“Forgive me, Aunt Zillah. I’ve too much mustard and pepper in my disposition. But there’s the supper bell. Azalea! Azalea, are you ready?”
They sat down at a bountiful table, and Simeon Pace folded his hand of flesh and his hand of tin together and prayed long and loud—something about the “sundering of joints and marrow.” Azalea, who was very hungry, hardly seemed to get the drift of these words. But she was startled from her dazed reverie by a sharp inquiry from Mr. Pace.
“So you two girls were asleep there before the fire, were you? Did you see me when I came in?” He turned his large eyes—so like and yet so unlike Annie Laurie’s—upon first one girl and then the other.
“I didn’t,” said his daughter.
“And you, Miss Azalea?”
“I awoke while you were in the room,” she said, feeling somewhat like Jack when he talked with the Giant Eater.
“So?” he looked at her sharply. “Why didn’t you speak?”
“I—I wasn’t sure you’d know me, sir.” She paused a moment and sat steady under the look he kept upon her. “Anyway, I was just as good as asleep—half dreaming.”
“And you never tell your dreams, I hope? It’s a bad habit.”
Azalea smiled at him.