Presently the hammock was completed and supper was served. Miss Zillah had persuaded Mrs. Panther to let them eat it in the open, and they sat together, that strangely mingled company, in the clear light of the long-lingering day, enjoying their homely repast. The lovely evening, the wild spot, her friends—so various, but so dear—the awakening light in Paralee’s eyes, the sense of being, somehow, on the right road of the world, brought to Azalea’s heart a sense of dancing delight. She insisted on serving the chicken, the hoecake and the hot decoction which Mrs. Panther was pleased to call tea, making the others sit still while she waited on them. She could only be contented when she was doing something, it seemed.
It was well on into the evening before the company was ready for rest; for the last preparations for moving had to be made that night if the company was to have an early morning start. The horses had to be cared for, Mr. Panther made as fit for civilization as possible, some sort of garments contrived for Mrs. Panther, and the house and yard “put straight.” Everyone, save, of course, the helpless, silent man upon his couch, turned in to help, Carin with the rest. Once Azalea whispered to her friend:
“Did you hear that noise? It’s Paralee laughing!”
“Do you think so?” asked Carin skeptically. “It sounded to me rather like a frog.”
“It was Paralee,” declared Azalea seriously. “It did sound a little like a frog, didn’t it, but just you wait a month or two, Carin Carson, and then hear how it sounds!”
Carin gave a tired little laugh.
“I can’t take another step, Zalie,” she declared. “No matter what the rest of you do, I’ve got to go to bed.”
Going to bed on this night meant rolling one’s self in a raincoat, covering one’s self with some coarse handmade sheeting, and lying straight upon a bed of pine needles with one’s face to the stars.
“You don’t seem nearly so tired and sleepy as I am, Zalie dear. Sit by me and hold my hand,” pleaded Carin. “You’ll lie next me, won’t you—quite close? The mountain seems huge, doesn’t it? Like a kind beast. Isn’t it breathing? I feel as if it were breathing. Deep breaths. Where do you suppose my own, own father and mother are to-night? It was queer that I didn’t want to go with them, wasn’t it? I wonder if it was because I didn’t wish to leave you, ‘honey-bird’—as Mr. Thompson calls you. Why didn’t he bring his fiddle? He doesn’t look right to me without his fiddle. Oh—h, how tired I am. Sing, Azalea: ‘Now the day is over.’”
Carin hummed the first line; Azalea took it up at the second, and the soft silence of the night was broken by the harmony of their voices. Azalea remembered the evening, long ago, when she had heard Carin and her father and mother singing that far down the trail. That was the night they had come to ask her to be Carin’s adopted sister—the night she had weighed her love for Ma McBirney in the balance with riches and opportunity, and had decided in favor of the mountain cabin and Ma McBirney’s love.