Anne of Ingleside - L. M. Montgomery [75]
The Shrimp basked in the glow, and Nan’s kitten, Pussy-willow, which always suggested some dainty exquisite little lady in black and silver, climbed everybody’s legs impartially. ‘Two cats, and mouse tracks everywhere in the pantry,’ was Susan’s disapproving parenthesis; the children talked over their little adventures together, and the wail of the distant ocean came through the cold autumn night.
Sometimes Miss Cornelia dropped in for a short call while her husband exchanged opinions in Carter Flagg’s store. Little pitchers pricked up their long ears then for Miss Cornelia always had the latest gossip and they always heard the most interesting things about people. It would be such fun next Sunday to sit in church and look at the said people, savouring what you knew about them, prim and proper as they looked.
‘My, but you’re cosy here, Anne, dearie. It’s a real keen night and starting to snow. Is the Doctor out?’
‘Yes. I hated to see him go… but they telephoned from the Harbour Head that Mrs Brooker Shaw insisted on seeing him,’ said Anne, while Susan swiftly and stealthily removed from the hearthrug a huge fishbone the Shrimp had brought in, praying that Miss Cornelia had not noticed it.
‘She’s no more sick than I am,’ said Susan bitterly. ‘But I hear she had got a new lace nightgown and no doubt she wants her doctor to see her in it. Lace nightgowns!’
‘Her daughter Leona brought it home from Boston for her. She came Friday evening, with four trunks,’ said Miss Cornelia. ‘I can remember her starting off to the States nine years ago, lugging a broken old Gladstone bag with things oozing out of it. That was when she was feeling pretty blue over Phil Turner’s jilting her. She tried to hide it, but everyone knew. Now she’s back to “nurse her mother”, so she says. She’ll be trying to flirt with the Doctor. I warn you, Anne, dearie. But I don’t suppose it will matter to him even if he is a man. And you’re not like Mrs Doctor Bronson at Mowbray Narrows. She is very jealous of her husband’s female patients, I am told.’
‘And of the trained nurses,’ said Susan.
‘Well, some of those trained nurses are far too pretty for their job,’ said Miss Cornelia. ‘There’s Janie Arthur now, she’s taking a rest between cases and trying to keep her two young men from finding out about each other.’
‘Pretty as she is, she is no spring chicken now,’ said Susan firmly, ‘and it would be far better for her to make a choice and settle down. Look at her Aunt Eudora… she said she didn’t intend to marry till she got through flirting, and behold the result. Even yet she tries to flirt with every man in sight, though she is forty-five if she is a day. That is what comes of forming a habit. Did you ever hear, Mrs Doctor dear, what she said to her cousin Fanny when she got married? “You’re taking my leavings,” she said. I am informed there was a shower of sparks and they have never spoken since.’
‘Life and death are in the power of the tongue,’ murmured Anne absently.
‘A true word, dearie. Speaking of that, I wish Mr Stanley would be a little more judicious in his sermons. He has offended Wallace Young, and Wallace is going to leave the church. Everyone says the sermon last Sunday was preached at him,’
‘If a minister preaches a sermon that hits home to some particular individual people always suppose he meant it for that very person,’ said Anne. ‘A hand-me-down cap is bound to fit somebody’s head, but it doesn’t follow that it was made for him.’
‘Sound sense,’ approved Susan. ‘And I have no use for Wallace Young. He let a firm paint ads. on his cows three years ago. That is too economical in my opinion.’
‘His brother David is going to be married at last,’ said Miss Cornelia. ‘He’s been a long time making up his