Azalea blushed violently.
“Oh, mother,” she whispered, “the people will hear you and they’ll think I’m a regular missionary!”
“Shake hands, girl,” cried Pa McBirney. “Here’s the train.”
So they were off. Miss Zillah had a seat to herself and her bags and boxes. Carin and Azalea sat together, and for a time said very little. Both were a bit tearful—Carin particularly, at the thought that her parents were going over-seas. But after a while they grew interested in the flowering mountain side and the little cabins tucked away on the shelves of the mountains. Azalea even caught a glimpse of the McBirney cabin lying so confidently on its high ledge—the cabin through whose hospitable door she had entered to find the only home she knew.
To keep the tears from getting out beyond her lids, where they were swimming at rising flood, she turned her attention to the people with her in the car. Opposite was an old woman in a sun bonnet, chewing her snuff stick and staring straight before her, without, apparently, the slightest curiosity about anyone. In front of her sat a little girl of seven, who evidently was traveling quite alone. She was just the sort of a child Azalea liked—though, come to think of it, Azalea had never seen any sort of a child she did not like. This one, however, was especially attractive, no doubt about that. She had purplish-blue eyes, like pansies, and dark hair and lashes so long they swept her cheeks. She looked both shy and innocently bold, both plain and pretty, both graceful and awkward, both wistful and mischievous. Azalea decided that when she grew up she probably would be lovely.
She kept glancing at the girls as if she would like to be acquainted with them, and finally Azalea motioned for her to come over to their seat. The little girl got up at the first crook of Azalea’s finger and crossed the aisle, smiling and coloring as she came.
“You don’t like sitting all alone very well, do you?” Azalea asked. “I think it’s horrid traveling in the cars with no one to talk to. Don’t you think I’m lucky to have my friend with me?”
“Yes’m,” said the little girl in a very sweet voice. Then after a pause: “I couldn’t bring any of my friends with me.”
She seemed to think she would have been the one to do the “bringing.” It evidently did not occur to her that she would have been “brought.”
“I’ll turn over this seat if you like,” said Azalea, “and then you may sit with us. Mayn’t she, Carin?”