“I’d take the Porter lot where there’s so many children buried. I like lots of company,” said Faith. “Carl, where’d you?”
“I’d rather not be buried at all,” said Carl, “but if I had to be
I’d like the ant-bed. Ants are AWF’LY int’resting.”
“How very good all the people who are buried here must have been,” said Una, who had been reading the laudatory old epitaphs. “There doesn’t seem to be a single bad person in the whole graveyard. Methodists must be better than Presbyterians after all.”
“Maybe the Methodists bury their bad people just like they do cats,” suggested Carl. “Maybe they don’t bother bringing them to the graveyard at all.”
“Nonsense,” said Faith. “The people that are buried here weren’t any better than other folks, Una. But when anyone is dead you mustn’t say anything of him but good or he’ll come back and ha’nt you. Aunt Martha told me that. I asked father if it was true and he just looked through me and muttered, ‘True? True? What is truth? What IS truth, O jesting Pilate?’ I concluded from that it must be true.”
“I wonder if Mr. Alec Davis would come back and ha’nt me if I threw a stone at the urn on top of his tombstone,” said Jerry.
“Mrs. Davis would,” giggled Faith. “She just watches us in church like a cat watching mice. Last Sunday I made a face at her nephew and he made one back at me and you should have seen her glare. I’ll bet she boxed HIS ears when they got out. Mrs. Marshall Elliott told me we mustn’t offend her on any account or I’d have made a face at her, too!”
“They say Jem Blythe stuck out his tongue at her once and she would never have his father again, even when her husband was dying,” said Jerry. “I wonder what the Blythe gang will be like.”
“I liked their looks,” said Faith. The manse children had been at the station that afternoon when the Blythe small fry had arrived. “I liked Jem’s looks ESPECIALLY.”
“They say in school that Walter’s a sissy,” said Jerry.
“I don’t believe it,” said Una, who had thought Walter very handsome.
“Well, he writes poetry, anyhow. He won the prize the teacher offered last year for writing a poem, Bertie Shakespeare Drew told me. Bertie’s mother thought HE should have got the prize because of his name, but Bertie said he couldn’t write poetry to save his soul, name or no name.”
“I suppose we’ll get acquainted with them as soon as they begin going to school,” mused Faith. “I hope the girls are nice. I don’t like most of the girls round here. Even the nice ones are poky. But the Blythe twins look jolly. I thought twins always looked alike, but they don’t. I think the red-haired one is the nicest.”
“I liked their mother’s looks,” said Una with a little sigh. Una envied all children their mothers. She had been only six when her mother died, but she had some very precious memories, treasured in her soul like jewels, of twilight cuddlings and morning frolics, of loving eyes, a tender voice, and the sweetest, gayest laugh.
“They say she isn’t like other people,” said Jerry.
“Mrs. Elliot says that is because she never really grew up,” said
Faith.
“She’s taller than Mrs. Elliott.”
“Yes, yes, but it is inside—Mrs. Elliot says Mrs. Blythe just stayed a little girl inside.”
“What do I smell?” interrupted Carl, sniffing.
They all smelled it now. A most delectable odour came floating up on the still evening air from the direction of the little woodsy dell below the manse hill.
“That makes me hungry,” said Jerry.
“We had only bread and molasses for supper and cold ditto for dinner,” said Una plaintively.
Aunt Martha’s habit was to boil a large slab of mutton early in the week and serve it up every day, cold and greasy, as long as it lasted. To this Faith, in a moment of inspiration, had give the name of “ditto”, and by this it was invariably known at the manse.
“Let’s go and see where that smell is coming from,” said Jerry.
They all sprang up, frolicked over the lawn with the abandon of young puppies, climbed a fence, and tore down the mossy slope, guided by the savory lure that ever grew stronger. A few minutes later they arrived breathlessly in the sanctum sanctorum of Rainbow Valley where the Blythe children were just about to give thanks and eat.
They halted shyly. Una wished they had not been so precipitate: but Di Blythe was equal to that and any occasion. She stepped forward, with a comrade’s smile.
“I guess I know who you are,” she said. “You belong to the manse, don’t you?”
Faith nodded, her face creased by dimples.
“We smelled your trout cooking and wondered what it was.”
“You must sit down and help us eat them,” said Di.
“Maybe you haven’t more than you want yourselves,” said Jerry, looking hungrily at the tin platter.
“We’ve heaps—three apiece,” said Jem. “Sit down.”
No more ceremony was necessary. Down they all sat on mossy stones. Merry was that feast and long. Nan and Di would probably have died of horror had they known what Faith and Una knew perfectly well—that Carl had two young mice in his jacket pocket. But they never knew it, so it never hurt them. Where can folks get better acquainted than over a meal table? When the last trout had vanished, the manse children and the Ingleside children were sworn friends and allies. They had always known each other and always would. The race of Joseph recognized its own.
They poured out the history of their little pasts. The manse children heard of Avonlea and Green Gables, of Rainbow Valley traditions, and of the little house by the harbour shore where Jem had been born. The Ingleside children heard of Maywater, where the Merediths had lived before coming to the Glen, of Una’s beloved, one-eyed doll and Faith’s pet rooster.
Faith was inclined to resent the fact that people laughed at her for petting a rooster. She liked the Blythes because they accepted it without question.
“A handsome rooster like Adam is just as nice a pet as a dog or cat, I think,” she said. “If he was a canary nobody would wonder. And I brought him up from a little, wee, yellow chicken. Mrs. Johnson at Maywater gave him to me. A weasel had killed all his brothers and sisters. I called him after her husband. I never liked dolls or cats. Cats are too sneaky and dolls are DEAD.”
“Who lives in that house away up there?” asked Jerry.
“The Miss Wests—Rosemary and Ellen,” answered Nan. “Di and I are going to take music lessons from Miss Rosemary this summer.”
Una gazed at the lucky twins with eyes whose longing was too gentle for envy. Oh, if she could only have music lessons! It was one of the dreams of her little hidden life. But nobody ever thought of such a thing.
“Miss Rosemary is so sweet and she always dresses so pretty,” said Di. “Her hair is just the colour of new molasses taffy,” she added wistfully—for Di, like her mother before her, was not resigned to her own ruddy tresses.
“I like Miss Ellen, too,” said Nan. “She always used to give me candies when she came to church. But Di is afraid of her.”
“Her brows are so black and she has such a great deep voice,” said Di. “Oh, how scared of her Kenneth Ford used to be when he was little! Mother says the first Sunday Mrs. Ford brought him to church Miss Ellen happened to be there, sitting right behind them. And the minute Kenneth saw her he just screamed and screamed until Mrs. Ford had to carry him out.”
“Who is Mrs. Ford?” asked Una wonderingly.
“Oh, the Fords don’t live here. They only come here in the summer. And they’re not coming this summer. They live in that little house ‘way, ‘way down on the harbour shore where father and mother used to lie. I wish you could see Persis Ford. She is just like a picture.”
“I’ve heard of Mrs. Ford,” broke in Faith. “Bertie Shakespeare Drew told me
about her. She was married fourteen years to a dead man and then he came to life.”
“Nonsense,” said Nan. “That isn’t the way it goes at all. Bertie Shakespeare can never get anything straight. I know the whole story and I’ll tell it to you some time, but not now, for it’s too long and it’s time for us to go home. Mother doesn’t like us to be out late these damp evenings.”
Nobody cared whether the manse children were out in the damp or not. Aunt Martha was already in bed and the minister was still too deeply lost in speculations concerning the immortality of the soul to remember the mortality of the body. But they went home, too, with visions of good times coming in their heads.
“I think Rainbow Valley is even nicer than the graveyard,” said Una. “And I just love those dear Blythes. It’s SO nice when you can love people because so often you CAN’T. Father said in his sermon last Sunday that we should love everybody. But how can we? How could we love Mrs. Alec Davis?”
“Oh, father only said that in the pulpit,” said Faith airily.
“He has more sense than to really think it outside.”
The Blythe children went up to Ingleside, except Jem, who slipped away for a few moments on a solitary expedition to a remote corner of Rainbow Valley. Mayflowers grew there and Jem never forgot to take his mother a bouquet as long as they lasted.
CHAPTER V. THE ADVENT OF MARY VANCE
“This is just the sort of day you feel as if things might happen,” said Faith, responsive to the lure of crystal air and blue hills. She hugged herself with delight and danced a hornpipe on old Hezekiah Pollock’s bench tombstone, much to the horror of two ancient maidens who happened to be driving past just as Faith hopped on one foot around the stone, waving the other and her arms in the air.
“And that,” groaned one ancient maiden, “is our minister’s daughter.”
“What else could you expect of a widower’s family?” groaned the other ancient maiden. And then they both shook their heads.
It was early on Saturday morning and the Merediths were out in the dew-drenched world with a delightful consciousness of the holiday. They had never had anything to do on a holiday. Even Nan and Di Blythe had certain household tasks for Saturday mornings, but the daughters of the manse were free to roam from blushing morn to dewy eve if so it pleased them. It DID please Faith, but Una felt a secret, bitter humiliation because they never learned to do anything. The other girls in her class at school could cook and sew and knit; she only was a little ignoramus.
Jerry suggested that they go exploring; so they went lingeringly through the fir grove, picking up Carl on the way, who was on his knees in the dripping grass studying his darling ants. Beyond the grove they came out in Mr. Taylor’s pasture field, sprinkled over with the white ghosts of dandelions; in a remote corner was an old tumbledown barn, where Mr. Taylor sometimes stored his surplus hay crop but which was never used for any other purpose. Thither the Meredith children trooped, and prowled about the ground floor for several minutes.
“What was that?” whispered Una suddenly.
They all listened. There was a faint but distinct rustle in the hayloft above. The Merediths looked at each other.
“There’s something up there,” breathed Faith.
“I’m going up to see what it is,” said Jerry resolutely.
“Oh, don’t,” begged Una, catching his arm.
“I’m going.”
“We’ll all go, too, then,” said Faith.
The whole four climbed the shaky ladder, Jerry and Faith quite dauntless, Una pale from fright, and Carl rather absent-mindedly speculating on the possibility of finding a bat up in the loft. He longed to see a bat in daylight.
When they stepped off the ladder they saw what had made the rustle and the sight struck them dumb for a few moments.
In a little nest in the hay a girl was curled up, looking as if she had just wakened from sleep. When she saw them she stood up, rather shakily, as it seemed, and in the bright sunlight that streamed through the cobwebbed window behind her, they saw that her thin, sunburned face was very pale under its tan. She had two braids of lank, thick, tow-coloured hair and very odd eyes—"white eyes,” the manse children thought, as she stared at them half defiantly, half piteously. They were really of so pale a blue that they did seem almost white, especially when contrasted with the narrow black ring that circled the iris. She was barefooted and bareheaded, and was clad in a faded, ragged, old plaid dress, much too short and tight for her. As for years, she might have been almost any age, judging from her wizened little face, but her height seemed to be somewhere in the neighbourhood of twelve.
“Who are you?” asked Jerry.
The girl looked about her as if seeking a way of escape. Then she seemed to give in with a little shiver of despair.
“I’m Mary Vance,” she said.
“Where’d you come from?” pursued Jerry.
Mary, instead of replying, suddenly sat, or fell, down on the hay and began to cry. Instantly Faith had flung herself down beside her and put her arm around the thin, shaking shoulders.
“You stop bothering her,” she commanded Jerry. Then she hugged the waif. “Don’t cry, dear. Just tell us what’s the matter. WE’RE friends.”
“I’m so—so—hungry,” wailed Mary. “I—I hain’t had a thing to eat since Thursday morning, ‘cept a little water from the brook out there.”
The manse children gazed at each other in horror. Faith sprang up.
“You come right up to the manse and get something to eat before you say another word.”
Mary shrank.
“Oh—I can’t. What will your pa and ma say? Besides, they’d send me back.”
“We’ve no mother, and father won’t bother about you. Neither will Aunt Martha. Come, I say.” Faith stamped her foot impatiently. Was this queer girl going to insist on starving to death almost at their very door?
Mary yielded. She was so weak that she could hardly climb down the ladder, but somehow they got her down and over the field and into the manse kitchen. Aunt Martha, muddling through her Saturday cooking, took no notice of her. Faith and Una flew to the pantry and ransacked it for such eatables as it contained—some “ditto,” bread, butter, milk and a doubtful pie. Mary Vance attacked the food ravenously and uncritically, while the manse children stood around and watched her. Jerry noticed that she had a pretty mouth and very nice, even, white teeth. Faith decided, with secret horror, that Mary had not one stitch on her except that ragged, faded dress. Una was full of pure pity, Carl of amused wonder, and all of them of curiosity.
“Now come out to the graveyard and tell us about yourself,” ordered Faith, when Mary’s appetite showed signs of failing her. Mary was now nothing loath. Food had restored her natural vivacity and unloosed her by no means reluctant tongue.
“You won’t tell your pa or anybody if I tell you?” she stipulated, when she was enthroned on Mr. Pollock’s tombstone. Opposite her the manse children lined up on another. Here was spice and mystery and adventure. Something HAD happened.
“No, we won’t.”
“Cross your hearts?”
“Cross our hearts.”
“Well, I’ve run away. I was living with Mrs. Wiley over-harbour.
Do you know Mrs. Wiley?”
“No.”
“Well, you don’t want to know her. She’s an awful woman. My, how I hate her! She worked me to death and wouldn’t give me half enough to eat, and she used to larrup me ‘most every day. Look a-here.”
Mary rolled up her ragged sleeves, and held up her scrawny arms and thin hands, chapped almost to rawness. They were black with bruises. The manse children shivered. Faith flushed crimson with indignation. Una’s blue eyes filled with tears.
“She licked me Wednesday night with a stick,” said Mary, indifferently. “It was ‘cause I let the cow kick over a pail of milk. How’d
I know the darn old cow was going to kick?”
A not unpleasant thrill ran over her listeners. They would never dream of using such dubious words, but it was rather titivating to hear someone else use them—and a girl, at that. Certainly this Mary Vance was an interesting creature.
“I don’t blame you for running away,” said Faith.
“Oh, I didn’t run away ‘cause she licked me. A licking was all in the day’s work with me. I was darn well used to it. Nope, I’d meant to run away for a week ‘cause I’d found out that Mrs. Wiley was going to rent her farm and go to Lowbridge to live and give me to a cousin of hers up Charlottetown way. I wasn’t going to stand for THAT. She was a worse sort than Mrs. Wiley even. Mrs. Wiley lent me to her for a month last summer and I’d rather live with the devil himself.”
Sensation number two. But Una looked doubtful.
“So I made up my mind I’d beat it. I had seventy cents saved up that Mrs. John Crawford give me in the spring for planting potatoes for her. Mrs. Wiley didn’t know about it. She was away visiting her cousin when I planted them. I thought I’d sneak up here to the Glen and buy a ticket to Charlottetown and try to get work there. I’m a hustler, let me tell you. There ain’t a lazy bone in MY body. So I lit out Thursday morning ‘fore Mrs. Wiley was up and walked to the Glen—six miles. And when I got to the station I found I’d lost my money. Dunno how—dunno where. Anyhow, it was gone. I didn’t know what to do. If I went back to old Lady Wiley she’d take the hide off me. So I went and hid in that old barn.”
“And what will you do now?” asked Jerry.
“Dunno. I s’pose I’ll have to go back and take my medicine. Now that I’ve got some grub in my stomach I guess I can stand it.”
But there was fear behind the bravado in Mary’s eyes. Una suddenly slipped from the one tombstone to the other and put her arm about Mary.
“Don’t go back. Just stay here with us.”
“Oh, Mrs. Wiley’ll hunt me up,” said Mary. “It’s likely she’s on my trail before this. I might stay here till she finds me, I s’pose, if your folks don’t mind. I was a darn fool ever to think of skipping out. She’d run a weasel to earth. But I was so misrebul.”
The Classic Children's Literature Collection: 39 Classic Novels Page 419