Rainbow Valley
the manse. In a few days it was a different place. Floors were swept,
furniture dusted, everything straightened out. She mended the
spare-room bed-tick, she sewed on missing buttons, she patched clothes
neatly, she even invaded the study with broom and dustpan and ordered
Mr. Meredith out while she put it to rights. But there was one
department with which Aunt Martha refused to let her interfere. Aunt
Martha might be deaf and half blind and very childish, but she was
resolved to keep the commissariat in her own hands, in spite of all
Mary’s wiles and stratagems.
“I can tell you if old Martha’d let _me_ cook you’d have some decent
meals,” she told the manse children indignantly. “There’d be no more
‘ditto’—and no more lumpy porridge and blue milk either. What _does_
she do with all the cream?”
“She gives it to the cat. He’s hers, you know,” said Faith.
“I’d like to _cat_ her,” exclaimed Mary bitterly. “I’ve no use for cats
anyhow. They belong to the old Nick. You can tell that by their eyes.
Well, if old Martha won’t, she won’t, I s’pose. But it gits on my
nerves to see good vittles spoiled.”
When school came out they always went to Rainbow Valley. Mary refused
to play in the graveyard. She declared she was afraid of ghosts.
“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” declared Jem Blythe.
“Oh, ain’t there?”
“Did you ever see any?”
“Hundreds of ‘em,” said Mary promptly.
“What are they like?” said Carl.
“Awful-looking. Dressed all in white with skellington hands and heads,”
said Mary.
“What did you do?” asked Una.
“Run like the devil,” said Mary. Then she caught Walter’s eyes and
blushed. Mary was a good deal in awe of Walter. She declared to the
manse girls that his eyes made her nervous.
“I think of all the lies I’ve ever told when I look into them,” she
said, “and I wish I hadn’t.”
Jem was Mary’s favourite. When he took her to the attic at Ingleside
and showed her the museum of curios that Captain Jim Boyd had
bequeathed to him she was immensely pleased and flattered. She also won
Carl’s heart entirely by her interest in his beetles and ants. It could
not be denied that Mary got on rather better with the boys than with
the girls. She quarrelled bitterly with Nan Blythe the second day.
“Your mother is a witch,” she told Nan scornfully. “Red-haired women
are always witches.” Then she and Faith fell out about the rooster.
Mary said its tail was too short. Faith angrily retorted that she
guessed God know what length to make a rooster’s tail. They did not
“speak” for a day over this. Mary treated Una’s hairless, one-eyed doll
with consideration; but when Una showed her other prized treasure—a
picture of an angel carrying a baby, presumably to heaven, Mary
declared that it looked too much like a ghost for her. Una crept away
to her room and cried over this, but Mary hunted her out, hugged her
repentantly and implored forgiveness. No one could keep up a quarrel
long with Mary—not even Nan, who was rather prone to hold grudges and
never quite forgave the insult to her mother. Mary was jolly. She could
and did tell the most thrilling ghost stories. Rainbow Valley seances
were undeniably more exciting after Mary came. She learned to play on
the jew’s-harp and soon eclipsed Jerry.
“Never struck anything yet I couldn’t do if I put my mind to it,” she
declared. Mary seldom lost a chance of tooting her own horn. She taught
them how to make “blow-bags” out of the thick leaves of the
“live-forever” that flourished in the old Bailey garden, she initiated
them into the toothsome qualities of the “sours” that grew in the
niches of the graveyard dyke, and she could make the most wonderful
shadow pictures on the walls with her long, flexible fingers. And when
they all went picking gum in Rainbow Valley Mary always got “the
biggest chew” and bragged about it. There were times when they hated
her and times when they loved her. But at all times they found her
interesting. So they submitted quite meekly to her bossing, and by the
end of a fortnight had come to feel that she must always have been with
them.
“It’s the queerest thing that Mrs. Wiley hain’t been after me,” said
Mary. “I can’t understand it.”
“Maybe she isn’t going to bother about you at all,” said Una. “Then you
can just go on staying here.”
“This house ain’t hardly big enough for me and old Martha,” said Mary
darkly. “It’s a very fine thing to have enough to eat—I’ve often
wondered what it would be like—but I’m p’ticler about my cooking. And
Mrs. Wiley’ll be here yet. _She’s_ got a rod in pickle for me all
right. I don’t think about it so much in daytime but say, girls, up
there in that garret at night I git to thinking and thinking of it,
till I just almost wish she’d come and have it over with. I dunno’s one
real good whipping would be much worse’n all the dozen I’ve lived
through in my mind ever since I run away. Were any of you ever licked?”
“No, of course not,” said Faith indignantly. “Father would never do
such a thing.”
“You don’t know you’re alive,” said Mary with a sigh half of envy, half
of superiority. “You don’t know what I’ve come through. And I s’pose
the Blythes were never licked either?”
“No-o-o, I guess not. But I _think_ they were sometimes spanked when
they were small.”
“A spanking doesn’t amount to anything,” said Mary contemptuously. “If
my folks had just spanked me I’d have thought they were petting me.
Well, it ain’t a fair world. I wouldn’t mind taking my share of
wallopings but I’ve had a darn sight too many.”
“It isn’t right to say that word, Mary,” said Una reproachfully. “You
promised me you wouldn’t say it.”
“G’way,” responded Mary. “If you knew some of the words I _could_ say
if I liked you wouldn’t make such a fuss over darn. And you know very
well I hain’t ever told any lies since I come here.”
“What about all those ghosts you said you saw?” asked Faith.
Mary blushed.
“That was diff’runt,” she said defiantly. “I knew you wouldn’t believe
them yarns and I didn’t intend you to. And I really did see something
queer one night when I was passing the over-harbour graveyard, true’s
you live. I dunno whether ‘twas a ghost or Sandy Crawford’s old white
nag, but it looked blamed queer and I tell you I scooted at the rate of
no man’s business.”
CHAPTER VII.
A FISHY EPISODE
Rilla Blythe walked proudly, and perhaps a little primly, through the
main “street” of the Glen and up the manse hill, carefully carrying a
small basketful of early strawberries, which Susan had coaxed into
lusciousness in one of the sunny nooks of Ingleside. Susan had charged
Rilla to give the basket to nobody except Aunt Martha or Mr. Meredith,
and Rilla, very proud of being entrusted with such an errand, was
resolved to carry out her instructions to the letter.
Susan had dressed her daintily in a white, starched, and embroidered
dress, with sash of blue and beaded slippers. Her long ruddy curls were
sleek and round, and Susan had let her put on her best hat, out of
compliment to the manse. It was a somewhat elaborate affair, wherein
Susan’s taste had had more to say than Anne’s, and Rilla’s small soul
gloried in its splendours of silk and lace and flowers. She was very
conscious of her hat, and I am afraid she strutted up the manse hill.
The strut, or the hat, or both, got on the nerves of Mary Vance, who
was swinging on the lawn gate. Mary’s temper was somewhat ruffled just
then, into the bargain. Aunt Martha had refused to let her peel the
potatoes and had ordered her out of the kitchen.
“Yah! You’ll bring the potatoes to the table with strips of skin
hanging to them and half boiled as usual! My, but it’ll be nice to go
to your funeral,” shrieked Mary. She went out of the kitchen, giving
the door such a bang that even Aunt Martha heard it, and Mr. Meredith
in his study felt the vibration and thought absently that there must
have been a slight earthquake shock. Then he went on with his sermon.
Mary slipped from the gate and confronted the spick-and-span damsel of
Ingleside.
“What you got there?” she demanded, trying to take the basket.
Rilla resisted. “It’th for Mithter Meredith,” she lisped.
“Give it to me. _I’ll_ give it to him,” said Mary.
“No. Thuthan thaid that I wathn’t to give it to anybody but Mithter
Mer’dith or Aunt Martha,” insisted Rilla.
Mary eyed her sourly.
“You think you’re something, don’t you, all dressed up like a doll!
Look at me. My dress is all rags and _I_ don’t care! I’d rather be
ragged than a doll baby. Go home and tell them to put you in a glass
case. Look at me—look at me—look at me!”
Mary executed a wild dance around the dismayed and bewildered Rilla,
flirting her ragged skirt and vociferating “Look at me—look at me”
until poor Rilla was dizzy. But as the latter tried to edge away
towards the gate Mary pounced on her again.
“You give me that basket,” she ordered with a grimace. Mary was past
mistress in the art of “making faces.” She could give her countenance a
most grotesque and unearthly appearance out of which her strange,
brilliant, white eyes gleamed with weird effect.
“I won’t,” gasped Rilla, frightened but staunch. “You let me go, Mary
Vanth.”
Mary let go for a minute and looked around her. Just inside the gate
was a small “flake,” on which a half a dozen large codfish were drying.
One of Mr. Meredith’s parishioners had presented him with them one day,
perhaps in lieu of the subscription he was supposed to pay to the
stipend and never did. Mr. Meredith had thanked him and then forgotten
all about the fish, which would have promptly spoiled had not the
indefatigable Mary prepared them for drying and rigged up the “flake”
herself on which to dry them.
Mary had a diabolical inspiration. She flew to the “flake” and seized
the largest fish there—a huge, flat thing, nearly as big as herself.
With a whoop she swooped down on the terrified Rilla, brandishing her
weird missile. Rilla’s courage gave way. To be lambasted with a dried
codfish was such an unheard-of thing that Rilla could not face it. With
a shriek she dropped her basket and fled. The beautiful berries, which
Susan had so tenderly selected for the minister, rolled in a rosy
torrent over the dusty road and were trodden on by the flying feet of
pursuer and pursued. The basket and contents were no longer in Mary’s
mind. She thought only of the delight of giving Rilla Blythe the scare
of her life. She would teach _her_ to come giving herself airs because
of her fine clothes.
Rilla flew down the hill and along the street. Terror lent wings to her
feet, and she just managed to keep ahead of Mary, who was somewhat
hampered by her own laughter, but who had breath enough to give
occasional blood-curdling whoops as she ran, flourishing her codfish in
the air. Through the Glen street they swept, while everybody ran to the
windows and gates to see them. Mary felt she was making a tremendous
sensation and enjoyed it. Rilla, blind with terror and spent of breath,
felt that she could run no longer. In another instant that terrible
girl would be on her with the codfish. At this point the poor mite
stumbled and fell into the mud-puddle at the end of the street just as
Miss Cornelia came out of Carter Flagg’s store.
Miss Cornelia took the whole situation in at a glance. So did Mary. The
latter stopped short in her mad career and before Miss Cornelia could
speak she had whirled around and was running up as fast as she had run
down. Miss Cornelia’s lips tightened ominously, but she knew it was no
use to think of chasing her. So she picked up poor, sobbing,
dishevelled Rilla instead and took her home. Rilla was heart-broken.
Her dress and slippers and hat were ruined and her six year old pride
had received terrible bruises.