Annie Laurie and Azalea

by Elia Wilkinson Peattie

“Don’t worry about Annie Laurie, sister,” replied Miss Zillah, setting her queer lid-like hat on her short gray curls. “She made the change of her own free will, remember. She’s run up against a stone wall for the first time in her life, and I’ll be interested to see whether she climbs over or burrows under it. Those two girls she’s studying with don’t like her—or at least they don’t like to have her intruding on them. I don’t know as I blame them very much. There they were, enjoying each other’s society, and in comes a stranger and thrusts them apart, you may say. Annie Laurie is as unlike them as she can be—quite of a different class, indeed.”

Miss Adnah snapped the fasteners of her gloves sharply.

“What do you mean by a different class, sister?” she said reprovingly. “Is it possible you consider the Paces inferior to anyone in this community?”

“Now, Adnah dear, I didn’t say anything about inferiority. I spoke of a difference. What the Paces know, they’ve mostly taught themselves; and what they have, they’ve honestly earned. They’re proud of it. But they’re no prouder of being what they are—well-to-do, reliable, respectable members of the community—than the Carsons are of being highly cultivated, rich, much-traveled gentle-folk, or the McBirneys of being industrious, independent mountain people. The truth is, Adnah, if there were fewer kinds of pride in this community, and less of each kind, it would be a better thing.”

“The team is up, aunts,” called Annie Laurie in her clear voice.

“Very well, child; we are ready,” came the reply.

Of course they were ready. It was seldom, indeed, that anyone in that house kept anyone else waiting. Simeon Pace, holding his fine large grays in check, knew almost to a second how long before the front door would open and three tall, upright figures emerge. And this morning was no exception. At the right instant his sisters, in their well-preserved cloaks, came out together, followed by his daughter. The door was locked, the key placed in the crotch of the sycamore, the aunts were helped to their places by Annie Laurie’s strong arms and then she swung herself into the seat beside her father, and took the reins from his hands. As she did so, she happened to hit her father’s left arm, which gave forth a sound like the rattling of an eave trough in the wind.

And truth to tell, it was made of the same material, for where Simeon Pace’s muscular member of flesh and blood had once swung, there now was an unjointed tin substitute for it, hollow as a drum. An ill-advised visit to a sawmill five years before was responsible for this defect, which indeed, might have been all but concealed had Mr. Pace been willing to buy one of the excellent modern imitations of an arm. His sisters and his daughter continually urged him to do this, but Simeon said that his tin arm had helped him when his trouble was new, and that he refused to throw it on the trash heap as a reward for faithful service. It was nothing to him that his gestures startled nervous folk. He remained loyal to his battered, awkward tin convenience, and seemed to take an innocent joy in waving it in the air, offering it as a support to old ladies, and sawing it up and down when he became excited. All the Paces were independent and Simeon was the most independent of them all.

He led his women folk well up to the front of the church and eyed them with critical kindness as they filed past him into the pew, confident that their thoughts would not wander from the preacher’s words during the service. So it was good for his fatherly satisfaction that he did not look into his daughter’s mind, for barely a sentence of the sermon did she hear that day. Her thoughts were slipping back and forth like shuttles in a loom. The past week in Mrs. Carson’s home has been a strange—and in some ways, a distressing—one. True, never had she learned so much in so short a space of time. If she asked a question everyone tried to answer it. Little as the other two girls had seemed to like her, when it came to a question of ideas, they paid instant and warm attention. An idea was an idea with them, and entitled to respect.

If the combined wit of Miss Parkhurst and her pupils failed to supply a good answer to an inquiry, plenty of books were at hand to consult, and as a last reference, there were Mr. and Mrs. Carson, who seemed to have been almost everywhere and to know something about almost everything. As Annie Laurie had heard them talk, speaking with interest about all manners of people, her little local standards began to vanish like mist before the sun. For the first time it was borne in upon her that Lee, North Carolina, was not the center of civilization. All the world, it appeared, was full of interest—full of good neighborly folk. All one had to do was to learn their language to find out how very nice they really were. It was such a new and brilliant idea to Annie Laurie that it almost dazzled her.