“And a very silly habit it is,” muttered Miss Adnah from the hall.
“Oh, don’t say any more, Miss Pace,” Azalea broke in with a sob in her voice. “If anybody in this world ought to have been good to Annie Laurie it is myself, for I haven’t any mother, either, you know, though of course Mrs. McBirney is as good to me as any mother could be. I can’t explain the way we’ve acted. It all came about from Carin and myself having some lovely secrets together, and games we liked to play that we didn’t want to share with any one. And we were writing poems, and Carin was painting me. We were happy in each other all the time. Then Annie Laurie came and—and we didn’t know her. It wouldn’t have made any difference who the girl was that broke in on us, we wouldn’t have liked it. Mrs. Carson said we were getting selfish and snobbish, and I suppose we were. And Annie Laurie was proud, too—and—and well, a little—”
“Say it, my dear. I am not laboring under the delusion that Annie Laurie is wearing a halo on her head.”
“Well, sulky. So she didn’t give us a chance to see the—the nice side which she simply must have since you love her so. And we wouldn’t show ours to her. We were all stupid, I think. But of course we didn’t have an idea how she really felt until this morning when she got so angry. And then I was—was just paralysed.”
“You talk very well, my child, for a person suffering with paralysis. I can see very well how it came about, however. Now may I ask why you came here?”
“To say how sorry we were—and to beg Annie Laurie to come back with us.”
“But have you the right to do this? Did Mrs. Carson tell you to come?”
Azalea, who had been sitting on the very edge of Miss Zillah’s horsehair sofa, now got to her feet, her face flaming till it was almost as red as her knitted reefer.
“No,” she said frankly. “She—she didn’t tell me to come, Miss Pace. I just ran after Annie Laurie as hard as I could.”
“And very sweet it was of you, my dear. It shows you have a generous heart, and that you couldn’t imagine Mrs. Carson or her daughter would feel any differently from you. But you can see for yourself that I must wait till I hear from them.”