Anne of Ingleside - L. M. Montgomery [18]
Walter was told in the morning that Dad would take him to Lowbridge after dinner. He said nothing, but during dinner a choky sensation came over him and he dropped his eyes quickly to hide a sudden mist of tears. Not quickly enough, however.
‘You’re not going to cry, Walter?’ said Aunt Mary Maria, as if a six-year-old mite would be disgraced for ever if he cried. ‘If there’s anything I do despise it’s a cry-baby. And you haven’t eaten your meat.’
‘All but the fat,’ said Walter, blinking valiantly, but not yet daring to look up. ‘I don’t like fat.’
‘When I was a child,’ said Aunt Mary Maria, ‘I was not allowed to have likes and dislikes. Well, Mrs Doctor Parker will probably cure you of some of your notions. She was a Winter, I think… or was she a Clark?… no, she must have been a Campbell. But the Winters and Campbells are all tarred with the same brush, and they don’t put up with any nonsense.’
‘Oh, please, Aunt Mary Maria, don’t frighten Walter about his visit to Lowbridge,’ said Anne, a little spark kindling far down in her eyes.
‘I’m sorry, Annie,’ said Aunt Mary Maria with great humility. ‘I should of course have remembered that I have no right to try to teach your children anything.’
‘Drat her hide,’ muttered Susan as she went out for the dessert… Walter’s favourite Queen pudding.
Anne felt miserably guilty. Gilbert had shot her a slightly reproachful glance as if to imply she might have been more patient with a poor lonely old lady.
Gilbert himself was feeling a bit seedy. The truth, as everyone knew, was that he had been terribly overworked all summer: and perhaps Aunt Mary Maria was more of a strain than he would admit. Anne made up her mind that in the autumn, if all was well, she would pack him off willy-nilly for a month’s snipe shooting in Nova Scotia.
‘How is your tea?’ she asked Aunt Mary Maria repentantly.
Aunt Mary Maria pursed her lips.
‘Too weak. But it doesn’t matter. Who cares whether a poor old woman gets her tea to her liking or not? Some folks, however, think I’m real good company.’
Whatever the connection between Aunt Mary Maria’s two sentences was Anne felt she was beyond ferreting it out just then. She had turned very pale.
‘I think I’ll go upstairs and lie down,’ she said a trifle faintly as she rose from the table. ‘And I think, Gilbert… perhaps you’d better not stay long in Lowbridge… and suppose you give Miss Carson a ring.’
She kissed Walter good-bye rather casually and hurriedly, very much as if she were not thinking about him at all. Walter would not cry. Aunt Mary Maria kissed him on the forehead – Walter hated to be moistly kissed on the forehead – and said:
‘Mind your table manners at Lowbridge, Walter. Mind you ain’t greedy. If you are, a Big Black Man will come along with a big black bag to pop naughty children into.’
It was perhaps as well that Gilbert had gone out to harness Grey Tom and did not hear this. He and Anne had always made a point of never frightening their children with such ideas or allowing anyone else to do it. Susan did hear it as she cleared the table, and Aunt Mary Maria never knew what a narrow escape she had of having the gravy boat and its contents flung at her head.
8
Generally Walter enjoyed a drive with Dad. He loved beauty, and the roads around Glen St Mary were beautiful. The road to Lowbridge was a double ribbon of dancing buttercups, with here and there the ferny green rim of an inviting grove. But today Dad didn’t seem to want to talk much and he drove Grey Tom as Walter never remembered seeing him driven before. When they reached Lowbridge he said