Rainbow Valley
think of her good points and not of her bad ones. I dunno what good
points she had, unless it was keeping her house clean and making
first-class butter. I know I ‘most wore my arms out scrubbing her old
kitchen floor with the knots in it. But anything your father says goes
with me after this.”
Mary proved a rather dull companion in the following days, however. She
confided to Una that the more she thought of going back to the asylum
the more she hated it. Una racked her small brains for some way of
averting it, but it was Nan Blythe who came to the rescue with a
somewhat startling suggestion.
“Mrs. Elliott might take Mary herself. She has a great big house and
Mr. Elliott is always wanting her to have help. It would be just a
splendid place for Mary. Only she’d have to behave herself.”
“Oh, Nan, do you think Mrs. Elliott would take her?”
“It wouldn’t do any harm if you asked her,” said Nan. At first Una did
not think she could. She was so shy that to ask a favour of anybody was
agony to her. And she was very much in awe of the bustling, energetic
Mrs. Elliott. She liked her very much and always enjoyed a visit to her
house; but to go and ask her to adopt Mary Vance seemed such a height
of presumption that Una’s timid spirit quailed.
When the Hopetown authorities wrote to Mr. Meredith to send Mary to
them without delay Mary cried herself to sleep in the manse attic that
night and Una found a desperate courage. The next evening she slipped
away from the manse to the harbour road. Far down in Rainbow Valley she
heard joyous laughter but her way lay not there. She was terribly pale
and terribly in earnest—so much so that she took no notice of the
people she met—and old Mrs. Stanley Flagg was quite huffed and said Una
Meredith would be as absentminded as her father when she grew up.
Miss Cornelia lived half way between the Glen and Four Winds Point, in
a house whose original glaring green hue had mellowed down to an
agreeable greenish gray. Marshall Elliott had planted trees about it
and set out a rose garden and a spruce hedge. It was quite a different
place from what it had been in years agone. The manse children and the
Ingleside children liked to go there. It was a beautiful walk down the
old harbour road, and there was always a well-filled cooky jar at the
end.
The misty sea was lapping softly far down on the sands. Three big boats
were skimming down the harbour like great white sea-birds. A schooner
was coming up the channel. The world of Four Winds was steeped in
glowing colour, and subtle music, and strange glamour, and everybody
should have been happy in it. But when Una turned in at Miss Cornelia’s
gate her very legs had almost refused to carry her.
Miss Cornelia was alone on the veranda. Una had hoped Mr. Elliott would
be there. He was so big and hearty and twinkly that there would be
encouragement in his presence. She sat on the little stool Miss
Cornelia brought out and tried to eat the doughnut Miss Cornelia gave
her. It stuck in her throat, but she swallowed desperately lest Miss
Cornelia be offended. She could not talk; she was still pale; and her
big, dark-blue eyes looked so piteous that Miss Cornelia concluded the
child was in some trouble.
“What’s on your mind, dearie?” she asked. “There’s something, that’s
plain to be seen.”
Una swallowed the last twist of doughnut with a desperate gulp.
“Mrs. Elliott, won’t you take Mary Vance?” she said beseechingly.
Miss Cornelia stared blankly.
“Me! Take Mary Vance! Do you mean keep her?”
“Yes—keep her—adopt her,” said Una eagerly, gaining courage now that
the ice was broken. “Oh, Mrs. Elliott, _please_ do. She doesn’t want to
go back to the asylum—she cries every night about it. She’s so afraid
of being sent to another hard place. And she’s _so_ smart—there isn’t
anything she can’t do. I know you wouldn’t be sorry if you took her.”
“I never thought of such a thing,” said Miss Cornelia rather
helplessly.
“_Won’t_ you think of it?” implored Una.
“But, dearie, I don’t want help. I’m quite able to do all the work
here. And I never thought I’d like to have a home girl if I did need
help.”
The light went out of Una’s eyes. Her lips trembled. She sat down on
her stool again, a pathetic little figure of disappointment, and began
to cry.
“Don’t—dearie—don’t,” exclaimed Miss Cornelia in distress. She could
never bear to hurt a child. “I don’t say I _won’t_ take her—but the
idea is so new it has just kerflummuxed me. I must think it over.”
“Mary is _so_ smart,” said Una again.
“Humph! So I’ve heard. I’ve heard she swears, too. Is that true?”
“I’ve never heard her swear _exactly_,” faltered Una uncomfortably.
“But I’m afraid she _could_.”
“I believe you! Does she always tell the truth?”
“I think she does, except when she’s afraid of a whipping.”
“And yet you want me to take her!”
“_Some one_ has to take her,” sobbed Una. “_Some one_ has to look after
her, Mrs. Elliott.”
“That’s true. Perhaps it _is_ my duty to do it,” said Miss Cornelia
with a sigh. “Well, I’ll have to talk it over with Mr. Elliott. So
don’t say anything about it just yet. Take another doughnut, dearie.”
Una took it and ate it with a better appetite.
“I’m very fond of doughnuts,” she confessed “Aunt Martha never makes
any. But Miss Susan at Ingleside does, and sometimes she lets us have a
plateful in Rainbow Valley. Do you know what I do when I’m hungry for
doughnuts and can’t get any, Mrs. Elliott?”
“No, dearie. What?”
“I get out mother’s old cook book and read the doughnut recipe—and the
other recipes. They sound _so_ nice. I always do that when I’m
hungry—especially after we’ve had ditto for dinner. _Then_ I read the
fried chicken and the roast goose recipes. Mother could make all those
nice things.”
“Those manse children will starve to death yet if Mr. Meredith doesn’t
get married,” Miss Cornelia told her husband indignantly after Una had
gone. “And he won’t—and what’s to be done? And _shall_ we take this
Mary-creature, Marshall?”
“Yes, take her,” said Marshall laconically.
“Just like a man,” said his wife, despairingly. “‘Take her’—as if that
was all. There are a hundred things to be considered, believe _me_.”
“Take her—and we’ll consider them afterwards, Cornelia,” said her
husband.
In the end Miss Cornelia did take her and went up to announce her
decision to the Ingleside people first.
“Splendid!” said Anne delightedly. “I’ve been hoping you would do that
very thing, Miss Cornelia. I want that poor child to get a good home. I
was a homeless little orphan just like her once.”
“I don’t think this Mary-creature is or ever will be much like you,”
retorted Miss Cornelia gloomily. “She’s a cat of another colour. But
she’s also a human being with an immortal soul to save. I’ve got a
shorter catechism and a small tooth comb and I’m going to do my duty by
her, now that I’ve set my hand to the plough, believe me.”
Mary received the news with chastened satisfaction.
“It’s better luck than I expected,” she said.
“You’ll have to mind your p’s and q’s with Mrs. Elliott,” said Nan.
“Well, I can do that,” flashed Mary. “I know how to behave when I want
to just as well as you, Nan Blythe.”
“You mustn’t use bad words, you know, Mary,” said Una anxiously.
“I s’pose she’d die of horror if I did,” grinned Mary, her white eyes
shining with unholy glee over the idea. “But you needn’t worry, Una.
Butter won’t melt in my mouth after this. I’ll be all prunes and
prisms.”
“Nor tell lies,” added Faith.
“Not even to get off from a whipping?” pleaded Mary.
“Mrs. Elliott will _never_ whip you—_never_,” exclaimed Di.
“Won’t she?” said Mary skeptically. “If I ever find myself in a place
where I ain’t licked I’ll think it’s heaven all right. No fear of me
telling lies then. I ain’t fond of telling ‘em—I’d ruther not, if it
comes to that.”
The day before Mary’s departure from the manse they had a picnic in her
honour in Rainbow Valley, and that evening all the manse children gave
her something from their scanty store of treasured things for a
keepsake. Carl gave her his Noah’s ark and Jerry his second best
jew’s-harp. Faith gave her a little hairbrush with a mirror in the back
of it, which Mary had always considered very wonderful. Una hesitated
between an old beaded purse and a gay picture of Daniel in the lion’s
den, and finally offered Mary her choice. Mary really hankered after
the beaded purse, but she knew Una loved it, so she said,
“Give me Daniel. I’d rusher have it ‘cause I’m partial to lions. Only I
wish they’d et Daniel up. It would have been more exciting.”
At bedtime Mary coaxed Una to sleep with her.
“It’s for the last time,” she said, “and it’s raining tonight, and I
hate sleeping up there alone when it’s raining on account of that
graveyard. I don’t mind it on fine nights, but a night like this I
can’t see anything but the rain pouring down on them old white stones,
and the wind round the window sounds as if them dead people were trying
to get in and crying ‘cause they couldn’t.”
“I like rainy nights,” said Una, when they were cuddled down together
in the little attic room, “and so do the Blythe girls.”
“I don’t mind ‘em when I’m not handy to graveyards,” said Mary. “If I
was alone here I’d cry my eyes out I’d be so lonesome. I feel awful bad
to be leaving you all.”
“Mrs. Elliott will let you come up and play in Rainbow Valley quite
often I’m sure,” said Una. “And you _will_ be a good girl, won’t you,
Mary?”
“Oh, I’ll try,” sighed Mary. “But it won’t be as easy for me to be
good—inside, I mean, as well as outside—as it is for you. You hadn’t
such scalawags of relations as I had.”
“But your people must have had some good qualities as well as bad
ones,” argued Una. “You must live up to them and never mind their bad
ones.”
“I don’t believe they had any good qualities,” said Mary gloomily. “I
never heard of any. My grandfather had money, but they say he was a
rascal. No, I’ll just have to start out on my own hook and do the best
I can.”
“And God will help you, you know, Mary, if you ask Him.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Oh, Mary. You know we asked God to get a home for you and He did.”
“I don’t see what He had to do with it,” retorted Mary. “It was you put
it into Mrs. Elliott’s head.”
“But God put it into her _heart_ to take you. All my putting it into
her _head_ wouldn’t have done any good if He hadn’t.”
“Well, there may be something in that,” admitted Mary. “Mind you, I
haven’t got anything against God, Una. I’m willing to give Him a
chance. But, honest, I think He’s an awful lot like your father—just
absent-minded and never taking any notice of a body most of the time,
but sometimes waking up all of a suddent and being awful good and kind
and sensible.”
“Oh, Mary, no!” exclaimed horrified Una. “God isn’t a bit like father—I
mean He’s a thousand times better and kinder.”
“If He’s as good as your father He’ll do for me,” said Mary. “When your
father was talking to me I felt as if I never could be bad any more.”
“I wish you’d talk to father about Him,” sighed Una. “He can explain it
all so much better than I can.”
“Why, so I will, next time he wakes up,” promised Mary. “That night he
talked to me in the study he showed me real clear that my praying
didn’t kill Mrs. Wiley. My mind’s been easy since, but I’m real
cautious about praying. I guess the old rhyme is the safest. Say, Una,
it seems to me if one has to pray to anybody it’d be better to pray to
the devil than to God. God’s good, anyhow so you say, so He won’t do
you any harm, but from all I can make out the devil needs to be
pacified. I think the sensible way would be to say to _him_, ‘Good
devil, please don’t tempt me. Just leave me alone, please.’ Now, don’t
you?”