Elia Wilkinson Peattie

“ Jim sat thinking and thinking. What wonderful things came to Zalie! And he—he was a gawk—a dunce—a silly hill billy! He wondered Azalea paid any attention to him! And yet, somehow, she seemed to think of herself as his sister. Well, then, he’d stick by her, sir, no matter what happened. Till he was an old man with long white whiskers he’d stick by her, and if anyone did her any sort of harm, he’d fix him. He almost leaped to his feet and stood there straight and fierce with his own combat, beside the girl. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Their cabin, with its two large rooms, its open chamber between, and the lean-to, where Jim slept, sat on a pleasant bench of Mount Tennyson, two thousand feet above the level of the sea. Through their yard ran the road that carried people from over Burlingame way, on the other side of the mountain, down to Lee, the town that lay below them in the purple valley. Sometimes, when the wind was right, they could hear the mill whistles blow at Lee, or the church bells ring; and sometimes they could see the houses there as plain as anything. ”

“ Just then, the man who was sitting next Azalea arose and went over by the window, and a moment later some one slipped down into the place he had left and gave Azalea’s hand a squeeze. Azalea turned her head as quick as a frightened bird, and there sat Carin Carson, smiling at her as if they were old friends.
“I was so glad when I saw you here,” she whispered. “Isn’t it a pity they don’t ask the children to sing? I just love to sing, don’t you?” ”

“ They telegraphed here and they telephoned there, and all over the county the good neighbors were keeping an outlook. Ma McBirney and Mrs. Carson kept together and talked over this and that phase of the matter, and both of them poured out their kind hearts in good wishes, as if their love would build a wall around the lost child to keep her from harm.
“Let no evil touch her, dear Lord,” prayed Mary McBirney over and over again. “Thy power is everywhere, and Thy love is all protecting. Spread Thy love about her like a cloak and keep her from harm.” ”

“ Don’t you think it’s fun to believe in fairies?”
“What’s the use of believing in a thing that isn’t true?”
“Oh, well,” said Carin, sighing, as if she found it rather hard to bridge the distance between Azalea’s mind and her own, “some p. 136thoughts are for use and some are for fun. My shoes are for use, but my gold beads are for fun. Ideas are like that too. I know the earth turns over and makes day and night; I play there are fairies just to suit myself. It’s like trimming on a dress—thoughts of that kind. You like trimming on a dress, don’t you, Azalea?”
But Azalea’s answer was a low cry. ”

“ Every spare minute he’d be practicing up in his part. But these folks acted as if they hardly had life enough to cross the yard; and as for the horses, their heads hung down and their bones stuck out as if they were ready for the buzzards to pick. Jim hated to have that girl crying like that. There was no fun in having a show in your yard when a girl was making such a noise. He tried to forget about it, and walked around looking in the wagons—not the wagon where the girl was, but the others—hoping to find some wild animals in cages. But the only wild animals he saw were made out of wood. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Mary McBirney gave her only a day or two p. 254to settle herself in her new home, and then, with a pail of mountain honey and a crock of cottage cheese by way of gifts, she came to see her. They liked each other at once, though the life of one had enabled her to make the best of herself, and the life of the other had kept her fighting like an angry rat. But the honesty that underlay the character of each, and the interest each had in Hi, and in Azalea—indeed, in children in general—helped them over the little strangeness they might have felt. ”

“ It made them keep the house tidy and themselves ready to see folks. But there were weeks of rain or snow there on the mountain side when almost nobody passed, and when the McBirneys couldn’t get to town; and the only sounds to be heard were their own voices and the baying of the four hounds, or the crying of the trees and the crackling of the fire on the hearth.
Not long ago, there had been four of them instead of three. There had been Molly, Jim’s little sister, a little girl with hair the color of corn silk, and eyes as dark as “spider lilies.” ”

“ 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?” ”

“ 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?” ”

“ I wish I’d divided up and just been the man of the house, and let some other folks take the rest of the parts. I’m a no-count old fool, anyhow. No one but a plumb idiot would ’a’ let that there girl be snatched away like that yesterday. A blamed, sapless old fool, that’s what I be! Me with nothing but a fiddle to give me an excuse for living! For my farming would make you sick to look at. The neighbors snigger when they see it. Well, what do you think of that now, for a man to reach my age and have nothing but a fiddle that he cares for! ”

“ It was Ma McBirney who murmured: “Yes.”
“We came,” went on Mr. Carson gently, “to ask Azalea to make a choice. We are going to invite her to live with us and to be as our own daughter. She will share equally with Carin in everything; at least as far as it is possible for us to make an equal division. We know the story of her life and that under more fortunate circumstances the home we live in would have been hers. She would have been educated in the best manner and fitted for the life of a lady of position. Now, of our four children only one is left. ”

“ Last of all came Jim, his arms full of laurel blossoms.
“Well,” said ma, looking in at the door of the cabin, “If this here place don’t look like a hurricane’d struck it! Azalea, you and me’ll have to straighten things up. We can change our dresses and freshen up afterward.”
“Being a girl’s hard luck,” thought Jim. “Me and pa can sit on the front porch I reckon, while the women folks tidy.” But he was mistaken.
“Here you, Jim,” called his mother in her most businesslike tones, “bring up fresh water from the spring. Pa, I’d like some more wood, please. Azalea, you can be sweeping out. ”

“ GROWING PAINS
That night Mary McBirney carried the candle up to the loft for Azalea and sat beside her while she undressed.
“I reckon you feel a little upset, honey,” she said in her gentle, motherly way. “You saw them grand folks with their fine ways, and beautiful home, and nice clothes, and it made you feel you wasn’t nobody. I know just how you feel. I was born up Blue River Valley way, and till I was fifteen I didn’t see nobody but folks of the same kind as mine. ”

“ Don’t you get to caring too much for nothing. You hear me? Keep calm, Zalie. Keep calm. Folks that cares too much gets in a lot of trouble.”
“Do they?” laughed the girl. The remark seemed to strike her as very funny, and her gay laughter rang out like silver bells on the night air. The horses quickened their steps as they heard it, and a discouraged looking old “houn’-dog” came out from a tumble-down cabin and bayed at them.
But Pa McBirney refused to be amused. “I mean what I say,” he declared.
Azalea pulled herself together and stopped laughing. ”

“ It’s healed up in brotherly love, and if you was to go to Lee and ask any questions about that there rumpus, you’d get your trouble for your pains. They’d pretend they didn’t know what you was talking about. And the young people, they don’t know any more about it than just that it happened, and they’ve married and intermarried, till them that was forced to be slayers and them that was slain have their names passed on in the same family. And I’m proud of it, Jim, and want you to know it, and to say to folks, when they hold out that we’re a quarrelsome people, that we’re a forgiving people too. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 p. 216sorrow less black yet somehow more disheartening than that which had engulfed her at the time of her Molly’s death, rested upon her heart. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The girl who had stood looking at the valley turned at this.
“I’ll show you, please ma’am,” she said, and her voice sounded so tired that it made a lump come in Jim’s throat.
Mary McBirney reached down and took the girl’s thin brown hand in her own, and the two went on to the wagon, the others watching them. They saw her lean forward and look in the wagon, and then draw back with a startled face.
“Why, it’s over!” she called. “Pa! Pa! The poor soul’s gone!” ”

“ There’s four of us, and pa’s dead, so my uncle, he said he’d take me off ma’s hands.”
“I’d like to go with a show.”
“Would you?” cried the other. His nutlike face seemed to grow old, and he looked at Jim from under his long lashes. “Would you like sleeping out in the rain, picking up meals here and there, and going on day after day, no matter how you feel? If the old folks take the notion, that’s what happens to a fella. And then the being funny, that’s the worst. I hate to be funny just because folks have paid to see me that a-way.”
“That girl, is she funny?” ”

“ Its feed and keep shall be, so far as possible, the care of my stable boys, so that my good friend McBirney, who is so willing to take other people’s burdens on him, may not have another one added. But I promise you all, for myself and for Mrs. Carson and Carin, that you shall be thought of, Azalea, as the daughter of this home here on the mountains. And while we shall give you all you will take in the way of schooling and development, we will not do one thing to win you away from the life you have chosen. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Make yourself to home Azalea, for this is where we’re going to stay till them friends of yours is tired of looking for us.”
Azalea drew up nearer to the woman and hid her face against her bosom.
“Why, what’s the matter, you little poor thing?” cried Mrs. McBirney. “You’re not minding a few little bats and spiders, be you? I’ll get them out in no time.”
“No, no!” almost shrieked the girl. “Don’t touch them, please! They’ll fall down on us!”
“Why, what’s this I hear?” demanded ma. “A girl that’s been plumb up against all kinds of trouble, getting scared at a few little beasties! ”

“ Jim never forgot the strange look of everything—of the cave with its rough walls, of the p. 59bats and spiders and beetles, of his mother, sitting there on the ground, all bewildered and strange-looking, and of the girl who clung to her and shuddered.
“Get out of here! Get out of here!” called Pa McBirney cheerily. “It’s a fine day outside.” And he helped his wife and Azalea to their feet and led them outside.
“Best not build a fire,” he said. “We’ll have to lie low a day or two till them show folks get out of the way. I cooked the bacon before I come, and I brought the coffee in a pail. ”