“I wish it was my name,” the little girl added. “I’m only named Constance.”
“But that’s a lovely name,” Carin told her. “It means that you will always have to be true to those you love.”
“I love ever so many people,” said the child. “And I’m going to keep right on loving them as long as I live.”
They chatted on for a while, as congenial folk will on the train. No doubt if Azalea had been left to herself she would frankly have told her new acquaintances just where she and her friends were going and what they intended to do, but the more reserved Carin and the cautious Miss Zillah forbade, by their eyes, any such confidences. So, after Constance had finished telling how a lady named Miss Todd has come to live with them for a while, and how she had taken her—Constance—home with her, and how Constance had stayed till the “spell” of homesickness conquered her, no more confidences were made save by the young man.
“This country’s new to me,” he told them. “But I’ve heard a lot about it, so I came up to see what it was like. You see, I’m a painter. At least if I keep on working for the next twenty years maybe I’ll become one. I’ve been sketching on the islands off the Carolina coast, and now I’m going to see what I can do with the mountains. I painted some pictures of the sea that were so bad the tide didn’t come in for three days and maybe I can make the mountains so enraged that they’ll skip like lambs. Anyway, it will be fun.”
“Where do you get off?” asked Azalea cheerfully.
“Hanged if I know,” the youth replied, turning on them again the radiance of his beautiful smile. “Any place that looks wild enough will get me.”
“It’s wild at Rowantree Road,” said the little Constance gravely, looking up from under her long lashes with almost the expression of some woods creature. “We never see anybody hardly. You can’t think how wild it is!”
Time went on and in spite of Miss Zillah’s reserved manner, all of the young people were beginning to enjoy themselves and each other when the train came to a sudden stop. It was so sudden that it threw Constance forward on Carin’s lap and hurled the contents of the overhead carry-alls down on the heads of the travelers.
“Oh!” cried Constance, righting herself, “I hope Mary Cecily isn’t broken!”