“Have you come up here to get learning?” asked Azalea quaintly.
“Yes’m,” said they. The girl added, “Please ma’am.”
“It certainly does amaze me,” said Miss Zillah under her breath to Carin, “the good manners all the mountain children have. It doesn’t matter from what way-back cove they come, they seem to understand politeness.”
“Isn’t Azalea clever?” murmured Carin. “Now I would probably have frightened them so that they’d have scampered away like rabbits.”
“The schoolhouse is over yon,” said Azalea. The three pupils nodded and when she set out they followed. Carin joined them, walking a little behind the others.
“What are your names?” she heard Azalea ask quietly—almost lazily.
“Coulter,” said the elder boy. “I’m Bud Coulter; my sister, she’s called Mandy Coulter. And this here is Babe.”
Carin ran forward and held out her hand to the little one.
“Take my hand, Babe,” she said. The child drew back for a moment, looking up in Carin’s face with something like fear; but when he saw those beautiful blue eyes which Azalea loved so well, and the shining mass of golden hair, his mouth opened slowly like one who sees a vision, and when Carin had grasped his thin little hand in her own, he walked beside her quietly, though his heart beat so that it made his homespun blouse rise and fall.
“Thar’s a boy living over beyant us that aims to come to school if we like it,” Mandy Coulter told Azalea.