Anne of Avonlea - L. M. Montgomery [78]
“I’m afraid he came long ago and went away again,” said Diana. “They say she used to be engaged to Stephen Irving…Paul’s father…when they were young. But they quarreled and parted.”
“Hush,” warned Anne. “The door is open.”
The girls paused in the porch under the tendrils of ivy and knocked at the open door. There was a patter of steps inside and a rather odd little personage presented herself…a girl of about fourteen, with a freckled face, a snub nose, a mouth so wide that it did really seem as if it stretched “from ear to ear,” and two long braids of fair hair tied with two enormous bows of blue ribbon.
“Is Miss Lewis at home?” asked Diana.
“Yes, ma’am. Come in, ma’am. I’ll tell Miss Lavendar you’re here, ma’am. She’s upstairs, ma’am.”
With this the small handmaiden whisked out of sight and the girls, left alone, looked about them with delighted eyes. The interior of this wonderful little house was quite as interesting as its exterior.
The room had a low ceiling and two square, small-paned windows, curtained with muslin frills. All the furnishings were old-fashioned, but so well and daintily kept that the effect was delicious. But it must be candidly admitted that the most attractive feature, to two healthy girls who had just tramped four miles through autumn air, was a table, set out with pale blue china and laden with delicacies, while little golden-hued ferns scattered over the cloth gave it what Anne would have termed “a festal air.”
“Miss Lavendar must be expecting company to tea,” she whispered. “There are six places set. But what a funny little girl she has. She looked like a messenger from pixy land. I suppose she could have told us the road, but I was curious to see Miss Lavendar. S…s…sh, she’s coming.”
And with that Miss Lavendar Lewis was standing in the doorway. The girls were so surprised that they forgot good manners and simply stared. They had unconsciously been expecting to see the usual type of elderly spinster as known to their experience…a rather angular personage, with prim gray hair and spectacles. Nothing more unlike Miss Lavendar could possibly be imagined.
She was a little lady with snow-white hair beautifully wavy and thick, and carefully arranged in becoming puffs and coils. Beneath it was an almost girlish face, pink-cheeked and sweet-lipped, with big soft brown eyes and dimples…actually dimples. She wore a very dainty gown of cream muslin with pale-hued roses on it…a gown which would have seemed ridiculously juvenile on most women of her age, but which suited Miss Lavendar so perfectly that you never thought about it at all.
“Charlotta the Fourth says that you wished to see me,” she said, in a voice that matched her appearance.
“We wanted to ask the right road to West Grafton,” said Diana. “We are invited to tea at Mr. Kimball’s, but we took the wrong path coming through the woods and came out to the base line instead of the West Grafton road. Do we take the right or left turning at your gate?”
“The left,” said Miss Lavendar, with a hesitating glance at her tea table. Then she exclaimed, as if in a sudden little burst of resolution:
“But oh, won’t you stay and have tea with me? Please do. Mr. Kimball’s will have tea over before you get there. And Charlotta the Fourth and I will be so glad to have you.”
Diana looked mute inquiry at Anne.
“We’d like to stay,” said Anne promptly, for she had made up her mind that she wanted to know more of this surprising Miss Lavendar, “if it won’t inconvenience you. But you are expecting other guests, aren’t you?”
Miss Lavendar looked at her tea table again, and blushed.
“I know you’ll think me dreadfully foolish,” she said. “I am foolish…and I’m ashamed of it when I’m found out, but never unless I am found out. I’m not expecting anybody…I was just pretending I was. You see, I was so lonely. I love company…that is, the right kind of company…but so few people ever come here because it is so far out of the way. Charlotta the Fourth was lonely too. So I just pretended I was going to have a tea