"But … Susan! What has become of Gog and Magog? Oh … they haven't been broken, have they?"
"No, no, Mrs. Dr. dear," exclaimed Susan, turning a deep brick-red from shame and dashing out of the room. She returned shortly with the two china dogs which always presided at the hearth of Ingleside. "I do not see how I could have forgotten to put them back before you came. You see, Mrs. Dr. dear, Mrs. Charles Day from Charlottetown called here the day after you left … and you know how very precise and proper she is. Walter thought he ought to entertain her and he started in by pointing out the dogs to her. 'This one is God and this is My God,' he said, poor innocent child. I was horrified … though I thought that die I would to see Mrs. Day's face. I explained as best I could, for I did not want her to think us a profane family, but I decided I would just put the dogs away in the china closet, out of sight, till you got back."
"Mummy, can't we have supper soon?" said Jem pathetically. "I've got a gnawful feeling in the pit of my stomach. And oh, Mummy, we've made everybody's favourite dish!"
"We, as the flea said to the elephant, have done that very thing," said Susan with a grin. "We thought that your return should be suitably celebrated, Mrs. Dr. dear. And now where is Walter? It is his week to ring the gong for meals, bless his heart."
Supper was a gala meal … and putting all the babies to bed afterwards was a delight. Susan even allowed her to put Shirley to bed, seeing what a very special occasion it was.
"This is no common day, Mrs. Dr. dear," she said solemnly.
"Oh, Susan, there is no such thing as a common day. Every day has something about it no other day has. Haven't you noticed?"
"How true that is, Mrs. Dr. dear. Even last Friday now, when it rained all day, and was so dull, my big pink geranium showed buds at last after refusing to bloom for three long years. And have you noticed the calceolarias, Mrs. Dr. dear?"
"Noticed them! I never saw such calceolarias in my life, Susan. How do you manage it?" (There, I've made Susan happy and haven't told a fib. I never did see such calceolarias … thank heaven!)
"It is the result of constant care and attention, Mrs. Dr. dear. But there is something I think I ought to speak of. I think Walter suspects something. No doubt some of the Glen children have said things to him. So many children nowadays know so much more than is fitting. Walter said to me the other day, very thoughtful-like, 'Susan,' he said, 'are babies very expensive?' I was a bit dumfounded, Mrs. Dr. dear, but I kept my head. 'Some folks think they are luxuries,' I said, 'but at Ingleside we think they are necessities.' And I reproached myself with having complained aloud about the shameful price of things in all the Glen stores. I am afraid it worried the child. But if he says anything to you, Mrs. Dr. dear, you will be prepared."
"I'm sure you handled the situation beautifully, Susan," said Anne gravely. "And I think it is time they all knew what we are hoping for."
But the best of all was when Gilbert came to her, as she stood at her window, watching a fog creeping in from the sea, over the moonlit dunes and the harbour, right into the long narrow valley upon which Ingleside looked down and in which nestled the village of Glen St. Mary.
"To come back at the end of a hard day and find you! Are you happy, Annest of Annes?"
"Happy!" Anne bent to sniff a vaseful of apple blossoms Jem had set on her dressing-table. She felt surrounded and encompassed by love. "Gilbert dear, it's been lovely to be Anne of Green Gables again for a week, but it's a hundred times lovelier to come back and be Anne of Ingleside."
CHAPTER IV.
"Absolutely not," said Dr. Blythe, in a tone Jem understood.
Jem knew there was no hope of Dad's changing his mind or that Mother would try to change it for him. It was plain to be seen that on this point Mother and Dad were as one. Jem's hazel eyes darkened with anger and disappointment as he looked at his cruel parents … glared at them … all the more glaringly that they were so maddeningly indifferent to his glares and went on eating their supper as if nothing at all were wrong and out of joint. Of course Aunt Mary Maria noticed his glares … nothing ever escaped Aunt Mary Maria's mournful, pale-blue eyes … but she only seemed amused at them.
Bertie Shakespeare Drew had been up playing with Jem all the afternoon … Walter having gone down to the old House of Dreams to play with Kenneth and Persis Ford … and Bertie Shakespeare had told Jem that all the Glen boys were going down to the Harbour Mouth that evening to see Captain Bill Taylor tatoo a snake on his cousin Joe Drew's arm. He, Bertie Shakespeare, was going and wouldn't Jem come too? It would be such fun. Jem was at once crazy to go; and now he had been told that it was utterly out of the question.
"For one reason among many," said Dad, "it's much too far for you to go down to the Harbour Mouth with those boys. They won't get back till late and your bedtime is supposed to be at eight, son."
"I was sent to bed at seven every night of my life when I was a child," said Aunt Mary Maria.
"You must wait till you are older, Jem, before you go so far away in the evenings," said Mother.
"You said that last week," cried Jem indignantly, "and I am older now. You'd think I was a baby! Bertie's going and I'm just as old as him."
"There's measles around," said Aunt Mary Maria darkly. "You might catch measles, James."
Jem hated to be called James. And she always did it.
"I want to catch measles," he muttered rebelliously. Then, catching Dad's eye instead, subsided. Dad would never let anyone "talk back" to Aunt Mary Maria. Jem hated Aunt Mary Maria. Aunt Diana and Aunt Marilla were such ducks of aunts but an aunt like Aunt Mary Maria was something wholly new in Jem's experience.
"All right," he said defiantly, looking at Mother so that nobody could suppose he was talking to Aunt Mary Maria, "if you don't want to love me you don't have to. But will you like it if I just go away 'n' shoot tigers in Africa?"
"There are no tigers in Africa, dear," said Mother gently.
"Lions, then!" shouted Jem. They were determined to put him in the wrong, were they? They were bound to laugh at him, were they? He'd show them! "You can't say there's no lions in Africa. There's millions of lions in Africa. Africa's just full of lions!"
Mother and Father only smiled again, much to Aunt Mary Maria's disapproval. Impatience in children should never be condoned.
"Meanwhile," said Susan, torn between her love for and sympathy with Little Jem and her conviction that Dr. and Mrs. Dr. were perfectly right in refusing to let him go away down to the Harbour Mouth with that village gang to that disreputable, drunken old Captain Bill Taylor's place, "here is your gingerbread and whipped cream, Jem dear."
Gingerbread and whipped cream was Jem's favourite dessert. But tonight it had no charm to soothe his stormy soul.
"I don't want any!" he said sulkily. He got up and marched away from the table, turning at the door to hurl a final defiance.
"I ain't going to bed till nine o'clock, anyhow. And when I'm grown up I'm never going to bed. I'm going to stay up all night … every night … and get tattooed all over. I'm just going to be as bad as bad can be. You'll see."
"'I'm not' would be so much better than 'ain't,' dear,"
