To have the strong-beating heart of Annie Laurie turn into structural rock was something the friends could not permit. Anyway it would be an excellent thing for Azalea in the mountain to know that her friends in the valley were doing well. She could tell if they were doing well, if the lantern was waved sideways; if anything was wrong it was to be swung up and down.
“But I reckon you-all had better not swing it up and down,” she had said, “for though I’ll know by that that something is wrong, of course I won’t know what it is. And the waiting to find out would be dreadful.”
“It will have to be a pretty dreadful ‘something’ to make us give the bad signal, won’t it, Annie Laurie?” Carin had remarked.
So it was with a light heart and a mysterious manner that Azalea, who was supposed to leave the kitchen-living room to go to her own little loft, stole out the back way, took the lantern from its nail, lighted it, and crept to the outlook. She had five minutes to wait before the time appointed, and these moments proved to be a “perfect caution” for slowness. She counted the seconds to make sure—and yet was not sure, for she managed to get in about two counts and a half to each second. However, at last she felt justified in bringing out her light from behind the tree bole where she had hidden it, and waving it back and forth in enthusiastic announcement that all was right. She couldn’t help thinking with a throb of the heart how very, very right it all was! How sweet the day had been; how filled with comfort for body and soul; how beautiful to be loved as she was loved in that little home! Of course she might have repined that she had not been made Carin’s adopted sister and surrounded with all manner of luxuries, but the love she felt for Mrs. McBirney was too deep, too sincere, to permit such a thought to have a place in her heart for very long.
Yes, her home was a log cabin, and her family simple mountain people. But she could not feel cheated. The taste of the Things That Were was sweet on her palate, and her hope for the future bubbled in her heart as the spring, whose whispering she could hear, bubbled from the ground.
So back and forth in the gray air went her lantern, saying:
“All is well! All is well!”
Azalea actually laughed aloud to think of Carin, all in her Sunday best, stealing out of that stately drawing-room and creeping up the stairs to the huge cupola and standing there on the roof in the wind and night, waving her lantern. What fun it was to know a girl like that—a girl who wasn’t afraid to do things, if she was rich and beautiful. There was some “go” in Carin, no doubt about it, though she did look so delicate and alabasterish. Azalea loved to invent words, and she invented “alabasterish” on the moment.
But what did that mean? Annie Laurie’s lantern, full and strong and like a star, had shone through the light mist and was being waved frantically up and down. Mercy! how it waved.