He had been working at William Spencer’s the day the new music teacher had come, and what Crooked Jack couldn’t find out about any person in one whole day — at least as far as outward life went — was hardly worth finding out. Next to discovering things did he love telling them, and it would be hard to say which enjoyed that ensuing half-hour more — Crooked Jack or the Old Lady.
Crooked Jack’s account, boiled down, amounted to this; both Miss Gray’s parents had died when she was a baby, she had been brought up by an aunt, she was very poor and very ambitious.
“Wants a moosical eddication,” finished up Crooked Jack, “and, by jingo, she orter have it, for anything like the voice of her I never heerd. She sung for us that evening after supper and I thought ‘twas an angel singing. It just went through me like a shaft o’ light. The Spencer young ones are crazy over her already. She’s got twenty pupils around here and in Grafton and Avonlea.”
When the Old Lady had found out everything Crooked Jack could tell her, she went into the house and sat down by the window of her little sitting-room to think it all over. She was tingling from head to foot with excitement.
Leslie’s daughter! This Old Lady had had her romance once. Long ago — forty years ago — she had been engaged to Leslie Gray, a young college student who taught in Spencervale for the summer term one year — the golden summer of Margaret Lloyd’s life. Leslie had been a shy, dreamy, handsome fellow with literary ambitions, which, as he and Margaret both firmly believed, would one day bring him fame and fortune.
Then there had been a foolish, bitter quarrel at the end of that golden summer. Leslie had gone away in anger, afterwards he had written, but Margaret Lloyd, still in the grasp of her pride and resentment, had sent a harsh answer. No more letters came; Leslie Gray never returned; and one day Margaret wakened to the realization that she had put love out of her life for ever. She knew it would never be hers again; and from that moment her feet were turned from youth to walk down the valley of shadow to a lonely, eccentric age.
Many years later she heard of Leslie’s marriage; then came news of his death, after a life that had not fulfilled his dreams for him. Nothing more she had heard or known — nothing to this day, when she had seen his daughter pass her by unseeing in the beech hollow.
“His daughter! And she might have been MY daughter,” murmured the Old Lady. “Oh, if I could only know her and love her — and perhaps win her love in return! But I cannot. I could not have Leslie Gray’s daughter know how poor I am — how low I have been brought. I could not bear that. And to think she is living so near me, the darling — just up the lane and over the hill. I can see her go by every day — I can have that dear pleasure, at least. But oh, if I could only do something for her — give her some little pleasure! It would be such a delight.”
When the Old Lady happened to go into her spare room that evening, she saw from it a light shining through a gap in the trees on the hill. She knew that it shone from the Spencers’ spare room. So it was Sylvia’s light. The Old Lady stood in the darkness and watched it until it went out — watched it with a great sweetness breathing in her heart, such as risen from old roseleaves when they are stirred. She fancied Sylvia moving about her room, brushing and braiding her long, glistening hair — laying aside her little trinkets and girlish adornments — making her simple preparations for sleep. When the light went out the Old Lady pictured a slight white figure kneeling by the window in the soft starshine, and the Old Lady knelt down then and there and said her own prayers in fellowship. She said the simple form of words she had always used; but a new spirit seemed to inspire them; and she finished with a new petition—”Let me think of something I can do for her, dear Father — some little, little thing that I can do for her.”
The Old Lady had slept in the same room all her life — the one looking north into the spruces — and loved it; but the next day she moved into the spare room without a regret. It was to be her room after this; she must be where she could see Sylvia’s light, she put the bed where she could lie in it and look at that earth star which had suddenly shone across the twilight shadows of her heart. She felt very happy, she had not felt happy for many years; but now a strange, new, dreamlike interest, remote from the harsh realities of her existence, but none the less comforting and alluring, had entered into her life. Besides, she had thought of something she could do for Sylvia—”a little, little thing” that might give her pleasure.
Spencervale people were wont to say regretfully that there were no Mayflowers in Spencervale; the Spencervale young fry, when they wanted Mayflowers, thought they had to go over to the barrens at Avonlea, six miles away, for them. Old Lady Lloyd knew better. In her many long, solitary rambles, she had discovered a little clearing far back in the woods — a southward-sloping, sandy hill on a tract of woodland belonging to a man who lived in town — which in spring was starred over with the pink and white of arbutus.
To this clearing the Old Lady betook herself that afternoon, walking through wood lanes and under dim spruce arches like a woman with a glad purpose. All at once the spring was dear and beautiful to her once more; for love had entered again into her heart, and her starved soul was feasting on its divine nourishment.
Old Lady Lloyd found a wealth of Mayflowers on the sandy hill. She filled her basket with them, gloating over the loveliness which was to give pleasure to Sylvia. When she got home she wrote on a slip of paper, “For Sylvia.” It was not likely anyone in Spencervale would know her handwriting, but, to make sure, she disguised it, writing in round, big letters like a child’s. She carried her Mayflowers down to the hollow and heaped them in a recess between the big roots of the old beech, with the little note thrust through a stem on top.
Then the Old Lady deliberately hid behind the spruce clump. She had put on her dark green silk on purpose for hiding. She had not long to wait. Soon Sylvia Gray came down the hill with Mattie Spencer. When she reached the bridge she saw the Mayflowers and gave an exclamation of delight. Then she saw her name and her expression changed to wonder. The Old Lady, peering through the boughs, could have laughed for very pleasure over the success of her little plot.
“For me!” said Sylvia, lifting the flowers. “CAN they really be for me, Mattie? Who could have left them here?”
Mattie giggled.
“I believe it was Chris Stewart,” she said. “I know he was over at Avonlea last night. And ma says he’s taken a notion to you — she knows by the way he looked at you when you were singing night before last. It would be just like him to do something queer like this — he’s such a shy fellow with the girls.”
Sylvia frowned a little. She did not like Mattie’s expressions, but she did like Mayflowers, and she did not dislike Chris Stewart, who had seemed to her merely a nice, modest, country boy. She lifted the flowers and buried her face in them.
“Anyway, I’m much obliged to the giver, whoever he or she is,” she said merrily. “There’s nothing I love like Mayflowers. Oh, how sweet they are!”
When they had passed the Old Lady emerged from her lurking place, flushed with triumph. It did not vex her that Sylvia should think Chris Stewart had given her the flowers; nay, it was all the better, since she would be the less likely to suspect the real donor. The main thing was that Sylvia should have the delight of them. That quite satisfied the Old Lady, who went back to her lonely house with the cockles of her heart all in a glow.
It soon was a matter of gossip in Spencervale that Chris Stewart was leaving Mayflowers at the beech hollow for the music teacher every other day. Chris himself denied it, but he was not believed. Firstly, there were no Mayflowers in Spencervale; secondly, Chris had to go to Carmody every other day to haul milk to the butter factory, and Mayflowers grew in Carmody, and, thirdly, the Stewarts always had a romantic streak in them. Was not that enough circumstantial evidence for anybody?
As for Sylvia, she did not mind if Chris had a boyish admiration for her and expressed it thus delicately. She thought it very nice of him, indeed, when he did not vex her with any other advances, and she was quite content to enjoy his Mayflowers.
Old Lady Lloyd heard all the