Anne of Ingleside - L. M. Montgomery [41]
‘Isn’t he rather anaemic and short-sighted?’ asked Anne.
‘And his eyes bulge,’ said Susan. ‘They must be dreadful when he tries to look sentimental.’
‘At least he’s a Presbyterian,’ said Miss Cornelia, as if that atoned for much. ‘Well, I must be going. I find if I’m out in the dew much my neuralgia troubles me.’
‘I’ll walk down to the gate with you.’
‘You always looked like a queen in that dress, Anne, dearie,’ said Miss Cornelia, admiringly and irrelevantly.
Anne met Owen and Leslie Ford at the gate and brought them back to the veranda. Susan had vanished to get lemonade for the doctor, who had just arrived home, and the children came swarming up from the Hollow, sleepy and happy.
‘You were making a dreadful noise as I drove in,’ said Gilbert. ‘The whole countryside must have heard you.’
Persis Ford, shaking back her thick, honey-tinted curls, stuck out her tongue at him. Persis was a great favourite with ‘Uncle Gil’.
‘We were just imitating howling dervishes, so of course we had to howl,’ explained Kenneth.
‘Look at the state your blouse is in,’ said Leslie rather severely.
‘I fell in Di’s mud-pie,’ said Kenneth, with decided satisfaction in his tone. He loathed those starched, spotless blouses Mother made him wear when he came up to the Glen.
‘Mother dearwums,’ said Jem, ‘can I have those old ostrich feathers in the garret to sew in the back of my pants for a tail? We’re going to have a circus tomorrow and I’m to be the ostrich. And we’re going to get an elephant.’
‘Do you know that it costs six hundred dollars a year to feed an elephant?’ said Gilbert solemnly.
‘An imaginary elephant doesn’t cost anything,’ explained Jem patiently.
Anne laughed. ‘We never need to be economical in our imaginations, thank heaven.’
Walter said nothing. He was a little tired and quite content to sit down beside Mother on the steps and lean his black head against her shoulder. Leslie Ford, looking at him, thought that he had the face of a genius… the remote, detached look of a soul from another star. Earth was not his habitat.
Everybody was very happy in this golden hour of a golden day. A bell in a church across the harbour rang faintly and sweetly. The moon was making patterns on the water. The dunes shimmered in hazy silver. There was a tang of mint in the air and some unseen roses were unbearably sweet. And Anne, looking dreamily over the lawn with eyes that, in spite of six children, were still very young, thought there was nothing in the world so slim and elfin as a very young lombardy poplar by moonlight.
Then she began to think about Stella Chase and Alden Churchill until Gilbert broke in and offered her a penny for her thoughts.
‘I’m thinking seriously of trying my hand at matchmaking,’ retorted Anne.
Gilbert looked at the others in mock despair.
‘I was afraid it would break out again some day. I’ve done my best, but you can’t reform a born matchmaker. She has a positive passion for it. The number of matches she has made is incredible. I couldn’t sleep o’ nights if I had such responsibilities on my conscience.’
‘But they’re all happy,’ protested Anne. ‘I’m really an adept. Think of all the matches I’ve made, or been accused of making… Theodora Dix and Ludovic Speed… Stephen Clark and Prissie Gardner… Janet Sweet and John Douglas… Professor Carter and Esme Taylor… Nora and Jim… Dovie and Jarvis…’
‘Oh, I admit it. This wife of mine, Owen, has never lost her sense of expectation. Thistles may, for her, bear figs at any time. I suppose she’ll keep on trying to marry people off until she grows up.’
‘I think she had something to do with another match yet,’ said Owen, smiling at his wife.
‘Not I,’ said Anne promptly. ‘Blame Gilbert for that. I did my best to persuade him not to have that operation performed on George Moore. Talk about sleeping o’ nights… there are nights when I wake up in a cold perspiration dreaming that I succeeded.’
‘Well, they say it is only happy women who match-make, so that is one up for me,’ said Gilbert complacently. ‘What new victims have you in mind now, Anne?’
Anne only