Azalea at Sunset Gap — A Closer Reading

166 door. “Tell ’em to ’light, ma, and come in,” she begged Keefe lifted a languid hand. “I’ve been wanting to 230 tell you for a long time,” he said

CHAPTER I THE PERFECT CHAPERON

Three girls, Azalea McBirney, Annie Laurie Pace and Carin Carson rode slowly along the red clay road that led no-where-in-particular. In fact, these friends were bound for No-Where-In-Particular, and the way there was lined on both sides with blossoming dogwood, as white as snow. There were snow-white clouds in the sky, too, against a background of glorious blue. But the balm in the air suggested anything rather than snow. It blew back and forth, carrying with it delicious perfumes of the blossoming shrubs that grew by the roadside and within the wood, and touching the cheek like a caress.

The horses seemed to be enjoying themselves almost as much as the girls. They stepped daintily, throwing back their heads as if they would be pleased if their mistresses would give them leave to be off and away down the road, and expanding their nostrils to catch the scents of the spring-awakened earth. But their mistresses were too deeply engaged in conversation just then to grant them their desire.

“You see,” the fairest of them was saying—the one the others called Carin—“I don’t really _want_ to go to Europe with father and mother this time. It isn’t as if they were going to stay in one place. They’ll be traveling the whole time, because, you see, father is going on business, and mother is going along to keep him company. It wouldn’t be very pleasant, would it, to hear mother saying: ‘And now what in the world will we do with Carin to-day?’ Really, you know, I wouldn’t at all enjoy having my name changed to ‘Little-Carin-in-the-Way.’”

The tallest girl, Annie Laurie Pace, laughed rather enviously.

“Think of giving up a European trip for that!” she cried.

“Oh, indeed, I’ll be only too thankful to go on some other occasion, Annie Laurie, when there’s time to see things or to study. Remember, I’ve gone twice already; once over the same ground that father and mother are going over this time. The next time, I hope to stay and study, but this summer I want to follow the plan we made last summer and go up into the mountains and teach school.”

“Oh, do you really, Carin?” cried Azalea, the third girl. “I’ve wondered and wondered if you’d remember about that! Would your father and mother let you?”

“That remains to be seen. One can always ask. Do you think Ma McBirney would give you permission, Azalea?”

“Oh, I think she would. The trouble with Ma McBirney is that she’s likely to say ‘yes’ whether my going makes it hard for her or not.”

“But didn’t she plan,” broke in Annie Laurie, “to visit her cousin down Calhoun way? Pa McBirney will be going too, won’t he?”

“I don’t think he could leave the stock and the farm. But you see, I thought maybe Mother McBirney would want to take me along to—”

“To show off her new daughter,” laughed Carin. “I don’t blame her.”

“I never meant anything of the sort,” protested Azalea, coloring. “But of course, having picked me up by the roadside the way she did—like a poor stray kitten, you may say—perhaps she would like her relatives to see that I wasn’t—” Azalea hesitated again, with the mocking eyes of her friends on her.

“That you weren’t _what_?” demanded Carin teasingly.

But Annie Laurie interrupted with one of the practical remarks for which she was celebrated.

“It’s all very well for you girls to talk of going off to the mountains to teach school,” she said, “but have you any idea of where you’ll go and whom you’ll teach?”

“We have a very clear idea,” answered Carin. “We’ll go back to Sunset Gap, where we were last summer, and where they need help about as badly as they can. I was talking with Azalea’s minister, Mr. Summers, and he says he doesn’t know of any place where the people are in greater need of schooling than they are there. You remember the place, Annie Laurie, don’t you? We stopped there overnight when we were on our camping trip. It took us a long time to get there by wagon, but this time we’ll take the train as far as Bee Tree and drive only the last fifteen miles. Mr. Summers says he knows a man who will meet us at the station.”