“I’ve heard you write,” said Miss Valentine anxiously, as they went down the lane. “You won’t put the things I’ve told you in your stories, will you?”
“You may be sure I won’t,” promised Anne.
“Do you think it is really wrong … or dangerous … to speak ill of the dead?” whispered Miss Valentine a bit anxiously.
“I don’t suppose it’s exactly either,” said Anne. “Only … rather unfair … like hitting those who can’t defend themselves. But you didn’t say anything very dreadful of anybody, Miss Courtaloe.”
“I told you Nathan Pringle thought his wife was trying to poison him …”
“But you give her the benefit of the doubt …” and Miss Valentine went her way reassured.
Chapter VI
“I wended my way to the graveyard this evening,” wrote Anne to Gilbert after she got home. “I think ‘wend your way’ is a lovely phrase and I work it in whenever I can. It sounds funny to say I enjoyed my stroll in the graveyard but I really did. Miss Courtaloe’s stories were so funny. Comedy and tragedy are so mixed up in life, Gilbert. The only thing that haunts me is that tale of the two who lived together fifty years and hated each other all that time. I can’t believe they really did. Somebody has said that ‘hate is only love that has missed its way.’ I feel sure that under the hatred they really loved each other … just as I really loved you all those years I thought I hated you … and I think death would show it to them. I’m glad I found out in life. And I have found out there are some decent Pringles … dead ones.
“Last night when I went down late for a drink of water I found Aunt Kate buttermilking her face in the pantry. She asked me not to tell Chatty … she would think it so silly. I promised I wouldn’t.
“Elizabeth still comes for the milk, though the Woman is pretty well over her bronchitis. I wonder they let her, especially since old Mrs. Campbell is a Pringle. Last Saturday night Elizabeth … she was Betty that night I think … ran in singing when she left me and I distinctly heard the Woman say to her at the porch door, ‘It’s too near the Sabbath for you to be singing that song.’ I am sure that Woman would prevent Elizabeth from singing on any day if she could!
“Elizabeth had on a new dress that night, a dark wine color … they do dress her nicely … and she said wistfully, ‘I thought I looked a little bit pretty when I put it on tonight, Miss Shirley, and I wished father could see me. Of course he will see me in Tomorrow … but it sometimes seems so slow in coming. I wish we could hurry time a bit, Miss Shirley.’
“Now, dearest, I must work out some geometrical exercises. Geometry exercises have taken the place of what Rebecca calls my ‘literary efforts.’ The specter that haunts my daily path now is the dread of an exercise popping up in class that I can’t do. And what would the Pringles say then, oh, then … oh, what would the Pringles say then!
“Meanwhile, as you love me and the cat tribe, pray for a poor brokenhearted, illused Thomas cat. A mouse ran over Rebecca Dew’s foot in the pantry the other day and she has fumed ever since. ‘That Cat does nothing but eat and sleep and let mice overrun everything. This is the last straw.’ So she chivies him from pillar to post, routs him off his favorite cushion and … I know, for I caught her at it … assists him none too gently with her foot when she lets him out.”
Chapter VII
One Friday evening, at the end of a mild, sunny December day Anne went out to Lowvale to attend a turkey supper. Wilfred Bryce’s home was in Lowvale, where he lived with an uncle, and he had asked her shyly if she would go out with him after school, go to the turkey supper in the church and spend Saturday at his home. Anne agreed, hoping that she might be able to influence the uncle to let Wilfred keep on going to High School. Wilfred was afraid that he would not be able to go back after New Year. He was a clever, ambitious boy and Anne felt a special interest in him.
It could not be said that she enjoyed her visit overmuch, except in the pleasure it gave Wilfred. His uncle and aunt were a rather odd and uncouth pair. Saturday morning was windy and dark, with showers of snow, and at first Anne wondered how she was going to put in the day. She felt tired and sleepy after the late hours of the turkey supper; Wilfred had to help thrash; and there was not even a book in sight. Then she thought of the battered old seaman’s chest she had seen in the back of the hall upstairs and recalled Mrs. Stanton’s request. Mrs. Stanton was writing a history of Prince County and had asked Anne if she knew of, or could find, any old diaries or documents that might be helpful.
“The Pringles, of course, have lots that I could use,” she told Anne. “But I can’t ask them. You know the Pringles and Stantons have never been friends.”
“I can’t ask them either, unfortunately,” said Anne.
“Oh, I’m not expecting you to. All I want is for you to keep your eyes open when you are visiting round in other people’s homes and if you find or hear of any old diaries or maps or anything like that, try to get the loan of them for me. You’ve no idea what interesting things I’ve found in old diaries … little bits of real life that make the old pioneers live again. I want to get things like that for my book as well as statistics and genealogical tables.”
Anne asked Mrs. Bryce if they had any such old records. Mrs. Bryce shook her head.
“Not as I knows on. In course …” brightening up … “there’s old Uncle Andy’s chist up there. There might be something in it. He used to sail with old Captain Abraham Pringle. I’ll go out and ask Duncan if ye kin root in it.”
Duncan sent word back that she could “root” in it all she liked and if she found any “dockymints” she could have them. He’d been meaning to burn the hull contents anyway and take the chest for a tool-box. Anne accordingly rooted, but all she found was an old yellowed diary or “log” which Andy Bryce seemed to have kept all through his years at sea. Anne beguiled the stormy forenoon away by reading it with interest and amusement. Andy was learned in sea lore and had gone on many voyages with Captain Abraham Pringle, whom he evidently admired immensely. The diary was full of ill-spelled, ungrammatical tributes to the Captain’s courage and resourcefulness, especially in one wild enterprise of beating round the Horn. But his admiration had not, it seemed, extended to Abraham’s brother Myrom, who was also a captain but of a different ship.
“Up to Myrom Pringle’s tonight. His wife made him mad and he up and throwed a glass of water in her face.”
“Myrom is home. His ship was burned and they took to the boats. Nearly starved. In the end they et up Jonas Selkirk, who had shot himself. They lived on him till the Mary G. picked them up. Myrom told me this himself. Seemed to think it a good joke.”
Anne shivered over this last entry, which seemed all the more horrifying for Andy’s unimpassioned statement of the grim facts. Then she fell into a reverie. There was nothing in the book that could be of any use to Mrs. Stanton, but wouldn’t Miss Sarah and Miss Ellen be interested in it since it contained so much about their adored old father? Suppose she sent it to them? Duncan Bryce had said she could do as she liked with it.
No, she wouldn’t. Why should she try to please them or cater to their absurd pride, which was great enough now without any more food? They had set themselves to drive her out of the school and they were succeeding. They and their clan had beaten her.
Wilfred took her back to Windy Poplars that evening, both of them feeling happy. Anne had talked Duncan