must slip out of her grave and dance like she used to do. But I suppose a Christian shouldn’t be harboring such thoughts. This is Herb Pringle’s grave. He was one of the jolly Pringles. He always made you laugh. He laughed right out in church once … when the mouse dropped out of the flowers on Meta Pringle’s hat when she bowed in prayer. I didn’t feel much like laughing. I didn’t know where the mouse had gone. I pulled my skirts tight about my ankles and held them there till church was out, but it spoiled the sermon for me. Herb sat behind me and such a shout as he gave. People who couldn’t see the mouse thought he’d gone crazy. It seemed to me that laugh of his couldn’t die. If he was alive he’d stand up for you, Sarah or no Sarah. This, of course, is Captain Abraham Pringle’s monument.”
It dominated the whole graveyard. Four receding platforms of stone formed a square pedestal on which rose a huge pillar of marble topped with a ridiculous draped urn beneath which a fat cherub was blowing a horn.
“How ugly!” said Anne candidly.
“Oh, do you think so?” Miss Valentine seemed rather shocked. “It was thought very handsome when it was erected. That is supposed to be Gabriel blowing his trumpet. I think it gives quite a touch of elegance to the graveyard. It cost nine hundred dollars. Captain Abraham was a very fine old man. It is a great pity he is dead. If he was living they wouldn’t be persecuting you the way they are. I don’t wonder Sarah and Ellen are proud of him, though I think they carry it a bit too far.”
At the graveyard gate Anne turned and looked back. A strange, peaceful hush lay over the windless land. Long fingers of moonlight were beginning to pierce the darkling firs, touching a gravestone here and there, and making strange shadows among them. But the graveyard wasn’t a sad place after all. Really, the people in it seemed alive after Miss Valentine’s tales.
“I’ve heard you write,” said Miss Valentine anxiously, as they went down the lane. “You won’t put the things I’ve told you in your stories, will you?”
“You may be sure I won’t,” promised Anne.
“Do you think it is really wrong … or dangerous … to speak ill of the dead?” whispered Miss Valentine a bit anxiously.
“I don’t suppose it’s exactly either,” said Anne. “Only … rather unfair … like hitting those who can’t defend themselves. But you didn’t say anything very dreadful of anybody, Miss Courtaloe.”
“I told you Nathan Pringle thought his wife was trying to poison him …”
“But you give her the benefit of the doubt …” and Miss Valentine went her way reassured.
Chapter VI
“I wended my way to the graveyard this evening,” wrote Anne to Gilbert after she got home. “I think ‘wend your way’ is a lovely phrase and I work it in whenever I can. It sounds funny to say I enjoyed my stroll in the graveyard but I really did. Miss Courtaloe’s stories were so funny. Comedy and tragedy are so mixed up in life, Gilbert. The only thing that haunts me is that tale of the two who lived together fifty years and hated each other all that time. I can’t believe they really did. Somebody has said that ‘hate is only love that has missed its way.’ I feel sure that under the hatred they really loved each other … just as I really loved you all those years I thought I hated you … and I think death would show it to them. I’m glad I found out in life. And I have found out there are some decent Pringles … dead ones.
“Last night when I went down late for a drink of water I found Aunt Kate buttermilking her face in the pantry. She asked me not to tell Chatty … she would think it so silly. I promised I wouldn’t.
“Elizabeth still comes for the milk, though the Woman is pretty well over her bronchitis. I wonder they let her, especially since old Mrs. Campbell is a Pringle. Last Saturday night Elizabeth … she was Betty that night I think … ran in singing when she left me and I distinctly heard the Woman say to her at the porch door, ‘It’s too near the Sabbath for you to be singing that song.’ I am sure that Woman would prevent Elizabeth from singing on any day if she could!
“Elizabeth had on a new dress that night, a dark wine color … they do dress her nicely … and she said wistfully, ‘I thought I looked a little bit pretty when I put it on tonight, Miss Shirley, and I wished father could see me. Of course he will see me in Tomorrow … but it sometimes seems so slow in coming. I wish we could hurry time a bit, Miss Shirley.’
“Now, dearest, I must work out some geometrical exercises. Geometry exercises have taken the place of what Rebecca calls my ‘literary efforts.’ The specter that haunts my daily path now is the dread of an exercise popping up in class that I can’t do. And what would the Pringles say then, oh, then … oh, what would the Pringles say then!
“Meanwhile, as you love me and the cat tribe, pray for a poor brokenhearted, illused Thomas cat. A mouse ran over Rebecca Dew’s foot in the pantry the other day and she has fumed ever since. ‘That Cat does nothing but eat and sleep and let mice overrun everything. This is the last straw.’ So she chivies him from pillar to post, routs him off his favorite cushion and … I know, for I caught her at it … assists him none too gently with her foot when she lets him out.”
Chapter VII
One Friday evening, at the end of a mild, sunny December day Anne went out to Lowvale to attend a turkey supper. Wilfred Bryce’s home was in Lowvale, where he lived with an uncle, and he had asked her shyly if she would go out with him after school, go to the turkey supper in the church and spend Saturday at his home. Anne agreed, hoping that she might be able to influence the uncle to let Wilfred keep on going to High School. Wilfred was afraid that he would not be able to go back after New Year. He was a clever, ambitious boy and Anne felt a special interest in him.
It could not be said that she enjoyed her visit overmuch, except in the pleasure it gave Wilfred. His uncle and aunt were a rather odd and uncouth pair. Saturday morning was windy and dark, with showers of snow, and at first Anne wondered how she was going to put in the day. She felt tired and sleepy after the late hours of the turkey supper; Wilfred had to help thrash; and there was not even a book in sight. Then she thought of the battered old seaman’s chest she had seen in the back of the hall upstairs and recalled Mrs. Stanton’s request. Mrs. Stanton was writing a history of Prince County and had asked Anne if she knew of, or could find, any old diaries or documents that might be helpful.
“The Pringles, of course, have lots that I could use,” she told Anne. “But I can’t ask them. You know the Pringles and Stantons have never been friends.”
“I can’t ask them either, unfortunately,” said Anne.
“Oh, I’m not expecting you to. All I want is for you to keep your eyes open when you are visiting round in other people’s homes and if you find or hear of any old diaries or maps or anything like that, try to get the loan of them for me. You’ve no idea what interesting things I’ve found in old diaries … little bits of real life that make the old pioneers live again. I want to get things like that for my book as well as statistics and genealogical tables.”
Anne asked Mrs. Bryce if they had any such old records. Mrs. Bryce shook her head.
