“I didn’t know they’d sent for you, Mrs. Rowantree, and I’m sorry you’ve been put to the trouble,” Keefe was saying.
“I met Miss Carin down the road and I know what a hero you’ve been, lad,” she said under her breath. “It was beautiful—helping a man out of his ‘prison house of pain’ like that. Maybe you’ll have to pay by being laid up for a time, but I know you’re thinking to yourself that it’s worth it.”
Keefe nodded. “If poor Panther gets well—”
“Ah, I hope for that—I pray for that—the poor man!”
Keefe said nothing more. He seemed very weary. Mary Cecily sat beside him, looking down at him, and he, half-closing his eyes, watched her changeful face. Azalea had sunk on the doorstep and sat there, her heart beating so she thought the others must hear it. All her thoughts and wishes were pouring out toward them, willing them to speak.
Somewhere in the woodland a hermit thrush sent out its liquid, lovely note. It seemed above all sounds in the world, the one that suited the moment.
“Why don’t they speak? Why don’t they speak?” Azalea asked the question over and over to herself. “They must speak. They will be so happy when they know! Oh, how lonely they’ve been. Oh, poor dears! But why don’t they speak?”
It seemed as if the very air palpitated with her passionate desire.
Then: “I wish you were my sister, Mrs. Rowantree,” said the boy’s wistful voice. “I’ve just been telling Miss Azalea how I once had a sister. Matey, she was called. Isn’t it a sweet little name? We were on a ship crossing the sea, my sister and my little mother and myself. It’s just a little bit of a boy I was—”
Azalea heard a low cry of utter happiness, of amazed, yet undoubting faith. She slipped from the room and ran down the path. Her tears fell as she fled, but her heart was singing.