Rilla of Ingleside
"We hope that he will be by the fall," said Mrs. Blythe. "An idle
summer in the open air and sunshine will do a great deal for him."
"Typhoid is a hard thing to get over," said Miss Cornelia emphatically,
"especially when one has had such a close shave as Walter had. I think
he'd do well to stay out of college another year. But then he's so
ambitious. Are Di and Nan going too?"
"Yes. They both wanted to teach another year but Gilbert thinks they
had better go to Redmond this fall."
"I'm glad of that. They'll keep an eye on Walter and see that he
doesn't study too hard. I suppose," continued Miss Cornelia, with a
side glance at Susan, "that after the snub I got a few minutes ago it
will not be safe for me to suggest that Jerry Meredith is making
sheep's eyes at Nan."
Susan ignored this and Mrs. Blythe laughed again.
"Dear Miss Cornelia, I have my hands full, haven't I?--with all these
boys and girls sweethearting around me? If I took it seriously it would
quite crush me. But I don't--it is too hard yet to realize that they're
grown up. When I look at those two tall sons of mine I wonder if they
can possibly be the fat, sweet, dimpled babies I kissed and cuddled and
sang to slumber the other day--only the other day, Miss Cornelia.
Wasn't Jem the dearest baby in the old House of Dreams? and now he's a
B.A. and accused of courting."
"We're all growing older," sighed Miss Cornelia.
"The only part of me that feels old," said Mrs. Blythe, "is the ankle I
broke when Josie Pye dared me to walk the Barry ridge-pole in the Green
Gables days. I have an ache in it when the wind is east. I won't admit
that it is rheumatism, but it does ache. As for the children, they and
the Merediths are planning a gay summer before they have to go back to
studies in the fall. They are such a fun-loving little crowd. They keep
this house in a perpetual whirl of merriment."
"Is Rilla going to Queen's when Shirley goes back?"
"It isn't decided yet. I rather fancy not. Her father thinks she is not
quite strong enough--she has rather outgrown her strength--she's really
absurdly tall for a girl not yet fifteen. I am not anxious to have her
go--why, it would be terrible not to have a single one of my babies
home with me next winter. Susan and I would fall to fighting with each
other to break the monotony."
Susan smiled at this pleasantry. The idea of her fighting with "Mrs.
Dr. dear!"
"Does Rilla herself want to go?" asked Miss Cornelia.
"No. The truth is, Rilla is the only one of my flock who isn't
ambitious. I really wish she had a little more ambition. She has no
serious ideals at all--her sole aspiration seems to be to have a good
time."
"And why should she not have it, Mrs. Dr. dear?" cried Susan, who could
not bear to hear a single word against anyone of the Ingleside folk,
even from one of themselves. "A young girl should have a good time, and
that I will maintain. There will be time enough for her to think of
Latin and Greek."
"I should like to see a little sense of responsibility in her, Susan.
And you know yourself that she is abominably vain."
"She has something to be vain about," retorted Susan. "She is the
prettiest girl in Glen St. Mary. Do you think that all those
over-harbour MacAllisters and Crawfords and Elliotts could scare up a
skin like Rilla's in four generations? They could not. No, Mrs. Dr.
dear, I know my place but I cannot allow you to run down Rilla. Listen
to this, Mrs. Marshall Elliott."
Susan had found a chance to get square with Miss Cornelia for her digs
at the children's love affairs. She read the item with gusto.
"'Miller Douglas has decided not to go West. He says old P.E.I. is good
enough for him and he will continue to farm for his aunt, Mrs. Alec
Davis.'"
Susan looked keenly at Miss Cornelia.
"I have heard, Mrs. Marshall Elliott, that Miller is courting Mary
Vance."
This shot pierced Miss Cornelia's armour. Her sonsy face flushed.
"I won't have Miller Douglas hanging round Mary," she said crisply. "He
comes of a low family. His father was a sort of outcast from the
Douglases--they never really counted him in--and his mother was one of
those terrible Dillons from the Harbour Head."
"I think I have heard, Mrs. Marshall Elliott, that Mary Vance's own
parents were not what you could call aristocratic."
"Mary Vance has had a good bringing up and she is a smart, clever,
capable girl," retorted Miss Cornelia. "She is not going to throw
herself away on Miller Douglas, believe me! She knows my opinion on the
matter and Mary has never disobeyed me yet."
"Well, I do not think you need worry, Mrs. Marshall Elliott, for Mrs.
Alec Davis is as much against it as you could be, and says no nephew of
hers is ever going to marry a nameless nobody like Mary Vance."
Susan returned to her mutton, feeling that she had got the best of it
in this passage of arms, and read another "note."
"'We are pleased to hear that Miss Oliver has been engaged as teacher
for another year. Miss Oliver will spend her well-earned vacation at
her home in Lowbridge.'"
"I'm so glad Gertrude is going to stay," said Mrs. Blythe. "We would
miss her horribly. And she has an excellent influence over Rilla who
worships her. They are chums, in spite of the difference in their ages."
"I thought I heard she was going to be married?"
"I believe it was talked of but I understand it is postponed for a
year."
"Who is the young man?"
"Robert Grant. He is a young lawyer in Charlottetown. I hope Gertrude
will be happy. She has had a sad life, with much bitterness in it, and
she feels things with a terrible keenness. Her first youth is gone and
she is practically alone in the world. This new love that has come into
her life seems such a wonderful thing to her that I think she hardly
dares believe in its permanence. When her marriage had to be put off
she was quite in despair--though it certainly wasn't Mr. Grant's fault.
There were complications in the settlement of his father's estate--his
father died last winter--and he could not marry till the tangles were
unravelled. But I think Gertrude felt it was a bad omen and that her
happiness would somehow elude her yet."
"It does not do, Mrs. Dr. dear, to set your affections too much on a
man," remarked Susan solemnly.
"Mr. Grant is quite as much in love with Gertrude as she is with him,
Susan. It is not he whom she distrusts--it is fate. She has a little
mystic streak in her--I suppose some people would call her
superstitious. She has an odd belief in dreams and we have not been
able to laugh it out of her. I must own, too, that some of her
dreams--but there, it would not do to let Gilbert hear me hinting such
heresy. What have you found of much interest, Susan?"
Susan had given an exclamation.
"Listen to this, Mrs. Dr. dear. 'Mrs. Sophia Crawford has given up her
house at Lowbridge and will make her home in future with her niece,
Mrs. Albert Crawford.' Why that is my own cousin Sophia, Mrs. Dr. dear.
We quarrelled when we were children over who should get a Sunday-school
card with the words 'God is Love,' wreathed in rosebuds, on it, and
have never spoken to each other since. And now she is coming to live
right across the road from us."
"You will have to make up the old quarrel, Susan. It will never do to
be at outs with your neighbours."
"Cousin Sophia began the quarrel, so she can begin the making up also,
Mrs. Dr. dear," said Susan loftily. "If she does I hope I am a good
enough Christian to meet her half-way. She is not a cheerful person and
has been a wet blanket all her life. The last time I saw her, her face
had a thousand wrinkles--maybe more, maybe less--from worrying and
foreboding. She howled dreadful at her first husband's funeral but she
married again in less than a year. The next note, I see, describes the
special service in our church last Sunday night and says the
decorations were very beautiful."
"Speaking of that reminds me that Mr. Pryor strongly disapproves of
flowers in church," said Miss Cornelia. "I always said there would be
trouble when that man moved here from Lowbridge. He should never have
been put in as elder--it was a mistake and we shall live to rue it,
believe me! I have heard that he has said that if the girls continue to
'mess up the pulpit with weeds' that he will not go to church."
"The church got on very well before old Whiskers-on-the-moon came to
the Glen and it is my opinion it will get on without him after he is
gone," said Susan.
"Who in the world ever gave him that ridiculous nickname?" asked Mrs.
Blythe.
"Why, the Lowbridge boys have called him that ever since I can
remember, Mrs. Dr. dear--I suppose because his face is so round and
red, with that fringe of sandy whisker about it. It does not do for
anyone to call him that in his hearing, though, and that you may tie
to. But worse than his whiskers, Mrs. Dr. dear, he is a very
unreasonable man and has a great many queer ideas. He is an elder now
and they say he is very religious; but I can well remember the time,
Mrs. Dr. dear, twenty years ago, when he was caught pasturing his cow
in the Lowbridge graveyard. Yes, indeed, I have not forgotten that, and
I always think of it when he is praying in meeting. Well, that is all
the notes and there is not much else in the paper of any importance. I
never take much interest in foreign parts. Who is this Archduke man who
has been murdered?"
"What does it matter to us?" asked Miss Cornelia, unaware of the
hideous answer to her question which destiny was even then preparing.
"Somebody is always murdering or being murdered in those Balkan States.
It's their normal condition and I don't really think that our papers
ought to print such shocking things. The Enterprise is getting far too
sensational with its big headlines. Well, I must be getting home. No,
Anne dearie, it's no use asking me to stay to supper. Marshall has got
to thinking that if I'm not home for a meal it's not worth eating--just
like a man. So off I go. Merciful goodness, Anne dearie, what is the
matter with that cat? Is he having a fit?"--this, as Doc suddenly
bounded to the rug at Miss Cornelia's feet, laid back his ears, swore
at her, and then disappeared with one fierce leap through the window.
"Oh, no. He's merely turning into Mr. Hyde--which means that we shall
have rain or high wind before morning. Doc is as good as a barometer."
"Well, I am thankful he has gone on the rampage outside this time and
not into my kitchen," said Susan. "And I am going out to see about
supper. With such a crowd as we have at Ingleside now it behooves us to
think about our meals betimes."
CHAPTER II
DEW OF MORNING
Outside, the Ingleside lawn was full of golden pools of sunshine and
plots of alluring shadows. Rilla Blythe was swinging in the hammock
under the big Scotch pine, Gertrude Oliver sat at its roots beside her,
and Walter was stretched at full length on the grass, lost in a romance
of chivalry wherein old heroes and beauties of dead and gone centuries
lived vividly again for him.
Rilla was the "baby" of the Blythe family and was in a chronic state of
secret indignation because nobody believed she was grown up. She was so
nearly fifteen that she called herself that, and she was quite as tall
as Di and Nan; also, she was nearly as pretty as Susan believed her to
be. She had great, dreamy, hazel eyes, a milky skin dappled with little
golden freckles, and delicately arched eyebrows, giving her a demure,
questioning look which made people, especially lads in their teens,
want to answer it. Her hair was ripely, ruddily brown and a little dent
in her upper lip looked as if some good fairy had pressed it in with
her finger at Rilla's christening. Rilla, whose best friends could not