie!”
“I know,” said the other sympathetically. “Of course I heard about that. We were all so excited, wondering if you’d be found, and I just cried when I heard that you were, and that good old Haystack Thompson was bringing you home. I didn’t know you—and I couldn’t evenremember having seen you—but I felt interested in you from that moment.”
“Well, perhaps you heard that I managed to run away from the people who were hiding me, and I went down the mountain in the night, and came to the little town at the foot of it, and crept into a house there, and into a sleeping-porch with a bed in it. Oh, I was so tired—so tired it was almost like dying. I don’t really remember getting in that bed; but I was found there in the morning by Mr. Summers, who is a Methodist minister, you know. His wife is Barbara Summers. And they have the dearest baby you ever saw or heard of—Jonathan Summers, he is, bless him. Well, Mrs. Summers is just a little dear thing with brown eyes—she’s no bigger than I am. And from the minute we saw each other, we loved each other and felt at home. So we decided that we’d be kin. I write to her one week, and she writes to me the next. She sends me pictures of Jonathan that she takes with her little camera, and I send her presents when I can—little woven table-covers or baskets. You’ve no idea how sweet she is, Annie Laurie.”
“You seem to make friends whenever you please, Azalea. It’s so easy for you! The Pacesaren’t like that. It’s hard for them to let themselves go and say the thing that comes into their minds. We’re stiff, someway. But when we do make friends, we keep them.”
“Be sure to keep me, Annie Laurie. I nearly lost you through my own carelessness, and I mean to hang on to you now. Well, come, let’s start for home.”
But as it turned out, it was raining most dismally. A dark cloud had tumbled off the mountain and settled down over the valley, and though it was not late, it seemed almost like night.
“Goodness me,” said Annie Laurie, “I don’t like to think of you riding away up on the mountain a night like this. Why, you’d be drenched.”
“I ought to have accepted Carin’s invitation and stayed all night with her,” said Azalea. “Mother doesn’t expect me on bad nights. She’s not to worry about me if I don’t come when it rains or snows.”
“Oh, stay with me, Azalea! It’s just the chance I’ve been wanting. You’ve never been in my home except on that funny day when we all had conniption fits—especially Aunt Adnah. But, honestly, Aunt Adnah is a brick if you know her.”
Azalea giggled. “Yes, she did seem to have some of the properties of a brick—hardness, for example. She hit me between the eyes.”
“Well, she’ll make it up to you now, if you’ll give her a chance. Of course she wouldn’t say that she wants to make up, but she does.”
“I’d just love to stay all night with you,” Azalea said. “I’ll take the pony back to the Carsons’ stable, and then we’ll walk over to your house.”
“Very well. I’ll go with you to the stable.” They put the pony in the stall, and then, wrapped in their raincoats, tramped along over the red pine needles to Annie Laurie’s home.
“Don’t feel at all backward, will you, Azalea?” the other girl said as they stood on the doorstep. “You just have a little pluck and everything will come out all right.”
Azalea laughed.
“You don’t half understand me yet, Annie Laurie,” she said. “You’re so much more serious than I am. I can’t help enjoying things even when they are serious. I know I oughtn’t to feel that way, but I think it will be awfully funny to see your Aunt Adnah’s face when she finds I’ve had the impudence to come again.”
Annie Laurie frowned a trifle. She was not quite sure she liked to have her aunt regarded as amusing. However, they went in together. The door of the grim little parlor was closed, but the living-room door stood open and Annie Laurie led the way in. There was an ugly brussels carpet on the floor, and a center table covered with a chenille cloth; on it was the reading lamp, and ranged about it were comfortable chairs. A black marble clock ticked noisily on the mantel shelf, and a low fire smouldered among the ashes. The scrim curtains had many colored figures in them, and helped to keep out the light of the declining day. Azalea could not help contrasting it with the exquisite rooms at The Shoals, and with the quaint, charming rooms in the McBirney cabin. She could understand some of the bitter things that Annie Laurie had said to her—could see that, somehow, life had been commonplace for this girl from the first, and that, though she did not altogether realize it, it was this common-placeness which made her dissatisfied.
“Wherever can the aunts be?” said Annie Laurie. “The fire is out in the kitchen, and there are no signs of supper. Usually at thishour, things are humming like a bee hive. Take off your things, Azalea. I’ll hang them up where they’ll dry. You sit right down before the fire, and I’ll bring in some wood.”
“But let me help, Annie Laurie.”
“No, no. You’re company. I don’t often have company.” She went away with Azalea’s things and then came back and stood looking at her guest with her glowing eyes. “Azalea,” she said intensely, “I never have company!”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know why not. I’m not supposed to want it. I’m to study and work, and mend and practice my music, and be doing something from early till late. It isn’t that they’re not kind to me—my aunts and my father—but they’re so dreadfully serious and conscientious.”
“Itdoesthrow a damper over everything, being conscientious like that,” mused Azalea.
Annie Laurie looked startled to hear her own secret idea put in words.
“For goodness sake,” she cried, “don’t let the aunts hear you say that!”
Azalea laughed teasingly.
“I’d really like to try that on Aunt Adnah,” she said.
Annie Laurie was getting used to her friend, and she made no reply. She ran upstairs for a moment, and came down clothed in a warm brown wrapper, and carrying another one of equally uninviting color on her arm.
“Slip into this, Azalea,” she commanded, “and let me hang your dress out in the hall near the heater. There now, lie down on the sofa—so. I’ll lie down too with my head the other way, and we’ll wrap ourselves in my grandfather’s old army blankets. I’m dead tired, aren’t you? I don’t seewherethe aunts are.”
She yawned wearily, and Azalea caught the contagion and stretched her pretty mouth in imitation.
“Oh, it’s cosy, isn’t it?” Azalea murmured. Neither spoke again. Their eyes were fixed on the smouldering coals, which seemed to hypnotize them, and presently they both slept.
Just how long they lay there, comfortably resting, Azalea could not tell, but when she opened her eyes the twilight had deepened. Annie Laurie was still deep in sleep. The fire had quickened, and by its glow Azalea could see that some one had entered the room. For a moment she was startled, but then she saw thatit was Annie Laurie’s father, Simeon Pace; so she lay still, not liking to speak, since she was not sure he would know her. He did not see the two girls on the sofa, and it was quite evident that he thought himself alone. Azalea watched him sleepily, and saw him take off his coat and throw it on the chair. Then he began twisting his arm in a most inhuman manner, and Azalea’s blood was frozen as she saw him loosen it at the elbow and lay it beside the coat, until she chanced to remember about its being merely a tin substitute for an arm. His next act was to take a long pocketbook or wallet from the mantel, draw something from it, stuff it into his hollow arm and deftly strap the arm into place again.
“How funny,” thought Azalea. “How Jim will laugh when I tell him about it!”
Then she remembered that she had been unintentionally spying, and that it would not be at all fair to tell what she had seen. She knew Ma McBirney would not like her to mention anything she had seen under such circumstances. So she lay as still as a lizard, hardly breathing, and finally Mr. Pace left the room. A moment later she heard the two aunts bustling about inthe kitchen. There was a poking at the stove, a lighting of lamps, a rattling of dishes, and it was evident that the household was being set in motion again.
“Where are you, Annie Laurie, child?” called the voice of Miss Zillah. “We’ve been out to the sewing circle, and it was so late before the refreshments were served that we couldn’t hold our business meeting till after five. Then on the way home we heard Mrs. Disbrow was worse and Hannah laid up with a cold and we dropped in to see them, though I must say they’re a shiftless lot. We thought you and your father wouldn’t mind if supper was a little late. What you lying there for, child? And mercy me, how big you look! Why, no wonder, there’s two of you. It’s you, Azalea? How do you do?”
“I’m very well, ma’am,” said Azalea rather shyly. “I hope you didn’t mind my coming. It was so rainy and horrid, Annie Laurie asked me to spend the night.”
“Why, you’re as welcome as sunrise, of course. Sister Adnah, here is Azalea McBirney. She’s come to spend the night with us.”
Azalea wondered what was going to happenthen. Miss Adnah had been quite vicious on the occasion of her former visit; but the mischievous spirit in the girl made her rather enjoy the uncertainty. Miss Adnah, she decided, could do no more than eat her up. But Miss Adnah was over her bad temper. She came in holding out her hand gravely.
“It was a wise thing for you to stay in the valley to-night,” she said primly. “I’m sure Mrs. McBirney wouldn’t want you to climb the mountain in such a drizzle.”
She avoided committing herself to a mere piece of flattery. She didn’t say she was glad Azalea was there, but for some reason, the girl did not feel chilled. She knew Annie Laurie wanted her, and it seemed to her that as the daughter of the house, Annie Laurie ought to enjoy some privileges. However, a few minutes later, when she was in Annie Laurie’s sober, tidy room, putting on her dress and freshening her hair, she overheard Miss Zillah saying softly to Annie Laurie in the next room:
“Sister Adnah thinks you should not invite anyone to the house without first asking permission, my dear. As for myself, I’m glad to seeyou have friends and feel free to ask them, but it would be well to make certain preparations.”
“Not at all, Aunt Zillah,” answered Annie Laurie hotly. “I’ve never had a girl to stay all night—never. I asked Azalea because it was raining. I couldn’t tell it was going to rain, or that I was going to ask her. I’m old enough now to use some sense, I hope, and I want it so that I can act without first having a period of fasting and prayer. You and Aunt Adnah were late to-night—”
“My dear, it is the first time we have been late to our duties, so far as I can remember, since we assumed them.”
“Oh, you don’t understand at all. I’m glad you were late. Why shouldn’t you be, if you wished? And your duties—why do you speak of what you do in the house like that? It’s not a duty to live and work and eat and sleep and all. It’s a pleasure. At least, that’s the way Carin and Azalea look at it. What I wanted to say was that for once you acted on impulse. You stayed till meeting was out, and you stopped in to see some sick neighbors. Well, I think that’s fine. Now, I asked my friend to stay all night. No preparation is needed. The cellar isbursting with food, the pantry is plumb full of it; there’s milk and cream to float a town and butter enough to grease all the engines in the world—”
“Annie Laurie!”
“Well, Aunt Adnah wears my patience out. I’m going to ask my friends here when it seems best.”
“My dear, you know we only ask you to use judgment.”
“Judgment? I don’t know what that means. I’ll use hospitality, if you like, and courtesy—”
“To your aunts, among others, I hope.”
“Bless your heart!” Azalea heard Annie Laurie cry softly. “You’re a dear, Aunt Zillah. Was I ever rude to you?”
“Not directly, my dear child. But you sometimes speak of my sister in a manner which I cannot regard as really respectful.”
“Forgive me, Aunt Zillah. I’ve too much mustard and pepper in my disposition. But there’s the supper bell. Azalea! Azalea, are you ready?”
They sat down at a bountiful table, and Simeon Pace folded his hand of flesh and his hand of tin together and prayed long and loud—something about the “sundering of joints andmarrow.” Azalea, who was very hungry, hardly seemed to get the drift of these words. But she was startled from her dazed reverie by a sharp inquiry from Mr. Pace.
“So you two girls were asleep there before the fire, were you? Did you see me when I came in?” He turned his large eyes—so like and yet so unlike Annie Laurie’s—upon first one girl and then the other.
“I didn’t,” said his daughter.
“And you, Miss Azalea?”
“I awoke while you were in the room,” she said, feeling somewhat like Jack when he talked with the Giant Eater.
“So?” he looked at her sharply. “Why didn’t you speak?”
“I—I wasn’t sure you’d know me, sir.” She paused a moment and sat steady under the look he kept upon her. “Anyway, I was just as good as asleep—half dreaming.”
“And you never tell your dreams, I hope? It’s a bad habit.”
Azalea smiled at him.
“I never, never tell them, sir,” she said.
“Good,” cried Simeon Pace. “A sensible girlwouldn’t, of course. Let me serve you some meat, Miss Azalea.”
And she understood clearly that she had given a tacit promise that she would not tell what she had seen; and Simeon Pace felt the reliable character of her, beneath her soft, girlish aspect, and trusted her.
While they were at supper a strong cold wind sprung up, so that Mr. Pace had to heap wood on the fire. And afterward, when the two girls ran to the door, they could see that the sky had cleared and the stars were out, looking, it seemed, unusually large and bright and sociable.
“Why not go to prayer meeting?” said Azalea.
“At your church or mine?”
“Oh, if you don’t mind, Annie Laurie, at mine this time. Dear old Elder Mills is leaving, you know. You’ve heard how sick he is with the rheumatism, haven’t you? He’s going down to Florida where the climate will be better for him. They say he’s wonderful these last few weeks. He’s trying to say everything he can think of that will help the people he’s known so long. I love to hear people talk when they are really, really in earnest, don’t you?”
Annie Laurie looked at her friend understandingly.
“You are just like me, Azalea; you always want mountains to be higher than they really are, and stars brighter, and sermons deeper, and friends more loving. Nothing is ever quite big enough to suit me—nor quitehardenough.”
“Not intense enough, Carin would say.”
“That’s it. Yes, let’s go to prayer meeting. I’ll ask father if I may.”
They presently were on their way, walking briskly because they were late. The little Methodist church was full of the old friends of Elder Mills, who as he stood before them, his white hair hanging around his shoulders, his face haggard with pain, yet had a look in his eyes of exaltation and joy which seemed to make a light thing of his physical distress.
“Oh, I want you to love one another,” he said during the evening. “I want you to forgive one another. Be honest, be brave in saying what you think, live truly, avoid lies. Above everything, avoid lies—in word and in act.”
“For goodness sake,” thought Annie Laurie, “Can’t preachers find anything else to talk about but lies? Whether I go to my own church oranother, that seems to be the theme.” She remembered how she had caught Sam Disbrow’s eye that day at the Baptist church when the minister had been talking about lies, and how queer it had been to realize that she was reading Sam’s mind, and could tell that he, like herself, was wondering why the preacher kept harping on that. Annie Laurie’s mind drifted off to Sam’s home—to his mother who never was well, to their untidy little house, and to his cross-eyed sister, who never would make friends with anybody. Sam seemed so different from the rest of the family, with his hearty downright ways, his energy, his determination to make something of himself.
Was meeting over? She aroused herself as from a dream.
“There’s to be a business meeting,” Azalea said to her as the people arose. “They’re to talk about who is to be our new minister. Since it is not conference time, we are to ask for some one we want, and then if the bishop thinks best we can have him.”
“I see,” said Annie Laurie vaguely. Though she did not really see.
The two girls started out together, crowdingsoftly by their elders who were gathered about in the aisles talking over the trial that had come to the church in losing Elder Mills, and in being obliged to bring a new minister in at the middle of the session. And then, suddenly, a beautiful idea came to Azalea. Why couldn’t they ask the Rev. Absalom Summers? He was in that tiny backwoods village where there were so few to hear or enjoy him; and he was such a wonderful man, all wrapped up in his religion, and talking about it as if it must be the business of everyone. And if he came, her “pretend cousin” Barbara, his wife, would come also, and that blessed baby, Jonathan. To think was to act with Azalea, now as always. She broke from Annie Laurie and ran up to her old friend and protector, Haystack Thompson.
“Oh, Mr. Thompson, dear,” she whispered, “if only you could manage to put in a word for Mr. Summers! You know what he is—how he talks and sings and laughs and keeps everybody stirred up. He’d put life into any church, wouldn’t he? He’s just wasted down in that little valley where he lives. Hardly anybody comes to church, and those who do, don’t likehim. They think he’s too new-fashioned. But here he’d be appreciated.”
“Well, now,” drawled Mr. Thompson, running his hand through his wild head of hair—the hair that gave him his nickname of “Haystack”—“I don’t know but there might be something in that. He sure has got a lot of ginger in him, ‘the power of the Lord,’ he calls it, and I reckon maybe that’s what it is. Anyway, as you insinuate, Zalie, the Seven Sleepers would have had a hard time of it trying to keep up their slumbers anywhere around his neighborhood.”
“And then Mrs. Summers,” went on Azalea breathlessly; “think what she would mean to the church! She’s so lively, you know, and so interested in everyone—sorry for them when she ought to be, and happy with them all other times.”
“Sharin’ their sorrows an’ their joys with ’em, I reckon you mean, daughter.”
“Yes; and the baby—”
“Of course, the baby! He’d be a drawin’ card to any congregation.”
“Oh, Mr. Thompson, if I could have that baby around I’d—”
“Yes?”
“I’d—I’d be good all the rest of my days.”
“Be a practicin’ Christian, eh? Well, as you say, Summers is a mighty fetching man—don’t know of any with more—well, more radiation. I reckon I’d better mention him to the bretherin. Perhaps the bishop would hear to his being moved up this a-way—particularly if I told him you was wantin’ to play with the baby.”
Azalea never cared how much fun her kind old Haystack made of her. He had followed her over mountains and through valleys, in sun and rain, in a certain terrible episode of her life, when she had been stolen away from Mrs. McBirney and all but forced back into her hateful life with a traveling show, and she let him joke and fleer all he pleased, knowing him, as she did, for one of her staunchest friends.
“Yes, please do,” she urged. “They’re just going into meeting now. Just tell them how he laughs and talks and cuts up!”
“Fine recommendations for a pastor!”
“Well, they are,” insisted Azalea. “Of course they are. He wants everyone to be as good and happy as he is, and if they aren’t, he’ll find out why.”
Haystack Thompson brought his huge brows together and regarded Azalea with his sharp eyes. Neither spoke for a moment. Then: “Yes-sum,” he said, and moved toward the front to join the representative members of the congregation.
So it came about that a month later Azalea had the great happiness of knowing that her friends, the Reverend Absalom Summers and his wife and baby were coming to Lee as the result of her suggestion. It was rather a joke among those who knew of it. “Azalea’s choice” they called the new minister. But it was no joke to Azalea. It meant more to her than she ever could explain.
“You see,” she said to Carin, “it’s ideas that count—right ideas. Now, I’m a person of no importance whatever. But because I happened to have the right idea, those men listened to me and did what I wanted them to do.”
“And the point of it all is,” laughed Carin, “that if you have enough right ideas and can find enough persons to listen to them, you’ll be important, see?”
“Don’t laugh,” said Azalea. “If you knewwhat it meant for me to have the Summerses come—”
“I know well enough—know too well. After they come, what chance will I have of getting your attention?”
“Carin, how can you? No one can take your place. My friends are all separate. I can’t spare one, and not one can take the place of another.”
They were in Carin’s pony cart as they held this conversation, on their way down to the station, and it seemed as they drove along the one macadamized road in the county, that everyone they knew was bent in the same direction.
True, it was nighttime, but the lanterns and lamps revealed the identity of the travelers. Amusements were not many at Lee, and the coming of the new Methodist minister and his family was an event worthy of notice. Moreover, the fame of the Reverend Absalom Summers had gone abroad. His strong bright gifts, his hearty, brotherly nature, his way of finding nothing too small for his interest or too great for his inquisitiveness, had won him friends. So they gathered—these friendly, waiting neighbors—inthe draughty little waiting room of the station and waited for the nine o’clock train.
The peculiarities of this nine o’clock train were well known. It had acquired a habit of arriving at about a quarter of ten, and it was not until the hands of the clock and of the frequently consulted watches of the male members approached that hour, that anyone thought of going out to look up the track. But there it was, sure enough, faithful to the time it had chosen for itself. Its flaring headlight could be seen away up the mountains. The air was nipping, and the company of watchers shivered together, but they would none of them go back into the station now that the headlight really was in sight.
Moreover, though they would not say so, they loved to be out among the mountains—those mountains that were as the very soul of their lives, that held them together, that gave meaning to their secret motives, to their religion, to their daily work. They loomed now, darkest purple against the starry sky. The wind swept down from them, fresh with an indescribable freshness. An owl called—was silent—then called again. Lights shone out from the houses in the village, and from the scattered cabinsalong the mountain sides. Now and then there was a movable light high on the mountain, as some hill farmer made his way to his house from a neighbor’s, or from his visit to town, or from looking after his stock.
The headlight disappeared as the train swept around the horseshoe bend. Then it burst upon them like a menacing star. It rushed towards them. There was a shriek as of a giant taken prisoner. The train was there! The conductor got down and exchanged greetings, and an enormously tall and thin man appeared, carrying many bundles.
“There he is! It’s the Elder. There’s Mr. Summers,” cried the people. They surged forward, pulled the man from the steps, seized his bundles, and waited while he assisted a little lady to alight.
“Why, she isn’t as large as we are, Azalea,” whispered Carin.
“I know,” Azalea whispered back, quivering as she hugged her companion’s arm. “I told you—”
But Carin was not to know what Azalea had told her, for at that moment the voice of the little lady was heard saying:
“And where’s Azalea?”
It was, for Azalea, a thrilling moment. Afterward, thinking it all over, she could not tell why her heart so leaped at that first word. Was it because she had no kin, really, that this voice of loving friendship was so sweet to her? Was it that she was proud—she who had been a wanderer and a beggar—to be asked for before all the people? Was it just abounding love for Barbara Summers, her “pretend cousin”?
It made no difference, really. There was Barbara, her dark eyes shining; there was her babe in her arms, fresh and wonderful from sleep; and there was his mother offering him to Azalea.
The two kissed above the baby.
“Honey bunch!” murmured Azalea, and gathered him into her arms.
She saw nothing of how the people came forward to make Mr. Summers and his wife welcome; heard nothing of what Pa McBirney said to them, urging them into his comfortable old mountain wagon. Even the voice of Carin was vague in her ears, though she knew she was murmuring her appreciation of golden curls and blue eyes, of tiny teeth, of dimples, orchubby little hands. But nothing that anybody could say would be too much, Azalea thought. Her hungry heart, never yet satisfied, with all the love that had come to her, wrapped a thousand quivering tendrils about this little laughing child.
“You riding with Miss Carin, Zalie?” asked Pa McBirney.
“Yes, thank you, father. We’ll drive right up to the parsonage, won’t we, Carin?”
“As fast as Mustard can take us,” replied Carin. “The baby won’t mind leaving you a moment, will he, Mrs. Summers?”
Barbara Summers shook her head. She was not given to passing Jonathan over to the care of others, but there was something in the satisfied expression of Azalea’s face that forbade her to take him away.
Carin turned the head of the little yellow pony toward the Methodist parsonage. They had a hill to climb and a dark, curving little road to traverse. But five or six vehicles were ahead of them, and Mustard, who felt like a mere boy in the horse world, and who always was pleased if he could get in a grown-up affair of any kind, trotted along importantly. Lightsshone out from among the armored pines. Azalea got out and carried Jonathan through the freshly decorated rooms, with their newly polished furniture and snowy curtains, to the bedroom where the little iron cot awaited Jonathan.
“Shut the door, Carin dear,” she whispered happily. “Let’s undress him. His mother said we’d find his nightie in that bag.”
“Once there was a bear,And he made his pasture there;And he crept, and he crept, and he crept,’Till he got away up there!”“Gurgle—gurgle—gurgle!”“And once there was a bear—”
This conversation took place between Azalea McBirney and Jonathan Summers one Sunday morning while Jonathan’s mother was at church. Azalea had been to Sunday-school, and had run over to ask her “Cousin” Barbara if she wouldn’t like to attend service to hear her husband preach. Barbara would—Oh, most undeniably she would. It was her firm conviction that if all men could hear her husband, and would give heed to what he said, they would be able to resist all temptations and would live in peace with the world. So she kissed Azalea and permitted her to button her into her pretty golden-brown frock, and then, clapping her large hat over herwayward hair and putting on her gloves as she hastened down the street, she was off, her heart beating high with loving pride of the man whose life was united with her own, and who had already found warm friends in his new parish.
Jonathan had been asleep when his mother left him, but it was not long before he opened his eyes and looked about him to see whom he could get to serve him. For Jonathan was, in his own opinion, the Prince of the World, and everyone in it was to do his bidding. He preferred, of course, his chief slave—the one called “Mamma”—and not seeing her, he opened his mouth and let out a more or less cheerful roar, not so much showing rage, as a healthful imitation of it.
Azalea was delighted. She picked him up, fed him his bottle, arranged him among the sofa pillows, and then, taking a dimpled hand in her own, she pointed delicately to the rosy palm.
“Once there was a bear,And he made his pasture there.”
“Once there was a bear,And he made his pasture there.”
It must have been a particularly small bear to have pastured in such a tiny pink palm, but Jonathan saw nothing inconsistent in it, and remarked enthusiastically:
“Gurgle—gurgle—gurgle.”
The bear began creeping slyly up Jonathan’s arm. It snuggled for a moment at his elbow, went on—and Jonathan shivered happily—up to his shoulder, and then settled right down in his neck, and seemed to think it a good place to stay. At least, Jonathan laughed delightedly.
Azalea looked at him with her soul in her eyes.
“Mercy me,” she sighed. “How well I understand kidnappers!”
Then she remembered that she had once been kidnapped herself, and that she had not liked it at all.
“Oh, Jonathan,” she cried, looking at him critically, “it seems impossible that anything as soft and lovely as you are can grow up to be just a hard, common, big man! If only I could put you in some kind of a preserve jar and keep you the way you are, I’d just give anything. Tired of sitting still? Well, come to Azalea, and we’ll go exploring. It’s a pretty house, isn’t it? But my goodness, you ought to have seen it a little while ago! It was as dull as Monday washday.
“Then, when it was decided that your papaand mamma were coming here to live, we all turned in and worked like sixty to make it look nice. Haystack Thompson—that’s the man that throws you up so high, you know—prepared it with his own hands. But you make up your mind we didn’t let him pick out the paper. Haystack is a dear, but he couldn’t be trusted to pick out wall paper. No, sir, my friends Carin and Annie Laurie and I did that. Brown for the sitting room, and green for the dining room, and pink and pale blue for the bedrooms.
“And we got these pretty print hangings and covers—at least, Mrs. Carson paid for them and we picked them out. And Ma McBirney wove these rugs—brown for the sitting room and green for the dining room. Aren’t they beauties? And Mr. Carson had the furniture done at his shop—the very best he could make. And Sam Disbrow, he brought this fern, and somebody else sent the palm, and Carin gave the pictures, and Annie Laurie made the table cover, and I don’t know what all. You see, some of these people don’t belong to your church at all, Jonathan. They just gave these things because you were so sweet that they couldn’t bear to have you come into any but a pretty house. Dear me,boy, stop pulling my hair! You treat me just as if I were a step-child. And I’m not. I’m your pretend cousin—which is ever and ever so much nicer than being a real cousin, because you do your own picking out.”
Jonathan replied after his own manner, and the morning wore on pleasantly. Azalea put the potatoes and the stew over to cook, and made some apple sauce. Then she set the table; and “toted” Jonathan some more. For once she forgot to think. The sad little thoughts that would mope around in the back of her mind, because she was, after all, a child without a father or a mother, kept entirely out of sight that morning. She was so busy that she could waste no time whatever on merely thinking; and the first thing she knew she saw the people pouring along the street from church.
Annie Laurie drove by with her aunts and her father, and waved to Azalea. Sam Disbrow walked by with his father, and Azalea thought what a dull time Sam had of it, with that heavy looking father with his hanging head and big, rolling eyes, both going home to a mother who was always sick, and to that queer sister of Sam’s, who had too much work to do,and who never seemed to want to talk with anybody. And then the Carson carriage rushed by with black Ben driving, and Mr. Carson, so handsome and straight, beside him, and Carin and Mrs. Carson on the back seat in their beautiful furs, smiling and bowing to everybody.
Then the McBirney wagon came, with Mr. and Mrs. Summers in with Pa and Ma McBirney and Jim. And Azalea was thanked and kissed, and had the pain of seeing Jonathan tear himself away from her to rush to his mother’s embrace, and then Azalea went out and got in with her foster parents, and Pa McBirney hissed to his horses in an odd way he had, and they started for their long drive up the mountain.
“It sure is a mighty curious thing how that man goes on, Mary,” said Mr. McBirney to his wife as they were driving by the prosperous dairy farm of Simeon Pace. “He’s jest rolling up money, but no one can tell what he does with it. Heller, the banker, he says nary a cent of it comes his way. Pace don’t believe in banks—got stung some time I reckon, and lost his nest egg by the busting of a bank. Anyhow, he hangs on to what he gets nowadays. It beats all to see anyone so old-fashioned. Heller says hesupposes he hides it away in his old stocking or buries it in the yard. I suppose I’m something of a mossback myself, but anyway I know enough to bank my money when I get it—which ain’t any too often.”
“He don’t look like such an old-fashioned man, Simeon Pace don’t,” mused Mrs. McBirney. “He certainly does keep his place up right smart. Them cattle o’ his’n is the best to be seen in the country, and everything around the place is right up in G.”
“Well, old-fashioned he is, but he’s far-seeing too. About five years ago he bought the Caruth Valley and all the uplying land beyond it. I couldn’t see what his idea was, but now I hear that he’s selling it out to Mr. Carson for five times what he paid for it. Mr. Carson wants it for the water power on it. He’s adding to his factory, you see.”
“That will mean work for a good many more of us mountain folks,” observed Mrs. McBirney. “The way Mr. Carson has opened up things for us is just stirring to think about. I don’t know as his efforts are appreciated, but I, for one, know who I have to thank when I see the new things in the house and the good new clotheswe’ve been able to get for the children. Why, only this morning I was calling Jim’s attention to it. ‘Look at you,’ I said, ‘in your store clothes and brown shoes and new overcoat and all. You look like a rich man’s son,’ says I. And I declare to goodness when I got out this here new cloak o’ mine, and this bonnet Mrs. Carson made for me out of silk velvet and a real ostrich tip, I could hardly believe it was me. I’m so used to wearing rusty black that I don’t know as I feel quite at home in good deep black like this a-here.”
Jim McBirney, who was sitting on the back seat with Azalea, not caring to listen longer to the conversation of his elders and knowing it was bad manners to disturb them, began whispering.
“I went to Sam Disbrow’s house last evening, sis.” When Jim said “evening” he meant afternoon.
“Did you, Jim? What was it like?”
“Shades all down—rooms all hot—Mrs. Disbrow lying on the settle—Hannah sitting by her, knitting and knitting, and her eyes so crossed you couldn’t think how she could do anything but cross stitch.”
“I’m sorry for Hannah. That’s a dreadful life to lead—being shut up all the time with a sick person. I’ve a good mind to give her a party if mother will let me.”
“Give Hannah Disbrow a party? Why, she’d run like a hare if she saw anybody coming, and she’d drop her ice cream and go home crying. I know Hannah.”
He spoke as if he had made girls and their outlandish ways his particular study.
“Well, anyway, I’m going to see her. And I’ll get the other girls to go.”
“Oh, yes, th’ other girls! Why, Zalie, you can’t move around by your lone no more; you’re just hitched on to them friends of yours. Ain’t you ever going to have any separate thoughts again?”
Azalea laughed lightly, and at the chime of her merriment Mary McBirney turned around to look at the occupants of the rear seat. It was at such times that Azalea loved her most—when the light of love flooded her face with its high brow and soft eyes. It always made Azalea feel as if there must be a lamp burning there behind the kind face. She gave a pleasant, inarticulate murmur that served better than words to let thechildren know that her love was round about them. Then she turned back to resume her conversation with her husband, and the horses—nimble mountain-climbers—pulled on up the road steadily, stopping now and again to breathe, and then sweeping around another curve of the ever winding road.
Azalea amused herself by noticing the little plateaus or “benches” along the mountain side. She played a little game with herself, building imaginary houses in this cove or on that bench among the maples. There was one place in particular, where three lofty tulip trees guarded a spring of cold water, and where there was a little almost level cove from which one could look off for miles and miles along the purple valley, where she put first one sort of a house and then another.
When she began thinking of it, she built—in her mind of course—a little house of cedar logs, with an open chamber between, like the one she now called home; but as time went on she changed her plans. Barbara Summers had tried to persuade her that a rambling bungalow of pine, with high chimneys and wide porches would be the thing; and Carin had been in favorof a cement bungalow with a pergola with trumpet vines growing over it. Annie Laurie thought it would be better to have a tent pitched there, and to eat off wooden plates and use paper napkins.
“Then you could heave everything into the fire,” said this practical young woman, “and there’d be no dishes to wash.”
As they passed the place this Sunday Azalea asked Jim what kind of a house he thought it would be best to put up there, but Jim was not fond of playing at air castles.
“We-all don’t own the land,” he said, “and we ain’t got the money for the house, so what’s the use of talking?”
Azalea felt just a trifle out of patience.
“The use of talking,” she said rather sharply, “is that it interests you.”
“Keeping still interests me all right.”
“Keep still, then, if you want to. I’m sure I’ve plenty to think about.”
It was then that Mary McBirney began singing softly:
“‘Sweet are the hillsides, pleasant are the valleys,Bright is the sky o’er the home of my heart.’”
“‘Sweet are the hillsides, pleasant are the valleys,Bright is the sky o’er the home of my heart.’”
Both Azalea and Jim knew very well why she was singing. She never could bear to reprove them; and she had a little theory that music could drive out any evil spirit. Such music as she made ought to, certainly, the children thought, sitting for a moment in silence, ashamed of their stupid quarrel. Neither one was of the sort to sulk. Jim gave a little twist on his seat, and joined in the fourth line:
“‘And my home, gentle friend, is wherever thou art.’”
“‘And my home, gentle friend, is wherever thou art.’”
Azalea loved the quaint old song. It was one of many such which Mary McBirney knew.
“I’d love to see the words and music of the songs you sing, mother,” Azalea had said to her once. “Where can I find them? Are they in any of the books you have?”
But Mary McBirney had shaken her head with a smile.
“The mountain folks have many a song that never yet has been writ down, child,” she said. “In the lonely nights in the little cabins away back on the mountains, all still and peaceful, the folks weave the songs out of their hearts. Grandmothers and mothers and daughters have sung them, and not one of them all had theknowledge to write them down. They make me think of wild roses. They grow beside the roadway, and they are the sweetest of them all.”
“‘Early in the morning I can hear the thrushes singing,’” Mary McBirney sang on, and Azalea, joining in, put all her love for the sweet woman into the words:
“‘Dear as the voice that I love best of all.’”
They stopped at the waterfall for the horses to drink. The cataract leaped down delicately and gayly from the height above, paused at the roadway, rippling along among the pebbles at the edges and rushing between the great boulders in the center of the ford, and then with a wild laugh plunged off over the edge and foamed down the mountain side. The sky was rather overcast on this particular day, and the trees wore a patient look; even the waterfall seemed subdued, and its rush of sound was more liquid and less like music than on brighter days. A heaviness and quietude lay over everything. But the McBirneys loved the mountain in all its moods, and little by little they set themselves to fit in with its whims, so that by the time they reached their home they were quiet, too.
But they were happy—Oh, most distinctly,they were that. They loved every inch of the old place. The cabin of logs, divided in the center with an open air chamber, the little loft where Azalea slept, looking up the mountain side, the Pride of India tree beneath which lay the graves of little Molly McBirney and of Azalea’s poor mother, the tulip trees at the outlook, the little smithy, the stable, the barn, the smoke house, the corn crib, the chicken house and the bee hives, the pigeon coops and the swinging gourds where the martins nested, all were dear to them. Vines, flowers, and bushes grew all about them. The farm slanted down the hillside at a dangerous angle, but contrived to soak into its produce the sweet Southern sun, and it gave of its rich bounty in return for Thomas McBirney’s hard toil.
Human care and enthusiasm showed in every foot of it. Even the most casual passer-by could see at a glance that here was a home in which people lived who loved life and each other.
“Happy and good folk live here,” it seemed to say.
And there were, first and last, a good many to read its message, for it was on the highway and whoever came over Tennyson Mountaindown to Lee must pass almost through the doorway.
This gray, pleasant Sunday, Mrs. McBirney and Azalea jumped from the wagon at the house door, and Jim and his father went on to the stable to look after the horses. The cow was munching contentedly in her stall, but the chickens seemed a little depressed and in need of their midday drink of hot water and their feeding of hot meal. The pigeons cooed chillily from their cote. As for the horses, they knew almost as much about unhitching as their betters, and if either Jim or Mr. McBirney had done anything they ought not to have done they would have turned their critical eyes upon them. The real pride of Jim’s heart, however, was the two ponies which he and Azalea rode to school. They had been the gift of Mr. Carson to them, and they were the brothers of Carin’s pony, Mustard, and bore the exciting names of Pepper and Paprika.
Jim lingered for a moment or two, loath to leave them. He loved the velvet noses of them the friendly eyes and the warm heaving sides. They muzzled him, and he put their noses in his neck and gave them to understand that their affection was returned. The cool, damp airbillowing in at the door was delicious, and he almost hated to go in the house.
“What’s the use in living in houses?” he thought. He had known a young fellow who traveled over the mountains all the time with two ponies. One he rode, the other carried his pack which consisted of a hammock, a frying pan, some blankets and a square of canvas, out of which he could, at need, fashion a sort of tent. He never had slept under a roof since he was a baby. Jim thought of this boy as a very fortunate fellow. He chose not to remember the desperate ill health that had driven the lad into the life. However, he must go in the house, he must! Ma had got the fire going in the kitchen, judging from the smoke that rolled from the chimney. Well, he was glad he didn’t have to build it. He didn’t feel like doing anything just then—except, perhaps, sitting by the door and looking off at the valley. Usually when he wanted to do this, some one straightway thought of some chore for him. So he slid softly onto the bench, sitting where he could be seen neither from the door nor the window, and fell into a comfortable though somewhat hungry day dream.
Meantime, odors of frying chicken were wafted to him, along with the smell of slightly burned corn cake and very good coffee. The odors grew stronger and pleasanter and after a time Jim decided that he wasn’t doing right to stay outside while everyone was working in the house. It really was his duty to go in. So in he went. The fire was leaping, the table was set, his mother was bustling around in her calico dress, Azalea was putting the chairs to the table, and his father looked ready primed for a long Sunday grace.
It proved to be even longer than Jim had feared. Thomas McBirney was one of those who count it a fault if they neglect to mention every event of their lives to the Almighty. He thanked the Lord for their united family, for food and fire, for roof and friends, for the privilege of attending divine service, and for the love of God which warmed their hearts. Meantime his son’s eyes wandered restlessly from the heaped plate of chicken to the bowl of gravy and “fixin’s.” He wondered if he would have no more than a “drumstick” and why there should be such intimate relations between boys and drumsticks. The world over, fathersseemed to think they should go to their sons. No doubt Chinese fathers held just the same opinion.
Imagine then, his surprise—his unbelieving surprise—when his father, having first served his mother and Azalea, took the “wish-bone,” beautifully burdened with tender white meat and laid it on Jim’s plate.
“For a good boy,” he said, as he heaped on the potatoes and gravy, and passed the corn bread. “Once in a while, Jim, we men folks have to set ourselves against these here women, eh? Them with their wishbones! Who said they was to eternally have the wishbones? No king that ever I hearn tell of. I say, let’s head a revolution and declare that they ken have only every other wishbone. That’s fair, ain’t it?”
A nice, warm feeling gathered in Jim’s heart. It was splendid to have a dad like that—a dad who could tell what was going on in a fellow’s mind. And his mother and Azalea seemed to be glad he had the wishbone, too. They were looking at him just the way a fellow likes to have his family look at him. My, what a nice day Sunday was! And wasn’t he glad he had helped haul those hickory logs! And wasn’tthe room nice, with the settle there next the fire, and the old clock tickin’, tickin’ away, and striking now and then with a voice like Haystack Thompson’s when he led in prayer. And there was a white table cloth on for Sunday, and Ma was smiling almost the way she used before Molly died. And the cat was stretching herself, and outside, Peter, the hound, was sniffling to let them know he was there and hadn’t had his dinner yet.
“Goodness gracious,” sighed Jim, “ain’t it lucky we’re all alive!”