“That’s it,” cried Aunt Zillah, who was a great patriot; “in this glorious country where everyone ought to be given a chance! That’s the promise we’ve held out to those who come to our shores, and it’s that which helps me to overlook so many things that seem wrong in our dear land. Greedy we may be, and disgraced by the scheming and grafting of our politicians, but after all, it is here that the ignorant are educated and the lowly learn to lift up their heads. Oh, I’m proud to be an American, and if I had my life to live over again I would devote it to some cause that would help on the real Americanism. Now, here’s Azalea, God bless her. She’s going to work among the mountaineers. What could be more fitting? The child has just the nature for the task, and her experiences have helped her to understand many things that a more carefully sheltered girl could not have understood.”
“I hope she’ll marry happily and keep in her own home,” said Mr. Rowantree shortly, while Azalea colored scarlet and was grateful for the gloom that hid her face. “I’m an old-fashioned man and I like to see a woman in her home. As one of the chief of Miss Azalea’s friends I do not desire a public career for her.”
Even in the dusk Miss Zillah’s head could be seen shaking emphatically.
“Well,” she said, “if you’re an old-fashioned man, Mr. Rowantree, I suppose I’m what could be called an old-fashioned woman. But this I will say: I believe in women using their powers, and I think a woman of intelligence and health has the ability to look after her home and do something else besides. Azalea may marry or she may not, but in any event I hope she’ll use her influence and some of her best thought in behalf of these poor people ’round about us. I’m not a great one for foreign missions—although I’ve no objection to them—but I do say that life is twice as wonderful and beautiful when one helps on her fellow beings. There never was a place in the world where missionary work was needed more than it is right here in our own beloved state of North Carolina. It’s a kind and gracious old state, and as beautiful as anything that lies beneath the sky, but it’s got some poor, neglected members of the human family in it, and I’m all for helping them on. I love Azalea, and have great confidence in her, and that’s why I want to see her give herself to a useful and important work. If she wasn’t of much account, I shouldn’t think that it mattered what she did; but she’s of much account, and so, if she were mine I would give her to this service of her kind as I would give a son, if I had one, to fight and die for his country.”
Miss Zillah’s gentle voice had gathered to itself unusual power, and its tones, charged with feeling, penetrated to the shadowy room where Keefe and Mary Cecily were. Mary Cecily laughed softly as she arose from the low chair where she had been sitting, and Keefe echoed her. Perhaps it struck them as amusing that anybody should find it necessary to worry about anything now, when suddenly, to them, the world seemed so completely right.
“How are you in there?” queried Rowantree. “I’m thinking of driving home the night, Mary Cecily, and leaving you here with Keefe.”
“Oh, would Mary Cecily be happy away from the little ones?” asked Keefe. “Really, I’m much better—fifty percent better, I assure you. It’s not necessary for—for my sister to stay with me.” His voice caught on the words. “My sister” was not easily uttered.
“Indeed, I’ve no thought of leaving you, brother dear—no thought at all. It’s as my husband says. He can ride home to the children; and very good and dear it is of him to think of it. The two of us will be along in the morning, as you were planning a while back. Be off, Bryan dear. There’s only Paralee with the children, and she’s strange to them. Tell them all that’s happened to me to-day, and let Constance know that I’m bringing home an own uncle—the very one she’d have chosen, I’m sure.”
Azalea drew back into the shadow of the house. So in the morning they would be off—Keefe and his bright little sister—carrying their rich romance with them, and the Oriole’s Nest would be the poorer for their going! They would be gloriously happy together, telling each other all that had happened in the years they had been apart. They would go farther, those two, with their eager, answering minds, and would talk not only of what they had done, but of what they had thought and felt. Each would be turning out the riches of his mind for the other to see—holding up their fancies as if they were embroidered clothes, and each marveling at what the other had to show. They would be telling to each other the poetry they knew; and Keefe would be making pictures while Mary Cecily watched. And how the two of them would love the children and admire their graceful ways! Azalea could see how they would look, all the family of them, sitting about the blazing fire in that queer “drawing-room.” Keefe’s pictures would be put up on the wall—the whole place would be plastered with them—and they would be talking about this one and that, and where it was painted. Then they would be singing together, and whistling and dancing—heaven only knew what they would or wouldn’t do.
Azalea felt the hot tears of shameless envy crowding out from under her lids, and hated herself for them. She to help on her fellow-men? She to work to add to the goodness and happiness of the world, when she grudged these two their simple happiness, after so many years of tears and longing and heartache? Could a more miserable, absurd, abject girl than herself be found anywhere, she wondered. She thanked heaven that the friends there beside her did not dream how ignoble she was.