A FISHY EPISODE
Rilla Blythe walked proudly, and perhaps a little primly, through the
main “street” of the Glen and up the manse hill, carefully carrying a
small basketful of early strawberries, which Susan had coaxed into
lusciousness in one of the sunny nooks of Ingleside. Susan had charged
Rilla to give the basket to nobody except Aunt Martha or Mr. Meredith,
and Rilla, very proud of being entrusted with such an errand, was
resolved to carry out her instructions to the letter.
Susan had dressed her daintily in a white, starched, and embroidered
dress, with sash of blue and beaded slippers. Her long ruddy curls were
sleek and round, and Susan had let her put on her best hat, out of
compliment to the manse. It was a somewhat elaborate affair, wherein
Susan’s taste had had more to say than Anne’s, and Rilla’s small soul
gloried in its splendours of silk and lace and flowers. She was very
conscious of her hat, and I am afraid she strutted up the manse hill.
The strut, or the hat, or both, got on the nerves of Mary Vance, who
was swinging on the lawn gate. Mary’s temper was somewhat ruffled just
then, into the bargain. Aunt Martha had refused to let her peel the
potatoes and had ordered her out of the kitchen.
“Yah! You’ll bring the potatoes to the table with strips of skin
hanging to them and half boiled as usual! My, but it’ll be nice to go
to your funeral,” shrieked Mary. She went out of the kitchen, giving
the door such a bang that even Aunt Martha heard it, and Mr. Meredith
in his study felt the vibration and thought absently that there must
have been a slight earthquake shock. Then he went on with his sermon.
Mary slipped from the gate and confronted the spick-and-span damsel of
Ingleside.
“What you got there?” she demanded, trying to take the basket.
Rilla resisted. “It’th for Mithter Meredith,” she lisped.
“Give it to me. _I’ll_ give it to him,” said Mary.
“No. Thuthan thaid that I wathn’t to give it to anybody but Mithter
Mer’dith or Aunt Martha,” insisted Rilla.
Mary eyed her sourly.
“You think you’re something, don’t you, all dressed up like a doll!
Look at me. My dress is all rags and _I_ don’t care! I’d rather be
ragged than a doll baby. Go home and tell them to put you in a glass
case. Look at me—look at me—look at me!”
Mary executed a wild dance around the dismayed and bewildered Rilla,
flirting her ragged skirt and vociferating “Look at me—look at me”
until poor Rilla was dizzy. But as the latter tried to edge away
towards the gate Mary pounced on her again.
“You give me that basket,” she ordered with a grimace. Mary was past
mistress in the art of “making faces.” She could give her countenance a
most grotesque and unearthly appearance out of which her strange,
brilliant, white eyes gleamed with weird effect.
“I won’t,” gasped Rilla, frightened but staunch. “You let me go, Mary
Vanth.”
Mary let go for a minute and looked around her. Just inside the gate
was a small “flake,” on which a half a dozen large codfish were drying.
One of Mr. Meredith’s parishioners had presented him with them one day,
perhaps in lieu of the subscription he was supposed to pay to the
stipend and never did. Mr. Meredith had thanked him and then forgotten
all about the fish, which would have promptly spoiled had not the
indefatigable Mary prepared them for drying and rigged up the “flake”
herself on which to dry them.
Mary had a diabolical inspiration. She flew to the “flake” and seized
the largest fish there—a huge, flat thing, nearly as big as herself.
With a whoop she swooped down on the terrified Rilla, brandishing her
weird missile. Rilla’s courage gave way. To be lambasted with a dried
codfish was such an unheard-of thing that Rilla could not face it. With
a shriek she dropped her basket and fled. The beautiful berries, which
Susan had so tenderly selected for the minister, rolled in a rosy
torrent over the dusty road and were trodden on by the flying feet of
pursuer and pursued. The basket and contents were no longer in Mary’s
mind. She thought only of the delight of giving Rilla Blythe the scare
of her life. She would teach _her_ to come giving herself airs because
of her fine clothes.
Rilla flew down the hill and along the street. Terror lent wings to her
feet, and she just managed to keep ahead of Mary, who was somewhat
hampered by her own laughter, but who had breath enough to give
occasional blood-curdling whoops as she ran, flourishing her codfish in
the air. Through the Glen street they swept, while everybody ran to the
windows and gates to see them. Mary felt she was making a tremendous
sensation and enjoyed it. Rilla, blind with terror and spent of breath,
felt that she could run no longer. In another instant that terrible
girl would be on her with the codfish. At this point the poor mite
stumbled and fell into the mud-puddle at the end of the street just as
Miss Cornelia came out of Carter Flagg’s store.
Miss Cornelia took the whole situation in at a glance. So did Mary. The
latter stopped short in her mad career and before Miss Cornelia could
speak she had whirled around and was running up as fast as she had run
down. Miss Cornelia’s lips tightened ominously, but she knew it was no
use to think of chasing her. So she picked up poor, sobbing,
dishevelled Rilla instead and took her home. Rilla was heart-broken.
Her dress and slippers and hat were ruined and her six year old pride
had received terrible bruises.
Susan, white with indignation, heard Miss Cornelia’s story of Mary
Vance’s exploit.
“Oh, the hussy—oh, the littly hussy!” she said, as she carried Rilla
away for purification and comfort.
“This thing has gone far enough, Anne dearie,” said Miss Cornelia
resolutely. “Something must be done. _Who_ is this creature who is
staying at the manse and where does she come from?”
“I understood she was a little girl from over-harbour who was visiting
at the manse,” answered Anne, who saw the comical side of the codfish
chase and secretly thought Rilla was rather vain and needed a lesson or
two.
“I know all the over-harbour families who come to our church and that
imp doesn’t belong to any of them,” retorted Miss Cornelia. “She is
almost in rags and when she goes to church she wears Faith Meredith’s
old clothes. There’s some mystery here, and I’m going to investigate
it, since it seems nobody else will. I believe she was at the bottom of
their goings-on in Warren Mead’s spruce bush the other day. Did you
hear of their frightening his mother into a fit?”
“No. I knew Gilbert had been called to see her, but I did not hear what
the trouble was.”
“Well, you know she has a weak heart. And one day last week, when she
was all alone on the veranda, she heard the most awful shrieks of
‘murder’ and ‘help’ coming from the bush—positively frightful sounds,
Anne dearie. Her heart gave out at once. Warren heard them himself at
the barn, and went straight to the bush to investigate, and there he
found all the manse children sitting on a fallen tree and screaming
‘murder’ at the top of their lungs. They told him they were only in fun
and didn’t think anyone would hear them. They were just playing Indian
ambush. Warren went back to the house and found his poor mother
unconscious on the veranda.”
Susan, who had returned, sniffed contemptuously.
“I think she was very far from being unconscious, Mrs. Marshall
Elliott, and that you may tie to. I have been hearing of Amelia
Warren’s weak heart for forty years. She had it when she was twenty.
She enjoys making a fuss and having the doctor, and any excuse will
do.”
“I don’t think Gilbert thought her attack very serious,” said Anne.
“Oh, that may very well be,” said Miss Cornelia. “But the matter has
made an awful lot of talk and the Meads being Methodists makes it that
much worse. What is going to become of those children? Sometimes I
can’t sleep at nights for thinking about them, Anne dearie. I really do
question if they get enough to eat, even, for their father is so lost
in dreams that he doesn’t often remember he has a stomach, and that
lazy old woman doesn’t bother cooking what she ought. They are just
running wild and now that school is closing they’ll be worse than
ever.”
“They do have jolly times,” said Anne, laughing over the recollections
of some Rainbow Valley happenings that had come to her ears. “And they
are all brave and frank and loyal and truthful.”
“That’s a true word, Anne dearie, and when you come to think of all the
trouble in the church those two tattling, deceitful youngsters of the
last minister’s made, I’m inclined to overlook a good deal in the
Merediths.”
“When all is said and done, Mrs. Dr. dear, they are very nice
children,” said Susan. “They have got plenty of original sin in them
and that I will admit, but maybe it is just as well, for if they had
not they might spoil from over-sweetness. Only I do think it is not
proper for them to play in a graveyard and that I will maintain.”
“But they really play quite quietly there,” excused Anne. “They don’t
run and yell as they do elsewhere. Such howls as drift up here from
Rainbow Valley sometimes! Though I fancy my own small fry bear a
valiant part in them. They had a sham battle there last night and had
to ‘roar’ themselves, because they had no artillery to do it, so Jem
says. Jem is passing through the stage where all boys hanker to be
soldiers.”
“Well, thank goodness, he’ll never be a soldier,” said Miss Cornelia.
“I never approved of our boys going to that South African fracas. But
it’s over, and not likely anything of the kind will ever happen again.
I think the world is getting more sensible. As for the Merediths, I’ve
said many a time and I say it again, if Mr. Meredith had a wife all
would be well.”
“He called twice at the Kirks’ last week, so I am told,” said Susan.
“Well,” said Miss Cornelia thoughtfully, “as a rule, I don’t approve of
a minister marrying in his congregation. It generally spoils him. But
in this case it would do no harm, for every one likes Elizabeth Kirk
and nobody else is hankering for the job of stepmothering those
youngsters. Even the Hill girls balk at that. They haven’t been found
laying traps for Mr. Meredith. Elizabeth would make him a good wife if
he only thought so. But the trouble is, she really is homely and, Anne
dearie, Mr. Meredith, abstracted as he is, has an eye for a
good-looking woman, man-like. He isn’t _so_ other-worldly when it comes
to that, believe _me_.”
“Elizabeth Kirk is a very nice person, but they do say that people have
nearly frozen to death in her mother’s spare-room bed before now, Mrs.
Dr. dear,” said Susan darkly. “If I felt I had any right to express an
opinion concerning such a solemn matter as a minister’s marriage I
would say that I think Elizabeth’s cousin Sarah, over-harbour, would
make Mr. Meredith a better wife.”
“Why, Sarah Kirk is a Methodist,” said Miss Cornelia, much as if Susan
had suggested a Hottentot as a manse bride.
“She would likely turn Presbyterian if she married Mr. Meredith,”
retorted Susan.
Miss Cornelia shook her head. Evidently with her it was, once a
Methodist, always a Methodist.
“Sarah Kirk is entirely out of the question,” she said positively. “And
so is Emmeline Drew—though the Drews are all trying to make the match.
They are literally throwing poor Emmeline at his head, and he hasn’t
the least idea of it.”
“Emmeline Drew has no gumption, I must allow,” said Susan. “She is the
kind of woman, Mrs. Dr. dear, who would put a hot-water bottle in your
bed on a dog-night and then have her feelings hurt because you were not
grateful. And her mother was a very poor housekeeper. Did you ever hear
the story of her dishcloth? She lost her dishcloth one day. But the
next day she found it. Oh, yes, Mrs. Dr. dear, she found it, in the
goose at the dinner-table, mixed up with the stuffing. Do you think a
woman like that would do for a minister’s mother-in-law? I do not. But
no doubt I would be better employed in mending little Jem’s trousers
than in talking gossip about my neighbours. He tore them something
scandalous last night in Rainbow Valley.”
“Where is Walter?” asked Anne.
“He is up to no good, I fear, Mrs. Dr. dear. He is in the attic writing
something in an exercise book. And he has not done as well in
arithmetic this term as he should, so the teacher tells me. Too well I
know the reason why. He has been writing silly rhymes when he should
have been doing his sums. I am afraid that boy is going to be a poet,
Mrs. Dr. dear.”
“He is a poet now, Susan.”
“Well, you take it real calm, Mrs. Dr. dear. I suppose it is the best
way, when a person has the strength. I had an uncle who began by being
a poet and ended up by being a tramp. Our family were dreadfully
ashamed of him.”
“You don’t seem to think very highly of poets, Susan,” said Anne,
laughing.
“Who does, Mrs. Dr. dear?” asked Susan in genuine astonishment.
“What about Milton and Shakespeare? And the poets of the Bible?”
“They tell me Milton could not get along with his wife, and Shakespeare
was no more than respectable by times. As for the Bible, of course
things were different in those sacred days—although I never had a high
opinion of King David, say what you will. I never knew any good to come
of writing poetry, and I hope and pray that blessed boy will outgrow
the tendency. If he does not—we must see what emulsion of cod-liver oil
will do.”