“You will find it very profitable to keep a diary, Sister Zillah,” Miss Adnah Pace commented. “It’s a burning shame we’re not all going,” little Mrs. Summers sighed. “I’m sure the mountain air is just what Jonathan needs.” Jonathan, who was toddling from friend to friend, sociably offering the words: “Don’t go” as an example of his conversational powers, really did not seem to need much of anything. “If you all went,” broke in the Reverend Absalom Summers, “we’d have just as much of a town up at the Gap as we have down here in the valley, and then that would spoil it all, and we’d have to light out again. Queer, isn’t it, how we all swarm to a town and then hike out to the solitude, and fret wherever we are?” “Oh, there’s the train,” cried Azalea. “Oh, mother McBirney, dear, I’ve got to go. You’re sure you won’t mind?” “It’s pretty late in the day to be thinking about that,” said Ma McBirney with laughing tremulousness. “You take care yo’self, Zalie, and look after Miss Zillah and Miss Carson, and yo’r pa and me’ll be all right. Do yo’r level best to pass on the l’arnin’ to them pore untaught folks, Zalie. We’ll be honin’ for you, but we’re mighty proud that yo’re able to be a help to others.” Azalea blushed violently. “Oh, mother,” she whispered, “the people will hear you and they’ll think I’m a regular missionary!” “Shake hands, girl,” cried Pa McBirney. “Here’s the train.” So they were off. Miss Zillah had a seat to herself and her bags and boxes. Carin and Azalea sat together, and for a time said very little. Both were a bit tearful—Carin particularly, at the thought that her parents were going over-seas. But after a while they grew interested in the flowering mountain side and the little cabins tucked away on the shelves of the mountains. Azalea even caught a glimpse of the McBirney cabin lying so confidently on its high ledge—the cabin through whose hospitable door she had entered to find the only home she knew. To keep the tears from getting out beyond her lids, where they were swimming at rising flood, she turned her attention to the people with her in the car. Opposite was an old woman in a sun bonnet, chewing her snuff stick and staring straight before her, without, apparently, the slightest curiosity about anyone. In front of her sat a little girl of seven, who evidently was traveling quite alone. She was just the sort of a child Azalea liked—though, come to think of it, Azalea had never seen any sort of a child she did not like. This one, however, was especially attractive, no doubt about that. She had purplish-blue eyes, like pansies, and dark hair and lashes so long they swept her cheeks. She looked both shy and innocently bold, both plain and pretty, both graceful and awkward, both wistful and mischievous. Azalea decided that when she grew up she probably would be lovely.