CHAPTER XI

THE SUMMERS FAMILY

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:

“Our helper he, amid the flood Of mortal ills pre-vail-ll-ing. For still our ancient foe, Doth seek to work us woe—”

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.