Anne of Ingleside - L. M. Montgomery [97]
‘Ah, but you’ve grow wiser since then,’ said Agatha.
‘No-o-o, foolisher,’ said Myra Murray slowly. ‘Too foolish now to dance along the shore.’
‘At first,’ said Emma, not to be cheated out of a complete story, ‘they thought the notice had been put in for a joke… because Abner had lost his election a few days before… but it turned out it was for an Amasa Cromwell, living away in the backwoods the other side of Lowbridge, no relation at all. He had really died. But it was a long time before people forgave Abner the disappointment, if they ever did.’
‘Well, it was a little inconvenient, driving all that distance, right in planting time, too, and finding you had your journey for your pains,’ said Mrs Tom Chubb defensively.
‘And people like funerals as a rule,’ said Mrs Donald Reese with spirit. ‘We’re all like children, I guess. I took Mary Anna to her Uncle Gordon’s funeral and she enjoyed it so. “Ma, couldn’t we dig him up and have the fun of burying him over again?” she said.’
They did laugh at this… everybody except Mrs Elder Baxter, who primmed up her long, thin face and jabbed the quilt mercilessly. Nothing was sacred nowadays. Everyone laughed at everything. But she, an elder’s wife, was not going to countenance any laughter connected with a funeral.
‘Speaking of Abner, do you remember the obituary his brother John wrote for his wife?’ asked Mrs Allan Milgrave. ‘It started out with, “God, for reasons best known to Himself, has been pleased to take my beautiful bride and leave my Cousin William’s ugly wife alive.” Shall I ever forget the fuss it made!’
‘How did such a thing ever come to be printed at all?’ asked Mrs Best.
‘Why, he was managing editor of the Enterprise then. He worshipped his wife… Bertha Morris, she was… and he hated Mrs William Cromwell because she hadn’t wanted him to marry Bertha. She thought Bertha too flighty.’
‘But she was pretty,’ said Elizabeth Kirk.
‘The prettiest thing I ever saw in my life,’ agreed Mrs Milgrave. ‘Good looks ran in the Morrises. But fickle… fickle as a breeze. Nobody ever knew how she came to stay in one mind long enough to marry John. They say her mother kept her up to the notch. Bertha was in love with Fred Reese, but he was notorious for flirting. “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” Mrs Morris told her.’
‘I’ve heard that proverb all my life,’ said Myra Murray, ‘and I wonder if it’s true. Perhaps the birds in the bush could sing and the one in the hand couldn’t.’
Nobody knew just what to say, but Mrs Tom Chubb said it, anyhow.
‘You’re always so whimsical, Myra.’
‘Do you know what Mary Anna said to me the other day?’ said Mrs Donald. ‘She said, “Ma, what will I do if nobody ever asks me to marry him?” ’
‘Us old maids could answer that, couldn’t we?’ asked Celia Reese, giving Edith Bailey a nudge with her elbow. Celia disliked Edith because Edith was still rather pretty and not entirely out of the running.
‘Gertrude Cromwell was ugly,’ said Mrs Grant Clow. ‘She had a figure like a slat. But a great housekeeper. She washed every curtain she owned every month, and if Bertha washed hers once a year it was as much as ever. And her window shades were always crooked. Gertrude said it just gave her the shivers to drive past John Cromwell’s house. And yet John Cromwell worshipped Bertha, and William just put up with Gertrude. Men are strange. They say William overslept on his wedding morning and dressed in such a tearing hurry he got to the church with old shoes and odd socks on.’
‘Well, that was better than Oliver Random,’ giggled Mrs George Carr. ‘He forgot to have a wedding suit made, and his old Sunday suit was simply impossible. It had been patched. So he borrowed his brother’s best suit. It only fitted him here and there.’
‘And at least William and Gertrude did get married,’ said Mrs Simon. ‘Her sister Caroline didn’t. She and Ronny Drew quarrelled over what minister they’d have marry them and never got married at all. Ronny was so mad he went and married Edna Stone before he’d time to cool