“You don’t know what Job’s tears be, honey? Why they’re the prettiest little things—sort of beans, they be—and folks dries and strings ’em. Jimmy, you fetch that string from the bureau.” Jim brought the string of softly polished gray beadlike things, and Ma McBirney slipped them softly over the girl’s head. “They just match your eyes, honey. You must wear them to remember me by!” “Thank you, ma’am. But I’ll remember you anyway. You’ll be taking care of mamma for me.” “Now here, honey, don’t you start crying again! You can do all the crying you want by and by. But now I want you to listen to me. What call have you got to go on with them show people?” “What else can I do, ma’am? They’re all the people I know.” “What do you do in the show?” “Not much now since my pony died. I used to ride him, ma’am. Now I sell things—peanuts or pictures or songs or anything.” A wave of scarlet went over her face, and Jim knew she hated being with the show and he wondered why. He would have liked to do that kind of thing very well. “Tell me—I won’t tell no one—be they good to you?” asked ma. The girl turned her tear-darkened eyes on her. “Oh, I don’t know—I don’t know!” she broke out. “Oh, I’m so tired! What shall I do? What shall I do?” Ma McBirney stooped down and put both arms tight about the girl’s shaking form. “I reckon you’d better stay right here with me,” she said. “I’m needing a little girl terrible; and you’ve lost your ma. You stay right here with me. What do you say to that?” The girl sat up in bed and looked straight into Ma McBirney’s eyes. “They’d never let me!” she cried. “Now maybe they would, dear. Would you like it?” “Oh!” sighed the girl; “Oh, ma’am!” “What was that name I heard them calling you?” “Zalie, ma’am. My name is Azalea.” CHAPTER II NEW FRIENDS How does news spread on the mountain side? Who carried the word to the little lonely cabins on the wide sides of old Tennyson mountain that there were “things going on” at the McBirney’s? Did the buzzards wing the message—or the bald-headed eagle that kept eyrie in the blasted Norway pine above the ginseng lot? Or the martins that made their home in the dried gourds that had been swung for them on the high crosstrees before the McBirney’s door? However that may be, by noon the people began to arrive. Some of them rode their mules or horses; some drove in their carts or wagons; but the greater number came on foot, slipping along the steep paths on the pine needles, or leaping among the rocks, sure of foot, long of limb, and caring nothing for distance.