Then the services of the carrier of the rural mail and of the doctor and the preacher were asked. Miles McEvoy made it his business to send on the good word by everyone he saw going mountainward. The grocer promised to let no mountaineer leave his place without telling him of the news and asking the person to whom he told it, to spread it far and wide.
So it came to pass that Azalea, sitting on the doorstep one morning after her early breakfast, saw three heads appearing above the slope.
“Carin,” she called. “They’ve come!”
“Who? The gypsies?”
“No. The pupils. Oh, where is the key to the schoolhouse? Oh, Aunt Zillah, do I look in the least like a teacher? Come, Carin, we must go meet them.”
But Carin held back a little because she had a curiosity to see how Azalea would meet these first seekers after knowledge. They were three slender young creatures, two boys and a girl, the eldest twelve, the girl not much younger, and the second boy a mere wisp of a child who looked as if he had been dragged along for safe-keeping.
Azalea had rushed forth from her door impetuously, the key to the schoolhouse in her hand, but Carin saw her check herself and walk toward the children rather slowly. Anyone looking at her would have said she was shy. But she was not half so shy as the children. They had a certain dignity about them, it is true, and looked as if they were there to face whatever might come, but they, too, came forward slowly, looking from the corners of their eyes, and with their heads drooping. When Azalea got near them they stopped, and she stopped too.
“Howdy,” said Azalea in the mountain fashion.
“Howdy,” said they.
A little silence fell.