Azalea: The Story of a Little Girl in the Blue Ridge Mountains

by Elia Wilkinson Peattie

Azalea nodded. She had little to say. She was letting all the comfort of being there soak into her as rain soaks into the thirsty earth.

“And then as to collars!” broke in ma. “I can’t bear to see a girl with a nice, round little throat, all choked up in a collar. I’ll cut this neck out a little, to give you a chance to crook your neck around like a young owl and look at the world.”

And then the machine raced along over the seams and hems, and the scissors snipped at raw edges, and ma’s needle flew in and out. It was left to Azalea and Jim to get supper, which they did well enough.

“It’ll give you a chance to learn where everything is,” said ma. “Jim, you show her the spring house and the dishes and everything.”

The little girl had cooked over a camp fire more than once, but she had never before set what Ma McBirney called “a nice table.” However, she soon found out the way that the McBirneys wanted things done, and meantime ma sewed on, faster and faster. Her hair got roughed from sitting in the wind, her hands were nervous and her eyes too bright, but she had set her mind on doing that particular thing and nothing that anyone could say to her would stop her. She was at the buttonholes when the rest of the family crept into bed.

“Don’t you do any worrying about me,” she bade them. “I’m better satisfied than I ever thought to be again.”

So they slept—Azalea on a little ‘knockdown’ that would have to serve till a place had been properly provided for her—and when morning came, on the chair lay the blue frock with its handmade edging, as simple and charming a little gown as any girl in the country would care to wear. Moreover, some faded ribbons had been dyed, and looked almost like new. And there was clean underclothing—not quite the right size, to be sure—and the old shoes had been polished and made to look fit.

But if Azalea thought that everything was to be done for her, and that she was to do nothing in return, she soon found out that she was wrong. Probably no such idea occurred to her, for she was born with a loving heart, and she had learned to serve. She was not surprised, therefore, when she found that all of the family got up early and worked hard. There were the animals to feed, the house to tidy, the water to bring, the plants to water, the garden to weed. Nobody hurried, exactly, but ma was not fond of “lazy bones,” and she kept everyone going till all was as it should be. She advised pa to drive the calf down to the butcher, and she had a basket of eggs to get ready.

But at last all was done, and pa, with Jim beside him, sat on the front seat of the wagon, and ma and Azalea sat in the back seat, all clean and fine, ready to drive down the mountain. The little calf was tied on behind. The hounds had been shut up, and only the cat saw them off. The chickens and guinea hens and turkeys could be heard away up in the brush, but they concerned themselves very little with the comings and goings of anyone. The martins were flying in and out of the high-swung gourds, but they seemed to care as little as the ground fowl. Neither did the little old house, basking there in the sun, seem to mind. And the graves there, under the Pride of India trees—they minded not at all.

So by steep and pleasant ways, underneath the chestnuts and the hemlocks, the oaks and the mulberries, the tulip trees and the poplars, the McBirneys, four in number, went winding on down, down the road toward Lee.