Girl.
“Boys ain’t ALWAYS hungry,” said Felix gravely. “There’s times when they ain’t.”
“I don’t believe it,” said the Story Girl drearily.
“Besides,” added Felix in the tone of one who says while there is life there is yet hope, “you may learn to cook yet if you keep on trying.”
“But Aunt Olivia won’t let me waste the stuff. My only hope was to learn this week. But I suppose Felicity is so disgusted with me now that she won’t give me any more lessons.”
“I don’t care,” said Felix. “I like you better than Felicity, even if you can’t cook. There’s lots of folks can make bread. But there isn’t many who can tell a story like you.”
“But it’s better to be useful than just interesting,” sighed the
Story Girl bitterly.
And Felicity, who was useful, would, in her secret soul, have given anything to be interesting. Which is the way of human nature.
Company descended on us that afternoon. First came Aunt Janet’s sister, Mrs. Patterson, with a daughter of sixteen years and a son of two. They were followed by a buggy-load of Markdale people; and finally, Mrs. Elder Frewen and her sister from Vancouver, with two small daughters of the latter, arrived.
“It never rains but it pours,” said Uncle Roger, as he went out to take their horse. But Felicity’s foot was on her native heath. She had been baking all the afternoon, and, with a pantry well stocked with biscuits, cookies, cakes, and pies, she cared not if all Carlisle came to tea. Cecily set the table, and the Story Girl waited on it and washed all the dishes afterwards. But all the blushing honours fell to Felicity, who received so many compliments that her airs were quite unbearable for the rest of the week. She presided at the head of the table with as much grace and dignity as if she had been five times twelve years old, and seemed to know by instinct just who took sugar and who took it not. She was flushed with excitement and pleasure, and was so pretty that I could hardly eat for looking at her — which is the highest compliment in a boy’s power to pay.
The Story Girl, on the contrary, was under eclipse. She was pale and lustreless from her disturbed night and early rising; and no opportunity offered to tell a melting tale. Nobody took any notice of her. It was Felicity’s day.
After tea Mrs. Frewen and her sister wished to visit their father’s grave in the Carlisle churchyard. It appeared that everybody wanted to go with them; but it was evident that somebody must stay home with Jimmy Patterson, who had just fallen sound asleep on the kitchen sofa. Dan finally volunteered to look after him. He had a new Henty book which he wanted to finish, and that, he said, was better fun than a walk to the graveyard.
“I think we’ll be back before he wakes,” said Mrs. Patterson, “and anyhow he is very good and won’t be any trouble. Don’t let him go outside, though. He has a cold now.”
We went away, leaving Dan sitting on the door-sill reading his book, and Jimmy P. snoozing blissfully on the sofa. When we returned — Felix and the girls and I were ahead of the others — Dan was still sitting in precisely the same place and attitude; but there was no Jimmy in sight.
“Dan, where’s the baby?” cried Felicity.
Dan looked around. His jaw fell in blank amazement. I never say any one look as foolish as Dan at that moment.
“Good gracious, I don’t know,” he said helplessly.
“You’ve been so deep in that wretched book that he’s got out, and dear knows where he is,” cried Felicity distractedly.
“I wasn’t,” cried Dan. “He MUST be in the house. I’ve been sitting right across the door ever since you left, and he couldn’t have got out unless he crawled right over me. He must be in the house.”
“He isn’t in the kitchen,” said Felicity rushing about wildly, “and he couldn’t get into the other part of the house, for I shut the hall door tight, and no baby could open it — and it’s shut tight yet. So are all the windows. He MUST have gone out of that door, Dan King, and it’s your fault.”
“He DIDN’T go out of this door,” reiterated Dan stubbornly. “I know that.”
“Well, where is he, then? He isn’t here. Did he melt into air?” demanded Felicity. “Oh, come and look for him, all of you. Don’t stand round like ninnies. We MUST find him before his mother gets here. Dan King, you’re an idiot!”
Dan was too frightened to resent this, at the time. However and wherever Jimmy had gone, he WAS gone, so much was certain. We tore about the house and yard like maniacs; we looked into every likely and unlikely place. But Jimmy we could not find, anymore than if he had indeed melted into air. Mrs. Patterson came, and we had not found him. Things were getting serious. Uncle Roger and Peter were summoned from the field. Mrs. Patterson became hysterical, and was taken into the spare room with such remedies as could be suggested. Everybody blamed poor Dan. Cecily asked him what he would feel like if Jimmy was never, never found. The Story Girl had a gruesome recollection of some baby at Markdale who had wandered away like that —
“And they never found him till the next spring, and all they found was — HIS SKELETON, with the grass growing through it,” she whispered.
“This beats me,” said Uncle Roger, when a fruitless hour had elapsed. “I do hope that baby hasn’t wandered down to the swamp. It seems impossible he could walk so far; but I must go and see. Felicity, hand me my high boots out from under the sofa, there’s a girl.”
Felicity, pale and tearful, dropped on her knees and lifted the cretonne frill of the sofa. There, his head pillowed hardly on Uncle Roger’s boots, lay Jimmy Patterson, still sound asleep!
“Well, I’ll be — jiggered!” said Uncle Roger.
“I KNEW he never went out of the door,” cried Dan triumphantly.
When the last buggy had driven away, Felicity set a batch of bread, and the rest of us sat around the back porch steps in the cat’s light and ate cherries, shooting the stones at each other. Cecily was in quest of information.
“What does ‘it never rains but it pours’ mean?”
“Oh, it means if anything happens something else is sure to happen,” said the Story Girl. “I’ll illustrate. There’s Mrs. Murphy. She never had a proposal in her life till she was forty, and then she had three in the one week, and she was so flustered she took the wrong one and has been sorry ever since. Do you see what it means now?”
“Yes, I guess so,” said Cecily somewhat doubtfully. Later on we heard her imparting her newly acquired knowledge to Felicity in the pantry.
“‘It never rains but it pours’ means that nobody wants to marry you for ever so long, and then lots of people do.”
CHAPTER XIV.
FORBIDDEN FRUIT
We were all, with the exception of Uncle Roger, more or less grumpy in the household of King next day. Perhaps our nerves had been upset by the excitement attendant on Jimmy Patterson’s disappearance. But it is more likely that our crankiness was the result of the supper we had eaten the previous night. Even children cannot devour mince pie, and cold fried pork ham, and fruit cake before going to bed with entire impunity. Aunt Janet had forgotten to warn Uncle Roger to keep an eye on our bedtime snacks, and we ate what seemed good unto us.
Some of us had frightful dreams, and all of us carried chips on our shoulders at breakfast. Felicity and Dan began a bickering which they kept up the entire day. Felicity had a natural aptitude for what we called “bossing,” and in her mother’s absence she deemed that she had a right to rule supreme. She knew better than to make any attempt to assert authority over the Story Girl, and Felix and I were allowed some length of tether; but Cecily, Dan, and Peter were expected to submit dutifully to her decrees. In the main they did; but on this particular morning Dan was plainly inclined to rebel. He had had time to grow sore over the things that Felicity had said to him when Jimmy Patterson was thought lost, and he began the day with a flatly expressed determination that he was not going to let Felicity rule the roost.
It was not a pleasant day, and to make matt
ers worse it rained until late in the afternoon. The Story Girl had not recovered from the mortifications of the previous day; she would not talk, and she would not tell a single story; she sat on Rachel Ward’s chest and ate her breakfast with the air of a martyr. After breakfast she washed the dishes and did the bed-room work in grim silence; then, with a book under one arm and Pat under the other, she betook herself to the window-seat in the upstairs hall, and would not be lured from that retreat, charmed we never so wisely. She stroked the purring Paddy, and read steadily on, with maddening indifference to all our pleadings.
Even Cecily, the meek and mild, was snappish, and complained of headache. Peter had gone home to see his mother, and Uncle Roger had gone to Markdale on business. Sara Ray came up, but was so snubbed by Felicity that she went home, crying. Felicity got the dinner by herself, disdaining to ask or command assistance. She banged things about and rattled the stove covers until even Cecily protested from her sofa. Dan sat on the floor and whittled, his sole aim and object being to make a mess and annoy Felicity, in which noble ambition he succeeded perfectly.
“I wish Aunt Janet and Uncle Alec were home,” said Felix. “It’s not half so much fun having the grown-ups away as I thought it would be.”
“I wish I was back in Toronto,” I said sulkily. The mince pie was to blame for THAT wish.
“I wish you were, I’m sure,” said Felicity, riddling the fire noisily.
“Any one who lives with you, Felicity King, will always be wishing he was somewhere else,” said Dan.
“I wasn’t talking to you, Dan King,” retorted Felicity, “‘Speak when you’re spoken to, come when you’re called.’”
“Oh, oh, oh,” wailed Cecily on the sofa. “I WISH it would stop raining. I WISH my head would stop aching. I WISH ma had never gone away. I WISH you’d leave Felicity alone, Dan.”
“I wish girls had some sense,” said Dan — which brought the orgy of wishing to an end for the time. A wishing fairy might have had the time of her life in the King kitchen that morning — particularly if she were a cynically inclined fairy.
But even the effects of unholy snacks wear away at length. By tea-time things had brightened up. The rain had ceased, and the old, low-raftered room was full of sunshine which danced on the shining dishes of the dresser, made mosaics on the floor, and flickered over the table whereon a delicious meal was spread. Felicity had put on her blue muslin, and looked so beautiful in it that her good humour was quite restored. Cecily’s headache was better, and the Story Girl, refreshed by an afternoon siesta, came down with smiles and sparkling eyes. Dan alone continued to nurse his grievances, and would not even laugh when the Story Girl told us a tale brought to mind by some of the “Rev. Mr. Scott’s plums” which were on the table.
“The Rev. Mr. Scott was the man who thought the pulpit door must be made for speerits, you know,” she said. “I heard Uncle Edward telling ever so many stories about him. He was called to this congregation, and he laboured here long and faithfully, and was much beloved, though he was very eccentric.”
“What does that mean?” asked Peter.
“Hush! It just means queer,” said Cecily, nudging him with her elbow. “A common man would be queer, but when it’s a minister, it’s eccentric.”
“When he gets very old,” continued the Story Girl, “the Presbytery thought it was time he was retired. HE didn’t think so; but the Presbytery had their way, because there were so many of them to one of him. He was retired, and a young man was called to Carlisle. Mr. Scott went to live in town, but he came out to Carlisle very often, and visited all the people regularly, just the same as when he was their minister. The young minister was a very good young man, and tried to do his duty; but he was dreadfully afraid of meeting old Mr. Scott, because he had been told that the old minister was very angry at being set aside, and would likely give him a sound drubbing, if he ever met him. One day the young minister was visiting the Crawfords in Markdale, when they suddenly heard old Mr. Scott’s voice in the kitchen. The young minister turned pale as the dead, and implored Mrs. Crawford to hid him. But she couldn’t get him out of the room, and all she could do was to hide him in the china closet. The young minister slipped into the china closet, and old Mr. Scott came into the room. He talked very nicely, and read, and prayed. They made very long prayers in those days, you know; and at the end of his prayer he said, ‘Oh Lord, bless the poor young man hiding in the closet. Give him courage not to fear the face of man. Make him a burning and a shining light to this sadly abused congregation.’ Just imagine the feelings of the young minister in the china closet! But he came right out like a man, though his face was very red, as soon as Mr. Scott had done praying. And Mr. Scott was lovely to him, and shook hands, and never mentioned the china closet. And they were the best of friends ever afterwards.”
“How did old Mr. Scott find out the young minister was in the closet?” asked Felix.
“Nobody ever knew. They supposed he had seen him through the window before he came into the house, and guessed he must be in the closet — because there was no way for him to get out of the room.”
“Mr. Scott planted the yellow plum tree in Grandfather’s time,” said Cecily, peeling one of the plums, “and when he did it he said it was as Christian an act as he ever did. I wonder what he meant. I don’t see anything very Christian about planting a tree.”
“I do,” said the Story Girl sagely.
When next we assembled ourselves together, it was after milking, and the cares of the day were done with. We foregathered in the balsam-fragrant aisles of the fir wood, and ate early August apples to such an extent that the Story Girl said we made her think of the Irishman’s pig.
“An Irishman who lived at Markdale had a little pig,” she said, “and he gave it a pailful of mush. The pig at the whole pailful, and then the Irishman put the pig IN the pail, and it didn’t fill more than half the pail. Now, how was that, when it held a whole pailful of mush?”
This seemed to be a rather unanswerable kind of conundrum. We discussed the problem as we roamed the wood, and Dan and Peter almost quarrelled over it, Dan maintaining that the thing was impossible, and Peter being of the opinion that the mush was somehow “made thicker” in the process of being eaten, and so took up less room. During the discussion we came out to the fence of the hill pasture where grew the “bad berry” bushes.
Just what these “bad berries” were I cannot tell. We never knew their real name. They were small, red-clustered berries of a glossy, seductive appearance, and we were forbidden to eat them, because it was thought they might be poisonous. Dan picked a cluster and held it up.
“Dan King, don’t you DARE eat those berries,” said Felicity in her “bossiest” tone. “They’re poison. Drop them right away.”
Now, Dan had not had the slightest intention of eating the berries. But at Felicity’s prohibition the rebellion which had smouldered in him all day broke into sudden flame. He would show her!
“I’ll eat them if I please, Felicity King,” he said in a fury:
“I don’t believe they’re poison. Look here!”
Dan crammed the whole bunch into his capacious mouth and chewed it up.
“They taste great,” he said, smacking; and he ate two more clusters, regardless of our horror-stricken protestations and Felicity’s pleadings.
We feared that Dan would drop dead on the spot. But nothing occurred immediately. When an hour had passed we concluded that the bad berries were not poison after all, and we looked upon Dan as quite a hero for daring to eat them.
“I knew they wouldn’t hurt me,” he said loftily. “Felicity’s so fond of making a fuss over everything.”
Nevertheless, when it grew dark and we returned to the house, I noticed that Dan was rather pale and quiet. He lay down on the kitchen sofa.
“Don’t you feel all right, Dan?” I whispered anxiously.
“Shut up,” he said.
I shut up.
Felicity and Cecily were setting
out a lunch in the pantry when we were all startled by a loud groan from the sofa.
“Oh, I’m sick — I’m awful sick,” said Dan abjectly, all the defiance and bravado gone out of him.
We all went to pieces, except Cecily, who alone retained her presence of mind.
“Have you got a pain in your stomach?” she demanded.
“I’ve got an awful pain here, if that’s where my stomach is,” moaned Dan, putting his hand on a portion of his anatomy considerably below his stomach. “Oh — oh — oh!”
“Go for Uncle Roger,” commanded Cecily, pale but composed. “Felicity, put on the kettle. Dan, I’m going to give you mustard and warm water.”
The mustard and warm water produced its proper effect promptly, but gave Dan no relief. He continued to writhe and groan. Uncle Roger, who had been summoned from his own place, went at once for the doctor, telling Peter to go down the hill for Mrs. Ray. Peter went, but returned accompanied by Sara only. Mrs. Ray and Judy Pineau were both away. Sara might better have stayed home; she was of no use, and could only add to the general confusion, wandering aimlessly about, crying and asking if Dan was going to die.
Cecily took charge of things. Felicity might charm the palate, and the Story Girl bind captive the soul; but when pain and sickness wrung the brow it was Cecily who was the ministering angel. She made the writhing Dan go to bed. She made him swallow every available antidote which was recommended in “the doctor’s book;” and she applied hot cloths to him until her faithful little hands were half scalded off.
There was no doubt Dan was suffering intense pain. He moaned and writhed, and cried for his mother.
“Oh, isn’t it dreadful!” said Felicity, wringing her hands as she walked the kitchen floor. “Oh, why doesn’t the doctor come? I TOLD Dan the bad berries were poison. But surely they can’t kill people ALTOGETHER.”
“Pa’s cousin died of eating something forty years ago,” sobbed
Sara Ray.
“Hold your tongue,” said Peter in a fierce whisper. “You oughter have more sense than to say such things to the girls. They don’t want to be any worse scared than they are.”
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 379