Annie Laurie and Azalea

by Elia Wilkinson Peattie

She had been used to thinking herself a bright girl—a girl who could keep at the head of her classes—so it was but natural in those first angry hours when she raged at the cold reception Carin and Azalea had given her, that she should have thought: “Just wait till we get down to lessons, and then I’ll show them.”

But to her surprise, she had not been able to “show them.” Carin and Azalea did not attack their studies so fiercely as she did. They seemed to make more of a game of them and less of a task. They laughed over things that puzzled her. But for all that they were clever, and it did not seem strange to them that Annie Laurie should be clever too. Her cleverness, as they knew, was Mrs. Carson’s excuse for asking her to join them. After that first chilly day they had been polite enough. But they somehow put her in the wrong. She felt awkward and strange. She fatally said the wrong thing—or the right thing in the wrong place. Even her clothes had seemed stiff and unlovely beside theirs, though they were of good material and honestly and thoroughly made. However, as Annie Laurie had more than once reflected, their clothes were made for them by their mothers, who asked nothing better than to see them looking their best. That Mary McBirney was not really Azalea’s mother made no difference—she loved Azalea almost as much, judging from what Azalea said.

Annie Laurie stole a glance at her two excellent aunts—always so really kind and just to her—but rather stern, like her father. The Paces seldom laughed; they almost never kissed each other; they said what they thought—and they quite lacked that pretty foolishness which Mrs. Carson sometimes indulged in with Carin.

Annie Laurie could remember that her own mother had been something like Mrs. Carson. It was she who had given her the name after the sweet old song. She had laughed and danced and sung, and the aunts had not quite liked it, although they mourned her deeply when she died, still in her youth. And they had treasured as keepsakes the things which had been hers.

But what was the preacher saying all this time? Something about Ananias and the doom which overtook him because of his lies. It was not a subject in which she could feel much interest. Sometimes, up at her house they suffered from too much truth telling—hard, cold truth telling—but not a soul of them would have been guilty of a lie.

“Plant a lie in the garden of your soul,” said the minister, “and it will flourish worse than any poisonous weed. And do not think that you can uproot it when you will, for it will grow and grow, till it is stronger than you, and not all your prayers and tears can tear it out of your life.”

Annie Laurie wondered why he should be talking like that to those friendly, good neighbors, who seemed to be doing the best they could’ from morning till night. She wished he would talk about something that would help her through the coming week, for she dreaded going back with those girls who did not like her. Why couldn’t preachers know what was going on in the back of one’s mind? She looked up wearily and met the gaze of “that Disbrow boy,” as her aunts always called Sam Disbrow, the son of the undertaker. For some reason they did not like him. They “had no use for the whole kit and b’ilin’ of Disbrows.” Yet, someway, Annie Laurie, though she had grown up with this sentiment ringing in her ears, thought Sam Disbrow rather a nice boy. At this moment he seemed to be as impatient as she was at the way the minister was scolding about liars. Evidently liars failed to interest Sam, also.

It happened that Annie Laurie and Sam were near together as the people came out of church, and while the rest stood talking in the bright winter sunshine, they talked, too.

“How are you liking it at your new school, Annie Laurie?” he inquired.

The girl flushed hotly—it was easy for a person with such white skin as Annie Laurie’s to blush. Sam knew this and made allowances, but he saw there was something more than ordinary the matter. He looked at her a moment, half closing his eyes, and turning his head a little on one side in a way he had.