Azalea stared into the woman’s face with wide-stretched eyes.
“Oh, thank you, thank you, Mrs. Bowen. I am glad to know; I do think I had a right to be told. But just think, I was in that old house the other day—that beautiful old house that belonged to my grandfather. ‘The Shoals’ it is called. And it’s very, very queer, but I felt all the time as if I had been in it before. But of course I never had. You can’t inherit memories, can you Mrs. Bowen, the way you do the features of your face, or—or habits?”
“So that’s your story, missy.”
But at that moment, Betty Bowen’s great hulk of a son came sauntering back from what he called a “spying.”
“There ain’t nobody in sight so far as I can make out,” he announced sullenly. “And now suppose you two quiet down a little. I want to sleep.”
He whistled his dog to him and pointed with a big forefinger at Azalea.
“Watch, Tige,” he commanded. And he and the dog stretched themselves side by side, the man to sleep, and the dog to keep guard.
Azalea felt a wave of trembling creeping over her, and she turned her eyes once more to Bet.
“Oh, Mrs. Bowen,” she whispered, “what have I done that you should treat me like this?”
But Mrs. Bowen lifted her finger in warning.
“Just keep still, Zalie,” she answered, also under her breath, “and you won’t be hurt. Sisson’s a man that hits back when he’s hit. He was all-fired mad at your being took from him and he swore he’d have you back. He seemed to have to do it to keep up his pride. So now he’s got you, and I’m to keep you, that’s all.”
“But how can you, Betty? How can you? I wouldn’t do anything mean to you.”
Betty Bowen looked at her darkly.
“Sisson is kin of mine,” she said, as if that settled the question. “There ain’t nobody else in the world for me to turn to as I know of.”
A lump came into Azalea’s throat as she looked at Betty. To think of having no friend but Sisson! Something warm began to stir in Azalea’s heart. She did not know that the name of it was pity.
Mrs. McBirney sat at her loom. Eyes, hands and feet were busy; but no matter how busy she kept them she could not keep her mind and heart at ease. She had come back home when she found that the search for her missing girl would be a long one, and from early morning till late at night she kept about her tasks. She had a theory that there was nothing like work to help a troubled mind to forgetfulness, and she put her theory to the full test.
Pa McBirney went about his tasks, too, and his face grew careworn as he saw the old restlessness and torment coming back in his wife’s face.
“That’s just the way she carried on after your sister Mollie passed away,” he said to Jim. “You wouldn’t think she’d take Azalea’s loss so hard, but then it’s kind o’ emptied her life again.”
“Well,” said Jim in an old way he sometimes had, “if she knew Azalea was dead and safe, perhaps she wouldn’t feel so dreadful bad. But not knowing where a body is—that’s what I call tormenting. When I think of the things that might be happening to Azalea—her maybe going hungry or being beat with sticks, or goodness knows what all—it makes me as nervous as a bat. Hi’s just the same way, too.”
Hi’s broken arm had made it impossible for him to return to the mill, and he was spending his time with the McBirneys. He seemed to be actually greedy to learn all he could of this pleasant home. He listened to all Ma McBirney had to say, as if her words were gold; he watched Pa McBirney about his work; he played chess with Jim and studied Jim’s schoolbooks under Mrs. McBirney’s direction.
Mrs. McBirney wrote home to his mother for him, and told her all that had happened to him. At first Hi objected.
“My uncle Hank Sisson will be after her first chance he gets, to find out where I am, and if she knows, he’ll worm it out of her,” the boy objected.
“That’s neither here nor there, Hi,” Ma McBirney had insisted. “She’s just aching to know what’s happening to her boy, and I’m going to let her know. Why, you ought to be with your ma, Hi. Somehow or other we’ve got to get the family down here. Now, when your arm’s well, you can go back to the mill, and perhaps some of the other children are old enough to take a hand too; and what with all the tourists that come to Lee, your ma could sure find work—washing, or sewing, or some such thing.”
“Oh, my, wouldn’t that be fun!” sighed Hi.
“See here, Mary,” Pa McBirney had broke in, “what makes you lift up that boy’s hopes the way you do? Like as not they’ll all be dashed to earth.”
“What a-way should they be dashed for, father? Ain’t it right that Hi and his ma should be together? And don’t you believe that what’s right will come to pass?”
Pa shook his head doubtfully. “I don’t know as that has been according to my experience,” he said.
“Of course it has, Thomas. You know it has! And everything’s going to come right for Hi—and for Azalea, Thomas—and for you and Jim and me! You’ll see! You mustn’t break down my faith, Thomas.”
And Thomas McBirney, looking at her face with its look as of a light burning through it, knew that he must not, indeed.
The second Saturday after Azalea’s disappearance, a letter came to the Lee post office for Pa McBirney from Haystack Thompson. It read like this.
“Deer Nabor:
“How many wagons did the Sisson All Star Combinashun have when you saw them last? Adres me with the show.
“C. W. Thompson.”
Pa McBirney made use of the telegraph for the first time in his life, being moved to the act by the insistence of Mr. Carson. He responded briefly:
“There were three wagons. Why? Wire my expense.”
And the answer came:
“Because now he’s got two only. I am fiddling for the show.”
“Good old Haystack!” cried Mr. Carson when he read the telegraphic message. And he himself ventured on a dispatch to Mr. Thompson.
“Keep on fiddling,” he wired. “The third wagon will come back.”
Then Mr. Carson rode home hard with the news to his Carin; and Mr. McBirney put his tired horses up the long mountain road to carry the word to his Mary. And Azalea’s friends took heart, and hoped on and prayed on; and the sheriff made his more or less languid inquiries, and the newspapers printed articles, and hundreds of people who did not know Azalea at all were very much interested.
But all this was not greatly helping Azalea through the long days. They kept out of sight as much as possible—Betty Bowen and her odd “family.” By creeping along old roads and only stopping at the most out-of-the-way villages they seemed to escape the curiosity of the people. Indeed, many of those they came across seemed not to have energy enough for anything so lively as curiosity. Azalea always had taken an interest in the world, and the best part of the old life had been, to her, the quiet journeys along the roads, with the glimpses they gave of farmhouses and cabins and little towns. Now that she had come to know so many warmhearted new people, and that her own heart was aglow with the remembrance of it all, her interest in the homes she passed was keener than ever. So long as she was allowed to sit where she could look out, she did not greatly mind the days. In spite of the constant watch kept over her, and of the fact that she had not dreamed it would be so long before she was restored to her friends, she would not be downcast, and it was only when Bet gave the word that they were to halt and go into camp for a day that the girl found life unendurable.
To be sure she grew very weary of going over and over the same thoughts; of wondering and wondering why no one came to her aid; of thinking what would happen to her when they had caught up with Sisson and his show. But when the dread and the fear were at their worst, she remembered certain words that Ma McBirney had spoken to her.
“No matter what comes to you, Azalea,” she had told her once, “you keep your heart full of God’s light and of God’s love, and nothing can really harm you. You mind what I say, child. You do that and the angels of the Lord will compass you about.”
If Betty Bowen had been her enemy she could have broken the child’s heart, or let her become exposed to some of those vague dangers which Azalea half imagined. But she was not her enemy. In her tired, discouraged way she seemed to like her. And she admired her. She used to command the child to sing and Azalea sang the sweet songs she had learned from Carin and from Ma McBirney.
They had crept up into the mountains by roundabout ways, and were now feeling their way toward the Sisson All Star Combination, the precise location of which they did not know. When Azalea learned that, in spite of herself, she began to feel anxious. Little by little the courage in her heart oozed out, leaving her a sad and trembling child. If the old-time wanderings with the show had been hateful to her when she was with her mother, she knew they would be much, much more so now that she was alone and unfriended. It is possible for children to feel black despair, and something like that came to Azalea. It was evident to her that her friends had failed to get on her track, and in the long, idle, sodden hours of thought, she decided that her escape depended on herself.
Little by little the watch set over her had grown less strict. She had made no attempt to get away, and Betty and her son had come to count her in as a part of their company. They could not, indeed, imagine what would become of her should she leave them. Sour and bitter as their natures were, they really could not help liking this winsome girl, whose voice and manner seemed to speak to them day by day of better things than they had ever known. And liking her, they no doubt felt that she liked them. At least, as they traveled together, or made camp in some wild, beautiful mountain cove, or worked side by side around the camp fire, she gave no sign that was not friendly. Even Tige had come to watch her in a spirit of defense rather than of attack.
So one night when they had been sitting late before the camp fire, and she had gone into the tent to go to bed, she crept beneath the canvas at the rear and stole away through the woods. If it had not been for the crackling of the camp fire, she might have been overheard; and if it had not been for the growing weakness which kept poor weary Bet drowsing sleepily there before the blaze, her escape would soon have been discovered. But as it was, not even the alert Tige had a hint of her going. He lay snoring and nuzzling before the fire, dimly aware that his master was near, and asking for no greater happiness. And that master sat there beside him, his head in his hands, thinking thoughts that for him were strange indeed. He had come back from a life of wandering and self-indulgence to prey upon his mother. She was a clever one—so he put it—and if she wanted him to keep out of mischief, let her find some way to care for him! But now, after these weeks in the company of the young girl who looked out at life with kind and trusting eyes, and who was polite even to the woman who kept her prisoner, Rafe began to see things in a different light. He had meant to torment that girl, and he had thought that he would have pleasure in doing it. But he had, someway, not been able to carry out his intention. She had seen through him—had believed in his good nature in spite of everything. And he knew now that he wanted to be the way she thought him. He wanted her to think of him as something besides a bully and jailer. He wished his mother were different from what she was; wished from the bottom of his heart that the two of them were something better than wandering vagabonds. If they had lived in a proper house, if his father had not left them, if he could have had a sister like Azalea, he would have made a very different fellow of himself from what he was.
He wondered if, after all, it was too late. There were things he knew how to do. If his mother would give up this wandering and settle down in some quiet little place and keep Azalea with her, and if they could have really good things to eat, and a hearth to sit before rainy nights, and clothes that were decent and clean, why perhaps, after all, a fellow could “get shet” of the drinking of corn whiskey and the gambling and all. Rafe was young still, and the little kind angel of his better impulses had not all been slain by his black selfishness and his coarse appetites. So he sat and dreamed before the fire, and was somehow washed almost innocent again by the great sea of goodness that forever stretches about us, and in which we may, if we will, bathe and purify ourselves. The night and the stars, the wind and the fire were there to help him find himself. And while he dreamed, Azalea clipped on through the thick-growing laurel, skirted a little spring-fed pond, and finding the wagon-road, fled down the mountain with feet that felt as light as feathers—as light as her heart. All of her courage had come rushing back. She said to herself that she would never be taken again—never. She was not going to have her life spoiled. It was her life and she meant to “run it” to suit herself. And as she fled, it seemed as if the little brown, thin hands of her dead mother were held out to help her; and as if the strong, kind hands of Ma McBirney were stretched in welcome; and the good, freckled hands of Jim and Hi beat together in encouragement.
Yes, they were patting “juba” for her, were Jim and Hi, and to the patter, patter, her feet sped on. She was not afraid of the night. She liked it. The stars saw what she was doing and were glad. The night bird that called out, kept the woods from being too solitary. The very wind was in her favor, and pushed at her back. Sometimes she stopped to rest, and she would have liked to sleep. But it seemed foolish to do that. The point now, was to get safe away.
“I was caught napping once,” she said to herself with a dry little laugh, “but I don’t mean to be again.”
Along toward morning she came on a little village—one she had not seen before. There was not a light anywhere, but the houses clustered together like comfortable sheep in the darkness, and she felt happier for being among them. Now that she was safe with these other human creatures, her weariness and sleepiness almost overcame her. It was growing chilly as the morning air quickened—though as yet there was no hint in the sky of coming light—and she shivered in her thin clothes. She still wore the white frock that had been so dainty and sweet the day of the Singing, but which was now a dusty rag. Her hat she had left behind her. The hair Ma McBirney had taught her to brush every night was full of the dust of the road. All of that pleasant cleanliness which she recently had been taught, had been of necessity lost in the life she had been leading. She felt ashamed as she thought how she would look to strangers, who probably would think her a miserable vagabond. However, her state could be remedied in time. Now the thing was to get in out of the cold; for she was drenched with sweat and her damp clothes clung to her.
She turned into one of the little yards, and going around to the rear of the house, tried the handle of a shed door. It yielded, and she stepped into a dark little room smelling of firewood. At the far side was an open door, and she groped her way to it and stood on a little framed-in porch with wire netting on the one exposed side. And there, neatly made, was a cot bed, waiting, it seemed, for some weary child to crawl in between its warm blankets. Azalea took off her worn and dusty shoes and her disgraceful frock, and stretched herself between the comforts. The next moment she was sound asleep.
* * * * *
A few hours later, the Sisson All Star Combination, rattling down the mountain side, came upon the wagon and the tent of Betty Bowen, ranged side by side in a comfortable little pocket away back from the road—the same road that Azalea had taken a mile lower down, after her hurried taking of the short cuts.
Sisson greeted the encampment with a whoop, and brought Rafe, shock-headed and heavy-eyed, from his bed of straw in the wagon.
“Well,” said Sisson, “you ain’t getting up early to hang out the wash, be you? Where’s Bet? Where’s the girl?”
Rafe pointed at the tent with his thumb.
“In there, I reckon. We all sat late last night around the fire.”
“Huh! Mighty social, ain’t you? Had any trouble with that girl?”
Rafe frowned and shook his head.
“Well, get ’em out of the tall grass,” commanded Sisson. “I want to see ’em.”
Rafe went to the tent door and called, but Bet was sleeping heavily, and her son, looking at her jaded face, hesitated to arouse her. It was Azalea whom Sisson wanted to see, and Rafe said to himself that Sisson would have to treat her well, or there would be trouble. He could see the girl’s bed bunched up as if she were rolled underneath the bed clothes, but when he called there was no answer, and at last, half frightened, he went over to awaken her. But when he got closer he discovered there was no one in the bed. The clothes were tossed up as if some one lay there, and he saw at a glance that they had been purposely made to look that way. For a minute his heart sank; and then, suddenly, with a strange new unselfishness, it lightened. Azalea had slipped from Sisson’s clutches after all. Rafe drew his belt a little tighter, pushed his hat on the back of his head, and going out, faced the company.
“The girl’s lit out,” he said briefly.
“What?” screamed Sisson. And before Rafe could say more, a man—the tallest, it seemed to Rafe, that he ever had set his eyes upon, came stalking around from behind one of the wagons. He was hatless, and revealed a startling shock of hair, and underneath his arm he carried a fiddle in its case.
“What you say, you speckled cub?” he roared.
“The girl’s lit out,” Rafe repeated. He grinned at them cheerfully, and was still grinning as Sisson advanced with fight in his eye.
“Ain’t you onto your job any better than that?” he yelled, still coming on. Rafe looked almost languid as he watched him, but just as Sisson got ready for a rush at him, the great arm of the young mountaineer shot forward, striking his “boss” cleanly between the eyes. And down in the dust went the head of the Sisson All Star Combination. Every one except the man with the violin laughed. He seemed hardly to have noticed Sisson’s downfall. He turned his piercing eyes on the young man and said in a voice as cold and keen as a sword-edge:
“Tell me where the girl is.”
That new, strange gathering of little good angels conspired again to make Rafe answer:
“I don’t know, sir. She went into that tent last night. That’s the last I seen of her. I didn’t set the dog to watch last night—I got tired of treating that little thing like she was a convict. So she’s slipped away.”
Something very like applause came from the All Stars, and it grew a little louder as Bet, having been awakened by the noise, appeared at the door. They were giving her credit, she understood, for having connived at the child’s escape.
“But she may be near at hand,” continued the man with the fiddle.
“I reckon not, sir. Her bed was fixed up to look like she was in it. She’s lit out all right.”
“Then I’ll do the same,” said Haystack Thompson. He reached in one of the wagons and drew out a few clothes tied in a square of homespun. “So long, folks,” he said. “Hope you’ll enjoy yourselves.”
The All Stars stared and forgot their manners, so that “Haystack” had to make his way on down the mountain with no one to say goodbye.
“So he was spying out the girl the whole time!” said they to each other.
But what they thought or knew was of no consequence to Haystack now. He swung on down the road, peering here and there, and hallooing at the top of his lungs every few minutes.
“Zalie! Zalie McBirney!” he shouted. “Where you hiding? This is ole Haystack come to take you home. Don’t be afeard, Zalie. Answer up, that’s a good girl.”
But no answer came; and a couple of hours later when he had reached the contented little town of Barrington, he went to the telegraph office and with the help of the obliging young operator sent this message to Mr. Carson.
“Found the third wagon, but not the girl. Search party going out to-day.”
The Rev. Mr. Absalom Summers, pastor of the Methodist church at Barrington, N. C., got up out of his bed singing. He went to his bath singing, and singing he hastened to the kitchen to build the fire for breakfast.
“A mighty fortress is our Lord,” he shouted to the clear, bright morning.
“A bulwark nev-ev-er fail-ll-ing.”
He did not even stop singing when he knocked his head against the shed door. Indeed, he would have felt a little lonesome if he had not hit it against that jamb, for that battering of his blond head was a part, so to speak of the morning ritual. He loomed six feet three in his knitted hose, and as the door was only six feet in height, difficulties of one sort or another were unavoidable. As yet, the door casing had resisted all attacks. All the Rev. Absalom said was “Ouch! Giminy cricket!” And then with increased vigor he continued:
The song died—not on the lips of the reverend gentleman, for to say that he sang with his lips would be to do him an injustice. The song died in his resounding throat and his massive lungs, it faded away in his deep diaphragm, and he stood frankly gasping.
The morning being so fair, it had called to him, and even with his arms laden with good “light wood,” he could not resist the temptation to step out on the little porch to look at the lacy clouds winding over an azure sky, and the delicate scarfs of mist fluttering from the shoulders of the mountains. And then he saw just what papa bear and mamma bear and baby bear saw when they came back to their home. He saw Golden-locks, or rather Hazel-locks, asleep in the little couch. She was smiling as if she were dreaming of happy things, but for all of that she looked very worn and uncared for. The shoes that stood beside the cot had almost no soles to them, and the soiled white frock that lay tumbled at the foot of the bed, was a mere rag. Her long hair was uncared for, and the deep rings beneath her eyes were not all from fatigue.
“Well,” said he under his breath, “the poor little thrush—the little storm-blown thrush!”
And then he rushed away, because he felt a great need upon him, which was to tell his wife Barbara what had happened. It was nothing less than a pain to him to know anything that Barbara did not know. So he emptied his arms of the wood, and dashed back to the bedroom.
“Come!” he commanded. “Come!” His greenish eyes were shining with the loving light that was almost always to be seen in them, his face, as quick with expressions as an actor’s, was literally beaming, and he was gesticulating with his large hands. “Just come, mamma, quick,” he pleaded. “Please don’t stop to do your hair.”
“Me go too! Me go too!” piped the insistent, high-pitched voice of the young person in the cradle. So without more ado, the Rev. Absalom gathered his son in his arms, and the three Summers made an excursion to the back porch. There they stood—at least there two of them stood, and there the third, safe under his dad’s arm, wriggled—and looked at the little forlorn, sleeping beauty. Then, because Mrs. Barbara had a way of finding the right word, she sighed happily:
“How winsome!” And then “How forlorn!”
“Clean beat out,” agreed the Rev. Absalom. Barbara put a finger on her lips.
“Let her sleep,” she said. “She shall sleep as long as she can, and after that, we’ll see what’s to be done. Best lock the shed door, dear, so she can’t get away without our knowing it. She might be frightened, you know.”
Her husband smiled his broadest smile.
“I don’t believe she’d be very much frightened,” he said. “She’s got too much sense. Now, if I was lost, or had run away from home, I’d never have the sense to nose out a bed and get into it. Not I. I’d be lying out in the rain groaning and sighing.”
“Yes, I see you groaning and sighing,” retorted his wife, pinching his arm as she took the baby from him. “You’d take a crowbar and break in the front door of the first house you came to, and then you’d bless all the people in the house and crawl in the best bed and go to sleep.”
She ran with the baby in her arms, away from his pretended anger, and he turned his attention once more to the kitchen fire, singing under his breath:
“And though this world with demons filled,
Should threaten to undo-oo-oo us—”
The world might be filled with demons, but it was quite evident that they had not succeeded in breaking into the house of the Rev. Absalom Summers. They had not put their clutches on his little brown wife nor on his golden-haired baby son. They were not in the bright little kitchen, where she hastily prepared the morning meal, and they did not sit down at the table with the family while the head of the house said grace in clear and decisive tones which could leave no chance for any inattention on the part of Providence.
“Oh, dear Master of the World and of this little house,” prayed the good man, “we thank Thee for this bright morning and for the flowers and clouds and birds which have helped to make it beautiful. We thank Thee that we, here beneath this roof, love each other with whole hearts. We thank Thee for the little child that sits here at our board, and for his health and smiles, and from the bottom of our hearts we pray Thee to give us wisdom to lead him in the paths of goodness. And we thank Thee for the little wanderer who sleeps a stranger in our house. If she be motherless, give us joy in mothering her; and if she be fatherless, we commit her to Thy all knowing care—beg for her Thy abounding love and mercy. May no fear come in her heart when first she looks upon us. May she see at once the tenderness we feel for her. And if it be Thy will that she shall unite her life with ours, may we have heart of grace to take her as a gift from Thee. Amen.”
“Amen,” breathed Mrs. Barbara, wiping her eyes.
“Amen,” laughed baby Jonathan.
And then they all fell to and ate with the best of appetites.
Then, while they lingered over their meal, and the Rev. Absalom talked about the ride he ought to take to Sessions to see old Mrs. Underwood, who had cancer, and while Mrs. Barbara decided that perhaps she’d better not start her blue chally that day when she was likely to have so much on her mind, and while baby Jonathan was wondering when, when he would be let down on the floor to crawl after that nice hairy caterpillar, there came a great knocking at the door.
“Old Bill Jones!” cried the preacher. “What a fist the man has! Who can it be, Barbara?” It was no easy matter for the master of the house to uncoil his long legs and get them out from under the table. So it was little Mrs. Barbara who opened the door to admit a man quite as tall as her own Absalom—a man with no hat and a great shock of hair, and a fiddle under his arm. He nodded to Mrs. Summers, but looked over her head at the man and shouted:
“Neighbor, I’m getting up a posse to hunt a little girl that’s been lost. It’s mighty important that we get under way inside of an hour at the farthest. Will you join us?”
“Now you just make up your mind I will, man. But first I want to know why she’s lost, and who wants her, and what’s to be done with her after she’s found. I’ve known of cases where it was better to be lost than found. What say?”
“I say what you say is true, sir! It would be a heap better for that there little girl to die on the mountains alone than to be picked up by the folks she’s run away from. But I don’t want them to get her, and I don’t want her to die on the mountain side, for there’s happiness a-coming to her if only I can put my hands on her and take her back to them that’s waiting for her.”
Mr. Summers was at last untangled from the table and he came forward holding out that great hearty hand which had put faith and hope into many weary hearts.
“Now, neighbor, you do me the honor to enter and be seated, if you please. I want to get the rights of this story before I do anything. And don’t think you’re wasting time, for I give you my word that you’re saving it, and that as soon as I find this is a thing we all ought to enlist in, I’ll have the whole town about us—baying at our heels, sir—and it will be view and halloo with us.”
Haystack Thompson shifted his violin to his other arm, and ran a long tongue over his lips. Then he looked over his man.
“You the preacher?” he asked.
“Right you are.”
He came in then, and at Mrs. Summer’s invitation to draw his chair up to the breakfast table, did so, and ate while he told his story. From time to time the Rev. Absalom consulted his wife Barbara. He had a way of lifting an eyebrow or half closing an eye, that was a code of signals in itself; and she had her own swift ways of answering. So that by the time Haystack was through with his story, both Mr. and Mrs. Summers had decided what to do.
“You show him,” said Mr. Summers. So Mrs. Barbara arose and beckoned their visitor.
“There’s no need of a searching party, sir,” she said. “Come see what we found this morning.”
And then, just as the two of them stepped out onto the porch, Azalea opened her weary eyes and blinked at the light.
“Well, praise the Lord!” broke from Haystack’s lips when he saw her.
“Amen!” shouted the Rev. Absalom, and in spite of some effort to restrain himself he broke out with:
“The Prince of darkness grim,
We tremble not for him;
His rage we can endure,
For lo! his doom is sure.
One little word shall fell-ll-ll him.”
Azalea sat up on her cot with the bedclothes drawn up to her chin, and stared about her with eyes too full of surprise to be troubled. Then, with a rush, she comprehended.
“Oh, Mr. Thompson, dear!” she gasped. “Is it really you? Oh, Mr. Thompson!” She forgot her uncovered arms and her straggling hair, and sprang from her couch into the old fiddler’s outstretched arms, and wept. It was not a mere summer shower, but a cloudburst—a freshet. And Haystack Thompson wept too, and mopped his eyes on his red bandana; and the Rev. Absalom Summers mopped his on the roller towel; and little Mrs. Summers dried hers delicately on the hem of the baby’s frock. But, however, it became necessary to bring all this to an end, and Haystack found the courage to do it. He set the little girl down firmly in a chair and shook a warning finger at her.
“Storm’s all over!” he announced; and he helped Mrs. Summers to wrap her pink knitted shawl around the girl’s shoulders.
“I’m off,” he announced, “to send word to the folks at home.”
“And I’m with you,” declared the preacher.
Mrs. Summers ran to the window to see the two tall men making their way down the street, and then hastened back to her strange guest. Azalea had arisen and came forward with the pink shawl dragging behind her.
“Oh, ma’am,” she pleaded, both hands extended, “Please don’t think me bold and horrid. I’m not bold, honest I’m not. I want to tell you all about it.”
“I know all about it now, my dear, and I understand everything. I don’t think you are bold, and I’m very thankful that you came here. And now, my child, you will find some clean clothes laid out on the bed—for you and I are just about of a size, though I’m a married person and you’re a little girl. And here’s a glass of milk to go on, so to speak, while you are making yourself fine. By the time you are ready, there’ll be more porridge cooked for you. You like porridge, don’t you—with cream? And do you like muffins with raisins in them? I can cook some in no time. And bacon—shall it be bacon—and a few fried potatoes?”
But Azalea had fled to make her toilet. It was, after all, not so quickly made as she might have hoped. As she stood in the simple, dainty room, with the pretty toilet table and the delicately perfumed soap and the great soft towels, all her longing for the cleanliness of the Ma McBirney days came over her, and when she emerged, at last, the muffins were as brown as nuts on top, and the bacon was done to a crisp.
“Well!” cried Mrs. Summers when she saw the girl in her starched pink gingham, with smooth braids and “shining morning face” standing in the doorway. “Well!” The word seemed to mean much. It meant among other things that Mrs. Barbara liked the looks of her unexpected guest, and Azalea felt a pleasant wave of “homeyness” gently rippling over her.
“And now for breakfast,” said little Mrs. Barbara. But at that moment Azalea saw what she thought was the sweetest thing her eyes ever had beheld. Baby Jonathan was in his tub down before the fire, and he was splashing with hands and feet till the water flew all about him on the blue oilcloth.
“Oh, the little deary dear!” squealed Azalea, forgetting all about breakfast and dropping on her knees beside the rosy baby. “Oh, the little lovey, ducky, honey-pot!” She dropped a kiss at the back of his neck, and then deposited one in each of his moist, rosy palms. She twisted his golden, silk-fine ringlets about her finger, and counted his toes and his fingers to the immemorial rhyme of the little pig that went to market.
“But, my dear,” protested the baby’s mother, “your breakfast is getting cold.”
“Oh, I know, Mrs. Summers. But I like it cold. I do, really, ma’am. And then I’ve had ever so many breakfasts—Oh, ever and ever so many in my time. But I never saw a baby before, close too, and like this. I didn’t know they were so sweet. Why, he’s the very loveliest thing I ever saw. Are all babies as nice as this one?”
Mrs. Barbara beamed, and her dark eyes looked deeper and sweeter than ever.
“Well, I don’t think there are any quite as nice,” she said blushing beautifully. “But so far as I’ve seen they’re all more or less nice.”
“I should think everybody would have ’em!” cried Azalea. “I certainly shall.”
“I would,” said little Mrs. Barbara tenderly. “And now come, you starved child, and eat your breakfast.”
While Azalea ate, she and Mrs. Summers exchanged confidences. Azalea told her the full story of her “strange life” as she called it; and Mrs. Summers told her about her happy girlhood, and her days away at boarding school, and how her parents had wished her to marry a young man who lived near them, and whom she had known all her life, and who was rich and of high social position, and how she had just had to marry Absalom Summers who had no money, and who didn’t know—or care—what you meant when you talked about a social position.
“And I’m so happy,” said the clergyman’s little wife, “in this dear funny little house—”
“And with that dear funny little baby,” broke in Azalea.
“That I really can’t be thankful enough,” concluded Mrs. Summers.
“Well,” said Azalea, “you’d be surprised if you could know of the perfectly lovely people I’ve been meeting these days.”
“Not Bet Bowen and her son?” teased Mrs. Summers.
Azalea flushed a little. “But really and truly, they had their good side, Mrs. Summers,” she said earnestly. “They weren’t half as bad to me as they might have been.”
“You dear child! I’m sure they weren’t. And perhaps in their hearts they are glad you got away.”
Azalea clasped her hands and swung them up over her head with a curious, excited gesture. “You can make up your mind that I’m glad, Mrs. Summers. Just think, I’m really free again, and I’m going back to Ma McBirney, and Carin and all the rest.”
The baby had been taken from its bath and clothed in fresh garments, and now its mother made herself comfortable in a low rocking chair, and drew the fuzzy head against her shoulder.
“I’m going to rock him to sleep,” she explained. “So we’ll have to stop talking a while.”
Azalea smiled till all of her teeth gleamed.
“I’ll try,” she said, “but I know it will be hard. Honest, I never talked so much before in my life. I’ve always been afraid of people a little, or thought it wasn’t polite to talk like this. But someway—you don’t mind my saying it, do you, Mrs. Summers?—you seem almost like my own sister. I couldn’t help talking to you. You may be married and older than I am, but you’re no bigger. And then you’ve been so good—so good I couldn’t say.”
“Sh, dear,” murmured the little mother. And she crooned the baby to sleep while the girl, sitting on a hassock near, watched her with admiring eyes.
Then, when baby was quiet, the two worked together about the little house till all was tidy and as it should be, and little Mrs. Summers made her confession too.
“I get dreadfully lonely at times,” she said. “The people here are good as good can be, but they’re different from the people I’m used to. I can’t seem to make myself feel quite free with them. Why, I’ve told you more, Azalea, than I have them, and I’ve only known you such a little, little few minutes.”
“It’s queer, isn’t it?” said Azalea softly. “It’s very queer. I know this: I’ll have you for my kin as long as I live. You see I’ve no real kin, so we’ll be pretend kin.”
“Cousins!” cried Mrs. Barbara. “Make it cousins!”
“Cousins!” cried Azalea in turn. And they smiled at each other from across the bed that they were making together.
So Haystack Thompson, still somewhat troubled and flustered, came back to find his charge as happy as a bird. And it was arranged that they should take the train for Lee that afternoon.
“You’re to wear the things you have on, Azalea,” said Mrs. Summers. “And my blue sunshade, and you can send them back to me when you get ready. I’ve ten times as many clothes as I have any occasion to wear here.”
But there were still several hours that these so sudden friends could spend together; so Azalea was shown the garden and the chickens and the cow and the one lazy white horse, and she was present when Jonathan awoke. She saw him dewy from his sleep, and thought him lovelier than ever. So it was not quite easy to say goodbye when the time came. But it was agreed that Mrs. Summers was to write to Azalea and that Azalea was to answer, and that they were to address each other as “My dear Cousin.”
The four o’clock train bore Haystack Thompson and Azalea away from the little huddled town and up through the purple mountains, and dropped them, after hours of unexpected delay, down into the village of Lee.
Ma McBirney, sitting sad-eyed at the edge of the mountain plateau on which her cottage stood, was absently watching the road. She had no reason to suppose that anybody would be winding up that five-mile wagonway to see her, yet for some reason she could not fix her mind on her work that morning. Sitting there at the “Outlook,” she could see over the bright valley and catch the gleam of the sun on the river and on the distant dome of the county courthouse.
About her the bees hummed, intent on their day’s work; and not far distant stood the buzzing village of hives which Thomas McBirney had placed where the Pride of India tree, the mimosas and catalpas, the trumpet flower and wild honeysuckle could feed them. Mary McBirney loved the song of the bees; she loved the bright valley; she loved her home and most of all she loved those within it.
Yet to-day the heart in her was heavy. A sorrow less black yet somehow more disheartening than that which had engulfed her at the time of her Molly’s death, rested upon her heart. When Molly had died, it was as if the tragic blackness of night had come upon her. Yet amid this murk there came shining the morning star of hope. And afterward there came the full and beautiful dawn of perfect trust. She believed that in the Time to Come she and Molly would stand together, spirit to spirit, and that there would be no more separation.
Then Azalea had come to fill the lonely hours with her bright ways, and every night Mary McBirney had thanked God for her daughterly society. And now she was gone! Nor could the woman who had grown to love her, rest in the comfort that she was, like Molly, safe from harm. When Molly died, her mother’s grief had been selfish. She did not mourn for Molly, but for herself. But now she mourned most for the lost girl, who might be going through terrible experiences, and who was, no doubt, eating out her heart in terror and homesickness.
There were not wanting those who said—and believed—that the “circus girl” had run away of her own accord and gone back to the wandering folk with whom she had spent the greater part of her life. But never for one fleeting second did Ma McBirney think this. She had looked too often into the clear and loving eyes of the girl, to believe that there could be anything about her which was not straightforward and loyal. She only prayed that in some way her love might reach out, as starlight reaches from stars, to shine on the poor wandering child and comfort her.
She could see her Thomas working on his terraced, steep fields, and now and then she waved a hand to him. She didn’t want him to know how heavily her heart lay in her. She had caused him enough anxiety during the past year, and she knew his own heart was sore with the loss of his Molly, and that he also was greatly distressed over Azalea. So, not to add to his troubles, she tried to wear a cheerful face. But this morning her knees seemed to give way under her, and her pulse fluttered sickeningly.
Then, as she sat there reproaching herself for not having more faith that her eager prayers would be answered, she saw three riders coming up the long road. They showed in the midst of a little clearing and then were lost among the trees, and only now and then, at some bald, out-jutting point, could she catch a glimpse of them. After a time she made out that they were a man, a woman and a girl; and when they were still far beneath her, she recognized them for Mr. and Mrs. Carson and Carin.
She threw a thought to the cabin and the way it looked, and decided that nothing was out of place. All was as orderly and clean as hands could make it, and up in Azalea’s empty room, there were fresh flowers in the vase, and the canary bird was singing on the little high-swung gallery. As for Ma McBirney herself, she always was neat. Her hair rippled away from her broad, low brow, and her plain gingham frock, with its crocheted collar and its branched coral brooch, was as clean and smooth as it could be made. So, unflurried as ever—though she had never before received people so important—Mrs. McBirney awaited her guests.
The three of them, having achieved the last climb on their way, urged their horses to a fine gallop, and they came bearing down tumultuously on Mary McBirney, crying out something joyously. Then, suddenly she forgot all her dignity and ran to meet them, and as they reined up sharply by her side the tears were streaming over her face.
“What say? What say?” she shrilled at them. “Is she found!”
“Found! Whoop la!” shouted Mr. Carson like a boy. “Found by Haystack Thompson. She’s all safe and right—safe and right as Carin here. And they’re coming home on the afternoon train.”
“Oh,” gasped Mrs. McBirney, and sank down on a convenient stump and stared in the distance, the unheeded tears still running down her cheeks. And then rousing herself she cried: “But the boys must know! Pa must know!”
“Where are they all?”
“Pa’s cultivating the cotton patch yon; and Hi’s fishing—it don’t take but one arm to fish, you know. And Jim’s off at school.”
“Count Jim out, then, Mrs. McBirney. Shall I go call the others?”
“Wait. I’ve a way,” cried Mrs. McBirney, and sped toward the house. There she kept an old horn hanging. It had come down in the family from Revolutionary times; it had been used to call the men in from the fields, when the hostile Indians showed their feathered heads above the pass, and now it blew its good tidings over the fields.
“That will bring them,” said Mrs. McBirney. “They’ll come running.”
The Carsons said they would sit out in the sunshine—that there was no need for them to go into the house. They had come up unexpectedly, and they gave Mary McBirney a chance to keep her house to herself if she wished. But a kind of humble pride swelled in the good woman’s heart. She had not many vanities, but her pride in her home was one of them.
“We will sit in the sun,” she said, “for it’s the place to be days like this. But first you must see my home. I’ve seen yours, you know.”
So they were shown the homely rooms—the rooms where each and every member of the family had his comfortable place. They saw the cat sunning on the doorstep, and the hounds stretched out in the yard. They saw the braided rugs, the woven counterpanes, the homemade cotton at the windows, the shapely baskets, all the products of Mary McBirney’s busy hands.
And then they were taken to that clean little chamber, looking straight up the leafy mountain side, which the McBirneys had lovingly made for Azalea.
“Oh!” cried Carin, “Isn’t it a dear place, mamma? Quaint and dear like Azalea! My room has too many things in it, hasn’t it mamma? I like this better. And it’s almost like living in the tree tops. The next time Azalea leaves you, Mrs. McBirney, it will be because she thinks she’s a bird and flies away. Or else she’ll be a flying squirrel.”
And just then they heard Thomas McBirney calling them from below. Then they all went down to have a part in telling their good news, and while they were in the very midst of their story—not that they had much to tell, for they knew no more than Haystack’s message had brought them—Hi’s odd little figure, with its long arms and bullet head, came crawling up the rocks from the lower waterfall. His dark face was strangely old and tired, and as he moved forward, with one of his thin arms in a splint, he certainly looked like a neglected boy, and this in spite of all that Ma McBirney could do to keep him as she thought a boy should be kept.
“She’s found, Hi,” Mr. Carson shouted in his hearty way. “Azalea is found!”
“Honest, sir?” cried Hi, stumbling forward. “Honest?”
“Honest Injun, hope to die!” roared back Mr. Carson.
Hi began kicking viciously at the dirt and twisting his body this way and that. He was in agony for fear he would “boo hoo,” as he put it to himself.
“Sap head!” he snarled under his breath, “Mammy’s baby boy!” He was calling himself names, and to some effect, for the invisible hand that had clutched his throat seemed to relax.
“Well,” said Mr. Carson, “let’s go sit out there on the headland and talk. We rode up here to-day not only to tell you this perfectly gorgeous piece of news, but also to talk over certain matters with you.”
“I’m sure we’re pleased to listen to anything you have to say, sir,” replied Thomas McBirney quaintly. So they seated themselves on the benches at “Outlook Point.”
“We are so,” murmured Ma McBirney in her soft voice.
“Won’t you begin at the beginning, Lucy?” said Mr. Carson to his wife. “Tell them how we came to leave the city and our friends and all, and settle here. Or shall I tell them, dear?”
Mrs. Carson leaned back against the trunk of a tulip tree and looked off across the valley.
“It was a great sorrow,” she said in her weary, beautiful way. “It was a sorrow so great that we never could quite believe it.” She spoke slowly, with a little pause between each word. “In one day our three sons were taken from us. It was at a theatre—there was a fire—I never talk of it. I cannot. We have traveled; we have lived here and there, and we have been unable to get back our strength and interest. My Charles—” she laid her white hand on her husband’s knee—“tries to make out that he has. But I know better. But he’s more unselfish than I, that’s all. Sometimes I’ve shut myself up for weeks at a time, and seen no one except my nurse. It was the only way that I could control myself. Well, not to talk of that, we have come, naturally enough, to look at life in a very different way from what we used to look at it. We see that we’ve got to stop living for ourselves alone. If we’re to be happy again, we must enlarge our family. We must take in everyone we can reach who needs us, or who will care for us. So we have come down here where every one seems simple and friendly, and where we can offer our neighborly offices, to spend the next few years. We heard of the fine old Atherton place, and finding that it was for sale, we bought it and have made a home there which we really are coming to love, though we had thought we never could really care for a home again. And now we want to be doing something—something really interesting.”
“We want to play a new game,” broke in Mr. Carson, “and to get as many as we can to come and play with us.”
“We want,” went on Mrs. Carson, “to go into these mountain industries. We want the old handicrafts to be revived; the weaving, the basket making and the pottery. And we want your help and advice.”
“Oh, yes’m,” cried Mary McBirney enthusiastically. “Thomas and I have talked many and many’s the time, of the good that might come from such a thing. Why, there’s chair makers in these parts that can make a chair that’ll go down to their great-great-grandchildren.”
“Just the thing, just the thing, madam!” answered Mr. Carson. “They’ve got the knowledge, and they’ve the talent, but they don’t use their knowledge sufficiently, and they don’t understand how to market their wares.”
“It’s true,” Mr. McBirney admitted. “They’re poorer than Job’s turkey. They just set around and mourn their fate. They stir up a little patch of ground, and think they’ve done everything there is to be done.”
“They’re too far from markets and railroads,” said Mr. Carson. “In the beginning the mountains called them, they were so beautiful; and then they cast a spell over them. It’s as if the people were hypnotized, and hadn’t leave to move.”
“That’s it,” agreed Mrs. McBirney. “You see them creeping down into town as shy as deer. And you can tell by looking at them, that there ain’t enough in the pantry to go around. They’re just plumb starved, that’s what they are.”
“Starved for lack of food, and society, and excitement,” Mr. Carson added. “Their stomachs and their minds and hearts are empty.”
“Yes, sir, just plumb empty.”
“Well, let’s put something in them. What do you say, Mr. McBirney?”
“It certainly would be a fine thing to do, sir. Now, how’ll you go about it?”
“Well, we want you and Mrs. McBirney to co-operate with us. We want you to take charge of the chair factory that we mean to start, and we want Mrs. McBirney to preside over the weaving.”
“And leave the farm, sir?” cried Mary McBirney. “You’re not ever meaning that, are you?”
“Why, would that be so hard? We’d put you up just the sort of cottage you want, you know. And you’d be near the school, so that Jim could go without using up the best part of his energy racing up and down the mountain.”
“I reckon Jimmy does get rather wore out,” Mary McBirney mused. “And maybe it would be better all ’round, Mr. Carson. And yet—”
Mary McBirney’s eyes strayed off to the purple valley with its silver streams; they rested on the low-lying cottage, wreathed in its flowering vines and hemmed around with its rose bushes, its sweet althea shrubs, its hydrangeas and bridal wreaths; they rested on the Pride of India tree and the graves beneath; on the towering tulip trees under which they sat, and she shook her head.
“No, Mr. Carson,” she said gently and with the moisture gathering in her eyes, “we couldn’t never make another place so—so sweet—as this here one. We couldn’t put our hearts into another place as we have into this. Besides, though I thank you kindly, sir, I wouldn’t want to leave my home to work outside. My job is making things bright for Thomas and Jim and Azalea, and perhaps for Hi, here. If it was so that I really needed to work outside, of course I would and never say a word. But I’d rather we got along with little, and went patched and mended, than for us to have more and lose the feeling of home.”
“I can’t say the farm has paid any too well,” Thomas McBirney said, “Sometimes it certainly has been hard scratching. And yet, somehow, I wouldn’t like to cut loose from it. It’s such a likely prospect we have here.” He too was looking off at the valley. “Somehow it don’t seem as if we could move on. Perhaps the mountains have cast a spell over us, as you say.”
“Well, I can’t blame you if they have,” said Mr. Carson cordially. “Yet ought you to let sentiment like that stand in the way of Jim’s schooling and your advancement?”
Thomas McBirney crossed one leg over the other, and looked down pensively at his calloused hands.
“I don’t know as I had ought to,” he said slowly. “But after all, we’re happy here. The children was born here. Our little girl—Molly, you know, that’s dead—she seems to be running over the place still. Seems like I can feel her near me, plenty of times. Don’t you feel that way, ma?”
Mary McBirney nodded, with her tender smile.
“So,” went on Thomas McBirney, “I don’t know as I ought to leave. But I tell you what I can do, Mr. Carson, and what I’d be proud to do. Times when I wasn’t busy here at the farm, I could drive back into the mountains to visit men I know, and men I don’t exactly know but that I’ve heard tell of, and I could get them to working on chairs for you. Then they’d haul them down to your place; and maybe some of them who ain’t as hard to pry loose from the rocks as I be, will move down beside your factory.”
“Thomas makes the best chairs I ever set in,” declared Mary McBirney with pride. “Talk about getting other men to make chairs! There ain’t none of them can come up to him.”
“I engage your whole output then,” declared Mr. Carson, apparently not at all vexed that his fine plan had been disarranged. “Get to work, Mr. McBirney, and get your boy to work. I’ll sell the chairs for you at better rates than you ever dreamed of.”
“And if you do that,” declared Thomas McBirney, “you’ll take your commission. This has got to be on a business basis, sir.”
“Of course, of course,” answered Mr. Carson hastily. He saw that it would be very easy to hurt the pride of this independent man. “We’ll agree on the commission, and I’ll take it. Of course I shall need money to build my cottages and to run the business.”
Hi had been wriggling like a worm on the bench where he sat beside Carin, and now, with much blinking and twisting, he managed to say, addressing himself to Mr. Carson:
“Yes, Hi.”
“My ma, you know,” but his cogs stopped again.
“Well, I don’t exactly know her, Hi, but I’d like to.”
“She can weave, sir, better than anybody. She can weave the Tudor Rose, and the Andrew Jackson Cabin, and the Diamond and Cat Track—Oh, most anything. You ought to see her weaving. And she can make her own dyes, just beautiful. But what’s the use? Where she lives nobody cares about her weaving. If you’d just ask her to come on, sir, since Mrs. McBirney don’t want to, she’d run the place for you, fine, and teach the women all the old patterns.”
His little black eyes seemed to hold flames in them as he turned his face, twitching with his excitement, toward Mr. Carson.
“Why, Hi, could she really? Where does she live? I can go and see her.”
“She lives away over on the far side of Steamboat Mountain, sir. Pa’s dead, you know, and there’s three children for ma to care for. She drives the horse to town and gets washing, and she farms a little. But it ain’t much. I had to leave home so’s I’d not be making her feed me. That’s why I went away with my uncle Sisson.” His face flushed scarlet through all the brown as he thought of his connection with this man whom he hated, and whom he knew all these people with him held in contempt.
“You shall go with me, Hi, and show me the way. We go by train, of course?”
“By train first. Then we drive.” Little drops of sweat broke out on Hi’s forehead and about his mouth and the tears swam into his hot eyes.
“Oh, if we could be together, here, sir! I just want to see my ma so! I’ve been wanting to see her all the time, and now since my arm got broke I can’t hardly live, I want her so.”
Mary McBirney reached out a hand and drew the boy over beside her. He might have been ashamed of her petting at another moment, but now he nestled up close to her, big boy that he was, and looked shyly up into her face.
“It was being with you, ma’am,” he murmured, “that made me so homesick, I reckon. It made me remember what ma was like.”
Mrs. Carson leaned forward to smile on him.
“We’ll have you and your mother together, Hi,” she declared, the languor gone out of her lovely voice, “one way or another. You may take my word for that. And if, as you say, she can attend to the weaving, why you may be sure she shall be given it to do. We can get some one to help her keep her house and care for the children. I agree with Mrs. McBirney, a mother has to make a happy home. That’s her first business—and her best business, too, isn’t it? But since your mother has to have the work outside in order to have a home, we’ll arrange the best we can.”
“I shall learn how to weave, too, mother,” Carin announced. “O mother, can’t I have that big room upstairs for a studio? I want to put my sketches up on the wall, and have a place to paint. Please, mother! I’d be so happy if I could have a studio of my own. If everyone else is to do something, I want to do something too. And I know I can paint. And I know I can weave. And I can make baskets. I have the dearest ideas for shapes and designs. Oh, I’d so much rather do that than study arithmetic and grammar.”
“Perhaps there’ll be time for both, my dear,” smiled her mother. “There seems to be a great deal of time down here. I’m having a friend of mine come down to act as governess for Carin,” Mrs. Carson said, turning to Mrs. McBirney. “She will teach her at home for the present, for I don’t feel as if I could let her go away to boarding school yet. Fortunately, my friend, Miss Parkhurst, paints charmingly in water colors, and so Carin will be able to take some lessons in that. Carin wants to make an artist of herself, and I’m sure I’d love to have her if she really has the talent. Well, come, Charles, we must be riding down the mountain. Will you meet Azalea this afternoon, Mr. McBirney?”
“You just believe I will, ma’am,” declared Thomas McBirney, going forward to hold Mrs. Carson’s horse for her. “And it will be as happy an errand as I ever took, ma’am.”
“We’ll be pleased to see you often, ma’am,” said Mrs. McBirney in her quaint way, as she stood beside Mrs. Carson’s beautiful white mare, looking up into the delicate, lovely face of the woman above her. “It’s a great privilege for me to know you, ma’am.”
“It’s one of the best things that has come to me to know you, Mary McBirney,” responded the other, leaning down to grasp the firm hand of her new friend. “I feel warmed all over when I’m with you. And I’m so glad you’ve decided to keep inside your home. I’m even glad that your husband has made up his mind to stay up here on the mountain, though I must confess that it sets back our plans a little. But it will all come out all right. We’ll find some one who needs to come. As for you—I mean ‘you-all’—” she laughed lightly, “as you say, you’re better right here in this beautiful spot. Let me come often, will you?”
“Come as often as you can, ma’am. It certainly will make me thankful to have you.” Mary McBirney spoke from the heart. Idle compliments were not in her line. She was offering her friendship, and Mrs. Carson, who had known brilliant and charming women and had had their devotion in plenty, felt her heart swell with satisfaction. She had known lovely women, but never one in whose eyes the lights of home seemed to glow as they did in Mary McBirney’s.
Good-byes were said by all save Hi. He, it seemed, was not to be found. He had slipped away in his own fashion, and at that moment he lay on the red pine needles back of the cabin, “just bawling,” as he would have phrased it.
He was astonished at himself, and thoroughly disgusted. He remembered that during all of his troubles, when Sisson beat him, when he went hungry, when he lay out in the wet, he had not once “bawled.” It seemed perfectly disgusting that he should be doing it now when everything was coming all right.