“Just about as bad as Parker Pringle,” said Aunt Mouser. “He has his dog sit at the table with a chair and napkin of his own. Well, sooner or later there’ll be a judgment.”
It was a large party, for all the married Nelson girls and their husbands were there, besides ushers and bridesmaids; and it was a merry one, in spite of Aunt Mouser’s “felicities” … or perhaps because of them. Nobody took Aunt Mouser very seriously; she was evidently a joke among the young fry. When she said, on being introduced to Gordon Hill, “Well, well, you ain’t a bit like I expected. I always thought Sally would pick out a tall handsome man,” ripples of laughter ran through the porch. Gordon Hill, who was on the short side and called no more than “pleasant-faced” by his best friends, knew he would never hear the last of it. When she said to Dot Fraser, “Well, well, a new dress every time I see you! All I hope is your father’s purse will be able to stand it for a few years yet,” Dot could, of course, have boiled her in oil, but some of the other girls found it amusing. And when Aunt Mouser mournfully remarked, apropos of the preparations of the wedding-dinner, “All I hope is everybody will get her teaspoons afterwards. Five were missing after Gertie Paul’s wedding. They never turned up,” Mrs. Nelson, who had borrowed three dozen and the sisters-in-law she had borrowed them from all looked harried. But Dr. Nelson hawhawed cheerfully.
“We’ll make everyone turn out their pockets before they go, Aunt Grace.”
“Ah, you may laugh, Samuel. It is no joking-matter to have anything like that happen in the family. Some one must have those teaspoons. I never go anywhere but I keep my eyes open for them. I’d know them wherever I saw them, though it was twenty-eight years ago. Poor Nora was just a baby then. You remember you had her there, Jane, in a little white embroidered dress? Twenty-eight years! Ah, Nora, you’re getting on, though in this light you don’t show your age so much.”
Nora did not join in the laugh that followed. She looked as if she might flash lightning at any moment. In spite of her daffodil-hued dress and the pearls in her dark hair, she made Anne think of a black moth. In direct contrast with Sally, who was a cool, snowy blonde, Nora Nelson had magnificent black hair, dusky eyes, heavy black brows and velvety red cheeks. Her nose was beginning to look a trifle hawk-like and she had never been accounted pretty, but Anne felt an odd attraction to her in spite of her sulky, smoldering expression. She felt that she would prefer Nora as a friend to the popular Sally.
They had a dance after dinner and music and laughter came tumbling out of the broad low windows of the old stone house in a flood. At ten Nora had disappeared. Anne was a little tired of the noise and merriment. She slipped through the hall to a back door that opened almost on the bay, and flitted down a flight of rocky steps to the shore, past a little grove of pointed firs. How divine the cool salt air was after the sultry evening! How exquisite the silver patterns of moonlight on the bay! How dreamlike that ship which had sailed at the rising of the moon and was now approaching the harbor bar! It was a night when you might expect to stray into a dance of mermaids.
Nora was hunched up in the grim black shadow of a rock by the water’s edge, looking more like a thunderstorm than ever.
“May I sit with you for a while?” asked Anne. “I’m a little tired of dancing and it’s a shame to miss this wonderful night. I envy you with the whole harbor for a back yard like this.”
“What would you feel like at a time like this if you had no beau?” asked Nora abruptly and sullenly. “Or any likelihood of one,” she added still more sullenly.
“I think it must be your own fault if you haven’t,” said Anne, sitting down beside her. Nora found herself telling Anne her troubles. There was always something about Anne that made people tell her their troubles.
“You’re saying that to be polite of course. You needn’t. You know as well as I do that I’m not a girl men are likely to fall in love with … I’m ‘the plain Miss Nelson.’ It isn’t my fault that I haven’t anybody. I couldn’t stand it in there any longer. I had to come down here and just let myself be unhappy. I’m tired of smiling and being agreeable to every one and pretending not to care when they give me digs about not being married. I’m not going to pretend any longer. I do care … I care horribly. I’m the only one of the Nelson girls left. Five of us are married or will be tomorrow. You heard Aunt Mouser casting my age up to me at the dinnertable. And I heard her telling Mother before dinner that I had ‘aged quite a bit’ since last summer. Of course I have. I’m twenty-eight. In twelve more years I’ll be forty. How will I endure life at forty, Anne, if I haven’t got any roots of my own by that time?”
“I wouldn’t mind what a foolish old woman said.”
“Oh, wouldn’t you? You haven’t a nose like mine. I’ll be as beaky as Father in ten more years. And I suppose you wouldn’t care, either, if you’d waited years for a man to propose … and he just wouldn’t?”
“Oh, yes, I think I would care about that.”
“Well, that’s my predicament exactly. Oh, I know you’ve heard of Jim Wilcox and me. It’s such an old story. He’s been hanging around me for years … but he’s never said anything about getting married.”
“Do you care for him?”
“Of course I care. I’ve always pretended I didn’t but, as I’ve told you, I’m through with pretending. And he’s never been near me since last January. We had a fight … but we’ve had hundreds of fights. He always came back before … but he hasn’t come this time … and he never will. He doesn’t want to. Look at his house across the bay, shining in the moonlight. I suppose he’s there … and I’m here … and all the harbor between us. That’s the way it always will be. It … it’s terrible! And I can’t do a thing.”
“If you sent for him, wouldn’t he come back?”
“Send for him! Do you think I’d do that? I’d die first. If he wants to come, there’s nothing to prevent him coming. If he doesn’t, I don’t want him to. Yes, I do … I do! I love Jim … and I want to get married. I want to have a home of my own and be ‘Mrs.’ and shut Aunt Mouser’s mouth. Oh, I wish I could be Barnabas or Saul for a few moments just to swear at her! If she calls me ‘poor Nora’ again I’ll throw a scuttle at her. But after all, she only says what everybody thinks. Mother has despaired long ago of my ever marrying, so she leaves me alone, but the rest rag me. I hate Sally … of course I’m dreadful . . . but I hate her. She’s getting a nice husband and a lovely home. It isn’t fair she should have everything and I nothing. She isn’t better or cleverer or much prettier than me … only luckier. I suppose you think I’m awful … not that I care what you think.”
“I think you’re very, very tired, after all these weeks of preparation and strain, and that things which were always hard have become too hard all at once.”
“You understand … oh, yes, I always knew you would. I’ve wanted to be friends with you, Anne Shirley. I like the way you laugh. I’ve always wished I could laugh like that. I’m not as sulky as I look … it’s these eyebrows. I really think they’re what scare the men away. I never had a real girl friend in my life. But of course I always had Jim. We’ve been … friends … ever since we were kids. Why, I used to put a light up in that little window in the attic whenever I wanted him over particularly and he’d sail across at once. We went everywhere together. No other boy ever had a chance … not that any one wanted it, I suppose. And now it’s all over. He was just tired of me and was glad of the excuse of a quarrel to get free. Oh, won’t I hate you tomorrow because I’ve told you this!”
“Why?”
“We always hate people who surprise our secrets, I suppose,” said Nora drearily. “But there’s something gets