Anne of Ingleside - L. M. Montgomery [12]
‘But not bugs, surely,’ protested Susan.
‘No-o-o, I suppose not. But a completed garden wouldn’t really be any fun, Susan. You have to work in a garden yourself or you miss its meaning. I want to weed and dig and transplant and change and prune. And I want the flowers I love in heaven… I’d rather my own pansies than the asphodel, Susan.’
‘Why can’t you put in the evening as you want to?’ broke in Susan, who thought Mrs Doctor was really getting a little wild.
‘Because the doctor wants me to go for a drive with him. He is going to see poor old Mrs John Paxton. She is dying… he can’t do her any good… he has done everything he can… but she does like to have him drop in.’
‘Oh, well, Mrs Doctor dear, we all know that nobody can die or be born without him hereabouts, and it is a nice evening for a drive. I think I’ll take a walk down to the village myself and replenish our pantry after I put the twins and Shirley to bed and manure Mrs Aaron Ward. She isn’t blooming as she ought to. Miss Blythe has just gone upstairs, sighing at every step, saying one of her headaches is coming on, so there’ll be a little peace and quiet for the evening at least.’
‘See that Jem goes to bed in good time, will you, Susan?’ said Anne, as she went away through the evening that was like a cup of fragrance that had spilled over. ‘He’s really much tireder than he thinks he is. And he never wants to go to bed. Walter is not coming home tonight; Leslie asked if he might stay there.’
Jem was sitting on the steps of the side door, one bare foot hooked over his knee, scowling viciously at things in general and at an enormous moon behind the Glen church spire in particular. Jem didn’t like such big moons.
‘Take care your face doesn’t freeze like that,’ Aunt Mary Maria had said as she passed him on her way into the house.
Jem scowled more blackly than ever. He didn’t care if his face did freeze like that. He hoped it would. ‘Go ’way and don’t come tagging after me all the time,’ he told Nan, who had crept out to him after Father and Mother had driven away.
‘Cross-patch!’ said Nan. But before she trotted off she laid down on the step beside him the red candy lion she had brought out to him.
Jem ignored it. He felt more abused than ever. He wasn’t being used right. Everybody picked on him. Hadn’t Nan that very morning said, ‘You weren’t born at Ingleside like the rest of us.’ Di had et his chocolate rabbit that forenoon, though she knew it was his rabbit. Even Walter had deserted him, going away to dig wells in the sand with Ken and Persis Ford. Great fun that! And he wanted so much to go with Bertie to see the tattooing. Jem was sure he had never wanted anything so much in his life before. He wanted to see the wonderful, full-rigged ship that Bertie said was always on Captain Bill’s mantelpiece. It was a mean shame, that’s what it was.
Susan brought him out a big slice of cake covered with maple frosting and nuts, but… ‘No, thank you,’ said Jem stonily. Why hadn’t she saved some of the gingerbread and cream for him? S’pose the rest of them had et it all. Pigs! He plunged into a deeper gulf of gloom. The gang would be on their way to the Harbour Mouth by now. He just couldn’t bear the thought. He’d got to do something to get square with folks. S’posin’ he sliced Di’s sawdust giraffe open on the living-room rug? That would make old Susan mad… Susan with her nuts, when she knew he hated nuts in frosting. S’posin’ he went and drew a moustache on that picture of the cherub on the calendar in her room? He had always hated that fat, pink, smiling cherub because it looked just like Sissy Flagg, who had told round school that Jem Blythe was her beau. Hers! Sissy Flagg! But Susan thought that cherub lovely.
S’posin’ he scalped Nan’s doll? S’posin’ he wacked the nose off Gog or Magog… or both of them? Maybe that would make Mother see he wasn’t a boy any longer. Just wait