Azalea at Sunset Gap

This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler
AZALEA. Clean and wholesome, but lacking nothing in liveliness. Azalea is a winsome mountain lassie who has made many friends among girl readers.
ANNIE LAURIE AND AZALEA. Continuing Mrs. Peattie’s success in “Azalea,” hailed by reviewers and readers as a “first-class piece of fiction any boy or girl between nine and ninety will enjoy.”
Each story complete and individual, but each dealing with the people and the locality Mrs. Peattie’s charming stories have endeared to young readers.
BY ELIA W. PEATTIE Author of Azalea; Annie Laurie and Azalea; etc.
Illustrations by Joseph Pierre Nuyttens
The Reilly & Britton Co. Chicago
Copyright, 1914 by The Reilly & Britton Co.
Azalea at Sunset Gap
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.’”