“I know,” cried Azalea gayly. “It’s the Carsons! Oh, ma, it’s Carin and her father and mother.”
Something gripped Mary McBirney’s loving, jealous heart. She knew why they were coming. She had asked them to come for this very thing, but when the rain had set in, it had seemed like an answer to her secret prayers—those prayers which she would not admit to herself that she prayed, and which were no more than her “heart’s sincere desire.”
The horses drew nearer; the words of the song could be heard.
“Now the day is over,
Night is drawing nigh—”
The three voices, softly blended, sang the familiar lines to the slow motion of their horses.
Azalea ran to the edge of the “Outlook” and sent her clear voice, rested and refreshed from the strain it had undergone in the days of her enforced singing of noisy songs, ringing down the mountain side.
“Shadows of the evening,
Steal across the sky.”
The tightness at Ma McBirney’s heart increased. How like her Azalea was to these others—like them in voice and manner, and unafraid of them! They had heard her, for Mr. Carson interrupted himself to call out to her. Then the song went on, and there were four singing it.
“Jesus give the weary
Calm and sweet repose;
With Thy tenderest blessing,
May our eyelids close.”
Now the sounds grew fainter as the windings of the road took them away; then they swelled again, as the horses returned on the winding road. But Azalea sang on, delighting in the song her mother had taught her—the song that had comforted her when she had grown sick at heart at all the silly things she had been obliged to sing when she was “the show girl.”