“I’m glad of that. They’ll keep an eye on Walter and see that he doesn’t study too hard. I suppose,” continued Miss Cornelia, with a side glance at Susan, “that after the snub I got a few minutes ago it will not be safe for me to suggest that Jerry Meredith is making sheep’s eyes at Nan.”
Susan ignored this and Mrs. Blythe laughed again.
“Dear Miss Cornelia, I have my hands full, haven’t I? — with all these boys and girls sweethearting around me? If I took it seriously it would quite crush me. But I don’t — it is too hard yet to realize that they’re grown up. When I look at those two tall sons of mine I wonder if they can possibly be the fat, sweet, dimpled babies I kissed and cuddled and sang to slumber the other day — only the other day, Miss Cornelia. Wasn’t Jem the dearest baby in the old House of Dreams? and now he’s a B.A. and accused of courting.”
“We’re all growing older,” sighed Miss Cornelia.
“The only part of me that feels old,” said Mrs. Blythe, “is the ankle I broke when Josie Pye dared me to walk the Barry ridgepole in the Green Gables days. I have an ache in it when the wind is east. I won’t admit that it is rheumatism, but it does ache. As for the children, they and the Merediths are planning a gay summer before they have to go back to studies in the fall. They are such a fun-loving little crowd. They keep this house in a perpetual whirl of merriment.”
“Is Rilla going to Queen’s when Shirley goes back?”
“It isn’t decided yet. I rather fancy not. Her father thinks she is not quite strong enough — she has rather outgrown her strength — she’s really absurdly tall for a girl not yet fifteen. I am not anxious to have her go — why, it would be terrible not to have a single one of my babies home with me next winter. Susan and I would fall to fighting with each other to break the monotony.”
Susan smiled at this pleasantry. The idea of her fighting with “Mrs. Dr. dear!”
“Does Rilla herself want to go?” asked Miss Cornelia.
“No. The truth is, Rilla is the only one of my flock who isn’t ambitious. I really wish she had a little more ambition. She has no serious ideals at all — her sole aspiration seems to be to have a good time.”
“And why should she not have it, Mrs. Dr. dear?” cried Susan, who could not bear to hear a single word against anyone of the Ingleside folk, even from one of themselves. “A young girl should have a good time, and that I will maintain. There will be time enough for her to think of Latin and Greek.”
“I should like to see a little sense of responsibility in her, Susan. And you know yourself that she is abominably vain.”
“She has something to be vain about,” retorted Susan. “She is the prettiest girl in Glen St. Mary. Do you think that all those over-harbour MacAllisters and Crawfords and Elliotts could scare up a skin like Rilla’s in four generations? They could not. No, Mrs. Dr. dear, I know my place but I cannot allow you to run down Rilla. Listen to this, Mrs. Marshall Elliott.”
Susan had found a chance to get square with Miss Cornelia for her digs at the children’s love affairs. She read the item with gusto.
“‘Miller Douglas has decided not to go West. He says old P.E.I. is good enough for him and he will continue to farm for his aunt, Mrs. Alec Davis.’”
Susan looked keenly at Miss Cornelia.
“I have heard, Mrs. Marshall Elliott, that Miller is courting Mary Vance.”
This shot pierced Miss Cornelia’s armour. Her sonsy face flushed.
“I won’t have Miller Douglas hanging round Mary,” she said crisply. “He comes of a low family. His father was a sort of outcast from the Douglases — they never really counted him in — and his mother was one of those terrible Dillons from the Harbour Head.”
“I think I have heard, Mrs. Marshall Elliott, that Mary Vance’s own parents were not what you could call aristocratic.”
“Mary Vance has had a good bringing up and she is a smart, clever, capable girl,” retorted Miss Cornelia. “She is not going to throw herself away on Miller Douglas, believe me! She knows my opinion on the matter and Mary has never disobeyed me yet.”
“Well, I do not think you need worry, Mrs. Marshall Elliott, for Mrs. Alec Davis is as much against it as you could be, and says no nephew of hers is ever going to marry a nameless nobody like Mary Vance.”
Susan returned to her mutton, feeling that she had got the best of it in this passage of arms, and read another “note.”
“‘We are pleased to hear that Miss Oliver has been engaged as teacher for another year. Miss Oliver will spend her well-earned vacation at her home in Lowbridge.’”
“I’m so glad Gertrude is going to stay,” said Mrs. Blythe. “We would miss her horribly. And she has an excellent influence over Rilla who worships her. They are chums, in spite of the difference in their ages.”
“I thought I heard she was going to be married?”
“I believe it was talked of but I understand it is postponed for a year.”
“Who is the young man?”
“Robert Grant. He is a young lawyer in Charlottetown. I hope Gertrude will be happy. She has had a sad life, with much bitterness in it, and she feels things with a terrible keenness. Her first youth is gone and she is practically alone in the world. This new love that has come into her life seems such a wonderful thing to her that I think she hardly dares believe in its permanence. When her marriage had to be put off she was quite in despair — though it certainly wasn’t Mr. Grant’s fault. There were complications in the settlement of his father’s estate — his father died last winter — and he could not marry till the tangles were unravelled. But I think Gertrude felt it was a bad omen and that her happiness would somehow elude her yet.”
“It does not do, Mrs. Dr. dear, to set your affections too much on a man,” remarked Susan solemnly.
“Mr. Grant is quite as much in love with Gertrude as she is with him, Susan. It is not he whom she distrusts — it is fate. She has a little mystic streak in her — I suppose some people would call her superstitious. She has an odd belief in dreams and we have not been able to laugh it out of her. I must own, too, that some of her dreams — but there, it would not do to let Gilbert hear me hinting such heresy. What have you found of much interest, Susan?”
Susan had given an exclamation.
“Listen to this, Mrs. Dr. dear. ‘Mrs. Sophia Crawford has given up her house at Lowbridge and will make her home in future with her niece, Mrs. Albert Crawford.’ Why that is my own cousin Sophia, Mrs. Dr. dear. We quarrelled when we were children over who should get a Sunday-school card with the words ‘God is Love,’ wreathed in rosebuds, on it, and have never spoken to each other since. And now she is coming to live right across the road from us.”
“You will have to make up the old quarrel, Susan. It will never do to be at outs with your neighbours.”
“Cousin Sophia began the quarrel, so she can begin the making up also, Mrs. Dr. dear,” said Susan loftily. “If she does I hope I am a good enough Christian to meet her halfway. She is not a cheerful person and has been a wet blanket all her life. The last time I saw her, her face had a thousand wrinkles — maybe more, maybe less — from worrying and foreboding. She howled dreadful at her first husband’s funeral but she married again in less than a year. The next note, I see, describes the special service in our church last Sunday night and says the decorations were very beautiful.”
“Speaking of that reminds me that Mr. Pryor strongly disapproves of flowers in church,” said Miss Cornelia. “I always said there would be trouble when that man moved here from Lowbridge. He should never have been put in as elder — it was a mistake and we shall live to rue it, believe me! I have heard that he has said that if the girls continue to ‘mess up the pulpit with