“What’s come over you, Zalie?” she demanded. “Of course the children care how we look. Looking as well as we can is part of our work. You know you’ve often said so yourself. But, dear me, why should I worry about you, you old Zalie thing? You always look lovely.” Her friends thought so that morning, certainly. Her eyes were a touch too bright, perhaps, her cheeks a shade too red, and there was something a little too vivid and throbbing about her. Try as hard as she could to keep in the background, she could not succeed. “You’re a flaming Azalea this morning, my dear,” whispered Mary Cecily just before she took her seat beside her brother in McEvoy’s wagon for the rough journey to Rowantree Hall. Keefe was white and spent-looking, but a glorious happiness shone in his eyes. “No one is to worry about me,” were his words at parting with his friends at the Oriole’s Nest. “If it’s sick I am, it must be with gratitude and bliss. Never will I forget your goodness to me at this house; and now here I am, going—home!” He turned swimming eyes on his sister. As they drove off he raised himself on one elbow—he was reclining on the clean straw in the wagon box—to catch one last glimpse of “the flaming Azalea.” But she was out of sight—absurdly and irritatingly out of sight. There were only Miss Zillah and the golden-headed Carin to wave good-bye. CHAPTER XV NEW HOPES “Only two more little days,” said Azalea, “and then we are through.” “Little days, little days,” sang Carin in a tune of her own. “Only two more little days.” “You use strange expressions,” remarked Miss Zillah to her girls. “Why do you say ‘little days’? Why not ‘short days’?” “When I love anything,” explained Azalea, “I call it little.” “Then you do love these days? I’m glad. I was afraid—” “Aunt Zillah, dear—afraid?” “Afraid you were tired, my girl. You’re tanned, of course, and so not pale, but you do seem rather weary.” “Oh, I’m tired, but school teachers have a perfect right to be tired. Six weeks of teaching children who haven’t been in the habit of learning _is_ rather an order, now, isn’t it, Aunt Zillah? But they’ve _learned_! All this last week they’ve studied like mad trying to get as much as they could before school closed. Even that queer, cross Mr. McIntosh has worked as if his life depended on it.” “His young shote depended on it, you remember,” laughed Carin. “Mr. Rowantree has lost his wager with him and will have to hand over the brace of ducks.”