But all that foolish fretting and fuming, she told herself severely, was over and done with. She was Azalea McBirney, with her chosen work to do. Things were as they were; not dreams, not charming visions, but just plain facts, plain needs, plain work. Moreover, life was all the better for being as it was. If the body needed simple bread more than candies, so the spirit needed the plain bread of life more than delicacies. So she bent brain, spirit, eyes, hands, lips to the labor of the day. She determined to draw from each of her pupils a quick and eager response. She threw herself into the hour’s performance, and had the profound satisfaction of feeling those minds which a few weeks before had been so aloof, so chilled, so closed, open to her influence as flowers open to the sun. From time to time more neighbors came and clustered about the windows without, leaning on the sills and listening to the program. Neither Azalea nor Carin paid much attention to these soft comings and goings, these quiet unobtrusive movements of the people without there in the heat of the changing day. There was some fear of rain; Azalea heard the people whispering about it; she herself noted how the light in the room changed from bright sunlight to soft shadow. She hoped, of course, that the rain would hold off; and yet she couldn’t help thinking how charming Keefe would look there on the window ledge, with the silver rain falling between him and the trees; and she remembered that first wonderful day at the Rowantrees, when they all had eaten on the gallery with the rain making a silver curtain between them and the rest of the world. It was time for the nooning—the famous nooning that was to hold Aunt Zillah’s surprise—and Azalea was just bringing the exercises to an end, when she saw an extraordinary sight. Carin, the proper, the correct, the ladylike, who had been seated on the platform near an open window, was suddenly seen to plunge through the window like the most madcap child in the whole school. Not a sound came from her, but with her bright hair tumbling about her from the violence of her leap to the ground, she was speeding down the path. What was worse and more astonishing, Aunt Zillah, the very mirror of what was decorous, had looked, and was now speeding after her, only she was swung down from the window by the sympathetic Keefe, who apparently had the key to her extraordinary conduct. In spite of the titter of delight that shook the school, Azalea preserved her dignity, but out of the corner of her eye she saw Mr. and Mrs. Carson, and Carin homing to them like a swift dove; and Annie Laurie running with outstretched arms to meet her Aunt Zillah.