Anne of Ingleside - L. M. Montgomery [115]
Red flannel and goose-grease! Not to speak of turpentine!
‘If you won’t have a sandwich… sure you won’t?… I’ll see what’s in the cookie box.’
The cookies, cut in the shape of roosters and ducks, were surprisingly good and fairly melted in your mouth. Mrs Fair beamed at Nan out of her round, faded eyes.
‘Now you’ll like me, won’t you? I like to have little girls like me.’
‘I’ll try,’ gasped Nan, who at that moment was hating poor Thomasine Fair as we can hate only those who destroy our illusions.
‘I’ve got some little grandchildren of my own out west, you know.’
Grandchildren!
‘I’ll show you their pictures. Pretty, ain’t they? That’s poor dear Poppa’s picture up there. Twenty years since he died.’
Poor dear Poppa’s picture was a large ‘crayon’ of a bearded man with a curly fringe of white hair surrounding a bald head.
Oh, lover disdained!
‘He was a good husband though he was bald at thirty,’ said Mrs Fair fondly. ‘My, but I had the pick of the beaux when I was a girl. I’m old now, but I had a fine time when I was young. The beaux on Sunday nights! Trying to sit each other out! And me holding up my head as haughty as any queen! Poppa was among them from the start, but at first I hadn’t nothing to say to him. I liked ’em a bit more dashing. There was Andrew Metcalf now… I was as near as no matter running away with him. But I knew ’twould be unlucky. Don’t you ever run away. It is unlucky and don’t let anyone ever tell you different.’
‘I… I… indeed I won’t.’
‘In the end I married Poppa. His patience gave out finally and he gave me twenty-four hours to take him or leave him. My pa wanted me to settle down. He got nervous when Jim Hewitt drowned himself because I wouldn’t have him. Poppa and I were real happy when we got used to each other. He said I suited him because I didn’t do too much thinking. Poppa held women weren’t made for thinking. He said it made ’em dried-up and unnatural. Baked beans disagreed with him turrible, and he had spells of lumbago, but my balmagilia balsam always straightened that out. There was a specialist in town said he could cure him permanent, but Poppa always said if you got into the hands of them specialists they’d never let you out again… never. I miss him to feed the pig. He was real fond of pork. I never eat a bit of bacon but I think of him. That picture opposite Poppa is Queen Victoria. Sometimes I say to her, “If they stripped all them lace and jewels off you, my dear, I doubt if you’d be any better looking than I am.” ’
Before she let Nan go she insisted on her taking a bag of peppermints, a pink glass slipper for holding flowers, and a glass of gooseberry jelly. ‘That’s for your ma. I’ve always had good luck with my gooseberry jelly. I’m coming down to Ingleside some day. I want to see them chiney dogs of yours. Tell Susan Baker I’m much obliged for that mess of turnip greens she sent me in the spring.’
Turnip greens!
‘I meant to thank her at Jacob Warren’s funeral, but she got away too quick. I like to take my time at funerals. There hasn’t been one for a month. I always think it’s a dull old time when there’s no funerals going. There’s always a fine lot of funerals over Low-bridge way. It don’t seem fair. Come again and see me, won’t you? You’ve got something about you… “loving favour is better than silver and gold”, the Good Book says, and I guess it’s right.’
She smiled very pleasantly at Nan… she had a sweet smile. In it you saw the pretty Thomasine of long ago. Nan managed another smile herself. Her eyes were stinging. She must get away before she cried outright.
‘Nice, well-behaved leetle creetur,’ mused old Thomasine Fair, looking out of her window after Nan. ‘Hasn’t got her ma’s gift of the gab, but maybe none the worse of that. Most of the kids today think they’re smart when they’re just being sassy. That little thing’s visit has kind of made me feel young again.’
Thomasine sighed and went out to finish cutting her marigolds and hoeing up some of the burdocks.
‘Thank goodness I’ve kept limber,’ she reflected.
Nan went back