Azalea did not answer for a moment. She moved nearer to the door and looked out; then drew back suddenly.
“Oh,” she said under her breath, “it’s that boy we saw on the cars—that young man, I mean. You know—Keefe O’Connor.”
“Oh, is that so?” said Carin in the most matter-of-fact way. “How jolly! Call him in, Azalea.”
But Azalea, the friendly one, Azalea who always liked to talk to people, and who, up at the McBirney cabin could hardly let anyone pass the door without saying “come in,” held back unaccountably. Miss Zillah and Mis’ Cassie were still in the kitchen, so they could not be appealed to, and finally it was Carin who ran out of the door and called. But it really was not necessary to call, for Keefe O’Connor had already discovered the little house dropped among the pines as naturally as a ground-bird’s nest, and he had turned aside to investigate it. When he saw the open door and the girls, he took off his hat and swung it.
“Isn’t this great!” he cried, not trying to hide his delight. “Do you live here?”
“We’ve been here only half an hour,” said Carin. “But in half an hour more I think we may truthfully say that we are living here.”
Keefe took it for granted that he was expected to enter. He looked about the house with admiring eyes.
“It’s a perfect place,” he said, “for a painter.”
“Oh, Carin’s a painter,” Azalea said quickly. How wonderful, she thought, that both Keefe and Carin should be artists. It ought to make them good friends.
“And are you an artist too?” asked Keefe, turning his dark eyes on Azalea with laughing and admiring inquiry.