"It's very kind of you, I'm sure," said Anne.
"It's all for the best, no doubt," Susan told the Shrimp darkly in the kitchen.
"It is very obliging of Mrs. Parker to take Walter off our hands, Annie," said Aunt Mary Maria, when the Parkers had gone. "She told me she had taken quite a fancy to him. People do take such odd fancies, don't they? Well, perhaps now for at least two weeks I'll be able to go into the bathroom without tramping on a dead fish."
"A dead fish, Aunty! You don't mean … "
"I mean exactly what I say, Annie. I always do. A dead fish! Did you ever step on a dead fish with your bare feet?"
"No-o … but how … "
"Walter caught a trout last night and put it in the bathtub to keep it alive, Mrs. Dr. dear," said Susan airily. "If it had stayed there it would have been all right, but somehow it got out and died in the night. Of course, if people will go about on bare feet … "
"I make it a rule never to quarrel with anyone," said Aunt Mary Maria, getting up and leaving the room.
"I am determined she shall not vex me, Mrs. Dr. dear," said Susan.
"Oh, Susan, she is getting on my nerves a bit … but of course I won't mind so much when all this is over … and it must be nasty to tramp on a dead fish … "
"Isn't a dead fish better than a live one, Mummy? A dead fish wouldn't squirm," said Di.
Since the truth must be told at all costs it must be admitted that the mistress and maid of Ingleside both giggled.
So that was that. But Anne wondered to Gilbert that night if Walter would be quite happy at Lowbridge.
"He's so very sensitive and imaginative," she said wistfully.
"Too much so," said Gilbert, who was tired after having had, to quote Susan, three babies that day. "Why, Anne, I believe that child is afraid to go upstairs in the dark. It will do him worlds of good to give and take with the Parker fry for a few days. He'll come home a different child."
Anne said nothing more. No doubt Gilbert was quite right. Walter was lonesome without Jem; and in view of what had happened when Shirley was born it would be just as well for Susan to have as little on her hands as possible beyond running the house and enduring Aunt Mary Maria … whose two weeks had already stretched to four.
Walter was lying awake in his bed trying to escape from the haunting thought that he was to go away next day by giving free rein to fancy. Walter had a very vivid imagination. It was to him a great white charger, like the one in the picture on the wall, on which he could gallop backward or forward in time and space. The Night was coming down … Night, like a tall, dark, bat-winged angel who lived in Mr. Andrew Taylor's woods on the south hill. Sometimes Walter welcomed her … sometimes he pictured her so vividly that he grew afraid of her. Walter dramatized and personified everything in his small world … the Wind who told him stories at night … the Frost that nipped the flowers in the garden … the Dew that fell so silverly and silently … the Moon which he felt sure he could catch if he could only go to the top of that faraway purple hill … the Mist that came in from the sea … the great Sea itself that was always changing and never changed … the dark, mysterious Tide. They were all entities to Walter. Ingleside and the Hollow and the maple grove and the Marsh and the harbour shore were full of elves and kelpies and dryads and mermaids and goblins. The black plaster-of-Paris cat on the library mantelpiece was a fairy witch. It came alive at night and prowled about the house, grown to enormous size. Walter ducked his head under the bedclothes and shivered. He was always scaring himself with his own fancies.
Perhaps Aunt Mary Maria was right when she said he was "far too nervous and high-strung," though Susan would never forgive her for it. Perhaps Aunt Kitty MacGregor of the Upper Glen, who was reported to have "the second sight," was right when, having once taken a deep look into Walter's long-lashed, smoky grey eyes, she said he "did be having an old soul in a young body." It might be that the old soul knew too much for the young brain to understand always.
Walter was told in the morning that Dad would take him to Lowbridge after dinner. He said nothing, but during dinner a choky sensation came over him and he dropped his eyes quickly to hide a sudden mist of tears. Not quickly enough, however.
"You're not going to cry, Walter?" said Aunt Mary Maria, as if a six-year-old mite would be disgraced forever if he cried. "If there's anything I do despise it's a cry-baby. And you haven't eaten your meat."
"All but the fat," said Walter, blinking valiantly but not yet daring to look up. "I don't like fat."
"When I was a child," said Aunt Mary Maria, "I was not allowed to have likes and dislikes. Well, Mrs. Dr. Parker will probably cure you of some of your notions. She was a Winter, I think … or was she a Clark? … no, she must have been a Campbell. But the Winters and the Campbells are all tarred with the same brush and they don't put up with any nonsense."
"Oh, please, Aunt Mary Maria, don't frighten Walter about his visit to Lowbridge," said Anne, a little spark kindling far down in her eyes.
"I'm sorry, Annie," said Aunt Mary Maria with great humility. "I should of course have remembered that I have no right to try to teach your children anything."
"Drat her hide," muttered Susan as she went out for the dessert … Walter's favourite Queen pudding.
Anne felt miserably guilty. Gilbert had shot her a slightly reproachful glance as if to imply she might have been more patient with a poor lonely old lady.
Gilbert himself was feeling a bit seedy. The truth, as everyone knew, was that he had been terribly overworked all summer; and perhaps Aunt Mary Maria was more of a strain than he would admit. Anne made up her mind that in the fall, if all was well, she would pack him off willy-nilly for a month's snipe-shooting in Nova Scotia.
"How is your tea?" she asked Aunt Mary Maria repentantly.
Aunt Mary Maria pursed her lips.
"Too weak. But it doesn't matter. Who cares whether a poor old woman gets her tea to her liking or not? Some folks, however, think I'm real good company."
Whatever the connexion between Aunt Mary Maria's two sentences was, Anne felt she was beyond ferreting it out just then. She had turned very pale.
"I think I'll go upstairs and lie down," she said, a trifle faintly, as she rose from the table. "And I think, Gilbert … perhaps you'd better not stay long in Lowbridge … and suppose you give Miss Carson a ring."
She kissed Walter good-bye rather casually and hurriedly … very much as if she were not thinking about him at all. Walter would not cry. Aunt Mary Maria kissed him on the forehead … Walter hated to be moistly kissed on the forehead … and said:
"Mind your table manners at Lowbridge, Walter. Mind you ain't greedy. If you are, a Big Black Man will come along with a big black bag to pop naughty children into."
It was perhaps as well that Gilbert had gone out to harness Grey Tom and did not hear this. He and Anne had always made a point of never frightening their children with such ideas or allowing anyone else to do it. Susan did hear it as she cleared the table and Aunt Mary Maria never knew what a narrow escape she had of having the gravy boat and its contents flung at her head.
CHAPTER VIII.
Generally Walter enjoyed a drive with Dad. He loved beauty, and the roads around Glen St. Mary were beautiful. The road to Lowbridge was a double ribbon of dancing buttercups, with here and there the ferny green rim of an inviting grove. But today Dad didn't seem to want to talk much and he drove Grey Tom as Walter never remembered seeing him driven before. When they reached Lowbridge he said a few hurried words aside to Mrs. Parker and rushed out without bidding Walter good-bye. Walter had again hard work to keep from crying. It was only too plain that nobody loved him. Mother and Father used to, but they didn't any longer.
The big, untidy Parker house at Lowbridge