Anne gave an involuntary shriek of dismay, but there was no real cause for alarm. The pond at its deepest would not come up to Gerald’s shoulders and where he had gone over, it was little deeper than his waist. He had somehow got on his feet and was standing there rather foolishly, with his aureole plastered drippingly down on his head, when Anne’s shriek was reechoed behind her, and Geraldine, in her nightgown, tore through the trees and out to the edge of the little wooden platform to which the flat was commonly moored.
With a despairing shriek of “Gerald!” she took a flying leap that landed her with a tremendous splash by Gerald’s side and almost gave him another ducking.
“Gerald, are you drowned?” cried Geraldine. “Are you drowned, darling?”
“No … no … darling,” Gerald assured her through his chattering teeth.
They embraced and kissed passionately.
“Children, come in here this minute,” said Anne.
They waded to the shore. The September day, warm in the morning, had turned cold and windy in the late afternoon. They shivered terribly … their faces were blue. Anne, without a word of censure, hurried them home, got off their wet clothes and got them into Mrs. Raymond’s bed, with hot-water bottles at their feet. They still continued to shiver. Had they got a chill? Were they headed for pneumonia?
“You should have taken better care of us, Miss Shirley,” said Gerald, still chattering.
“‘Course you should,” said Geraldine.
A distracted Anne flew downstairs and telephoned for the doctor. By the time he came the twins had got warm, and he assured Anne that they were in no danger. If they stayed in bed till tomorrow they would be all right.
He met Mrs. Raymond coming up from the station on the way back, and it was a pale, almost hysterical lady who presently rushed in.
“Oh, Miss Shirley, how could you have let my little treasures get into such danger!”
“That’s just what we told her, Mother,” chorused the twins.
“I trusted you … I told you …”
“I hardly see how I was to blame, Mrs. Raymond,” said Anne, with eyes as cold as gray mist. “You will realize this, I think, when you are calmer. The children are quite all right … I simply sent for the doctor as a precautionary measure. If Gerald and Geraldine had obeyed me, this would not have happened.”
“I thought a teacher would have a little authority over children,” said Mrs. Raymond bitterly.
“Over children perhaps … but not young demons,” thought Anne. She said only,
“Since you are here, Mrs. Raymond, I think I will go home. I don’t think I can be of any further service and I have some school work to do this evening.”
As one child the twins hurled themselves out of bed and flung their arms around her.
“I hope there’ll be a funeral every week,” cried Gerald. “‘Cause I like you, Miss Shirley, and I hope you’ll come and look after us every time Mother goes away.”
“So do I,” said Geraldine.
“I like you ever so much better than Miss Prouty.”
“Oh, ever so much,” said Geraldine.
“Will you put us in a story?” demanded Gerald.
“Oh, do,” said Geraldine.
“I’m sure you meant well,” said Mrs. Raymond tremulously.
“Thank you,” said Anne icily, trying to detach the twins’ clinging arms.
“Oh, don’t let’s quarrel about it,” begged Mrs. Raymond, her enormous eyes filling with tears. “I can’t endure quarreling with anybody.”
“Certainly not.” Anne was at her stateliest and Anne could be very stately. “I don’t think there is the slightest necessity for quarreling. I think Gerald and Geraldine have quite enjoyed the day, though I don’t suppose poor little Ivy Trent did.”
Anne went home feeling years older.
“To think I ever thought Davy was mischievous,” she reflected.
She found Rebecca in the twilight garden gathering late pansies.
“Rebecca Dew, I used to think the adage, ‘Children should be seen and not heard,’ entirely too harsh. But I see its points now.”
“My poor darling. I’ll get you a nice supper,” said Rebecca Dew. And did not say, “I told you so.”
Chapter V
(Extract from letter to Gilbert.)
“Mrs. Raymond came down last night and, with tears in her eyes, begged me to forgive her for her ‘hasty behavior.’ ‘If you knew a mother’s heart, Miss Shirley, you would not find it hard to forgive.’
“I didn’t find it hard to forgive as it was … there is really something about Mrs. Raymond I can’t help liking and she was a duck about the Dramatic Club. Just the same I did not say, ‘Any Saturday you want to be away, I’ll look after your offspring.’ One learns by experience … even a person so incorrigibly optimistic and trustful as myself.
“I find that a certain section of Summerside society is at present very much exercised over the loves of Jarvis Morrow and Dovie Westcott … who, as Rebecca Dew says, have been engaged for over a year but can’t get any ‘forrader.’ Aunt Kate, who is a distant aunt of Dovie’s … to be exact, I think she’s the aunt of a second cousin of Dovie’s on the mother’s side … is deeply interested in the affair because she thinks Jarvis is such an excellent match for Dovie … and also, I suspect, because she hates Franklin Westcott and would like to see him routed, horse, foot and artillery. Not that Aunt Kate would admit she ‘hated’ anybody, but Mrs. Franklin Westcott was a very dear girlhood friend of hers and Aunt Kate solemnly avers that he murdered her.
“I am interested in it, partly because I’m very fond of Jarvis and moderately fond of Dovie and partly, I begin to suspect, because I am an inveterate meddler in other people’s business … always with excellent intentions, of course.
“The situation is briefly this: — Franklin Westcott is a tall, somber, hard-bitten merchant, close and unsociable. He lives in a big, old-fashioned house called Elmcroft just outside the town on the upper harbor road. I have met him once or twice but really know very little about him, except that he has an uncanny habit of saying something and then going off into a long chuckle of soundless laughter. He has never gone to church since hymns came in and he insists on having all his windows open even in winter storms. I confess to a sneaking sympathy with him in this, but I am probably the only person in Summerside who would. He has got into the habit of being a leading citizen and nothing municipal dares to be done without his approval.
“His wife is dead. It is common report that she was a slave, unable to call her soul her own. Franklin told her, it is said, when he brought her home that he would be master.
“Dovie, whose real name is Sibyl, is his only child … a very pretty, plump, lovable girl of nineteen, with a red mouth always falling a little open over her small white teeth, glints of chestnut in her brown hair, alluring blue eyes and sooty lashes so long you wonder if they