Anne of Ingleside - L. M. Montgomery [118]
‘I suppose this new infatuation will run its course in due time,’ said Anne. ‘Who is this Delilah, Susan? I don’t want the children to be little snobs… but after our experience with Jenny Penny…’
‘The Greens are very respectable, Mrs Doctor dear. They are well known at Lowbridge. They moved into the old Hunter place this summer. Mrs Green is the second wife and has two children of her own. I do not know much about her, but she seems to have a slow, kind, easy way with her. I can hardly believe she uses Delilah as Di says.’
‘Don’t put too much credence in everything Delilah tells you,’ Anne warned Diana. ‘She may be prone to exaggerate a little. Remember Jenny Penny.’
‘Why, Mother, Delilah isn’t a single bit like Jenny Penny,’ said Di, indignantly. ‘Not one bit. She is scrupulously truthful. If you only saw her, Mother, you’d know she couldn’t tell a lie. They all pick on her at home because she is so different. And she has such an affectionate nature. She has been persecuted from her birth. Her stepmother hates her. It just breaks my heart to hear of her sufferings. Why, Mother, she doesn’t get enough to eat, truly she doesn’t. She never knows what it is not to be hungry. Mother, they send her to bed without any supper lots of times and she cries herself to sleep. Did you ever cry because you were hungry, Mother?’
‘Often,’ said Mother.
Diana stared at her mother, all the wind taken out of the sails of her rhetorical question.
‘I was often very hungry before I came to Green Gables. At the orphanage… and before. I’ve never cared to talk of those days.’
‘Well, you ought to be able to understand Delilah, then,’ said Di, rallying her confused wits. ‘When she is so hungry she just sits down and imagines things to eat. Just think of her imagining things to eat!’
‘You and Nan do enough of that yourselves,’ said Anne, but Di would not listen.
‘Her sufferings are not only physical, but spiritual. Why, she wants to be a missionary, Mother… to consecrate her life… and they all laugh at her.’
‘Very heartless of them,’ agreed Anne. But something in her voice made Di suspicious.
‘Mother, why will you be so sceptical?’ she demanded reproachfully.
‘For the second time,’ smiled Mother, ‘I must remind you of Jenny Penny. You believed in her too.’
‘I was only a child then and it was easy to fool me,’ said Diana in her stateliest manner. She felt that Mother was not her usual sympathetic and understanding self in regard to Delilah Green. After that Diana talked only to Susan about her, since Nan only hooted when Delilah’s name was mentioned. ‘Just jealousy,’ thought Diana sadly.
Not that Susan was so markedly sympathetic either. But Diana had to talk to somebody about Delilah, and Susan’s derision did not hurt like Mother’s. You wouldn’t expect Susan to understand fully. But Mother had been a girl… Mother had such a tender heart. How was it that the account of poor Delilah’s ill-treatment left her so cold?
‘Maybe she’s a little jealous, too, because I love Delilah so much,’ reflected Diana sagely. ‘They say mothers do get like that. Kind of possessive.’
‘It makes my blood boil to hear of the way her stepmother treats Delilah,’ Di told Susan. ‘She is a martyr, Susan. She never has anything but a little porridge for breakfast and supper… a very little bit of porridge. And she isn’t allowed sugar on the porridge. Susan, I’ve given up taking sugar on mine because it made me feel guilty.’
‘Oh, so that’s why. Well, sugar had gone up a cent, so maybe it is just as well.’
Diana vowed she wouldn’t tell Susan anything more about Delilah, but next evening she was so indignant she couldn’t help herself.
‘Susan, Delilah’s mother chased her last night with a red-hot tea-kettle. Think of it, Susan. Of course Delilah says she doesn’t do that very often… only