Lucy Maud Montgomery, The Woman Behind The Books - Memoirs & Private Letters (Including The Complete Anne of Green Gables Series, Emily Starr Trilogy & The Blue Castle). Lucy Maud Montgomery

A tremor seemed to pass over his rubicund face, but no words came. Still, she was sure his mustaches were a little less defiant.

      “What would you think of a man who let his aunt … his only aunt … go to the poorhouse?” asked Trix.

      “And pastured his cow in the graveyard?” said Pringle. “Summerside hasn’t got over that sight yet.”

      “What would you think of a man who would write down in his diary every day what he had for dinner?” asked Trix.

      “The great Pepys did that,” said Dr. Carter with another smile. His voice sounded as if he would like to laugh. Perhaps after all he was not pompous, thought Anne … only young and shy and overserious. But she was feeling positively aghast. She had never meant things to go as far as this. She was finding out that it is much easier to start things than finish them. Trix and Pringle were being diabolically clever. They had not said that their father did a single one of these things. Anne could fancy Pringle saying, his round eyes rounder still with pretended innocence, “I just asked those questions of Dr. Carter for information.”

      “What would you think,” kept on Trix, “of a man who opens and reads his wife’s letters?”

      “What would you think of a man who would go to a funeral … his father’s funeral … in overalls?” asked Pringle.

      What would they think of next? Mrs. Cyrus was crying openly and Esme was quite calm with despair. Nothing mattered any more. She turned and looked squarely at Dr. Carter, whom she had lost forever. For once in her life she was stung into saying a really clever thing.

      “What,” she asked quietly, “would you think of a man who spent a whole day hunting for the kittens of a poor cat who had been shot, because he couldn’t bear to think of them starving to death?”

      A strange silence descended on the room. Trix and Pringle looked suddenly ashamed of themselves. And then Mrs. Cyrus piped up, feeling it her wifely duty to back up Esme’s unexpected defense of her father.

      “And he can crochet so beautifully … he made the loveliest centerpiece for the parlor table last winter when he was laid up with lumbago.”

      Every one has some limit of endurance and Cyrus Taylor had reached his. He gave his chair such a furious backward push that it shot instantly across the polished floor and struck the table on which the vase stood. The table went over and the vase broke in the traditional thousand pieces. Cyrus, his bushy white eyebrows fairly bristling with wrath, stood up and exploded at last.

      “I don’t crochet, woman! Is one contemptible doily going to blast a man’s reputation forever? I was so bad with that blamed lumbago I didn’t know what I was doing. And I’m deaf, am I, Miss Shirley? I’m deaf?”

      “She didn’t say you were, Papa,” cried Trix, who was never afraid of her father when his temper was vocal.

      “Oh, no, she didn’t say it. None of you said anything! You didn’t say I was sixty-eight when I’m only sixty-two, did you? You didn’t say I wouldn’t let your mother have a dog! Good Lord, woman, you can have forty thousand dogs if you want to and you know it! When did I ever deny you anything you wanted … when?”

      “Never, Poppa, never,” sobbed Mrs. Cyrus brokenly. “And I never wanted a dog. I never even thought of wanting a dog, Poppa.”

      “When did I open your letters? When have I ever kept a diary? A diary! When did I ever wear overalls to anybody’s funeral? When did I pasture a cow in the graveyard? What aunt of mine is in the poorhouse? Did I ever throw a roast at anybody? Did I ever make you live on fruit and eggs?”

      “Never, Poppa, never,” wept Mrs. Cyrus. “You’ve always been a good provider … the best.”

      “Didn’t you tell me you wanted goloshes last Christmas?”

      “Yes, oh, yes; of course I did, Poppa. And my feet have been so nice and warm all winter.”

      “Well, then!” Cyrus threw a triumphant glance around the room. His eyes encountered Anne’s. Suddenly the unexpected happened. Cyrus chuckled. His cheeks actually dimpled. Those dimples worked a miracle with his whole expression. He brought his chair back to the table and sat down.

      “I’ve got a very bad habit of sulking, Dr. Carter. Every one has some bad habit … that’s mine. The only one. Come, come, Momma, stop crying. I admit I deserved all I got except that crack of yours about crocheting. Esme, my girl, I won’t forget that you were the only one who stood up for me. Tell Maggie to come and clear up that mess … I know you’re all glad the darn thing is smashed … and bring on the pudding.”

      Anne could never have believed that an evening which began so terribly could end up so pleasantly. Nobody could have been more genial or better company than Cyrus: and there was evidently no aftermath of reckoning, for when Trix came down a few evenings later it was to tell Anne that she had at last scraped up enough courage to tell her father about Johnny.

      “Was he very dreadful, Trix?”

      “He … he wasn’t dreadful at all,” admitted Trix sheepishly. “He just snorted and said it was about time Johnny came to the point after hanging around for two years and keeping every one else away. I think he felt he couldn’t go into another spell of sulks so soon after the last one. And you know, Anne, between sulks Papa really is an old duck.”

      “I think he is a great deal better father to you than you deserve,” said Anne, quite in Rebecca Dew’s manner. “You were simply outrageous at that dinner, Trix.”

      “Well, you know you started it,” said Trix. “And good old Pringle helped a bit. All’s well that ends well … and thank goodness I’ll never have to dust that vase again.”