Anne of Windy Poplars - L. M. Montgomery [95]
‘You should have taken better care of us, Miss Shirley,’ said Gerald, still chattering.
‘Course you should,’ said Geraldine.
A distracted Anne flew downstairs and telephoned for the doctor. By the time he came the twins had got warm, and he assured Anne that they were in no danger. If they stayed in bed till tomorrow they would be all right.
He met Mrs Raymond coming up from the station on the way back, and it was a pale, almost hysterical lady who presently rushed in.
‘Oh, Miss Shirley, how could you have let my little treasures get into such danger!’
‘That’s just what we told her, Mother,’ chorused the twins.
‘I trusted you. I told you –’
‘I hardly see how I was to blame, Mrs Raymond,’ said Anne, her eyes as cold as grey mist. ‘You will realize this, I think, when you are calmer. The children are quite all right. I simply sent for the doctor as a precautionary measure. If Gerald and Geraldine had obeyed me this would not have happened.’
‘I thought a teacher would have a little authority over children,’ said Mrs Raymond bitterly.
‘Other children, perhaps, but not young demons,’ thought Anne. She said only, ‘Since you are here, Mrs Raymond, I think I will go home. I don’t think I can be of any further service, and I have some school work to do this evening.’
As one child the twins hurled themselves out of bed and flung their arms around her.
‘I hope there’ll be a funeral every week,’ cried Gerald, ‘’cause I like you, Miss Shirley, and I hope you’ll come and look after us every time Mother goes away.’
‘So do I,’ said Geraldine.
‘I like you ever so much better than Miss Prouty.’
‘Oh, ever so much!’ said Geraldine.
‘Will you put us in a story?’ demanded Gerald.
‘Oh, do!’ said Geraldine.
‘I’m sure you meant well,’ said Mrs Raymond tremulously.
‘Thank you,’ said Anne icily, trying to detach the twins’ clinging arms.
‘Oh, don’t let’s quarrel about it!’ begged Mrs Raymond, her enormous eyes filling with tears. ‘I can’t endure quarrelling with anybody.’
‘Certainly not.’ Anne was at her stateliest, and Anne could be very stately. ‘I don’t think there is the slightest necessity for quarrelling. I think Gerald and Geraldine have quite enjoyed the day, though I don’t suppose poor little Ivy Trent did.’
Anne went home feeling years older.
‘To think I ever thought Davy was mischievous!’ she reflected.
She found Rebecca in the twilit garden gathering late pansies.
‘Rebecca Dew, I used to think the adage, “Children should be seen and not heard” entirely too harsh. But I see its points now.’
‘My poor darling, I’ll get you a nice supper,’ said Rebecca Dew. And did not say, ‘I told you so.’
5
Extract from a letter to Gilbert
Mrs Raymond came down last night, and, with tears in her eyes, begged me to forgive her for her hasty behaviour. ‘If you knew a mother’s heart, Miss Shirley, you would not find it hard to forgive.’
I didn’t find it hard to forgive, as it was. There is really something about Mrs Raymond I can’t help liking, and she was a duck about the Dramatic Club. Just the same, I did not say, ‘Any Saturday you want to be away I’ll look after your offspring.’ One learns by experience, even a person so incorrigibly optimistic and trustful as myself.
I find that a certain section of Summerside society is at present very much exercised over the loves of Jarvis Morrow and Dovie Westcott, who, as Rebecca Dew says, ‘have been engaged for over a year, but can’t get any forrader’. Aunt Kate, who is a distant aunt of Dovie’s – to be exact, I think she’s the aunt of a second cousin of Dovie’s on the mother’s side – is deeply interested in the affair, because she thinks Jarvis is such an excellent match for Dovie, and also, I suspect, because she hates Franklin Westcott, and would like to see him routed horse, foot, and artillery. Not that Aunt Kate would admit she ‘hated’ anybody, but Mrs Franklin Westcott was a very dear girlhood friends of hers, and Aunt Kate solemnly avers that he murdered her.
I am interested in it, partly because I’m very fond of Jarvis and moderately fond of Dovie, and