Anne of Ingleside - L. M. Montgomery [17]
‘I’ll take him over tomorrow,’ said Gilbert.
‘The youngsters will be looking forward to it,’ said Mrs Parker.
‘It’s very kind of you, I’m sure,’ said Anne.
‘It’s all for the best, no doubt,’ Susan told the Shrimp darkly in the kitchen.
‘It is very obliging of Mrs Parker to take Walter off our hands, Annie,’ said Aunt Mary Maria, when the Parkers had gone. ‘She told me she had taken quite a fancy to him. People do take such odd fancies, don’t they? Well, perhaps now for at least two weeks I’ll be able to go into the bathroom without trampling on a dead fish.’
‘A dead fish, Ay! You don’t mean –’
‘I mean exactly what I say, Annie. I always do. A dead fish! Did you ever step on a dead fish with your bare feet?’
‘No – o… but how…’
‘Walter caught a trout last night and put it in the bath-tub to keep it alive, Mrs Doctor dear,’ said Susan airily. ‘If it had stayed there it would have been all right, but somehow it got out and died in the night. Of course, if people will go about on bare feet…’
‘I make it a rule never to quarrel with anyone,’ said Aunt Mary Maria, getting up and leaving the room.
‘I am determined she shall not vex me, Mrs Doctor dear,’ said Susan.
‘Oh, Susan, she is getting on my nerves a bit… but of course I won’t mind so much when all this is over, and it must be nasty to tramp on a dead fish…’
‘Isn’t a dead fish better than a live one, Mummy? A dead fish wouldn’t squirm,’ said Di.
Since the truth must be told at all costs it must be admitted that the mistress and maid of Ingleside both giggled.
So that was that. But Anne wondered to Gilbert that night if Walter would be quite happy at Lowbridge.
‘He’s so very sensitive and imaginative,’ she said wistfully.
‘Too much so,’ said Gilbert, who was tired, after having had… to quote Susan… three babies that day. ‘Why, Anne, I believe that child is afraid to go upstairs in the dark. It will do him worlds of good to give and take with the Parker fry for a few days. He’ll come home a different child.’
Anne said nothing more. No doubt Gilbert was quite right. Walter was lonesome without Jem; and in view of what had happened when Shirley was born it would be just as well for Susan to have as little on her hands as possible beyond running the house and enduring Aunt Mary Maria… whose two weeks had already stretched to four.
Walter was lying awake in his bed trying to escape from the haunting thought that he was to go away next day by giving free rein to fancy. Walter had a very vivid imagination. It was to him a great white charger, like the one in the picture on the wall, on which he could gallop backward or forward in time and space. The Night was coming down… Night, like a tall, dark, bat-winged angel who lived in Mr Andrew Taylor’s woods on the south hill. Sometimes Walter welcomed her, sometimes he pictured her so vividly that he grew afraid of her. Walter dramatized and personified in his small world… the Wind who told him stories at night… the Frost that nipped the flowers in the garden… the Dew that fell so silverly and silently… the Moon which he felt sure he could catch if he could only go to the top of that far-away purple hill… the Mist that came in from the sea… the great Sea itself that was always changing and never changed… the dark, mysterious Tide. They were all entities to Walter. Ingleside and the Hollow and the maple grove and the Marsh and the harbour shore were full of elves and kelpies and dryads and mermaids and goblins. The black plaster-of-paris cat on the library mantelpiece was a fairy witch. It came alive at night and prowled about the house, grown to enormous size. Walter ducked his head under the bedclothes and shivered. He was always scaring