“Keeping still interests me all right.”
“Keep still, then, if you want to. I’m sure I’ve plenty to think about.”
It was then that Mary McBirney began singing softly:
“‘Sweet are the hillsides, pleasant are the valleys,
Bright is the sky o’er the home of my heart.’”
Both Azalea and Jim knew very well why she was singing. She never could bear to reprove them; and she had a little theory that music could drive out any evil spirit. Such music as she made ought to, certainly, the children thought, sitting for a moment in silence, ashamed of their stupid quarrel. Neither one was of the sort to sulk. Jim gave a little twist on his seat, and joined in the fourth line:
“‘And my home, gentle friend, is wherever thou art.’”
Azalea loved the quaint old song. It was one of many such which Mary McBirney knew.
“I’d love to see the words and music of the songs you sing, mother,” Azalea had said to her once. “Where can I find them? Are they in any of the books you have?”
But Mary McBirney had shaken her head with a smile.
“The mountain folks have many a song that never yet has been writ down, child,” she said. “In the lonely nights in the little cabins away back on the mountains, all still and peaceful, the folks weave the songs out of their hearts. Grandmothers and mothers and daughters have sung them, and not one of them all had the knowledge to write them down. They make me think of wild roses. They grow beside the roadway, and they are the sweetest of them all.”