“Let’s get nearer the waterfall,” said ma to Azalea. So they went to a place where a great flat rock ran out into the mountain stream, and here they sat with the water tossing and leaping past them and hurling itself over the side of the mountain. Ma lay down and put her hands under her head and looked straight up through the branches of an overhanging beech, into the soft blue sky. And Azalea pillowed her head on her arm and lay there too. A long time passed and neither spoke. It was enough to listen to the voices of the mountain, to watch the sailing of the clouds and the winging of the birds. But after a time ma reached out and touched Azalea gently. “Little girl,” she said, “little daughter!” “Ma’am?” “I’ve been a-thinking and a-thinking, and it seems to me it’s a queer world.” “Yes’m, it is,” said Azalea as if she too had settled that fact in her mind. “Some things that seem wrong is right, and some that everybody—or almost everybody—says is right, is really, when you come down to it, plumb wrong.” “I reckon that’s so, ma’am.” “Now, me taking you in the way I did—grabbing you away from the folks you’d known and been with—that might look wrong. But it ain’t, Azalea, it ain’t! You want to know how I know it ain’t wrong?” “If you please, ma’am.” “Well, first of all I reasoned it out. You was better in a house than on the road. You was better living where you could go to school than where you’d slave for people who’d give you no education. You was better with people who’d take you to church and read the Scriptures to you than with people who’d swear and curse and drink and gamble. And most of all, you was better with them that would love and cherish you than with them that would just use you, and perhaps bring you to some harm and turn you off when they got through with you.” “Oh, yes’m! I know, ma’am. I’m thankful—” “I don’t want you bothering to be thankful, Azalea. I just want you to be loving. But I haven’t said what I wanted to say. It ain’t reason that tells me I’ve done right. It’s something else.” There was a little pause, and then she went on: “It’s something I wouldn’t like to speak of to everyone, Azalea. But you see, you’re going to take Molly’s place with me, and I’m going to begin right away treating you as if you was her.” “Thank you, ma’am.”