“I’d just love to stay all night with you,” Azalea said. “I’ll take the pony back to the Carsons’ stable, and then we’ll walk over to your house.”
“Very well. I’ll go with you to the stable.” They put the pony in the stall, and then, wrapped in their raincoats, tramped along over the red pine needles to Annie Laurie’s home.
“Don’t feel at all backward, will you, Azalea?” the other girl said as they stood on the doorstep. “You just have a little pluck and everything will come out all right.”
Azalea laughed.
“You don’t half understand me yet, Annie Laurie,” she said. “You’re so much more serious than I am. I can’t help enjoying things even when they are serious. I know I oughtn’t to feel that way, but I think it will be awfully funny to see your Aunt Adnah’s face when she finds I’ve had the impudence to come again.”
Annie Laurie frowned a trifle. She was not quite sure she liked to have her aunt regarded as amusing. However, they went in together. The door of the grim little parlor was closed, but the living-room door stood open and Annie Laurie led the way in. There was an ugly brussels carpet on the floor, and a center table covered with a chenille cloth; on it was the reading lamp, and ranged about it were comfortable chairs. A black marble clock ticked noisily on the mantel shelf, and a low fire smouldered among the ashes. The scrim curtains had many colored figures in them, and helped to keep out the light of the declining day. Azalea could not help contrasting it with the exquisite rooms at The Shoals, and with the quaint, charming rooms in the McBirney cabin. She could understand some of the bitter things that Annie Laurie had said to her—could see that, somehow, life had been commonplace for this girl from the first, and that, though she did not altogether realize it, it was this common-placeness which made her dissatisfied.
“Wherever can the aunts be?” said Annie Laurie. “The fire is out in the kitchen, and there are no signs of supper. Usually at this hour, things are humming like a bee hive. Take off your things, Azalea. I’ll hang them up where they’ll dry. You sit right down before the fire, and I’ll bring in some wood.”
“But let me help, Annie Laurie.”
“No, no. You’re company. I don’t often have company.” She went away with Azalea’s things and then came back and stood looking at her guest with her glowing eyes. “Azalea,” she said intensely, “I never have company!”
“Why not?”