Anne of Windy Poplars - L. M. Montgomery [110]
Of course, I think Miss Minerva has all the Tomgallon liking for the spotlight, and gets no end of satisfaction out of her tragedies. They are to her what husband and children are to other women. But, oh, Gilbert, no matter how old we get in years to come, don’t let’s ever see life as all tragedy, and revel in it. I think I hate a house a hundred and twenty years old, I hope when we get our house of dreams it will either be new, ghostless, and traditionless, or, if that can’t be, at least have been occupied by reasonably happy people. I shall never forget my night at Tomgallon House. And for once in my life I’ve met a person who could talk me down.
12
Little Elizabeth Grayson had been born expecting things to happen. That they seldom happened under the watchful eyes of Grandmother and the Woman never blighted her expectations in the least. Things were just bound to happen some time – if not today, then tomorrow.
When Miss Shirley came to live at Windy Willows Elizabeth felt that Tomorrow must be very close at hand, and her visit to Green Gables was like a foretaste of it. But now in the June of Miss Shirley’s third and last year in Summerside High little Elizabeth’s heart had descended into the nice buttoned boots Grandmother always got for her to wear. Many children at the school where she went envied little Elizabeth those beautiful buttoned kid boots But little Elizabeth cared nothing about buttoned boots when she could not tread the way to freedom in them. And now her adored Miss Shirley was going away from her for ever. At the end of June she would be leaving Summerside and going back to that beautiful Green Gables. Little Elizabeth simply could not bear the thought of it. It was of no use for Miss Shirley to promise that she would have her down at Green Gables in the summer before she was married. Little Elizabeth knew somehow that Grandmother would not let her go again. Little Elizabeth knew Grandmother had never really approved of her intimacy with Miss Shirley.
‘It will be the end of everything, Miss Shirley,’ she sobbed.
‘Let’s hope, darling, that it is only a new beginning,’ said Anne cheerfully. But she felt downcast herself. No word had ever come from little Elizabeth’s father. Either her letter had never reached him or he did not care. And, if he did not care, what was to become of Elizabeth? It was bad enough now in her childhood, but what would it be later on?
‘Those two old dames will boss her to death,’ Rebecca Dew had said. Anne felt that there was more truth than elegance in her remark.
Elizabeth knew that she was ‘bossed’. And she especially resented being bossed by the Woman. She did not like it in Grandmother, of course, but one conceded reluctantly that perhaps a grandmother had a certain right to boss you. But what right had the Woman? Elizabeth always wanted to ask her that right out. She would do it some time – when Tomorrow came. And, oh, how she would enjoy the look on the Woman’s face!
Grandmother would never let little Elizabeth go walking by herself, for fear, she said, that she might be kidnapped by gipsies. A child had been once, forty years before. It was very seldom gipsies came to the Island now, and little Elizabeth felt that it was only an excuse. But why should Grandmother care whether she was kidnapped or not? Elizabeth knew that Grandmother and the Woman didn’t love her at all. Why, they never even spoke of her by her name if they could help it. It was always ‘the child’. How Elizabeth hated to be called ‘the child’, just as they might have spoken of ‘the dog’ or ‘the cat’, if there had been one. But when Elizabeth had ventured a protest Grandmother’s face had grown dark and angry, and little Elizabeth had been punished for impertinence, while the Woman looked on, well content. Little Elizabeth often wondered just why the Woman hated her. Why should anyone hate you when you were so small? Could you be worth hating? Little Elizabeth did not know that the mother whose life she had cost had been that bitter old woman’s darling, and if