CHAPTER XIII

AT HOME AGAIN

At four o’clock that afternoon, at which time the train bearing Mr. Thompson and Azalea was due at Lee, Ma McBirney went to the “Outlook” and fastened an old sheet in the crotch of the tulip trees, and there being a fine breeze blowing across the flank of the mountain, it caught the folds of this copious flag and spread it to the breeze.

“Azalea will be the first to see it, likely,” thought Mrs. McBirney. “She has such sharp eyes.”

But the sharp eyes of Azalea were busy, at that moment, staring disconsolately from the car window, many miles from home. For there was a freight wreck not far ahead of them, and, according to the conductor, there was no telling when they could move on.

It was quite possible for Mary McBirney to hear the roar of the approaching train from her high-swung home-nest, although the railroad lay across the valley from them, but Jim had come home from school and heard all the story, and he and Hi had sat on the bench and nearly stared their eyes out watching for the locomotive to push its black nose over the gap, and supper had been eaten, and the darkness settled down for the night, before the shrill and apologetic whistle of the engine was heard.

“That child will be clean starved,” ma said to the boys. “And pa, too, unless he had the sense to go to the inn and get supper. And I don’t suppose he did, me not being along. Seems like married men didn’t know enough to eat unless their wives was by to tell ’em when to do it.”

Not that Ma McBirney was scolding. She was merely passing the time.

“I reckon we’d best take that there sheet in, ma, and swing out the lantern,” Jim said as he heard the distant shriek of the train.

“It sure will cheer them up to see it,” ma said. “It’s all ready for use, Jim. I filled it and polished it yesterday.”

So Jim climbed up the tulip tree to the first long, out-reaching branch, and swung out a serviceable headlight lantern.

“There!” said Jim descending, “It looks like the morning star.”

And so it did to the homesick eyes of the girl who sat snuggled close to Pa McBirney, sitting all starched and prim, in the pink gingham frock of little Barbara Summers.

“What’s that, please?” she cried, nudging pa’s arm. “That away up on the mountain? That’s not a star, is it? It’s too low down.”

“Sho!” ejaculated pa, “that’s ma’s lantern. She’s telling us to hurry up. You hear, you there?” he called good-naturedly to the horses.

“Perhaps the boys will come down to meet us.”

“No they won’t, Azalea. At least, Jim won’t. He’ll stay with his ma. As much as we can, Azalea, we-all must stay with ma. It ain’t good for her to be alone too much. I’ve been talking that over with Jim and he thinks just like I do. She’s had too much trouble, ma has, to be left alone to brood over them. Not that she’s a fretting one. But she’s deep, ma is.”

“I know.”

“It just seemed like her heart would break when you was took away, Azalea. She sets great store by you—almost as much as she did by Molly. You see, she’s turned the love she had for Molly, right on you. So you be good to her, sister, won’t you now?”

“Oh, indeed I will! Just as good as I know how.”

“You’re a bright girl, Zalie, and I feel it in my bones that there’s fine things in store for you. But I’m going to say right now, that if you can, I want you to stick to ma. If you can, Azalea. Of course I don’t want you to stand in your own light.”

The girl slipped a hand into the arm of Pa McBirney. Then she pointed up the valley to where the light shone from the “Outlook.”

“That’s my light, pa,” she said softly.

Haystack Thompson, who had stayed in town for the night, putting up at the inn and intending to return to his neglected farm in the morning, had given Mr. McBirney an account of Azalea’s adventures, but now pa begged to hear them again from the girl’s lips. So she told him everything in her sweet wistful voice.

“It seems like I’m a dreadful lot of trouble to you,” she said. “I can’t see why it is that I had to bring you all this worry.”

“Why tain’t your fault, Zalie. What’s the use of talking like that?”

“It seems like I’m not the way other girls are. I’ve had such a strange life, Pa McBirney.”

“Well it hain’t been very long yet, girl—hardly long enough to be strange, you might say.”

“Yes it has, pa. It’s been short and strange. Now really, you know, I ought to be living in The Shoals. That’s my house—at least, I mean it might have been. That old Colonel Atherton you told Jim about, and that he told me about, was my grandfather.”

She said it in a musing way, as if she attached very little importance to it, and her hand still rested on the arm of Pa McBirney.

“What’s that!” roared pa. “What you saying, girl? Whoa there, Mac. Whoa Nannie.” He brought the horses to such a short stop that the stones crashed away from hoofs and wheels down the steep grade of the road. “Just say that again, will ye?”

“I found it out while I was away, pa. Betty Bowen told me. She said mamma never wanted to come down this way, so near her old home, until just at the last, when she knew she couldn’t live. But it don’t matter, pa. You don’t think any less of me for being the granddaughter of that man, do you? I can’t help being related to him anyway.”

“Sho!” exclaimed pa. “What you talking about, girl? He may have been a foolish man in the heat of all the trouble of the war, and done things that hadn’t ought to have been done, but he was quality, Azalea. They was great folks, the Athertons.”

“Well, the only ones I know anything about,” said Azalea with a choke in her voice, “were wandering show folks; and one of them was a friendless orphan, Pa McBirney, till you and ma took her in. There wasn’t any great folks about her. There was just a miserable little wretch. Don’t change toward me, pa, please, please! Don’t go and tell Jim and Hi. Maybe they’d think I was putting on airs. Just let everything go on the way it is.”

“Nothing ever goes on the way it was,” said pa profoundly, clucking to his horses. “But I see what you mean, girl, and since you and me is pretty good friends, I’ll do what you want me to do. I’ll stand by you because we are friends.”

He felt the girl’s grateful lips pressed against the rough sleeve of his coat, and he laughed down at her in a kindly, almost pitying way.

“See here, Zalie,” he said, “don’t you get to caring too much for us. 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.

“I know I’m silly, pa, but I’m so happy! You can’t think how happy I am! There now, don’t you try to tell me not to be too happy, because I’ve simply got to be happy to-night. Now, I’ll be good and talk like a sensible person all the rest of the ride. I want to tell you more about Mr. Summers, and my cousin Barbara.”

“Your cousin Barbara?”

“Yes, Mrs. Summers, you know. She’s so little she seems almost like a girl. And we made up our minds to be kin.”

“Oh, you did, did you?”

“Yes. We’re going to write to each other just like we were cousins. See?”

“Eh-huh.”

“I just love her!”

“There you go again.”

“Well, I can’t help it if I do. Tell me about Carin, pa.”

“I reckon she’ll be up to see you to-morrow to tell you everything herself. She’s going into some kind of picture making, and her pa and ma is simply rooting up the earth, doing things.” He told her about the project for developing the mountain industries and the part they all were to play in it.

“Something laid out for every last one of us, you see.”

“Except me, pa. Didn’t they make plans for me?”

“They didn’t mention any, but I suspicion that they’ve got more plans for you than for anybody else. And that makes me feel kind o’ bothered, on ma’s account. Now that you tell me about your being the granddaughter of old Colonel Atherton, with a sort of right to live in the great house—though it did pass out of the family years ago—I’m more bothered than ever.”

Azalea laughed again.

“I don’t believe you’re bothered at all, pa,” she declared. “Why, here we are, home! Why, we’re really home! Didn’t the time pass quickly? Ma! Ma! Hullo, boys! Where’s ma?”

Mary McBirney folded the slight form of the girl in her arms.

“My prayers was answered,” she said simply. “Just bear witness, children. They was all answered. It’s a lesson to us, ain’t it? If we want anything of the Lord, just ask him, believing. Are you clean starved out, pet? Come right along in and have supper. Pa, the boys will put up the horses. You hike in the house and eat something decent. I suppose you had some kind of stuff down at that there inn. My land, it’s a wonder to me them folks can’t learn how to cook.”

She led the girl in and seated her before the table with its fine bread, its glasses of foaming milk, its cottage cheese and honey. Then she pushed her husband to his seat, and hung over him, then fluttered to Azalea to hang over her like an anxious mother bird.

“Here’s a little hot ham to help quell your appetites. And here’s some hominy cakes. My goodness, Azalea, do eat something. Pa, you just ruined your appetite down there in that miserable eating place. Ain’t it wonderful to have Zalie home again, pa? The ways of the Lord are past our comprehending. You must tell me everything, Zalie—every last thing.”

The lights from the homemade candles fluttered softly against the brown walls. Far off, the whippoorwills called. The chill freshness of the night-enshrouded mountain stole in the door, and when the boys had returned from putting up the horses, the family shut out the silent, shadowy world about them and drew around the table. Their faces, earnest, eager, loving, came into the full light from the candle dips. And there, far into the night, Azalea talked to them, secure in her sense of love and peace.

Afterward, when they all had lighted her to her chamber, and then had left her, she stood for a while on her little gallery listening to the whippoorwills and looking at the low stars. It seemed as if messages of good will came from the birds, from the near dark forest, from the loud-singing stream. All was familiar and dear. And her fragrant chamber welcomed her with the silent sweetness to be found only in well-loved rooms.