“Come, Carin,” she said, “we mustn’t be late to school. Let’s settle down now for a long hard pull. We’ll teach school as we never did before. There’s only three weeks more ahead of us and we mustn’t waste a minute.”
“My goodness,” yawned Carin, prettily, “you sound like a call to arms. All right, comrade, I’m with you. Shall we wear our pink ginghams?”
“What does it matter what we wear?” demanded Azalea sternly. “We’re here to teach school. Nobody cares how we look.”
At that Carin sat up in bed bristling with protest.
“What’s come over you, Zalie?” she demanded. “Of course the children care how we look. Looking as well as we can is part of our work. You know you’ve often said so yourself. But, dear me, why should I worry about you, you old Zalie thing? You always look lovely.”
Her friends thought so that morning, certainly. Her eyes were a touch too bright, perhaps, her cheeks a shade too red, and there was something a little too vivid and throbbing about her. Try as hard as she could to keep in the background, she could not succeed.
“You’re a flaming Azalea this morning, my dear,” whispered Mary Cecily just before she took her seat beside her brother in McEvoy’s wagon for the rough journey to Rowantree Hall. Keefe was white and spent-looking, but a glorious happiness shone in his eyes.
“No one is to worry about me,” were his words at parting with his friends at the Oriole’s Nest. “If it’s sick I am, it must be with gratitude and bliss. Never will I forget your goodness to me at this house; and now here I am, going—home!” He turned swimming eyes on his sister.
As they drove off he raised himself on one elbow—he was reclining on the clean straw in the wagon box—to catch one last glimpse of “the flaming Azalea.” But she was out of sight—absurdly and irritatingly out of sight. There were only Miss Zillah and the golden-headed Carin to wave good-bye.