“But my goodness,” exclaimed Azalea, “don’t you suppose he’s noticed how the men were treating his father—turning their backs on him and all that? Pa McBirney said he just couldn’t bring himself to shake hands with him any more. Don’t you suppose Mr. Disbrow ever had spoken of that at home?”
“He always was bitter and fault-finding anyway,” said Annie Laurie. “Mrs. Disbrow told me that. I suppose a little more or less complaining wouldn’t mean anything to her.”
“But she certainly must have wondered at having the house torn up in an hour or two, and at setting out in the night that way like fugitives,” said Carin.
“Oh, well, you know she hated to go out driving with me for fear the neighbors would be peeping at her, so I suppose she was well pleased to go in the night. She’d hate to have folks find out what a poor little handful of things they had, and all that.”
“Of course,” said Azalea, “it would be easy enough to find which way they went, by the wagon marks. They must have had the cow tied on behind the wagon, and so they could be followed easily and overtaken if—if you wanted them to be, Annie Laurie.”
“Yes,—I know. If—I wanted them to be.”
The girl sank into a chair and rested her face in her hand, staring straight before her. Azalea and Carin said nothing. They were thinking very, very hard, too. The silence was long and intense. Then they heard Miss Parkhurst’s steps approaching down the hall. Annie Laurie struck her two hands together sharply.
“I can’t do it!” she cried. “I can’t let Sam’s people be chased like that and brought back. I may be wrong, and weak, and not fair to the poor old aunts, but I just can’t do it, that’s all there is to it.”
Carin and Azalea looked at her with perfect understanding.
“No,” said Carin softly, “you couldn’t do that, could you? Plenty of people could, and they’d be just and right—maybe. But you couldn’t, and I like you, Annie Laurie, because you can’t.”