CHAPTER II
PASSENGERS FOR BEE TREE
Three weeks later there was a notable gathering at the railroad station at Lee. The Carsons were there, the Paces, the McBirneys, including Jim, in a new straw hat, Dick Heller, just up from the Rutherford Academy, Sam Disbrow, happy now and full of wholesome activity, Hi Kitchell and his sister, and ever so many others, some black and some white. The baggage man was oppressed with a sense of the importance of the luggage he was to put on the train, for it included, as he realized full well, the summer outfit of Miss Zillah Pace and her charges. That is, if Azalea and Carin, so important and full of business, so suddenly grown up as it seemed, and their own mistresses, could possibly be looked upon as “charges.”
“Wire Mr. Summers if anything goes wrong, Carin,” Mr. Carson was commanding.
“Mind you write me everything—simply everything,” warned Annie Laurie.
“You will find it very profitable to keep a diary, Sister Zillah,” Miss Adnah Pace commented.
“It’s a burning shame we’re not all going,” little Mrs. Summers sighed. “I’m sure the mountain air is just what Jonathan needs.”
Jonathan, who was toddling from friend to friend, sociably offering the words: “Don’t go” as an example of his conversational powers, really did not seem to need much of anything.
“If you all went,” broke in the Reverend Absalom Summers, “we’d have just as much of a town up at the Gap as we have down here in the valley, and then that would spoil it all, and we’d have to light out again. Queer, isn’t it, how we all swarm to a town and then hike out to the solitude, and fret wherever we are?”
“Oh, there’s the train,” cried Azalea. “Oh, mother McBirney, dear, I’ve got to go. You’re sure you won’t mind?”
“It’s pretty late in the day to be thinking about that,” said Ma McBirney with laughing tremulousness. “You take care yo’self, Zalie, and look after Miss Zillah and Miss Carson, and yo’r pa and me’ll be all right. Do yo’r level best to pass on the l’arnin’ to them pore untaught folks, Zalie. We’ll be honin’ for you, but we’re mighty proud that yo’re able to be a help to others.”