← catalogue

Rainbow Valley

by L. M. Montgomery · English · Gutenberg #5343 · 463,185 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Rainbow Valley
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Rainbow Valley

Author: L. M. Montgomery


        
Release date: March 1, 2004 [eBook #5343]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2025

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5343

Credits: Bernard J. Farber, Carmen Baxter, Dona Rucci, Elizabeth Morton, Rebekah Neely, Joe Johnson, Joan Chovan, Judith Fetterolf, Mary Nuzzo, Sally Drake, Sally Starks, Steve Callis, Virginia Mohlere-Dellinger, Mary Mark Ockerbloom, Ben Crowder and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAINBOW VALLEY ***

[Illustration]




Rainbow Valley

by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Author of “Anne of Green Gables,” “Anne of the
Island,”

“Anne’s House of Dreams,” “The Story Girl,”
“The Watchman,” etc.

“The thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”
—LONGFELLOW

TO THE MEMORY OF

GOLDWIN LAPP, ROBERT BROOKES AND MORLEY SHIER

WHO MADE THE SUPREME SACRIFICE THAT THE HAPPY VALLEYS OF THEIR HOME
LAND MIGHT BE KEPT SACRED FROM THE RAVAGE OF THE INVADER


Contents

 I. HOME AGAIN
 II. SHEER GOSSIP
 III. THE INGLESIDE CHILDREN
 IV. THE MANSE CHILDREN
 V. THE ADVENT OF MARY VANCE
 VI. MARY STAYS AT THE MANSE
 VII. A FISHY EPISODE
 VIII. MISS CORNELIA INTERVENES
 IX. UNA INTERVENES
 X. THE MANSE GIRLS CLEAN HOUSE
 XI. A DREADFUL DISCOVERY
 XII. AN EXPLANATION AND A DARE
 XIII. THE HOUSE ON THE HILL
 XIV.  MRS. ALEC DAVIS MAKES A CALL
 XV. MORE GOSSIP
 XVI. TIT FOR TAT
 XVII. A DOUBLE VICTORY
 XVIII. MARY BRINGS EVIL TIDINGS
 XIX. POOR ADAM!
 XX. FAITH MAKES A FRIEND
 XXI. THE IMPOSSIBLE WORD
 XXII. ST. GEORGE KNOWS ALL ABOUT IT
 XXIII. THE GOOD-CONDUCT CLUB
 XXIV. A CHARITABLE IMPULSE
 XXV. ANOTHER SCANDAL AND ANOTHER “EXPLANATION”
 XXVI. MISS CORNELIA GETS A NEW POINT OF VIEW
 XXVII. A SACRED CONCERT
 XXVIII. A FAST DAY
 XXIX. A WEIRD TALE
 XXX. THE GHOST ON THE DYKE
 XXXI. CARL DOES PENANCE
 XXXII. TWO STUBBORN PEOPLE
 XXXIII. CARL IS—NOT—WHIPPED
 XXXIV. UNA VISITS THE HILL
 XXXV. “LET THE PIPER COME”




RAINBOW VALLEY




CHAPTER I.
HOME AGAIN


It was a clear, apple-green evening in May, and Four Winds Harbour was
mirroring back the clouds of the golden west between its softly dark
shores. The sea moaned eerily on the sand-bar, sorrowful even in
spring, but a sly, jovial wind came piping down the red harbour road
along which Miss Cornelia’s comfortable, matronly figure was making its
way towards the village of Glen St. Mary. Miss Cornelia was rightfully
Mrs. Marshall Elliott, and had been Mrs. Marshall Elliott for thirteen
years, but even yet more people referred to her as Miss Cornelia than
as Mrs. Elliott. The old name was dear to her old friends, only one of
them contemptuously dropped it. Susan Baker, the gray and grim and
faithful handmaiden of the Blythe family at Ingleside, never lost an
opportunity of calling her “Mrs. Marshall Elliott,” with the most
killing and pointed emphasis, as if to say “You wanted to be Mrs. and
Mrs. you shall be with a vengeance as far as I am concerned.”

Miss Cornelia was going up to Ingleside to see Dr. and Mrs. Blythe, who
were just home from Europe. They had been away for three months, having
left in February to attend a famous medical congress in London; and
certain things, which Miss Cornelia was anxious to discuss, had taken
place in the Glen during their absence. For one thing, there was a new
family in the manse. And such a family! Miss Cornelia shook her head
over them several times as she walked briskly along.

Susan Baker and the Anne Shirley of other days saw her coming, as they
sat on the big veranda at Ingleside, enjoying the charm of the cat’s
light, the sweetness of sleepy robins whistling among the twilit
maples, and the dance of a gusty group of daffodils blowing against the
old, mellow, red brick wall of the lawn.

Anne was sitting on the steps, her hands clasped over her knee,
looking, in the kind dusk, as girlish as a mother of many has any right
to be; and the beautiful gray-green eyes, gazing down the harbour road,
were as full of unquenchable sparkle and dream as ever. Behind her, in
the hammock, Rilla Blythe was curled up, a fat, roly-poly little
creature of six years, the youngest of the Ingleside children. She had
curly red hair and hazel eyes that were now buttoned up after the
funny, wrinkled fashion in which Rilla always went to sleep.

Shirley, “the little brown boy,” as he was known in the family “Who’s
Who,” was asleep in Susan’s arms. He was brown-haired, brown-eyed and
brown-skinned, with very rosy cheeks, and he was Susan’s especial love.
After his birth Anne had been very ill for a long time, and Susan
“mothered” the baby with a passionate tenderness which none of the
other children, dear as they were to her, had ever called out. Dr.
Blythe had said that but for her he would never have lived.

“I gave him life just as much as you did, Mrs. Dr. dear,” Susan was
wont to say. “He is just as much my baby as he is yours.” And, indeed,
it was always to Susan that Shirley ran, to be kissed for bumps, and
rocked to sleep, and protected from well-deserved spankings. Susan had
conscientiously spanked all the other Blythe children when she thought
they needed it for their souls’ good, but she would not spank Shirley
nor allow his mother to do it. Once, Dr. Blythe had spanked him and
Susan had been stormily indignant.

“That man would spank an angel, Mrs. Dr. dear, that he would,” she had
declared bitterly; and she would not make the poor doctor a pie for
weeks.

She had taken Shirley with her to her brother’s home during his
parents’ absence, while all the other children had gone to Avonlea, and
she had three blessed months of him all to herself. Nevertheless, Susan
was very glad to find herself back at Ingleside, with all her darlings
around her again. Ingleside was her world and in it she reigned
supreme. Even Anne seldom questioned her decisions, much to the disgust
of Mrs. Rachel Lynde of Green Gables, who gloomily told Anne, whenever
she visited Four Winds, that she was letting Susan get to be entirely
too much of a boss and would live to rue it.

“Here is Cornelia Bryant coming up the harbour road, Mrs. Dr. dear,”
said Susan. “She will be coming up to unload three months’ gossip on
us.”

“I hope so,” said Anne, hugging her knees. “I’m starving for Glen St.
Mary gossip, Susan. I hope Miss Cornelia can tell me everything that
has happened while we’ve been away—_everything_—who has got born, or
married, or drunk; who has died, or gone away, or come, or fought, or
lost a cow, or found a beau. It’s so delightful to be home again with
all the dear Glen folks, and I want to know all about them. Why, I
remember wondering, as I walked through Westminster Abbey which of her
two especial beaux Millicent Drew would finally marry. Do you know,
Susan, I have a dreadful suspicion that I love gossip.”

“Well, of course, Mrs. Dr. dear,” admitted Susan, “every proper woman
likes to hear the news. I am rather interested in Millicent Drew’s case
myself. I never had a beau, much less two, and I do not mind now, for
being an old maid does not hurt when you get used to it. Millicent’s
hair always looks to me as if she had swept it up with a broom. But the
men do not seem to mind that.”

“They see only her pretty, piquant, mocking, little face, Susan.”

“That may very well be, Mrs. Dr. dear. The Good Book says that favour
is deceitful and beauty is vain, but I should not have minded finding
that out for myself, if it had been so ordained. I have no doubt we
will all be beautiful when we are angels, but what good will it do us
then? Speaking of gossip, however, they do say that poor Mrs. Harrison
Miller over harbour tried to hang herself last week.”

“Oh, Susan!”

“Calm yourself, Mrs. Dr. dear. She did not succeed. But I really do not
blame her for trying, for her husband is a terrible man. But she was
very foolish to think of hanging herself and leaving the way clear for
him to marry some other woman. If I had been in her shoes, Mrs. Dr.
dear, I would have gone to work to worry him so that he would try to
hang himself instead of me. Not that I hold with people hanging
themselves under any circumstances, Mrs. Dr. dear.”

“What is the matter with Harrison Miller, anyway?” said Anne
impatiently. “He is always driving some one to extremes.”

“Well, some people call it religion and some call it cussedness,
begging your pardon, Mrs. Dr. dear, for using such a word. It seems
they cannot make out which it is in Harrison’s case. There are days
when he growls at everybody because he thinks he is fore-ordained to
eternal punishment. And then there are days when he says he does not
care and goes and gets drunk. My own opinion is that he is not sound in
his intellect, for none of that branch of the Millers were. His
grandfather went out of his mind. He thought he was surrounded by big
black spiders. They crawled over him and floated in the air about him.
I hope I shall never go insane, Mrs. Dr. dear, and I do not think I
will, because it is not a habit of the Bakers. But, if an all-wise
Providence should decree it, I hope it will not take the form of big
black spiders, for I loathe the animals. As for Mrs. Miller, I do not
know whether she really deserves pity or not. There are some who say
she just married Harrison to spite Richard Taylor, which seems to me a
very peculiar reason for getting married. But then, of course, _I_ am
no judge of things matrimonial, Mrs. Dr. dear. And there is Cornelia
Bryant at the gate, so I will put this blessed brown baby on his bed
and get my knitting.”




CHAPTER II.
SHEER GOSSIP


“Where are the other children?” asked Miss Cornelia, when the first
greetings—cordial on her side, rapturous on Anne’s, and dignified on
Susan’s—were over.

“Shirley is in bed and Jem and Walter and the twins are down in their
beloved Rainbow Valley,” said Anne. “They just came home this
afternoon, you know, and they could hardly wait until supper was over
before rushing down to the valley. They love it above every spot on
earth. Even the maple grove doesn’t rival it in their affections.”

“I am afraid they love it too well,” said Susan gloomily. “Little Jem
said once he would rather go to Rainbow Valley than to heaven when he
died, and that was not a proper remark.”

“I suppose they had a great time in Avonlea?” said Miss Cornelia.

“Enormous. Marilla does spoil them terribly. Jem, in particular, can do
no wrong in her eyes.”

“Miss Cuthbert must be an old lady now,” said Miss Cornelia, getting
out her knitting, so that she could hold her own with Susan. Miss
Cornelia held that the woman whose hands were employed always had the
advantage over the woman whose hands were not.

“Marilla is eighty-five,” said Anne with a sigh. “Her hair is
snow-white. But, strange to say, her eyesight is better than it was
when she was sixty.”

“Well, dearie, I’m real glad you’re all back. I’ve been dreadful
lonesome. But we haven’t been dull in the Glen, believe _me_. There
hasn’t been such an exciting spring in my time, as far as church
matters go. We’ve got settled with a minister at last, Anne dearie.”

“The Reverend John Knox Meredith, Mrs. Dr. dear,” said Susan, resolved
not to let Miss Cornelia tell all the news.

“Is he nice?” asked Anne interestedly.

Miss Cornelia sighed and Susan groaned.

“Yes, he’s nice enough if that were all,” said the former. “He is
_very_ nice—and very learned—and very spiritual. But, oh Anne dearie,
he has no common sense!

“How was it you called him, then?”

“Well, there’s no doubt he is by far the best preacher we ever had in
Glen St. Mary church,” said Miss Cornelia, veering a tack or two. “I
suppose it is because he is so moony and absent-minded that he never
got a town call. His trial sermon was simply wonderful, believe _me_.
Every one went mad about it—and his looks.”

“He is _very_ comely, Mrs. Dr. dear, and when all is said and done, I
_do_ like to see a well-looking man in the pulpit,” broke in Susan,
thinking it was time she asserted herself again.

“Besides,” said Miss Cornelia, “we were anxious to get settled. And Mr.
Meredith was the first candidate we were all agreed on. Somebody had
some objection to all the others. There was some talk of calling Mr.
Folsom. He was a good preacher, too, but somehow people didn’t care for
his appearance. He was too dark and sleek.”

“He looked exactly like a great black tomcat, that he did, Mrs. Dr.
dear,” said Susan. “I never could abide such a man in the pulpit every
Sunday.”

“Then Mr. Rogers came and he was like a chip in porridge—neither harm
nor good,” resumed Miss Cornelia. “But if he had preached like Peter
and Paul it would have profited him nothing, for that was the day old
Caleb Ramsay’s sheep strayed into church and gave a loud ‘ba-a-a’ just
as he announced his text. Everybody laughed, and poor Rogers had no
chance after that. Some thought we ought to call Mr. Stewart, because
he was so well educated. He could read the New Testament in five
languages.”

“But I do not think he was any surer than other men of getting to
heaven because of that,” interjected Susan.

“Most of us didn’t like his delivery,” said Miss Cornelia, ignoring
Susan. “He talked in grunts, so to speak. And Mr. Arnett couldn’t
preach _at all_. And he picked about the worst candidating text there
is in the Bible—‘Curse ye Meroz.’”

“Whenever he got stuck for an idea, he would bang the Bible and shout
very bitterly, ‘Curse ye Meroz.’ Poor Meroz got thoroughly cursed that
day, whoever he was, Mrs. Dr. dear,” said Susan.

“The minister who is candidating can’t be too careful what text he
chooses,” said Miss Cornelia solemnly. “I believe Mr. Pierson would
have got the call if he had picked a different text. But when he
announced ‘I will lift my eyes to the hills’ _he_ was done for. Every
one grinned, for every one knew that those two Hill girls from the
Harbour Head have been setting their caps for every single minister who
came to the Glen for the last fifteen years. And Mr. Newman had too
large a family.”

“He stayed with my brother-in-law, James Clow,” said Susan. “‘How many
children have you got?’ I asked him. ‘Nine boys and a sister for each
of them,’ he said. ‘Eighteen!’ said I. ‘Dear me, what a family!’ And
then he laughed and laughed. But I do not know why, Mrs. Dr. dear, and
I am certain that eighteen children would be too many for any manse.”

“He had only ten children, Susan,” explained Miss Cornelia, with
contemptuous patience. “And ten good children would not be much worse
for the manse and congregation than the four who are there now. Though
I wouldn’t say, Anne dearie, that they are so bad, either. I like
them—everybody likes them. It’s impossible to help liking them. They
would be real nice little souls if there was anyone to look after their
manners and teach them what is right and proper. For instance, at
school the teacher says they are model children. But at home they
simply run wild.”

“What about Mrs. Meredith?” asked Anne.

“There’s _no_ Mrs. Meredith. That is just the trouble. Mr. Meredith is
a widower. His wife died four years ago. If we had known that I don’t
suppose we would have called him, for a widower is even worse in a
congregation than a single man. But he was heard to speak of his
children and we all supposed there was a mother, too. And when they
came there was nobody but old Aunt Martha, as they call her. She’s a
cousin of Mr. Meredith’s mother, I believe, and he took her in to save
her from the poorhouse. She is seventy-five years old, half blind, and
very deaf and very cranky.”

“And a very poor cook, Mrs. Dr. dear.”

“The worst possible manager for a manse,” said Miss Cornelia bitterly.
“Mr. Meredith won’t get any other housekeeper because he says it would
hurt Aunt Martha’s feelings. Anne dearie, believe me, the state of that
manse is something terrible. Everything is thick with dust and nothing
is ever in its place. And we had painted and papered it all so nice
before they came.”

“There are four children, you say?” asked Anne, beginning to mother
them already in her heart.

“Yes. They run up just like the steps of a stair. Gerald’s the oldest.
He’s twelve and they call him Jerry. He’s a clever boy. Faith is
eleven. She is a regular tomboy but pretty as a picture, I must say.”

“She looks like an angel but she is a holy terror for mischief, Mrs.
Dr. dear,” said Susan solemnly. “I was at the manse one night last week
and Mrs. James Millison was there, too. She had brought them up a dozen
eggs and a little pail of milk—a _very_ little pail, Mrs. Dr. dear.
Faith took them and whisked down the cellar with them. Near the bottom
of the stairs she caught her toe and fell the rest of the way, milk and
eggs and all. You can imagine the result, Mrs. Dr. dear. But that child
came up laughing. ‘I don’t know whether I’m myself or a custard pie,’
she said. And Mrs. James Millison was very angry. She said she would
never take another thing to the manse if it was to be wasted and
destroyed in that fashion.”

“Maria Millison never hurt herself taking things to the manse,” sniffed
Miss Cornelia. “She just took them that night as an excuse for
curiosity. But poor Faith is always getting into scrapes. She is so
heedless and impulsive.”

“Just like me. I’m going to like your Faith,” said Anne decidedly.

“She is full of spunk—and I do like spunk, Mrs. Dr. dear,” admitted
Susan.

“There’s something taking about her,” conceded Miss Cornelia. “You
never see her but she’s laughing, and somehow it always makes you want
to laugh too. She can’t even keep a straight face in church. Una is
ten—she’s a sweet little thing—not pretty, but sweet. And Thomas
Carlyle is nine. They call him Carl, and he has a regular mania for
collecting toads and bugs and frogs and bringing them into the house.”

“I suppose he was responsible for the dead rat that was lying on a
chair in the parlour the afternoon Mrs. Grant called. It gave her a
turn,” said Susan, “and I do not wonder, for manse parlours are no
places for dead rats. To be sure it may have been the cat who left it,
there. _He_ is as full of the old Nick as he can be stuffed, Mrs. Dr.
dear. A manse cat should at least _look_ respectable, in my opinion,
whatever he really is. But I never saw such a rakish-looking beast. And
he walks along the ridgepole of the manse almost every evening at
sunset, Mrs. Dr. dear, and waves his tail, and that is not becoming.”

“The worst of it is, they are _never_ decently dressed,” sighed Miss
Cornelia. “And since the snow went they go to school barefooted. Now,
you know Anne dearie, that isn’t the right thing for manse
children—especially when the Methodist minister’s little girl always
wears such nice buttoned boots. And I _do_ wish they wouldn’t play in
the old Methodist graveyard.”

“It’s very tempting, when it’s right beside the manse,” said Anne.
“I’ve always thought graveyards must be delightful places to play in.”

“Oh, no, you did not, Mrs. Dr. dear,” said loyal Susan, determined to
protect Anne from herself. “You have too much good sense and decorum.”

“Why did they ever build that manse beside the graveyard in the first
place?” asked Anne. “Their lawn is so small there is no place for them
to play except in the graveyard.”

“It _was_ a mistake,” admitted Miss Cornelia. “But they got the lot
cheap. And no other manse children ever thought of playing there. Mr.
Meredith shouldn’t allow it. But he has always got his nose buried in a
book, when he is home. He reads and reads, or walks about in his study
in a day-dream. So far he hasn’t forgotten to be in church on Sundays,
but twice he has forgotten about the prayer-meeting and one of the
elders had to go over to the manse and remind him. And he forgot about
Fanny Cooper’s wedding. They rang him up on the ‘phone and then he
rushed right over, just as he was, carpet slippers and all. One
wouldn’t mind if the Methodists didn’t laugh so about it. But there’s
one comfort—they can’t criticize his sermons. He wakes up when he’s in
the pulpit, believe _me_. And the Methodist minister can’t preach at
all—so they tell me. _I_ have never heard him, thank goodness.”

Miss Cornelia’s scorn of men had abated somewhat since her marriage,
but her scorn of Methodists remained untinged of charity. Susan smiled
slyly.

“They do say, Mrs. Marshall Elliott, that the Methodists and
Presbyterians are talking of uniting,” she said.

“Well, all I hope is that I’ll be under the sod if that ever comes to
pass,” retorted Miss Cornelia. “I shall never have truck or trade with
Methodists, and Mr. Meredith will find that he’d better steer clear of
them, too. He is entirely too sociable with them, believe _me_. Why, he
went to the Jacob Drews’ silver-wedding supper and got into a nice
scrape as a result.”

“What was it?”

“Mrs. Drew asked him to carve the roast goose—for Jacob Drew never did
or could carve. Well, Mr. Meredith tackled it, and in the process he
knocked it clean off the platter into Mrs. Reese’s lap, who was sitting
next him. And he just said dreamily. ‘Mrs. Reese, will you kindly
return me that goose?’ Mrs. Reese ‘returned’ it, as meek as Moses, but
she must have been furious, for she had on her new silk dress. The
worst of it is, she was a Methodist.”

“But I think that is better than if she was a Presbyterian,”
interjected Susan. “If she had been a Presbyterian she would mostly
likely have left the church and we cannot afford to lose our members.
And Mrs. Reese is not liked in her own church, because she gives
herself such great airs, so that the Methodists would be rather pleased
that Mr. Meredith spoiled her dress.”

“The point is, he made himself ridiculous, and _I_, for one, do not
like to see my minister made ridiculous in the eyes of the Methodists,”
said Miss Cornelia stiffly. “If he had had a wife it would not have
happened.”

“I do not see if he had a dozen wives how they could have prevented
Mrs. Drew from using up her tough old gander for the wedding-feast,”
said Susan stubbornly.

“They say that was her husband’s doing,” said Miss Cornelia. “Jacob
Drew is a conceited, stingy, domineering creature.”

“And they do say he and his wife detest each other—which does not seem
to me the proper way for married folks to get along. But then, of
course, I have had no experience along that line,” said Susan, tossing
her head. “And _I_ am not one to blame everything on the men. Mrs. Drew
is mean enough herself. They say that the only thing she was ever known
to give away was a crock of butter made out of cream a rat had fell
into. She contributed it to a church social. Nobody found out about the
rat until afterwards.”

“Fortunately, all the people the Merediths have offended so far are
Methodists,” said Miss Cornelia. “That Jerry went to the Methodist
prayer-meeting one night about a fortnight ago and sat beside old
William Marsh who got up as usual and testified with fearful groans.
‘Do you feel any better now?’ whispered Jerry when William sat down.
Poor Jerry meant to be sympathetic, but Mr. Marsh thought he was
impertinent and is furious at him. Of course, Jerry had no business to
be in a Methodist prayer-meeting at all. But they go where they like.”

“I hope they will not offend Mrs. Alec Davis of the Harbour Head,” said
Susan. “She is a very touchy woman, I understand, but she is very well
off and pays the most of any one to the salary. I have heard that she
says the Merediths are the worst brought up children she ever saw.”

“Every word you say convinces me more and more that the Merediths
belong to the race that knows Joseph,” said Mistress Anne decidedly.

“When all is said and done, they _do_,” admitted Miss Cornelia. “And
that balances everything. Anyway, we’ve got them now and we must just
do the best we can by them and stick up for them to the Methodists.
Well, I suppose I must be getting down harbour. Marshall will soon be
home—he went over-harbour to-day—and wanting his super, man-like. I’m
sorry I haven’t seen the other children. And where’s the doctor?”

“Up at the Harbour Head. We’ve only been home three days and in that
time he has spent three hours in his own bed and eaten two meals in his
own house.”

“Well, everybody who has been sick for the last six weeks has been
waiting for him to come home—and I don’t blame them. When that
over-harbour doctor married the undertaker’s daughter at Lowbridge
people felt suspicious of him. It didn’t look well. You and the doctor
must come down soon and tell us all about your trip. I suppose you’ve
had a splendid time.”

“We had,” agreed Anne. “It was the fulfilment of years of dreams. The
old world is very lovely and very wonderful. But we have come back very
well satisfied with our own land. Canada is the finest country in the
world, Miss Cornelia.”

“Nobody ever doubted that,” said Miss Cornelia, complacently.

“And old P.E.I. is the loveliest province in it and Four Winds the
loveliest spot in P.E.I.,” laughed Anne, looking adoringly out over the
sunset splendour of glen and harbour and gulf. She waved her hand at
it. “I saw nothing more beautiful than that in Europe, Miss Cornelia.
Must you go? The children will be sorry to have missed you.”

“They must come and see me soon. Tell them the doughnut jar is always
full.”

“Oh, at supper they were planning a descent on you. They’ll go soon;
but they must settle down to school again now. And the twins are going
to take music lessons.”

“Not from the Methodist minister’s wife, I hope?” said Miss Cornelia
anxiously.

“No—from Rosemary West. I was up last evening to arrange it with her.
What a pretty girl she is!”

“Rosemary holds her own well. She isn’t as young as she once was.”

“I thought her very charming. I’ve never had any real acquaintance with
her, you know. Their house is so out of the way, and I’ve seldom ever
seen her except at church.”

“People always have liked Rosemary West, though they don’t understand
her,” said Miss Cornelia, quite unconscious of the high tribute she was
paying to Rosemary’s charm. “Ellen has always kept her down, so to
speak. She has tyrannized over her, and yet she has always indulged her
in a good many ways. Rosemary was engaged once, you know—to young
Martin Crawford. His ship was wrecked on the Magdalens and all the crew
were drowned. Rosemary was just a child—only seventeen. But she was
never the same afterwards. She and Ellen have stayed very close at home
since their mother’s death. They don’t often get to their own church at
Lowbridge and I understand Ellen doesn’t approve of going too often to
a Presbyterian church. To the Methodist she _never_ goes, I’ll say that
much for her. That family of Wests have always been strong
Episcopalians. Rosemary and Ellen are pretty well off. Rosemary doesn’t
really need to give music lessons. She does it because she likes to.
They are distantly related to Leslie, you know. Are the Fords coming to
the harbour this summer?”

“No. They are going on a trip to Japan and will probably be away for a
year. Owen’s new novel is to have a Japanese setting. This will be the
first summer that the dear old House of Dreams will be empty since we
left it.”

“I should think Owen Ford might find enough to write about in Canada
without dragging his wife and his innocent children off to a heathen
country like Japan,” grumbled Miss Cornelia. “_The Life Book_ was the
best book he’s ever written and he got the material for that right here
in Four Winds.”

“Captain Jim gave him the most of that, you know. And he collected it
all over the world. But Owen’s books are all delightful, I think.”

“Oh, they’re well enough as far as they go. I make it a point to read
every one he writes, though I’ve always held, Anne dearie, that reading
novels is a sinful waste of time. I shall write and tell him my opinion
of this Japanese business, believe _me_. Does he want Kenneth and
Persis to be converted into pagans?”

With which unanswerable conundrum Miss Cornelia took her departure.
Susan proceeded to put Rilla in bed and Anne sat on the veranda steps
under the early stars and dreamed her incorrigible dreams and learned
all over again for the hundredth happy time what a moonrise splendour
and sheen could be on Four Winds Harbour.




CHAPTER III.
THE INGLESIDE CHILDREN


In daytime the Blythe children liked very well to play in the rich,
soft greens and glooms of the big maple grove between Ingleside and the
Glen St. Mary pond; but for evening revels there was no place like the
little valley behind the maple grove. It was a fairy realm of romance
to them. Once, looking from the attic windows of Ingleside, through the
mist and aftermath of a summer thunderstorm, they had seen the beloved
spot arched by a glorious rainbow, one end of which seemed to dip
straight down to where a corner of the pond ran up into the lower end
of the valley.

“Let us call it Rainbow Valley,” said Walter delightedly, and Rainbow
Valley thenceforth it was.

Outside of Rainbow Valley the wind might be rollicking and boisterous.
Here it always went gently. Little, winding, fairy paths ran here and
there over spruce roots cushioned with moss. Wild cherry trees, that in
blossom time would be misty white, were scattered all over the valley,
mingling with the dark spruces. A little brook with amber waters ran
through it from the Glen village. The houses of the village were
comfortably far away; only at the upper end of the valley was a little
tumble-down, deserted cottage, referred to as “the old Bailey house.”
It had not been occupied for many years, but a grass-grown dyke
surrounded it and inside was an ancient garden where the Ingleside
children could find violets and daisies and June lilies still blooming
in season. For the rest, the garden was overgrown with caraway that
swayed and foamed in the moonshine of summer eves like seas of silver.

To the sought lay the pond and beyond it the ripened distance lost
itself in purple woods, save where, on a high hill, a solitary old gray
homestead looked down on glen and harbour. There was a certain wild
woodsiness and solitude about Rainbow Valley, in spite of its nearness
to the village, which endeared it to the children of Ingleside.

The valley was full of dear, friendly hollows and the largest of these
was their favourite stamping ground. Here they were assembled on this
particular evening. There was a grove of young spruces in this hollow,
with a tiny, grassy glade in its heart, opening on the bank of the
brook. By the brook grew a silver birch-tree, a young, incredibly
straight thing which Walter had named the “White Lady.” In this glade,
too, were the “Tree Lovers,” as Walter called a spruce and maple which
grew so closely together that their boughs were inextricably
intertwined. Jem had hung an old string of sleigh-bells, given him by
the Glen blacksmith, on the Tree Lovers, and every visitant breeze
called out sudden fairy tinkles from it.

“How nice it is to be back!” said Nan. “After all, none of the Avonlea
places are quite as nice as Rainbow Valley.”

But they were very fond of the Avonlea places for all that. A visit to
Green Gables was always considered a great treat. Aunt Marilla was very
good to them, and so was Mrs. Rachel Lynde, who was spending the
leisure of her old age in knitting cotton-warp quilts against the day
when Anne’s daughters should need a “setting-out.” There were jolly
playmates there, too—“Uncle” Davy’s children and “Aunt” Diana’s
children. They knew all the spots their mother had loved so well in her
girlhood at old Green Gables—the long Lover’s Lane, that was
pink-hedged in wild-rose time, the always neat yard, with its willows
and poplars, the Dryad’s Bubble, lucent and lovely as of yore, the Lake
of Shining Waters, and Willowmere. The twins had their mother’s old
porch-gable room, and Aunt Marilla used to come in at night, when she
thought they were asleep, to gloat over them. But they all knew she
loved Jem the best.

Jem was at present busily occupied in frying a mess of small trout
which he had just caught in the pond. His stove consisted of a circle
of red stones, with a fire kindled in it, and his culinary utensils
were an old tin can, hammered out flat, and a fork with only one tine
left. Nevertheless, ripping good meals had before now been thus
prepared.

Jem was the child of the House of Dreams. All the others had been born
at Ingleside. He had curly red hair, like his mother’s, and frank hazel
eyes, like his father’s; he had his mother’s fine nose and his father’s
steady, humorous mouth. And he was the only one of the family who had
ears nice enough to please Susan. But he had a standing feud with Susan
because she would not give up calling him Little Jem. It was
outrageous, thought thirteen-year-old Jem. Mother had more sense.

“I’m _not_ little any more, Mother,” he had cried indignantly, on his
eighth birthday. “I’m _awful_ big.”

Mother had sighed and laughed and sighed again; and she never called
him Little Jem again—in his hearing at least.

He was and always had been a sturdy, reliable little chap. He never
broke a promise. He was not a great talker. His teachers did not think
him brilliant, but he was a good, all-round student. He never took
things on faith; he always liked to investigate the truth of a
statement for himself. Once Susan had told him that if he touched his
tongue to a frosty latch all the skin would tear off it. Jem had
promptly done it, “just to see if it was so.” He found it was “so,” at
the cost of a very sore tongue for several days. But Jem did not grudge
suffering in the interests of science. By constant experiment and
observation he learned a great deal and his brothers and sisters
thought his extensive knowledge of their little world quite wonderful.
Jem always knew where the first and ripest berries grew, where the
first pale violets shyly wakened from their winter’s sleep, and how
many blue eggs were in a given robin’s nest in the maple grove. He
could tell fortunes from daisy petals and suck honey from red clovers,
and grub up all sorts of edible roots on the banks of the pond, while
Susan went in daily fear that they would all be poisoned. He knew where
the finest spruce-gum was to be found, in pale amber knots on the
lichened bark, he knew where the nuts grew thickest in the beechwoods
around the Harbour Head, and where the best trouting places up the
brooks were. He could mimic the call of any wild bird or beast in Four
Winds and he knew the haunt of every wild flower from spring to autumn.

Walter Blythe was sitting under the White Lady, with a volume of poems
lying beside him, but he was not reading. He was gazing now at the
emerald-misted willows by the pond, and now at a flock of clouds, like
little silver sheep, herded by the wind, that were drifting over
Rainbow Valley, with rapture in his wide splendid eyes. Walter’s eyes
were very wonderful. All the joy and sorrow and laughter and loyalty
and aspiration of many generations lying under the sod looked out of
their dark gray depths.

Walter was a “hop out of kin,” as far as looks went. He did not
resemble any known relative. He was quite the handsomest of the
Ingleside children, with straight black hair and finely modelled
features. But he had all his mother’s vivid imagination and passionate
love of beauty. Frost of winter, invitation of spring, dream of summer
and glamour of autumn, all meant much to Walter.

In school, where Jem was a chieftain, Walter was not thought highly of.
He was supposed to be “girly” and milk-soppish, because he never fought
and seldom joined in the school sports, preferring to herd by himself
in out of the way corners and read books—especially “po’try books.”
Walter loved the poets and pored over their pages from the time he
could first read. Their music was woven into his growing soul—the music
of the immortals. Walter cherished the ambition to be a poet himself
some day. The thing could be done. A certain Uncle Paul—so called out
of courtesy—who lived now in that mysterious realm called “the States,”
was Walter’s model. Uncle Paul had once been a little school boy in
Avonlea and now his poetry was read everywhere. But the Glen schoolboys
did not know of Walter’s dreams and would not have been greatly
impressed if they had. In spite of his lack of physical prowess,
however, he commanded a certain unwilling respect because of his power
of “talking book talk.” Nobody in Glen St. Mary school could talk like
him. He “sounded like a preacher,” one boy said; and for this reason he
was generally left alone and not persecuted, as most boys were who were
suspected of disliking or fearing fisticuffs.

The ten year old Ingleside twins violated twin tradition by not looking
in the least alike. Anne, who was always called Nan, was very pretty,
with velvety nut-brown eyes and silky nut-brown hair. She was a very
blithe and dainty little maiden—Blythe by name and blithe by nature,
one of her teachers had said. Her complexion was quite faultless, much
to her mother’s satisfaction.

“I’m so glad I have one daughter who can wear pink,” Mrs. Blythe was
wont to say jubilantly.

Diana Blythe, known as Di, was very like her mother, with gray-green
eyes that always shone with a peculiar lustre and brilliancy in the
dusk, and red hair. Perhaps this was why she was her father’s
favourite. She and Walter were especial chums; Di was the only one to
whom he would ever read the verses he wrote himself—the only one who
knew that he was secretly hard at work on an epic, strikingly
resembling “Marmion” in some things, if not in others. She kept all his
secrets, even from Nan, and told him all hers.

“Won’t you soon have those fish ready, Jem?” said Nan, sniffing with
her dainty nose. “The smell makes me awfully hungry.”

“They’re nearly ready,” said Jem, giving one a dexterous turn. “Get out
the bread and the plates, girls. Walter, wake up.”

“How the air shines to-night,” said Walter dreamily. Not that he
despised fried trout either, by any means; but with Walter food for the
soul always took first place. “The flower angel has been walking over
the world to-day, calling to the flowers. I can see his blue wings on
that hill by the woods.”

“Any angels’ wings I ever saw were white,” said Nan.

“The flower angel’s aren’t. They are a pale misty blue, just like the
haze in the valley. Oh, how I wish I could fly. It must be glorious.”

“One does fly in dreams sometimes,” said Di.

“I never dream that I’m flying exactly,” said Walter. “But I often
dream that I just rise up from the ground and float over the fences and
the trees. It’s delightful—and I always think, ‘This _isn’t_ a dream
like it’s always been before. _This_ is real’—and then I wake up after
all, and it’s heart-breaking.”

“Hurry up, Nan,” ordered Jem.

Nan had produced the banquet-board—a board literally as well as
figuratively—from which many a feast, seasoned as no viands were
elsewhere, had been eaten in Rainbow Valley. It was converted into a
table by propping it on two large, mossy stones. Newspapers served as
tablecloth, and broken plates and handleless cups from Susan’s discard
furnished the dishes. From a tin box secreted at the root of a spruce
tree Nan brought forth bread and salt. The brook gave Adam’s ale of
unsurpassed crystal. For the rest, there was a certain sauce,
compounded of fresh air and appetite of youth, which gave to everything
a divine flavour. To sit in Rainbow Valley, steeped in a twilight half
gold, half amethyst, rife with the odours of balsam-fir and woodsy
growing things in their springtime prime, with the pale stars of wild
strawberry blossoms all around you, and with the sough of the wind and
tinkle of bells in the shaking tree tops, and eat fried trout and dry
bread, was something which the mighty of earth might have envied them.

“Sit in,” invited Nan, as Jem placed his sizzling tin platter of trout
on the table. “It’s your turn to say grace, Jem.”

“I’ve done my part frying the trout,” protested Jem, who hated saying
grace. “Let Walter say it. He _likes_ saying grace. And cut it short,
too, Walt. I’m starving.”

But Walter said no grace, short or long, just then. An interruption
occurred.

“Who’s coming down from the manse hill?” said Di.




CHAPTER IV.
THE MANSE CHILDREN


Aunt Martha might be, and was, a very poor housekeeper; the Rev. John
Knox Meredith might be, and was, a very absent-minded, indulgent man.
But it could not be denied that there was something very homelike and
lovable about the Glen St. Mary manse in spite of its untidiness. Even
the critical housewives of the Glen felt it, and were unconsciously
mellowed in judgment because of it. Perhaps its charm was in part due
to accidental circumstances—the luxuriant vines clustering over its
gray, clap-boarded walls, the friendly acacias and balm-of-gileads that
crowded about it with the freedom of old acquaintance, and the
beautiful views of harbour and sand-dunes from its front windows. But
these things had been there in the reign of Mr. Meredith’s predecessor,
when the manse had been the primmest, neatest, and dreariest house in
the Glen. So much of the credit must be given to the personality of its
new inmates. There was an atmosphere of laughter and comradeship about
it; the doors were always open; and inner and outer worlds joined
hands. Love was the only law in Glen St. Mary manse.

The people of his congregation said that Mr. Meredith spoiled his
children. Very likely he did. It is certain that he could not bear to
scold them. “They have no mother,” he used to say to himself, with a
sigh, when some unusually glaring peccadillo forced itself upon his
notice. But he did not know the half of their goings-on. He belonged to
the sect of dreamers. The windows of his study looked out on the
graveyard but, as he paced up and down the room, reflecting deeply on
the immortality of the soul, he was quite unaware that Jerry and Carl
were playing leap-frog hilariously over the flat stones in that abode
of dead Methodists. Mr. Meredith had occasional acute realizations that
his children were not so well looked after, physically or morally, as
they had been before his wife died, and he had always a dim
sub-consciousness that house and meals were very different under Aunt
Martha’s management from what they had been under Cecilia’s. For the
rest, he lived in a world of books and abstractions; and, therefore,
although his clothes were seldom brushed, and although the Glen
housewives concluded, from the ivory-like pallor of his clear-cut
features and slender hands, that he never got enough to eat, he was not
an unhappy man.

If ever a graveyard could be called a cheerful place, the old Methodist
graveyard at Glen St. Mary might be so called. The new graveyard, at
the other side of the Methodist church, was a neat and proper and
doleful spot; but the old one had been left so long to Nature’s kindly
and gracious ministries that it had become very pleasant.

It was surrounded on three sides by a dyke of stones and sod, topped by
a gray and uncertain paling. Outside the dyke grew a row of tall fir
trees with thick, balsamic boughs. The dyke, which had been built by
the first settlers of the Glen, was old enough to be beautiful, with
mosses and green things growing out of its crevices, violets purpling
at its base in the early spring days, and asters and golden-rod making
an autumnal glory in its corners. Little ferns clustered companionably
between its stones, and here and there a big bracken grew.

On the eastern side there was neither fence nor dyke. The graveyard
there straggled off into a young fir plantation, ever pushing nearer to
the graves and deepening eastward into a thick wood. The air was always
full of the harp-like voices of the sea, and the music of gray old
trees, and in the spring mornings the choruses of birds in the elms
around the two churches sang of life and not of death. The Meredith
children loved the old graveyard.

Blue-eyed ivy, “garden-spruce,” and mint ran riot over the sunken
graves. Blueberry bushes grew lavishly in the sandy corner next to the
fir wood. The varying fashions of tombstones for three generations were
to be found there, from the flat, oblong, red sandstone slabs of old
settlers, down through the days of weeping willows and clasped hands,
to the latest monstrosities of tall “monuments” and draped urns. One of
the latter, the biggest and ugliest in the graveyard, was sacred to the
memory of a certain Alec Davis who had been born a Methodist but had
taken to himself a Presbyterian bride of the Douglas clan. She had made
him turn Presbyterian and kept him toeing the Presbyterian mark all his
life. But when he died she did not dare to doom him to a lonely grave
in the Presbyterian graveyard over-harbour. His people were all buried
in the Methodist cemetery; so Alec Davis went back to his own in death
and his widow consoled herself by erecting a monument which cost more
than any of the Methodists could afford. The Meredith children hated
it, without just knowing why, but they loved the old, flat, bench-like
stones with the tall grasses growing rankly about them. They made jolly
seats for one thing. They were all sitting on one now. Jerry, tired of
leap frog, was playing on a jew’s-harp. Carl was lovingly poring over a
strange beetle he had found; Una was trying to make a doll’s dress, and
Faith, leaning back on her slender brown wrists, was swinging her bare
feet in lively time to the jew’s-harp.

Jerry had his father’s black hair and large black eyes, but in him the
latter were flashing instead of dreamy. Faith, who came next to him,
wore her beauty like a rose, careless and glowing. She had golden-brown
eyes, golden-brown curls and crimson cheeks. She laughed too much to
please her father’s congregation and had shocked old Mrs. Taylor, the
disconsolate spouse of several departed husbands, by saucily
declaring—in the church-porch at that—“The world _isn’t_ a vale of
tears, Mrs. Taylor. It’s a world of laughter.”

Little dreamy Una was not given to laughter. Her braids of straight,
dead-black hair betrayed no lawless kinks, and her almond-shaped,
dark-blue eyes had something wistful and sorrowful in them. Her mouth
had a trick of falling open over her tiny white teeth, and a shy,
meditative smile occasionally crept over her small face. She was much
more sensitive to public opinion than Faith, and had an uneasy
consciousness that there was something askew in their way of living.
She longed to put it right, but did not know how. Now and then she
dusted the furniture—but it was so seldom she could find the duster
because it was never in the same place twice. And when the
clothes-brush was to be found she tried to brush her father’s best suit
on Saturdays, and once sewed on a missing button with coarse white
thread. When Mr. Meredith went to church next day every female eye saw
that button and the peace of the Ladies’ Aid was upset for weeks.

Carl had the clear, bright, dark-blue eyes, fearless and direct, of his
dead mother, and her brown hair with its glints of gold. He knew the
secrets of bugs and had a sort of freemasonry with bees and beetles.
Una never liked to sit near him because she never knew what uncanny
creature might be secreted about him. Jerry refused to sleep with him
because Carl had once taken a young garter snake to bed with him; so
Carl slept in his old cot, which was so short that he could never
stretch out, and had strange bed-fellows. Perhaps it was just as well
that Aunt Martha was half blind when she made that bed. Altogether they
were a jolly, lovable little crew, and Cecilia Meredith’s heart must
have ached bitterly when she faced the knowledge that she must leave
them.

“Where would you like to be buried if you were a Methodist?” asked
Faith cheerfully.

This opened up an interesting field of speculation.

“There isn’t much choice. The place is full,” said Jerry. “_I’d_ like
that corner near the road, I guess. I could hear the teams going past
and the people talking.”

“I’d like that little hollow under the weeping birch,” said Una. “That
birch is such a place for birds and they sing like mad in the
mornings.”

“I’d take the Porter lot where there’s so many children buried. _I_
like lots of company,” said Faith. “Carl, where’d you?”

“I’d rather not be buried at all,” said Carl, “but if I had to be I’d
like the ant-bed. Ants are _awf’ly_ int’resting.”

“How very good all the people who are buried here must have been,” said
Una, who had been reading the laudatory old epitaphs. “There doesn’t
seem to be a single bad person in the whole graveyard. Methodists must
be better than Presbyterians after all.”

“Maybe the Methodists bury their bad people just like they do cats,”
suggested Carl. “Maybe they don’t bother bringing them to the graveyard
at all.”

“Nonsense,” said Faith. “The people that are buried here weren’t any
better than other folks, Una. But when anyone is dead you mustn’t say
anything of him but good or he’ll come back and ha’nt you. Aunt Martha
told me that. I asked father if it was true and he just looked through
me and muttered, ‘True? True? What is truth? What _is_ truth, O jesting
Pilate?’ I concluded from that it must be true.”

“I wonder if Mr. Alec Davis would come back and ha’nt me if I threw a
stone at the urn on top of his tombstone,” said Jerry.

“Mrs. Davis would,” giggled Faith. “She just watches us in church like
a cat watching mice. Last Sunday I made a face at her nephew and he
made one back at me and you should have seen her glare. I’ll bet she
boxed _his_ ears when they got out. Mrs. Marshall Elliott told me we
mustn’t offend her on any account or I’d have made a face at her, too!”

“They say Jem Blythe stuck out his tongue at her once and she would
never have his father again, even when her husband was dying,” said
Jerry. “I wonder what the Blythe gang will be like.”

“I liked their looks,” said Faith. The manse children had been at the
station that afternoon when the Blythe small fry had arrived. “I liked
Jem’s looks _especially_.”

“They say in school that Walter’s a sissy,” said Jerry.

“I don’t believe it,” said Una, who had thought Walter very handsome.

“Well, he writes poetry, anyhow. He won the prize the teacher offered
last year for writing a poem, Bertie Shakespeare Drew told me. Bertie’s
mother thought _he_ should have got the prize because of his name, but
Bertie said he couldn’t write poetry to save his soul, name or no
name.”

“I suppose we’ll get acquainted with them as soon as they begin going
to school,” mused Faith. “I hope the girls are nice. I don’t like most
of the girls round here. Even the nice ones are poky. But the Blythe
twins look jolly. I thought twins always looked alike, but they don’t.
I think the red-haired one is the nicest.”

“I liked their mother’s looks,” said Una with a little sigh. Una envied
all children their mothers. She had been only six when her mother died,
but she had some very precious memories, treasured in her soul like
jewels, of twilight cuddlings and morning frolics, of loving eyes, a
tender voice, and the sweetest, gayest laugh.

“They say she isn’t like other people,” said Jerry.

“Mrs. Elliot says that is because she never really grew up,” said
Faith.

“She’s taller than Mrs. Elliott.”

“Yes, yes, but it is inside—Mrs. Elliot says Mrs. Blythe just stayed a
little girl inside.”

“What do I smell?” interrupted Carl, sniffing.

They all smelled it now. A most delectable odour came floating up on
the still evening air from the direction of the little woodsy dell
below the manse hill.

“That makes me hungry,” said Jerry.

“We had only bread and molasses for supper and cold ditto for dinner,”
said Una plaintively.

Aunt Martha’s habit was to boil a large slab of mutton early in the
week and serve it up every day, cold and greasy, as long as it lasted.
To this Faith, in a moment of inspiration, had give the name of
“ditto”, and by this it was invariably known at the manse.

“Let’s go and see where that smell is coming from,” said Jerry.

They all sprang up, frolicked over the lawn with the abandon of young
puppies, climbed a fence, and tore down the mossy slope, guided by the
savory lure that ever grew stronger. A few minutes later they arrived
breathlessly in the sanctum sanctorum of Rainbow Valley where the
Blythe children were just about to give thanks and eat.

They halted shyly. Una wished they had not been so precipitate: but Di
Blythe was equal to that and any occasion. She stepped forward, with a
comrade’s smile.

“I guess I know who you are,” she said. “You belong to the manse, don’t
you?”

Faith nodded, her face creased by dimples.

“We smelled your trout cooking and wondered what it was.”

“You must sit down and help us eat them,” said Di.

“Maybe you haven’t more than you want yourselves,” said Jerry, looking
hungrily at the tin platter.

“We’ve heaps—three apiece,” said Jem. “Sit down.”

No more ceremony was necessary. Down they all sat on mossy stones.
Merry was that feast and long. Nan and Di would probably have died of
horror had they known what Faith and Una knew perfectly well—that Carl
had two young mice in his jacket pocket. But they never knew it, so it
never hurt them. Where can folks get better acquainted than over a meal
table? When the last trout had vanished, the manse children and the
Ingleside children were sworn friends and allies. They had always known
each other and always would. The race of Joseph recognized its own.

They poured out the history of their little pasts. The manse children
heard of Avonlea and Green Gables, of Rainbow Valley traditions, and of
the little house by the harbour shore where Jem had been born. The
Ingleside children heard of Maywater, where the Merediths had lived
before coming to the Glen, of Una’s beloved, one-eyed doll and Faith’s
pet rooster.

Faith was inclined to resent the fact that people laughed at her for
petting a rooster. She liked the Blythes because they accepted it
without question.

“A handsome rooster like Adam is just as nice a pet as a dog or cat,
_I_ think,” she said. “If he was a canary nobody would wonder. And I
brought him up from a little, wee, yellow chicken. Mrs. Johnson at
Maywater gave him to me. A weasel had killed all his brothers and
sisters. I called him after her husband. I never liked dolls or cats.
Cats are too sneaky and dolls are _dead_.”

“Who lives in that house away up there?” asked Jerry.

“The Miss Wests—Rosemary and Ellen,” answered Nan. “Di and I are going
to take music lessons from Miss Rosemary this summer.”

Una gazed at the lucky twins with eyes whose longing was too gentle for
envy. Oh, if she could only have music lessons! It was one of the
dreams of her little hidden life. But nobody ever thought of such a
thing.

“Miss Rosemary is so sweet and she always dresses so pretty,” said Di.
“Her hair is just the colour of new molasses taffy,” she added
wistfully—for Di, like her mother before her, was not resigned to her
own ruddy tresses.

“I like Miss Ellen, too,” said Nan. “She always used to give me candies
when she came to church. But Di is afraid of her.”

“Her brows are so black and she has such a great deep voice,” said Di.
“Oh, how scared of her Kenneth Ford used to be when he was little!
Mother says the first Sunday Mrs. Ford brought him to church Miss Ellen
happened to be there, sitting right behind them. And the minute Kenneth
saw her he just screamed and screamed until Mrs. Ford had to carry him
out.”

“Who is Mrs. Ford?” asked Una wonderingly.

“Oh, the Fords don’t live here. They only come here in the summer. And
they’re not coming this summer. They live in that little house ‘way,
‘way down on the harbour shore where father and mother used to live. I
wish you could see Persis Ford. She is just like a picture.”

“I’ve heard of Mrs. Ford,” broke in Faith. “Bertie Shakespeare Drew
told me about her. She was married fourteen years to a dead man and
then he came to life.”

“Nonsense,” said Nan. “That isn’t the way it goes at all. Bertie
Shakespeare can never get anything straight. I know the whole story and
I’ll tell it to you some time, but not now, for it’s too long and it’s
time for us to go home. Mother doesn’t like us to be out late these
damp evenings.”

Nobody cared whether the manse children were out in the damp or not.
Aunt Martha was already in bed and the minister was still too deeply
lost in speculations concerning the immortality of the soul to remember
the mortality of the body. But they went home, too, with visions of
good times coming in their heads.

“I think Rainbow Valley is even nicer than the graveyard,” said Una.
“And I just love those dear Blythes. It’s _so_ nice when you can love
people because so often you _can’t_. Father said in his sermon last
Sunday that we should love everybody. But how can we? How could we love
Mrs. Alec Davis?”

“Oh, father only said that in the pulpit,” said Faith airily. “He has
more sense than to really think it outside.”

The Blythe children went up to Ingleside, except Jem, who slipped away
for a few moments on a solitary expedition to a remote corner of
Rainbow Valley. Mayflowers grew there and Jem never forgot to take his
mother a bouquet as long as they lasted.




CHAPTER V.
THE ADVENT OF MARY VANCE


“This is just the sort of day you feel as if things might happen,” said
Faith, responsive to the lure of crystal air and blue hills. She hugged
herself with delight and danced a hornpipe on old Hezekiah Pollock’s
bench tombstone, much to the horror of two ancient maidens who happened
to be driving past just as Faith hopped on one foot around the stone,
waving the other and her arms in the air.

“And that,” groaned one ancient maiden, “is our minister’s daughter.”

“What else could you expect of a widower’s family?” groaned the other
ancient maiden. And then they both shook their heads.

It was early on Saturday morning and the Merediths were out in the
dew-drenched world with a delightful consciousness of the holiday. They
had never had anything to do on a holiday. Even Nan and Di Blythe had
certain household tasks for Saturday mornings, but the daughters of the
manse were free to roam from blushing morn to dewy eve if so it pleased
them. It _did_ please Faith, but Una felt a secret, bitter humiliation
because they never learned to do anything. The other girls in her class
at school could cook and sew and knit; she only was a little ignoramus.

Jerry suggested that they go exploring; so they went lingeringly
through the fir grove, picking up Carl on the way, who was on his knees
in the dripping grass studying his darling ants. Beyond the grove they
came out in Mr. Taylor’s pasture field, sprinkled over with the white
ghosts of dandelions; in a remote corner was an old tumbledown barn,
where Mr. Taylor sometimes stored his surplus hay crop but which was
never used for any other purpose. Thither the Meredith children
trooped, and prowled about the ground floor for several minutes.

“What was that?” whispered Una suddenly.

They all listened. There was a faint but distinct rustle in the hayloft
above. The Merediths looked at each other.

“There’s something up there,” breathed Faith.

“I’m going up to see what it is,” said Jerry resolutely.

“Oh, don’t,” begged Una, catching his arm.

“I’m going.”

“We’ll all go, too, then,” said Faith.

The whole four climbed the shaky ladder, Jerry and Faith quite
dauntless, Una pale from fright, and Carl rather absent-mindedly
speculating on the possibility of finding a bat up in the loft. He
longed to see a bat in daylight.

When they stepped off the ladder they saw what had made the rustle and
the sight struck them dumb for a few moments.

In a little nest in the hay a girl was curled up, looking as if she had
just wakened from sleep. When she saw them she stood up, rather
shakily, as it seemed, and in the bright sunlight that streamed through
the cobwebbed window behind her, they saw that her thin, sunburned face
was very pale under its tan. She had two braids of lank, thick,
tow-coloured hair and very odd eyes—“white eyes,” the manse children
thought, as she stared at them half defiantly, half piteously. They
were really of so pale a blue that they did seem almost white,
especially when contrasted with the narrow black ring that circled the
iris. She was barefooted and bareheaded, and was clad in a faded,
ragged, old plaid dress, much too short and tight for her. As for
years, she might have been almost any age, judging from her wizened
little face, but her height seemed to be somewhere in the neighbourhood
of twelve.

“Who are you?” asked Jerry.

The girl looked about her as if seeking a way of escape. Then she
seemed to give in with a little shiver of despair.

“I’m Mary Vance,” she said.

“Where’d you come from?” pursued Jerry.

Mary, instead of replying, suddenly sat, or fell, down on the hay and
began to cry. Instantly Faith had flung herself down beside her and put
her arm around the thin, shaking shoulders.

“You stop bothering her,” she commanded Jerry. Then she hugged the
waif. “Don’t cry, dear. Just tell us what’s the matter. _We’re_
friends.”

“I’m so—so—hungry,” wailed Mary. “I—I hain’t had a thing to eat since
Thursday morning, ‘cept a little water from the brook out there.”

The manse children gazed at each other in horror. Faith sprang up.

“You come right up to the manse and get something to eat before you say
another word.”

Mary shrank.

“Oh—I can’t. What will your pa and ma say? Besides, they’d send me
back.”

“We’ve no mother, and father won’t bother about you. Neither will Aunt
Martha. Come, I say.” Faith stamped her foot impatiently. Was this
queer girl going to insist on starving to death almost at their very
door?

Mary yielded. She was so weak that she could hardly climb down the
ladder, but somehow they got her down and over the field and into the
manse kitchen. Aunt Martha, muddling through her Saturday cooking, took
no notice of her. Faith and Una flew to the pantry and ransacked it for
such eatables as it contained—some “ditto,” bread, butter, milk and a
doubtful pie. Mary Vance attacked the food ravenously and uncritically,
while the manse children stood around and watched her. Jerry noticed
that she had a pretty mouth and very nice, even, white teeth. Faith
decided, with secret horror, that Mary had not one stitch on her except
that ragged, faded dress. Una was full of pure pity, Carl of amused
wonder, and all of them of curiosity.

“Now come out to the graveyard and tell us about yourself,” ordered
Faith, when Mary’s appetite showed signs of failing her. Mary was now
nothing loath. Food had restored her natural vivacity and unloosed her
by no means reluctant tongue.

“You won’t tell your pa or anybody if I tell you?” she stipulated, when
she was enthroned on Mr. Pollock’s tombstone. Opposite her the manse
children lined up on another. Here was spice and mystery and adventure.
Something _had_ happened.

“No, we won’t.”

“Cross your hearts?”

“Cross our hearts.”

“Well, I’ve run away. I was living with Mrs. Wiley over-harbour. Do you
know Mrs. Wiley?”

“No.”

“Well, you don’t want to know her. She’s an awful woman. My, how I hate
her! She worked me to death and wouldn’t give me half enough to eat,
and she used to larrup me ‘most every day. Look a-here.”

Mary rolled up her ragged sleeves, and held up her scrawny arms and
thin hands, chapped almost to rawness. They were black with bruises.
The manse children shivered. Faith flushed crimson with indignation.
Una’s blue eyes filled with tears.

“She licked me Wednesday night with a stick,” said Mary, indifferently.
“It was ‘cause I let the cow kick over a pail of milk. How’d I know the
darn old cow was going to kick?”

A not unpleasant thrill ran over her listeners. They would never dream
of using such dubious words, but it was rather titivating to hear
someone else use them—and a girl, at that. Certainly this Mary Vance
was an interesting creature.

“I don’t blame you for running away,” said Faith.

“Oh, I didn’t run away ‘cause she licked me. A licking was all in the
day’s work with me. I was darn well used to it. Nope, I’d meant to run
away for a week ‘cause I’d found out that Mrs. Wiley was going to rent
her farm and go to Lowbridge to live and give me to a cousin of hers up
Charlottetown way. I wasn’t going to stand for _that_. She was a worse
sort than Mrs. Wiley even. Mrs. Wiley lent me to her for a month last
summer and I’d rather live with the devil himself.”

Sensation number two. But Una looked doubtful.

“So I made up my mind I’d beat it. I had seventy cents saved up that
Mrs. John Crawford give me in the spring for planting potatoes for her.
Mrs. Wiley didn’t know about it. She was away visiting her cousin when
I planted them. I thought I’d sneak up here to the Glen and buy a
ticket to Charlottetown and try to get work there. I’m a hustler, let
me tell you. There ain’t a lazy bone in _my_ body. So I lit out
Thursday morning ‘fore Mrs. Wiley was up and walked to the Glen—six
miles. And when I got to the station I found I’d lost my money. Dunno
how—dunno where. Anyhow, it was gone. I didn’t know what to do. If I
went back to old Lady Wiley she’d take the hide off me. So I went and
hid in that old barn.”

“And what will you do now?” asked Jerry.

“Dunno. I s’pose I’ll have to go back and take my medicine. Now that
I’ve got some grub in my stomach I guess I can stand it.”

But there was fear behind the bravado in Mary’s eyes. Una suddenly
slipped from the one tombstone to the other and put her arm about Mary.

“Don’t go back. Just stay here with us.”

“Oh, Mrs. Wiley’ll hunt me up,” said Mary. “It’s likely she’s on my
trail before this. I might stay here till she finds me, I s’pose, if
your folks don’t mind. I was a darn fool ever to think of skipping out.
She’d run a weasel to earth. But I was so misrebul.”

Mary’s voice quivered, but she was ashamed of showing her weakness.

“I hain’t had the life of a dog for these four years,” she explained
defiantly.

“You’ve been four years with Mrs. Wiley?”

“Yip. She took me out of the asylum over in Hopetown when I was eight.”

“That’s the same place Mrs. Blythe came from,” exclaimed Faith.

“I was two years in the asylum. I was put there when I was six. My ma
had hung herself and my pa had cut his throat.”

“Holy cats! Why?” said Jerry.

“Booze,” said Mary laconically.

“And you’ve no relations?”

“Not a darn one that I know of. Must have had some once, though. I was
called after half a dozen of them. My full name is Mary Martha Lucilla
Moore Ball Vance. Can you beat that? My grandfather was a rich man.
I’ll bet he was richer than _your_ grandfather. But pa drunk it all up
and ma, she did her part. _They_ used to beat me, too. Laws, I’ve been
licked so much I kind of like it.”

Mary tossed her head. She divined that the manse children were pitying
her for her many stripes and she did not want pity. She wanted to be
envied. She looked gaily about her. Her strange eyes, now that the
dullness of famine was removed from them, were brilliant. She would
show these youngsters what a personage she was.

“I’ve been sick an awful lot,” she said proudly. “There’s not many kids
could have come through what I have. I’ve had scarlet fever and measles
and ersipelas and mumps and whooping cough and pewmonia.”

“Were you ever fatally sick?” asked Una.

“I don’t know,” said Mary doubtfully.

“Of course she wasn’t,” scoffed Jerry. “If you’re fatally sick you
die.”

“Oh, well, I never died exactly,” said Mary, “but I come blamed near it
once. They thought I was dead and they were getting ready to lay me out
when I up and come to.”

“What is it like to be half dead?” asked Jerry curiously.

“Like nothing. I didn’t know it for days afterwards. It was when I had
the pewmonia. Mrs. Wiley wouldn’t have the doctor—said she wasn’t going
to no such expense for a home girl. Old Aunt Christina MacAllister
nursed me with poultices. She brung me round. But sometimes I wish I’d
just died the other half and done with it. I’d been better off.”

“If you went to heaven I s’pose you would,” said Faith, rather
doubtfully.

“Well, what other place is there to go to?” demanded Mary in a puzzled
voice.

“There’s hell, you know,” said Una, dropping her voice and hugging Mary
to lessen the awfulness of the suggestion.

“Hell? What’s that?”

“Why, it’s where the devil lives,” said Jerry. “You’ve heard of him—you
spoke about him.”

“Oh, yes, but I didn’t know he lived anywhere. I thought he just roamed
round. Mr. Wiley used to mention hell when he was alive. He was always
telling folks to go there. I thought it was some place over in New
Brunswick where he come from.”

“Hell is an awful place,” said Faith, with the dramatic enjoyment that
is born of telling dreadful things. “Bad people go there when they die
and burn in fire for ever and ever and ever.”

“Who told you that?” demanded Mary incredulously.

“It’s in the Bible. And Mr. Isaac Crothers at Maywater told us, too, in
Sunday School. He was an elder and a pillar in the church and knew all
about it. But you needn’t worry. If you’re good you’ll go to heaven and
if you’re bad I guess you’d rather go to hell.”

“I wouldn’t,” said Mary positively. “No matter how bad I was I wouldn’t
want to be burned and burned. _I_ know what it’s like. I picked up a
red hot poker once by accident. What must you do to be good?”

“You must go to church and Sunday School and read your Bible and pray
every night and give to missions,” said Una.

“It sounds like a large order,” said Mary. “Anything else?”

“You must ask God to forgive the sins you’ve committed.

“But I’ve never com—committed any,” said Mary. “What’s a sin any way?”

“Oh, Mary, you must have. Everybody does. Did you never tell a lie?”

“Heaps of ‘em,” said Mary.

“That’s a dreadful sin,” said Una solemnly.

“Do you mean to tell me,” demanded Mary, “that I’d be sent to hell for
telling a lie now and then? Why, I _had_ to. Mr. Wiley would have
broken every bone in my body one time if I hadn’t told him a lie. Lies
have saved me many a whack, I can tell you.”

Una sighed. Here were too many difficulties for her to solve. She
shuddered as she thought of being cruelly whipped. Very likely she
would have lied too. She squeezed Mary’s little calloused hand.

“Is that the only dress you’ve got?” asked Faith, whose joyous nature
refused to dwell on disagreeable subjects.

“I just put on this dress because it was no good,” cried Mary flushing.
“Mrs. Wiley’d bought my clothes and I wasn’t going to be beholden to
her for anything. And I’m honest. If I was going to run away I wasn’t
going to take what belong to _her_ that was worth anything. When I grow
up I’m going to have a blue sating dress. Your own clothes don’t look
so stylish. I thought ministers’ children were always dressed up.”

It was plain that Mary had a temper and was sensitive on some points.
But there was a queer, wild charm about her which captivated them all.
She was taken to Rainbow Valley that afternoon and introduced to the
Blythes as “a friend of ours from over-harbour who is visiting us.” The
Blythes accepted her unquestioningly, perhaps because she was fairly
respectable now. After dinner—through which Aunt Martha had mumbled and
Mr. Meredith had been in a state of semi-unconsciousness while brooding
his Sunday sermon—Faith had prevailed on Mary to put on one of her
dresses, as well as certain other articles of clothing. With her hair
neatly braided Mary passed muster tolerably well. She was an acceptable
playmate, for she knew several new and exciting games, and her
conversation lacked not spice. In fact, some of her expressions made
Nan and Di look at her rather askance. They were not quite sure what
their mother would have thought of her, but they knew quite well what
Susan would. However, she was a visitor at the manse, so she must be
all right.

When bedtime came there was the problem of where Mary should sleep.

“We can’t put her in the spare room, you know,” said Faith perplexedly
to Una.

“I haven’t got anything in my head,” cried Mary in an injured tone.

“Oh, I didn’t mean _that_,” protested Faith. “The spare room is all
torn up. The mice have gnawed a big hole in the feather tick and made a
nest in it. We never found it out till Aunt Martha put the Rev. Mr.
Fisher from Charlottetown there to sleep last week. _He_ soon found it
out. Then father had to give him his bed and sleep on the study lounge.
Aunt Martha hasn’t had time to fix the spare room bed up yet, so she
says; so _nobody_ can sleep there, no matter how clean their heads are.
And our room is so small, and the bed so small you can’t sleep with
us.”

“I can go back to the hay in the old barn for the night if you’ll lend
me a quilt,” said Mary philosophically. “It was kind of chilly last
night, but ‘cept for that I’ve had worse beds.”

“Oh, no, no, you mustn’t do that,” said Una. “I’ve thought of a plan,
Faith. You know that little trestle bed in the garret room, with the
old mattress on it, that the last minister left there? Let’s take up
the spare room bedclothes and make Mary a bed there. You won’t mind
sleeping in the garret, will you, Mary? It’s just above our room.”

“Any place’ll do me. Laws, I never had a decent place to sleep in my
life. I slept in the loft over the kitchen at Mrs. Wiley’s. The roof
leaked rain in the summer and the snow druv in in winter. My bed was a
straw tick on the floor. You won’t find me a mite huffy about where _I_
sleep.”

The manse garret was a long, low, shadowy place, with one gable end
partitioned off. Here a bed was made up for Mary of the dainty
hemstitched sheets and embroidered spread which Cecilia Meredith had
once so proudly made for her spare-room, and which still survived Aunt
Martha’s uncertain washings. The good nights were said and silence fell
over the manse. Una was just falling asleep when she heard a sound in
the room just above that made her sit up suddenly.

“Listen, Faith—Mary’s crying,” she whispered. Faith replied not, being
already asleep. Una slipped out of bed, and made her way in her little
white gown down the hall and up the garret stairs. The creaking floor
gave ample notice of her coming, and when she reached the corner room
all was moonlit silence and the trestle bed showed only a hump in the
middle.

“Mary,” whispered Una.

There was no response.

Una crept close to the bed and pulled at the spread. “Mary, I know you
are crying. I heard you. Are you lonesome?”

Mary suddenly appeared to view but said nothing.

“Let me in beside you. I’m cold,” said Una shivering in the chilly air,
for the little garret window was open and the keen breath of the north
shore at night blew in.

Mary moved over and Una snuggled down beside her.

“_Now_ you won’t be lonesome. We shouldn’t have left you here alone the
first night.”

“I wasn’t lonesome,” sniffed Mary.

“What were you crying for then?”

“Oh, I just got to thinking of things when I was here alone. I thought
of having to go back to Mrs. Wiley—and of being licked for running
away—and—and—and of going to hell for telling lies. It all worried me
something scandalous.”

“Oh, Mary,” said poor Una in distress. “I don’t believe God will send
you to hell for telling lies when you didn’t know it was wrong. He
_couldn’t_. Why, He’s kind and good. Of course, you mustn’t tell any
more now that you know it’s wrong.”

“If I can’t tell lies what’s to become of me?” said Mary with a sob.
“_You_ don’t understand. You don’t know anything about it. You’ve got a
home and a kind father—though it does seem to me that he isn’t more’n
about half there. But anyway he doesn’t lick you, and you get enough to
eat such as it is—though that old aunt of yours doesn’t know _anything_
about cooking. Why, this is the first day I ever remember of feeling
‘sif I’d enough to eat. I’ve been knocked about all of my life, ‘cept
for the two years I was at the asylum. They didn’t lick me there and it
wasn’t too bad, though the matron was cross. She always looked ready to
bite my head off a nail. But Mrs. Wiley is a holy terror, that’s what
_she_ is, and I’m just scared stiff when I think of going back to her.”

“Perhaps you won’t have to. Perhaps we’ll be able to think of a way
out. Let’s both ask God to keep you from having to go back to Mrs.
Wiley. You say your prayers, don’t you Mary?”

“Oh, yes, I always go over an old rhyme ‘fore I get into bed,” said
Mary indifferently. “I never thought of asking for anything in
particular though. Nobody in this world ever bothered themselves about
me so I didn’t s’pose God would. He _might_ take more trouble for you,
seeing you’re a minister’s daughter.”

“He’d take every bit as much trouble for you, Mary, I’m sure,” said
Una. “It doesn’t matter whose child you are. You just ask Him—and I
will, too.”

“All right,” agreed Mary. “It won’t do any harm if it doesn’t do much
good. If you knew Mrs. Wiley as well as I do you wouldn’t think God
would want to meddle with her. Anyhow, I won’t cry any more about it.
This is a big sight better’n last night down in that old barn, with the
mice running about. Look at the Four Winds light. Ain’t it pretty?”

“This is the only window we can see it from,” said Una. “I love to
watch it.”

“Do you? So do I. I could see it from the Wiley loft and it was the
only comfort I had. When I was all sore from being licked I’d watch it
and forget about the places that hurt. I’d think of the ships sailing
away and away from it and wish I was on one of them sailing far away
too—away from everything. On winter nights when it didn’t shine, I just
felt real lonesome. Say, Una, what makes all you folks so kind to me
when I’m just a stranger?”

“Because it’s right to be. The bible tells us to be kind to everybody.”

“Does it? Well, I guess most folks don’t mind it much then. I never
remember of any one being kind to me before—true’s you live I don’t.
Say, Una, ain’t them shadows on the walls pretty? They look just like a
flock of little dancing birds. And say, Una, I like all you folks and
them Blythe boys and Di, but I don’t like that Nan. She’s a proud one.”

“Oh, no, Mary, she isn’t a bit proud,” said Una eagerly. “Not a single
bit.”

“Don’t tell me. Any one that holds her head like that _is_ proud. I
don’t like her.”

“_We_ all like her very much.”

“Oh, I s’pose you like her better’n me?” said Mary jealously. “Do you?”

“Why, Mary—we’ve known her for weeks and we’ve only known you a few
hours,” stammered Una.

“So you do like her better then?” said Mary in a rage. “All right! Like
her all you want to. _I_ don’t care. _I_ can get along without you.”

She flung herself over against the wall of the garret with a slam.

“Oh, Mary,” said Una, pushing a tender arm over Mary’s uncompromising
back, “don’t talk like that. I _do_ like you ever so much. And you make
me feel so bad.”

No answer. Presently Una gave a sob. Instantly Mary squirmed around
again and engulfed Una in a bear’s hug.

“Hush up,” she ordered. “Don’t go crying over what I said. I was as
mean as the devil to talk that way. I orter to be skinned alive—and you
all so good to me. I should think you _would_ like any one better’n me.
I deserve every licking I ever got. Hush, now. If you cry any more I’ll
go and walk right down to the harbour in this night-dress and drown
myself.”

This terrible threat made Una choke back her sobs. Her tears were wiped
away by Mary with the lace frill of the spare-room pillow and forgiver
and forgiven cuddled down together again, harmony restored, to watch
the shadows of the vine leaves on the moonlit wall until they fell
asleep.

And in the study below Rev. John Meredith walked the floor with rapt
face and shining eyes, thinking out his message of the morrow, and knew
not that under his own roof there was a little forlorn soul, stumbling
in darkness and ignorance, beset by terror and compassed about with
difficulties too great for it to grapple in its unequal struggle with a
big indifferent world.




CHAPTER VI.
MARY STAYS AT THE MANSE


The manse children took Mary Vance to church with them the next day. At
first Mary objected to the idea.

“Didn’t you go to church over-harbour?” asked Una.

“You bet. Mrs. Wiley never troubled church much, but I went every
Sunday I could get off. I was mighty thankful to go to some place where
I could sit down for a spell. But I can’t go to church in this old
ragged dress.”

This difficulty was removed by Faith offering the loan of her second
best dress.

“It’s faded a little and two of the buttons are off, but I guess it’ll
do.”

“I’ll sew the buttons on in a jiffy,” said Mary.

“Not on Sunday,” said Una, shocked.

“Sure. The better the day the better the deed. You just gimme a needle
and thread and look the other way if you’re squeamish.”

Faith’s school boots, and an old black velvet cap that had once been
Cecilia Meredith’s, completed Mary’s costume, and to church she went.
Her behaviour was quite conventional, and though some wondered who the
shabby little girl with the manse children was she did not attract much
attention. She listened to the sermon with outward decorum and joined
lustily in the singing. She had, it appeared, a clear, strong voice and
a good ear.

“His blood can make the _violets_ clean,” carolled Mary blithely. Mrs.
Jimmy Milgrave, whose pew was just in front of the manse pew, turned
suddenly and looked the child over from top to toe. Mary, in a mere
superfluity of naughtiness, stuck out her tongue at Mrs. Milgrave, much
to Una’s horror.

“I couldn’t help it,” she declared after church. “What’d she want to
stare at me like that for? Such manners! I’m _glad_ I stuck my tongue
out at her. I wish I’d stuck it farther out. Say, I saw Rob MacAllister
from over-harbour there. Wonder if he’ll tell Mrs. Wiley on me.”

No Mrs. Wiley appeared, however, and in a few days the children forgot
to look for her. Mary was apparently a fixture at the manse. But she
refused to go to school with the others.

“Nope. I’ve finished my education,” she said, when Faith urged her to
go. “I went to school four winters since I come to Mrs. Wiley’s and
I’ve had all I want of _that_. I’m sick and tired of being
everlastingly jawed at ‘cause I didn’t get my home-lessons done. _I’d_
no time to do home-lessons.”

“Our teacher won’t jaw you. He is awfully nice,” said Faith.

“Well, I ain’t going. I can read and write and cipher up to fractions.
That’s all I want. You fellows go and I’ll stay home. You needn’t be
scared I’ll steal anything. I swear I’m honest.”

Mary employed herself while the others were at school in cleaning up
the manse. In a few days it was a different place. Floors were swept,
furniture dusted, everything straightened out. She mended the
spare-room bed-tick, she sewed on missing buttons, she patched clothes
neatly, she even invaded the study with broom and dustpan and ordered
Mr. Meredith out while she put it to rights. But there was one
department with which Aunt Martha refused to let her interfere. Aunt
Martha might be deaf and half blind and very childish, but she was
resolved to keep the commissariat in her own hands, in spite of all
Mary’s wiles and stratagems.

“I can tell you if old Martha’d let _me_ cook you’d have some decent
meals,” she told the manse children indignantly. “There’d be no more
‘ditto’—and no more lumpy porridge and blue milk either. What _does_
she do with all the cream?”

“She gives it to the cat. He’s hers, you know,” said Faith.

“I’d like to _cat_ her,” exclaimed Mary bitterly. “I’ve no use for cats
anyhow. They belong to the old Nick. You can tell that by their eyes.
Well, if old Martha won’t, she won’t, I s’pose. But it gits on my
nerves to see good vittles spoiled.”

When school came out they always went to Rainbow Valley. Mary refused
to play in the graveyard. She declared she was afraid of ghosts.

“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” declared Jem Blythe.

“Oh, ain’t there?”

“Did you ever see any?”

“Hundreds of ‘em,” said Mary promptly.

“What are they like?” said Carl.

“Awful-looking. Dressed all in white with skellington hands and heads,”
said Mary.

“What did you do?” asked Una.

“Run like the devil,” said Mary. Then she caught Walter’s eyes and
blushed. Mary was a good deal in awe of Walter. She declared to the
manse girls that his eyes made her nervous.

“I think of all the lies I’ve ever told when I look into them,” she
said, “and I wish I hadn’t.”

Jem was Mary’s favourite. When he took her to the attic at Ingleside
and showed her the museum of curios that Captain Jim Boyd had
bequeathed to him she was immensely pleased and flattered. She also won
Carl’s heart entirely by her interest in his beetles and ants. It could
not be denied that Mary got on rather better with the boys than with
the girls. She quarrelled bitterly with Nan Blythe the second day.

“Your mother is a witch,” she told Nan scornfully. “Red-haired women
are always witches.” Then she and Faith fell out about the rooster.
Mary said its tail was too short. Faith angrily retorted that she
guessed God know what length to make a rooster’s tail. They did not
“speak” for a day over this. Mary treated Una’s hairless, one-eyed doll
with consideration; but when Una showed her other prized treasure—a
picture of an angel carrying a baby, presumably to heaven, Mary
declared that it looked too much like a ghost for her. Una crept away
to her room and cried over this, but Mary hunted her out, hugged her
repentantly and implored forgiveness. No one could keep up a quarrel
long with Mary—not even Nan, who was rather prone to hold grudges and
never quite forgave the insult to her mother. Mary was jolly. She could
and did tell the most thrilling ghost stories. Rainbow Valley seances
were undeniably more exciting after Mary came. She learned to play on
the jew’s-harp and soon eclipsed Jerry.

“Never struck anything yet I couldn’t do if I put my mind to it,” she
declared. Mary seldom lost a chance of tooting her own horn. She taught
them how to make “blow-bags” out of the thick leaves of the
“live-forever” that flourished in the old Bailey garden, she initiated
them into the toothsome qualities of the “sours” that grew in the
niches of the graveyard dyke, and she could make the most wonderful
shadow pictures on the walls with her long, flexible fingers. And when
they all went picking gum in Rainbow Valley Mary always got “the
biggest chew” and bragged about it. There were times when they hated
her and times when they loved her. But at all times they found her
interesting. So they submitted quite meekly to her bossing, and by the
end of a fortnight had come to feel that she must always have been with
them.

“It’s the queerest thing that Mrs. Wiley hain’t been after me,” said
Mary. “I can’t understand it.”

“Maybe she isn’t going to bother about you at all,” said Una. “Then you
can just go on staying here.”

“This house ain’t hardly big enough for me and old Martha,” said Mary
darkly. “It’s a very fine thing to have enough to eat—I’ve often
wondered what it would be like—but I’m p’ticler about my cooking. And
Mrs. Wiley’ll be here yet. _She’s_ got a rod in pickle for me all
right. I don’t think about it so much in daytime but say, girls, up
there in that garret at night I git to thinking and thinking of it,
till I just almost wish she’d come and have it over with. I dunno’s one
real good whipping would be much worse’n all the dozen I’ve lived
through in my mind ever since I run away. Were any of you ever licked?”

“No, of course not,” said Faith indignantly. “Father would never do
such a thing.”

“You don’t know you’re alive,” said Mary with a sigh half of envy, half
of superiority. “You don’t know what I’ve come through. And I s’pose
the Blythes were never licked either?”

“No-o-o, I guess not. But I _think_ they were sometimes spanked when
they were small.”

“A spanking doesn’t amount to anything,” said Mary contemptuously. “If
my folks had just spanked me I’d have thought they were petting me.
Well, it ain’t a fair world. I wouldn’t mind taking my share of
wallopings but I’ve had a darn sight too many.”

“It isn’t right to say that word, Mary,” said Una reproachfully. “You
promised me you wouldn’t say it.”

“G’way,” responded Mary. “If you knew some of the words I _could_ say
if I liked you wouldn’t make such a fuss over darn. And you know very
well I hain’t ever told any lies since I come here.”

“What about all those ghosts you said you saw?” asked Faith.

Mary blushed.

“That was diff’runt,” she said defiantly. “I knew you wouldn’t believe
them yarns and I didn’t intend you to. And I really did see something
queer one night when I was passing the over-harbour graveyard, true’s
you live. I dunno whether ‘twas a ghost or Sandy Crawford’s old white
nag, but it looked blamed queer and I tell you I scooted at the rate of
no man’s business.”




CHAPTER VII.
A FISHY EPISODE


Rilla Blythe walked proudly, and perhaps a little primly, through the
main “street” of the Glen and up the manse hill, carefully carrying a
small basketful of early strawberries, which Susan had coaxed into
lusciousness in one of the sunny nooks of Ingleside. Susan had charged
Rilla to give the basket to nobody except Aunt Martha or Mr. Meredith,
and Rilla, very proud of being entrusted with such an errand, was
resolved to carry out her instructions to the letter.

Susan had dressed her daintily in a white, starched, and embroidered
dress, with sash of blue and beaded slippers. Her long ruddy curls were
sleek and round, and Susan had let her put on her best hat, out of
compliment to the manse. It was a somewhat elaborate affair, wherein
Susan’s taste had had more to say than Anne’s, and Rilla’s small soul
gloried in its splendours of silk and lace and flowers. She was very
conscious of her hat, and I am afraid she strutted up the manse hill.
The strut, or the hat, or both, got on the nerves of Mary Vance, who
was swinging on the lawn gate. Mary’s temper was somewhat ruffled just
then, into the bargain. Aunt Martha had refused to let her peel the
potatoes and had ordered her out of the kitchen.

“Yah! You’ll bring the potatoes to the table with strips of skin
hanging to them and half boiled as usual! My, but it’ll be nice to go
to your funeral,” shrieked Mary. She went out of the kitchen, giving
the door such a bang that even Aunt Martha heard it, and Mr. Meredith
in his study felt the vibration and thought absently that there must
have been a slight earthquake shock. Then he went on with his sermon.

Mary slipped from the gate and confronted the spick-and-span damsel of
Ingleside.

“What you got there?” she demanded, trying to take the basket.

Rilla resisted. “It’th for Mithter Meredith,” she lisped.

“Give it to me. _I’ll_ give it to him,” said Mary.

“No. Thuthan thaid that I wathn’t to give it to anybody but Mithter
Mer’dith or Aunt Martha,” insisted Rilla.

Mary eyed her sourly.

“You think you’re something, don’t you, all dressed up like a doll!
Look at me. My dress is all rags and _I_ don’t care! I’d rather be
ragged than a doll baby. Go home and tell them to put you in a glass
case. Look at me—look at me—look at me!”

Mary executed a wild dance around the dismayed and bewildered Rilla,
flirting her ragged skirt and vociferating “Look at me—look at me”
until poor Rilla was dizzy. But as the latter tried to edge away
towards the gate Mary pounced on her again.

“You give me that basket,” she ordered with a grimace. Mary was past
mistress in the art of “making faces.” She could give her countenance a
most grotesque and unearthly appearance out of which her strange,
brilliant, white eyes gleamed with weird effect.

“I won’t,” gasped Rilla, frightened but staunch. “You let me go, Mary
Vanth.”

Mary let go for a minute and looked around her. Just inside the gate
was a small “flake,” on which a half a dozen large codfish were drying.
One of Mr. Meredith’s parishioners had presented him with them one day,
perhaps in lieu of the subscription he was supposed to pay to the
stipend and never did. Mr. Meredith had thanked him and then forgotten
all about the fish, which would have promptly spoiled had not the
indefatigable Mary prepared them for drying and rigged up the “flake”
herself on which to dry them.

Mary had a diabolical inspiration. She flew to the “flake” and seized
the largest fish there—a huge, flat thing, nearly as big as herself.
With a whoop she swooped down on the terrified Rilla, brandishing her
weird missile. Rilla’s courage gave way. To be lambasted with a dried
codfish was such an unheard-of thing that Rilla could not face it. With
a shriek she dropped her basket and fled. The beautiful berries, which
Susan had so tenderly selected for the minister, rolled in a rosy
torrent over the dusty road and were trodden on by the flying feet of
pursuer and pursued. The basket and contents were no longer in Mary’s
mind. She thought only of the delight of giving Rilla Blythe the scare
of her life. She would teach _her_ to come giving herself airs because
of her fine clothes.

Rilla flew down the hill and along the street. Terror lent wings to her
feet, and she just managed to keep ahead of Mary, who was somewhat
hampered by her own laughter, but who had breath enough to give
occasional blood-curdling whoops as she ran, flourishing her codfish in
the air. Through the Glen street they swept, while everybody ran to the
windows and gates to see them. Mary felt she was making a tremendous
sensation and enjoyed it. Rilla, blind with terror and spent of breath,
felt that she could run no longer. In another instant that terrible
girl would be on her with the codfish. At this point the poor mite
stumbled and fell into the mud-puddle at the end of the street just as
Miss Cornelia came out of Carter Flagg’s store.

Miss Cornelia took the whole situation in at a glance. So did Mary. The
latter stopped short in her mad career and before Miss Cornelia could
speak she had whirled around and was running up as fast as she had run
down. Miss Cornelia’s lips tightened ominously, but she knew it was no
use to think of chasing her. So she picked up poor, sobbing,
dishevelled Rilla instead and took her home. Rilla was heart-broken.
Her dress and slippers and hat were ruined and her six year old pride
had received terrible bruises.

Susan, white with indignation, heard Miss Cornelia’s story of Mary
Vance’s exploit.

“Oh, the hussy—oh, the littly hussy!” she said, as she carried Rilla
away for purification and comfort.

“This thing has gone far enough, Anne dearie,” said Miss Cornelia
resolutely. “Something must be done. _Who_ is this creature who is
staying at the manse and where does she come from?”

“I understood she was a little girl from over-harbour who was visiting
at the manse,” answered Anne, who saw the comical side of the codfish
chase and secretly thought Rilla was rather vain and needed a lesson or
two.

“I know all the over-harbour families who come to our church and that
imp doesn’t belong to any of them,” retorted Miss Cornelia. “She is
almost in rags and when she goes to church she wears Faith Meredith’s
old clothes. There’s some mystery here, and I’m going to investigate
it, since it seems nobody else will. I believe she was at the bottom of
their goings-on in Warren Mead’s spruce bush the other day. Did you
hear of their frightening his mother into a fit?”

“No. I knew Gilbert had been called to see her, but I did not hear what
the trouble was.”

“Well, you know she has a weak heart. And one day last week, when she
was all alone on the veranda, she heard the most awful shrieks of
‘murder’ and ‘help’ coming from the bush—positively frightful sounds,
Anne dearie. Her heart gave out at once. Warren heard them himself at
the barn, and went straight to the bush to investigate, and there he
found all the manse children sitting on a fallen tree and screaming
‘murder’ at the top of their lungs. They told him they were only in fun
and didn’t think anyone would hear them. They were just playing Indian
ambush. Warren went back to the house and found his poor mother
unconscious on the veranda.”

Susan, who had returned, sniffed contemptuously.

“I think she was very far from being unconscious, Mrs. Marshall
Elliott, and that you may tie to. I have been hearing of Amelia
Warren’s weak heart for forty years. She had it when she was twenty.
She enjoys making a fuss and having the doctor, and any excuse will
do.”

“I don’t think Gilbert thought her attack very serious,” said Anne.

“Oh, that may very well be,” said Miss Cornelia. “But the matter has
made an awful lot of talk and the Meads being Methodists makes it that
much worse. What is going to become of those children? Sometimes I
can’t sleep at nights for thinking about them, Anne dearie. I really do
question if they get enough to eat, even, for their father is so lost
in dreams that he doesn’t often remember he has a stomach, and that
lazy old woman doesn’t bother cooking what she ought. They are just
running wild and now that school is closing they’ll be worse than
ever.”

“They do have jolly times,” said Anne, laughing over the recollections
of some Rainbow Valley happenings that had come to her ears. “And they
are all brave and frank and loyal and truthful.”

“That’s a true word, Anne dearie, and when you come to think of all the
trouble in the church those two tattling, deceitful youngsters of the
last minister’s made, I’m inclined to overlook a good deal in the
Merediths.”

“When all is said and done, Mrs. Dr. dear, they are very nice
children,” said Susan. “They have got plenty of original sin in them
and that I will admit, but maybe it is just as well, for if they had
not they might spoil from over-sweetness. Only I do think it is not
proper for them to play in a graveyard and that I will maintain.”

“But they really play quite quietly there,” excused Anne. “They don’t
run and yell as they do elsewhere. Such howls as drift up here from
Rainbow Valley sometimes! Though I fancy my own small fry bear a
valiant part in them. They had a sham battle there last night and had
to ‘roar’ themselves, because they had no artillery to do it, so Jem
says. Jem is passing through the stage where all boys hanker to be
soldiers.”

“Well, thank goodness, he’ll never be a soldier,” said Miss Cornelia.
“I never approved of our boys going to that South African fracas. But
it’s over, and not likely anything of the kind will ever happen again.
I think the world is getting more sensible. As for the Merediths, I’ve
said many a time and I say it again, if Mr. Meredith had a wife all
would be well.”

“He called twice at the Kirks’ last week, so I am told,” said Susan.

“Well,” said Miss Cornelia thoughtfully, “as a rule, I don’t approve of
a minister marrying in his congregation. It generally spoils him. But
in this case it would do no harm, for every one likes Elizabeth Kirk
and nobody else is hankering for the job of stepmothering those
youngsters. Even the Hill girls balk at that. They haven’t been found
laying traps for Mr. Meredith. Elizabeth would make him a good wife if
he only thought so. But the trouble is, she really is homely and, Anne
dearie, Mr. Meredith, abstracted as he is, has an eye for a
good-looking woman, man-like. He isn’t _so_ other-worldly when it comes
to that, believe _me_.”

“Elizabeth Kirk is a very nice person, but they do say that people have
nearly frozen to death in her mother’s spare-room bed before now, Mrs.
Dr. dear,” said Susan darkly. “If I felt I had any right to express an
opinion concerning such a solemn matter as a minister’s marriage I
would say that I think Elizabeth’s cousin Sarah, over-harbour, would
make Mr. Meredith a better wife.”

“Why, Sarah Kirk is a Methodist,” said Miss Cornelia, much as if Susan
had suggested a Hottentot as a manse bride.

“She would likely turn Presbyterian if she married Mr. Meredith,”
retorted Susan.

Miss Cornelia shook her head. Evidently with her it was, once a
Methodist, always a Methodist.

“Sarah Kirk is entirely out of the question,” she said positively. “And
so is Emmeline Drew—though the Drews are all trying to make the match.
They are literally throwing poor Emmeline at his head, and he hasn’t
the least idea of it.”

“Emmeline Drew has no gumption, I must allow,” said Susan. “She is the
kind of woman, Mrs. Dr. dear, who would put a hot-water bottle in your
bed on a dog-night and then have her feelings hurt because you were not
grateful. And her mother was a very poor housekeeper. Did you ever hear
the story of her dishcloth? She lost her dishcloth one day. But the
next day she found it. Oh, yes, Mrs. Dr. dear, she found it, in the
goose at the dinner-table, mixed up with the stuffing. Do you think a
woman like that would do for a minister’s mother-in-law? I do not. But
no doubt I would be better employed in mending little Jem’s trousers
than in talking gossip about my neighbours. He tore them something
scandalous last night in Rainbow Valley.”

“Where is Walter?” asked Anne.

“He is up to no good, I fear, Mrs. Dr. dear. He is in the attic writing
something in an exercise book. And he has not done as well in
arithmetic this term as he should, so the teacher tells me. Too well I
know the reason why. He has been writing silly rhymes when he should
have been doing his sums. I am afraid that boy is going to be a poet,
Mrs. Dr. dear.”

“He is a poet now, Susan.”

“Well, you take it real calm, Mrs. Dr. dear. I suppose it is the best
way, when a person has the strength. I had an uncle who began by being
a poet and ended up by being a tramp. Our family were dreadfully
ashamed of him.”

“You don’t seem to think very highly of poets, Susan,” said Anne,
laughing.

“Who does, Mrs. Dr. dear?” asked Susan in genuine astonishment.

“What about Milton and Shakespeare? And the poets of the Bible?”

“They tell me Milton could not get along with his wife, and Shakespeare
was no more than respectable by times. As for the Bible, of course
things were different in those sacred days—although I never had a high
opinion of King David, say what you will. I never knew any good to come
of writing poetry, and I hope and pray that blessed boy will outgrow
the tendency. If he does not—we must see what emulsion of cod-liver oil
will do.”




CHAPTER VIII.
MISS CORNELIA INTERVENES


Miss Cornelia descended upon the manse the next day and
cross-questioned Mary, who, being a young person of considerable
discernment and astuteness, told her story simple and truthfully, with
an entire absence of complaint or bravado. Miss Cornelia was more
favourably impressed than she had expected to be, but deemed it her
duty to be severe.

“Do you think,” she said sternly, “that you showed your gratitude to
this family, who have been far too kind to you, by insulting and
chasing one of their little friends as you did yesterday?”

“Say, it was rotten mean of me,” admitted Mary easily. “I dunno what
possessed me. That old codfish seemed to come in so blamed handy. But I
was awful sorry—I cried last night after I went to bed about it, honest
I did. You ask Una if I didn’t. I wouldn’t tell her what for ‘cause I
was ashamed of it, and then she cried, too, because she was afraid
someone had hurt my feelings. Laws, _I_ ain’t got any feelings to hurt
worth speaking of. What worries me is why Mrs. Wiley hain’t been
hunting for me. It ain’t like her.”

Miss Cornelia herself thought it rather peculiar, but she merely
admonished Mary sharply not to take any further liberties with the
minister’s codfish, and went to report progress at Ingleside.

“If the child’s story is true the matter ought to be looked into,” she
said. “I know something about that Wiley woman, believe _me_. Marshall
used to be well acquainted with her when he lived over-harbour. I heard
him say something last summer about her and a home child she had—likely
this very Mary-creature. He said some one told him she was working the
child to death and not half feeding and clothing it. You know, Anne
dearie, it has always been my habit neither to make nor meddle with
those over-harbour folks. But I shall send Marshall over to-morrow to
find out the rights of this if he can. And _then_ I’ll speak to the
minister. Mind you, Anne dearie, the Merediths found this girl
literally starving in James Taylor’s old hay barn. She had been there
all night, cold and hungry and alone. And us sleeping warm in our beds
after good suppers.”

“The poor little thing,” said Anne, picturing one of her own dear
babies, cold and hungry and alone in such circumstances. “If she has
been ill-used, Miss Cornelia, she mustn’t be taken back to such a
place. _I_ was an orphan once in a very similar situation.”

“We’ll have to consult the Hopetown asylum folks,” said Miss Cornelia.
“Anyway, she can’t be left at the manse. Dear knows what those poor
children might learn from her. I understand that she has been known to
swear. But just think of her being there two whole weeks and Mr
Meredith never waking up to it! What business has a man like that to
have a family? Why, Anne dearie, he ought to be a monk.”

Two evenings later Miss Cornelia was back at Ingleside.

“It’s the most amazing thing!” she said. “Mrs. Wiley was found dead in
her bed the very morning after this Mary-creature ran away. She has had
a bad heart for years and the doctor had warned her it might happen at
any time. She had sent away her hired man and there was nobody in the
house. Some neighbours found her the next day. They missed the child,
it seems, but supposed Mrs. Wiley had sent her to her cousin near
Charlottetown as she had said she was going to do. The cousin didn’t
come to the funeral and so nobody ever knew that Mary wasn’t with her.
The people Marshall talked to told him some things about the way Mrs.
Wiley used this Mary that made his blood boil, so he declares. You
know, it puts Marshall in a regular fury to hear of a child being
ill-used. They said she whipped her mercilessly for every little fault
or mistake. Some folks talked of writing to the asylum authorities but
everybody’s business is nobody’s business and it was never done.”

“I am sorry that Wiley person is dead,” said Susan fiercely. “I should
like to go over-harbour and give her a piece of my mind. Starving and
beating a child, Mrs. Dr. dear! As you know, I hold with lawful
spanking, but I go no further. And what is to become of this poor child
now, Mrs. Marshall Elliott?”

“I suppose she must be sent back to Hopetown,” said Miss Cornelia. “I
think every one hereabouts who wants a home child has one. I’ll see Mr.
Meredith to-morrow and tell him my opinion of the whole affair.”

“And no doubt she will, Mrs. Dr. dear,” said Susan, after Miss Cornelia
had gone. “She would stick at nothing, not even at shingling the church
spire if she took it into her head. But I cannot understand how even
Cornelia Bryant can talk to a minister as she does. You would think he
was just any common person.”

When Miss Cornelia had gone, Nan Blythe uncurled herself from the
hammock where she had been studying her lessons and slipped away to
Rainbow Valley. The others were already there. Jem and Jerry were
playing quoits with old horseshoes borrowed from the Glen blacksmith.
Carl was stalking ants on a sunny hillock. Walter, lying on his stomach
among the fern, was reading aloud to Mary and Di and Faith and Una from
a wonderful book of myths wherein were fascinating accounts of Prester
John and the Wandering Jew, divining rods and tailed men, of Schamir,
the worm that split rocks and opened the way to golden treasure, of
Fortunate Isles and swan-maidens. It was a great shock to Walter to
learn that William Tell and Gelert were myths also; and the story of
Bishop Hatto was to keep him awake all that night; but best of all he
loved the stories of the Pied Piper and the San Greal. He read them
thrillingly, while the bells on the Tree Lovers tinkled in the summer
wind and the coolness of the evening shadows crept across the valley.

“Say, ain’t them in’resting lies?” said Mary admiringly when Walter had
closed the book.

“They aren’t lies,” said Di indignantly.

“You don’t mean they’re true?” asked Mary incredulously.

“No—not exactly. They’re like those ghost-stories of yours. They
weren’t true—but you didn’t expect us to believe them, so they weren’t
lies.”

“That yarn about the divining rod is no lie, anyhow,” said Mary. “Old
Jake Crawford over-harbour can work it. They send for him from
everywhere when they want to dig a well. And I believe I know the
Wandering Jew.”

“Oh, Mary,” said Una, awe-struck.

“I do—true’s you’re alive. There was an old man at Mrs. Wiley’s one day
last fall. He looked old enough to be _anything_. She was asking him
about cedar posts, if he thought they’d last well. And he said, ‘Last
well? They’ll last a thousand years. I know, for I’ve tried them
twice.’ Now, if he was two thousand years old who was he but your
Wandering Jew?”

“I don’t believe the Wandering Jew would associate with a person like
Mrs. Wiley,” said Faith decidedly.

“I love the Pied Piper story,” said Di, “and so does mother. I always
feel so sorry for the poor little lame boy who couldn’t keep up with
the others and got shut out of the mountain. He must have been so
disappointed. I think all the rest of his life he’d be wondering what
wonderful thing he had missed and wishing he could have got in with the
others.”

“But how glad his mother must have been,” said Una softly. “I think she
had been sorry all her life that he was lame. Perhaps she even used to
cry about it. But she would never be sorry again—never. She would be
glad he was lame because that was why she hadn’t lost him.”

“Some day,” said Walter dreamily, looking afar into the sky, “the Pied
Piper will come over the hill up there and down Rainbow Valley, piping
merrily and sweetly. And I will follow him—follow him down to the
shore—down to the sea—away from you all. I don’t think I’ll want to
go—Jem will want to go—it will be such an adventure—but I won’t. Only
I’ll _have_ to—the music will call and call and call me until I _must_
follow.”

“We’ll all go,” cried Di, catching fire at the flame of Walter’s fancy,
and half-believing she could see the mocking, retreating figure of the
mystic piper in the far, dim end of the valley.

“No. You’ll sit here and wait,” said Walter, his great, splendid eyes
full of strange glamour. “You’ll wait for us to come back. And we may
not come—for we cannot come as long as the Piper plays. He may pipe us
round the world. And still you’ll sit here and wait—and _wait_.”

“Oh, dry up,” said Mary, shivering. “Don’t look like that, Walter
Blythe. You give me the creeps. Do you want to set me bawling? I could
just see that horrid old Piper going away on, and you boys following
him, and us girls sitting here waiting all alone. I dunno why it is—I
never was one of the blubbering kind—but as soon as you start your
spieling I always want to cry.”

Walter smiled in triumph. He liked to exercise this power of his over
his companions—to play on their feelings, waken their fears, thrill
their souls. It satisfied some dramatic instinct in him. But under his
triumph was a queer little chill of some mysterious dread. The Pied
Piper had seemed very real to him—as if the fluttering veil that hid
the future had for a moment been blown aside in the starlit dusk of
Rainbow Valley and some dim glimpse of coming years granted to him.

Carl, coming up to their group with a report of the doings in ant-land,
brought them all back to the realm of facts.

“Ants _are_ darned in’resting,” exclaimed Mary, glad to escape the
shadowy Piper’s thrall. “Carl and me watched that bed in the graveyard
all Saturday afternoon. I never thought there was so much in bugs. Say,
but they’re quarrelsome little cusses—some of ‘em like to start a fight
‘thout any reason, far’s we could see. And some of ‘em are cowards.
They got so scared they just doubled theirselves up into a ball and let
the other fellows bang ‘em. They wouldn’t put up a fight at all. Some
of ‘em are lazy and won’t work. We watched ‘em shirking. And there was
one ant died of grief ‘cause another ant got killed—wouldn’t
work—wouldn’t eat—just died—it did, honest to Go—oodness.”

A shocked silence prevailed. Every one knew that Mary had not started
out to say “goodness.” Faith and Di exchanged glances that would have
done credit to Miss Cornelia herself. Walter and Carl looked
uncomfortable and Una’s lip trembled.

Mary squirmed uncomfortably.

“That slipped out ‘fore I thought—it did, honest to—I mean, true’s you
live, and I swallowed half of it. You folks over here are mighty
squeamish seems to me. Wish you could have heard the Wileys when they
had a fight.”

“Ladies don’t say such things,” said Faith, very primly for her.

“It isn’t right,” whispered Una.

“I ain’t a lady,” said Mary. “What chance’ve I ever had of being a
lady? But I won’t say that again if I can help it. I promise you.”

“Besides,” said Una, “you can’t expect God to answer your prayers if
you take His name in vain, Mary.”

“I don’t expect Him to answer ‘em anyhow,” said Mary of little faith.
“I’ve been asking Him for a week to clear up this Wiley affair and He
hasn’t done a thing. I’m going to give up.”

At this juncture Nan arrived breathless.

“Oh, Mary, I’ve news for you. Mrs. Elliott has been over-harbour and
what do you think she found out? Mrs. Wiley is dead—she was found dead
in bed the morning after you ran away. So you’ll never have to go back
to her.”

“Dead!” said Mary stupefied. Then she shivered.

“Do you s’pose my praying had anything to do with that?” she cried
imploringly to Una. “If it had I’ll never pray again as long as I live.
Why, she may come back and ha’nt me.”

“No, no, Mary,” said Una comfortingly, “it hadn’t. Why, Mrs. Wiley died
long before you ever began to pray about it at all.”

“That’s so,” said Mary recovering from her panic. “But I tell you it
gave me a start. I wouldn’t like to think I’d prayed anybody to death.
I never thought of such a thing as her dying when I was praying. She
didn’t seem much like the dying kind. Did Mrs. Elliott say anything
about me?”

“She said you would likely have to go back to the asylum.”

“I thought as much,” said Mary drearily. “And then they’ll give me out
again—likely to some one just like Mrs. Wiley. Well, I s’pose I can
stand it. I’m tough.”

“I’m going to pray that you won’t have to go back,” whispered Una, as
she and Mary walked home to the manse.

“You can do as you like,” said Mary decidedly, “but I vow _I_ won’t.
I’m good and scared of this praying business. See what’s come of it. If
Mrs. Wiley _had_ died after I started praying it would have been my
doings.”

“Oh, no, it wouldn’t,” said Una. “I wish I could explain things
better—father could, I know, if you’d talk to him, Mary.”

“Catch me! I don’t know what to make of your father, that’s the long
and short of it. He goes by me and never sees me in broad daylight. I
ain’t proud—but I ain’t a door-mat, neither!”

“Oh, Mary, it’s just father’s way. Most of the time he never sees us,
either. He is thinking deeply, that is all. And I _am_ going to pray
that God will keep you in Four Winds—because I like you, Mary.”

“All right. Only don’t let me hear of any more people dying on account
of it,” said Mary. “I’d like to stay in Four Winds fine. I like it and
I like the harbour and the light house—and you and the Blythes. You’re
the only friends I ever had and I’d hate to leave you.”




CHAPTER IX.
UNA INTERVENES


Miss Cornelia had an interview with Mr. Meredith which proved something
of a shock to that abstracted gentleman. She pointed out to him, none
too respectfully, his dereliction of duty in allowing a waif like Mary
Vance to come into his family and associate with his children without
knowing or learning anything about her.

“I don’t say there is much harm done, of course,” she concluded. “This
Mary-creature isn’t what you might call bad, when all is said and done.
I’ve been questioning your children and the Blythes, and from what I
can make out there’s nothing much to be said against the child except
that she’s slangy and doesn’t use very refined language. But think what
might have happened if she’d been like some of those home children we
know of. You know yourself what that poor little creature the Jim
Flaggs’ had, taught and told the Flagg children.”

Mr. Meredith did know and was honestly shocked over his own
carelessness in the matter.

“But what is to be done, Mrs. Elliott?” he asked helplessly. “We can’t
turn the poor child out. She must be cared for.”

“Of course. We’d better write to the Hopetown authorities at once.
Meanwhile, I suppose she might as well stay here for a few more days
till we hear from them. But keep your eyes and ears open, Mr.
Meredith.”

Susan would have died of horror on the spot if she had heard Miss
Cornelia so admonishing a minister. But Miss Cornelia departed in a
warm glow of satisfaction over duty done, and that night Mr. Meredith
asked Mary to come into his study with him. Mary obeyed, looking
literally ghastly with fright. But she got the surprise of her poor,
battered little life. This man, of whom she had stood so terribly in
awe, was the kindest, gentlest soul she had ever met. Before she knew
what happened Mary found herself pouring all her troubles into his ear
and receiving in return such sympathy and tender understanding as it
had never occurred to her to imagine. Mary left the study with her face
and eyes so softened that Una hardly knew her.

“Your father’s all right, when he does wake up,” she said with a sniff
that just escaped being a sob. “It’s a pity he doesn’t wake up oftener.
He said I wasn’t to blame for Mrs. Wiley dying, but that I must try to
think of her good points and not of her bad ones. I dunno what good
points she had, unless it was keeping her house clean and making
first-class butter. I know I ‘most wore my arms out scrubbing her old
kitchen floor with the knots in it. But anything your father says goes
with me after this.”

Mary proved a rather dull companion in the following days, however. She
confided to Una that the more she thought of going back to the asylum
the more she hated it. Una racked her small brains for some way of
averting it, but it was Nan Blythe who came to the rescue with a
somewhat startling suggestion.

“Mrs. Elliott might take Mary herself. She has a great big house and
Mr. Elliott is always wanting her to have help. It would be just a
splendid place for Mary. Only she’d have to behave herself.”

“Oh, Nan, do you think Mrs. Elliott would take her?”

“It wouldn’t do any harm if you asked her,” said Nan. At first Una did
not think she could. She was so shy that to ask a favour of anybody was
agony to her. And she was very much in awe of the bustling, energetic
Mrs. Elliott. She liked her very much and always enjoyed a visit to her
house; but to go and ask her to adopt Mary Vance seemed such a height
of presumption that Una’s timid spirit quailed.

When the Hopetown authorities wrote to Mr. Meredith to send Mary to
them without delay Mary cried herself to sleep in the manse attic that
night and Una found a desperate courage. The next evening she slipped
away from the manse to the harbour road. Far down in Rainbow Valley she
heard joyous laughter but her way lay not there. She was terribly pale
and terribly in earnest—so much so that she took no notice of the
people she met—and old Mrs. Stanley Flagg was quite huffed and said Una
Meredith would be as absentminded as her father when she grew up.

Miss Cornelia lived half way between the Glen and Four Winds Point, in
a house whose original glaring green hue had mellowed down to an
agreeable greenish gray. Marshall Elliott had planted trees about it
and set out a rose garden and a spruce hedge. It was quite a different
place from what it had been in years agone. The manse children and the
Ingleside children liked to go there. It was a beautiful walk down the
old harbour road, and there was always a well-filled cooky jar at the
end.

The misty sea was lapping softly far down on the sands. Three big boats
were skimming down the harbour like great white sea-birds. A schooner
was coming up the channel. The world of Four Winds was steeped in
glowing colour, and subtle music, and strange glamour, and everybody
should have been happy in it. But when Una turned in at Miss Cornelia’s
gate her very legs had almost refused to carry her.

Miss Cornelia was alone on the veranda. Una had hoped Mr. Elliott would
be there. He was so big and hearty and twinkly that there would be
encouragement in his presence. She sat on the little stool Miss
Cornelia brought out and tried to eat the doughnut Miss Cornelia gave
her. It stuck in her throat, but she swallowed desperately lest Miss
Cornelia be offended. She could not talk; she was still pale; and her
big, dark-blue eyes looked so piteous that Miss Cornelia concluded the
child was in some trouble.

“What’s on your mind, dearie?” she asked. “There’s something, that’s
plain to be seen.”

Una swallowed the last twist of doughnut with a desperate gulp.

“Mrs. Elliott, won’t you take Mary Vance?” she said beseechingly.

Miss Cornelia stared blankly.

“Me! Take Mary Vance! Do you mean keep her?”

“Yes—keep her—adopt her,” said Una eagerly, gaining courage now that
the ice was broken. “Oh, Mrs. Elliott, _please_ do. She doesn’t want to
go back to the asylum—she cries every night about it. She’s so afraid
of being sent to another hard place. And she’s _so_ smart—there isn’t
anything she can’t do. I know you wouldn’t be sorry if you took her.”

“I never thought of such a thing,” said Miss Cornelia rather
helplessly.

“_Won’t_ you think of it?” implored Una.

“But, dearie, I don’t want help. I’m quite able to do all the work
here. And I never thought I’d like to have a home girl if I did need
help.”

The light went out of Una’s eyes. Her lips trembled. She sat down on
her stool again, a pathetic little figure of disappointment, and began
to cry.

“Don’t—dearie—don’t,” exclaimed Miss Cornelia in distress. She could
never bear to hurt a child. “I don’t say I _won’t_ take her—but the
idea is so new it has just kerflummuxed me. I must think it over.”

“Mary is _so_ smart,” said Una again.

“Humph! So I’ve heard. I’ve heard she swears, too. Is that true?”

“I’ve never heard her swear _exactly_,” faltered Una uncomfortably.
“But I’m afraid she _could_.”

“I believe you! Does she always tell the truth?”

“I think she does, except when she’s afraid of a whipping.”

“And yet you want me to take her!”

“_Some one_ has to take her,” sobbed Una. “_Some one_ has to look after
her, Mrs. Elliott.”

“That’s true. Perhaps it _is_ my duty to do it,” said Miss Cornelia
with a sigh. “Well, I’ll have to talk it over with Mr. Elliott. So
don’t say anything about it just yet. Take another doughnut, dearie.”

Una took it and ate it with a better appetite.

“I’m very fond of doughnuts,” she confessed “Aunt Martha never makes
any. But Miss Susan at Ingleside does, and sometimes she lets us have a
plateful in Rainbow Valley. Do you know what I do when I’m hungry for
doughnuts and can’t get any, Mrs. Elliott?”

“No, dearie. What?”

“I get out mother’s old cook book and read the doughnut recipe—and the
other recipes. They sound _so_ nice. I always do that when I’m
hungry—especially after we’ve had ditto for dinner. _Then_ I read the
fried chicken and the roast goose recipes. Mother could make all those
nice things.”

“Those manse children will starve to death yet if Mr. Meredith doesn’t
get married,” Miss Cornelia told her husband indignantly after Una had
gone. “And he won’t—and what’s to be done? And _shall_ we take this
Mary-creature, Marshall?”

“Yes, take her,” said Marshall laconically.

“Just like a man,” said his wife, despairingly. “‘Take her’—as if that
was all. There are a hundred things to be considered, believe _me_.”

“Take her—and we’ll consider them afterwards, Cornelia,” said her
husband.

In the end Miss Cornelia did take her and went up to announce her
decision to the Ingleside people first.

“Splendid!” said Anne delightedly. “I’ve been hoping you would do that
very thing, Miss Cornelia. I want that poor child to get a good home. I
was a homeless little orphan just like her once.”

“I don’t think this Mary-creature is or ever will be much like you,”
retorted Miss Cornelia gloomily. “She’s a cat of another colour. But
she’s also a human being with an immortal soul to save. I’ve got a
shorter catechism and a small tooth comb and I’m going to do my duty by
her, now that I’ve set my hand to the plough, believe me.”

Mary received the news with chastened satisfaction.

“It’s better luck than I expected,” she said.

“You’ll have to mind your p’s and q’s with Mrs. Elliott,” said Nan.

“Well, I can do that,” flashed Mary. “I know how to behave when I want
to just as well as you, Nan Blythe.”

“You mustn’t use bad words, you know, Mary,” said Una anxiously.

“I s’pose she’d die of horror if I did,” grinned Mary, her white eyes
shining with unholy glee over the idea. “But you needn’t worry, Una.
Butter won’t melt in my mouth after this. I’ll be all prunes and
prisms.”

“Nor tell lies,” added Faith.

“Not even to get off from a whipping?” pleaded Mary.

“Mrs. Elliott will _never_ whip you—_never_,” exclaimed Di.

“Won’t she?” said Mary skeptically. “If I ever find myself in a place
where I ain’t licked I’ll think it’s heaven all right. No fear of me
telling lies then. I ain’t fond of telling ‘em—I’d ruther not, if it
comes to that.”

The day before Mary’s departure from the manse they had a picnic in her
honour in Rainbow Valley, and that evening all the manse children gave
her something from their scanty store of treasured things for a
keepsake. Carl gave her his Noah’s ark and Jerry his second best
jew’s-harp. Faith gave her a little hairbrush with a mirror in the back
of it, which Mary had always considered very wonderful. Una hesitated
between an old beaded purse and a gay picture of Daniel in the lion’s
den, and finally offered Mary her choice. Mary really hankered after
the beaded purse, but she knew Una loved it, so she said,

“Give me Daniel. I’d rusher have it ‘cause I’m partial to lions. Only I
wish they’d et Daniel up. It would have been more exciting.”

At bedtime Mary coaxed Una to sleep with her.

“It’s for the last time,” she said, “and it’s raining tonight, and I
hate sleeping up there alone when it’s raining on account of that
graveyard. I don’t mind it on fine nights, but a night like this I
can’t see anything but the rain pouring down on them old white stones,
and the wind round the window sounds as if them dead people were trying
to get in and crying ‘cause they couldn’t.”

“I like rainy nights,” said Una, when they were cuddled down together
in the little attic room, “and so do the Blythe girls.”

“I don’t mind ‘em when I’m not handy to graveyards,” said Mary. “If I
was alone here I’d cry my eyes out I’d be so lonesome. I feel awful bad
to be leaving you all.”

“Mrs. Elliott will let you come up and play in Rainbow Valley quite
often I’m sure,” said Una. “And you _will_ be a good girl, won’t you,
Mary?”

“Oh, I’ll try,” sighed Mary. “But it won’t be as easy for me to be
good—inside, I mean, as well as outside—as it is for you. You hadn’t
such scalawags of relations as I had.”

“But your people must have had some good qualities as well as bad
ones,” argued Una. “You must live up to them and never mind their bad
ones.”

“I don’t believe they had any good qualities,” said Mary gloomily. “I
never heard of any. My grandfather had money, but they say he was a
rascal. No, I’ll just have to start out on my own hook and do the best
I can.”

“And God will help you, you know, Mary, if you ask Him.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Oh, Mary. You know we asked God to get a home for you and He did.”

“I don’t see what He had to do with it,” retorted Mary. “It was you put
it into Mrs. Elliott’s head.”

“But God put it into her _heart_ to take you. All my putting it into
her _head_ wouldn’t have done any good if He hadn’t.”

“Well, there may be something in that,” admitted Mary. “Mind you, I
haven’t got anything against God, Una. I’m willing to give Him a
chance. But, honest, I think He’s an awful lot like your father—just
absent-minded and never taking any notice of a body most of the time,
but sometimes waking up all of a suddent and being awful good and kind
and sensible.”

“Oh, Mary, no!” exclaimed horrified Una. “God isn’t a bit like father—I
mean He’s a thousand times better and kinder.”

“If He’s as good as your father He’ll do for me,” said Mary. “When your
father was talking to me I felt as if I never could be bad any more.”

“I wish you’d talk to father about Him,” sighed Una. “He can explain it
all so much better than I can.”

“Why, so I will, next time he wakes up,” promised Mary. “That night he
talked to me in the study he showed me real clear that my praying
didn’t kill Mrs. Wiley. My mind’s been easy since, but I’m real
cautious about praying. I guess the old rhyme is the safest. Say, Una,
it seems to me if one has to pray to anybody it’d be better to pray to
the devil than to God. God’s good, anyhow so you say, so He won’t do
you any harm, but from all I can make out the devil needs to be
pacified. I think the sensible way would be to say to _him_, ‘Good
devil, please don’t tempt me. Just leave me alone, please.’ Now, don’t
you?”

“Oh, no, no, Mary. I’m sure it couldn’t be right to pray to the devil.
And it wouldn’t do any good because he’s bad. It might aggravate him
and he’d be worse than ever.”

“Well, as to this God-matter,” said Mary stubbornly, “since you and I
can’t settle it, there ain’t no use in talking more about it until
we’ve a chanct to find out the rights of it. I’ll do the best I can
alone till then.”

“If mother was alive she could tell us everything,” said Una with a
sigh.

“I wisht she was alive,” said Mary. “I don’t know what’s going to
become of you youngsters when I’m gone. Anyhow, _do_ try and keep the
house a little tidy. The way people talks about it is scandalous. And
the first thing you know your father will be getting married again and
then your noses will be out of joint.”

Una was startled. The idea of her father marrying again had never
presented itself to her before. She did not like it and she lay silent
under the chill of it.

“Stepmothers are _awful_ creatures,” Mary went on. “I could make your
blood run cold if I was to tell you all I know about ‘em. The Wilson
kids across the road from Wiley’s had a stepmother. She was just as bad
to ‘em as Mrs. Wiley was to me. It’ll be awful if you get a
stepmother.”

“I’m sure we won’t,” said Una tremulously. “Father won’t marry anybody
else.”

“He’ll be hounded into it, I expect,” said Mary darkly. “All the old
maids in the settlement are after him. There’s no being up to them. And
the worst of stepmothers is, they always set your father against you.
He’d never care anything about you again. He’d always take her part and
her children’s part. You see, she’d make him believe you were all bad.”

“I wish you hadn’t told me this, Mary,” cried Una. “It makes me feel so
unhappy.”

“I only wanted to warn you,” said Mary, rather repentantly. “Of course,
your father’s so absent-minded he mightn’t happen to think of getting
married again. But it’s better to be prepared.”

Long after Mary slept serenely little Una lay awake, her eyes smarting
with tears. Oh, how dreadful it would be if her father should marry
somebody who would make him hate her and Jerry and Faith and Carl! She
couldn’t bear it—she couldn’t!

Mary had not instilled any poison of the kind Miss Cornelia had feared
into the manse children’s minds. Yet she had certainly contrived to do
a little mischief with the best of intentions. But she slept
dreamlessly, while Una lay awake and the rain fell and the wind wailed
around the old gray manse. And the Rev. John Meredith forgot to go to
bed at all because he was absorbed in reading a life of St. Augustine.
It was gray dawn when he finished it and went upstairs, wrestling with
the problems of two thousand years ago. The door of the girls’ room was
open and he saw Faith lying asleep, rosy and beautiful. He wondered
where Una was. Perhaps she had gone over to “stay all night” with the
Blythe girls. She did this occasionally, deeming it a great treat. John
Meredith sighed. He felt that Una’s whereabouts ought not to be a
mystery to him. Cecelia would have looked after her better than that.

If only Cecelia were still with him! How pretty and gay she had been!
How the old manse up at Maywater had echoed to her songs! And she had
gone away so suddenly, taking her laughter and music and leaving
silence—so suddenly that he had never quite got over his feeling of
amazement. How could _she_, the beautiful and vivid, have died?

The idea of a second marriage had never presented itself seriously to
John Meredith. He had loved his wife so deeply that he believed he
could never care for any woman again. He had a vague idea that before
very long Faith would be old enough to take her mother’s place. Until
then, he must do the best he could alone. He sighed and went to his
room, where the bed was still unmade. Aunt Martha had forgotten it, and
Mary had not dared to make it because Aunt Martha had forbidden her to
meddle with anything in the minister’s room. But Mr. Meredith did not
notice that it was unmade. His last thoughts were of St. Augustine.




CHAPTER X.
THE MANSE GIRLS CLEAN HOUSE


“Ugh,” said Faith, sitting up in bed with a shiver. “It’s raining. I do
hate a rainy Sunday. Sunday is dull enough even when it’s fine.”

“We oughtn’t to find Sunday dull,” said Una sleepily, trying to pull
her drowsy wits together with an uneasy conviction that they had
overslept.

“But we _do_, you know,” said Faith candidly. “Mary Vance says most
Sundays are so dull she could hang herself.”

“We ought to like Sunday better than Mary Vance,” said Una
remorsefully. “We’re the minister’s children.”

“I wish we were a blacksmith’s children,” protested Faith angrily,
hunting for her stockings. “_Then_ people wouldn’t expect us to be
better than other children. _Just_ look at the holes in my heels. Mary
darned them all up before she went away, but they’re as bad as ever
now. Una, get up. I can’t get the breakfast alone. Oh, dear. I wish
father and Jerry were home. You wouldn’t think we’d miss father much—we
don’t see much of him when he is home. And yet _everything_ seems gone.
I must run in and see how Aunt Martha is.”

“Is she any better?” asked Una, when Faith returned.

“No, she isn’t. She’s groaning with the misery still. Maybe we ought to
tell Dr. Blythe. But she says not—she never had a doctor in her life
and she isn’t going to begin now. She says doctors just live by
poisoning people. Do you suppose they do?”

“No, of course not,” said Una indignantly. “I’m sure Dr. Blythe
wouldn’t poison anybody.”

“Well, we’ll have to rub Aunt Martha’s back again after breakfast. We’d
better not make the flannels as hot as we did yesterday.”

Faith giggled over the remembrance. They had nearly scalded the skin
off poor Aunt Martha’s back. Una sighed. Mary Vance would have known
just what the precise temperature of flannels for a misery back should
be. Mary knew everything. They knew nothing. And how could they learn,
save by bitter experience for which, in this instance, unfortunate Aunt
Martha had paid?

The preceding Monday Mr. Meredith had left for Nova Scotia to spend his
short vacation, taking Jerry with him. On Wednesday Aunt Martha was
suddenly seized with a recurring and mysterious ailment which she
always called “the misery,” and which was tolerably certain to attack
her at the most inconvenient times. She could not rise from her bed,
any movement causing agony. A doctor she flatly refused to have. Faith
and Una cooked the meals and waited on her. The less said about the
meals the better—yet they were not much worse than Aunt Martha’s had
been. There were many women in the village who would have been glad to
come and help, but Aunt Martha refused to let her plight be known.

“You must worry on till I kin git around,” she groaned. “Thank
goodness, John isn’t here. There’s a plenty o’ cold biled meat and
bread and you kin try your hand at making porridge.”

The girls had tried their hand, but so far without much success. The
first day it had been too thin. The next day so thick that you could
cut it in slices. And both days it had been burned.

“I hate porridge,” said Faith viciously. “When I have a house of my own
I’m _never_ going to have a single bit of porridge in it.”

“What’ll your children do then?” asked Una. “Children have to have
porridge or they won’t grow. Everybody says so.”

“They’ll have to get along without it or stay runts,” retorted Faith
stubbornly. “Here, Una, you stir it while I set the table. If I leave
it for a minute the horrid stuff will burn. It’s half past nine. We’ll
be late for Sunday School.”

“I haven’t seen anyone going past yet,” said Una. “There won’t likely
be many out. Just see how it’s pouring. And when there’s no preaching
the folks won’t come from a distance to bring the children.”

“Go and call Carl,” said Faith.

Carl, it appeared, had a sore throat, induced by getting wet in the
Rainbow Valley marsh the previous evening while pursuing dragon-flies.
He had come home with dripping stockings and boots and had sat out the
evening in them. He could not eat any breakfast and Faith made him go
back to bed again. She and Una left the table as it was and went to
Sunday School. There was no one in the school room when they got there
and no one came. They waited until eleven and then went home.

“There doesn’t seem to be anybody at the Methodist Sunday School
either,” said Una.

“I’m _glad_,” said Faith. “I’d hate to think the Methodists were better
at going to Sunday School on rainy Sundays than the Presbyterians. But
there’s no preaching in their Church to-day, either, so likely their
Sunday School is in the afternoon.”

Una washed the dishes, doing them quite nicely, for so much had she
learned from Mary Vance. Faith swept the floor after a fashion and
peeled the potatoes for dinner, cutting her finger in the process.

“I wish we had something for dinner besides ditto,” sighed Una. “I’m so
tired of it. The Blythe children don’t know what ditto is. And we
_never_ have any pudding. Nan says Susan would faint if they had no
pudding on Sundays. Why aren’t we like other people, Faith?”

“I don’t want to be like other people,” laughed Faith, tying up her
bleeding finger. “I like being myself. It’s more interesting. Jessie
Drew is as good a housekeeper as her mother, but would you want to be
as stupid as she is?”

“But our house isn’t right. Mary Vance says so. She says people talk
about it being so untidy.”

Faith had an inspiration.

“We’ll clean it all up,” she cried. “We’ll go right to work to-morrow.
It’s a real good chance when Aunt Martha is laid up and can’t interfere
with us. We’ll have it all lovely and clean when father comes home,
just like it was when Mary went away. _Any one_ can sweep and dust and
wash windows. People won’t be able to talk about us any more. Jem
Blythe says it’s only old cats that talk, but their talk hurts just as
much as anybody’s.”

“I hope it will be fine to-morrow,” said Una, fired with enthusiasm.
“Oh, Faith, it will be splendid to be all cleaned up and like other
people.”

“I hope Aunt Martha’s misery will last over to-morrow,” said Faith. “If
it doesn’t we won’t get a single thing done.”

Faith’s amiable wish was fulfilled. The next day found Aunt Martha
still unable to rise. Carl, too, was still sick and easily prevailed on
to stay in bed. Neither Faith nor Una had any idea how sick the boy
really was; a watchful mother would have had a doctor without delay;
but there was no mother, and poor little Carl, with his sore throat and
aching head and crimson cheeks, rolled himself up in his twisted
bedclothes and suffered alone, somewhat comforted by the companionship
of a small green lizard in the pocket of his ragged nighty.

The world was full of summer sunshine after the rain. It was a peerless
day for house-cleaning and Faith and Una went gaily to work.

“We’ll clean the dining-room and the parlour,” said Faith. “It wouldn’t
do to meddle with the study, and it doesn’t matter much about the
upstairs. The first thing is to take everything out.”

Accordingly, everything was taken out. The furniture was piled on the
veranda and lawn and the Methodist graveyard fence was gaily draped
with rugs. An orgy of sweeping followed, with an attempt at dusting on
Una’s part, while Faith washed the windows of the dining-room, breaking
one pane and cracking two in the process. Una surveyed the streaked
result dubiously.

“They don’t look right, somehow,” she said. “Mrs. Elliott’s and Susan’s
windows just shine and sparkle.”

“Never mind. They let the sunshine through just as well,” said Faith
cheerfully. “They _must_ be clean after all the soap and water I’ve
used, and that’s the main thing. Now, it’s past eleven, so I’ll wipe up
this mess on the floor and we’ll go outside. You dust the furniture and
I’ll shake the rugs. I’m going to do it in the graveyard. I don’t want
to send dust flying all over the lawn.”

Faith enjoyed the rug shaking. To stand on Hezekiah Pollock’s
tombstone, flapping and shaking rugs, was real fun. To be sure, Elder
Abraham Clow and his wife, driving past in their capacious
double-seated buggy, seemed to gaze at her in grim disapproval.

“Isn’t that a terrible sight?” said Elder Abraham solemnly.

“I would never have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes,”
said Mrs. Elder Abraham, more solemnly still.

Faith waved a door mat cheerily at the Clow party. It did not worry her
that the elder and his wife did not return her greeting. Everybody knew
that Elder Abraham had never been known to smile since he had been
appointed Superintendent of the Sunday School fourteen years
previously. But it hurt her that Minnie and Adella Clow did not wave
back. Faith liked Minnie and Adella. Next to the Blythes, they were her
best friends in school and she always helped Adella with her sums. This
was gratitude for you. Her friends cut her because she was shaking rugs
in an old graveyard where, as Mary Vance said, not a living soul had
been buried for years. Faith flounced around to the veranda, where she
found Una grieved in spirit because the Clow girls had not waved to
her, either.

“I suppose they’re mad over something,” said Faith. “Perhaps they’re
jealous because we play so much in Rainbow Valley with the Blythes.
Well, just wait till school opens and Adella wants me to show her how
to do her sums! We’ll get square then. Come on, let’s put the things
back in. I’m tired to death and I don’t believe the rooms will look
much better than before we started—though I shook out pecks of dust in
the graveyard. I _hate_ house-cleaning.”

It was two o’clock before the tired girls finished the two rooms. They
got a dreary bite in the kitchen and intended to wash the dishes at
once. But Faith happened to pick up a new story-book Di Blythe had lent
her and was lost to the world until sunset. Una took a cup of rank tea
up to Carl but found him asleep; so she curled herself up on Jerry’s
bed and went to sleep too. Meanwhile, a weird story flew through Glen
St. Mary and folks asked each other seriously what was to be done with
those manse youngsters.

“That is past laughing at, believe _me_,” said Miss Cornelia to her
husband, with a heavy sigh. “I couldn’t believe it at first. Miranda
Drew brought the story home from the Methodist Sunday School this
afternoon and I simply scoffed at it. But Mrs. Elder Abraham says she
and the Elder saw it with their own eyes.”

“Saw what?” asked Marshall.

“Faith and Una Meredith stayed home from Sunday School this morning and
_cleaned house_,” said Miss Cornelia, in accents of despair. “When
Elder Abraham went home from the church—he had stayed behind to
straighten out the library books—he saw them shaking rugs in the
Methodist graveyard. I can never look a Methodist in the face again.
Just think what a scandal it will make!”

A scandal it assuredly did make, growing more scandalous as it spread,
until the over-harbour people heard that the manse children had not
only cleaned house and put out a washing on Sunday, but had wound up
with an afternoon picnic in the graveyard while the Methodist Sunday
School was going on. The only household which remained in blissful
ignorance of the terrible thing was the manse itself; on what Faith and
Una fondly believed to be Tuesday it rained again; for the next three
days it rained; nobody came near the manse; the manse folk went
nowhere; they might have waded through the misty Rainbow Valley up to
Ingleside, but all the Blythe family, save Susan and the doctor, were
away on a visit to Avonlea.

“This is the last of our bread,” said Faith, “and the ditto is done. If
Aunt Martha doesn’t get better soon _what_ will we do?”

“We can buy some bread in the village and there’s the codfish Mary
dried,” said Una. “But we don’t know how to cook it.”

“Oh, that’s easy,” laughed Faith. “You just boil it.”

Boil it they did; but as it did not occur to them to soak it beforehand
it was too salty to eat. That night they were very hungry; but by the
following day their troubles were over. Sunshine returned to the world;
Carl was well and Aunt Martha’s misery left her as suddenly as it had
come; the butcher called at the manse and chased famine away. To crown
all, the Blythes returned home, and that evening they and the manse
children and Mary Vance kept sunset tryst once more in Rainbow Valley,
where the daisies were floating upon the grass like spirits of the dew
and the bells on the Tree Lovers rang like fairy chimes in the scented
twilight.




CHAPTER XI.
A DREADFUL DISCOVERY


“Well, you kids have gone and done it now,” was Mary’s greeting, as she
joined them in the Valley. Miss Cornelia was up at Ingleside, holding
agonized conclave with Anne and Susan, and Mary hoped that the session
might be a long one, for it was all of two weeks since she had been
allowed to revel with her chums in the dear valley of rainbows.

“Done what?” demanded everybody but Walter, who was day-dreaming as
usual.

“It’s you manse young ones, I mean,” said Mary. “It was just awful of
you. _I_ wouldn’t have done such a thing for the world, and _I_ weren’t
brought up in a manse—weren’t brought up _anywhere_—just _come_ up.”

“What have _we_ done?” asked Faith blankly.

“Done! You’d _better_ ask! The talk is something terrible. I expect
it’s ruined your father in this congregation. He’ll never be able to
live it down, poor man! Everybody blames him for it, and that isn’t
fair. But nothing _is_ fair in this world. You ought to be ashamed of
yourselves.”

“What _have_ we done?” asked Una again, despairingly. Faith said
nothing, but her eyes flashed golden-brown scorn at Mary.

“Oh, don’t pretend innocence,” said Mary, witheringly. “Everybody knows
what you have done.”

“_I_ don’t,” interjected Jem Blythe indignantly. “Don’t let me catch
you making Una cry, Mary Vance. What are you talking about?”

“I s’pose you don’t know, since you’re just back from up west,” said
Mary, somewhat subdued. Jem could always manage her. “But everybody
else knows, you’d better believe.”

“Knows what?”

“That Faith and Una stayed home from Sunday School last Sunday and
_cleaned house_.”

“We didn’t,” cried Faith and Una, in passionate denial.

Mary looked haughtily at them.

“I didn’t suppose you’d deny it, after the way you’ve combed _me_ down
for lying,” she said. “What’s the good of saying you didn’t? Everybody
knows you _did_. Elder Clow and his wife saw you. Some people say it
will break up the church, but _I_ don’t go that far. You _are_ nice
ones.”

Nan Blythe stood up and put her arms around the dazed Faith and Una.

“They were nice enough to take you in and feed you and clothe you when
you were starving in Mr. Taylor’s barn, Mary Vance,” she said. “You are
_very_ grateful, I must say.”

“I _am_ grateful,” retorted Mary. “You’d know it if you’d heard me
standing up for Mr. Meredith through thick and thin. I’ve blistered my
tongue talking for him this week. I’ve said again and again that he
isn’t to blame if his young ones did clean house on Sunday. He was
away—and they knew better.”

“But we didn’t,” protested Una. “It was _Monday_ we cleaned house.
Wasn’t it, Faith?”

“Of course it was,” said Faith, with flashing eyes. “We went to Sunday
School in spite of the rain—and no one came—not even Elder Abraham, for
all his talk about fair-weather Christians.”

“It was Saturday it rained,” said Mary. “Sunday was as fine as silk. I
wasn’t at Sunday School because I had toothache, but every one else was
and they saw all your stuff out on the lawn. And Elder Abraham and Mrs.
Elder Abraham saw you shaking rugs in the graveyard.”

Una sat down among the daisies and began to cry.

“Look here,” said Jem resolutely, “this thing must be cleared up.
_Somebody_ has made a mistake. Sunday _was_ fine, Faith. How could you
have thought Saturday was Sunday?”

“Prayer-meeting was Thursday night,” cried Faith, “and Adam flew into
the soup-pot on Friday when Aunt Martha’s cat chased him, and spoiled
our dinner; and Saturday there was a snake in the cellar and Carl
caught it with a forked stick and carried it out, and Sunday it rained.
So there!”

“Prayer-meeting was Wednesday night,” said Mary. “Elder Baxter was to
lead and he couldn’t go Thursday night and it was changed to Wednesday.
You were just a day out, Faith Meredith, and you _did_ work on Sunday.”

Suddenly Faith burst into a peal of laughter.

“I suppose we did. What a joke!”

“It isn’t much of a joke for your father,” said Mary sourly.

“It’ll be all right when people find out it was just a mistake,” said
Faith carelessly. “We’ll explain.”

“You can explain till you’re black in the face,” said Mary, “but a lie
like that’ll travel faster’n further than you ever will. I’VE seen more
of the world than you and _I_ know. Besides, there are plenty of folks
won’t believe it was a mistake.”

“They will if I tell them,” said Faith.

“You can’t tell everybody,” said Mary. “No, I tell you you’ve disgraced
your father.”

Una’s evening was spoiled by this dire reflection, but Faith refused to
be made uncomfortable. Besides, she had a plan that would put
everything right. So she put the past with its mistake behind her and
gave herself over to enjoyment of the present. Jem went away to fish
and Walter came out of his reverie and proceeded to describe the woods
of heaven. Mary pricked up her ears and listened respectfully. Despite
her awe of Walter she revelled in his “book talk.” It always gave her a
delightful sensation. Walter had been reading his Coleridge that day,
and he pictured a heaven where

“There were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incense bearing tree,
And there were forests ancient as the hills
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.”

“I didn’t know there was any woods in heaven,” said Mary, with a long
breath. “I thought it was all streets—and streets—_and_ streets.”

“Of course there are woods,” said Nan. “Mother can’t live without trees
and I can’t, so what would be the use of going to heaven if there
weren’t any trees?”

“There are cities, too,” said the young dreamer, “splendid
cities—coloured just like the sunset, with sapphire towers and rainbow
domes. They are built of gold and diamonds—whole streets of diamonds,
flashing like the sun. In the squares there are crystal fountains
kissed by the light, and everywhere the asphodel blooms—the flower of
heaven.”

“Fancy!” said Mary. “I saw the main street in Charlottetown once and I
thought it was real grand, but I s’pose it’s nothing to heaven. Well,
it all sounds gorgeous the way you tell it, but won’t it be kind of
dull, too?”

“Oh, I guess we can have some fun when the angels’ backs are turned,”
said Faith comfortably.

“Heaven is _all_ fun,” declared Di.

“The Bible doesn’t say so,” cried Mary, who had read so much of the
Bible on Sunday afternoons under Miss Cornelia’s eye that she now
considered herself quite an authority on it.

“Mother says the Bible language is figurative,” said Nan.

“Does that mean that it isn’t true?” asked Mary hopefully.

“No—not exactly—but I think it means that heaven will be just like what
you’d like it to be.”

“I’d like it to be just like Rainbow Valley,” said Mary, “with all you
kids to gas and play with. _That’s_ good enough for me. Anyhow, we
can’t go to heaven till we’re dead and maybe not then, so what’s the
use of worrying? Here’s Jem with a string of trout and it’s my turn to
fry them.”

“We ought to know more about heaven than Walter does when we’re the
minister’s family,” said Una, as they walked home that night.

“We _know_ just as much, but Walter can _imagine_,” said Faith. “Mrs.
Elliott says he gets it from his mother.”

“I do wish we hadn’t made that mistake about Sunday,” sighed Una.

“Don’t worry over that. I’ve thought of a great plan to explain so that
everybody will know,” said Faith. “Just wait till to-morrow night.”




CHAPTER XII.
AN EXPLANATION AND A DARE


The Rev. Dr. Cooper preached in Glen St. Mary the next evening and the
Presbyterian Church was crowded with people from near and far. The
Reverend Doctor was reputed to be a very eloquent speaker; and, bearing
in mind the old dictum that a minister should take his best clothes to
the city and his best sermons to the country, he delivered a very
scholarly and impressive discourse. But when the folks went home that
night it was not of Dr. Cooper’s sermon they talked. They had
completely forgotten all about it.

Dr. Cooper had concluded with a fervent appeal, had wiped the
perspiration from his massive brow, had said “Let us pray” as he was
famed for saying it, and had duly prayed. There was a slight pause. In
Glen St. Mary church the old fashion of taking the collection after the
sermon instead of before still held—mainly because the Methodists had
adopted the new fashion first, and Miss Cornelia and Elder Clow would
not hear of following where Methodists had led. Charles Baxter and
Thomas Douglas, whose duty it was to pass the plates, were on the point
of rising to their feet. The organist had got out the music of her
anthem and the choir had cleared its throat. Suddenly Faith Meredith
rose in the manse pew, walked up to the pulpit platform, and faced the
amazed audience.

Miss Cornelia half rose in her seat and then sat down again. Her pew
was far back and it occurred to her that whatever Faith meant to do or
say would be half done or said before she could reach her. There was no
use making the exhibition worse than it had to be. With an anguished
glance at Mrs. Dr. Blythe, and another at Deacon Warren of the
Methodist Church, Miss Cornelia resigned herself to another scandal.

“If the child was only dressed decently itself,” she groaned in spirit.

Faith, having spilled ink on her good dress, had serenely put on an old
one of faded pink print. A caticornered rent in the skirt had been
darned with scarlet tracing cotton and the hem had been let down,
showing a bright strip of unfaded pink around the skirt. But Faith was
not thinking of her clothes at all. She was feeling suddenly nervous.
What had seemed easy in imagination was rather hard in reality.
Confronted by all those staring questioning eyes Faith’s courage almost
failed her. The lights were so bright, the silence so awesome. She
thought she could not speak after all. But she _must_—her father _must_
be cleared of suspicion. Only—the words would _not_ come.

Una’s little pearl-pure face gleamed up at her beseechingly from the
manse pew. The Blythe children were lost in amazement. Back under the
gallery Faith saw the sweet graciousness of Miss Rosemary West’s smile
and the amusement of Miss Ellen’s. But none of these helped her. It was
Bertie Shakespeare Drew who saved the situation. Bertie Shakespeare sat
in the front seat of the gallery and he made a derisive face at Faith.
Faith promptly made a dreadful one back at him, and, in her anger over
being grimaced at by Bertie Shakespeare, forgot her stage fright. She
found her voice and spoke out clearly and bravely.

“I want to explain something,” she said, “and I want to do it now
because everybody will hear it that heard the other. People are saying
that Una and I stayed home last Sunday and cleaned house instead of
going to Sunday School. Well, we did—but we didn’t mean to. We got
mixed up in the days of the week. It was all Elder Baxter’s
fault”—sensation in Baxter’s pew—“because he went and changed the
prayer-meeting to Wednesday night and then we thought Thursday was
Friday and so on till we thought Saturday was Sunday. Carl was laid up
sick and so was Aunt Martha, so they couldn’t put us right. We went to
Sunday School in all that rain on Saturday and nobody came. And then we
thought we’d clean house on Monday and stop old cats from talking about
how dirty the manse was”—general sensation all over the church—“and we
did. I shook the rugs in the Methodist graveyard because it was such a
convenient place and not because I meant to be disrespectful of the
dead. It isn’t the dead folks who have made the fuss over this—it’s the
living folks. And it isn’t right for any of you to blame my father for
this, because he was away and didn’t know, and anyhow we thought it was
Monday. He’s just the best father that ever lived in the world and we
love him with all our hearts.”

Faith’s bravado ebbed out in a sob. She ran down the steps and flashed
out of the side door of the church. There the friendly starlit, summer
night comforted her and the ache went out of her eyes and throat. She
felt very happy. The dreadful explanation was over and everybody knew
now that her father wasn’t to blame and that she and Una were not so
wicked as to have cleaned house knowingly on Sunday.

Inside the church people gazed blankly at each other, but Thomas
Douglas rose and walked up the aisle with a set face. _His_ duty was
clear; the collection must be taken if the skies fell. Taken it was;
the choir sang the anthem, with a dismal conviction that it fell
terribly flat, and Dr. Cooper gave out the concluding hymn and
pronounced the benediction with considerably less unction than usual.
The Reverend Doctor had a sense of humour and Faith’s performance
tickled him. Besides, John Meredith was well known in Presbyterian
circles.

Mr. Meredith returned home the next afternoon, but before his coming
Faith contrived to scandalize Glen St. Mary again. In the reaction from
Sunday evening’s intensity and strain she was especially full of what
Miss Cornelia would have called “devilment” on Monday. This led her to
dare Walter Blythe to ride through Main Street on a pig, while she rode
another one.

The pigs in question were two tall, lank animals, supposed to belong to
Bertie Shakespeare Drew’s father, which had been haunting the roadside
by the manse for a couple of weeks. Walter did not want to ride a pig
through Glen St. Mary, but whatever Faith Meredith dared him to do must
be done. They tore down the hill and through the village, Faith bent
double with laughter over her terrified courser, Walter crimson with
shame. They tore past the minister himself, just coming home from the
station; he, being a little less dreamy and abstracted than usual—owing
to having had a talk on the train with Miss Cornelia who always wakened
him up temporarily—noticed them, and thought he really must speak to
Faith about it and tell her that such conduct was not seemly. But he
had forgotten the trifling incident by the time he reached home. They
passed Mrs. Alec Davis, who shrieked in horror, and they passed Miss
Rosemary West who laughed and sighed. Finally, just before the pigs
swooped into Bertie Shakespeare Drew’s back yard, never to emerge
therefrom again, so great had been the shock to their nerves—Faith and
Walter jumped off, as Dr. and Mrs. Blythe drove swiftly by.

“So that is how you bring up your boys,” said Gilbert with mock
severity.

“Perhaps I do spoil them a little,” said Anne contritely, “but, oh,
Gilbert, when I think of my own childhood before I came to Green Gables
I haven’t the heart to be very strict. How hungry for love and fun I
was—an unloved little drudge with never a chance to play! They do have
such good times with the manse children.”

“What about the poor pigs?” asked Gilbert.

Anne tried to look sober and failed.

“Do you really think it hurt them?” she said. “I don’t think anything
could hurt those animals. They’ve been the plague of the neighbourhood
this summer and the Drews _won’t_ shut them up. But I’ll talk to
Walter—if I can keep from laughing when I do it.”

Miss Cornelia came up to Ingleside that evening to relieve her feelings
over Sunday night. To her surprise she found that Anne did not view
Faith’s performance in quite the same light as she did.

“I thought there was something brave and pathetic in her getting up
there before that churchful of people, to confess,” she said. “You
could see she was frightened to death—yet she was bound to clear her
father. I loved her for it.”

“Oh, of course, the poor child meant well,” sighed Miss Cornelia, “but
just the same it was a terrible thing to do, and is making more talk
than the house-cleaning on Sunday. _That_ had begun to die away, and
this has started it all up again. Rosemary West is like you—she said
last night as she left the church that it was a plucky thing for Faith
to do, but it made her feel sorry for the child, too. Miss Ellen
thought it all a good joke, and said she hadn’t had as much fun in
church for years. Of course _they_ don’t care—they are Episcopalians.
But we Presbyterians feel it. And there were so many hotel people there
that night and scores of Methodists. Mrs. Leander Crawford cried, she
felt so bad. And Mrs. Alec Davis said the little hussy ought to be
spanked.”

“Mrs. Leander Crawford is always crying in church,” said Susan
contemptuously. “She cries over every affecting thing the minister
says. But you do not often see her name on a subscription list, Mrs.
Dr. dear. Tears come cheaper. She tried to talk to me one day about
Aunt Martha being such a dirty housekeeper; and I wanted to say, ‘Every
one knows that _you_ have been seen mixing up cakes in the kitchen
wash-pan, Mrs. Leander Crawford!’ But I did not say it, Mrs. Dr. dear,
because I have too much respect for myself to condescend to argue with
the likes of her. But I could tell worse things than _that_ of Mrs.
Leander Crawford, if I was disposed to gossip. And as for Mrs. Alec
Davis, if she had said that to me, Mrs. Dr. dear, do you know what I
would have said? I would have said, ‘I have no doubt you would like to
spank Faith, Mrs. Davis, but you will never have the chance to spank a
minister’s daughter either in this world or in that which is to come.’”

“If poor Faith had only been decently dressed,” lamented Miss Cornelia
again, “it wouldn’t have been quite that bad. But that dress looked
dreadful, as she stood there upon the platform.”

“It was clean, though, Mrs. Dr. dear,” said Susan. “They _are_ clean
children. They may be very heedless and reckless, Mrs. Dr. dear, and I
am not saying they are not, but they _never_ forget to wash behind
their ears.”

“The idea of Faith forgetting what day was Sunday,” persisted Miss
Cornelia. “She will grow up just as careless and impractical as her
father, believe _me_. I suppose Carl would have known better if he
hadn’t been sick. I don’t know what was wrong with him, but I think it
very likely he had been eating those blueberries that grew in the
graveyard. No wonder they made him sick. If I was a Methodist I’d try
to keep my graveyard cleaned up at least.”

“I am of the opinion that Carl only ate the sours that grow on the
dyke,” said Susan hopefully. “I do not think _any_ minister’s son would
eat blueberries that grew on the graves of dead people. You know it
would not be so bad, Mrs. Dr. dear, to eat things that grew on the
dyke.”

“The worst of last night’s performance was the face Faith made made at
somebody in the congregation before she started in,” said Miss
Cornelia. “Elder Clow declares she made it at him. And _did_ you hear
that she was seen riding on a pig to-day?”

“I saw her. Walter was with her. I gave him a little—a _very_
little—scolding about it. He did not say much, but he gave me the
impression that it had been his idea and that Faith was not to blame.”

“I do not not believe _that_, Mrs. Dr. dear,” cried Susan, up in arms.
“That is just Walter’s way—to take the blame on himself. But you know
as well as I do, Mrs. Dr. dear, that that blessed child would never
have thought of riding on a pig, even if he does write poetry.”

“Oh, there’s no doubt the notion was hatched in Faith Meredith’s
brain,” said Miss Cornelia. “And I don’t say that I’m sorry that Amos
Drew’s old pigs did get their come-uppance for once. But the minister’s
daughter!”

“_And_ the doctor’s son!” said Anne, mimicking Miss Cornelia’s tone.
Then she laughed. “Dear Miss Cornelia, they’re only little children.
And you _know_ they’ve never yet done anything bad—they’re just
heedless and impulsive—as I was myself once. They’ll grow sedate and
sober—as I’ve done.”

Miss Cornelia laughed, too.

“There are times, Anne dearie, when I know by your eyes that _your_
soberness is put on like a garment and you’re really aching to do
something wild and young again. Well, I feel encouraged. Somehow, a
talk with you always does have that effect on me. Now, when I go to see
Barbara Samson, it’s just the opposite. She makes me feel that
everything’s wrong and always will be. But of course living all your
life with a man like Joe Samson wouldn’t be exactly cheering.”

“It is a very strange thing to think that she married Joe Samson after
all her chances,” remarked Susan. “She was much sought after when she
was a girl. She used to boast to me that she had twenty-one beaus and
Mr. Pethick.”

“What was Mr. Pethick?”

“Well, he was a sort of hanger-on, Mrs. Dr. dear, but you could not
exactly call him a beau. He did not really have any intentions.
Twenty-one beaus—and me that never had one! But Barbara went through
the woods and picked up the crooked stick after all. And yet they say
her husband can make better baking powder biscuits than she can, and
she always gets him to make them when company comes to tea.”

“Which reminds _me_ that I have company coming to tea to-morrow and I
must go home and set my bread,” said Miss Cornelia. “Mary said she
could set it and no doubt she could. But while I live and move and have
my being _I_ set my own bread, believe me.”

“How is Mary getting on?” asked Anne.

“I’ve no fault to find with Mary,” said Miss Cornelia rather gloomily.
“She’s getting some flesh on her bones and she’s clean and
respectful—though there’s more in her than _I_ can fathom. She’s a sly
puss. If you dug for a thousand years you couldn’t get to the bottom of
that child’s mind, believe _me!_ As for work, I never saw anything like
her. She _eats_ it up. Mrs. Wiley may have been cruel to her, but folks
needn’t say she made Mary work. Mary’s a born worker. Sometimes I
wonder which will wear out first—her legs or her tongue. I don’t have
enough to do to keep me out of mischief these days. I’ll be real glad
when school opens, for then I’ll have something to do again. Mary
doesn’t want to go to school, but I put my foot down and said that go
she must. I shall _not_ have the Methodists saying that I kept her out
of school while I lolled in idleness.”




CHAPTER XIII.
THE HOUSE ON THE HILL


There was a little unfailing spring, always icy cold and crystal pure,
in a certain birch-screened hollow of Rainbow Valley in the lower
corner near the marsh. Not a great many people knew of its existence.
The manse and Ingleside children knew, of course, as they knew
everything else about the magic valley. Occasionally they went there to
get a drink, and it figured in many of their plays as a fountain of old
romance. Anne knew of it and loved it because it somehow reminded her
of the beloved Dryad’s Bubble at Green Gables. Rosemary West knew of
it; it was her fountain of romance, too. Eighteen years ago she had sat
behind it one spring twilight and heard young Martin Crawford stammer
out a confession of fervent, boyish love. She had whispered her own
secret in return, and they had kissed and promised by the wild wood
spring. They had never stood together by it again—Martin had sailed on
his fatal voyage soon after; but to Rosemary West it was always a
sacred spot, hallowed by that immortal hour of youth and love. Whenever
she passed near it she turned aside to hold a secret tryst with an old
dream—a dream from which the pain had long gone, leaving only its
unforgettable sweetness.

The spring was a hidden thing. You might have passed within ten feet of
it and never have suspected its existence. Two generations past a huge
old pine had fallen almost across it. Nothing was left of the tree but
its crumbling trunk out of which the ferns grew thickly, making a green
roof and a lacy screen for the water. A maple-tree grew beside it with
a curiously gnarled and twisted trunk, creeping along the ground for a
little way before shooting up into the air, and so forming a quaint
seat; and September had flung a scarf of pale smoke-blue asters around
the hollow.

John Meredith, taking the cross-lots road through Rainbow Valley on his
way home from some pastoral visitations around the Harbour head one
evening, turned aside to drink of the little spring. Walter Blythe had
shown it to him one afternoon only a few days before, and they had had
a long talk together on the maple seat. John Meredith, under all his
shyness and aloofness, had the heart of a boy. He had been called Jack
in his youth, though nobody in Glen St. Mary would ever have believed
it. Walter and he had taken to each other and had talked unreservedly.
Mr. Meredith found his way into some sealed and sacred chambers of the
lad’s soul wherein not even Di had ever looked. They were to be chums
from that friendly hour and Walter knew that he would never be
frightened of the minister again.

“I never believed before that it was possible to get really acquainted
with a minister,” he told his mother that night.

John Meredith drank from his slender white hand, whose grip of steel
always surprised people who were unacquainted with it, and then sat
down on the maple seat. He was in no hurry to go home; this was a
beautiful spot and he was mentally weary after a round of rather
uninspiring conversations with many good and stupid people. The moon
was rising. Rainbow Valley was wind-haunted and star-sentinelled only
where he was, but afar from the upper end came the gay notes of
children’s laughter and voices.

The ethereal beauty of the asters in the moonlight, the glimmer of the
little spring, the soft croon of the brook, the wavering grace of the
brackens all wove a white magic round John Meredith. He forgot
congregational worries and spiritual problems; the years slipped away
from him; he was a young divinity student again and the roses of June
were blooming red and fragrant on the dark, queenly head of his
Cecilia. He sat there and dreamed like any boy. And it was at this
propitious moment that Rosemary West stepped aside from the by-path and
stood beside him in that dangerous, spell-weaving place. John Meredith
stood up as she came in and saw her—_really_ saw her—for the first
time.

He had met her in his church once or twice and shaken hands with her
abstractedly as he did with anyone he happened to encounter on his way
down the aisle. He had never met her elsewhere, for the Wests were
Episcopalians, with church affinities in Lowbridge, and no occasion for
calling upon them had ever arisen. Before to-night, if anyone had asked
John Meredith what Rosemary West looked like he would not have had the
slightest notion. But he was never to forget her, as she appeared to
him in the glamour of kind moonlight by the spring.

She was certainly not in the least like Cecilia, who had always been
his ideal of womanly beauty. Cecilia had been small and dark and
vivacious—Rosemary West was tall and fair and placid, yet John Meredith
thought he had never seen so beautiful a woman.

She was bareheaded and her golden hair—hair of a warm gold, “molasses
taffy” colour as Di Blythe had said—was pinned in sleek, close coils
over her head; she had large, tranquil, blue eyes that always seemed
full of friendliness, a high white forehead and a finely shaped face.

Rosemary West was always called a “sweet woman.” She was so sweet that
even her high-bred, stately air had never gained for her the reputation
of being “stuck-up,” which it would inevitably have done in the case of
anyone else in Glen St. Mary. Life had taught her to be brave, to be
patient, to love, to forgive. She had watched the ship on which her
lover went sailing out of Four Winds Harbour into the sunset. But,
though she watched long, she had never seen it coming sailing back.
That vigil had taken girlhood from her eyes, yet she kept her youth to
a marvellous degree. Perhaps this was because she always seemed to
preserve that attitude of delighted surprise towards life which most of
us leave behind in childhood—an attitude which not only made Rosemary
herself seem young, but flung a pleasing illusion of youth over the
consciousness of every one who talked to her.

John Meredith was startled by her loveliness and Rosemary was startled
by his presence. She had never thought she would find anyone by that
remote spring, least of all the recluse of Glen St. Mary manse. She
almost dropped the heavy armful of books she was carrying home from the
Glen lending library, and then, to cover her confusion, she told one of
those small fibs which even the best of women do tell at times.

“I—I came for a drink,” she said, stammering a little, in answer to Mr.
Meredith’s grave “good evening, Miss West.” She felt that she was an
unpardonable goose and she longed to shake herself. But John Meredith
was not a vain man and he knew she would likely have been as much
startled had she met old Elder Clow in that unexpected fashion. Her
confusion put him at ease and he forgot to be shy; besides, even the
shyest of men can sometimes be quite audacious in moonlight.

“Let me get you a cup,” he said smiling. There was a cup near by, if he
had only known it, a cracked, handleless blue cup secreted under the
maple by the Rainbow Valley children; but he did not know it, so he
stepped out to one of the birch-trees and stripped a bit of its white
skin away. Deftly he fashioned this into a three-cornered cup, filled
it from the spring, and handed it to Rosemary.

Rosemary took it and drank every drop to punish herself for her fib,
for she was not in the least thirsty, and to drink a fairly large
cupful of water when you are not thirsty is somewhat of an ordeal. Yet
the memory of that draught was to be very pleasant to Rosemary. In
after years it seemed to her that there was something sacramental about
it. Perhaps this was because of what the minister did when she handed
him back the cup. He stooped again and filled it and drank of it
himself. It was only by accident that he put his lips just where
Rosemary had put hers, and Rosemary knew it. Nevertheless, it had a
curious significance for her. They two had drunk of the same cup. She
remembered idly that an old aunt of hers used to say that when two
people did this their after-lives would be linked in some fashion,
whether for good or ill.

John Meredith held the cup uncertainly. He did not know what to do with
it. The logical thing would have been to toss it away, but somehow he
was disinclined to do this. Rosemary held out her hand for it.

“Will you let me have it?” she said. “You made it so knackily. I never
saw anyone make a birch cup so since my little brother used to make
them long ago—before he died.”

“I learned how to make them when _I_ was a boy, camping out one summer.
An old hunter taught me,” said Mr. Meredith. “Let me carry your books,
Miss West.”

Rosemary was startled into another fib and said oh, they were not
heavy. But the minister took them from her with quite a masterful air
and they walked away together. It was the first time Rosemary had stood
by the valley spring without thinking of Martin Crawford. The mystic
tryst had been broken.

The little by-path wound around the marsh and then struck up the long
wooded hill on the top of which Rosemary lived. Beyond, through the
trees, they could see the moonlight shining across the level summer
fields. But the little path was shadowy and narrow. Trees crowded over
it, and trees are never quite as friendly to human beings after
nightfall as they are in daylight. They wrap themselves away from us.
They whisper and plot furtively. If they reach out a hand to us it has
a hostile, tentative touch. People walking amid trees after night
always draw closer together instinctively and involuntarily, making an
alliance, physical and mental, against certain alien powers around
them. Rosemary’s dress brushed against John Meredith as they walked.
Not even an absent-minded minister, who was after all a young man
still, though he firmly believed he had outlived romance, could be
insensible to the charm of the night and the path and the companion.

It is never quite safe to think we have done with life. When we imagine
we have finished our story fate has a trick of turning the page and
showing us yet another chapter. These two people each thought their
hearts belonged irrevocably to the past; but they both found their walk
up that hill very pleasant. Rosemary thought the Glen minister was by
no means as shy and tongue-tied as he had been represented. He seemed
to find no difficulty in talking easily and freely. Glen housewives
would have been amazed had they heard him. But then so many Glen
housewives talked only gossip and the price of eggs, and John Meredith
was not interested in either. He talked to Rosemary of books and music
and wide-world doings and something of his own history, and found that
she could understand and respond. Rosemary, it appeared, possessed a
book which Mr. Meredith had not read and wished to read. She offered to
lend it to him and when they reached the old homestead on the hill he
went in to get it.

The house itself was an old-fashioned gray one, hung with vines,
through which the light in the sitting-room winked in friendly fashion.
It looked down the Glen, over the harbour, silvered in the moonlight,
to the sand-dunes and the moaning ocean. They walked in through a
garden that always seemed to smell of roses, even when no roses were in
bloom. There was a sisterhood of lilies at the gate and a ribbon of
asters on either side of the broad walk, and a lacery of fir trees on
the hill’s edge beyond the house.

“You have the whole world at your doorstep here,” said John Meredith,
with a long breath. “What a view—what an outlook! At times I feel
stifled down there in the Glen. You can breathe up here.”

“It is calm to-night,” said Rosemary laughing. “If there were a wind it
would blow your breath away. We get ‘a’ the airts the wind can blow’ up
here. This place should be called Four Winds instead of the Harbour.”

“I like wind,” he said. “A day when there is no wind seems to me
_dead_. A windy day wakes me up.” He gave a conscious laugh. “On a calm
day I fall into day dreams. No doubt you know my reputation, Miss West.
If I cut you dead the next time we meet don’t put it down to bad
manners. Please understand that it is only abstraction and forgive
me—and speak to me.”

They found Ellen West in the sitting room when they went in. She laid
her glasses down on the book she had been reading and looked at them in
amazement tinctured with something else. But she shook hands amiably
with Mr. Meredith and he sat down and talked to her, while Rosemary
hunted out his book.

Ellen West was ten years older than Rosemary, and so different from her
that it was hard to believe they were sisters. She was dark and
massive, with black hair, thick, black eyebrows and eyes of the clear,
slaty blue of the gulf water in a north wind. She had a rather stern,
forbidding look, but she was in reality very jolly, with a hearty,
gurgling laugh and a deep, mellow, pleasant voice with a suggestion of
masculinity about it. She had once remarked to Rosemary that she would
really like to have a talk with that Presbyterian minister at the Glen,
to see if he could find a word to say to a woman when he was cornered.
She had her chance now and she tackled him on world politics. Miss
Ellen, who was a great reader, had been devouring a book on the Kaiser
of Germany, and she demanded Mr. Meredith’s opinion of him.

“A dangerous man,” was his answer.

“I believe you!” Miss Ellen nodded. “Mark my words, Mr. Meredith, that
man is going to fight somebody yet. He’s _aching_ to. He is going to
set the world on fire.”

“If you mean that he will wantonly precipitate a great war I hardly
think so,” said Mr. Meredith. “The day has gone by for that sort of
thing.”

“Bless you, it hasn’t,” rumbled Ellen. “The day never goes by for men
and nations to make asses of themselves and take to the fists. The
millenniun isn’t _that_ near, Mr. Meredith, and _you_ don’t think it is
any more than I do. As for this Kaiser, mark my words, he is going to
make a heap of trouble”—and Miss Ellen prodded her book emphatically
with her long finger. “Yes, if he isn’t nipped in the bud he’s going to
make trouble. _We’ll_ live to see it—you and I will live to see it, Mr.
Meredith. And who is going to nip him? England should, but she won’t.
_Who_ is going to nip him? Tell me that, Mr. Meredith.”

Mr. Meredith couldn’t tell her, but they plunged into a discussion of
German militarism that lasted long after Rosemary had found the book.
Rosemary said nothing, but sat in a little rocker behind Ellen and
stroked an important black cat meditatively. John Meredith hunted big
game in Europe with Ellen, but he looked oftener at Rosemary than at
Ellen, and Ellen noticed it. After Rosemary had gone to the door with
him and come back Ellen rose and looked at her accusingly.

“Rosemary West, that man has a notion of courting you.”

Rosemary quivered. Ellen’s speech was like a blow to her. It rubbed all
the bloom off the pleasant evening. But she would not let Ellen see how
it hurt her.

“Nonsense,” she said, and laughed, a little too carelessly. “You see a
beau for me in every bush, Ellen. Why he told me all about his wife
to-night—how much she was to him—how empty her death had left the
world.”

“Well, that may be _his_ way of courting,” retorted Ellen. “Men have
all kinds of ways, I understand. But don’t forget your promise,
Rosemary.”

“There is no need of my either forgetting or remembering it,” said
Rosemary, a little wearily. “_You_ forget that I’m an old maid, Ellen.
It is only your sisterly delusion that I am still young and blooming
and dangerous. Mr. Meredith merely wants to be a friend—if he wants
that much itself. He’ll forget us both long before he gets back to the
manse.”

“I’ve no objection to your being friends with him,” conceded Ellen,
“but it musn’t go beyond friendship, remember. I’m always suspicious of
widowers. They are not given to romantic ideas about friendship.
They’re apt to mean business. As for this Presbyterian man, what do
they call him shy for? He’s not a bit shy, though he may be
absent-minded—so absent-minded that he forgot to say goodnight to _me_
when you started to go to the door with him. He’s got brains, too.
There’s so few men round here that can talk sense to a body. I’ve
enjoyed the evening. I wouldn’t mind seeing more of him. But no
philandering, Rosemary, mind you—no philandering.”

Rosemary was quite used to being warned by Ellen from philandering if
she so much as talked five minutes to any marriageable man under eighty
or over eighteen. She had always laughed at the warning with unfeigned
amusement. This time it did not amuse her—it irritated her a little.
Who wanted to philander?

“Don’t be such a goose, Ellen,” she said with unaccustomed shortness as
she took her lamp. She went upstairs without saying goodnight.

Ellen shook her head dubiously and looked at the black cat.

“What is she so cross about, St. George?” she asked. “When you howl
you’re hit, I’ve always heard, George. But she promised, Saint—she
promised, and we Wests always keep our word. So it won’t matter if he
does want to philander, George. She promised. I won’t worry.”

Upstairs, in her room, Rosemary sat for a long while looking out of the
window across the moonlit garden to the distant, shining harbour. She
felt vaguely upset and unsettled. She was suddenly tired of outworn
dreams. And in the garden the petals of the last red rose were
scattered by a sudden little wind. Summer was over—it was autumn.




CHAPTER XIV.
MRS. ALEC DAVIS MAKES A CALL


John Meredith walked slowly home. At first he thought a little about
Rosemary, but by the time he reached Rainbow Valley he had forgotten
all about her and was meditating on a point regarding German theology
which Ellen had raised. He passed through Rainbow Valley and knew it
not. The charm of Rainbow Valley had no potency against German
theology. When he reached the manse he went to his study and took down
a bulky volume in order to see which had been right, he or Ellen. He
remained immersed in its mazes until dawn, struck a new trail of
speculation and pursued it like a sleuth hound for the next week,
utterly lost to the world, his parish and his family. He read day and
night; he forgot to go to his meals when Una was not there to drag him
to them; he never thought about Rosemary or Ellen again. Old Mrs.
Marshall, over-harbour, was very ill and sent for him, but the message
lay unheeded on his desk and gathered dust. Mrs. Marshall recovered but
never forgave him. A young couple came to the manse to be married and
Mr. Meredith, with unbrushed hair, in carpet slippers and faded
dressing gown, married them. To be sure, he began by reading the
funeral service to them and got along as far as “ashes to ashes and
dust to dust” before he vaguely suspected that something was wrong.

“Dear me,” he said absently, “that is strange—very strange.”

The bride, who was very nervous, began to cry. The bridegroom, who was
not in the least nervous, giggled.

“Please, sir, I think you’re burying us instead of marrying us,” he
said.

“Excuse me,” said Mr. Meredith, as it it did not matter much. He turned
up the marriage service and got through with it, but the bride never
felt quite properly married for the rest of her life.

He forgot his prayer-meeting again—but that did not matter, for it was
a wet night and nobody came. He might even have forgotten his Sunday
service if it had not been for Mrs. Alec Davis. Aunt Martha came in on
Saturday afternoon and told him that Mrs. Davis was in the parlour and
wanted to see him. Mr. Meredith sighed. Mrs. Davis was the only woman
in Glen St. Mary church whom he positively detested. Unfortunately, she
was also the richest, and his board of managers had warned Mr. Meredith
against offending her. Mr. Meredith seldom thought of such a worldly
matter as his stipend; but the managers were more practical. Also, they
were astute. Without mentioning money, they contrived to instil into
Mr. Meredith’s mind a conviction that he should not offend Mrs. Davis.
Otherwise, he would likely have forgotten all about her as soon as Aunt
Martha had gone out. As it was, he turned down his Ewald with a feeling
of annoyance and went across the hall to the parlour.

Mrs. Davis was sitting on the sofa, looking about her with an air of
scornful disapproval.

What a scandalous room! There were no curtains on the window. Mrs.
Davis did not know that Faith and Una had taken them down the day
before to use as court trains in one of their plays and had forgotten
to put them up again, but she could not have accused those windows more
fiercely if she had known. The blinds were cracked and torn. The
pictures on the walls were crooked; the rugs were awry; the vases were
full of faded flowers; the dust lay in heaps—literally in heaps.

“What are we coming to?” Mrs. Davis asked herself, and then primmed up
her unbeautiful mouth.

Jerry and Carl had been whooping and sliding down the banisters as she
came through the hall. They did not see her and continued whooping and
sliding, and Mrs. Davis was convinced they did it on purpose. Faith’s
pet rooster ambled through the hall, stood in the parlour doorway and
looked at her. Not liking her looks, he did not venture in. Mrs. Davis
gave a scornful sniff. A pretty manse, indeed, where roosters paraded
the halls and stared people out of countenance.

“Shoo, there,” commanded Mrs. Davis, poking her flounced,
changeable-silk parasol at him.

Adam shooed. He was a wise rooster and Mrs. Davis had wrung the necks
of so many roosters with her own fair hands in the course of her fifty
years that an air of the executioner seemed to hang around her. Adam
scuttled through the hall as the minister came in.

Mr. Meredith still wore slippers and dressing gown, and his dark hair
still fell in uncared-for locks over his high brow. But he looked the
gentleman he was; and Mrs. Alec Davis, in her silk dress and beplumed
bonnet, and kid gloves and gold chain looked the vulgar, coarse-souled
woman she was. Each felt the antagonism of the other’s personality. Mr.
Meredith shrank, but Mrs. Davis girded up her loins for the fray. She
had come to the manse to propose a certain thing to the minister and
she meant to lose no time in proposing it. She was going to do him a
favour—a great favour—and the sooner he was made aware of it the
better. She had been thinking about it all summer and had come to a
decision at last. This was all that mattered, Mrs. Davis thought. When
she decided a thing it _was_ decided. Nobody else had any say in the
matter. That had always been her attitude. When she had made her mind
up to marry Alec Davis she had married him and that was the end to it.
Alec had never known how it happened, but what odds? So in this
case—Mrs. Davis had arranged everything to her own satisfaction. Now it
only remained to inform Mr. Meredith.

“Will you please shut that door?” said Mrs. Davis, unprimming her mouth
slightly to say it, but speaking with asperity. “I have something
important to say, and I can’t say it with that racket in the hall.”

Mr. Meredith shut the door meekly. Then he sat down before Mrs. Davis.
He was not wholly aware of her yet. His mind was still wrestling with
Ewald’s arguments. Mrs. Davis sensed this detachment and it annoyed
her.

“I have come to tell you, Mr. Meredith,” she said aggressively, “that I
have decided to adopt Una.”

“To—adopt—Una!” Mr. Meredith gazed at her blankly, not understanding in
the least.

“Yes. I’ve been thinking it over for some time. I have often thought of
adopting a child, since my husband’s death. But it seemed so hard to
get a suitable one. It is very few children I would want to take into
_my_ home. I wouldn’t think of taking a home child—some outcast of the
slums in all probability. And there is hardly ever any other child to
be got. One of the fishermen down at the harbour died last fall and
left six youngsters. They tried to get me to take one, but I soon gave
them to understand that I had no idea of adopting trash like that.
Their grandfather stole a horse. Besides, they were all boys and I
wanted a girl—a quiet, obedient girl that I could train up to be a
lady. Una will suit me exactly. She would be a nice little thing if she
was properly looked after—so different from Faith. I would never dream
of adopting Faith. But I’ll take Una and I’ll give her a good home, and
up-bringing, Mr. Meredith, and if she behaves herself I’ll leave her
all my money when I die. Not one of my own relatives shall have a cent
of it in any case, I’m determined on that. It was the idea of
aggravating them that set me to thinking of adopting a child as much as
anything in the first place. Una shall be well dressed and educated and
trained, Mr. Meredith, and I shall give her music and painting lessons
and treat her as if she was my own.”

Mr. Meredith was wide enough awake by this time. There was a faint
flush in his pale cheek and a dangerous light in his fine dark eyes.
Was this woman, whose vulgarity and consciousness of money oozed out of
her at every pore, actually asking him to give her Una—his dear little
wistful Una with Cecilia’s own dark-blue eyes—the child whom the dying
mother had clasped to her heart after the other children had been led
weeping from the room. Cecilia had clung to her baby until the gates of
death had shut between them. She had looked over the little dark head
to her husband.

“Take good care of her, John,” she had entreated. “She is so small—and
sensitive. The others can fight their way—but the world will hurt
_her_. Oh, John, I don’t know what you and she are going to do. You
both need me so much. But keep her close to you—keep her close to you.”

These had been almost her last words except a few unforgettable ones
for him alone. And it was this child whom Mrs. Davis had coolly
announced her intention of taking from him. He sat up straight and
looked at Mrs. Davis. In spite of the worn dressing gown and the frayed
slippers there was something about him that made Mrs. Davis feel a
little of the old reverence for “the cloth” in which she had been
brought up. After all, there _was_ a certain divinity hedging a
minister, even a poor, unworldly, abstracted one.

“I thank you for your kind intentions, Mrs. Davis,” said Mr. Meredith
with a gentle, final, quite awful courtesy, “but I cannot give you my
child.”

Mrs. Davis looked blank. She had never dreamed of his refusing.

“Why, Mr. Meredith,” she said in astonishment. “You must be cr—you
can’t mean it. You must think it over—think of all the advantages I can
give her.”

“There is no need to think it over, Mrs. Davis. It is entirely out of
the question. All the worldly advantages it is in your power to bestow
on her could not compensate for the loss of a father’s love and care. I
thank you again—but it is not to be thought of.”

Disappointment angered Mrs. Davis beyond the power of old habit to
control. Her broad red face turned purple and her voice trembled.

“I thought you’d be only too glad to let me have her,” she sneered.

“Why did you think that?” asked Mr. Meredith quietly.

“Because nobody ever supposed you cared anything about any of your
children,” retorted Mrs. Davis contemptuously. “You neglect them
scandalously. It is the talk of the place. They aren’t fed and dressed
properly, and they’re not trained at all. They have no more manners
than a pack of wild Indians. You never think of doing your duty as a
father. You let a stray child come here among them for a fortnight and
never took any notice of her—a child that swore like a trooper I’m
told. _You_ wouldn’t have cared if they’d caught small-pox from her.
And Faith made an exhibition of herself getting up in preaching and
making that speech! And she rid a pig down the street—under your very
eyes I understand. The way they act is past belief and you never lift a
finger to stop them or try to teach them anything. And now when I offer
one of them a good home and good prospects you refuse it and insult me.
A pretty father you, to talk of loving and caring for your children!”

“That will do, woman!” said Mr. Meredith. He stood up and looked at
Mrs. Davis with eyes that made her quail. “That will do,” he repeated.
“I desire to hear no more, Mrs. Davis. You have said too much. It may
be that I have been remiss in some respects in my duty as a parent, but
it is not for you to remind me of it in such terms as you have used.
Let us say good afternoon.”

Mrs. Davis did not say anything half so amiable as good afternoon, but
she took her departure. As she swept past the minister a large, plump
toad, which Carl had secreted under the lounge, hopped out almost under
her feet. Mrs. Davis gave a shriek and in trying to avoid treading on
the awful thing, lost her balance and her parasol. She did not exactly
fall, but she staggered and reeled across the room in a very
undignified fashion and brought up against the door with a thud that
jarred her from head to foot. Mr. Meredith, who had not seen the toad,
wondered if she had been attacked with some kind of apoplectic or
paralytic seizure, and ran in alarm to her assistance. But Mrs. Davis,
recovering her feet, waved him back furiously.

“Don’t you dare to touch me,” she almost shouted. “This is some more of
your children’s doings, I suppose. This is no fit place for a decent
woman. Give me my umbrella and let me go. I’ll never darken the doors
of your manse or your church again.”

Mr. Meredith picked up the gorgeous parasol meekly enough and gave it
to her. Mrs. Davis seized it and marched out. Jerry and Carl had given
up banister sliding and were sitting on the edge of the veranda with
Faith. Unfortunately, all three were singing at the tops of their
healthy young voices “There’ll be a hot time in the old town to-night.”
Mrs. Davis believed the song was meant for her and her only. She
stopped and shook her parasol at them.

“Your father is a fool,” she said, “and you are three young varmints
that ought to be whipped within an inch of your lives.”

“He isn’t,” cried Faith. “We’re not,” cried the boys. But Mrs. Davis
was gone.

“Goodness, isn’t she mad!” said Jerry. “And what is a ‘varmint’
anyhow?”

John Meredith paced up and down the parlour for a few minutes; then he
went back to his study and sat down. But he did not return to his
German theology. He was too grievously disturbed for that. Mrs. Davis
had wakened him up with a vengeance. _Was_ he such a remiss, careless
father as she had accused him of being? _Had_ he so scandalously
neglected the bodily and spiritual welfare of the four little
motherless creatures dependent on him? _Were_ his people talking of it
as harshly as Mrs. Davis had declared? It must be so, since Mrs. Davis
had come to ask for Una in the full and confident belief that he would
hand the child over to her as unconcernedly and gladly as one might
hand over a strayed, unwelcome kitten. And, if so, what then?

John Meredith groaned and resumed his pacing up and down the dusty,
disordered room. What could he do? He loved his children as deeply as
any father could and he knew, past the power of Mrs. Davis or any of
her ilk, to disturb his conviction, that they loved him devotedly. But
_was_ he fit to have charge of them? He knew—none better—his weaknesses
and limitations. What was needed was a good woman’s presence and
influence and common sense. But how could that be arranged? Even were
he able to get such a housekeeper it would cut Aunt Martha to the
quick. She believed she could still do all that was meet and necessary.
He could not so hurt and insult the poor old woman who had been so kind
to him and his. How devoted she had been to Cecilia! And Cecilia had
asked him to be very considerate of Aunt Martha. To be sure, he
suddenly remembered that Aunt Martha had once hinted that he ought to
marry again. He felt she would not resent a wife as she would a
housekeeper. But that was out of the question. He did

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/5343