So they slipped in softly behind the great chimney and the pretty screens to their own quaint makeshift of bedroom, leaving Mary Cecily on a cot near her brother. The windows and doors all stood open to the night, and the girls could hear the soft rustlings of the wood and the tinkle of the brook. The whippoorwills were very distant and their insistent cry sounded sweet and mournful, though it could be hectoring enough when it was near at hand. But nothing was hectoring this night, except that foolish, wistful longing in Azalea’s restless young heart, because Keefe and Mary Cecily were so happy in themselves, and because it was taken for granted that she, Azalea, was always to be so brave and so eager for service, and was to be a missionary to the mountain folk and was never to have any joy of her own—no real, selfish, glorious joy! Yet only the other day she had told Carin how clearly the finger of fate pointed to her as one set apart to “do good.” She would never marry, she had said—never, never—because she could not marry a “gentleman” and because she would marry no one who could not lay claim to that name. And they had taken her at her word—or at least, they had almost done so. She was to be Azalea McBirney, the adopted daughter of the mountain folk, the little sister to all the unfortunates, and was to live apart and be good! Azalea lay quite on the edge of her bed, very straight and rigid, and looked up at the stars through her open window. They were cold, unsympathetic looking stars! Azalea had not previously noticed how very haughty and remote they could appear, or how indifferent they could be to the woes and doubts, the frets and flurries of one self-centered young person called Azalea McBirney—one reneging, horrid young person, who was secretly going back on all her declarations of faith and service, and wanting nothing in the world so much as merely to be happy! Life, decided Azalea, was a puzzle. Once it had seemed simple. Some things had plainly been right to do; others, as plainly wrong. In those days she had believed she had only, at any time, to listen to her conscience to find out precisely what she ought to do, and therefore what she wanted to do. Because, of course, she wanted to do what was right.