

This etext was transcribed by Les Bowler.

                          [Picture: Book cover]

                    [Picture: Being thrown by Paprika]





                                 AZALEA’S
                                SILVER WEB


                                    BY
                             ELIA W. PEATTIE
                Author of Azalea; Annie Laurie and Azalea;
                        Azalea at Sunset Gap, etc.

                            _Illustrations by_
                            _E. R. Kirkbride_

                                * * * * *

                        [Picture: Publisher logo]

                                * * * * *

                         The Reilly & Britton Co.
                                 Chicago

                                * * * * *

                             Copyright, 1915
                                    by
                         The Reilly & Britton Co.

                                * * * * *




CONTENTS

CHAPTER                                    PAGE
          I  GROWN GIRLS                      9
         II  NEW RELATIONS                   27
        III  OWN FOLK                        46
         IV  MADAM GRANDMOTHER               64
          V  MALLOWBANKS                     82
         VI  MY BALL                        101
        VII  GETTING SETTLED                120
       VIII  THE PORTRAIT                   139
         IX  GRANDMOTHER’S STORY            158
          X  “THE WATERS OF QUIET”          177
         XI  A FRIEND                       195
        XII  A TRAVEL LOG                   212
       XIII  CROSSROADS                     231
        XIV  “WHERE THERE IS A WILL”        250
         XV  “RING, HAPPY BELLS”            267

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

So, in a moment more I felt myself—I who had never      _Frontispiece_
been thrown in my life—going over Paprika’s head
We stepped back in the shrubbery and kept very                      84
still while they passed.  Grandmother was weeping
like a hurt child
Azalea’s Coming Out Party                                          114
It was Keefe O’Connor who stood there holding out                  276
his hands to me

CHAPTER I
GROWN GIRLS


                                                 Tennyson Mountain, N. C.,
                                                                October 6.

_Carin_, _dear and far_:

So you are back at your beloved Vassar!  Does it seem as wonderful as it
did last year?  Or more so?  More so, I expect.  You were a little lonely
and strange last year, you know.  But now it will be different.  The
girls will seem like old friends to you now that you are coming back to
them.  But, Carin, girl, they cannot _possibly_ be such old friends as I
am, or as Annie Laurie is.  Don’t dare to like one of them better than
you like us.  I can imagine, and really spend too much time imagining,
just how lovely and cultivated and surprising some of them are.  But,
please, aren’t some of them quite stupid, too?  I hope so.  Annie Laurie
hopes so.  We want still to be the brightest stars in your sky.

Lest you should think we are not, we keep polishing ourselves.  Annie
Laurie, when she is not attending to her dairy, will take university
extension work.  And I, your own ever adoring, ever grateful Azalea, will
keep hammering away at the books that dear Barbara Summers lends, and
Keefe O’Connor sends down from New York, and those that your own library
at the Shoals furnishes.

I have the heart to read, Carin, but not the time.  That’s the truth.
Or, come to think of it, perhaps it is a matter of eyelids.  I have a
queer, self-closing pair.  If they would stay up after nine o’clock at
night I could learn something.  But, no, they appear to be attached to a
wheel or a ratchet in the clock, and when nine strikes, down they go and
down they stay.

What can I do?

Nothing, except kiss dearest Mother McBirney good night, trying not to
yawn in her face as I do it, and after paying my respects to Father
McBirney and “brother” Jim, slip away up to my darling loft.

Now, there, Carin!  You see I’m nicer than your other friends, more
unusual and surprising.  (You told me the last time I saw you that you
liked your friends to be unusual and surprising.)  Well, have you any
other friend who goes up to her bedroom by means of an outside pair of
stairs and who sleeps in a loft, with a tame bat for company?  You have
not, Carin Carson, and you know it.  And, Oh,