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Title: Anne of Ingleside
Author: L. M. Montgomery
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eBook No.:  0100281.txt
Language:   English
Date first posted: December 2001
Date most recently updated: December 2001

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Title:      Anne of Ingleside
Author:     L. M. Montgomery


Please note:  Italics used for emphasis have been converted to
uppercase lettering, except for the word I which is shown as _I_.





1


"How white the moonlight is tonight!" said Anne Blythe to herself,
as she went up the walk of the Wright garden to Diana Wright's
front door, where little cherry-blossom petals were coming down on
the salty, breeze-stirred air.

She paused for a moment to look about her on hills and woods she
had loved in olden days and still loved.  Dear Avonlea!  Glen St.
Mary was home to her now and had been home for many years but
Avonlea had something that Glen St. Mary could never have.  Ghosts
of herself met her at every turn . . . the fields she had roamed in
welcomed her . . . unfading echoes of the old sweet life were all
about her . . . every spot she looked upon had some lovely memory.
There were haunted gardens here and there where bloomed all the
roses of yesteryear.  Anne always loved to come home to Avonlea
even when, as now, the reason for her visit had been a sad one.
She and Gilbert had come up for the funeral of his father and Anne
had stayed for a week.  Marilla and Mrs. Lynde could not bear to
have her go away too soon.

Her old porch gable room was always kept for her and when Anne had
gone to it the night of her arrival she found that Mrs. Lynde had
put a big, homey bouquet of spring flowers in it for her . . . a
bouquet that, when Anne buried her face in it, seemed to hold all
the fragrance of unforgotten years.  The Anne-who-used-to-be was
waiting there for her.  Deep, dear old gladnesses stirred in her
heart.  The gable room was putting its arms around her . . .
enclosing her . . . enveloping her.  She looked lovingly at her
old bed with the apple-leaf spread Mrs. Lynde had knitted and the
spotless pillows trimmed with deep lace Mrs. Lynde had crocheted
. . . at Marilla's braided rugs on the floor . . . at the mirror
that had reflected the face of the little orphan, with her unwritten
child's forehead, who had cried herself to sleep there that first
night so long ago.  Anne forgot that she was the joyful mother of
five children . . . with Susan Baker again knitting mysterious
bootees at Ingleside.  She was Anne of Green Gables once more.

Mrs. Lynde found her still staring dreamily in the mirror when she
came in, bringing clean towels.

"It's real good to have you home again, Anne, that's what.  It's
nine years since you went away, but Marilla and I can't seem to get
over missing you.  It's not so lonesome now since Davy got married
. . . Millie is a real nice little thing . . . such pies! . . .
though she's curious as a chipmunk about everything.  But I've
always said and always will say that there's nobody like you."

"Ah, but this mirror can't be tricked, Mrs. Lynde.  It's telling me
plainly, 'You're not as young as you once were,'" said Anne
whimsically.

"You've kept your complexion very well," said Mrs. Lynde
consolingly.  "Of course you never had much colour to lose."

"At any rate, I've never a hint of a second chin yet," said Anne
gaily.  "And my old room remembers me, Mrs. Lynde.  I'm glad . . .
it would hurt me so if I ever came back and found it had forgotten
me.  And it's wonderful to see the moon rising over the Haunted
Wood again."

"It looks like a great big piece of gold in the sky, doesn't it?"
said Mrs. Lynde, feeling that she was taking a wild, poetical
flight and thankful that Marilla wasn't there to hear.

"Look at those pointed firs coming out against it . . . and the
birches in the hollow still holding their arms up to the silver
sky.  They're big trees now . . . they were just baby things when
I came here . . . that DOES make me feel a bit old."

"Trees are like children," said Mrs. Lynde.  "It's dreadful the way
they grow up the minute you turn your back on them.  Look at Fred
Wright . . . he's only thirteen but he's nearly as tall as his
father.  There's a hot chicken pie for supper and I made some of my
lemon biscuits for you.  You needn't be a mite afraid to sleep in
that bed.  I aired the sheets today . . . and Marilla didn't know I
did it and gave them another airing . . . and Millie didn't know
either of us did and gave them a third.  I hope Mary Maria Blythe
will get out tomorrow . . . she always enjoys a funeral so."

"Aunt Mary Maria . . . Gilbert always calls her that although she
is only his father's cousin . . . always calls me 'Annie,'"
shuddered Anne.  "And the first time she saw me after I was married
she said, 'It's so strange Gilbert picked you.  He could have had
so many nice girls.'  Perhaps that's why I've never liked her . . .
and I know Gilbert doesn't either, though he's too clannish to
admit it."

"Will Gilbert be staying up long?"

"No.  He has to go back tomorrow night.  He left a patient in a
very critical condition."

"Oh, well, I suppose there isn't much to keep him in Avonlea now,
since his mother went last year.  Old Mr. Blythe never held up his
head after her death . . . just hadn't anything left to live for.
The Blythes were always like that . . . always set their affections
too much on earthly things.  It's real sad to think there are none
of them left in Avonlea.  They were a fine old stock.  But then
. . . there's any amount of Sloanes.  The Sloanes are still Sloanes,
Anne, and will be for ever and ever, world without end, amen."

"Let there be as many Sloanes as there will, I'm going out after
supper to walk all over the old orchard by moonlight.  I suppose
I'll have to go to bed finally . . . though I've always thought
sleeping on moonlight nights a waste of time . . . but I'm going to
wake early to see the first faint morning light steal over the
Haunted Wood.  The sky will turn to coral and the robins will be
strutting around . . . perhaps a little grey sparrow will light on
the windowsill . . . and there'll be gold and purple pansies to
look at . . ."

"But the rabbits has et up all the June lily bed," said Mrs. Lynde
sadly, as she waddled downstairs, feeling secretly relieved that
there need be no more talk about the moon.  Anne had always been a
bit queer that way.  And there did not any longer seem to be much
use in hoping she would outgrow it.



Diana came down the walk to meet Anne.  Even in the moonlight you
saw that her hair was still black and her cheeks rosy and her eyes
bright.  But the moonlight could not hide that she was something
stouter than in years agone . . . and Diana had never been what
Avonlea folks called "skinny."

"Don't worry, darling . . . I haven't come to stay. . . ."

"As if I'd worry over THAT," said Diana reproachfully.  "You know
I'd far rather spend the evening with you than go to the reception.
I feel I haven't seen half enough of you and now you're going back
day after tomorrow.  But Fred's brother, you know . . . we've just
got to go."

"Of course you have.  And I just ran up for a moment.  I came the
old way, Di . . . past the Dryad's Bubble . . . through the Haunted
Wood . . . past your bowery old garden . . . and along by Willowmere.
I even stopped to watch the willows upside down in the water as we
always used to do.  They've grown so."

"Everything has," said Diana with a sigh.  "When I look at young
Fred!  We've all changed so . . . except you.  You never change,
Anne.  How DO you keep so slim?  Look at me!"

"A bit matronish of course," laughed Anne.  "But you've escaped the
middle-aged spread so far, Di.  As for my not changing . . . well,
Mrs. H. B. Donnell agrees with you.  She told me at the funeral
that I didn't look a day older.  But Mrs. Harmon Andrews doesn't.
SHE said, 'Dear me, Anne, how you've failed!'  It's all in the
beholder's eye . . . or conscience.  The only time I feel I'm
getting along a bit is when I look at the pictures in the magazines.
The heroes and heroines in them are beginning to look TOO YOUNG to
me.  But never mind, Di . . . we're going to be girls again
tomorrow.  That's what I've come up to tell you.  We're going to
take an afternoon and evening off and visit all our old haunts . . .
every one of them.  We'll walk over the spring fields and through
those ferny old woods.  We'll see all the old familiar things we
loved and hills where we'll find our youth again. Nothing ever seems
impossible in spring, you know.  We'll stop feeling parental and
responsible and be as giddy as Mrs. Lynde really thinks me still in
her heart of hearts.  There's really no fun in being sensible ALL
the time, Diana."

"My, how like you that sounds!  And I'd love to.  But . . ."

"There aren't any buts.  I know you're thinking, 'Who'll get the
men's supper?'"

"Not exactly.  Anne Cordelia can get the men's supper as well as I
can, if she is only eleven," said Diana proudly.  "She was going
to, anyway.  I was going to the Ladies' Aid.  But I won't.  I'll go
with you.  It will be like having a dream come true.  You know,
Anne, lots of evenings I sit down and just pretend we're little
girls again.  I'll take our supper with us . . ."

"And we'll eat it back in Hester Gray's garden . . . I suppose
Hester Gray's garden is still there?"

"I suppose so," said Diana doubtfully.  "I've never been there
since I was married.  Anne Cordelia explores a lot . . . but I
always tell her she mustn't go too far from home.  She loves
prowling about the woods . . . and one day when I scolded her for
talking to herself in the garden she said she wasn't talking to
herself . . . she was talking to the spirit of the flowers.  You
know that dolls' tea-set with the tiny pink rosebuds you sent her
for her ninth birthday.  There isn't a piece broken . . . she's so
careful.  She only uses it when the Three Green People come to tea
with her.  I can't get out of her who she thinks THEY are.  I
declare in some ways, Anne, she's far more like you than she is
like me."

"Perhaps there's more in a name than Shakespeare allowed.  Don't
grudge Anne Cordelia her fancies, Diana.  I'm always sorry for
children who don't spend a few years in fairyland."

"Olivia Sloane is our teacher now," said Diana doubtfully.  "She's
a B.A., you know, and just took the school for a year to be near
her mother.  SHE says children should be made to face realities."

"Have I lived to hear YOU taking up with Sloanishness, Diana
Wright?"

"No . . . no . . . NO!  I don't like her a bit . . .  She has such
round staring blue eyes like all that clan.  And I don't mind Anne
Cordelia's fancies.  They're pretty . . . just like yours used to
be.  I guess she'll get enough 'reality' as life goes on."

"Well, it's settled then.  Come down to Green Gables about two and
we'll have a drink of Marilla's red currant wine . . . she makes it
now and then in spite of the minister and Mrs. Lynde . . . just to
make us feel real devilish."

"Do you remember the day you set me drunk on it?" giggled Diana,
who did not mind "devilish" as she would if anybody but Anne used
it.  Everybody knew Anne didn't really mean things like that.  It
was just her way.

"We'll have a real do-you-remember day tomorrow, Diana.  I won't
keep you any longer . . . there's Fred coming with the buggy.  Your
dress is lovely."

"Fred made me get a new one for the wedding.  I didn't feel we
could afford it since we built the new barn, but he said he wasn't
going to have HIS wife looking like someone that was sent for and
couldn't go when everybody else would be dressed within an inch of
her life.  Wasn't that just like a man?"

"Oh, you sound just like Mrs. Elliott at the Glen," said Anne
severely.  "You want to watch that tendency.  Would you like to
live in a world where there were no men?"

"It would be horrible," admitted Diana.  "Yes, yes, Fred, I'm
coming.  Oh, ALL right!  Till tomorrow then, Anne."

Anne paused by the Dryad's Bubble on her way back.  She loved that
old brook so.  Every trill of her childhood's laughter that it had
ever caught, it had held and now seemed to give out again to her
listening ears.  Her old dreams . . . she could see them reflected
in the clear Bubble . . . old vows . . . old whispers . . . the
brook kept them all and murmured of them . . . but there was no one
to listen save the wise old spruces in the Haunted Wood that had
been listening so long.



2


"Such a lovely day . . . made for us," said Diana.  "I'm afraid
it's a pet day, though . . . there'll be rain tomorrow."

"Never mind.  We'll drink its beauty today, even if its sunshine is
gone tomorrow.  We'll enjoy each other's friendship today even if
we are to be parted tomorrow.  Look at those long, golden-green
hills . . . those mist-blue valleys.  They're OURS, Diana . . . I
don't care if that furthest hill is registered in Abner Sloan's
name . . . it's OURS today.  There's a west wind blowing . . . I
always feel adventurous when a west wind blows . . . and we're
going to have a perfect ramble."

They had.  All the old dear spots were revisited:  Lover's Lane,
the Haunted Wood, Idlewild, Violet Vale, the Birch Path, Crystal
Lake.  There were some changes.  The little ring of birch saplings
in Idlewild, where they had had a playhouse long ago, had grown
into big trees; the Birch Path, long untrodden, was matted with
bracken; the Crystal Lake had entirely disappeared, leaving only a
damp mossy hollow.  But Violet Vale was purple with violets and the
seedling apple tree Gilbert had once found far back in the woods
was a huge tree peppered over with tiny, crimson-tipped blossom-
buds.

They walked bareheaded.  Annie's hair still gleamed like polished
mahogany in the sunlight and Diana's was still glossy black.  They
exchanged gay and understanding, warm and friendly, glances.
Sometimes they walked in silence . . . Anne always maintained that
two people as sympathetic as she and Diana could FEEL each other's
thoughts.  Sometimes they peppered their conversation with do-you-
remembers.  "Do you remember the day you fell through the Cobb
duckhouse on the Tory Road?" . . . "Do you remember when we jumped
on Aunt Josephine?" . . . "Do you remember our Story Club?" . . .
"Do you remember Mrs. Morgan's visit when you stained your nose
red?" . . . "Do you remember how we signalled to each other from
our windows with candles?" . . . "Do you remember the fun we had at
Miss Lavender's wedding and Charlotta's blue bows?" . . . "Do you
remember the Improvement Society?"  It almost seemed to them they
could hear their old peals of laughter echoing down the years.

The A. V. I. S. was, it seemed, dead.  It had petered out soon
after Anne's marriage.

"They just couldn't keep it up, Anne.  The young people in Avonlea
now are not what they were in OUR day."

"Don't talk as if 'our day' were ended, Diana.  We're only fifteen
years old and kindred spirits.  The air isn't just full of light
. . . it IS light.  I'm not sure that I haven't sprouted wings."

"I feel just that way, too," said Diana, forgetting that she had
tipped the scale at one hundred and fifty-five that morning.  "I
often feel that I'd love to be turned into a bird for a little
while.  It must be wonderful to fly."

Beauty was all around them.  Unsuspected tintings glimmered in the
dark demesnes of the woods and glowed in their alluring by-ways.
The spring sunshine sifted through the young green leaves.  Gay
trills of song were everywhere.  There were little hollows where
you felt as if you were bathing in a pool of liquid gold.  At every
turn some fresh spring scent struck their faces . . . spice ferns
. . . fir balsam . . . the wholesome odour of newly ploughed fields.
There was a lane curtained with wild-cherry blossoms . . . a grassy
old field full of tiny spruce trees just starting in life and
looking like elvish things that had squatted down among the grasses
. . . brooks not yet "too broad for leaping" . . . star-flowers
under the firs . . . sheets of curly young ferns . . . and a birch
tree whence some vandal had torn away the white-skin wrapper in
several places, exposing the tints of the bark below.  Anne looked
at it so long that Diana wondered.  She did not see what Anne did
. . . tints ranging from purest creamy white, through exquisite
golden tones, growing deeper and deeper until the inmost layer
revealed the deepest richest brown as if to tell that all birches,
so maiden-like and cool exteriorly, had yet warm-hued feelings.

"The primeval fire of earth at their hearts," murmured Anne.

And finally, after traversing a little wood glen full of toadstools,
they found Hester Gray's garden.  Not so much changed. It was still
very sweet with dear flowers.  There were still plenty of June
lilies, as Diana called the narcissi.  The row of cherry trees had
grown older but was a drift of snowy bloom.  You could still find
the central rose walk, and the old dyke was white with strawberry
blossoms and blue with violets and green with baby fern.  They ate
their picnic supper in a corner of it, sitting on some old mossy
stones, with a lilac tree behind them flinging purple banners
against a low-hanging sun.  Both were hungry and both did justice
to their own good cooking.

"How nice things taste out of doors!" sighed Diana comfortably.
"That chocolate cake of yours, Anne . . . well, words fail me, but
I must get the recipe.  Fred would adore it.  HE can eat anything
and stay thin.  I'm always saying I'm NOT going to eat any more
cake . . . because I'm getting fatter every year.  I've such a
horror of getting like great-aunt Sarah . . . she was so fat she
always had to be pulled up when she had sat down.  But when I see a
cake like that . . . and last night at the reception . . . well,
they would all have been so offended if I didn't eat."

"Did you have a nice time?"

"Oh, yes, in a way.  But I fell into Fred's Cousin Henrietta's
clutches . . . and it's SUCH a delight to her to tell all about her
operations and her sensations while going through them and how soon
her appendix would have burst if she hadn't had it out.  'I had
fifteen stitches put in it.  Oh, Diana, the agony I suffered!'  Well,
she enjoyed it if I didn't.  And she HAS suffered, so why shouldn't
she have the fun of talking about it now?  Jim was so funny . . . I
don't know if Mary Alice liked it altogether. . . . Well, just one
teeny piece . . . may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, I
suppose . . . a mere sliver can't make much difference. . . .  One
thing he said . . . that the very night before the wedding he was so
scared he felt he'd have to take the boat-train.  He said all grooms
felt just the same if they'd be honest about it.  You don't suppose
Gilbert and Fred felt like that, do you, Anne?"

"I'm sure they didn't."

"That's what Fred said when I asked him.  He said all he was scared
of was that I'd change my mind at the last moment like Rose
Spencer.  But you can never really tell what a man may be thinking.
Well, there's no use worrying over it now.  What a lovely time
we've had this afternoon!  We seem to have lived so many old
happinesses over.  I wish you didn't have to go tomorrow, Anne."

"Can't you come down for a visit to Ingleside sometime this summer,
Diana?  Before . . . well, before I'll not be wanting visitors for
a while."

"I'd love to.  But it seems impossible to get away from home in the
summer.  There's always so much to do."

"Rebecca Dew is coming at long last, of which I'm glad . . . and
I'm afraid Aunt Mary Maria is, too.  She hinted as much to Gilbert.
He doesn't want her any more than I do . . . but she is 'a
relation' and so his latchstring must be always out for her."

"Perhaps I'll get down in the winter.  I'd love to see Ingleside
again.  You have a lovely home, Anne . . . and a lovely family."

"Ingleside IS nice . . . and I do love it now.  I once thought I
would never love it.  I hated it when we went there first . . .
hated it for its very virtues.  They were an insult to my dear
House of Dreams.  I remember saying piteously to Gilbert when we
left it, 'We've been so happy here.  We'll never be so happy
anywhere else.'  I revelled in a luxury of homesickness for a
while.  Then . . . I found little rootlets of affection for
Ingleside beginning to sprout out.  I fought against it . . . I
really did . . . but at last I had to give in and admit I loved it.
And I've loved it better every year since.  It isn't too old a
house . . . too old houses are sad.  And it isn't too young . . .
too young houses are crude.  It's just mellow.  I love every room
in it.  Every one has some fault but also some virtue . . .
something that distinguishes it from all the others . . . gives it
a personality.  I love all those magnificent trees on the lawn.  I
don't know who planted them but every time I go upstairs I stop on
the landing . . . you know that quaint window on the landing with
the broad deep seat . . . and sit there looking out for a moment
and say, 'God bless the man who planted those trees whoever he
was.'  We've really too many trees about the house but we wouldn't
give up one."

"That's just like Fred.  He worships that big willow south of the
house.  It spoils the view from the parlour windows, as I've told
him again and again, but he only says, 'Would you cut a lovely
thing like that down even if it does shut out the view?'  So the
willow stays . . . and it IS lovely.  That's why we've called our
place Lone Willow Farm.  I love the name Ingleside.  It's such a
nice, homey name."

"That's what Gilbert said.  We had quite a time deciding on a name.
We tried out several but they didn't seem to BELONG.  But when we
thought of Ingleside we knew it was the right one.  I'm glad we
have a nice big roomy house . . . we need it with our family.  The
children love it, too, small as they are."

"They're such darlings."  Diana slyly cut herself another "sliver"
of the chocolate cake.  "I think my own are pretty nice . . . but
there's really something about yours . . . and your twins!  THAT I
do envy you.  I've always wanted twins."

"Oh, I couldn't get away from twins . . . they're my destiny.  But
I'm disappointed mine don't look alike . . . not one bit alike.
Nan's pretty, though, with her brown hair and eyes and her lovely
complexion.  Di is her father's favourite, because she has green
eyes and red hair . . . red hair with a swirl to it.  Shirley is
the apple of Susan's eye . . . I was ill so long after he was born
and she looked after him till I really believe she thinks he is
her own.  She calls him her 'little brown boy' and spoils him
shamefully."

"And he's still so small you can creep in to find if he has kicked
off the clothes and tuck him in again," said Diana enviously.
"Jack's nine, you know, and he doesn't want me to do that now.  He
says he's too big.  And I loved so to do it!  Oh, I wish children
didn't grow up so soon."

"None of mine have got to that stage yet . . . though I've noticed
that since Jem began to go to school he doesn't want to hold my
hand any more when we walk through the village," said Anne with a
sigh.  "But he and Walter and Shirley all want me to tuck them in
yet.  Walter sometimes makes quite a ritual of it."

"And you don't have to worry yet over what they're going to be.
Now, Jack is crazy to be a soldier when he grows up . . . a
soldier!  Just fancy!"

"I wouldn't worry over that.  He'll forget about it when another
fancy seizes him.  War is a thing of the past.  Jem imagines he is
going to be a sailor . . . like Captain Jim . . . and Walter is by
way of being a poet.  He isn't like any of the others.  But they
all love trees and they all love playing in 'the Hollow,' as it's
called--a little valley just below Ingleside with fairy paths and a
brook.  A very ordinary place . . . just 'the Hollow' to others but
to them fairyland.  They've all got their faults . . . but they're
not such a bad little gang . . . and luckily there's always enough
love to go round.  Oh, I'm glad to think that this time tomorrow
night I'll be back at Ingleside, telling my babies stories at
bedtime and giving Susan's calceolarias and ferns their meed of
praise.  Susan has 'luck' with ferns.  No one can grow them like
her.  I can praise her ferns honestly . . . but the calceolarias,
Diana!  They don't look like flowers to me at all.  But I never
hurt Susan's feeling by telling her so.  I always get around it
somehow.  Providence has never failed yet.  Susan is such a duck
. . . I can't imagine what I'd do without her.  And I remember once
calling her 'an outsider.'  Yes, it's lovely to think of going home
and yet I'm sad to leave Green Gables, too.  It's so beautiful here
. . . with Marilla . . . and YOU.  Our friendship has always been a
very lovely thing, Diana."

"Yes . . . and we've always . . . I mean . . . I never could say
things like you, Anne . . . but we HAVE kept our old 'solemn vow
and promise,' haven't we?"

"Always . . . and always will."

Anne's hand found its way into Diana's.  They sat for a long time
in a silence too sweet for words.  Long, still evening shadows fell
over the grasses and the flowers and the green reaches of the
meadows beyond.  The sun went down . . . grey-pink shades of sky
deepened and paled behind the pensive trees . . . the spring
twilight took possession of Hester Gray's garden where nobody ever
walked now.  Robins were sprinkling the evening air with flute-like
whistles.  A great star came out over the white cherry trees.

"The first star is always a miracle," said Anne dreamily.

"I could sit here forever," said Diana.  "I hate the thought of
leaving it."

"So do I . . . but after all we've only been pretending to be
fifteen.  We've got to remember our family cares.  How those lilacs
smell!  Has it ever occurred to you, Diana, that there is something
not quite . . . chaste . . . in the scent of lilac blossoms?
Gilbert laughs at such a notion . . . he loves them . . . but to me
they always seem to be remembering some secret, TOO-sweet thing."

"They're too heavy for the house, I always think," said Diana.  She
picked up the plate which held the remainder of the chocolate cake
. . . looked at it longingly . . . shook her head and packed it in
the basket with an expression of great nobility and self-denial on
her face.

"Wouldn't it be fun, Diana, if now, as we went home, we were to
meet our old selves running along Lover's Lane?"

Diana gave a little shiver.

"No-o-o, I don't think that would be funny, Anne.  I hadn't noticed
it was getting so dark.  It's all right to fancy things in
daylight, but . . ."

They went quietly, silently, lovingly home together, with the
sunset glory burning on the old hills behind them and their old
unforgotten love burning in their hearts.



3


Anne ended a week that had been full of pleasant days by taking
flowers to Matthew's grave the next morning and in the afternoon
she took the train from Carmody home.  For a time she thought of
all the old loved things behind her and then her thoughts ran ahead
of her to the loved things before her.  Her heart sang all the way
because she was going home to a joyous house . . . a house where
every one who crossed its threshold knew it was a HOME . . . a
house that was filled all the time with laughter and silver mugs
and snapshots and babies . . . precious things with curls and
chubby knees . . . and rooms that would welcome her . . . where the
chairs waited patiently and the dresses in her closet were
expecting her . . . where little anniversaries were always being
celebrated and little secrets were always being whispered.

"It's lovely to feel you like going home," thought Anne, fishing
out of her purse a certain letter from a small son over which she
had laughed gaily the night before, reading it proudly to the Green
Gables folks . . . the first letter she had ever received from any
of her children.  It was quite a nice little letter for a seven-
year-old who had been going to school only a year to write, even
though Jem's spelling was a bit uncertain and there was a big blob
of ink in one corner.

"Di cryed and cryed all night because Tommy Drew told her he was
going to burn her doll at the steak.  Susan tells us nice tails at
night but she isn't you, mummy.  She let me help her sow the beats
last night."

"HOW could I have been happy for a whole week away from them all?"
thought the chatelaine of Ingleside self-reproachfully.

"How nice to have someone meet you at the end of a journey!" she
cried, as she stepped off the train at Glen St. Mary into Gilbert's
waiting arms.  She could never be sure Gilbert would meet her . . .
somebody was always dying or being born . . . but no homecoming
ever seemed just right to Anne unless he did.  And he had on such a
nice new light-grey suit!  (How glad I am I put on this frilly
eggshell blouse with my brown suit, even if Mrs. Lynde thought I
was crazy to wear it travelling.  If I hadn't I wouldn't have
looked so nice for Gilbert.)

Ingleside was all lighted up, with gay Japanese lanterns hanging on
the veranda.  Anne ran gaily along the walk bordered by daffodils.

"Ingleside, I'm here!" she called.

They were all around her . . . laughing, exclaiming, jesting . . .
with Susan Baker smiling properly in the background.  Everyone of
the children had a bouquet picked specially for her, even the two-
year-old Shirley.

"Oh, this IS a nice welcome home!  Everything about Ingleside looks
so happy.  It's splendid to think my family are so glad to see me."

"If you ever go away from home again, Mummy," said Jem solemnly,
"I'll go and take appensitis."

"How do you go about taking it?" asked Walter.

"S-s-sh!"  Jem nudged Walter secretly and whispered, "There's a
pain somewhere, I know . . . but I just want to scare Mummy so she
WON'T go away."

Anne wanted to do a hundred things first . . . hug everybody . . .
run out in the twilight and gather some of her pansies . . . you
found pansies everywhere at Ingleside . . . pick up the little
well-worn doll lying on the rug . . . hear all the juicy tidbits of
gossip and news, everyone contributing something.  How Nan had got
the top off a tube of vaseline up her nose when the doctor was out
on a case and Susan had all but gone distracted . . . "I assure you
it was an anxious time, Mrs. Dr. dear" . . . how Mrs. Jud Palmer's
cow had eaten fifty-seven wire nails and had to have a vet from
Charlottetown . . . how absent-minded Mrs. Fenner Douglas had gone
to church BARE-HEADED . . . how Dad had dug all the dandelions out
of the lawn . . . "between babies, Mrs. Dr. dear . . . he's had
eight while you were away" . . . how Mr. Tom Flagg had dyed his
moustache . . . "and his wife only dead two years" . . . how Rose
Maxwell of the Harbour Head had jilted Jim Hudson of the Upper Glen
and he had sent her a bill for all he had spent on her . . . what a
splendid turn-out there had been at Mrs. Amasa Warren's funeral
. . . how Carter Flagg's cat had had a piece bitten right out of
the root of its tail . . . how Shirley had been found in a stable
standing right under one of the horses . . . "Mrs. Dr. dear, never
shall I be the same woman again" . . . how there was sadly too much
reason to fear that the blue plum trees were developing black knot
. . . how Di had gone about the whole day singing, "Mummy's coming
home today, home today, home today" to the tune of "Merrily We Roll
Along" . . . how the Joe Reeses had a kitten that was cross-eyed
because it had been born with its eyes open . . . how Jem had
inadvertently sat on some fly-paper before he had put his little
trousers on . . . and how the Shrimp had fallen into the soft-water
puncheon.

"He was nearly drowned, Mrs. Dr. dear, but luckily the doctor heard
his howls in the nick of time and pulled him out by his hind-legs."
(What is the nick of time, Mummy?)

"He seems to have recovered nicely from it," said Anne, stroking
the glossy black-and-white curves of a contented pussy with huge
jowls, purring on a chair in the firelight.  It was never quite
safe to sit down on a chair at Ingleside without first making sure
there wasn't a cat in it.  Susan, who had not cared much for cats
to begin with, vowed she had to learn to like them in self-defense.
As for the Shrimp, Gilbert had called him that a year ago when Nan
had brought the miserable, scrawny kitten home from the village
where some boys had been torturing it, and the name clung, though
it was very inappropriate now.

"But . . . Susan!  What has become of Gog and Magog?  Oh . . . they
haven't been broken, have they?"

"No, no, Mrs. Dr. dear," exclaimed Susan, turning a deep brick-red
from shame and dashing out of the room.  She returned shortly with
the two china dogs which always presided at the hearth of Ingleside.
"I do not see how I could have forgotten to put them back before you
came.  You see, Mrs. Dr. dear, Mrs. Charles Day from Charlottetown
called here the day after you left . . . and you know how very
precise and proper she is.  Walter thought he ought to entertain her
and he started in by pointing out the dogs to her. 'This one is God
and this is My God,' he said, poor innocent child.  I was horrified
. . . though I thought that die I would to see Mrs. Day's face.  I
explained as best I could, for I did not want her to think us a
profane family, but I decided I would just put the dogs away in the
china closet, out of sight, till you got back."

"Mummy, can't we have supper soon?" said Jem pathetically.  "I've
got a gnawful feeling in the pit of my stomach.  And oh, Mummy,
we've made everybody's favourite dish!"

"We, as the flea said to the elephant, have done that very thing,"
said Susan with a grin.  "We thought that your return should be
suitably celebrated, Mrs. Dr. dear.  And now where is Walter?  It
is his week to ring the gong for meals, bless his heart."

Supper was a gala meal . . . and putting all the babies to bed
afterwards was a delight.  Susan even allowed her to put Shirley to
bed, seeing what a very special occasion it was.

"This is no common day, Mrs. Dr. dear," she said solemnly.

"Oh, Susan, there is no such thing as a common day.  EVERY day has
something about it no other day has.  Haven't you noticed?"

"How true that is, Mrs. Dr. dear.  Even last Friday now, when it
rained all day, and was so dull, my big pink geranium showed buds
at last after refusing to bloom for three long years.  And have you
noticed the calceolarias, Mrs. Dr. dear?"

"Noticed them!  I never saw such calceolarias in my life, Susan.
How DO you manage it?"  (There, I've made Susan happy and haven't
told a fib.  I never did see such calceolarias . . . thank heaven!)

"It is the result of constant care and attention, Mrs. Dr. dear.
But there is something I think I ought to speak of.  I think Walter
SUSPECTS SOMETHING.  No doubt some of the Glen children have said
things to him.  So many children nowadays know so much more than is
fitting.  Walter said to me the other day, very thoughtful-like,
'Susan,' he said, 'are babies VERY expensive?'  I was a bit
dumfounded, Mrs. Dr. dear, but I kept my head.  'Some folks think
they are luxuries,' I said, 'but at Ingleside we think they are
necessities.'  And I reproached myself with having complained aloud
about the shameful price of things in all the Glen stores.  I am
afraid it worried the child.  But if he says anything to you, Mrs.
Dr. dear, you will be prepared."

"I'm sure you handled the situation beautifully, Susan," said Anne
gravely.  "And I think it is time they all knew what we are hoping
for."

But the best of all was when Gilbert came to her, as she stood at
her window, watching a fog creeping in from the sea, over the
moonlit dunes and the harbour, right into the long narrow valley
upon which Ingleside looked down and in which nestled the village
of Glen St. Mary.

"To come back at the end of a hard day and find you!  Are you
happy, Annest of Annes?"

"Happy!"  Anne bent to sniff a vaseful of apple blossoms Jem had
set on her dressing-table.  She felt surrounded and encompassed by
love.  "Gilbert dear, it's been lovely to be Anne of Green Gables
again for a week, but it's a hundred times lovelier to come back
and be Anne of Ingleside."



4


"Absolutely not," said Dr. Blythe, in a tone Jem understood.

Jem knew there was no hope of Dad's changing his mind or that
Mother would try to change it for him.  It was plain to be seen
that on this point Mother and Dad were as one.  Jem's hazel eyes
darkened with anger and disappointment as he looked at his cruel
parents . . . GLARED at them . . . all the more glaringly that they
were so maddeningly indifferent to his glares and went on eating
their supper as if nothing at all were wrong and out of joint.  Of
course Aunt Mary Maria noticed his glares . . . nothing ever
escaped Aunt Mary Maria's mournful, pale-blue eyes . . . but she
only seemed amused at them.

Bertie Shakespeare Drew had been up playing with Jem all the
afternoon . . . Walter having gone down to the old House of Dreams
to play with Kenneth and Persis Ford . . . and Bertie Shakespeare
had told Jem that all the Glen boys were going down to the Harbour
Mouth that evening to see Captain Bill Taylor tatoo a snake on his
cousin Joe Drew's arm.  He, Bertie Shakespeare, was going and
wouldn't Jem come too?  It would be such fun.  Jem was at once
crazy to go; and now he had been told that it was utterly out of
the question.

"For one reason among many," said Dad, "it's much too far for you
to go down to the Harbour Mouth with those boys.  They won't get
back till late and your bedtime is supposed to be at eight, son."

"_I_ was sent to bed at seven every night of my life when I was a
child," said Aunt Mary Maria.

"You must wait till you are older, Jem, before you go so far away
in the evenings," said Mother.

"You said that last week," cried Jem indignantly, "and I AM older
now.  You'd think I was a baby!  Bertie's going and I'm just as old
as him."

"There's measles around," said Aunt Mary Maria darkly.  "You might
catch measles, James."

Jem hated to be called James.  And she always did it.

"I WANT to catch measles," he muttered rebelliously.  Then,
catching Dad's eye instead, subsided.  Dad would never let anyone
"talk back" to Aunt Mary Maria.  Jem hated Aunt Mary Maria.  Aunt
Diana and Aunt Marilla were such ducks of aunts but an aunt like
Aunt Mary Maria was something wholly new in Jem's experience.

"All right," he said defiantly, looking at Mother so that nobody
could suppose he was talking to Aunt Mary Maria, "if you don't WANT
to love me you don't HAVE to.  But will you like it if I just go
away 'n' shoot tigers in Africa?"

"There are no tigers in Africa, dear," said Mother gently.

"Lions, then!" shouted Jem.  They were determined to put him in the
wrong, were they?  They were bound to laugh at him, were they?
He'd show them!  "You can't say there's no lions in Africa.
There's MILLIONS of lions in Africa.  Africa's just FULL of lions!"

Mother and Father only smiled again, much to Aunt Mary Maria's
disapproval.  Impatience in children should never be condoned.

"Meanwhile," said Susan, torn between her love for and sympathy
with Little Jem and her conviction that Dr. and Mrs. Dr. were
perfectly right in refusing to let him go away down to the Harbour
Mouth with that village gang to that disreputable, drunken old
Captain Bill Taylor's place, "here is your gingerbread and whipped
cream, Jem dear."

Gingerbread and whipped cream was Jem's favourite dessert.  But
tonight it had no charm to soothe his stormy soul.

"I don't want any!" he said sulkily.  He got up and marched away
from the table, turning at the door to hurl a final defiance.

"I ain't going to bed till nine o'clock, anyhow.  And when I'm
grown up I'm NEVER going to bed.  I'm going to stay up all night
. . . every night . . . and get tattooed ALL OVER.  I'm just going
to be as bad as bad can be.  You'll see."

"'I'm not' would be so much better than 'ain't,' dear," said
Mother.

Could NOTHING make them feel?

"I suppose nobody wants MY opinion, Annie, but if I had talked to
my parents like that when I was a child I would have been whipped
within an inch of my life," said Aunt Mary Maria.  "I think it is
a great pity the birch rod is so neglected now in some homes."

"Little Jem is not to blame," snapped Susan, seeing that Dr. and
Mrs. Dr. were not going to say anything.  But if Mary Maria Blythe
was going to get away with that, she, Susan would know the reason
why.  "Bertie Shakespeare Drew put him up to it, filling him up
with what fun it would be to see Joe Drew tatooed.  He was here all
the afternoon and sneaked into the kitchen and took the best
aluminum saucepan to use as a helmet.  Said they were playing
soldiers.  Then they made boats out of shingles and got soaked to
the bone sailing them in the Hollow brook.  And after that they
went hopping about the yard for a solid hour, making the weirdest
noises, pretending they were frogs.  Frogs!  No wonder Little Jem
is tired out and not himself.  He is the best-behaved child that
ever lived when he is not worn to a frazzle, and that you may tie
to."

Aunt Mary Maria said nothing aggravatingly.  She never talked to
Susan Baker at meal-times, thus expressing her disapproval over
Susan being allowed to "sit with the family" at all.

Anne and Susan had thrashed that out before Aunt Mary Maria had
come.  Susan, who "knew her place," never sat or expected to sit
with the family when there was company at Ingleside.

"But Aunt Mary Maria isn't company," said Anne.  "She's just one of
the family . . . and so are you, Susan."

In the end Susan gave in, not without a secret satisfaction that
Mary Maria Blythe would see that she was no common hired girl.
Susan had never met Aunt Mary Maria, but a niece of Susan's, the
daughter of her sister Matilda, had worked for her in Charlottetown
and had told Susan all about her.

"I am not going to pretend to you, Susan, that I'm overjoyed at the
prospect of a visit from Aunt Mary Maria, especially just now,"
said Anne frankly.  "But she has written Gilbert asking if she may
come for a few weeks . . . and you know how the doctor is about
such things. . . ."

"As he has a perfect right to be," said Susan staunchly.  "What is
a man to do but stand by his own flesh and blood?  But as for a few
weeks . . . well, Mrs. Dr. dear, I do not want to look on the dark
side of things . . . but my sister Matilda's sister-in-law came to
visit HER for a few weeks and stayed for twenty years."

"I don't think we need dread anything like that, Susan," smiled
Anne.  "Aunt Mary Maria has a very nice home of her own in
Charlottetown.  But she is finding it very big and lonely.  Her
mother died two years ago, you know . . . she was eighty-five and
Aunt Mary Maria was very good to her and misses her very much.
Let's make her visit as pleasant as we can, Susan."

"I will do what in me lies, Mrs. Dr. dear.  Of course we must put
another board in the table, but after all is said and done it is
better to be lengthening the table than shortening it down."

"We mustn't have flowers on the table, Susan, because I understand
they give her asthma.  And pepper makes her sneeze, so we'd better
not have it.  She is subject to frequent bad headaches, too, so we
must really try not to be noisy."

"Good grief!  Well, I have never noticed you and the doctor making
much noise.  And if I want to yell I can go to the middle of the
maple bush; but if our poor children have to keep quiet ALL the
time because of Mary Maria Blythe's headaches . . . you will excuse
me for saying I think it is going a little too far, Mrs. Dr. dear."

"It's just for a few weeks, Susan."

"Let us hope so.  Oh, well, Mrs. Dr. dear, we just have to take the
lean streaks with the fat in this world," was Susan's final word.

So Aunt Mary Maria came, demanding immediately upon her arrival if
they had had the chimneys cleaned recently.  She had, it appeared,
a great dread of fire.  "And I've always said that the chimneys of
this house aren't nearly tall enough.  I hope my bed has been well
aired, Annie.  Damp bed linen is terrible."

She took possession of the Ingleside guest-room . . . and
incidentally of all the other rooms in the house except Susan's.
Nobody hailed her arrival with frantic delight.  Jem, after one
look at her, slipped out to the kitchen and whispered to Susan,
"Can we laugh while she's here, Susan?"  Walter's eyes brimmed with
tears at sight of her and he had to be hustled ignominiously out of
the room.  The twins did not wait to be hustled but ran of their
own accord.  Even the Shrimp, Susan averred went and had a fit in
the back yard.  Only Shirley stood his ground, gazing fearlessly at
her out of his round brown eyes from the safe anchorage of Susan's
lap and arm.  Aunt Mary Maria thought the Ingleside children had
very bad manners.  But what could you expect when they had a mother
who "wrote for the papers" and a father who thought they were
perfection just because they were HIS children, and a hired girl
like Susan Baker who never knew her place?  But she, Mary Maria
Blythe, would do her best for poor Cousin John's grandchildren as
long as she was at Ingleside.

"Your grace is much too short, Gilbert," she said disapprovingly at
her first meal.  "Would you like me to say grace for you while I am
here?  It will be a better example to your family."

Much to Susan's horror Gilbert said he would and Aunt Mary Maria
said grace at supper.  "More like a prayer than a grace," Susan
sniffed over her dishes.  Susan privately agreed with her niece's
description of Mary Maria Blythe.  "She always seems to be smelling
a bad smell, Aunt Susan.  Not an unpleasant odour . . . just a bad
smell."  Gladys had a way of putting things, Susan reflected.  And
yet, to anyone less prejudiced than Susan Miss Mary Maria Blythe
was not ill-looking for a lady of fifty-five.  She had what she
believed were "aristocratic features," framed by always sleek grey
crimps which seemed to insult daily Susan's spiky little knob of
grey hair.  She dressed very nicely, wore long jet earrings in her
ears and fashionably high-boned net collars on her lean throat.

"At least, we do not need to be ashamed of her appearance,"
reflected Susan.  But what Aunt Mary Maria would have thought if
she had known Susan was consoling herself on such grounds must be
left to the imagination.



5


Anne was cutting a vaseful of June lilies for her room and another
of Susan's peonies for Gilbert's desk in the library . . . the
milky-white peonies with the blood-red flecks at their hearts, like
a god's kiss.  The air was coming alive after the unusually hot
June day and one could hardly tell whether the harbour were silver
or gold.

"There's going to be a wonderful sunset tonight, Susan," she said,
looking in at the kitchen window as she passed it.

"I cannot admire the sunset until I have got my dishes washed, Mrs.
Dr. dear," protested Susan.

"It will be gone by that time, Susan.  Look at that enormous white
cloud towering up over the Hollow, with its rosy-pink top.
Wouldn't you like to fly up and light on it?"

Susan had a vision of herself flying up over the glen, dishcloth in
hand, to that cloud.  It did not appeal to her.  But allowances
must be made for Mrs. Dr. just now.

"There's a new, vicious kind of bug eating the rose-bushes," went
on Anne.  "I must spray them tomorrow.  I'd like to do it tonight
. . . this is just the kind of evening I love to work in the garden.
Things are growing tonight.  I hope there'll be gardens in heaven,
Susan . . . gardens we can work in, I mean, and help things to
grow."

"But not bugs surely," protested Susan.

"No-o-o, I suppose not.  But a COMPLETED garden wouldn't really be
any fun, Susan.  You have to work in a garden yourself or you miss
its meaning.  I want to weed and dig and transplant and change and
plan and prune.  And I want the flowers I love in heaven . . . I'd
rather my own pansies than the asphodel, Susan."

"Why cannot you put in the evening as you want to?" broke in Susan,
who thought Mrs. Dr. was really going a little wild.

"Because the doctor wants me to go for a drive with him.  He is
going to see poor old Mrs. John Paxton.  She is dying . . . he
can't do her any good . . . he has done everything he can . . .
but she does like to have him drop in."

"Oh, well, Mrs. Dr. dear, we all know that nobody can die or be
born without him hereabouts and it is a nice evening for a drive.
I think I will take a walk down to the village myself and replenish
our pantry after I put the twins and Shirley to bed and manure Mrs.
Aaron Ward.  She isn't blooming as she ought to.  Miss Blythe has
just gone upstairs, sighing at every step, saying one of her
headaches is coming on, so there will be a little peace and quiet
for the evening at least."

"See that Jem goes to bed in good time, will you, Susan?" said Anne
as she went away through the evening that was like a cup of
fragrance that has spilled over.  "He's really much tireder than he
thinks he is.  And he never wants to go to bed.  Walter is not
coming home tonight, Leslie asked if he might stay there."

Jem was sitting on the steps of the side door, one bare foot hooked
over his knee, scowling viciously at things in general and at an
enormous moon behind the Glen church spire in particular.  Jem
didn't like such big moons.

"Take care your face doesn't freeze like that," Aunt Mary Maria had
said as she passed him on her way into the house.

Jem scowled more blackly than ever.  He didn't care if his face did
freeze like that.  He hoped it would.  "Go 'way and don't come
tagging after me all the time," he told Nan, who had crept out to
him after Father and Mother had driven away.

"Cross-patch!" said Nan.  But before she trotted off she laid down
on the step beside him the red candy lion she had brought out to
him.

Jem ignored it.  He felt more abused than ever.  He wasn't being
used right.  Everybody picked on him.  Hadn't Nan that very morning
said, "YOU weren't born at Ingleside like the rest of us."  Di had
et his chocolate rabbit that forenoon though she KNEW it was his
rabbit.  Even Walter had deserted him, going away to dig wells in
the sand with Ken and Persis Ford.  Great fun that!  And he wanted
so much to go with Bertie to see the tattooing.  Jem was sure he
had never wanted anything so much in his life before.  He wanted to
see the wonderful, full-rigged ship that Bertie said was always on
Captain Bill's mantelpiece.  It was a mean shame, that's what it
was.

Susan brought him out a big slice of cake covered with maple
frosting and nuts, but, "No, thank you," said Jem stonily.  Why
hadn't she saved some of the gingerbread and cream for him?  S'pose
the rest of them had et it all.  Pigs!  He plunged into a deeper
gulf of gloom.  The gang would be on their way to the Harbour Mouth
by now.  He just couldn't bear the thought.  He'd GOT to do
something to get square with folks.  S'posin' he sliced Di's
sawdust giraffe open on the living-room rug?  That would make old
Susan mad . . . Susan with her nuts, when she knew he hated nuts in
frosting.  S'posin' he went and drew a moustache on that picture of
the cherub on the calendar in her room?  He had always hated that
fat, pink, smiling cherub because it looked just like Sissy Flagg
who had told round school that Jem Blythe was her beau.  Hers!
Sissy Flagg!  But Susan thought that cherub lovely.

S'posin' he scalped Nan's doll?  S'posin' he whacked the nose off
Gog or Magog . . . or both of them?  Maybe that would make Mother
see he wasn't a baby any longer.  Just wait till next spring!  He
had brought her mayflowers for years and years and years . . . ever
since he was four . . . but he wouldn't do it next spring.  No,
sir!

S'posin' he et a lot of the little green apples on the early tree
and got nice and sick?  Maybe THAT would scare them.  S'posin' he
never washed behind his ears again?  S'posin' he made faces at
everybody in church next Sunday?  S'posin' he put a caterpillar on
Aunt Mary Maria . . . a big, striped, woolly caterpillar?  S'posin'
he ran away to the harbour and hid in Captain David Reese's ship
and sailed out of the harbour in the morning on his way to South
America?  Would they be sorry THEN?  S'posin' he never came back?
S'posin' he went hunting jaggers in Brazil?  Would they be sorry
THEN?  No, he bet they wouldn't.  Nobody loved him.  There was a
hole in his pants pocket.  Nobody had mended it.  Well, HE didn't
care.  He'd just show that hole to everybody in the Glen and let
people see how neglected he was.  His wrongs surged up and
overwhelmed him.

Tick-tack . . . tick-tack . . . tick-tack . . . went the old
grandfather clock in the hall that had been brought to Ingleside
after Grandfather Blythe's death . . . a deliberate old clock
dating from the days when there was such a thing as time.
Generally Jem loved it . . . now he hated it.  It seemed to be
laughing at him.  "Ha, ha, bedtime is coming.  The other fellows
can go to the Harbour Mouth but you go to bed.  Ha, ha . . . ha, ha
. . . ha, ha!"

WHY did he have to go to bed every night?  Yes, why?

Susan came out on her way to the Glen and looked tenderly at the
small, rebellious figure.

"You needn't go to bed till I get back, Little Jem," she said
indulgently.

"I ain't going to bed tonight!" said Jem fiercely.  "I'M going to
run away, that's what I'm going to do, old Susan Baker.  I'm going
to go and jump into the pond, old Susan Baker."

Susan did not enjoy being called old, even by Little Jem.  She
stalked away in a grim silence.  He DID need a bit of disciplining.
The Shrimp, who had followed her out, feeling a yearning for
companionship, squatted down on his black haunches before Jem, but
got only a glare for his pains.  "Clear out!  Sitting there on your
bottom, staring like Aunt Mary Maria!  Scat!  Oh, you won't, won't
you!  Then take that!"

Jem shied Shirley's little tin wheelbarrow that was lying handily
near, and the Shrimp fled with a plaintive yowl to the sanctuary of
the sweetbriar hedge.  Look at that!  Even the family cat hated
him!  What was the use of going on living?

He picked up the candy lion.  Nan had eaten the tail and most of
the hindquarters but it was still quite a lion.  Might as well eat
it.  It might be the last lion he'd ever eat.  By the time Jem had
finished the lion and licked his fingers he had made up his mind
what he was going to do.  It was the only thing a fellow COULD do
when a fellow wasn't allowed to do ANYTHING.



6


"Why in the world is the house lighted up like that?" exclaimed
Anne, when she and Gilbert turned in at the gate at eleven o'clock.
"Company must have come."

But there was no company visible when Anne hurried into the house.
Nor was anyone else visible.  There was a light in the kitchen . . .
in the living-room . . . in the library . . . in the dining-room
. . . in Susan's room and the upstairs hall . . . but no sign of an
occupant.

"What do you suppose," began Anne . . . but she was interrupted by
the ringing of the telephone.  Gilbert answered . . . listened for
a moment . . . uttered an ejaculation of horror . . . and tore out
without even a glance at Anne.  Evidently something dreadful had
happened and there was no time to be wasted in explanations.

Anne was used to this . . . as the wife of a man who waits on life
and death must be.  With a philosophical shrug she removed her hat
and coat.  She felt a trifle annoyed with Susan, who really
shouldn't have gone out and left all the lights blazing and all the
doors wide open.

"Mrs. . . . Dr. . . . dear," said a voice that could not possibly
be Susan's . . . but was.

Anne stared at Susan.  Such as Susan . . . hatless . . . her grey
hair full of bits of hay . . . her print dress shockingly stained
and discoloured.  And her face!

"Susan!  What has happened?  Susan!"

"Little Jem has disappeared."

"Disappeared!"  Anne stared stupidly.  "What do you mean?  He can't
have disappeared!"

"He has," gasped Susan, wringing her hands.  "He was on the side
steps when I went to the Glen.  I was back before dark . . . and he
was not there.  At first . . . I was not scared . . . but I could
not find him anywhere.  I have searched every room in the house
. . . he said he was going to run away . . ."

"Nonsense!  He wouldn't do that, Susan.  You have worked yourself
up unnecessarily.  He must be somewhere about . . . he has fallen
asleep . . . he MUST be somewhere around."

"I have looked everywhere . . . everywhere.  I have combed the
grounds and the outhouses.  Look at my dress . . . I remembered he
always said it would be such fun to sleep in the hay-loft.  So I
went there . . . and fell through that hole in the corner into one
of the mangers in the stable . . . and lit on a nest of eggs.  It
is a mercy I did not break a leg . . . if anything can be a mercy
when Little Jem is lost."

Annie still refused to feel perturbed.

"Do you think he could have gone to the Harbour Mouth with the
boys, after all, Susan?  He has never disobeyed a command before,
but . . ."

"No, he did not, Mrs. Dr. dear . . . the blessed lamb did not
disobey.  I rushed down to Drews' after I had searched everywhere
and Bertie Shakespeare had just got home.  He said Jem had not gone
with them.  The pit seemed to drop out of my stomach.  You had
trusted him to me and . . . I phoned Paxtons' and they said you had
been there and gone they did not know where."

"We drove to Lowbridge to call on the Parkers. . . ."

"I phoned everywhere I thought you could be.  Then I went back to
the village . . . the men have started out to search . . ."

"Oh, Susan, was that necessary?"

"Mrs. Dr. dear, I had looked everywhere . . . everywhere that child
could be.  Oh, what I have gone through this night!  And he SAID he
was going to jump into the pond. . . ."

In spite of herself a queer little shiver ran over Anne.  Of course
Jem wouldn't jump into the pond . . . that was nonsense . . . but
there was an old dory on it which Carter Flagg used for trouting
and Jem might, in his defiant mood of the earlier evening, have
tried to row about the pond in it . . . he had often wanted to . . .
he might even have fallen into the pond trying to untie the dory.
All at once her fear took terrible shape.

"And I haven't the slightest idea where Gilbert has gone," she
thought wildly.

"What's all this fuss about?" demanded Aunt Mary Maria, suddenly
appearing on the stairs, her head surrounded by a halo of crimpers
and her body encased in a dragon-embroidered dressing-gown.  "Can't
a body EVER get a quiet night's sleep in this house?"

"Little Jem has disappeared," said Susan again, too much in the
grip of terror to resent Miss Blythe's tone.  "His mother trusted
me . . ."

Anne had gone to search the house for herself.  Jem must be somewhere!
He was not in his room . . . the bed was undisturbed. . . .  He was
not in the twins' room . . . in hers. . . .  He was . . . he was
nowhere in the house.  Anne, after a pilgrimage from garret to
cellar, returned to the living-room in a condition that was suddenly
akin to panic.

"I don't want to make you nervous, Annie," said Aunt Mary Marie,
lowering her voice creepily, "but have you looked in the rainwater
hogshead?  Little Jack MacGregor was drowned in a rainwater
hogshead in town last year."

"I . . . I looked there," said Susan, with another wring of her
hands.  "I . . . I took a stick . . . and poked . . ."

Anne's heart, which had stood still at Aunt Mary Maria's question,
resumed operations.  Susan gathered herself together and stopped
wringing her hands.  She had remembered too late that Mrs. Dr. dear
should not be upset.

"Let us calm down and pull together," she said in a trembling
voice.  "As you say, Mrs. Dr. dear, he MUST be somewhere about.  He
CANNOT have dissolved into thin air."

"Have you looked in the coal-bin?  And the clock?" asked Aunt Mary
Maria.

Susan HAD looked in the coal-bin but nobody had thought of the
clock.  It WAS quite big enough for a small boy to hide in.  Anne,
not considering the absurdity of supposing that Jem would crouch
there for four hours, rushed to it.  But Jem was not in the clock.

"I had a FEELING something was going to happen when I went to bed
tonight," said Aunt Mary Maria, pressing both hands to her temples.
"When I read my nightly chapter in the Bible the words, 'Ye know
not what a day may bring forth,' seemed to stand out from the page
as it were.  It was a sign.  You'd better nerve yourself to bear
the worst, Annie.  He may have wandered into the marsh.  It's a
pity we haven't a few bloodhounds."

With a dreadful effort Anne managed a laugh.

"I'm afraid there aren't any on the Island, Aunty.  If we had
Gilbert's old setter Rex, who got poisoned, he would soon find Jem.
I feel sure we are all alarming ourselves for nothing . . ."

"Tommy Spencer in Carmody disappeared mysteriously forty years ago
and was never found . . . or was he?  Well, if he was, it was only
his skeleton.  This is no laughing matter, Annie.  I don't know how
you can take it so calmly."

The telephone rang.  Anne and Susan looked at each other.

"I can't . . . I CAN'T go to the phone, Susan," said Anne in a
whisper.

"I cannot either," said Susan flatly.  She was to hate herself all
her days for showing such weakness before Mary Maria Blythe, but
she could not help it.  Two hours of terrified searching and
distorted imaginations had made Susan a wreck.

Aunt Mary Maria stalked to the telephone and took down the
receiver, her crimpers making a horned silhouette on the wall
which, Susan reflected, in spite of her anguish, looked like the
old Nick himself.

"Carter Flagg says they have searched everywhere but found no sign
of him yet," reported Aunt Mary Maria coolly.  "But he says the
dory is out in the middle of the pond with no one in it as far as
they can ascertain.  They are going to drag the pond."

Susan caught Anne just in time.

"No . . . no . . . I'm not going to faint, Susan," said Anne
through white lips.  "Help me to a chair . . . thanks.  We MUST
find Gilbert . . ."

"If James is drowned, Annie, you must remind yourself that he has
been spared a lot of trouble in this wretched world," said Aunt
Mary Marie by way of administering further consolation.

"I'm going to get the lantern and search the grounds again," said
Anne, as soon as she could stand up.  "Yes, I know you did, Susan
. . . but let me . . . let me.  I CANNOT sit still and wait."

"You must put on a sweater then, Mrs. Dr. dear.  There is a heavy
dew and the air is damp.  I will get your red one . . . it is
hanging on a chair in the boys' room.  Wait you here till I bring
it."

Susan hurried upstairs.  A few moments later something that could
only be described as a shriek echoed through Ingleside.  Anne and 
Aunt Mary Maria rushed upstairs, where they found Susan laughing
and crying in the hall, nearer to hysterics than Susan Baker had
ever been in her life or ever would be again.

"Mrs. Dr. dear . . . he's there!  Little Jem is there . . . asleep
on the window-seat behind the door.  I never looked there . . . the
door hid it . . . and when he wasn't in his bed . . ."

Anne, weak with relief and joy, got herself into the room and
dropped on her knees by the window-seat.  In a little while she and
Susan would be laughing over their own foolishness, but now there
could be only tears of thankfulness.  Little Jem was sound asleep
on the window-seat, with an afghan pulled over him, his battered
Teddy Bear in his little sunburned hands, and a forgiving Shrimp
stretched across his legs.  His red curls fell over the cushion.
He seemed to be having a pleasant dream and Anne did not mean to
waken him.  But suddenly he opened his eyes that were like hazel
stars and looked at her.

"Jem, darling, why aren't you in your bed?  We've . . . we've been
a little alarmed . . . we couldn't find you . . . and we never
thought of looking here . . ."

"I wanted to lie here 'cause I could see you and Daddy drive in at
the gate when you got home.  It was so lonesome I just had to go to
bed."

Mother was lifting him in her arms . . . carrying him to his own
bed.  It was so nice to be kissed . . . to feel her tucking the
sheets about him with those caressing little pats that gave him
such a sense of being loved.  Who cared about seeing an old snake
tattooed, anyhow?  Mother was so nice . . . the nicest mother
anybody ever had.  Everybody in the Glen called Bertie Shakespeare's
mother "Mrs. Second Skimmings" because she was so mean, and he
knew . . . for he'd seen it . . . that she slapped Bertie's face
for every little thing.

"Mummy," he said sleepily, "of course I'll bring you mayflowers
next spring . . . every spring.  You can depend on me."

"Of course I can, darling," said Mother.

"Well, since everyone is over their fit of the fidgets, I suppose
we can draw a peaceful breath and go back to our beds," said Aunt
Mary Maria.  But there was some shrewish relief in her tone.

"It was very silly of me not to remember the window-seat," said
Anne.  "The joke is on us and the doctor will not let us forget it,
you may be certain.  Susan, please phone Mr. Flagg that we've found
Jem."

"And a nice laugh he will have on me," said Susan happily.  "Not
that I care . . . he can laugh all he likes since Little Jem is
safe."

"I could do with a cup of tea," sighed Aunt Mary Maria plaintively,
gathering her dragons about her spare form.

"I will get it in a jiffy," said Susan briskly.  "We will all feel
the sprightlier for one.  Mrs. Dr. dear, when Carter Flagg heard
Little Jem was safe he said, 'Thank God.'  I shall never say a word
against that man again, no matter what his prices are.  And don't
you think we might have a chicken dinner tomorrow, Mrs. Dr. dear?
Just by way of a little celebration, so to speak.  And Little Jem
shall have his favourite muffins for breakfast."

There was another telephone call . . . this time from Gilbert to
say that he was taking a badly burned baby from the Harbour Head to
the hospital in town and not to look for him till morning.

Anne bent from her window for a thankful goodnight look at the
world before going to bed.  A cool wind was blowing in from the
sea.  A sort of moonlit rapture was running through the trees in
the Hollow.  Anne could even laugh . . . with a quiver behind the
laughter . . . over their panic of an hour ago and Aunt Mary
Maria's absurd suggestions and ghoulish memories.  Her child was
safe . . . Gilbert was somewhere battling to save another child's
life. . . .  Dear God, help him and help the mother . . . help
all mothers everywhere.  We need so much help, with the little
sensitive, loving hearts and minds that look to us for guidance
and love and understanding.

The friendly enfolding night took possession of Ingleside, and
everybody, even Susan . . . who rather felt that she would like to
crawl into some nice quiet hole and pull it in after her . . . fell
on sleep under its sheltering roof.



7


"He'll have plenty of company . . . he won't be lonesome . . . our
four . . . and my niece and nephew from Montreal are visiting us.
What one doesn't think of the others do."

Big, sonsy, jolly Mrs. Dr. Parker smiled expansively at Walter . . .
who returned the smile somewhat aloofly.  He wasn't altogether
sure he liked Mrs. Parker in spite of her smiles and jollity.
There was too much of her, somehow.  Dr. Parker he did like.  As
for "our four" and the niece and nephew from Montreal, Walter had
never seen any of them.  Lowbridge, where the Parkers lived, was
six miles from the Glen and Walter had never been there, though Dr.
and Mrs. Parker and Dr. and Mrs. Blythe visited back and forth
frequently.  Dr. Parker and Dad were great friends, though Walter
had a feeling now and again that Mother could have got along very
well without Mrs. Parker.  Even at six, Walter, as Anne realized,
could see things that other children could not.

Walter was not sure, either, that he really wanted to go to
Lowbridge.  Some visits were splendid.  A trip to Avonlea now . . .
ah, there was fun for you!  And a night spent with Kenneth Ford at
the old House of Dreams was more fun still . . . though THAT
couldn't really be called visiting, for the House of Dreams always
seemed like a second home to the small fry of Ingleside.  But to
go to Lowbridge for two whole weeks, among strangers, was a very
different matter.  However, it seemed to be a settled thing.  For
some reason, which Walter felt but could not understand, Dad and
Mummy were pleased over the arrangement.  Did they want to get rid
of ALL their children, Walter wondered, rather sadly and uneasily.
Jem was away, having been taken to Avonlea two days ago, and he had
heard Susan making mysterious remarks about "sending the twins to
Mrs. Marshall Elliott when the time came."  What time?  Aunt Mary
Maria seemed very gloomy over something and had been known to say
that she "wished it was all well over."  What was it she wished
over?  Walter had no idea.  But there was something strange in the
air at Ingleside.

"I'll take him over tomorrow," said Gilbert.

"The youngsters will be looking forward to it," said Mrs. Parker.

"It's very kind of you, I'm sure," said Anne.

"It's all for the best, no doubt," Susan told the Shrimp darkly in
the kitchen.

"It is very obliging of Mrs. Parker to take Walter off our hands,
Annie," said Aunt Mary Maria, when the Parkers had gone.  "She told
me she had taken quite a fancy to him.  People DO take such odd
fancies, don't they?  Well, perhaps now for at least two weeks I'll
be able to go into the bathroom without tramping on a dead fish."

"A dead fish, Aunty!  You don't mean . . ."

"I mean exactly what I say, Annie.  I always do.  A dead fish!  Did
YOU ever step on a dead fish with your bare feet?"

"No-o . . . but how . . ."

"Walter caught a trout last night and put it in the bathtub to keep
it alive, Mrs. Dr. dear," said Susan airily.  "If it had stayed
there it would have been all right, but somehow it got out and died
in the night.  Of course, if people WILL go about on bare feet . . ."

"I make it a rule never to quarrel with anyone," said Aunt Mary
Maria, getting up and leaving the room.

"_I_ am determined she shall not vex ME, Mrs. Dr. dear," said
Susan.

"Oh, Susan, she IS getting on my nerves a bit . . . but of course I
won't mind so much when all this is over . . . and it MUST be nasty
to tramp on a dead fish . . ."

"Isn't a dead fish better than a live one, Mummy?  A dead fish
wouldn't squirm," said Di.

Since the truth must be told at all costs it must be admitted that
the mistress and maid of Ingleside both giggled.

So that was that.  But Anne wondered to Gilbert that night if
Walter would be quite happy at Lowbridge.

"He's so very sensitive and imaginative," she said wistfully.

"Too much so," said Gilbert, who was tired after having had, to
quote Susan, three babies that day.  "Why, Anne, I believe that
child is afraid to go upstairs in the dark.  It will do him worlds
of good to give and take with the Parker fry for a few days.  He'll
come home a different child."

Anne said nothing more.  No doubt Gilbert was quite right.  Walter
was lonesome without Jem; and in view of what had happened when
Shirley was born it would be just as well for Susan to have as
little on her hands as possible beyond running the house and
enduring Aunt Mary Maria . . . whose two weeks had already
stretched to four.

Walter was lying awake in his bed trying to escape from the
haunting thought that he was to go away next day by giving free
rein to fancy.  Walter had a very vivid imagination.  It was to him
a great white charger, like the one in the picture on the wall, on
which he could gallop backward or forward in time and space.  The
Night was coming down . . . Night, like a tall, dark, bat-winged
angel who lived in Mr. Andrew Taylor's woods on the south hill.
Sometimes Walter welcomed her . . . sometimes he pictured her so
vividly that he grew afraid of her.  Walter dramatized and
personified everything in his small world . . . the Wind who told
him stories at night . . . the Frost that nipped the flowers in the
garden . . . the Dew that fell so silverly and silently . . . the
Moon which he felt sure he could catch if he could only go to the
top of that faraway purple hill . . . the Mist that came in from
the sea . . . the great Sea itself that was always changing and
never changed . . . the dark, mysterious Tide.  They were all
entities to Walter.  Ingleside and the Hollow and the maple grove
and the Marsh and the harbour shore were full of elves and kelpies
and dryads and mermaids and goblins.  The black plaster-of-Paris
cat on the library mantelpiece was a fairy witch.  It came alive at
night and prowled about the house, grown to enormous size.  Walter
ducked his head under the bedclothes and shivered.  He was always
scaring himself with his own fancies.

Perhaps Aunt Mary Maria was right when she said he was "far too
nervous and high-strung," though Susan would never forgive her for
it.  Perhaps Aunt Kitty MacGregor of the Upper Glen, who was
reported to have "the second sight," was right when, having once
taken a deep look into Walter's long-lashed, smoky grey eyes, she
said he "did be having an old soul in a young body."  It might be
that the old soul knew too much for the young brain to understand
always.

Walter was told in the morning that Dad would take him to Lowbridge
after dinner.  He said nothing, but during dinner a choky sensation
came over him and he dropped his eyes quickly to hide a sudden mist
of tears.  Not quickly enough, however.

"You're not going to CRY, Walter?" said Aunt Mary Maria, as if a
six-year-old mite would be disgraced forever if he cried.  "If
there's anything I DO despise it's a cry-baby.  And you haven't
eaten your meat."

"All but the fat," said Walter, blinking valiantly but not yet
daring to look up.  "I don't like fat."

"When _I_ was a child," said Aunt Mary Maria, "I was not allowed to
have likes and dislikes.  Well, Mrs. Dr. Parker will probably cure
you of some of your notions.  She was a Winter, I think . . . or
was she a Clark? . . . no, she must have been a Campbell.  But the
Winters and the Campbells are all tarred with the same brush and
they don't put up with any nonsense."

"Oh, please, Aunt Mary Maria, don't frighten Walter about his visit
to Lowbridge," said Anne, a little spark kindling far down in her
eyes.

"I'm sorry, Annie," said Aunt Mary Maria with great humility.  "I
should of course have remembered that _I_ have no right to try to
teach your children ANYTHING."

"Drat her hide," muttered Susan as she went out for the dessert . . .
Walter's favourite Queen pudding.

Anne felt miserably guilty.  Gilbert had shot her a slightly
reproachful glance as if to imply she might have been more patient
with a poor lonely old lady.

Gilbert himself was feeling a bit seedy.  The truth, as everyone
knew, was that he had been terribly overworked all summer; and
perhaps Aunt Mary Maria was more of a strain than he would admit.
Anne made up her mind that in the fall, if all was well, she would
pack him off willy-nilly for a month's snipe-shooting in Nova
Scotia.

"How is your tea?" she asked Aunt Mary Maria repentantly.

Aunt Mary Maria pursed her lips.

"Too weak.  But it doesn't matter.  Who cares whether a poor old
woman gets her tea to her liking or not?  Some folks, however,
think I'm real good company."

Whatever the connexion between Aunt Mary Maria's two sentences was,
Anne felt she was beyond ferreting it out just then.  She had
turned very pale.

"I think I'll go upstairs and lie down," she said, a trifle
faintly, as she rose from the table.  "And I think, Gilbert . . .
perhaps you'd better not stay long in Lowbridge . . . and suppose
you give Miss Carson a ring."

She kissed Walter good-bye rather casually and hurriedly . . . very
much as if she were not thinking about him at all.  Walter WOULD
NOT cry.  Aunt Mary Maria kissed him on the forehead . . . Walter
hated to be moistly kissed on the forehead . . . and said:

"Mind your table manners at Lowbridge, Walter.  Mind you ain't
greedy.  If you are, a Big Black Man will come along with a big
black bag to pop naughty children into."

It was perhaps as well that Gilbert had gone out to harness Grey
Tom and did not hear this.  He and Anne had always made a point of
never frightening their children with such ideas or allowing anyone
else to do it.  Susan did hear it as she cleared the table and Aunt
Mary Maria never knew what a narrow escape she had of having the
gravy boat and its contents flung at her head.



8


Generally Walter enjoyed a drive with Dad.  He loved beauty, and
the roads around Glen St. Mary were beautiful.  The road to
Lowbridge was a double ribbon of dancing buttercups, with here and
there the ferny green rim of an inviting grove.  But today Dad
didn't seem to want to talk much and he drove Grey Tom as Walter
never remembered seeing him driven before.  When they reached
Lowbridge he said a few hurried words aside to Mrs. Parker and
rushed out without bidding Walter good-bye.  Walter had again hard
work to keep from crying.  It was only too plain that nobody loved
him.  Mother and Father used to, but they didn't any longer.

The big, untidy Parker house at Lowbridge did not seem friendly to
Walter.  But perhaps no house would have seemed that just then.
Mrs. Parker took him out to the back yard, where shrieks of noisy
mirth were resounding, and introduced him to the children who
seemed to fill it.  Then she promptly went back to her sewing,
leaving them to "get acquainted by themselves" . . . a proceeding
that worked very well in nine cases out of ten.  Perhaps she could
not be blamed for failing to see that little Walter Blythe was the
tenth.  She liked him . . . her own children were jolly little tads
. . . Fred and Opal were inclined to put on Montreal airs, but she
felt quite sure they wouldn't be unkind to anyone.  Everything
would go swimmingly.  She was so glad she could help "poor Anne
Blythe" out, even if it was only by taking one of her children off
her hands.  Mrs. Parker hoped "all would go well."  Anne's friends
were a good deal more worried over her than she was over herself,
reminding each other of Shirley's birth.

A sudden hush had fallen over the back yard . . . a yard which ran
off into a big, bowery apple orchard.  Walter stood looking gravely
and shyly at the Parker children and their Johnson cousins from
Montreal.  Bill Parker was ten . . . a ruddy, round-faced urchin
who "took after" his mother and seemed very old and big in Walter's
eyes.  Andy Parker was nine and Lowbridge children could have told
you that he was "the nasty Parker one" and was nicknamed "Pig" for
reasons good.  Walter did not like his looks from the first . . .
his short-cropped fair bristles, his impish freckled face, his
bulging blue eyes.  Fred Johnson was Bill's age and Walter didn't
like him either, though he was a good-looking chap with tawny curls
and black eyes.  His nine-year-old sister, Opal, had curls and
black eyes, too . . . snapping black eyes.  She stood with her arm
about tow-headed, eight-year-old Cora Parker and they both looked
Walter over condescendingly.  If it had not been for Alice Parker
Walter might very conceivably have turned and fled.

Alice was seven; Alice had the loveliest little ripples of golden
curls all over her head; Alice had eyes as blue and soft as the
violets in the Hollow; Alice had pink, dimpled cheeks; Alice wore a
little frilled yellow dress in which she looked like a dancing
buttercup; Alice smiled at him as if she had known him all her
life; Alice was a friend.

Fred opened the conversation.

"Hello, sonny," he said condescendingly.

Walter felt the condescension at once and retreated into himself.

"My name is Walter," he said distinctly.

Fred turned to the others with a well-done air of amazement.  HE'D
show this country lad!

"He says his name is WALTER," he told Bill with a comical twist of
his mouth.

"He says his name is WALTER," Bill told Opal in turn.

"He says his name is WALTER," Opal told the delighted Andy.

"He says his name is WALTER," Andy told Cora.

"He says his name is WALTER," Cora giggled to Alice.

Alice said nothing.  She just looked admiringly at Walter and her
look enabled him to bear up when all the rest chanted together, "He
says his name is WALTER," and then burst into shrieks of derisive
laughter.

"What fun the dear little folks are having!" thought Mrs. Parker
complacently over her shining.

"I heard Mom say you believed in fairies," Andy said, leering
impudently.

Walter gazed levelly at him.  He was not going to be downed before
Alice.

"There ARE fairies," he said stoutly.

"There ain't," said Andy.

"There ARE," said Walter.

"He says there are FAIRIES," Andy told Fred.

"He says there are FAIRIES," Fred told Bill . . . and they went
through the whole performance again.

It was torture to Walter, who had never been made fun of before and
couldn't take it.  He bit his lips to keep the tears back.  He must
not cry before Alice.

"How would you like to be pinched black and blue?" demanded Andy,
who had made up his mind that Walter was a sissy and that it would
be good fun to tease him.

"Pig, hush!" ordered Alice terribly . . . very terribly, although
very quietly and sweetly and gently.  There was something in her
tone that even Andy dared not flout.

"'Course I didn't mean it," he muttered shamefacedly.

The wind veered a bit in Walter's favour and they had a fairly
amiable game of tag in the orchard.  But when they trouped noisily
in to supper Walter was again overwhelmed with homesickness.  It
was so terrible that for one awful moment he was afraid he was
going to cry before them all . . . even Alice, who, however, gave
his arm such a friendly little nudge as they sat down that it
helped him.  But he could not eat anything . . . he simply could
not.  Mrs. Parker, for whose methods there was certainly something
to be said, did not worry him about it, comfortably concluding that
his appetite would be better in the morning, and the others were
too much occupied in eating and talking to take much notice of him.

Walter wondered why the whole family shouted so at each other,
ignorant of the fact that they had not yet had time to get out of
the habit since the recent death of a very deaf and sensitive old
grandmother.  The noise made his head ache.  Oh, at home now they
would be eating supper, too.  Mother would be smiling from the head
of the table, Father would be joking with the twins, Susan would be
pouring cream into Shirley's mug of milk, Nan would be sneaking
tidbits to the Shrimp.  Even Aunt Mary Maria, as part of the home
circle, seemed suddenly invested with a soft, tender radiance.  Who
would have rung the Chinese gong for supper?  It was his week to do
it and Jem was away.  If he could only find a place to cry in!  But
there seemed to be no place where you could indulge in tears at
Lowbridge.  Besides . . . there was Alice.  Walter gulped down a
whole glassful of ice-water and found that it helped.

"Our cat takes fits," Andy said suddenly, kicking him under the
table.

"So does ours," said Walter.  The Shrimp had had two fits.  And he
wasn't going to have the Lowbridge cats rated higher than the
Ingleside cats.

"I'll bet our cat takes fittier fits than yours," taunted Andy.

"I'll bet she doesn't," retorted Walter.

"Now, now, don't let's have any arguments over your cats," said
Mrs. Parker, who wanted a quiet evening to write her Institute
paper on "Misunderstood Children."  "Run out and play.  It won't be
long before your bedtime."

Bedtime!  Walter suddenly realized that he had to stay here all
night . . . many nights . . . two weeks of nights.  It was
dreadful.  He went out to the orchard with clenched fists, to find
Bill and Andy in a furious clinch on the grass, kicking, clawing,
yelling.

"You give me the wormy apple, Bill Parker!" Andy was howling.
"I'll teach you to give me wormy apples!  I'll bite off your ears!"

Fights of this sort were an everyday occurrence with the Parkers.
Mrs. Parker held that it didn't hurt boys to fight.  She said they
got a lot of devilment out of their systems that way and were as
good friends as ever afterwards.  But Walter had never seen anyone
fighting before and was aghast.

Fred was cheering them on, Opal and Cora were laughing, but there
were tears in Alice's eyes.  Walter could not endure that.  He
hurled himself between the combatants, who had drawn apart for a
moment to snatch breath before joining battle again.

"You stop fighting," said Walter.  "You're scaring Alice."

Bill and Andy stared at him in amazement for a moment, until the
funny side of this baby interfering in their fight struck them.
Both burst into laughter and Bill slapped him on the back.

"It's got spunk, kids," he said.  "It's going to be a real boy
sometime if you let it grow.  Here's an apple for it . . . and no
worms either."

Alice wiped the tears away from her soft pink cheeks and looked so
adoringly at Walter that Fred didn't like it.  Of course Alice was
only a baby but even babies had no business to be looking adoringly
at other boys when he, Fred Johnson of Montreal, was around.  This
must be dealt with.  Fred had been into the house and had heard
Aunt Jen, who had been talking over the telephone, say something to
Uncle Dick.

"Your mother's awful sick," he told Walter.

"She . . . she isn't!" cried Walter.

"She is, too.  I heard Aunt Jen telling Uncle Dick . . ."  Fred had
heard his aunt say, "Anne Blythe is sick," and it was fun to tack
in the "awful."  "She'll likely be dead before you get home."

Walter looked around with tormented eyes.  Again Alice ranged
herself by him . . . and again the rest gathered around the
standard of Fred.  They felt something alien about this dark,
handsome child . . . they felt an urge to tease him.

"If she is sick," said Walter, "Father will cure her."

He would . . . he must!

"I'm afraid that will be impossible," said Fred, pulling a long
face but winking at Andy.

"Nothing is impossible for Father," insisted Walter loyally.

"Why, Russ Carter went to Charlottetown just for a day last summer
and when he came home his mother was dead as a door-nail," said
Bill.

"AND buried," said Andy, thinking to add an extra dramatic touch--
whether a fact or not didn't matter.  "Russ was awful mad he'd
missed the funeral . . . funerals are so jolly."

"And I've never seen a single funeral," said Opal sadly.

"Well, there'll be lots of chances for you yet," said Andy.  "But
you see even Dad couldn't keep Mrs. Carter alive and he's a lot
better doctor than YOUR father."

"He isn't . . ."

"Yes, he is, and a lot better-looking, too . . ."

"He isn't . . ."

"Something ALWAYS happens when you go away from home," said Opal.
"What will you feel like if you find Ingleside burned down when you
go home?"

"If your mother dies, likely you children will all be sep'rated,"
said Cora cheerfully.  "Maybe you'll come and live here."

"Yes . . . do," said Alice sweetly.

"Oh, his father would want to keep them," said Bill.  "He'd soon be
marrying again.  But maybe his father will die too.  I heard Dad
say Dr. Blythe was working himself to death.  Look at him staring.
You've got girls' eyes, sonny . . . girls' eyes . . . girls' eyes."

"Aw, shut up," said Opal, suddenly tiring of the sport.  "You ain't
fooling him.  He knows you're only teasing.  Let's go down to the
Park and watch the baseball game.  Walter and Alice can stay here.
We can't have kids tagging after us everywhere."

Walter was not sorry to see them go.  Neither apparently was Alice.
They sat down on an apple log and looked shyly and contentedly at
each other.

"I'll show you how to play jackstones," said Alice, "and lend you
my plush kangaroo."

When bedtime came Walter found himself put into the little hall
bedroom alone.  Mrs. Parker considerately left a candle with him
and a warm puff, for the July night was unreasonably cold as even a
summer night in the Maritimes sometimes is.  It almost seemed as if
there might be a frost.

But Walter could not sleep, not even with Alice's plush kangaroo
cuddled to his cheek.  Oh, if he were only home in his own room,
where the big window looked out on the Glen and the little window,
with a tiny roof all its own, looked out into the Scotch pine!
Mother would come in and read poetry to him in her lovely voice . . .

"I'm a big boy . . . I won't cry . . . I wo-o-o-n't . . ."  The
tears came in spite of himself.  What good were plush kangaroos?
It seemed years since he had left home.

Presently the other children came back from the Park and crowded
amiably into the room to sit on the bed and eat apples.

"You've been crying, baby," jeered Andy.  "You're nothing but a
sweet little girl.  Momma's Pet!"

"Have a bite, kid," said Bill proffering a half-gnawed apple.  "And
cheer up.  I wouldn't be surprised if your mother got better . . .
if she's got a constitution, that is.  Dad says Mrs. Stephen Flagg
would-a died years ago if she hadn't a constitution.  Has your
mother got one?"

"Of course she has," said Walter.  He had no idea what a
constitution was, but if Mrs. Stephen Flagg had one Mother must.

"Mrs. Ab Sawyer died last week and Sam Clark's mother died the week
before," said Andy.

"They died in the night," said Cora.  "Mother says people mostly
die in the night.  I hope _I_ won't.  Fancy going to Heaven in your
nightdress!"

"Children!  Children!  Get off to your beds," called Mrs. Parker.

The boys went, after pretending to smother Walter with a towel.
After all, they rather liked the kid.  Walter caught Opal's hand as
she turned away.

"Opal, it isn't true Mother's sick, is it?" he whispered
imploringly.  He could not face being left alone with his fear.

Opal was "not a bad-hearted child," as Mrs. Parker said, but she
could not resist the thrill one got out of telling bad news.

"She IS sick.  Aunt Jen says so . . . she said I wasn't to tell
you.  But I think you ought to know.  Maybe she has a cancer."

"Does EVERYBODY have to die, Opal?"  This was a new and dreadful
idea to Walter, who had never thought about death before.

"Of course, silly.  Only they don't die really . . . they go to
Heaven," said Opal cheerfully.

"Not all of them," said Andy . . . who was listening outside the
door . . . in a pig's whisper.

"Is . . . is Heaven farther away than Charlottetown?" asked Walter.

Opal shrilled with laugher.

"Well, you ARE queer!  Heaven's millions of miles away.  But I'll
tell you what to do.  You pray.  Praying's good.  I lost a dime
once and I prayed and I found a quarter.  That's how I know."

"Opal Johnson, did you hear what I said?  And put out that candle
in Walter's room.  I'm afraid of fire," called Mrs. Parker from her
room.  "He should have been asleep long ago."

Opal blew out the candle and flew.  Aunt Jen was easy-going, but
when she DID get riled!  Andy stuck his head in at the door for a
good-night benediction.

"Likely them birds in the wallpaper will come alive and pick your
eyes out," he hissed.

After which everybody did really go to bed, feeling that it was the
end of a perfect day and Walt Blythe wasn't a bad little kid and
they'd have some more fun teasing him tomorrow.

"Dear little souls," thought Mrs. Parker sentimentally.

An unwonted quiet descended upon the Parker house and six miles
away at Ingleside little Bertha Marilla Blythe was blinking round
hazel eyes at the happy faces around her and the world into which
she had been ushered on the coldest July night the Maritimes had
experienced in eighty-seven years!



9


Walter, alone in the darkness, still found it impossible to sleep.
He had never slept alone before in his short life.  Always Jem or
Ken near him, warm and comforting.  The little room became dimly
visible as the pale moonlight crept into it, but it was almost
worse than darkness.  A picture on the wall at the foot of his bed
seemed to leer at him . . . pictures always looked so DIFFERENT by
moonlight.  You saw things in them you never suspected by daylight.
The long lace curtains looked like tall thin women, one on each
side of the window, weeping.  There were noises about the house . . .
creaks, sighs, whisperings.  Suppose the birds in the wallpaper
WERE coming to life and getting ready to pick out his eyes?  A
creepy fear suddenly possessed Walter . . . and then one great fear
banished all the others.  MOTHER WAS SICK.  He had to believe it
since Opal had said it was true.  Perhaps Mother was dying!
PERHAPS MOTHER WAS DEAD!  There would be no Mother to go home to.
Walter saw Ingleside without Mother!

Suddenly Walter knew he could not bear it.  He must go home.  Right
away--at once.  He must see Mother before she . . . before she . . .
died.  THIS was what Aunt Mary Maria had meant.  SHE had known
Mother was going to die.  It was no use to think of waking anyone
and asking to be taken home.  They wouldn't take him . . . they
would only laugh at him.  It was an awful long road home but he
would walk all night.

Very quietly he slipped out of bed and put on his clothes.  He took
his shoes in his hand.  He did not know where Mrs. Parker had put
his cap, but that did not matter.  He must not make any noise . . .
he must just escape and get to Mother.  He was sorry he could not
say good-bye to Alice . . . she would have understood.  Through the
dark hall . . . down the stairs . . . step by step . . . hold your
breath . . . was there no end to the steps? . . . the very
furniture was listening . . . oh, oh!

Walter had dropped one of his shoes!  Down the stairs it clattered,
bumping from step to step, shot across the hall and brought up
against the front door with what seemed to Walter a deafening
crash.

Walter huddled in despair against the rail.  EVERYBODY must have
heard that noise . . . they would come rushing out . . . he
wouldn't be let go home . . . a sob of despair choked in his
throat.

It seemed hours before he dared believe that nobody had wakened up
. . . before he dared resume his careful passage down the stairs.
But it was accomplished at last; he found his shoe and cautiously
turned the handle of the front door . . . doors were never locked
at the Parker place.  Mrs. Parker said they hadn't anything worth
stealing except children and nobody wanted THEM.

Walter was out . . . the door closed behind him.  He slipped on his
shoes and stole down the street: the house was on the edge of the
village and he was soon on the open road.  A moment of panic
overwhelmed him.  The fear of being caught and prevented was past
and all his old fears of darkness and solitude returned.  He had
never been out ALONE in the night before.  He was afraid of the
WORLD.  It was such a huge world and he was so terribly small in
it.  Even the cold raw wind that was coming up from the east seemed
blowing in his face as if to push him back.

MOTHER WAS GOING TO DIE!  Walter took a gulp and set his face
towards home.  On and on he went, fighting fear gallantly.  It was
moonlight but the moonlight let you SEE things . . . and nothing
looked familiar.  Once when he had been out with Dad he had thought
he had never seen anything so pretty as a moonlit road crossed by
tree shadows.  But now the shadows were so black and sharp they
might fly up at you.  The fields had put on a strangeness.  The
trees were no longer friendly.  They seemed to be watching him . . .
crowding in before and behind him.  Two blazing eyes looked out
at him from the ditch and a black cat of unbelievable size ran
across the road.  WAS IT A CAT?  Or . . . ?  The night was cold: he
shivered in his thin blouse, but he would not mind the cold if he
could only stop being afraid of everything . . . of the shadows and
the furtive sounds and the nameless things that might be prowling
in the strips of woodland he passed through.  He wondered what it
would be like not to be afraid of anything . . . like Jem.

"I'll . . . I'll just pretend I'm not afraid," he said aloud . . .
and then shuddered with terror over the LOST sound of his own voice
in the great night.

But he went on . . . one had to go on when Mother was going to die.
Once he fell and bruised and skinned his knee badly on a stone.
Once he heard a buggy coming along behind him and hid behind a tree
till it passed, terrified lest Dr. Parker had discovered he had
gone and was coming after him.  Once he stopped in sheer terror of
something black and furry sitting on the side of the road.  He
could not pass it . . . he could NOT . . . but he did.  It was a
big black dog . . . WAS it a dog? . . . but he was past it.  He
dared not run lest it chase him.  He stole a desperate glance over
his shoulder . . . it had got up and was loping away in the
opposite direction.  Walter put his little brown hand up to his
face and found it wet with sweat.

A star fell in the sky before him, scattering sparks of flame.
Walter remembered hearing old Aunt Kitty say that when a star fell
someone died.  WAS IT MOTHER?  He had just been feeling that his
legs would not carry him another step, but at the thought he
marched on again.  He was so cold now that he had almost ceased to
feel afraid.  Would he never get home?  It must be hours and hours
since he had left Lowbridge.

It WAS three hours.  He had stolen out of the Parker house at
eleven and it was now two.  When Walter found himself on the road
that dipped down into the Glen he gave a sob of relief.  But as he
stumbled through the village the sleeping houses seemed remote and
far away.  They had forgotten him.  A cow suddenly bawled at him
over a fence and Walter remembered that Mr. Joe Reese kept a savage
bull.  He broke into a run of sheer panic that carried him up the
hill to the gate of Ingleside.  He was home . . . oh, he was home!

Then he stopped short, trembling, overcome by a dreadful feeling of
desolation.  He had been expecting to see the warm, friendly lights
of home.  And there was not a light at Ingleside!

There really was a light, if he could have seen it, in a back
bedroom where the nurse slept with the baby's basket beside her
bed.  But to all intents and purposes Ingleside was as dark as a
deserted house and it broke Walter's spirit.  He had never seen,
never imagined, Ingleside dark at night.

IT MEANT THAT MOTHER WAS DEAD!

Walter stumbled up the drive, across the grim black shadow of the
house on the lawn, to the front door.  It was locked.  He gave a
feeble knock . . . he could not reach to the knocker . . . but
there was no response, nor did he expect any.  He listened . . .
there was not a sound of LIVING in the house.  He knew Mother was
dead and everybody had gone away.

He was by now too chilled and exhausted to cry: but he crept around
to the barn and climbed the ladder to the hay-mow.  He was past
being frightened; he only wanted to get somewhere out of that wind
and lie down till morning.  Perhaps somebody would come back then
after they had buried Mother.

A sleek little tiger kitten someone had given the doctor purred up
to him, smelling nicely of clover hay.  Walter clutched it gladly
. . . it was warm and ALIVE.  But it heard the little mice scampering
over the floor and would not stay.  The moon looked at him through
the cobwebby window but there was no comfort in that far, cold,
unsympathetic moon.  A light burning in a house down in the Glen
was more like a friend.  As long as that light shone he could bear
up.

He could not sleep.  His knee hurt too much and he was cold . . .
with such a funny feeling in his stomach.  Perhaps he was dying,
too.  He hoped he was, since everyone else was dead or gone away.
Did nights ever end?  Other nights had always ended but maybe this
one wouldn't.  He remembered a dreadful story he had heard to the
effect that Captain Jack Flagg at the Harbour Mouth had said he
wouldn't let the sun come up some morning when he got real mad.
Suppose Captain Jack had got real mad at last.

Then the Glen light went out . . . and he couldn't bear it.  But as
the little cry of despair left his lips he realized that it was
day.



10


Walter climbed down the ladder and went out.  Ingleside lay in the
strange, timeless light of first dawn.  The sky over the birches in
the Hollow was showing a faint, silvery-pink radiance.  Perhaps he
could get in at the side door.  Susan sometimes left it open for
Dad.

The side door was unlocked.  With a sob of thankfulness Walter
slipped into the hall.  It was still dark in the house and he began
stealing softly upstairs.  He would go to bed . . . his own bed . . .
and if nobody ever came back he could die there and go to Heaven
and find Mother.  Only . . . Walter remembered what Opal had said
. . . Heaven was millions of miles away.  In the fresh wave of
desolation that swept over him Walter forgot to step carefully and
set his foot heavily down on the tail of the Shrimp, who was
sleeping at the curve of the stairs.  The Shrimp's yowl of anguish
resounded through the house.

Susan, just dropping off to sleep, was dragged back from slumber by
the horrible sound.  Susan had gone to bed at twelve, somewhat
exhausted after her strenuous afternoon and evening, to which Mary
Maria Blythe had contributed by taking "a stitch in her side" just
when the tension was greatest.  She had to have a hot-water bottle
and a rub with liniment, and finished up with a wet cloth over her
eyes because "one of her headaches" had come on.

Susan had wakened at three with a very strange feeling that
somebody wanted her very badly.  She had risen and tiptoed down the
hall to the door of Mrs. Blythe's room.  All was silence there . . .
she could hear Anne's soft regular breathing.  Susan made the
rounds of the house and returned to her bed, convinced that that
strange feeling was only the hangover of a nightmare.  But for the
rest of her life Susan believed she had had what she had always
scoffed at and what Abby Flagg, who "went in" for spiritualism,
called "a physic experience."

"Walter was calling me and I heard him," she averred.

Susan got up and went out again, thinking that Ingleside was really
possessed that night.  She was attired only in a flannel nightdress,
which had shrunk in repeated washing till it was well above her bony
ankles: but she seemed the most beautiful thing in the world to the
white-faced, trembling little creature whose frantic grey eyes
stared up at her from the landing.

"Walter Blythe!"

In two steps Susan had him in her arms . . . her strong, tender
arms.

"Susan . . . is Mother dead?" said Walter.

In a very brief time everything had changed.  Walter was in bed,
warm, fed, comforted.  Susan had whisked on a fire, got him a hot
cup of milk, a slice of golden-brown toast and a big plateful of
his favourite "monkey face" cookies, and then tucked him away with
a hot-water bottle at his feet.  She had kissed and anointed his
little bruised knee.  It was such a nice feeling to know that
someone was looking after you . . . that someone wanted you . . .
that you were important to someone.

"And you're SURE, Susan, that Mother isn't dead?"

"Your mother is sound asleep and well and happy, my lamb."

"And wasn't she sick at all?  Opal said . . ."

"Well, lamb, she did not feel very well for a while yesterday, but
that is all over and she was never in any danger of dying this
time.  You just wait till you have had a sleep and you will see her
. . . and something else.  If I had hold of those young Satans at
Lowbridge!  I just cannot believe that you walked all the way home
from Lowbridge.  Six miles!  On such a night!"

"I suffered awful agony of mind, Susan," said Walter gravely.  But
it was all over; he was safe and happy; he was . . . home . . . he
was . . .

He was asleep.

It was nearly midday before he woke, to see sunshine billowing in
through his own windows, and limped in to see Mother.  He had begun
to think he had been very foolish and maybe Mother would not be
pleased with him for running away from Lowbridge.  But Mother only
put an arm around him and drew him close to her.  She had heard the
whole story from Susan and had thought of a few things she intended
to say to Jen Parker.

"Oh, Mummy, you're not going to die . . . and you still love me,
don't you?"

"Darling, I've no notion of dying . . . and I love you so much it
hurts.  To think that you walked all the way from Lowbridge in the
night!"

"And on an empty stomach," shuddered Susan.  "The wonder is he is
alive to tell it.  The days of miracles are not yet over and that
you may tie to."

"A spunky little lad," laughed Dad, who had come in with Shirley on
his shoulder.  He patted Walter's head and Walter caught his hand
and hugged it.  There was no one like Dad in the world.  But nobody
must ever know how scared he had really been.

"I needn't ever go away from home again, need I, Mummy?"

"Not till you want to," promised Mother.

"I'll never," began Walter . . . and then stopped.  After all, he
wouldn't mind seeing Alice again.

"Look you here, lamb," said Susan, ushering in a rosy young lady in
a white apron and cap who carried a basket.

Walter looked.  A baby!  A plump, roly-poly baby, with silky damp
curls all over her head and such tiny cunning hands.

"Is she not a beauty?" said Susan proudly.  "Look at her eyelashes
. . . never did I see such long eyelashes on a baby.  And her
pretty little ears.  I always look at their ears first."

Walter hesitated.

"She's sweet, Susan . . . oh, look at her darling little curly
toes! . . . but . . . isn't she rather small?"

Susan laughed.

"Eight pounds is not small, lamb.  And she has begun to take notice
already.  That child was not an hour old when she raised her head
and LOOKED at the doctor.  I have never seen the like of it in all
my life."

"She's going to have red hair," said the doctor in a tone of
satisfaction.  "Lovely red-gold hair like her mother's."

"And hazel eyes like her father's," said the doctor's wife
jubilantly.

"I don't see why one of us can't have yellow hair," said Walter
dreamily, thinking of Alice.

"Yellow hair!  Like the Drews!" said Susan in measureless contempt.

"She looks so cunning when she is asleep," crooned the nurse.  "I
never saw a baby that crinkled its eyes like that when it went to
sleep."

"She is a miracle.  All our babies were sweet, Gilbert, but she is
the sweetest of them all."

"Lord love you," said Aunt Mary Maria with a sniff, "there's been a
few babies in the world before, you know, Annie."

"OUR baby has never been in the world before, Aunt Mary Maria,"
said Walter proudly.  "Susan, may I kiss her . . . just once . . .
please?"

"That you may," said Susan, glaring after Aunt Mary Maria's
retreating back.  "And now I'm going down to make a cherry pie for
dinner.  Mary Maria Blythe made one yesterday afternoon . . . .  I
wish you could see it, Mrs. Dr. dear.  It looks like something the
cat dragged in.  I shall eat as much of it myself as I can, rather
than waste it, but such a pie shall never be set before the doctor
as long as I have my health and strength and that you may tie to."

"It isn't everybody that has your knack with pastry, you know,"
said Anne.

"Mummy," said Walter, as the door closed behind a gratified Susan,
"I think we are a very nice family, don't you?"

A very nice family, Anne reflected happily as she lay in her bed,
with the baby beside her.  Soon she would be about with them again,
light-footed as of yore, loving them, teaching them, comforting
them.  They would be coming to her with their little joys and
sorrows, their budding hopes, their new fears, their little
problems that seemed so big to them and their little heart-breaks
that seemed so bitter.  She would hold all the threads of the
Ingleside life in her hands again to weave into a tapestry of
beauty.  And Aunt Mary Maria should have no cause to say, as Anne
had heard her say two days ago, "You look dreadful tired, Gilbert.
Does ANYBODY ever look after you?"

Downstairs Aunt Mary Maria was shaking her head despondently and
saying, "All newborn infants' legs are crooked, I know, but, Susan,
that child's legs are much TOO crooked.  Of course we must not say
so to poor Annie.  Be sure you don't mention it to Annie, Susan."

Susan, for once, was beyond speech.



11


By the end of August Anne was herself again, looking forward to a
happy autumn.  Small Bertha Marilla grew in beauty day by day and
was a centre of worship to adoring brothers and sisters.

"I thought a baby would be something that yelled all the time,"
said Jem, rapturously letting the tiny fingers cling around his.
"Bertie Shakespeare Drew told me so."

"I am not doubting that the Drew babies yell all the time, Jem
dear," said Susan.  "Yell at the thought of having to be Drews, I
presume.  But Bertha Marilla is an INGLESIDE baby, Jem dear."

"I wish I had been born at Ingleside, Susan," said Jem wistfully.
He always felt sorry he hadn't been.  Di cast it up to him at
times.

"Don't you find life here rather dull?" an old Queen's classmate
from Charlottetown had asked Anne rather patronizingly one day.

Dull!  Anne almost laughed in her caller's face.  Ingleside dull!
With a delicious baby bringing new wonders every day . . . with
visits from Diana and Little Elizabeth and Rebecca Dew to be
planned for . . . with Mrs. Sam Ellison of the Upper Glen on
Gilbert's hands with a disease only three people in the world had
ever been known to have before . . . with Walter starting to school
. . . with Nan drinking a whole bottle of perfume from Mother's
dressing-table . . . they thought it would kill her but she was
never a whit the worse . . . with a strange black cat having the
unheard-of number of ten kittens in the back porch . . . with
Shirley locking himself in the bathroom and forgetting how to
unlock it . . . with the Shrimp getting rolled up in a sheet of
fly-paper . . . with Aunt Mary Maria setting the curtains of her
room on fire in the dead of night while prowling with a candle, and
rousing the household with appalling screams.  Life dull!

For Aunt Mary Maria was still at Ingleside.  Occasionally she would
say pathetically, "Whenever you are tired of me just let me know
. . . I'm used to looking after myself."  There was only one thing
to say to that and of course Gilbert always said it.  Though he did
not say it quite as heartily as at first.  Even Gilbert's
"clannishness" was beginning to wear a little thin; he was
realizing rather helplessly . . . "man-like" as Miss Cornelia
sniffed . . . that Aunt Mary Maria was by way of becoming a bit of
a problem in his household.  He HAD ventured one day to give a
slight hint as to how houses suffered if left too long without
inhabitants; and Aunt Mary Maria agreed with him, calmly remarking
that she was thinking of selling her Charlottetown house.

"Not a bad idea," encouraged Gilbert.  "And I know a very nice
little cottage in town for sale . . . a friend of mine is going to
California . . . it's very like that one you admired so much where
Mrs. Sarah Newman lives . . ."

"But lives ALONE," sighed Aunt Mary Maria.

"She likes it," said Anne hopefully.

"There's something wrong with anyone who likes living alone, Anne,"
said Aunt Mary Maria.

Susan repressed a groan with difficulty.

Diana came for a week in September.  Then Little Elizabeth came
. . . Little Elizabeth no longer . . . tall, slender, beautiful
Elizabeth now.  But still with the golden hair and wistful smile.
Her father was returning to his office in Paris and Elizabeth was
going with him to keep his house.  She and Anne took long walks
around the storied shores of the old harbour, coming home beneath
silent, watchful autumn stars.  They relived the old Windy Poplars
life and retraced their steps in the map of fairyland which
Elizabeth still had and meant to keep forever.

"Hanging on the wall of my room wherever I go," she said.

One day a wind blew through the Ingleside garden . . . the first
wind of autumn.  That night the rose of the sunset was a trifle
austere.  All at once the summer had grown old.  The turn of the
season had come.

"It's early for fall," said Aunt Mary Maria in a tone that implied
the fall had insulted her.

But the fall was beautiful, too.  There was the joy of winds
blowing in from a darkly blue gulf and the splendour of harvest
moons.  There were lyric asters in the Hollow and children laughing
in an apple-laden orchard, clear serene evenings on the high hill
pastures of the Upper Glen and silvery mackerel skies with dank
birds flying across them; and, as the days shortened, little grey
mists stealing over the dunes and up the harbour.

With the falling leaves Rebecca Dew came to Ingleside to make a
visit promised for years.  She came for a week but was prevailed
upon to stay two . . . none being so urgent as Susan.  Susan and
Rebecca Dew seemed to discover at first sight that they were
kindred spirits . . . perhaps because they both loved Anne . . .
perhaps because they both hated Aunt Mary Maria.

There came an evening in the kitchen when, as the rain dripped down
on the dead leaves outside and the wind cried around the eaves and
corners of Ingleside, Susan poured out all her woes to sympathetic
Rebecca Dew.  The doctor and his wife had gone out to make a call,
the small fry were all cosy in their beds, and Aunt Mary Maria
fortunately out of the way with a headache . . . "just like a band
of iron round my brain," she had moaned.

"Anyone," remarked Rebecca Dew, opening the oven door and
depositing her feet comfortably in the oven, "who eats as much
fried mackerel as that woman did for supper DESERVES to have a
headache.  I do not deny I ate my share . . . for I will say, Miss
Baker, I never knew anyone who could fry mackerel like you . . .
but I did NOT eat four pieces."

"Miss Dew dear," said Susan earnestly, laying down her knitting and
gazing imploringly into Rebecca's little black eyes, "you have seen
something of what Mary Maria Blythe is like in the time you have
been here.  But you do not know the half . . . no, nor yet the
quarter.  Miss Dew dear, I feel that I can trust you.  May I open
my heart to you in strict confidence?"

"You may, Miss Baker."

"That woman came here in June and it is my opinion she means to
stay here the rest of her life.  Everyone in this house detests her
. . . even the doctor has no use for her now, hide it as he will
and does.  But he is clannish and says his father's cousin must not
be made to feel unwelcome in his house.  I have begged," said
Susan, in a tone which seemed to imply she had done it on her
knees, "I have begged Mrs. Dr. to put her foot down and say Mary
Maria Blythe must go.  But Mrs. Dr. is too softhearted . . . and so
we are helpless, Miss Dew . . . completely helpless."

"I wish _I_ had the handling of her," said Rebecca Dew, who had
smarted considerably herself under some of Aunt Mary Maria's
remarks.  "I know as well as anyone, Miss Baker, that we must not
violate the sacred proprieties of hospitality, but I assure you,
Miss Baker, that I would let her have it straight."

"_I_ could handle her if I did not know my place, Miss Dew.  _I_
never forget that I am not mistress here.  Sometimes, Miss Dew, I
say solemnly to myself, 'Susan Baker, are you or are you not a
door-mat?'  But you know how my hands are tied.  I CANNOT desert
Mrs. Dr. and I MUST NOT add to her troubles by fighting with Mary
Maria Blythe.  I shall continue to endeavour to do my duty.
Because, Miss Dew dear," said Susan solemnly, "I could cheerfully
die for either the doctor or his wife.  We were such a happy family
before she came here, Miss Dew.  But she is making our lives
miserable and what is to be the outcome I cannot tell, being no
prophetess, Miss Dew.  Or rather, I CAN tell.  We will all be
driven into lunatic asylums.  It is not any one thing, Miss Dew
. . . it is scores of them, Miss Dew . . . hundreds of them, Miss
Dew.  You can endure one mosquito, Miss Dew . . . but think of
millions of them!"

Rebecca Dew thought of them with a mournful shake of her head.

"She is always telling Mrs. Dr. how to run her house and what
clothes she should wear.  She is always watching me . . . and she
says she never saw such quarrelsome children.  Miss Dew dear, you
have seen for yourself that our children NEVER quarrel . . . well,
hardly ever . . ."

"They are among the most admirable children I have ever seen, Miss
Baker."

"She snoops and pries . . ."

"I have caught her at it myself, Miss Baker."

"She's always getting offended and heart-broken over something but
never offended enough to up and leave.  She just sits around
looking lonely and neglected until poor Mrs. Dr. is almost
distracted.  Nothing suits her.  If a window is open she complains
of draughts.  If they are all shut she says she DOES like a little
fresh air once in a while.  She cannot bear onions . . . she cannot
even bear the smell of them.  She says they make her sick.  So Mrs.
Dr. says we must not use any.  Now," said Susan grandly, "it may be
a common taste to like onions, Miss Dew dear, but we all plead
guilty to it at Ingleside."

"I am very partial to onions myself," admitted Rebecca Dew.

"She cannot bear cats.  She says cats give her the creeps.  It does
not make any difference whether she sees them or not.  Just to know
there is one about the place is enough for her.  So that poor
Shrimp hardly dare show his face in the house.  I have never
altogether liked cats myself, Miss Dew, but I maintain they have a
right to wave their own tails.  And it is, 'Susan, never forget
that I cannot eat eggs, please,' or 'Susan, how often must I tell
you I cannot eat cold toast?' or 'Susan, SOME people may be able to
drink stewed tea but I am not in that fortunate class.'  Stewed
tea, Miss Dew!  As if I ever offered anyone stewed tea!"

"Nobody could ever suppose it of you, Miss Baker."

"If there is a question that should not be asked she will ask it.
She is jealous because the doctor tells things to his wife before
he tells them to her . . . and she is always trying to pick news
out of him about his patients.  Nothing aggravates him so much,
Miss Dew.  A doctor must know how to hold his tongue, as you are
well aware.  And her tantrums about fire!  'Susan Baker,' she says
to me, 'I hope you never light a fire with coal-oil.  Or leave
oily rags lying around, Susan.  They have been known to cause
spontaneous combustion in less than an hour.  How would you like to
stand and watch this house burn down, Susan, knowing it was your
fault?'  Well, Miss Dew dear, I had my laugh on her over THAT.  It
was that very night she set her curtains on fire and the yells of
her are ringing in my ears yet.  And just when the poor doctor had
got to sleep after having been up for two nights!  What infuriates
me most, Miss Dew, is that before she goes anywhere she goes into
my pantry and COUNTS THE EGGS.  It takes all my philosophy to
refrain from saying, 'Why not count the spoons, too?'  Of course
the children hate her.  Mrs. Dr. is just about worn out keeping
them from showing it.  She actually slapped Nan one day when the
doctor and Mrs. Dr. were both away . . . SLAPPED her . . . just
because Nan called her 'Mrs Mefusaleh' . . . having heard that imp
of a Ken Ford saying it."

"I'd have slapped HER," said Rebecca Dew viciously.

"I told her if she ever did the like again I WOULD slap her.   'An
occasional spanking we do have at Ingleside,' I told her, 'but
slapping never, so put that in pickle.'  She was sulky and offended
for a week but at least she has never dared to lay a finger on one
of them since.  She loves it when their parents punish them,
though.  'If _I_ was your mother,' she says to Little Jem one
evening.  'Oh ho, you won't ever be anybody's mother,' said the
poor child . . . driven to it, Miss Dew, absolutely driven to it.
The doctor sent him to bed without his supper, but who would you
suppose, Miss Dew, saw that some was smuggled up to him later on?"

"Ah, now, WHO?" chortled Rebecca Dew, entering into the spirit of
the tale.

"It would have broken your heart, Miss Dew, to hear the prayer he
put up afterwards . . . all off his own bat, 'O God, please forgive
me for being impertinent to Aunt Mary Maria.  And O God, please
help me to be always very polite to Aunt Mary Maria.'  It brought
the tears into my eyes, the poor lamb.  I do NOT hold with
irreverence or impertinence from youth to age, Miss Dew dear, but I
must admit that when Bertie Shakespeare Drew threw a spit-ball at
her one day . . . it just missed her nose by an inch, Miss Dew . . .
I waylaid him at the gate on his way home and gave him a bag of
doughnuts.  Of course I did not tell him why.  He was tickled over
it . . . for doughnuts do not grow on trees, Miss Dew, and Mrs.
Second Skimmings never makes them.  Nan and Di . . . I would not
breathe this to a soul but you, Miss Dew . . . the doctor and his
wife never dream of it or they would put a stop to it . . . Nan and
Di have named their old china doll with the split head after Aunt
Mary Maria and whenever she scolds them they go out and drown her
. . . the doll I mean . . . in the rainwater hogshead.  Many's the
jolly drowning we have had, I can assure you.  But you could not
believe what that woman did the other night, Miss Dew."

"I'd believe anything of her, Miss Baker."

"She would not eat a bite of supper because her feelings had been
hurt over something, but she went into the pantry before she went
to bed and ATE UP A LUNCH I HAD LEFT FOR THE POOR DOCTOR . . .
every crumb, Miss Dew dear.  I hope you will not think me an
infidel, Miss Dew, but I cannot understand why the Good Lord does
not get tired of some people."

"You must not allow yourself to lose your sense of humour, Miss
Baker," said Rebecca Dew firmly.

"Oh, I am very well aware that there is a comical side to a toad
under a harrow, Miss Dew.  But the question is, does the toad see
it?  I am sorry to have bothered you with all this, Miss Dew dear,
but it has been a great relief.  I cannot say these things to Mrs.
Dr. and I have been feeling lately that if I did not find an outlet
I would BURST."

"How well I know that feeling, Miss Baker."

"And now, Miss Dew dear," said Susan, getting up briskly, "what do
you say to a cup of tea before bed?  And a cold chicken leg, Miss
Dew?"

"I have never denied," said Rebecca Dew, taking her well-baked feet
out of the oven, "that while we should not forget the Higher Things
of Life good food is a pleasant thing in moderation."



12


Gilbert had his two weeks' snipe shooting in Nova Scotia . . . not
even Anne could persuade him to take a month . . . and November
closed in on Ingleside.  The dark hills, with the darker spruces
marching over them, looked grim on early falling nights, but
Ingleside bloomed with firelight and laughter, though the winds
come in from the Atlantic singing of mournful things.

"Why isn't the wind happy, Mummy?" asked Walter one night.

"Because it is remembering all the sorrow of the world since time
began," answered Anne.

"It is moaning just because there is so much dampness in the air,"
sniffed Aunt Mary Maria, "and my back is killing me."

But some days even the wind blew cheerfully through the silvery
grey maple wood and some days there was no wind at all, only mellow
Indian summer sunshine and the quiet shadows of the bare trees all
over the lawn and frosty stillness at sunset.

"Look at that white evening star over the lombardy in the corner,"
said Anne.  "Whenever I see anything like that I am minded to be
just glad I am alive."

"You do say such funny things, Annie.  Stars are quite common in P.
E. Island," said Aunt Mary Maria . . . and thought:  "Stars indeed!
As if no one ever saw a star before!  Didn't Annie know of the
terrible waste that was going on in the kitchen every day?  Didn't
she know of the reckless way Susan Baker threw eggs about and used
lard where dripping would do quite as well?  Or didn't she care?
Poor Gilbert!  No wonder he had to keep his nose to the grindstone!"

November went out in greys and browns: but by morning the snow had
woven its old white spell and Jem shouted with delight as he rushed
down to breakfast.

"Oh, Mummy, it will soon be Christmas now and Santa Claus will be
coming!"

"You surely don't believe in Santa Claus STILL?" said Aunt Mary
Maria.

Anne shot a glance of alarm at Gilbert, who said gravely:  "We want
the children to possess their heritage of fairyland as long as they
can, Aunty."

Luckily Jem had paid no attention to Aunt Mary Maria.  He and
Walter were too eager to get out into the new wonderful world to
which winter had brought its own loveliness.  Anne always hated to
see the beauty of the untrodden snow marred by footprints; but that
couldn't be helped and there was still beauty and to spare at
eventide when the west was aflame over all the whitened hollows in
the violet hills and Anne was sitting in the living-room before a
fire of rock maple.  Firelight, she thought, was always so lovely.
It did such tricksy, unexpected things.  Parts of the room flashed
into being and then out again.  Pictures came and went.  Shadows
lurked and sprang.  Outside, through the big unshaded window, the
whole scene was elvishly reflected on the lawn with Aunt Mary Maria
apparently sitting stark upright . . . Aunt Mary Maria never
allowed herself to "loll" . . . under the Scotch pine.

Gilbert was "lolling" on the couch, trying to forget that he had
lost a patient from pneumonia that day.  Small Rilla was trying to
eat her pink fists in her basket; even the Shrimp, with his white
paws curled in under his breast, was daring to purr on the hearth-
rug, much to Aunt Mary Maria's disapproval.

"Speaking of cats," said Aunt Mary Maria pathetically . . . though
nobody HAD been speaking of them . . . "do ALL the cats in the Glen
visit us at night?  How anyone could have slept through the
caterwauling last night _I_ really am at a loss to understand.  Of
course, my room being at the back I suppose I get the full benefit
of the free concert."

Before anyone had to reply Susan entered, saying that she had seen
Mrs. Marshall Elliott in Carter Flagg's store and she was coming up
when she had finished her shopping.  Susan d