MARY STAYS AT THE MANSE
The manse children took Mary Vance to church with them the next day. At
first Mary objected to the idea.
“Didn’t you go to church over-harbour?” asked Una.
“You bet. Mrs. Wiley never troubled church much, but I went every
Sunday I could get off. I was mighty thankful to go to some place where
I could sit down for a spell. But I can’t go to church in this old
ragged dress.”
This difficulty was removed by Faith offering the loan of her second
best dress.
“It’s faded a little and two of the buttons are off, but I guess it’ll
do.”
“I’ll sew the buttons on in a jiffy,” said Mary.
“Not on Sunday,” said Una, shocked.
“Sure. The better the day the better the deed. You just gimme a needle
and thread and look the other way if you’re squeamish.”
Faith’s school boots, and an old black velvet cap that had once been
Cecilia Meredith’s, completed Mary’s costume, and to church she went.
Her behaviour was quite conventional, and though some wondered who the
shabby little girl with the manse children was she did not attract much
attention. She listened to the sermon with outward decorum and joined
lustily in the singing. She had, it appeared, a clear, strong voice and
a good ear.
“His blood can make the _violets_ clean,” carolled Mary blithely. Mrs.
Jimmy Milgrave, whose pew was just in front of the manse pew, turned
suddenly and looked the child over from top to toe. Mary, in a mere
superfluity of naughtiness, stuck out her tongue at Mrs. Milgrave, much
to Una’s horror.
“I couldn’t help it,” she declared after church. “What’d she want to
stare at me like that for? Such manners! I’m _glad_ I stuck my tongue
out at her. I wish I’d stuck it farther out. Say, I saw Rob MacAllister
from over-harbour there. Wonder if he’ll tell Mrs. Wiley on me.”
No Mrs. Wiley appeared, however, and in a few days the children forgot
to look for her. Mary was apparently a fixture at the manse. But she
refused to go to school with the others.
“Nope. I’ve finished my education,” she said, when Faith urged her to
go. “I went to school four winters since I come to Mrs. Wiley’s and
I’ve had all I want of _that_. I’m sick and tired of being
everlastingly jawed at ‘cause I didn’t get my home-lessons done. _I’d_
no time to do home-lessons.”
“Our teacher won’t jaw you. He is awfully nice,” said Faith.
“Well, I ain’t going. I can read and write and cipher up to fractions.
That’s all I want. You fellows go and I’ll stay home. You needn’t be
scared I’ll steal anything. I swear I’m honest.”
Mary employed herself while the others were at school in cleaning up
the manse. In a few days it was a different place. Floors were swept,
furniture dusted, everything straightened out. She mended the
spare-room bed-tick, she sewed on missing buttons, she patched clothes
neatly, she even invaded the study with broom and dustpan and ordered
Mr. Meredith out while she put it to rights. But there was one
department with which Aunt Martha refused to let her interfere. Aunt
Martha might be deaf and half blind and very childish, but she was
resolved to keep the commissariat in her own hands, in spite of all
Mary’s wiles and stratagems.
“I can tell you if old Martha’d let _me_ cook you’d have some decent
meals,” she told the manse children indignantly. “There’d be no more
‘ditto’—and no more lumpy porridge and blue milk either. What _does_
she do with all the cream?”
“She gives it to the cat. He’s hers, you know,” said Faith.
“I’d like to _cat_ her,” exclaimed Mary bitterly. “I’ve no use for cats
anyhow. They belong to the old Nick. You can tell that by their eyes.
Well, if old Martha won’t, she won’t, I s’pose. But it gits on my
nerves to see good vittles spoiled.”
When school came out they always went to Rainbow Valley. Mary refused
to play in the graveyard. She declared she was afraid of ghosts.
“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” declared Jem Blythe.
“Oh, ain’t there?”
“Did you ever see any?”
“Hundreds of ‘em,” said Mary promptly.
“What are they like?” said Carl.
“Awful-looking. Dressed all in white with skellington hands and heads,”
said Mary.
“What did you do?” asked Una.
“Run like the devil,” said Mary. Then she caught Walter’s eyes and
blushed. Mary was a good deal in awe of Walter. She declared to the
manse girls that his eyes made her nervous.
“I think of all the lies I’ve ever told when I look into them,” she
said, “and I wish I hadn’t.”
Jem was Mary’s favourite. When he took her to the attic at Ingleside
and showed her the museum of curios that Captain Jim Boyd had
bequeathed to him she was immensely pleased and flattered. She also won
Carl’s heart entirely by her interest in his beetles and ants. It could
not be denied that Mary got on rather better with the boys than with
the girls. She quarrelled bitterly with Nan Blythe the second day.
“Your mother is a witch,” she told Nan scornfully. “Red-haired women
are always witches.” Then she and Faith fell out about the rooster.
Mary said its tail was too short. Faith angrily retorted that she
guessed God know what length to make a rooster’s tail. They did not
“speak” for a day over this. Mary treated Una’s hairless, one-eyed doll
with consideration; but when Una showed her other prized treasure—a
picture of an angel carrying a baby, presumably to heaven, Mary
declared that it looked too much like a ghost for her. Una crept away
to her room and cried over this, but Mary hunted her out, hugged her
repentantly and implored forgiveness. No one could keep up a quarrel
long with Mary—not even Nan, who was rather prone to hold grudges and
never quite forgave the insult to her mother. Mary was jolly. She could
and did tell the most thrilling ghost stories. Rainbow Valley seances
were undeniably more exciting after Mary came. She learned to play on
the jew’s-harp and soon eclipsed Jerry.
“Never struck anything yet I couldn’t do if I put my mind to it,” she
declared. Mary seldom lost a chance of tooting her own horn. She taught
them how to make “blow-bags” out of the thick leaves of the
“live-forever” that flourished in the old Bailey garden, she initiated
them into the toothsome qualities of the “sours” that grew in the
niches of the graveyard dyke, and she could make the most wonderful
shadow pictures on the walls with her long, flexible fingers. And when
they all went picking gum in Rainbow Valley Mary always got “the
biggest chew” and bragged about it. There were times when they hated
her and times when they loved her. But at all times they found her
interesting. So they submitted quite meekly to her bossing, and by the
end of a fortnight had come to feel that she must always have been with
them.
“It’s the queerest thing that Mrs. Wiley hain’t been after me,” said
Mary. “I can’t understand it.”
“Maybe she isn’t going to bother about you at all,” said Una. “Then you
can just go on staying here.”
“This house ain’t hardly big enough for me and old Martha,” said Mary
darkly. “It’s a very fine thing to have enough to eat—I’ve often
wondered what it would be like—but I’m p’ticler about my cooking. And
Mrs. Wiley’ll be here yet. _She’s_ got a rod in pickle for me all
right. I don’t think about it so much in daytime but say, girls, up
there in that garret at night I git to thinking and thinking of it,
till I just almost wish she’d come and have it over with. I dunno’s one
real good whipping would be much worse’n all the dozen I’ve lived
through in my mind ever since I run away. Were any of you ever licked?”
“No, of course not,” said Faith indignantly. “Father would never do
such a thing.”
“You don’t know you’re alive,” said Mary with a sigh half of envy, half
of superiority. “You don’t know what I’ve come through. And I s’pose
the Blythes were never licked either?”
“No-o-o, I guess not. But I _think_ they were sometimes spanked when
they were small.”
“A spanking doesn’t amount to anything,” said Mary contemptuously. “If
my folks had just spanked me I’d have thought they were petting me.
Well, it ain’t a fair world. I wouldn’t mind taking my share of
wallopings but I’ve had a darn sight too many.”
“It isn’t right to say that word, Mary,” said Una reproachfully. “You
promised me you wouldn’t say it.”
“G’way,” responded Mary. “If you knew some of the words I _could_ say
if I liked you wouldn’t make such a fuss over darn. And you know very
well I hain’t ever told any lies since I come here.”
“What about all those ghosts you said you saw?” asked Faith.
Mary blushed.
“That was diff’runt,” she said defiantly. “I knew you wouldn’t believe
them yarns and I didn’t intend you to. And I really did see something
queer one night when I was passing the over-harbour graveyard, true’s
you live. I dunno whether ‘twas a ghost or Sandy Crawford’s old white
nag, but it looked blamed queer and I tell you I scooted at the rate of
no man’s business.”