The Complete Works of L M Montgomery

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The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 613

by L. M. Montgomery


  “It won’t mend matters trying to get clear of me, Chester. I know it was you and I want an answer — a truthful one, mind you — to my question. I am your friend, and I am not going to harm you if you tell me the truth.”

  Her clear and incisive gaze met and held irresistibly the boy’s wavering one. The sullen obstinacy of his face relaxed.

  “Well,” he muttered finally, “I was just desperate, that’s why. I’ve never done anything real bad in my life before, but people have always been down on me. I’m blamed for everything, and nobody wants anything to do with me. I’m willing to work, but I can’t get a thing to do. I’m in rags and I haven’t a cent, and winter’s coming on. I heard you telling Mrs. Galloway yesterday about the money. I was behind the fir hedge and you didn’t see me. I went away and planned it all out. I’d get in some way — and I meant to use the money to get away out west as far from here as I could, and begin life there, where nobody knew me, and where I’d have some sort of a chance. I’ve never had any here. You can put me in jail now, if you like — they’ll feed and clothe me there, anyhow, and I’ll be on a level with the rest.”

  The boy had blurted it all out sullenly and half-chokingly. A world of rebellion and protest against the fate that had always dragged him down was couched in his voice.

  Miss Calista drew Dapple to a standstill before her gate.

  “I’m not going to send you to jail, Chester. I believe you’ve told me the truth. Yesterday you wanted me to give you Caleb’s place and I refused. Well, I offer it to you now. If you’ll come, I’ll hire you, and give you as good wages as I gave him.”

  Ches Maybin looked incredulous.

  “Miss Calista, you can’t mean it.”

  “I do mean it, every word. You say you have never had a chance. Well, I am going to give you one — a chance to get on the right road and make a man of yourself. Nobody shall ever know about last night’s doings from me, and I’ll make it my business to forget them if you deserve it. What do you say?”

  Ches lifted his head and looked her squarely in the face.

  “I’ll come,” he said huskily. “It ain’t no use to try and thank you, Miss Calista. But I’ll live my thanks.”

  And he did. The good people of Cooperstown held up their hands in horror when they heard that Miss Calista had hired Ches Maybin, and prophesied that the deluded woman would live to repent her rash step. But not all prophecies come true. Miss Calista smiled serenely and kept on her own misguided way. And Ches Maybin proved so efficient and steady that the arrangement was continued, and in due time people outlived their old suspicions and came to regard him as a thoroughly smart and trustworthy young man.

  “Miss Calista has made a man of Ches Maybin,” said the oracles. “He ought to be very grateful to her.”

  And he was. But only he and Miss Calista and the peppermint bottle ever knew the precise extent of his gratitude, and they never told.

  The Jest That Failed

  “I think it is simply a disgrace to have a person like that in our class,” said Edna Hayden in an injured tone.

  “And she doesn’t seem a bit ashamed of it, either,” said Agnes Walters.

  “Rather proud of it, I should say,” returned her roommate, spitefully. “It seems to me that if I were so poor that I had to ‘room’ myself and dress as dowdily as she does that I really couldn’t look anybody in the face. What must the boys think of her? And if it wasn’t for her being in it, our class would be the smartest and dressiest in the college — even those top-lofty senior girls admit that.”

  “It’s a shame,” said Agnes, conclusively. “But she needn’t expect to associate with our set. I, for one, won’t have anything to do with her.”

  “Nor I. I think it is time she should be taught her place. If we could only manage to inflict some decided snub on her, she might take the hint and give up trying to poke herself in where she doesn’t belong. The idea of her consenting to be elected on the freshmen executive! But she seems impervious to snubs.”

  “Edna, let’s play a joke on her. It will serve her right. Let us send an invitation in somebody’s name to the senior ‘prom.’”

  “The very thing! And sign Sidney Hill’s name to it. He’s the handsomest and richest fellows at Payzant, and belongs to one of the best families in town, and he’s awfully fastidious besides. No doubt she will feel immensely flattered and, of course, she’ll accept. Just think how silly she’ll feel when she finds out he never sent it. Let’s write it now, and send it at once. There is no time to lose, for the ‘prom’ is on Thursday night.”

  The freshmen co-eds at Payzant College did not like Grace Seeley — that is to say, the majority of them. They were a decidedly snobbish class that year. No one could deny that Grace was clever, but she was poor, dressed very plainly—”dowdily,” the girls said — and “roomed” herself, that phrase meaning that she rented a little unfurnished room and cooked her own meals over an oil stove.

  The “senior prom,” as it was called, was the annual reception which the senior class gave in the middle of every autumn term. It was the smartest and gayest of all the college functions, and a Payzant co-ed who received an invitation to it counted herself fortunate. The senior girls were included as a matter of course, but a junior, soph, or freshie could not go unless one of the senior boys invited her.

  Grace Seeley was studying Greek in her tiny room that afternoon when the invitation was brought to her. It was scrupulously orthodox in appearance and form, and Grace never doubted that it was genuine, although she felt much surprised that Sidney Hill, the leader of his class and the foremost figure in all college sports and societies, should have asked her to go with him to the senior prom.

  But she was girlishly pleased at the prospect. She was as fond of a good time as any other girl, and she had secretly wished very much that she could go to the brilliant and much talked about senior prom.

  Grace was quite unaware of her own unpopularity among her class co-eds, although she thought it was very hard to get acquainted with them. Without any false pride herself, and of a frank, independent nature, it never occurred to her that the other Payzant freshies could look down on her because she was poor, or resent her presence among them because she dressed plainly.

  She straightway wrote a note of acceptance to Sidney Hill, and that young man naturally felt much mystified when he opened and read it in the college library next morning.

  “Grace Seeley,” he pondered. “That’s the jolly girl with the brown eyes that I met at the philomathic the other night. She thanks me for my invitation to the senior prom, and accepts with pleasure. Why, I certainly never invited her or anyone else to go with me to the senior prom. There must be some mistake.”

  Grace passed him at this moment on her way to the Latin classroom. She bowed and smiled in a friendly fashion and Sidney Hill felt decidedly uncomfortable. What was he to do? He did not like to think of putting Miss Seeley in a false position because somebody had sent her an invitation in his name.

  “I suppose it is some cad who has a spite at me that has done it,” he reflected, “but if so I’ll spoil his game. I’ll take Miss Seeley to the prom as if I had never intended doing anything else. She shan’t be humiliated just because there is someone at Payzant who would stoop to that sort of thing.”

  So he walked up the hall with Grace and expressed his pleasure at her acceptance, and on the evening of the prom he sent her a bouquet of white carnations, whose spicy fragrance reminded her of her own little garden at home. Grace thought it extremely nice of him, and dressed in a flutter of pleasant anticipation.

  Her gown was a very simple one of sheer white organdie, and was the only evening dress she had. She knew there would be many smarter dresses at the reception, but the knowledge did not disturb her sensible head in the least.

  She fingered the dainty white frills lovingly as she remembered the sunny summer days at home in the little sewing-room, where cherry boughs poked their blossoms in at the window, when her moth
er and sisters had helped her to make it, with laughing prophesies and speculations as to its first appearance. Into seam and puff and frill many girlish hopes and dreams had been sewn, and they all came back to Grace as she put it on, and helped to surround her with an atmosphere of happiness.

  When she was ready she picked up her bouquet and looked herself over in the mirror, from the top of her curly head to the tips of her white shoes, with a little nod of satisfaction. Grace was not exactly pretty, but she had such a bright, happy face and such merry brown eyes and such a friendly smile that she was very pleasant to look upon, and a great many people thought so that night.

  Grace had never in all her life before had so good a time as she had at that senior prom. The seniors were quick to discover her unaffected originality and charm, and everywhere she went she was the centre of a merry group. In short, Grace, as much to her own surprise as anyone’s, found herself a social success.

  Presently Sidney brought his brother up to be introduced, and the latter said:

  “Miss Seeley, will you excuse my asking if you have a brother or any relative named Max Seeley?”

  Grace nodded. “Oh, yes, my brother Max. He is a doctor out west.”

  “I was sure of it,” said Murray Hill triumphantly. “You resemble him so strongly. Please don’t consider me as a stranger a minute longer, for Max and I are like brothers. Indeed, I owe my life to him. Last summer I was out there on a surveying expedition, and I took typhoid in a little out-of-the-way place where good nursing was not to be had for love or money. Your brother attended me and he managed to pull me through. He never left me day or night until I was out of danger, and he worked like a Trojan for me.”

  “Dear old Max,” said Grace, her brown eyes shining with pride and pleasure. “That is so like him. He is such a dear brother and I haven’t seen him for four years. To see somebody who knows him so well is next best thing to seeing himself.”

  “He is an awfully fine fellow,” said Mr. Hill heartily, “and I’m delighted to have met the ‘little sister’ he used to talk so much about. I want you to come ever and meet my mother and sister. They have heard me talk so much about Max that they think almost as much of him as I do, and they will be glad to meet his sister.”

  Mrs. Hill, a handsome, dignified lady who was one of the chaperones of the prom, received Grace warmly, while Beatrice Hill, an extremely pretty, smartly gowned girl, made her feel at home immediately.

  “You came with Sid, didn’t you?” she whispered. “Sid is so sly — he never tells us whom he is going to take anywhere. But when I saw you come in with him I knew I was going to like you, you looked so jolly. And you’re really the sister of that splendid Dr. Seeley who saved Murray’s life last summer? And to think you’ve been at Payzant nearly a whole term and we never knew it!”

  “Well, how have you enjoyed our prom, Miss Seeley?” asked Sid, as they walked home together under the arching elms of the college campus.

  “Oh! it was splendid,” said Grace enthusiastically. “Everybody was so nice. And then to meet someone who could tell me so much about Max! I must write them home all about it before I sleep, just to calm my head a bit. Mother and the girls will be so interested, and I must send Lou and Mab a carnation apiece for their scrapbooks.”

  “Give me one back, please,” said Sid. And Grace with a little blush, did so.

  That night, while Grace was slipping the stems of her carnations and putting them into water, three little bits of conversation were being carried on which it is necessary to report in order to round up this story neatly and properly, as all stories should be rounded up.

  In the first place, Beatrice Hill was saying to Sidney, “Oh, Sid, that Miss Seeley you had at the prom is a lovely girl. I don’t know when I’ve met anyone I liked so much. She was so jolly and friendly and she didn’t put on learned airs at all, as so many of those Payzant girls do. I asked her all about herself and she told me, and all about her mother and sisters and home and the lovely times they had together, and how hard they worked to send her to college too, and how she taught school in vacations and ‘roomed’ herself to help along. Isn’t it so brave and plucky of her! I know we are going to be great friends.”

  “I hope so,” said Sidney briefly, “because I have an idea that she and I are going to be very good friends too.”

  And Sidney went upstairs and put away a single white carnation very carefully.

  In the second place, Mrs. Hill was saying to her eldest son, “I liked that Miss Seeley very much. She seemed a very sweet girl.”

  And, finally, Agnes Walters and Edna Hayden were discussing the matter in great mystification in their room.

  “I can’t understand it at all,” said Agnes slowly. “Sid Hill took her to the prom and he must have sent her those carnations too. She could never have afforded them herself. And did you see the fuss his people made over her? I heard Beatrice telling her that she was coming to call on her tomorrow, and Mrs. Hill said she must look upon ‘Beechlawn’ as her second home while she was at Payzant. If the Hills are going to take her up we’ll have to be nice to her.”

  “I suppose,” said Edna conclusively, “the truth of the matter is that Sid Hill meant to ask her anyway. I dare say he asked her long ago, and she would know our invitation was a fraud. So the joke is on ourselves, after all.”

  But, as you and I know, that, with the exception of the last sentence, was not the truth of the matter at all.

  The Penningtons’ Girl

  Winslow had been fishing — or pretending to — all the morning, and he was desperately thirsty. He boarded with the Beckwiths on the Riverside East Shore, but he was nearer Riverside West, and he knew the Penningtons well. He had often been there for bait and milk and had listened times out of mind to Mrs. Pennington’s dismal tales of her tribulations with hired girls. She never could get along with them, and they left, on an average, after a fortnight’s trial. She was on the lookout for one now, he knew, and would likely be cross, but he thought she would give him a drink.

  He rowed his skiff into the shore and tied it to a fir that hung out from the bank. A winding little footpath led up to the Pennington farmhouse, which crested the hill about three hundred yards from the shore. Winslow made for the kitchen door and came face to face with a girl carrying a pail of water — Mrs. Pennington’s latest thing in hired girls, of course.

  Winslow’s first bewildered thought was “What a goddess!” and he wondered, as he politely asked for a drink, where on earth Mrs. Pennington had picked her up. She handed him a shining dipper half full and stood, pail in hand, while he drank it.

  She was rather tall, and wore a somewhat limp, faded print gown, and a big sunhat, beneath which a glossy knot of chestnut showed itself. Her skin was very fair, somewhat freckled, and her mouth was delicious. As for her eyes, they were grey, but beyond that simply defied description.

  “Will you have some more?” she asked in a soft, drawling voice.

  “No, thank you. That was delicious. Is Mrs. Pennington home?”

  “No. She has gone away for the day.”

  “Well, I suppose I can sit down here and rest a while. You’ve no serious objections, have you?”

  “Oh, no.”

  She carried her pail into the kitchen and came out again presently with a knife and a pan of apples. Sitting down on a bench under the poplars she proceeded to peel them with a disregard of his presence that piqued Winslow, who was not used to being ignored in this fashion. Besides, as a general rule, he had been quite good friends with Mrs. Pennington’s hired girls. She had had three strapping damsels during his sojourn in Riverside, and he used to sit on this very doorstep and chaff them. They had all been saucy and talkative. This girl was evidently a new species.

  “Do you think you’ll get along with Mrs. Pennington?” he asked finally. “As a rule she fights with her help, although she is a most estimable woman.”

  The girl smiled quite broadly.

  “I guess p’r’aps she’s ra
ther hard to suit,” was the answer, “but I like her pretty well so far. I think we’ll get along with each other. If we don’t I can leave — like the others did.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Nelly Ray.”

  “Well, Nelly, I hope you’ll be able to keep your place. Let me give you a bit of friendly advice. Don’t let the cats get into the pantry. That is what Mrs. Pennington has quarrelled with nearly every one of her girls about.”

  “It is quite a bother to keep them out, ain’t it?” said Nelly calmly. “There’s dozens of cats about the place. What on earth makes them keep so many?”

  “Mr. Pennington has a mania for cats. He and Mrs. Pennington have a standing disagreement about it. The last girl left here because she couldn’t stand the cats; they affected her nerves, she said. I hope you don’t mind them.”

  “Oh, no; I kind of like cats. I’ve been tryin’ to count them. Has anyone ever done that?”

  “Not that I know of. I tried but I had to give up in despair — never could tell when I was counting the same cat over again. Look at that black goblin sunning himself on the woodpile. I say, Nelly, you’re not going, are you?”

  “I must. It’s time to get dinner. Mr. Pennington will be in from the fields soon.”

  The next minute he heard her stepping briskly about the kitchen, shooing out intruding cats, and humming a darky air to herself. He went reluctantly back to the shore and rowed across the river in a brown study.

  I don’t know whether Winslow was afflicted with chronic thirst or not, or whether the East side water wasn’t so good as that of the West side; but I do know that he fairly haunted the Pennington farmhouse after that. Mrs. Pennington was home the next time he went, and he asked her about her new girl. To his surprise the good lady was unusually reticent. She couldn’t really say very much about Nelly. No, she didn’t belong anywhere near Riverside. In fact, she — Mrs. Pennington — didn’t think she had any settled home at present. Her father was travelling over the country somewhere. Nelly was a good little girl, and very obliging. Beyond this Winslow could get no more information, so he went around and talked to Nelly, who was sitting on the bench under the poplars and seemed absorbed in watching the sunset.

 

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