

This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler

                          [Picture: Book cover]

                     [Picture: And then came Azalea]





                                  AZALEA


                          _The Story of a Girl_
                                 _in the_
                          _Blue Ridge Mountains_

                                * * * * *

                                    By
                             ELIA W. PEATTIE

                                * * * * *

                            _Illustrations by_
                             _Hazel Roberts_

                                * * * * *

                       [Picture: Publisher’s Logo]

                                * * * * *

                         The Reilly & Britton Co.
                                 Chicago

                                * * * * *

                             Copyright, 1912
                                    by
                         The Reilly & Britton Co.

                                * * * * *




CONTENTS

CHAPTER                                  PAGE
          I  THE MCBIRNEYS                  9
         II  NEW FRIENDS                   28
        III  IN HIDING                     47
         IV  NEW CLOTHES                   69
          V  THE SHOALS                    88
         VI  GROWING PAINS                108
        VII  THE SINGING                  123
       VIII  THE KIDNAPPING               143
         IX  HAYSTACK THOMPSON            162
          X  THE ESCAPE                   181
         XI  THE SUMMERS FAMILY           198
        XII  MA SAYS NO                   215
       XIII  AT HOME AGAIN                236
        XIV  THE SACRIFICE                247
         XV  AZALEA CHOOSES               265




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

And then came Azalea                    _Frontispiece_
“She ran out to meet me,” he cried                  92
“So that’s your story, missy.”                     178
He stood there, straight and fierce                270




CHAPTER I
THE MCBIRNEYS


The guinea hens wanted everybody to get up.  They said so right under the
bedroom window; and the turkey gobbler had the same wish and made it
known in his most important manner.  Hours before, Mr. Rhode Island Red,
the rooster, had expressed his opinion on the subject, and from the first
pale hint of dawn till the sun swung up in the clear May sky, a great
company of tanagers, robins, martins, meadow larks and their friends had
suggested, each in his own way, that it was time to be awake.

But really, it didn’t need all of this clamor to get the McBirneys out of
bed.  Since sunup, Thomas McBirney had been planting cotton on the red
clay terraces of his mountain farm; and Mary McBirney, his wife, had been
busied laying her hearth-fire, getting the breakfast and feeding the
crowing, cackling, gobbling creatures in the yard.  And three times she
had thrust her head in at the door of the lean-to to say that if she were
a boy she’d get up and see what a pretty day it was.

James Stuart McBirney, otherwise Jim, thought his mother was right about
almost everything, but he did differ with her about getting up when a
fellow felt like a log and his eyes were as tight as ticks.  He had heard
her say there was a time for everything, and it seemed to him that the
time to sleep was when a fellow was sleepy.  Why should sensible people
send him to bed when he wasn’t sleepy and make him get up when he was?

Besides, something kept nagging away in the back of his mind.  It was
something that he ought to remember, and couldn’t quite, on account of
being so sleepy.  Or perhaps he didn’t want to remember it.  At any rate,
it wouldn’t let him rest in comfort, but pecked away like a woodpecker at
a tree.  So, in spite of himself, it all came back to him.  Ma was out of
“fat pine” for kindling, and he must go hunting it.

Well, if he must—

“It don’t seem as you ought to be so long getting into such a few
clothes, Jimmy,” a soft voice called.  “You’ll be falling into lazy
habits if you don’t set a watch on yourself, and you’ll never get shet of
them, long as you live.”

“Yessum,” said Jim.

“I can see your pa a-coming ’cross the fields now, and I reckon if you
don’t do some hustling he’ll catch you dawdling.”

“Yessum.”

“And, Jimmy!”

“Yessum?”

“I’ve been hearing that Aunt Nan Leiter’s got a making of that blue dye
like I’ve been wanting.  I reckon after you’ve got the wood you’d better
walk over yon and get the bucket of it she promised to give me.”

“Yessum.”

“And, Jimmy, here’s your pa.”

“Yessum.”

“Ain’t you washed yet, son?  Shame on you!”

There was a wild splashing of water on the back porch where the wash
basin stood, a gasping and panting, and then, with one last “Yessum,”
James Stuart McBirney stood in the door.  His turned-up nose, his
freckles and his blue eyes all shone as if he had polished them, and his
curling, clay-colored hair had drawn itself up in tight ringlets about
his head.

He had been hoping that no one would pay any attention to him, and he had
his wish.  Ma was setting breakfast on the table, steaming hot from the
hearth.  Pa was standing outside the door shading his eyes with one hand.

