Anne of Ingleside - L. M. Montgomery [109]
Rilla worshipped Miss Emmy. She was so pretty and dainty, with her white, white skin and her brown, brown eyes and her sad, sweet smile… sad, another small girl had whispered to Rilla one day, because the man she was going to marry had died. She was so glad she was in Miss Emmy’s class. She would have hated to be in Miss Florrie Flagg’s class… Florrie Flagg was ugly and Rilla couldn’t bear an ugly teacher.
When Rilla met Miss Emmy away from Sunday School and Miss Emmy smiled and spoke to her it was one of the high moments of life for Rilla. Only to be nodded to on the street by Miss Emmy gave a strange, sudden lift of the heart, and when Miss Emmy had invited all her class to a soap-bubble party, where they made the bubbles red with strawberry juice, Rilla had all but died of sheer bliss.
But to meet Miss Emmy, carrying a cake, was just not to be endured and Rilla was not going to endure it. Besides, Miss Emmy was going to get up a dialogue for the next Sunday School concert, and Rilla was cherishing secret hopes of being asked to take the fairy’s part in it… a fairy in scarlet with a little peaked green hat. But there would be no use in hoping for that if Miss Emmy saw her carrying a cake.
Miss Emmy was not going to see her! Rilla was standing on the little bridge crossing the brook, which was quite deep and creek-like there. She snatched the cake out of the basket and hurled it into the brook where the alders met over a dark pool. The cake hurtled through the branches and sank with a plop and a gurgle. Rilla felt a wild spasm of relief and freedom and escape, as she turned to meet Miss Emmy, who, she now saw, was carrying a big, bulgy, brown paper parcel.
Miss Emmy smiled down at her, from beneath a little green hat with a tiny orange feather in it.
‘Oh, you’re beautiful, teacher… beautiful,’ gasped Rilla adoringly. Miss Emmy smiled again. Even when your heart is broken… and Miss Emmy truly believed hers was… it is not unpleasant to be given such a sincere compliment.
‘It’s the new hat, I expect, dear. Fine feathers, you know. I suppose’… glancing at the empty basket… ‘you’ve been taking your cake up for the social. What a pity you’re not going instead of coming. I’m taking mine… such a big, gooey chocolate cake.’
Rilla gazed up piteously, unable to utter a word. Miss Emmy was carrying a cake. Therefore, it could not be a disgraceful thing to carry a cake. And she… oh, what had she done? She had thrown Susan’s lovely gold-and-silver cake into the brook… and she had lost the chance of walking up to the church with Miss Emmy, both carrying cakes!
After Miss Emmy had gone on Rilla went home with her dreadful secret. She buried herself in Rainbow Valley until supper-time, when again nobody noticed that she was very quiet. She was terribly afraid Susan would ask to whom she had given the cake, but there were no awkward questions. After supper the others went to play in Rainbow Valley, but Rilla sat alone on the steps until the sun went down and the sky was all a windy gold behind Ingleside and the lights sprang up in the village below. Always Rilla liked to watch them blooming out, here and there, all over the Glen, but tonight she was interested in nothing. She had never been so unhappy in her life. She just didn’t see how she could live. The evening deepened to purple and she was still more unhappy. A most delectable odour of maple sugar buns drifted out to her… Susan had waited for the evening coolness to do the family baking… but maple sugar buns, like all else, were just vanity. Miserably she climbed the stairs and went to bed under the new, pink-flowered spread she had once been so proud of. But she could not sleep. She was haunted by the ghost of the cake she had drowned. Mother had promised the committee the cake… what