Anne of Ingleside - L. M. Montgomery [36]
‘Susan, you old duck!’
Plotting and planning followed. Susan, having yielded, was determined that for the honour of Ingleside the party must be something that even Mary Maria Blythe could not find fault with.
‘I think we’ll have a luncheon, Susan. Then they’ll be away early enough for me to go to the concert at Low-bridge with the doctor. We’ll keep it a secret and surprise her. She shan’t know a thing about it till the last minute. I’ll invite all the people in the Glen she likes…’
‘And who may they be, Mrs Doctor dear?’
‘Well, tolerates, then. And her cousin, Adella Carey from Low-bridge, and some people from town. We’ll have a big plump birthday cake with fifty-five candles on it…’
‘Which I am to make, of course…’
‘Susan, you know you make the best fruit-cake in P.E. Island…’
‘I know that I am as wax in your hands, Mrs Doctor dear.’
A mysterious week followed. An air of hush-hush pervaded Ingleside. Everybody was sworn not to give the secret away to Aunt Mary Maria. But Anne and Susan had reckoned without gossip. The night before the party Aunt Mary Maria came home from a call in the Glen to find them sitting rather wearily in the unlighted sun-room.
‘All in the dark, Annie? It beats me how anyone can like sitting in the dark. It gives me the blues.’
‘It isn’t dark… it’s twilight… there had been a love-match between light and dark, and beautiful exceedingly is the offspring thereof,’ said Anne, more to herself than anybody else.
‘I suppose you know what you mean yourself, Annie. And so you’re having a party tomorrow?’
Anne suddenly sat bolt upright. Susan, already sitting so, could not sit any uprighter.
‘Why… why… Auntie…’
‘You always leave me to hear things from outsiders,’ said Aunt Mary Maria, but seemingly more in sorrow than in anger.
‘We… we meant it for a surprise, Auntie…’
‘I don’t know what you want of a party this time of year when you can’t depend on the weather, Annie.’
Anne drew a breath of relief. Evidently Aunt Mary Maria knew only that there was to be a party, not that it had any connection with her.
‘… I wanted to have it before the spring flowers were done, Auntie.’
‘I shall wear my garnet taffeta. I suppose, Annie, if I had not heard of this in the village I should have been caught by all your fine friends tomorrow in a cotton dress.’
‘Oh, no, Auntie. We meant to tell you in time to dress, of course…’
‘Well, if my advice means anything to you, Annie… and sometimes I am almost compelled to think it does not… I would say that in future it would be better for you not to be quite so secretive about things. By the way, are you aware that they are saying in the village that it was Jem who threw the stone through the window of the Methodist church?’
‘He did not,’ said Anne quietly. ‘He told me he did not.’
‘Are you sure, Annie, dear, that he was not fibbing?’
‘Annie dear’ still spoke quietly.
‘Quite sure, Aunt Mary Maria. Jem has never told me an untruth in his life.’
‘Well, I thought you ought to know what was being said.’
Aunt Mary Maria stalked off in her usual gracious manner, ostentatiously avoiding the Shrimp, who was lying on his back on the floor entreating someone to tickle his stomach.
Susan and Anne drew a long breath.
‘I think I’ll go to bed, Susan. And I do hope it is going to be fine tomorrow. I don’t like the look of that dark cloud over the harbour.’
‘It will be fine, Mrs Doctor dear,’ reassured Susan. ‘The almanac says so.’
Susan had an almanac that foretold the whole year’s weather and was right often enough to keep up its credit.
‘Leave the side door unlocked for the doctor, Susan. He may be late getting home from town. He went in for the roses… fifty-five golden roses, Susan… I’ve heard Aunt Mary Maria say that yellow roses were the only flowers she liked.’
Half an hour later, Susan, reading her nightly chapter in her Bible, came across the verse, ‘Withdraw thy foot from thy neighbour’s house lest he