Anne of Ingleside - L. M. Montgomery [94]
Anne could not either, but she dared not smile.
‘I thought that dress was lovely with Mrs Campbell’s silver hair, Susan. And by the way, she wants your recipe for spiced gooseberry relish, Susan. She says she had some of it at the Harvest Home supper and it was delicious.’
‘Oh, well, Mrs Doctor dear, it is not everyone who can make spiced gooseberry’… and no more disapproval was expressed of hydrangea blue dresses. Mrs Campbell might henceforth appear out in the costume of a Fiji Islander if she chose and Susan would find excuses for it.
The young months had grown old, but autumn was still remembering summer and the quilting day was more like June than October. Every member of the Ladies’ Aid who could possibly come came, looking forward pleasurably to a good dish of gossip and an Ingleside supper, besides seeing some sweet new thing in fashions, since the Doctor’s wife had recently been to town.
Susan, unbowed by the culinary cares that were heaped upon her, stalked about, showing the ladies to the guest-room, serene in the knowledge that not one of them possessed an apron trimmed with crochet lace five inches deep made from Number One Hundred thread. Susan had captured first prize at the Charlottetown Exhibition the week before with that lace. She and Rebecca Dew had trysted there and made a day of it, and Susan had come home that night the proudest woman in Prince Edward Island.
Susan’s face was perfectly controlled, but her thoughts were her own, sometimes spiced with a trifle of mild malice.
Celia Reese is here, looking for something to laugh at as usual. Well, she will not find it at our supper table and that you may tie to. Myra Murray in red velvet… a little too sumptuous for a quilting in my opinion, but I am not denying she looks well in it. At least it is not wincey. Agatha Drew… and her glasses tied on with a string as usual… Sarah Taylor… it may be her last quilting… she has got a terrible heart, the doctor says, but the spirit of her! Mrs Donald Reese… thank the Good Lord she didn’t bring Mary Anna with her, but no doubt we will hear plenty. Jane Burr from the Upper Glen. She isn’t a member of the Aid. Well, I shall count the spoons after supper and that you may tie to. That family were all light-fingered. Candace Crawford… she doesn’t often trouble an Aid meeting, but a quilting is a good place to show off her pretty hands and her diamond ring. Emma Pollock, with her petticoat showing below her dress of course. A pretty woman, but flimsy minded like all that tribe. Tillie MacAllister, don’t you go and upset the jelly on the tablecloth like you did at Mrs Palmer’s quilting. Martha Crothers, you will have a decent meal for once. It is too bad your husband could not have come too… I hear he has to live on nuts or something like that. Mrs Elder Baxter… I hear the elder has scared Harold Reese away from Mina at last. Harold always had a wishbone in place of a backbone, and faint heart never won fair lady, as the Good Book says. Well, we have enough for two quilts and some over to thread needles.
The quilts were set up on the broad veranda and everyone was busy with fingers and tongues. Anne and Susan were deep in preparations for supper in the kitchen, and Walter, who had been kept home from school that morning because of a slight sore throat, was squatted on the veranda steps, screened from view of the quilters by a curtain of vines. He always liked to listen to older people talking. They said such surprising, mysterious things… things you could think over afterwards and weave into the very stuff of drama, things that reflected the colours and shadows, the comedies and tragedies, the jests and the sorrows, of every Four Winds clan.
Of all the women present Walter liked Mrs Myra Murray best, with her easy, infectious