“Well, I don’t think there are any quite as nice,” she said blushing beautifully. “But so far as I’ve seen they’re all more or less nice.”
“I should think everybody would have ’em!” cried Azalea. “I certainly shall.”
“I would,” said little Mrs. Barbara tenderly. “And now come, you starved child, and eat your breakfast.”
While Azalea ate, she and Mrs. Summers exchanged confidences. Azalea told her the full story of her “strange life” as she called it; and Mrs. Summers told her about her happy girlhood, and her days away at boarding school, and how her parents had wished her to marry a young man who lived near them, and whom she had known all her life, and who was rich and of high social position, and how she had just had to marry Absalom Summers who had no money, and who didn’t know—or care—what you meant when you talked about a social position.
“And I’m so happy,” said the clergyman’s little wife, “in this dear funny little house—”
“And with that dear funny little baby,” broke in Azalea.
“That I really can’t be thankful enough,” concluded Mrs. Summers.
“Well,” said Azalea, “you’d be surprised if you could know of the perfectly lovely people I’ve been meeting these days.”
“Not Bet Bowen and her son?” teased Mrs. Summers.
Azalea flushed a little. “But really and truly, they had their good side, Mrs. Summers,” she said earnestly. “They weren’t half as bad to me as they might have been.”