MARY BRINGS EVIL TIDINGS
Mary Vance, whom Mrs. Elliott had sent up to the manse on an errand,
came tripping down Rainbow Valley on her way to Ingleside where she was
to spend the afternoon with Nan and Di as a Saturday treat. Nan and Di
had been picking spruce gum with Faith and Una in the manse woods and
the four of them were now sitting on a fallen pine by the brook, all,
it must be admitted, chewing rather vigorously. The Ingleside twins
were not allowed to chew spruce gum anywhere but in the seclusion of
Rainbow Valley, but Faith and Una were unrestricted by such rules of
etiquette and cheerfully chewed it everywhere, at home and abroad, to
the very proper horror of the Glen. Faith had been chewing it in church
one day; but Jerry had realized the enormity of _that_, and had given
her such an older-brotherly scolding that she never did it again.
“I was so hungry I just felt as if I had to chew something,” she
protested. “You know well enough what breakfast was like, Jerry
Meredith. I _couldn’t_ eat scorched porridge and my stomach just felt
so queer and empty. The gum helped a lot—and I didn’t chew _very_ hard.
I didn’t make any noise and I never cracked the gum once.”
“You mustn’t chew gum in church, anyhow,” insisted Jerry. “Don’t let me
catch you at it again.”
“You chewed yourself in prayer-meeting last week,” cried Faith.
“_That’s_ different,” said Jerry loftily. “Prayer-meeting isn’t on
Sunday. Besides, I sat away at the back in a dark seat and nobody saw
me. You were sitting right up front where every one saw you. And I took
the gum out of my mouth for the last hymn and stuck it on the back of
the pew right up in front where every one saw you. Then I came away and
forgot it. I went back to get it next morning, but it was gone. I
suppose Rod Warren swiped it. And it was a dandy chew.”
Mary Vance walked down the Valley with her head held high. She had on a
new blue velvet cap with a scarlet rosette in it, a coat of navy blue
cloth and a little squirrel-fur muff. She was very conscious of her new
clothes and very well pleased with herself. Her hair was elaborately
crimped, her face was quite plump, her cheeks rosy, her white eyes
shining. She did not look much like the forlorn and ragged waif the
Merediths had found in the old Taylor barn. Una tried not to feel
envious. Here was Mary with a new velvet cap, but she and Faith had to
wear their shabby old gray tams again this winter. Nobody ever thought
of getting them new ones and they were afraid to ask their father for
them for fear that he might be short of money and then he would feel
badly. Mary had told them once that ministers were always short of
money, and found it “awful hard” to make ends meet. Since then Faith
and Una would have gone in rags rather than ask their father for
anything if they could help it. They did not worry a great deal over
their shabbiness; but it was rather trying to see Mary Vance coming out
in such style and putting on such airs about it, too. The new squirrel
muff was really the last straw. Neither Faith nor Una had ever had a
muff, counting themselves lucky if they could compass mittens without
holes in them. Aunt Martha could not see to darn holes and though Una
tried to, she made sad cobbling. Somehow, they could not make their
greeting of Mary very cordial. But Mary did not mind or notice that;
she was not overly sensitive. She vaulted lightly to a seat on the pine
tree, and laid the offending muff on a bough. Una saw that it was lined
with shirred red satin and had red tassels. She looked down at her own
rather purple, chapped, little hands and wondered if she would ever,
_ever_ be able to put them into a muff like that.
“Give us a chew,” said Mary companionably. Nan, Di and Faith all
produced an amber-hued knot or two from their pockets and passed them
to Mary. Una sat very still. She had four lovely big knots in the
pocket of her tight, thread-bare little jacket, but she wasn’t going to
give one of them to Mary Vance—not one. Let Mary pick her own gum!
People with squirrel muffs needn’t expect to get everything in the
world.
“Great day, isn’t it?” said Mary, swinging her legs, the better,
perhaps, to display new boots with very smart cloth tops. Una tucked
_her_ feet under her. There was a hole in the toe of one of her boots
and both laces were much knotted. But they were the best she had. Oh,
this Mary Vance! Why hadn’t they left her in the old barn?
Una never felt badly because the Ingleside twins were better dressed
than she and Faith were. _They_ wore their pretty clothes with careless
grace and never seemed to think about them at all. Somehow, they did
not make other people feel shabby. But when Mary Vance was dressed up
she seemed fairly to exude clothes—to walk in an atmosphere of
clothes—to make everybody else feel and think clothes. Una, as she sat
there in the honey-tinted sunshine of the gracious December afternoon,
was acutely and miserably conscious of everything she had on—the faded
tam, which was yet her best, the skimpy jacket she had worn for three
winters, the holes in her skirt and her boots, the shivering
insufficiency of her poor little undergarments. Of course, Mary was
going out for a visit and she was not. But even if she had been she had
nothing better to put on and in this lay the sting.
“Say, this is great gum. Listen to me cracking it. There ain’t any gum
spruces down at Four Winds,” said Mary. “Sometimes I just hanker after
a chew. Mrs. Elliott won’t let me chew gum if she sees me. She says it
ain’t lady-like. This lady-business puzzles me. I can’t get on to all
its kinks. Say, Una, what’s the matter with you? Cat got your tongue?”
“No,” said Una, who could not drag her fascinated eyes from that
squirrel muff. Mary leaned past her, picked it up and thrust it into
Una’s hands.
“Stick your paws in that for a while,” she ordered. “They look sorter
pinched. Ain’t that a dandy muff? Mrs. Elliott give it to me last week
for a birthday present. I’m to get the collar at Christmas. I heard her
telling Mr. Elliott that.”
“Mrs. Elliott is very good to you,” said Faith.
“You bet she is. And _I’m_ good to her, too,” retorted Mary. “I work
like a nigger to make it easy for her and have everything just as she
likes it. We was made for each other. ‘Tisn’t every one could get along
with her as well as I do. She’s pizen neat, but so am I, and so we
agree fine.”
“I told you she would never whip you.”
“So you did. She’s never tried to lay a finger on me and I ain’t never
told a lie to her—not one, true’s you live. She combs me down with her
tongue sometimes though, but that just slips off _me_ like water off a
duck’s back. Say, Una, why didn’t you hang on to the muff?”
Una had put it back on the bough.
“My hands aren’t cold, thank you,” she said stiffly.
“Well, if you’re satisfied, _I_ am. Say, old Kitty Alec has come back
to church as meek as Moses and nobody knows why. But everybody is
saying it was Faith brought Norman Douglas out. His housekeeper says
you went there and gave him an awful tongue-lashing. Did you?”
“I went and asked him to come to church,” said Faith uncomfortably.
“Fancy your spunk!” said Mary admiringly. “_I_ wouldn’t have dared do
that and I’m not so slow. Mrs. Wilson says the two of you jawed
something scandalous, but you come off best and then he just turned
round and like to eat you up. Say, is your father going to preach here
to-morrow?”
“No. He’s going to exchange with Mr. Perry from Charlottetown. Father
went to town this morning and Mr. Perry is coming out to-night.”
“I _thought_ there was something in the wind, though old Martha
wouldn’t give me any satisfaction. But I felt sure she wouldn’t have
been killing that rooster for nothing.”
“What rooster? What do you mean?” cried Faith, turning pale.
“_I_ don’t know what rooster. I didn’t see it. When she took the butter
Mrs. Elliott sent up she said she’d been out to the barn killing a
rooster for dinner tomorrow.”
Faith sprang down from the pine.
“It’s Adam—we have no other rooster—she has killed Adam.”
“Now, don’t fly off the handle. Martha said the butcher at the Glen had
no meat this week and she had to have something and the hens were all
laying and too poor.”
“If she has killed Adam—” Faith began to run up the hill.
Mary shrugged her shoulders.
“She’ll go crazy now. She was so fond of that Adam. He ought to have
been in the pot long ago—he’ll be as tough as sole leather. But _I_
wouldn’t like to be in Martha’s shoes. Faith’s just white with rage;
Una, you’d better go after her and try to peacify her.”
Mary had gone a few steps with the Blythe girls when Una suddenly
turned and ran after her.
“Here’s some gum for you, Mary,” she said, with a little repentant
catch in her voice, thrusting all her four knots into Mary’s hands,
“and I’m glad you have such a pretty muff.”
“Why, thanks,” said Mary, rather taken by surprise. To the Blythe
girls, after Una had gone, she said, “Ain’t she a queer little mite?
But I’ve always said she had a good heart.”