CHAPTER V

THE SHOALS

“Jim,” cried Azalea, “my room’s done at last. Come see it, quick!”

“I’ve looked at that room and looked at it. I don’t believe it’s any different from what it was yesterday.”

“James Stuart McBirney, it is too! Ma’s hung a blue curtain over the place where my clothes hang, and she’s got a braided rug on the floor and a cheesecloth curtain at the window, and she’s covered my stand with blue and white print. The way she’s fixed up those cones and pine leaves, you’d never know the looking glass was broke. It’s the prettiest room I ever saw. Oh, Jim, do come!”

Jim pretended that he wasn’t interested, and stamped up the new stairs his father had built, and along the platform which led to the attic room which had been given Azalea for her own. Although Jim was supposed not to care anything about the room, he had, nevertheless, braided a hammock of warp such as his mother used on her loom, and this hammock had been swung out on the platform. Azalea could lie there and look straight up the mountain side. Jim had helped, too, with the making of the bedstead and the splint-bottomed chairs and the dresser, and in the bottom of his heart he thought it was just the kind of a room Azalea ought to have—she was so pretty and—well, Jim couldn’t quite find the word to describe her—but she reminded him of a pinky-white trillium. Not that he would have said so. He treated her just as if she had been his own sister, and that means that he led her rather a hard life at times. But that didn’t seem to bother Azalea at all. She would do anything for him, and she could tease back when she had a mind to, and when he “got her in a corner,” as he put it, she laughed her ringing laugh.

“Some girls would get mad to be treated the way Jim treats Azalea,” ma used to say. “But she’s got the sweetest disposition of anybody I ever saw.”

“Not too sweet to hold her own,” answered Thomas McBirney. “At first I thought to myself, have to pitch in and take that girl’s part, but after a time I says to myself, I reckon I’ll leave them two young uns to take care of theirselves.”

They used to buy each other to do things, by promising to tell stories. If Jim wanted Azalea to help him gather firewood, he offered to tell her a story in payment for her help. If Azalea wanted Jim to help her scrub the floor, she promised him a story of things that had happened to her when she was “on the road.” One day Jim told Azalea the story his father had told him that day on the mountain, about the old Atherton mansion, and how it had stood vacant for years and years, with the swallows flying in and out its chimneys, and the snakes and squirrels and birds having their way with it.

“There’s snakes in the grass and bats in the porches and wild doves in the barn,” said Jim. “A boy I know told me about it. He says you can’t count the squirrels and the catbirds and the robins and the thrushes. Some think it’s haunted, but I don’t reckon there’s much in that story. I’m not long on ghosts.”

“It might have a ghost,” said Azalea wistfully. “Anyway, I’d like to see it—the house, I mean. Oh, Jimmy, I’d just love to see it! Let’s ask ma if we-all can’t go picnicking down there.”

Ma was doubtful. She said she’d fooled away altogether too much time lately—that she’d never been so lazy. But at this her whole family laughed so, for they almost never caught her for a moment idle, that she gave in and agreed to go the next Saturday.

“Pa’ll be driving to town, and we-all will go along. We can get out at the Old Green Place and cut off across to the Atherton Place and eat our lunch there, and then pa, he can meet us at the Green Place again on the way home.

“The road to town used to run by the Atherton house,” pa said. “But it did seem as if it picked up every hill in the whole county, and now that the road ain’t been taken care of for a dozen years, it’s just a pesky lot of sink holes. Why, it’s as much as a horse’s life is worth to take it over that there road.”

Saturday morning came with the bluest of skies. Little soft white clouds floated over it like happy ships on a sea; and the wind was playful, too, and the sunshine friendly. The four got off very early and rattled down the mountain side in a manner to take the breath away from anyone who had not perfect confidence in Pa McBirney’s driving.

At last the “Old Green Place” was reached, and ma prepared to get out with the children. But pa objected.

“See here, I don’t think this is a fair deal, ma,” he said. “Me going off all by myself, eating my lunch alone in this tarnation old wagon, and you three picnicking! You come along with me, ma. I’m not fit to do trading by myself. You know you’ve often said that.”

Ma made a face at him, for she knew he had her there, but she really did think it rather dull for pa to drive on alone seven miles to town, and so, after she had made the children promise that they would be careful about this, that and the other thing, and be at the Green Place in the middle of the afternoon, she went on to Lee with pa.

[Picture: “She ran out to meet me,” he cried]

The two children turned their faces down an unknown road, overhung with great chestnuts and lindens, and cut into deep gulleys by the rains. The way looked lonely and beautiful and strange and Azalea felt her heart beating a little faster than usual. She was just going to say to Jim that they’d probably get lost, when something ran swiftly across their path.

“An adder!” cried Jim. “A gray adder! That’s the poisonest snake that lives anywhere here about. Don’t you go fooling with snakes like that, Zalie, whatever you do. Why, once I teased a gray adder till he got so mad he bit himself. And in three minutes he was dead.”

“Honest?”

“Honest! You say you’re sorry for snakes—I like ’em to kill!—but don’t you fool none around an adder.”

“You didn’t try to kill that one.”

“Well, if I hadn’t been going for a good time, I would. Somehow, when I’m going out for a good time, I don’t like to begin by killing something.”

Azalea laughed lightly, and the two went on along the shady road. Twice they crossed creeks—amber-colored, rippling streams that sang over the stones. One they jumped across; the other was too wide for that, but they found a narrow swinging bridge a little way upstream.

“Don’t it seem strange to think that there used to be people and people going along here,” mused Azalea, “and now almost no one comes here!”

Jim nodded. He hadn’t much time to think about things like that. He was wondering what he would find at the Atherton house.

After a time they came to a sunny piece of road, and along the side a clay bank punctured with little holes.

“Oh, doodle bug holes!” cried Jim. “Come, let’s get the doodle bugs out.” So the two children got down on their knees and blew into the holes where the bugs lived and called three times:

“Doodle bug, come out of your hole!”

And the doodle bugs came out politely, and ran about this way and that as if looking for the person who had called them.

“I spose we’re too large for them to see,” said Azalea.

They had been told to keep their lunch until noon, but they felt so hungry—at least Jim did—that they decided to eat it at once. So they got out the cold biscuit spread with honey and the bottle of milk and the cornbread sandwiches with the bacon between and ate it all. Not a scrap did they leave. Then they took a long drink of spring water and started on again.

“It’s about ten o’clock,” said Azalea. “By noon we’ll be hungry again, and by four o’clock we’ll be starved to death. Pa and ma will come along and find two heaps of bones at the Old Green Place, and they’ll never know it’s us, and they’ll go up the mountain weeping and gnashing their teeth.”

Jim looked at her admiringly.

“I don’t see how you think of so many things to say, Zalie. I can’t think of things to say.”

“Then take me along with you wherever you go, Jimmy.”

“All right,” said he.

At last they got in sight of the Atherton estate. Jim saw it first.

“Look there! Look there!” he cried. “Did you ever see such hedges?”

They ran through the trees, then along beside the great hedge as far as the gateway.

“Why, the gates are open, ain’t they, Jim?”

“Say, they are! Now what do you think of that? Zalie, there’s smoke coming out of the kitchen chimney—and the grass is cut. And, look there, a man is painting the house.”

“There’s folks living there, Jim. Maybe it’s ghosts—like I said.”

“No it ain’t. I smell the paint. And that’s old man Hendricks doing that painting. It wouldn’t be right to holler to him, would it, Azalea?”

“The folks might hear you. It’s queer pa didn’t know folks had moved in.”

“Well, pa ain’t been to town for three weeks, and anyway, he might not come on anybody that would tell him. Lots of rich folks comes to Lee now. They come down there because they think it’s pretty. That don’t seem much of a reason for coming to a place, does it?”

“Well, I reckon that’s why your pa and ma stopped away up on Tennyson mountain, Jim. It ain’t no way convenient to anything—just way off by itself. If it wasn’t that they stopped on account of prettiness, what was it?”

“Pshaw! Pa wouldn’t stop nowhere for prettiness.”

“I’ll bet he would! I’ll just bet he would.”

“I guess I know pa better than you do, Zalie. I’ve known him years, and you’ve known him weeks.”

“It ain’t the length of time you know a person that counts, Jim. It’s the looking in at their hearts and the understanding of them.”

“You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you? Knowing my pa better than I know him!”

“Oh, Jim, see! A girl!”

Their little pretense at quarreling—for it was only a pretense—was stopped by the appearance of a little girl on the portico of the great house.

She looked quite small to them at first, standing among the great pillars that ran up the front of the house, but as she walked on down the old brick walk toward the gateway, they saw that she was almost as tall as Azalea, and quite a little heavier. She was all russet brown—hair, eyes, frock, stockings and shoes, and in her arms she carried a little silky dog with long ears and wistful, bulging eyes.

“We ought to go away,” whispered Azalea. “We’ve no business to stand staring in at other folks’s yards like this. It ain’t polite.”

But though she said this, she did not move an inch, and as for Jim, he stood with his mouth open, watching that girl dance down the long brick walk between the box hedges.

Suddenly she saw the children and stopped. Her eyes rested on Jim a moment and she seemed to smile at his kind, freckled, jolly phiz. Then she saw Azalea and the look in her face changed to one of deeper interest. Azalea, standing slender and straight there in her clean blue frock, with her gray eyes shining and her long hair beautifully braided, certainly was good to look at. So the girl came on, not dancing now, but hastening along as if bent on business.

“How do you do?” she said sweetly, blushing a little with shyness.

“I’m very well, thank you,” said Azalea. “How are you?”

Jim made a noise in his throat to show that he meant well, but no one could tell what words he was trying to say.

“Do you live near here?” the little girl inquired.

Jim pointed over his shoulder.

“We come from up mountain.”

“You’re not brother and sister!” exclaimed the girl.

Jim wondered what Azalea would say. He was very proud of her. She seemed to him like a humming bird that had come to live among wrens, and he wondered if she would be ashamed of him? He was a happy boy, who wasted no time in thinking about uncomfortable things, but now, suddenly it came over him that he was rather a stupid chap, with trousers that were too long for him, and a waist that was too short in the sleeves, and bare feet and a freckled face. Azalea’s clothes were new, and anyway, his mother knew much more about dressing girls than she did about dressing boys. And then no matter how he dressed or how he tried he never could look like Azalea!

She was speaking now, and he put aside his thoughts to listen.

“Jim’s father and mother took me in,” she was saying softly, “and they treat me like I was their own. My mother died just a little while ago, and my father—well, I never saw him at all—and now I say my name is McBirney, just like Jim’s. He’s James Stuart McBirney. I’m Azalea—they let me be called Azalea McBirney.”

It was beautifully done—lovingly done. Her pleasant voice caressed the words, her gratitude put a little dew into her eyes. The other girl stood listening and looking and “Oh!” she said. Then she looked at Jim and smiled and said “Oh,” once more. And after that she murmured, “Azalea! How pretty! My name is Carin Carson, and we’ve just moved here. I don’t know anyone and I’m dreadfully lonesome. Couldn’t you come in and play for a little while?”

“Thank you,” said Azalea, “I s’pose we could. We really came down here to see this house, but we didn’t know anyone was living in it. We thought it would be such fun to see a house that no one had lived in for years and years.”

“Did you? Why, so did I. And so did papa and mamma. It’s a beautiful old house, isn’t it? We find something new about it almost every hour. Why, this morning what do you think we found?”

The children shook their heads.

“A secret staircase! Yes, we did. It runs up from a sitting room in that far wing to a bedroom above. There’s no door you can see—only panels that slide in the wainscoting. It’s more fun! Wouldn’t you like to see it?”

“I’d just love to see it. But your ma—would she like us to come in? I don’t believe I’d like to come in unless your ma said we might.”

“Well, you _are_ particular,” laughed Carin. “You must have been very strictly brought up. I’ll go ask my mamma, if you’ll wait a minute. Come in and sit on this bench.”

And without waiting to see them seated under the wide-branching plane tree, she sped away up the walk. Azalea looked after her rather gloomily. What would this nice girl say if she knew that Azalea had been brought up with a traveling show—a miserable show, with coarse, profane men and women in it? And then she remembered, how, though her mother was one of them, and always seemed to want to stay with them and was frightened if any people from the towns tried to know her, yet her mother had been different from the others. And coarse and mean as the show people had been, they were nevertheless afraid of what she would think of them, in a way; and Azalea knew that no unkind or unlovely word ever had passed her lips. She had been most careful about her daughter’s manner and language, and as a matter of fact, Azalea knew how to use much better grammar than she usually employed. She talked carelessly because the people around her did so, and because she didn’t want to seem a bit finer than dear Pa and Ma McBirney. Whatever they said, somehow sounded right to her.

In a moment or two Azalea saw Carin coming back with a tall, slender lady. The lady was dressed in white and wore a white scarf that drifted back from her shoulders. Even her shoes and her parasol were white.

“That’s the ghost, if there is one, I reckon,” whispered Jim. Azalea arose as the lady drew near and bowed politely, and Jim did the same, because he saw Azalea doing it. The lady shook hands with them when Carin had introduced them, and talked with them a little while.

“How fortunate it is,” she said in a fluty voice, “that you and papa and I bought this house before Jim and his sister saw it, isn’t it? They’d have got it away from us I’m afraid.” She laughed lightly and looked down at them with large, warm brown eyes like her daughter’s. “Well,” she went on, “since we were the lucky ones, Carin, the only thing we can do is to show them our treasures.” And she led the way back to the house. Carin gave a little skip.

“Don’t you think she’s a dear?” she whispered to Azalea. “She’s the sweetest mother in the world!”

Azalea had a vision of her own tired, frail little mother in her silly show dresses, smiling and bowing to the crowds of common people that came to hear them, and she shivered as if a chilly wind had blown over her. Yet her mother might have looked as beautiful as this lady, she thought, if she could have walked about a lovely garden with a scarf like a cobweb floating from her shoulders.

They were taken into the wide hall which ran straight through the house and showed a garden in the rear, where a fountain played; and through the long drawing room, where as yet there were only piles of heaped-up furniture, then into a gay little room Mrs. Carson called the morning room, where bright birds were pictured on the curtains and the chair backs; and then into the sitting room in the far wing, where servants were putting hundreds of books on the shelves.

“Let me show them, mother!” cried Carin, and she ran forward to a piece of the high paneling which was not occupied by book shelves, and pushed a little spring, and whish! back into the casement flew the door.

“Look up! Look!” said Carin, dancing about in her delight. Azalea ran forward and looked up the dark narrow stairs.

“Who do you see coming down?” asked Mrs. Carson.

“A tall old man, with stooped shoulders and a dreadful frown,” said Azalea.

At that, Jim looked up.

“Why, Zalie,” he said, “I don’t see anyone!” Azalea was going to laugh, but she saw that Carin and Mrs. Carson didn’t laugh.

“It’s only our nonsense, Jim,” the lady said smilingly. “There isn’t one of course.”

She looked at her two visitors for a moment. Jim was inquisitive. He wanted to know all there was to know. He was out gunning, so to speak, for facts. Azalea was wandering along hoping to meet with fancies. She was the one with the imagination.

“I don’t know which I like best,” thought Mrs. Carson. “But I’m sure they make a good team.” Aloud she said: “What do you think of lunch in the garden? Everyone in the house save us is as busy as busy as can be. Shall we get our own lunch?”

So, hardly believing that it could all be true, Jim and his sister went with Mrs. Carson and Carin into the great cool pantry and helped spread the thin slices of bread, and to cut the cheese and dish the honey and slice the cold chicken. And then they sat where the cucumber oleanders shed their fragrance, and the sound of the fountain whispered in their ears, and ate and talked and laughed together.

Afterward they explored the garden and the barn—at least the children did—and then the hour came for the McBirneys to go.

“Could I see your mother?” asked Azalea. “Do you think she’s resting?”

“I’ll go see,” Carin said. Mrs. Carson came back with her and smiled upon the children.

“Happy days, happy days!” she sighed. “It’s nice to be as young as you are.”

“We certainly have been happy, ma’am,” Azalea said. “You’ve been so good to us, and we’re just strangers. I don’t see how you could be so good when you didn’t know us or anything.”

“My dear,” said the lady, “A few years ago something happened to me which made me decide to be happy whenever I had the chance, and to make other people happy in the same way. I saw you and wanted to know you. Carin wanted to know you. You wished to see our home. It was the kind of a home you would have picked out for your own if you could. It was the merest accident that I had it and you didn’t. Very well, I’ve shared it with you. See? Come again, come again! We keep open doors at The Shoals.”

Azalea got away somehow, her heart dancing with gratitude. Jim followed. They were late, and they ran along the uneven, shady road. Pa and Ma McBirney were already at the “Old Green Place,” a little tired of waiting but very good-natured notwithstanding. So, since everything was going well it seemed a little odd that Azalea should put her head down in Ma McBirney’s lap and softly weep.

Never did Azalea love this dear woman more than when she found that she was to be allowed to weep if she liked without being asked why. Mary McBirney stroked the soft hair and said nothing—was most careful in fact, not to call the attention of Jim and his father to her outburst. At last Azalea lifted her face, tear-stained and smiling.

“I’ve been so happy,” she whispered. “When we get home I’ll tell you all about it. Everything seems different.”

Jim had been rattling on to his father on the front seat, and Mrs. McBirney, who had managed to catch a part of what he was saying, had some idea of why the world seemed different. She, herself, thought that Azalea, the daughter of the wandering show woman, was really meant for a beautiful life like that of the Carson’s, rather than a life of work and poverty and hardship like her own.

“But I’ll give her what I can,” she thought. “I’ll give her love.”