“Carin,” she called. “They’ve come!” “Who? The gypsies?” “No. The pupils. Oh, where is the key to the schoolhouse? Oh, Aunt Zillah, do I look in the least like a teacher? Come, Carin, we must go meet them.” But Carin held back a little because she had a curiosity to see how Azalea would meet these first seekers after knowledge. They were three slender young creatures, two boys and a girl, the eldest twelve, the girl not much younger, and the second boy a mere wisp of a child who looked as if he had been dragged along for safe-keeping. Azalea had rushed forth from her door impetuously, the key to the schoolhouse in her hand, but Carin saw her check herself and walk toward the children rather slowly. Anyone looking at her would have said she was shy. But she was not half so shy as the children. They had a certain dignity about them, it is true, and looked as if they were there to face whatever might come, but they, too, came forward slowly, looking from the corners of their eyes, and with their heads drooping. When Azalea got near them they stopped, and she stopped too. “Howdy,” said Azalea in the mountain fashion. “Howdy,” said they. A little silence fell. “Have you come up here to get learning?” asked Azalea quaintly. “Yes’m,” said they. The girl added, “Please ma’am.” “It certainly does amaze me,” said Miss Zillah under her breath to Carin, “the good manners all the mountain children have. It doesn’t matter from what way-back cove they come, they seem to understand politeness.” “Isn’t Azalea clever?” murmured Carin. “Now I would probably have frightened them so that they’d have scampered away like rabbits.” “The schoolhouse is over yon,” said Azalea. The three pupils nodded and when she set out they followed. Carin joined them, walking a little behind the others. “What are your names?” she heard Azalea ask quietly—almost lazily. “Coulter,” said the elder boy. “I’m Bud Coulter; my sister, she’s called Mandy Coulter. And this here is Babe.” Carin ran forward and held out her hand to the little one. “Take my hand, Babe,” she said. The child drew back for a moment, looking up in Carin’s face with something like fear; but when he saw those beautiful blue eyes which Azalea loved so well, and the shining mass of golden hair, his mouth opened slowly like one who sees a vision, and when Carin had grasped his thin little hand in her own, he walked beside her quietly, though his heart beat so that it made his homespun blouse rise and fall. “Thar’s a boy living over beyant us that aims to come to school if we like it,” Mandy Coulter told Azalea. “Hush up,” her brother whispered, poking her reprovingly in the ribs. “Don’t be a tell-all.” “Oh, you’ll like it, I reckon,” said Azalea. “Anyway, it’s worth while to learn to read and write, isn’t it? People who get on in the world all know how to read and write.”