Annie Laurie frowned a trifle. She was not quite sure she liked to have her aunt regarded as amusing. However, they went in together. The door of the grim little parlor was closed, but the living-room door stood open and Annie Laurie led the way in. There was an ugly brussels carpet on the floor, and a center table covered with a chenille cloth; on it was the reading lamp, and ranged about it were comfortable chairs. A black marble clock ticked noisily on the mantel shelf, and a low fire smouldered among the ashes. The scrim curtains had many colored figures in them, and helped to keep out the light of the declining day. Azalea could not help contrasting it with the exquisite rooms at The Shoals, and with the quaint, charming rooms in the McBirney cabin. She could understand some of the bitter things that Annie Laurie had said to her—could see that, somehow, life had been commonplace for this girl from the first, and that, though she did not altogether realize it, it was this common-placeness which made her dissatisfied.
“Wherever can the aunts be?” said Annie Laurie. “The fire is out in the kitchen, and there are no signs of supper. Usually at this hour, things are humming like a bee hive. Take off your things, Azalea. I’ll hang them up where they’ll dry. You sit right down before the fire, and I’ll bring in some wood.”
“No, no. You’re company. I don’t often have company.” She went away with Azalea’s things and then came back and stood looking at her guest with her glowing eyes. “Azalea,” she said intensely, “I never have company!”
“I don’t know why not. I’m not supposed to want it. I’m to study and work, and mend and practice my music, and be doing something from early till late. It isn’t that they’re not kind to me—my aunts and my father—but they’re so dreadfully serious and conscientious.”
“It _does_ throw a damper over everything, being conscientious like that,” mused Azalea.
Annie Laurie looked startled to hear her own secret idea put in words.
“For goodness sake,” she cried, “don’t let the aunts hear you say that!”
“I’d really like to try that on Aunt Adnah,” she said.
Annie Laurie was getting used to her friend, and she made no reply. She ran upstairs for a moment, and came down clothed in a warm brown wrapper, and carrying another one of equally uninviting color on her arm.