Anne of Ingleside - L. M. Montgomery [83]
‘Shut up,’ said Uncle Ben in a great booming voice.
‘I won’t shut up… you can’t make me shut up,’ cried Jenny.
‘Don’t sass your uncle,’ said Aunt Lina placidly. ‘Come now, girls, behave like ladies. Curt, pass the potatoes to Miss Blythe.’
‘Oh, ho, Miss Blythe,’ sniggered Curt.
But Diana had got at least one thrill. For the first time in her life she had been called Miss Blythe.
For a wonder the food was good and abundant. Di, who was hungry, would have enjoyed the meal… though she hated drinking out of a chipped cup… if she had only been sure it was clean… and if everybody hadn’t quarrelled so. Private fights were going on all the time… between George Andrew and Curt… between Curt and Annabel… between Gert and Jen… even between Uncle Ben and Aunt Lina. They had a terrible fight and hurled the bitterest accusations at each other. Aunt Lina cast up to Ben all the fine men she might have married, and Uncle Ben said he only wished she had married anybody but him.
‘Wouldn’t it be dreadful if my father and mother fought like that?’ thought Di. ‘Oh, if I were only back home.’
‘Don’t suck your thumb, Tuppy.’
She said that before she thought. They had had such a time breaking Rilla of sucking her thumb.
Instantly Curt was red with rage.
‘Let him alone,’ he shouted. ‘He can suck his thumb if he likes. We ain’t bossed to death like you Ingleside kids are. Who do you think you are?’
‘Curt, Curt! Miss Blythe will think you haven’t any manners,’ said Aunt Lina. She was quite calm and smiling again and put two teaspoons of sugar in Uncle Ben’s tea. ‘Don’t mind him, dear. Have another piece of pie.’
Di did not want another piece of pie. She only wanted to go home… and she did not see how it could be brought about.
‘Well,’ boomed Uncle Ben, as he drained the last of his tea noisily from the saucer. ‘That’s so much over. Get up in the morning, work all day, eat three meals and go to bed. What a life!’
‘Pa loves his little joke,’ smiled Aunt Lina.
‘Talking of jokes… I saw the Methodist minister in Flagg’s store today. He tried to contradict me when I said there was no God. “You talk on Sunday,” I told him. “It’s my turn now. Prove to me there’s a God,” I told him. “It’s you that’s doing the talking,” sez he. They all laughed like ninnies. Thought he was smart.’
No God! The bottom seemed falling out of Di’s world. She wanted to cry.
31
It was worse after supper. Before that she and Jenny had been alone at least. Now there was a mob. George Andrew grabbed her hand and galloped her through a mud-puddle before she could escape him. Di had never been treated like this in her life. Jem and Walter teased her, as did Ken Ford, but she did not know anything about boys like these.
Curt offered her a chew of gum, fresh from his mouth, and was mad when she refused it.
‘I’ll put a live mouse on you,’ he yelled. ‘Smarty cat! Stuckupitty! Got a sissy for a brother!’
‘Walter isn’t a sissy,’ said Di. She was half sick from fright, but she would not hear Walter called names.
‘He is. He writes poetry. Do you know what I’d do if I’d a brother that writ po’try? I’d drown him… like they do kittens.’
‘Talking of kittens, there’s a lot of wild ones in the barn’, said Jen. ‘Let’s go and hunt them out.’
Di simply would not go hunting kittens with those boys and said so.
‘We’ve got plenty of kittens at home. We’ve got eleven,’ she said proudly.
‘I don’t believe it,’ cried Jen. ‘You haven’t! Nobody ever had eleven kittens!… it wouldn’t be right to have eleven kittens.’
‘One cat has five and the other six. And I’m not going to the barn anyhow. I fell off the loft in Amy Taylor’s barn last winter. I’d have been killed if I hadn’t lit on a pile of chaff.’
‘Well, I’d have fell off our loft once if Curt hadn’t caught me,’ said Jen sulkily. Nobody had any right to be falling off lofts but her. Di Blythe having adventures! The impudence of her!
‘You should say “I’d have fallen”,’ said Di; and from that