Anne of Ingleside - L. M. Montgomery [82]
‘What’s the matter?’ demanded Jenny. ‘Nobody’s going to bite you.’
‘Is she… she did really live before the flood, Jenny?’
‘Of course not. Whoever said she did? She’ll be a hundred, though, if she lives till her next birthday. Come on.’
Di went, gingerly. In a small, badly cluttered bedroom Gammy lay in a huge bed. Her face, unbelievably wrinkled and shrunken, looked like an old monkey’s. She peered at Di with sunken, red-rimmed eyes and said testily:
‘Stop staring. Who are you?’
‘This is Diana Blythe, Gammy,’ said Jenny… a rather subdued Jenny.
‘Humph! A nice high-sounding name! They tell me you’ve got a proud sister.’
‘Nan isn’t proud,’ cried Di, with a flash of spirit. Had Jenny been running down Nan?
‘A little saucy, ain’t you? I wasn’t brought up to speak like that to my betters. She is proud. Anyone who walks with her head in the air like young Jenny tells me she does, is proud. One of your hoity-toitys! Don’t contradict me.’
Gammy looked so angry that Di hastily inquired how her back was.
‘Who says I’ve got a back. Such presumption! My back’s my own business. Come here… come close to my bed.’
Di went, wishing herself a thousand miles away. What was this dreadful old woman going to do to her?
Gammy hitched herself alertly to the edge of the bed and put a claw-like hand on Di’s hair.
‘Sort of carroty but real slick. That’s a pretty dress. Turn it up and show me your petticoat.’
Di obeyed, thankful that she had on her white petticoat with its trimming of Susan’s crocheted lace. But what sort of a family was it where you were made to show your petticoat?
‘I always judge a girl by her petticoats,’ said Gammy. ‘Yours’ll pass. Now your drawers.’
Di dared not refuse. She lifted her petticoat.
‘Humph! Lace on them too! That’s extravagance. And you’ve never asked after John!’
‘How is he?’ gasped Di.
‘ “How is he,” says she, bold as brass. He might be dead for all you know. Tell me this. Is it true your mother has a gold thimble… a solid gold thimble?’
‘Yes. Daddy gave it to her her last birthday.’
‘Well, I’d never have believed it. Young Jenny told me she had, but you can’t ever believe a word young Jenny says. A solid gold thimble! I never heard the beat of that. Well, you’d better go out and get your suppers. Eating never goes out of fashion. Jenny, pull up your pants. One leg’s hanging below your dress. Let us have decency at least.’
‘My pant… drawer leg isn’t hanging down,’ said Jenny indignantly.
‘Pants for Pennys and drawers for Blythes. That’s the distinction between you and always will be. Don’t contradict me.’
The whole Penny family were assembled around the supper table in the big kitchen. Di had not seen any of them before except Aunt Lina, but as she shot a glance around the board she understood why Mother and Susan had not wanted her to come here. The tablecloth was ragged and daubed with ancient gravy stains. The dishes were a nondescript assortment. Flies swarmed over everything. As for the Pennys… Di had never sat at table with such company before and she wished herself safely back at Ingleside. But she must go through with it now.
Uncle Ben, as Jenny called him, sat at the head of the table; he had a flaming red beard and a bald, grey-fringed head. His bachelor brother, Parker, lank and unshaven, had arranged himself at an angle convenient for spitting in the wood-box, which he did at frequent intervals. The boys, Curt, twelve, and George Andrew, thirteen, had pale-blue, fishy eyes, with a bold stare and bare skin showing through the holes in their ragged shirts. Curt had his hand, which he had cut on a broken bottle, tied up with a blood-stained rag. Annabel Penny, eleven, and ‘Gert’ Penny, ten, were two rather pretty girls with round brown eyes. ‘Tuppy’, aged two, had delightful curls and rosy cheeks, and the baby, with roguish black eyes, on Aunt Lina’s lap, would have been adorable if it had been clean.
‘Curt, why didn’t you clean your nails when you knew company was coming,’ demanded Jenny.