I felt the lady, Mrs. Knox, taking hold of me with those long, soft, cool hands of hers and forcing me back on the bed.
“Lie still,” she begged. “Do lie still, Miss Azalea. You mustn’t care about anything. No one shall do you any harm, and we’ll not even let troublesome ideas come near you if we can help it.”
“Did you not say,” said the gentleman, “that your name was McBirney?”
“Yes, yes, McBirney. Don’t you know Ma and Pa McBirney? Why, everyone knows them. They take orphans in. At least they took me in. They would have taken my little mama in, only she was dead, so they put her beneath the Pride of India tree beside their own Molly. You can go see for yourself. You will know the house by the Pride of India tree and the gourds before the door. The gourds are for the martins—dozens and dozens of martins. The martins will show you the way if you like. Or the bees—thousands of bees.”
“Hush, hush,” whispered the lady. “David, go and take the light. Hush, Azalea, hush. It is all right. Your little mama would want you to hush.”
She began singing the song with her own name in it.
“The years roll slowly by, Lorena.”
I went to sleep. But this time it was different. I did not seem to be sinking into that chilly gray place where the visions were. I just went to sleep the way I ought.
The next morning when I awoke I was quite sensible and calm. I saw the world as it was, and remembered all my life, and knew that I had come by a strange, strange chance, among my dead father’s people. David Knox was his elder brother, and Lorena Knox, with her yellow hair and her long cool hands, was David’s wife. It made me deeply satisfied—not exactly happy, but deeply satisfied.
I ate the breakfast they brought me, and after a while I was taken out into the sitting room. It was a beautiful room, large and square and quiet, with a great fireplace of gray stone, and more little uncurtained windows looking out at the green and purple world. So then I sat up and looked at these people.