Afterward they explored the garden and the barn—at least the children did—and then the hour came for the McBirneys to go.
“Could I see your mother?” asked Azalea. “Do you think she’s resting?”
“I’ll go see,” Carin said. Mrs. Carson came back with her and smiled upon the children.
“Happy days, happy days!” she sighed. “It’s nice to be as young as you are.”
“We certainly have been happy, ma’am,” Azalea said. “You’ve been so good to us, and we’re just strangers. I don’t see how you could be so good when you didn’t know us or anything.”
“My dear,” said the lady, “A few years ago something happened to me which made me decide to be happy whenever I had the chance, and to make other people happy in the same way. I saw you and wanted to know you. Carin wanted to know you. You wished to see our home. It was the kind of a home you would have picked out for your own if you could. It was the merest accident that I had it and you didn’t. Very well, I’ve shared it with you. See? Come again, come again! We keep open doors at The Shoals.”
Azalea got away somehow, her heart dancing with gratitude. Jim followed. They were late, and they ran along the uneven, shady road. Pa and Ma McBirney were already at the “Old Green Place,” a little tired of waiting but very good-natured notwithstanding. So, since everything was going well it seemed a little odd that Azalea should put her head down in Ma McBirney’s lap and softly weep.
Never did Azalea love this dear woman more than when she found that she was to be allowed to weep if she liked without being asked why. Mary McBirney stroked the soft hair and said nothing—was most careful in fact, not to call the attention of Jim and his father to her outburst. At last Azalea lifted her face, tear-stained and smiling.
“I’ve been so happy,” she whispered. “When we get home I’ll tell you all about it. Everything seems different.”
Jim had been rattling on to his father on the front seat, and Mrs. McBirney, who had managed to catch a part of what he was saying, had some idea of why the world seemed different. She, herself, thought that Azalea, the daughter of the wandering show woman, was really meant for a beautiful life like that of the Carson’s, rather than a life of work and poverty and hardship like her own.