“Well, anyway, I’m going to see her. And I’ll get the other girls to go.”
“Oh, yes, th’ other girls! Why, Zalie, you can’t move around by your lone no more; you’re just hitched on to them friends of yours. Ain’t you ever going to have any separate thoughts again?”
Azalea laughed lightly, and at the chime of her merriment Mary McBirney turned around to look at the occupants of the rear seat. It was at such times that Azalea loved her most—when the light of love flooded her face with its high brow and soft eyes. It always made Azalea feel as if there must be a lamp burning there behind the kind face. She gave a pleasant, inarticulate murmur that served better than words to let the children know that her love was round about them. Then she turned back to resume her conversation with her husband, and the horses—nimble mountain-climbers—pulled on up the road steadily, stopping now and again to breathe, and then sweeping around another curve of the ever winding road.
Azalea amused herself by noticing the little plateaus or “benches” along the mountain side. She played a little game with herself, building imaginary houses in this cove or on that bench among the maples. There was one place in particular, where three lofty tulip trees guarded a spring of cold water, and where there was a little almost level cove from which one could look off for miles and miles along the purple valley, where she put first one sort of a house and then another.
When she began thinking of it, she built—in her mind of course—a little house of cedar logs, with an open chamber between, like the one she now called home; but as time went on she changed her plans. Barbara Summers had tried to persuade her that a rambling bungalow of pine, with high chimneys and wide porches would be the thing; and Carin had been in favor of a cement bungalow with a pergola with trumpet vines growing over it. Annie Laurie thought it would be better to have a tent pitched there, and to eat off wooden plates and use paper napkins.
“Then you could heave everything into the fire,” said this practical young woman, “and there’d be no dishes to wash.”
As they passed the place this Sunday Azalea asked Jim what kind of a house he thought it would be best to put up there, but Jim was not fond of playing at air castles.
“We-all don’t own the land,” he said, “and we ain’t got the money for the house, so what’s the use of talking?”
Azalea felt just a trifle out of patience.
“The use of talking,” she said rather sharply, “is that it interests you.”