Anne of Ingleside - L. M. Montgomery [20]
‘Pig, hush!’ ordered Alice terribly… very terribly, although very quietly and sweetly and gently. There was something in her tone that even Andy dared not flout.
‘Course I didn’t meant it,’ he muttered, shamefacedly.
The wind veered a bit in Walter’s favour and they had a fairly amiable game of tag in the orchard. But when they trooped noisily into supper Walter was again overwhelmed with homesickness. It was so terrible that for one awful moment he was afraid he was going to cry before them all… even Alice, who, however, gave his arm such a friendly little nudge as they sat down that it helped him. But he could not eat anything… he simply could not. Mrs Parker, for whose methods there was certainly something to be said, did not worry him about it, comfortably concluding that his appetite would be better in the morning, and the others were too much occupied in eating and talking to take much notice of him. Walter wondered why the whole family shouted so at each other, ignorant of the fact that they had not yet had time to get out of the habit since the recent death of a very deaf and sensitive old grandmother. The noise made his head ache. Oh, at home now they would be eating supper too. Mother would be smiling from the head of the table, Father would be joking with the twins, Susan would be pouring cream into Shirley’s mug of milk, Nan would be sneaking titbits to the Shrimp. Even Aunt Mary Maria, as part of the home circle, seemed suddenly invested with a soft, tender radiance. Who would have rung the Chinese gong for supper? It was his week to do it and Jem was away. If he could only find a place to cry in! But there seemed to be no place where you could indulge in tears at Lowbridge. Besides… there was Alice… Walter gulped down a whole glassful of ice water and found that it helped.
‘Our cat takes fits,’ Andy said suddenly, kicking him under the table.
‘So does ours,’ said Walter. The Shrimp had had two fits. And he wasn’t going to have the Lowbridge cats rated higher than the Ingleside cats.
‘I’ll bet our cat takes fittier fits than yours,’ taunted Andy.
‘I’ll bet she doesn’t,’ retorted Walter.
‘Now, now, don’t let’s have any arguments over your cats,’ said Mrs Parker, who wanted a quiet evening to write her Institute paper on ‘Misunderstood Children’. ‘Run out and play. It won’t be long before your bed-time.’
Bed-time! Walter suddenly realized that he had to stay here all night… many nights… two weeks of nights. It was dreadful. He went out to the orchard with clenched fists, to find Bill and Andy in a furious clinch on the grass, kicking, clawing, yelling.
‘You gave me the wormy apple, Bill Parker,’ Andy was howling. ‘I’ll teach you to give me wormy apples! I’ll bite off your ears!’
Fights of this sort were an everyday occurrence with the Parkers. Mrs Parker held that it didn’t hurt boys to fight. She said they got a lot of devilment out of their systems that way and were as good friends afterwards. But Walter had never seen anyone fighting before and was aghast.
Fred was cheering them on, Opal and Cora were laughing, but there were tears in Alice’s eyes. Walter could not endure that. He hurled himself between the combatants, who had drawn apart for a moment to snatch breath before joining battle again.
‘You stop fighting,’ said Walter. ‘You’re scaring Alice.’
Bill and Andy stared at him in amazement for a moment until the funny side of this baby interfering in their fight struck them. Both burst into laughter, and Bill slapped him on the back.
‘It’s got spunk, kids,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be a real boy some time if you let it grow up. Here’s an apple for it… and no worms either.’
Alice wiped the tears away from her soft pink cheeks and looked so adoringly at Walter that Fred didn’t like it. Of course Alice was only a baby, but even babies had no business to be looking adoringly at other boys when he, Fred Johnson of Montreal, was around. This must be dealt with. Fred had been into the house and had heard Aunt Jen,