Anne's House of Dreams - L. M. Montgomery [49]
‘If that were really all, I wouldn’t mind, Captain Jim. I would understand. But there are times – not always, but now and again – when I almost have to believe that Leslie doesn’t – doesn’t like me. Sometimes I surprise a look in her eyes that seems to show resentment and dislike – it goes so quickly – but – I’ve seen it, I’m sure of that. And it hurts me, Captain Jim. I’m not used to being disliked – and I’ve tried so hard to win Leslie’s friendship.’
‘You have won it, Mistress Blythe. Don’t you go cherishing any foolish notion that Leslie don’t like you. If she didn’t she wouldn’t have anything to do with you, much less chumming with you as she does. I know Leslie Moore too well not to be sure of that.’
‘The first time I ever saw her, driving her geese down the hill on the day I came to Four Winds, she looked at me with the same expression,’ persisted Anne. ‘I felt it, even in the midst of my admiration of her beauty. She looked at me resentfully – she did, indeed, Captain Jim.’
‘The resentment must have been about something else, Mistress Blythe, and you jest come in for a share of it because you happened past. Leslie does take sullen spells now and again, poor girl. I can’t blame her, when I know what she has to put up with. I don’t know why it’s permitted. The doctor and I have talked a lot about the origin of evil, but we haven’t quite found out all about it yet. There’s a vast of onunderstandable things in life, ain’t there, Mistress Blythe? Sometimes things seem to work out real proper-like, same as with you and the doctor. And then again they all seem to go catawampus. There’ Leslie, so clever and beautiful you’d think she was meant for a queen, and instead she’s cooped up over there, robbed of almost everything a woman’d value, with no prospect except waiting on Dick Moore all her life. Though, mind you, Mistress Blythe, I dare say she’d choose her life now, such as it is, rather than the life she lived with Dick before he went away. That’s something a clumsy old sailor’s tongue mustn’t meddle with. But you’ve helped Leslie a lot – she’s a different creature since you come to Four Winds. Us old friends see the difference in her, as you can’t. Miss Cornelia and me was talking it over the other day, and it’s one of the mighty few p’ints that we see eye to eye on. So jest you throw overboard any idea of her not liking you.’
Anne could hardly discard it completely, for there were undoubtedly times when she felt, with an instinct that was not to be combated by reason, that Leslie harboured a queer, indefinable resentment towards her. At times this secret consciousness marred the delight of their comradeship; at others it was almost forgotten but Anne always felt the hidden thorn was there, and might prick her at any moment. She felt a cruel sting from it on the day when she told Leslie of what she hoped the spring would bring to the little house of dreams. Leslie looked at her with hard, bitter, unfriendly eyes.
‘So you are to have that, too,’ she said in a choked voice. And without another word she had turned and gone across the fields homeward. Anne was deeply hurt; for the moment she felt as if she could never like Leslie again. But when Leslie came over a few evenings later she was so pleasant, so friendly, so frank, and witty, and winsome, that Anne was charmed into forgiveness and forgetfulness. Only, she never mentioned her darling hope to Leslie again; nor did Leslie ever refer to it. But one evening, when late winter was listening for the word of spring, she came over to the little house for a twilight chat; and when she went away she left a small white box on the table. Anne found it after she was gone and opened it wonderingly. In it was a tiny white dress of exquisite workmanship – delicate embroidery, wonderful tucking, sheer loveliness. Every stitch in it was handwork; and the little frills of lace at neck and sleeves were of real Valenciennes. Lying on it was a card – ‘with Leslie’s love’.
‘What hours of work she must have put on it,’ said Anne. ‘And the material must have cost