Anne of the Island - L. M. Montgomery [33]
“Miss Patty and Miss Maria are hardly such stuff as dreams are made of,” laughed Anne. “Can you fancy them ‘globetrotting’—especially in those shawls and caps?”
“I suppose they’ll take them off when they really begin to trot,” said Priscilla, “but I know they’ll take their knitting with them everywhere. They simply couldn’t be parted from it. They will walk about Westminster Abbey and knit, I feel sure. Meanwhile, Anne, we shall be living in Patty’s Place—and on Spofford Avenue. I feel like a millionaires even now.”
“I feel like one of the morning stars that sang for joy,” said Anne.
Phil Gordon crept into Thirty-eight, St. John’s, that night and flung herself on Anne’s bed.
“Girls, dear, I’m tired to death. I feel like the man without a country—or was it without a shadow? I forget which. Anyway, I’ve been packing up.”
“And I suppose you are worn out because you couldn’t decide which things to pack first, or where to put them,” laughed Priscilla.
“E-zackly. And when I had got everything jammed in somehow, and my landlady and her maid had both sat on it while I locked it, I discovered I had packed a whole lot of things I wanted for Convocation at the very bottom. I had to unlock the old thing and poke and dive into it for an hour before I fished out what I wanted. I would get hold of something that felt like what I was looking for, and I’d yank it up, and it would be something else. No, Anne, I did not swear.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“Well, you looked it. But I admit my thoughts verged on the profane. And I have such a cold in the head—I can do nothing but sniffle, sigh and sneeze. Isn’t that alliterative agony for you? Queen Anne, do say something to cheer me up.”
“Remember that next Thursday night, you’ll be back in the land of Alec and Alonzo,” suggested Anne.
Phil shook her head dolefully.
“More alliteration. No, I don’t want Alec and Alonzo when I have a cold in the head. But what has happened you two? Now that I look at you closely you seem all lighted up with an internal iridescence. Why, you’re actually shining! What’s up?”
“We are going to live in Patty’s Place next winter,” said Anne triumphantly. “Live, mark you, not board! We’ve rented it, and Stella Maynard is coming, and her aunt is going to keep house for us.”
Phil bounced up, wiped her nose, and fell on her knees before Anne.
“Girls—girls—let me come, too. Oh, I’ll be so good. If there’s no room for me I’ll sleep in the little doghouse in the orchard—I’ve seen it. Only let me come.”
“Get up, you goose.”
“I won’t stir off my marrow bones till you tell me I can live with you next winter.”
Anne and Priscilla looked at each other. Then Anne said slowly, “Phil dear, we’d love to have you. But we may as well speak plainly. I’m poor—Pris is poor—Stella Maynard is poor—our housekeeping will have to be very simple and our table plain. You’d have to live as we would. Now, you are rich and your boardinghouse fare attests the fact.”
“Oh, what do I care for that?” demanded Phil tragically. “Better a dinner of herbs where your chums are than a stalled ox in a lonely boardinghouse. Don’t think I’m all stomach, girls. I’ll be willing to live on bread and water—with just a leetle jam—if you’ll let me come.”
“And then,” continued Anne, “there will be a good deal of work to be done. Stella’s aunt can’t do it all. We all expect to have our chores to do. Now, you—”
“Toil not, neither do I spin,” finished Philippa. “But I’ll learn to do things. You’ll only have to show me once. I can make my own bed to begin with. And remember that, though I can’t cook, I can keep my temper. That’s something. And I never growl about the weather. That’s more. Oh, please, please! I never wanted anything so much in my life—and this floor is awfully hard.”
“There’s just one more thing,” said Priscilla resolutely. “You, Phil, as all Redmond knows, entertain callers almost every evening. Now, at Patty’s Place we can’t do that. We have decided that we shall be at home to our friends on Friday evenings only.