Anne of Ingleside - L. M. Montgomery [120]
Susan was very nice about it. Jem and Nan had gone to Avonlea, and Walter was down at the House of Dreams with Kenneth Ford. There was nothing to cast a shadow on Delilah’s visit and it certainly seemed to go off very well. Delilah arrived Saturday morning very nicely dressed in pink muslin… at least the stepmother seemed to do her well in the matter of clothes. And she had, as Susan saw at a glance, irreproachable ears and nails.
‘This is the day of my life,’ she said solemnly to Diana. ‘My, what a grand house this is! And them’s the china dogs! Oh, they’re wonderful!’
Everything was wonderful. Delilah worked the poor word to death. She helped Diana set the table for dinner and picked the little glass basket full of pink sweet peas for a centre-piece.
‘Oh, you don’t know how I love to do something just because I like to do it,’ she told Diana. ‘Isn’t there anything else I can do, please?’
‘You can crack the nuts for the cake I’m going to make this afternoon,’ said Susan, who was herself falling under the spell of Delilah’s beauty and voice. After all, perhaps Laura Green was a Tartar. You couldn’t always go by what people seemed like in public. Delilah’s plate was heaped with chicken and stuffing and gravy and she got a second piece of pie without hinting for it.
‘I’ve often wondered what it would be like to have all you could eat for once. It is a wonderful sensation,’ she told Diana as they left the table.
They had a gay afternoon. Susan had given Diana a box of candy and Diana shared it with Delilah. Delilah admired one of Di’s rings and Di gave it to her. They cleaned out the pansy bed and dug up a few stray dandelions that had invaded the lawn. They helped Susan polish the silver and assisted her to get supper. Delilah was so efficient and tidy that Susan capitulated completely. Only two things marred the afternoon… Delilah contrived to spatter her dress with ink and she lost her pearl bead necklace. But Susan took the ink out nicely… some of the colour coming out too… with salts of lemon, and Delilah said it didn’t matter about the necklace.
Nothing mattered except that she was at Ingleside with her dearest Diana.
‘Aren’t we going to sleep in the spare-room bed?’ asked Diana when bed-time came. ‘We always put company in the spare room, Susan.’
‘Your Aunt Diana is coming with your father and mother tomorrow night,’ said Susan. ‘The spare room has been made up for her. You can have the Shrimp on your own bed and you couldn’t have him in the spare room.’
‘My, but your sheets smell nice!’ said Delilah as they snuggled down.
‘Susan always boils them with orris root,’ said Diana.
Delilah sighed.
‘I wonder if you know what a lucky girl you are, Diana. If I had a home like you… but it’s my lot in life. I just have to bear it.’
Susan, on her nightly round of the house before retiring, came in and told them to stop chattering and go to sleep. She gave them two maple sugar buns apiece.
‘I can never forget your kindness, Miss Baker,’ said Delilah, her voice quivering with emotion. Susan went to her bed reflecting that a nicer-mannered, more appealing little girl she had never seen. Certainly she had misjudged Delilah Green. Though at that moment it occurred to Susan that, for a child who never got enough to eat, the bones of the said Delilah Green were very well covered!
Delilah went home the next afternoon, and Mother and Father and Aunt Diana came at night. On Monday the bolt fell from the proverbial blue. Diana, returning to school at noon hour, caught her own name as she entered the school porch. Inside the schoolroom Delilah Green was the centre of a group of curious little girls.
‘I was so disappointed in Ingleside. After the way Di has bragged about her house I expected a mansion. Of course it’s big enough, but some of the furniture is shabby. The chairs want to be recovered the worst way.’
‘Did you see the china dogs?’ asked Bessy Palmer.
‘They’re nothing wonderful. They haven’t even got hair. I told