Anne of Ingleside - L. M. Montgomery [93]
‘They are only two girls out of all the little girls you know, dear. None of your other playmates has ever told you what wasn’t true. There are people in the world like that, grown-ups as well as children. When you are a little older you will be better able to “tell the gold from the tinsel”.’
‘Mummy, I wish Walter and Jem and Di needn’t know what a silly I was.’
‘They needn’t. Di went to Lowbridge with Daddy, and the boys need only know you went too far down the Harbour Road and were caught in the storm. You were foolish to believe Dovie, but you were a very fine, brave little girl to go and offer what you thought her rightful place to poor little Cassie Thomas. Mother is proud of you.’
The storm was over. The moon was looking down on a cool, happy world.
‘Oh, I’m so glad I’m me!’ was Nan’s last thought as she fell asleep.
Gilbert and Anne came in later to look on the little sleeping faces that were so sweetly close to each other. Diana slept with the corners of her firm little mouth tucked in, but Nan had gone to sleep smiling. Gilbert had heard the story and was so angry that it was well for Dovie Johnson that she was a good thirty miles away from him. But Anne was feeling conscience-stricken.
‘I should have found out what was troubling her, but I’ve been too much taken up with other things this week… things that really mattered nothing compared to a child’s unhappiness. Think of what the poor darling has suffered.’
She stooped repentantly, gloatingly, over them. They were still hers… wholly hers, to mother and love and protect. They still came to her with every love and grief of their little hearts. For a few years longer they would be hers… and then? Anne shivered. Motherhood was very sweet… but very terrible.
‘I wonder what life holds for them,’ she whispered.
‘At least, let’s hope and trust they’ll each get as good a husband as their mother got,’ said Gilbert teasingly.
34
‘So the Ladies’ Aid is going to have their quilting at Ingleside?’ said the Doctor. ‘Bring out all your lordly dishes, Susan, and provide several brooms to sweep up the fragments of reputations afterwards.’
Susan smiled wanly, as tolerant of a man’s lack of all understanding of vital things, but she did not feel like smiling… at least, until everything concerning the Aid supper had been settled.
‘Hot chicken-pie,’ she went about murmuring, ‘mashed potatoes and creamed peas for the main course. And it will be such a good chance to use your new lace tablecloth, Mrs Doctor dear. Such a thing has never been seen in the Glen and I am confident it will make a sensation. I am looking forward to Annabel Clow’s face when she sees it. And will you be using your blue and silver basket for the flowers?’
‘Yes, full of pansies and yellow-green ferns from the maple grove. And I want you to put those three magnificent pink geraniums of yours somewhere around… in the living-room if we quilt there, or on the balustrade of the veranda if it’s warm enough to work out there. I’m glad we have so many flowers left. The garden has never been so beautiful as it has been this summer, Susan. But then I say that every autumn, don’t I?’
There were many things to be settled. Who should sit by whom? It was essential that Mrs Simon Millison should not be asked to sit beside Mrs William McCreery, for they never spoke to each other because of some obscure old feud dating back to school days. Then there was the question of whom to invite, for it was the hostess’s privilege to ask a few guests apart from the members of the Aid.
‘I’m going to have Mrs Best and Mrs Campbell,’ said Anne.
Susan looked doubtful.
‘They are newcomers, Mrs Doctor dear’… much as she might have said, ‘They are crocodiles.’
‘The Doctor and I were newcomers once, Susan.’
‘But the Doctor’s uncle was here for years before that. Nobody knows anything about these Bests and Campbells. But it is your house, Mrs Doctor dear, and who am I to object to anyone you wish to have? I remember one quilting at Mrs Carter Flagg’s many