“You seem to make friends whenever you please, Azalea. It’s so easy for you! The Paces aren’t like that. It’s hard for them to let themselves go and say the thing that comes into their minds. We’re stiff, someway. But when we do make friends, we keep them.”
“Be sure to keep me, Annie Laurie. I nearly lost you through my own carelessness, and I mean to hang on to you now. Well, come, let’s start for home.”
But as it turned out, it was raining most dismally. A dark cloud had tumbled off the mountain and settled down over the valley, and though it was not late, it seemed almost like night.
“Goodness me,” said Annie Laurie, “I don’t like to think of you riding away up on the mountain a night like this. Why, you’d be drenched.”
“I ought to have accepted Carin’s invitation and stayed all night with her,” said Azalea. “Mother doesn’t expect me on bad nights. She’s not to worry about me if I don’t come when it rains or snows.”
“Oh, stay with me, Azalea! It’s just the chance I’ve been wanting. You’ve never been in my home except on that funny day when we all had conniption fits—especially Aunt Adnah. But, honestly, Aunt Adnah is a brick if you know her.”
Azalea giggled. “Yes, she did seem to have some of the properties of a brick—hardness, for example. She hit me between the eyes.”
“Well, she’ll make it up to you now, if you’ll give her a chance. Of course she wouldn’t say that she wants to make up, but she does.”
“I’d just love to stay all night with you,” Azalea said. “I’ll take the pony back to the Carsons’ stable, and then we’ll walk over to your house.”
“Very well. I’ll go with you to the stable.” They put the pony in the stall, and then, wrapped in their raincoats, tramped along over the red pine needles to Annie Laurie’s home.
“Don’t feel at all backward, will you, Azalea?” the other girl said as they stood on the doorstep. “You just have a little pluck and everything will come out all right.”
“You don’t half understand me yet, Annie Laurie,” she said. “You’re so much more serious than I am. I can’t help enjoying things even when they are serious. I know I oughtn’t to feel that way, but I think it will be awfully funny to see your Aunt Adnah’s face when she finds I’ve had the impudence to come again.”
