Rainbow Valley
swear word since, or told a lie. And I’d like to see him happy and
comfortable, with his buttons on and his meals decent, and you young
ones licked into shape, and that old cat of a Martha put in _her_
proper place. The way she looked at the eggs I brought her to-night. ‘I
hope they’re fresh,’ says she. I just wished they _was_ rotten. But you
just mind that she gives you all one for breakfast, including your pa.
Make a fuss if she doesn’t. That was what they was sent up for—but I
don’t trust old Martha. She’s quite capable of feeding ‘em to her cat.”
Mary’s tongue being temporarily tired, a brief silence fell over the
graveyard. The manse children did not feel like talking. They were
digesting the new and not altogether palatable ideas Mary had suggested
to them. Jerry and Carl were somewhat startled. But, after all, what
did it matter? And it wasn’t likely there was a word of truth in it.
Faith, on the whole, was pleased. Only Una was seriously upset. She
felt that she would like to get away and cry.
“Will there be any stars in my crown?” sang the Methodist choir,
beginning to practise in the Methodist church.
“_I_ want just three,” said Mary, whose theological knowledge had
increased notably since her residence with Mrs. Elliott. “Just
three—setting up on my head, like a corownet, a big one in the middle
and a small one each side.”
“Are there different sizes in souls?” asked Carl.
“Of course. Why, little babies must have smaller ones than big men.
Well, it’s getting dark and I must scoot home. Mrs. Elliott doesn’t
like me to be out after dark. Laws, when I lived with Mrs. Wiley the
dark was just the same as the daylight to me. I didn’t mind it no
more’n a gray cat. Them days seem a hundred years ago. Now, you mind
what I’ve said and try to behave yourselves, for you pa’s sake. _I’ll_
always back you up and defend you—you can be dead sure of that. Mrs.
Elliott says she never saw the like of me for sticking up for my
friends. I was real sassy to Mrs. Alec Davis about you and Mrs. Elliott
combed me down for it afterwards. The fair Cornelia has a tongue of her
own and no mistake. But she was pleased underneath for all, ‘cause she
hates old Kitty Alec and she’s real fond of you. _I_ can see through
folks.”
Mary sailed off, excellently well pleased with herself, leaving a
rather depressed little group behind her.
“Mary Vance always says something that makes us feel bad when she comes
up,” said Una resentfully.
“I wish we’d left her to starve in the old barn,” said Jerry
vindictively.
“Oh, that’s wicked, Jerry,” rebuked Una.
“May as well have the game as the name,” retorted unrepentant Jerry.
“If people say we’re so bad let’s _be_ bad.”
“But not if it hurts father,” pleaded Faith.
Jerry squirmed uncomfortably. He adored his father. Through the
unshaded study window they could see Mr. Meredith at his desk. He did
not seem to be either reading or writing. His head was in his hands and
there was something in his whole attitude that spoke of weariness and
dejection. The children suddenly felt it.
“I dare say somebody’s been worrying him about us to-day,” said Faith.
“I wish we _could_ get along without making people talk. Oh—Jem Blythe!
How you scared me!”
Jem Blythe had slipped into the graveyard and sat down beside the
girls. He had been prowling about Rainbow Valley and had succeeded in
finding the first little star-white cluster of arbutus for his mother.
The manse children were rather silent after his coming. Jem was
beginning to grow away from them somewhat this spring. He was studying
for the entrance examination of Queen’s Academy and stayed after school
with the older pupils for extra lessons. Also, his evenings were so
full of work that he seldom joined the others in Rainbow Valley now. He
seemed to be drifting away into grown-up land.
“What is the matter with you all to-night?” he asked. “There’s no fun
in you.”
“Not much,” agreed Faith dolefully. “There wouldn’t be much fun in you
either if _you_ knew you were disgracing your father and making people
talk about you.”
“Who’s been talking about you now?”
“Everybody—so Mary Vance says.” And Faith poured out her troubles to
sympathetic Jem. “You see,” she concluded dolefully, “we’ve nobody to
bring us up. And so we get into scrapes and people think we’re bad.”
“Why don’t you bring yourselves up?” suggested Jem. “I’ll tell you what
to do. Form a Good-Conduct Club and punish yourselves every time you do
anything that’s not right.”
“That’s a good idea,” said Faith, struck by it. “But,” she added
doubtfully, “things that don’t seem a bit of harm to US seem simply
dreadful to other people. How can we tell? We can’t be bothering father
all the time—and he has to be away a lot, anyhow.”
“You could mostly tell if you stopped to think a thing over before
doing it and ask yourselves what the congregation would say about it,”
said Jem. “The trouble is you just rush into things and don’t think
them over at all. Mother says you’re all too impulsive, just as she
used to be. The Good-Conduct Club would help you to think, if you were
fair and honest about punishing yourselves when you broke the rules.
You’d have to punish in some way that really _hurt_, or it wouldn’t do
any good.”
“Whip each other?”
“Not exactly. You’d have to think up different ways of punishment to
suit the person. You wouldn’t punish each other—you’d punish
_yourselves_. I read all about such a club in a story-book. You try it
and see how it works.”
“Let’s,” said Faith; and when Jem was gone they agreed they would. “If
things aren’t right we’ve just got to make them right,” said Faith,
resolutely.
“We’ve got to be fair and square, as Jem says,” said Jerry. “This is a
club to bring ourselves up, seeing there’s nobody else to do it.
There’s no use in having many rules. Let’s just have one and any of us
that breaks it has got to be punished hard.”
“But _how_.”
“We’ll think that up as we go along. We’ll hold a session of the club
here in the graveyard every night and talk over what we’ve done through
the day, and if we think we’ve done anything that isn’t right or that
would disgrace dad the one that does it, or is responsible for it, must
be punished. That’s the rule. We’ll all decide on the kind of
punishment—it must be made to fit the crime, as Mr. Flagg says. And the
one that’s guilty will be bound to carry it out and no shirking.
There’s going to be fun in this,” concluded Jerry, with a relish.
“You suggested the soap-bubble party,” said Faith.
“But that was before we’d formed the club,” said Jerry hastily.
“Everything starts from to-night.”
“But what if we can’t agree on what’s right, or what the punishment
ought to be? S’pose two of us thought of one thing and two another.
There ought to be five in a club like this.”
“We can ask Jem Blythe to be umpire. He is the squarest boy in Glen St.
Mary. But I guess we can settle our own affairs mostly. We want to keep
this as much of a secret as we can. Don’t breathe a word to Mary Vance.
She’d want to join and do the bringing up.”
“_I_ think,” said Faith, “that there’s no use in spoiling every day by
dragging punishments in. Let’s have a punishment day.”
“We’d better choose Saturday because there is no school to interfere,”
suggested Una.
“And spoil the one holiday in the week,” cried Faith. “Not much! No,
let’s take Friday. That’s fish day, anyhow, and we all hate fish. We
may as well have all the disagreeable things in one day. Then other
days we can go ahead and have a good time.”
“Nonsense,” said Jerry authoritatively. “Such a scheme wouldn’t work at
all. We’ll just punish ourselves as we go along and keep a clear slate.
Now, we all understand, don’t we? This is a Good-Conduct Club, for the
purpose of bringing ourselves up. We agree to punish ourselves for bad
conduct, and always to stop before we do anything, no matter what, and
ask ourselves if it is likely to hurt dad in any way, and any one who
shirks is to be cast out of the club and never allowed to play with the
rest of us in Rainbow Valley again. Jem Blythe to be umpire in case of
disputes. No more taking bugs to Sunday School, Carl, and no more
chewing gum in public, if you please, Miss Faith.”
“No more making fun of elders praying or going to the Methodist prayer
meeting,” retorted Faith.
“Why, it isn’t any harm to go to the Methodist prayer meeting,”
protested Jerry in amazement.
“Mrs. Elliott says it is, She says manse children have no business to
go anywhere but to Presbyterian things.”
“Darn it, I won’t give up going to the Methodist prayer meeting,” cried
Jerry. “It’s ten times more fun than ours is.”
“You said a naughty word,” cried Faith. “_Now_, you’ve got to punish
yourself.”
“Not till it’s all down in black and white. We’re only talking the club
over. It isn’t really formed until we’ve written it out and signed it.
There’s got to be a constitution and by-laws. And you _know_ there’s
nothing wrong in going to a prayer meeting.”
“But it’s not only the wrong things we’re to punish ourselves for, but
anything that might hurt father.”
“It won’t hurt anybody. You know Mrs. Elliott is cracked on the subject
of Methodists. Nobody else makes any fuss about my going. I always
behave myself. You ask Jem or Mrs. Blythe and see what they say. I’ll
abide by their opinion. I’m going for the paper now and I’ll bring out
the lantern and we’ll all sign.”
Fifteen minutes later the document was solemnly signed on Hezekiah
Pollock’s tombstone, on the centre of which stood the smoky manse
lantern, while the children knelt around it. Mrs. Elder Clow was going
past at the moment and next day all the Glen heard that the manse
children had been having another praying competition and had wound it
up by chasing each other all over the graves with a lantern. This piece
of embroidery was probably suggested by the fact that, after the
signing and sealing was completed, Carl had taken the lantern and had
walked circumspectly to the little hollow to examine his ant-hill. The
others had gone quietly into the manse and to bed.
“Do you think it is true that father is going to marry Miss West?” Una
had tremulously asked of Faith, after their prayers had been said.
“I don’t know, but I’d like it,” said Faith.
“Oh, I wouldn’t,” said Una, chokingly. “She is nice the way she is. But
Mary Vance says it changes people _altogether_ to be made stepmothers.
They get horrid cross and mean and hateful then, and turn your father
against you. She says they’re sure to do that. She never knew it to
fail in a single case.”
“I don’t believe Miss West would _ever_ try to do that,” cried Faith.
“Mary says _anybody_ would. She knows _all_ about stepmothers,
Faith—she says she’s seen hundreds of them—and you’ve never seen one.
Oh, Mary has told me blood-curdling things about them. She says she
knew of one who whipped her husband’s little girls on their bare
shoulders till they bled, and then shut them up in a cold, dark coal
cellar all night. She says they’re _all_ aching to do things like
that.”
“I don’t believe Miss West would. You don’t know her as well as I do,
Una. Just think of that sweet little bird she sent me. I love it far
more even than Adam.”
“It’s just being a stepmother changes them. Mary says they can’t help
it. I wouldn’t mind the whippings so much as having father hate us.”
“You know nothing could make father hate us. Don’t be silly, Una. I
dare say there’s nothing to worry over. Likely if we run our club right
and bring ourselves up properly father won’t think of marrying any one.
And if he does, I _know_ Miss West will be lovely to us.”
But Una had no such conviction and she cried herself to sleep.
CHAPTER XXIV.
A CHARITABLE IMPULSE