Azalea never forgot how quietly and sweetly that night came down. The mountain, so old—older than the peaks of the Rockies or the Sierras—lay beneath the stars with an air of placidity as comforting to the spirit as great music or great words.

Within the room where Keefe rested, the shadows deepened till Azalea and the others could no longer see his long form on the sofa, nor the little dark head of Mary Cecily bent to touch his.

“To think of finding some one on the earth who really, really belongs to you,” said Azalea. “Oh, Carin, how happy they are!”

“Aren’t they!” sighed Carin sympathetically. “Oh, dear, Azalea, it makes me homesick for papa and mamma. Yet here we are, only half through the term of school we promised to teach.”

“You can’t say that it’s been dull,” replied Azalea with a fluttering little laugh. “Just think of all that has happened these short three weeks.”

“I ought,” murmured Mr. Rowantree, who had supped with them, and who sat with them now on the porch, “to be riding home to Constance and the other children. Paralee kindly promised that she would look in on them and help them get a bit of something to eat, but now I really must be getting along. They’ve never been alone before after nightfall.”

“You’re going to leave Mrs. Rowantree here then?” asked Aunt Zillah. “Oh, that’s good of you. I don’t believe those two could bear to be separated. I know I couldn’t bear to have them.”

“Of course they must stay together,” answered Mr. Rowantree. “Ah, what a brave, bright little creature my Mary Cecily is, Miss Pace! Folks think I don’t appreciate her because I’m a lazy, dreamy fool who hasn’t found out how to take hold of life over here, but perhaps some day I’ll be able to show them that I’m not quite such a useless creature as they think me. I know my faults better than anyone else knows them; and the worst fault of them all is not being properly ashamed of myself. I always was too indifferent to what others thought; but since you came, Miss Pace, with these fine unselfish girls, I—well, I’ve seen myself pretty much as others must see me and I confess I don’t like the picture.”

“Oh, Mr. Rowantree,” cried Aunt Zillah, distressed, “I’m sure—”

“Don’t trouble yourself to say a single polite thing, ma’am. Leave me the virtue of my repentance. Now, about my little wife’s brother in there; he must come to Rowantree Hall to-morrow morning. Miles McEvoy can drive him over the way he took Panther to the station, lying out on the straw in the wagon box. Keefe’s a fine fellow, no manner of doubt about that. I took to him from the first.”

“Have you seen the pictures Keefe has up in Mr. McEvoy’s barn?” asked Aunt Zillah. “It’s a great pleasure and profit to look at them. I’m sure when Mr. and Mrs. Carson see them they’ll be all for having an exhibit of them down at Lee. Many artists come there, as you know, and it’s the habit of the tourists to attend their exhibits. Sometimes they purchase very freely.”

“It would be a fine thing for him if something of the sort could be done,” said Mr. Rowantree. “My only fear is that Mary Cecily may have another philandering male for her to care for. That really would be one too many. I declare,” he added humorously, “if it came to that, I think it might drive me to work!”

Azalea could not repress a little laugh, but Carin maintained disapproving silence. She liked Mr. Rowantree—nobody could help liking him—but she certainly did not approve of him, and it was not in her to ease off the situation as Azalea could. Azalea had grown up among vagabonds, and if she recognized in the magnificent Rowantree a new variety of the tribe, it only made her tolerant of him.

“But you do like to teach, don’t you, Mr. Rowantree?” she said encouragingly. “Paralee met me and told me what a wonderful day it had been for them all, and how you came it over that poor silly Mr. McIntosh. If only you had been given a chance to teach, maybe—” she hesitated, not quite seeing where her speech would lead her.

“Maybe I would have stirred my old stumps, eh, Miss Azalea, and not sat around on my gallery giving a bad imitation of a Southern planter, while my lion-hearted little wife used her wit and her strength to provide for the lot of us? Well, now, maybe you’re right. And that reminds me of a plan we evolved among us to-day. That nice red-headed boy—whatever his name is—helped shape the notion.”

He told them the idea of the moonlight school and instantly Azalea was on fire with enthusiasm.

“Oh, Mr. Rowantree,” she cried, “what a splendid thought—what a shining, glittering thought! It looks just like a king, dressed in white and jewels and with a crown on its head. Let’s make it come true. Carin, you’re the wonderful one for doing things. All I can do is to exclaim, but you go off and do them. Make this come true, Carin! I couldn’t bear to have it stay merely a dream.”

“It is a glorious idea,” said Carin. “I suppose men and women were quite happy in the old days, Mr. Rowantree, in ignorance. My father says some of the old, unlettered peasants were very wise, and that they had valuable knowledge they passed on from father to son. But in these days it certainly does seem terrible for a man or woman not to know how to read or write, particularly here in our country where everyone should have a chance.”

“That’s it,” cried Aunt Zillah, who was a great patriot; “in this glorious country where everyone ought to be given a chance! That’s the promise we’ve held out to those who come to our shores, and it’s that which helps me to overlook so many things that seem wrong in our dear land. Greedy we may be, and disgraced by the scheming and grafting of our politicians, but after all, it is here that the ignorant are educated and the lowly learn to lift up their heads. Oh, I’m proud to be an American, and if I had my life to live over again I would devote it to some cause that would help on the real Americanism. Now, here’s Azalea, God bless her. She’s going to work among the mountaineers. What could be more fitting? The child has just the nature for the task, and her experiences have helped her to understand many things that a more carefully sheltered girl could not have understood.”

“I hope she’ll marry happily and keep in her own home,” said Mr. Rowantree shortly, while Azalea colored scarlet and was grateful for the gloom that hid her face. “I’m an old-fashioned man and I like to see a woman in her home. As one of the chief of Miss Azalea’s friends I do not desire a public career for her.”

Even in the dusk Miss Zillah’s head could be seen shaking emphatically.

“Well,” she said, “if you’re an old-fashioned man, Mr. Rowantree, I suppose I’m what could be called an old-fashioned woman. But this I will say: I believe in women using their powers, and I think a woman of intelligence and health has the ability to look after her home and do something else besides. Azalea may marry or she may not, but in any event I hope she’ll use her influence and some of her best thought in behalf of these poor people ’round about us. I’m not a great one for foreign missions—although I’ve no objection to them—but I do say that life is twice as wonderful and beautiful when one helps on her fellow beings. There never was a place in the world where missionary work was needed more than it is right here in our own beloved state of North Carolina. It’s a kind and gracious old state, and as beautiful as anything that lies beneath the sky, but it’s got some poor, neglected members of the human family in it, and I’m all for helping them on. I love Azalea, and have great confidence in her, and that’s why I want to see her give herself to a useful and important work. If she wasn’t of much account, I shouldn’t think that it mattered what she did; but she’s of much account, and so, if she were mine I would give her to this service of her kind as I would give a son, if I had one, to fight and die for his country.”

Miss Zillah’s gentle voice had gathered to itself unusual power, and its tones, charged with feeling, penetrated to the shadowy room where Keefe and Mary Cecily were. Mary Cecily laughed softly as she arose from the low chair where she had been sitting, and Keefe echoed her. Perhaps it struck them as amusing that anybody should find it necessary to worry about anything now, when suddenly, to them, the world seemed so completely right.

“How are you in there?” queried Rowantree. “I’m thinking of driving home the night, Mary Cecily, and leaving you here with Keefe.”

“Oh, would Mary Cecily be happy away from the little ones?” asked Keefe. “Really, I’m much better—fifty percent better, I assure you. It’s not necessary for—for my sister to stay with me.” His voice caught on the words. “My sister” was not easily uttered.

“Indeed, I’ve no thought of leaving you, brother dear—no thought at all. It’s as my husband says. He can ride home to the children; and very good and dear it is of him to think of it. The two of us will be along in the morning, as you were planning a while back. Be off, Bryan dear. There’s only Paralee with the children, and she’s strange to them. Tell them all that’s happened to me to-day, and let Constance know that I’m bringing home an own uncle—the very one she’d have chosen, I’m sure.”

Azalea drew back into the shadow of the house. So in the morning they would be off—Keefe and his bright little sister—carrying their rich romance with them, and the Oriole’s Nest would be the poorer for their going! They would be gloriously happy together, telling each other all that had happened in the years they had been apart. They would go farther, those two, with their eager, answering minds, and would talk not only of what they had done, but of what they had thought and felt. Each would be turning out the riches of his mind for the other to see—holding up their fancies as if they were embroidered clothes, and each marveling at what the other had to show. They would be telling to each other the poetry they knew; and Keefe would be making pictures while Mary Cecily watched. And how the two of them would love the children and admire their graceful ways! Azalea could see how they would look, all the family of them, sitting about the blazing fire in that queer “drawing-room.” Keefe’s pictures would be put up on the wall—the whole place would be plastered with them—and they would be talking about this one and that, and where it was painted. Then they would be singing together, and whistling and dancing—heaven only knew what they would or wouldn’t do.

Azalea felt the hot tears of shameless envy crowding out from under her lids, and hated herself for them. She to help on her fellow-men? She to work to add to the goodness and happiness of the world, when she grudged these two their simple happiness, after so many years of tears and longing and heartache? Could a more miserable, absurd, abject girl than herself be found anywhere, she wondered. She thanked heaven that the friends there beside her did not dream how ignoble she was.

Rowantree meantime had said good night and had mounted and ridden away. They watched the light of his lantern flitting like a firefly among the trees and at last disappearing entirely in the night.

The McEvoys came with the milk, and lingered to learn the news. As they walked away Miss Zillah and her girls could hear their soft singsong voices in kindly unison.

“They’re right sweet folks,” Miss Zillah declared, sighing unaccountably. “At first they did seem queer to me, but now I’ve grown to be as fond of them as if they were old neighbors. They’re a good example of a happy married pair, too. I don’t know as I ever heard them really disagree about a thing; and though those medicine bottles must be a terrible trial to Mr. McEvoy, he never says a word about them, except, of course, to tease Mis’ Cassie a little now and then.”

“There haven’t been any new bottles bought since we came up here, I notice,” said Carin. “I suppose we’ve kept Mis’ Cassie so busy that she hasn’t had time to take thought about them.”

“I’ve a fine little plan that I’d like to carry into execution,” said Miss Zillah. “Down home I have quite a number of pretty mantel ornaments I bought long ago when—when I thought I was going to have a little home of my own. I—I never told you about that, my dears, but it seems a good time to do it now, this being such a wonderful day for us all. You see, I had my wedding clothes made, and I was to marry one of the kindest, fairest-minded men that ever lived in the world. And he—he was killed, dears—thrown from his horse and killed.”

Azalea had still kept in the background, those hurt and lonely tears hot beneath her lids; and now, at the story of another’s sorrow, she frankly let them fall. Curiously, though, they were not so hot and bitter as she had thought they would be.

“Why, Aunt Zillah,” she murmured, “we never guessed! Yet we might have known. There always was something about you so gentle and sweet—we might have known that you’d had sorrow.”

“Few live to my age without having sorrow, Zalie, but my sorrow came in my youth, and it took the zest out of life for a time. However, it was a sweet sorrow. I’ve always been able to keep my lover young and kind in my memory. But what I started to say was, that I put away and never have used the things I got for that little home I meant to have. Now, I’m going to write sister Adnah and ask her to send me my mantel ornaments. They’re very pretty and chaste,” went on Miss Zillah quaintly. “Little shepherds and shepherdesses, piping to each other, and all dressed in the softest pink and blue, and a clock to match. I even have an embroidered cover for the mantel, done in cross stitch and in pastel colors to go with the ornaments. If I give these to Mis’ Cassie and induce her to put them in the spare room she’ll stick the medicine bottles away out of sight.”

“They’ll go in that mess under the house,” agreed Carin. “And it will be a grand day for the McEvoys when they do. Oh, Aunt Zillah, how tired and sleepy I am—almost too tired and sleepy to go to bed.”

“I feel just the same way,” said Azalea. “Yet I hate to leave the night to itself, it’s so lovely. Sometimes I think I’ll sleep days and keep awake nights, I love the night so much.”“Come,” said Miss Zillah with the voice of authority, “don’t be talking nonsense. We will get to our beds.”

So they slipped in softly behind the great chimney and the pretty screens to their own quaint makeshift of bedroom, leaving Mary Cecily on a cot near her brother. The windows and doors all stood open to the night, and the girls could hear the soft rustlings of the wood and the tinkle of the brook. The whippoorwills were very distant and their insistent cry sounded sweet and mournful, though it could be hectoring enough when it was near at hand. But nothing was hectoring this night, except that foolish, wistful longing in Azalea’s restless young heart, because Keefe and Mary Cecily were so happy in themselves, and because it was taken for granted that she, Azalea, was always to be so brave and so eager for service, and was to be a missionary to the mountain folk and was never to have any joy of her own—no real, selfish, glorious joy! Yet only the other day she had told Carin how clearly the finger of fate pointed to her as one set apart to “do good.” She would never marry, she had said—never, never—because she could not marry a “gentleman” and because she would marry no one who could not lay claim to that name. And they had taken her at her word—or at least, they had almost done so. She was to be Azalea McBirney, the adopted daughter of the mountain folk, the little sister to all the unfortunates, and was to live apart and be good!

Azalea lay quite on the edge of her bed, very straight and rigid, and looked up at the stars through her open window. They were cold, unsympathetic looking stars! Azalea had not previously noticed how very haughty and remote they could appear, or how indifferent they could be to the woes and doubts, the frets and flurries of one self-centered young person called Azalea McBirney—one reneging, horrid young person, who was secretly going back on all her declarations of faith and service, and wanting nothing in the world so much as merely to be happy!

Life, decided Azalea, was a puzzle. Once it had seemed simple. Some things had plainly been right to do; others, as plainly wrong. In those days she had believed she had only, at any time, to listen to her conscience to find out precisely what she ought to do, and therefore what she wanted to do. Because, of course, she wanted to do what was right.

Now she was finding out that there were all sorts of matters which were neither right nor wrong, about which she had to decide. At present she was tormented with a longing to share in the joy and in the lives of Keefe and Mary Cecily. Something in them called to her. Their quick gayety, their sudden sadnesses, their caring about pictures and poetry more than they did about food or work, or sleep, or any usual, dutiful thing, made them seem the very kin of her soul. She couldn’t account for it. It was merely a fact. She began to understand that there might have been something of the sort in her own poor little mother. When she took to wandering the roads with a cheap “show” perhaps it was not merely necessity, but some half-formed dream of wildness and gayety and art that had led her on. She too had loved the night and laughter and dancing, singing and pictures. Not anything evil—Oh, no, on the contrary, only happily, brightly good things, things that lightened the heart and set the brain moving so that glittering little thoughts shone in it like stars in the night.The Carsons, gentle and kind, formal and polite, were Azalea’s tried and trusted friends; the McBirneys, generous and loving, lived in the inner chamber of her heart; Annie Laurie was a gallant girl and her own true friend; but the soft gay laughter of Keefe and Mary Cecily was as fairy bells in her ears, and that night she could hear nothing else, it seemed—not even the voices of the dear old friends—for the tinkling of them.

So, very stiff, very straight, very miserable, she lay upon her edge of the bed and counted the hours. Carin, soft as a kitten, curled down well in the center of the mattress and slept as babies sleep.

“What’s come over me?” demanded Azalea of herself. “Haven’t I any heart? Haven’t I any sense? Can’t I see anybody else happy without being jealous of them? Am I an Everlasting Pig?”

Haughty and remote stars do not answer questions like that. Along in the latter part of the night Azalea fell asleep with the question hanging in the fast-chilling air. When she awoke, the day was already bright, and outside the door sounded the voice of Miles McEvoy making arrangements to carry Mary Cecily and Keefe to Rowantree Hall.

Azalea sprang out of bed with decision. Her lips were set in a hard little line.

“Come, Carin,” she said, “we mustn’t be late to school. Let’s settle down now for a long hard pull. We’ll teach school as we never did before. There’s only three weeks more ahead of us and we mustn’t waste a minute.”

“My goodness,” yawned Carin, prettily, “you sound like a call to arms. All right, comrade, I’m with you. Shall we wear our pink ginghams?”

“What does it matter what we wear?” demanded Azalea sternly. “We’re here to teach school. Nobody cares how we look.”

At that Carin sat up in bed bristling with protest.

“What’s come over you, Zalie?” she demanded. “Of course the children care how we look. Looking as well as we can is part of our work. You know you’ve often said so yourself. But, dear me, why should I worry about you, you old Zalie thing? You always look lovely.”

Her friends thought so that morning, certainly. Her eyes were a touch too bright, perhaps, her cheeks a shade too red, and there was something a little too vivid and throbbing about her. Try as hard as she could to keep in the background, she could not succeed.

“You’re a flaming Azalea this morning, my dear,” whispered Mary Cecily just before she took her seat beside her brother in McEvoy’s wagon for the rough journey to Rowantree Hall. Keefe was white and spent-looking, but a glorious happiness shone in his eyes.

“No one is to worry about me,” were his words at parting with his friends at the Oriole’s Nest. “If it’s sick I am, it must be with gratitude and bliss. Never will I forget your goodness to me at this house; and now here I am, going—home!” He turned swimming eyes on his sister.

As they drove off he raised himself on one elbow—he was reclining on the clean straw in the wagon box—to catch one last glimpse of “the flaming Azalea.” But she was out of sight—absurdly and irritatingly out of sight. There were only Miss Zillah and the golden-headed Carin to wave good-bye.