Anne of Ingleside - L. M. Montgomery [53]
Suppose God forgot to let the sun rise! The thought was so terrible that Jem buried his face in the afghan to shut it out, and there Susan found him sound asleep when she came home in the fiery orange of a winter sunrise.
‘Little Jem!’
Jem uncoiled himself and sat up, yawning. It had been a busy night for Silversmith Frost and the woods were fairyland. A far-off hill was touched with a crimson spear. All the white fields beyond the Glen were a lovely rose-colour. It was Mother’s birthday morning.
‘I was waiting for you, Susan… to tell you to call me… and you never came…’
‘I went down to see the John Warrens, because their aunt had died, and they asked me to stay the night and sit up with the corpse,’ explained Susan cheerfully. ‘I didn’t suppose you’d be trying to catch pneumonia, too, the minute my back was turned. Scamper off to your bed and I’ll call you when I hear your Mother stirring.’
‘Susan, how do you stab sharks?’ Jem wanted to know before he went upstairs.
‘I do not stab them,’ answered Susan.
Mother was up when he went into her room, brushing her long, shining hair before the glass. Her eyes when she saw the necklace!
‘Jem, darling! For me!’
‘Now you won’t have to wait till Dad’s ship comes in,’ said Jem with a fine nonchalance. What was that gleaming greenly on Mother’s hand? A ring… Dad’s present. All very well, but rings were common things… even Sissy Flagg had one. But a pearl necklace!
‘A necklace is such a nice birthdayish thing,’ said Mother.
21
When Gilbert and Anne went to dinner with friends in Charlottetown one evening in late March Anne put on a new dress of ice-green encrusted with silver around neck and arms: and she wore Gilbert’s emerald ring and Jem’s necklace.
‘Haven’t I got a handsome wife, Jem?’ asked Dad proudly.
Jem thought Mother was very handsome and her dress very lovely. How pretty the pearls looked on her white throat! He always liked to see Mother dressed up, but he liked it still better when she took off a splendid dress. It had transformed her into an alien. She was not really Mother in it.
After supper Jem went to the village to do an errand for Susan and it was while he was waiting in Mr Flagg’s store… rather afraid that Sissy might come in as she sometimes did and be entirely too friendly… that the blow fell… the shattering blow of disillusionment which is so terrible to a child because so unexpected and so seemingly inescapable.
Two girls were standing before the glass showcase where Mr Carter Elagg kept necklaces and chain bracelets and hair barettes.
‘Aren’t those pearl strings pretty?’ said Abbie Russell.
‘You’d almost think they were real,’ said Leona Reese.
They passed on then, quite unwitting of what they had done to the small boy sitting on the nail keg. Jem continued to sit there for some time longer. He was incapable of movement.
‘What’s the matter, sonny?’ inquired Mr Flagg. ‘You seem kind of low in your mind.’
Jem looked at Mr Flagg with tragic eyes. His mouth was strangely dry.
‘Please, Mr Flagg… are those… those necklaces… they are real pearls, aren’t they?’
Mr Flagg laughed.
‘No, Jem, I’m afraid you can’t get real pearls for fifty cents, you know. A real pearl necklace like that would cost hundreds of dollars. They’re just pearl beads, very good ones for the price, too. I got ’em at a bankrupt sale, that’s why I can sell ’em