“So I do, Thomas; so I do. Soon as I laid eyes on you I knew you was the man I wanted to live with for the rest of my natural life, and when you asked me to marry you it didn’t take me a quarter of a second to say yes. Soon as I saw Jimmy there, I knew he was the baby for me. Of course he really was mine, and I’d ’a’ had to put up with him even if I hadn’t liked the kind he was; but it turned out he was the kind to suit me. It was just the same with Azalea there. The minute I laid eyes on her, I yearned over her, and I can tell just as well as if it was proved to me, that she’s going to be a comfort to all of us. Yes, I’m that way, Thomas, mighty impulsive and quick-acting. Now, I’ve just made up my mind that to-morrow we’ll all go down to Lee together and get what we want for Azalea and show the folks what a united family we be.” “You don’t want to go flaunting Azalea in the faces of folks, do you, ma?” pa protested. “Well, I don’t know as I’d use the word ‘flaunting,’ pa, if I was in your place. The folks will be just crazy to see what she’s like, and after the stand they took, hustling them show people out of the way and all, and maybe saving your life by doing it, I think the least we can do is to let them see that the girl was worth all the trouble they took.” “Like as not; like as not!” agreed pa. That ma had other things on her mind was very certain. She went poking over chests and drawers, searching for something, and at last she came on some undyed homespun cotton of her own weaving. She sat for several minutes with this on her knees, looking at it. At last she called Azalea to her. “I’ve half a mind to use that there blue dye Mis’ Leiter brought over, to color this here, so’s I can run up a dress for you, Azalea. I can’t have you go down to town looking like a scarecrow, and I ’clare to goodness, I’m prejudiced against having you go down in that outgrown dress you had on when I saw you first. Why, your arms and legs stuck out like the turkey legs on a platter. It ain’t fitten for you to go that way.” “It does seem like you have to go to an awful lot of trouble for me, ma’am,” murmured the girl. “And anyway, you couldn’t get that done for to-morrow.” Ma muttered something to herself which Azalea could not catch, and the next minute Mrs. McBirney was away down to the spring, building a fire, putting over a pot, and showing that she was in for what Jim called “one of her spells.” “When ma has a spell of work,” he told Azalea, “nothing in this world can stop her.” It couldn’t have been more than an hour later that the good, well-made stuff, dyed a rich, dark blue, was whipping on the line in the wind. An hour after that it was pressed and ready to be cut out; and before Azalea could realize what had happened, ma was fitting the waist of a new dress to her.