“Well,” she said, “if you’re an old-fashioned man, Mr. Rowantree, I suppose I’m what could be called an old-fashioned woman. But this I will say: I believe in women using their powers, and I think a woman of intelligence and health has the ability to look after her home and do something else besides. Azalea may marry or she may not, but in any event I hope she’ll use her influence and some of her best thought in behalf of these poor people ’round about us. I’m not a great one for foreign missions—although I’ve no objection to them—but I do say that life is twice as wonderful and beautiful when one helps on her fellow beings. There never was a place in the world where missionary work was needed more than it is right here in our own beloved state of North Carolina. It’s a kind and gracious old state, and as beautiful as anything that lies beneath the sky, but it’s got some poor, neglected members of the human family in it, and I’m all for helping them on. I love Azalea, and have great confidence in her, and that’s why I want to see her give herself to a useful and important work. If she wasn’t of much account, I shouldn’t think that it mattered what she did; but she’s of much account, and so, if she were mine I would give her to this service of her kind as I would give a son, if I had one, to fight and die for his country.” Miss Zillah’s gentle voice had gathered to itself unusual power, and its tones, charged with feeling, penetrated to the shadowy room where Keefe and Mary Cecily were. Mary Cecily laughed softly as she arose from the low chair where she had been sitting, and Keefe echoed her. Perhaps it struck them as amusing that anybody should find it necessary to worry about anything now, when suddenly, to them, the world seemed so completely right. “How are you in there?” queried Rowantree. “I’m thinking of driving home the night, Mary Cecily, and leaving you here with Keefe.” “Oh, would Mary Cecily be happy away from the little ones?” asked Keefe. “Really, I’m much better—fifty percent better, I assure you. It’s not necessary for—for my sister to stay with me.” His voice caught on the words. “My sister” was not easily uttered. “Indeed, I’ve no thought of leaving you, brother dear—no thought at all. It’s as my husband says. He can ride home to the children; and very good and dear it is of him to think of it. The two of us will be along in the morning, as you were planning a while back. Be off, Bryan dear. There’s only Paralee with the children, and she’s strange to them. Tell them all that’s happened to me to-day, and let Constance know that I’m bringing home an own uncle—the very one she’d have chosen, I’m sure.”