“What’s the matter with me?” he asked. “Why, I’m homesick—for a home I never had. I want to see the kin I haven’t got. I want to know my own name. I want to understand—” he broke off and let the words rest quivering upon the air. Azalea drew a little nearer in the gloom.
“Don’t you know any of those things, Keefe?” Her voice sounded awed.
“No, Azalea, I don’t. I have, I believe, the strangest story in the world. I’ve wanted and wanted to tell it to you, but I’ve been afraid that you—well, that you wouldn’t believe it, or perhaps that you wouldn’t like me so well after you knew it.”
“Oh, Keefe, tell me now! I should love to hear a strange story to-night. I love to live under the sky, don’t you? When I was a little girl I often slept out like this with my poor mamma. Oh, Keefe, how I wish you had known my poor little mother! Where shall we sit while you tell me the story? Or would you rather we walked back and forth?”
But before Keefe could reply, Miss Zillah, with Paralee and her mother, came from the house and joined them.
“Paralee wishes to sleep out here with us, Azalea,” said Miss Pace. “That will be very nice, won’t it? Mrs. Panther has come to say good night, my dear. I tell her she must get to bed. To-morrow will be a trying day, though, I hope, a happy one, too.”
Keefe and Azalea stood silent for a moment. Their little moment of enchantment was shattered and it was hard for them to hide their disappointment. Then Azalea tried to say what was expected of her, but Mrs. Panther broke in:
“I’ve got it on my mind,” she said slowly, “to say how I feel about you-all coming away out here to help me and my man. It’s hard for me to say, for I ain’t used to strangers. What’s more, it’s a good while since I had call to thank anyone. Things has been against me and folks has been against me. My own children has been against me.”
“No, they hain’t, ma. No, they hain’t,” cried Paralee excitedly. “You’ll see it hain’t so—”
“What I can’t get clear in my mind,” went on the woman, paying no heed to Paralee’s wistful tug at her sleeve, “is why you-all should trouble yourselves to come up here on something that ain’t no concern of yourn—”