have always been rivals in the matter of good voices!
“I gave Elizabeth a bit of a picture for Christmas to hang above her bed … just a light-dappled woodland path leading up a hill to a quaint little house among some trees. Little Elizabeth says she is not so frightened now to go to sleep in the dark, because as soon as she gets into bed she pretends that she is walking up the path to the house and that she goes inside and it is all lighted and her father is there.
“Poor darling! I can’t help detesting that father of hers!”
“January 19th.
“There was a dance at Carry Pringle’s last night. Katherine was there in a dark red silk with the new side flounces and her hair had been done by a hairdresser. Would you believe it, people who had known her ever since she came to teach in Summerside actually asked one another who she was when she came into the room. But I think it was less the dress and hair that made the difference than some indefinable change in herself.
“Always before, when she was out with people, her attitude seemed to be, ‘These people bore me. I expect I bore them and I hope I do.’ But last night it was as if she had set lighted candles in all the windows of her house of life.
“I’ve had a hard time winning Katherine’s friendship. But nothing worth while is ever easy come by and I have always felt that her friendship would be worth while.
“Aunt Chatty has been in bed for two days with a feverish cold and thinks she may have the doctor tomorrow, in case she is taking pneumonia. So Rebecca Dew, her head tied up in a towel, has been cleaning the house madly all day to get it in perfect order before the doctor’s possible visit. Now she is in the kitchen ironing Aunt Chatty’s white cotton nighty with the crochet yoke, so that it will be ready for her to slip over her flannel one. It was spotlessly clean before, but Rebecca Dew thought it was not quite a good color from lying in the bureau drawer.”
“January 28th.
“January so far has been a month of cold gray days, with an occasional storm whirling across the harbor and filling Spook’s Lane with drifts. But last night we had a silver thaw and today the sun shone. My maple grove was a place of unimaginable splendors. Even the commonplaces had been made lovely. Every bit of wire fencing was a wonder of crystal lace.
“Rebecca Dew has been poring this evening over one of my magazines containing an article on ‘Types of Fair Women,’ illustrated by photographs.
“‘Wouldn’t it be lovely, Miss Shirley, if some one could just wave a wand and make everybody beautiful?’ she said wistfully. ‘Just fancy my feelings, Miss Shirley, if I suddenly found myself beautiful! But then’ … with a sigh … ‘if we were all beauties who would do the work?’”
Chapter VIII
“I’m so tired,” sighed Cousin Ernestine Bugle, dropping into her chair at the Windy Poplars supper-table. “I’m afraid sometimes to sit down for fear I’ll never be able to git up again.”
Cousin Ernestine, a cousin three times removed of the late Captain MacComber, but still, as Aunt Kate used to reflect, much too close, had walked in from Lowvale that afternoon for a visit to Windy Poplars. It cannot be said that either of the widows had welcomed her very heartily, in spite of the sacred ties of family. Cousin Ernestine was not an exhilarating person, being one of those unfortunates who are constantly worrying not only about their own affairs but everybody else’s as well and will not give themselves or others any rest at all. The very look of her, Rebecca Dew declared, made you feel that life was a vale of tears.
Certainly Cousin Ernestine was not beautiful and it was extremely doubtful if she ever had been. She had a dry, pinched little face, faded, pale blue eyes, several badly placed moles and a whining voice. She wore a rusty black dress and a decrepit neck-piece of Hudson seal which she would not remove even at the table, because she was afraid of draughts.
Rebecca Dew might have sat at the table with them had she wished, for the widows did not regard Cousin Ernestine as any particular “company.” But Rebecca always declared she couldn’t “savor her victuals” in that old kill-joy’s society. She preferred to “eat her morsel” in the kitchen, but that did not prevent her from saying her say as she waited on the table.
“Likely it’s the spring getting into your bones,” she remarked unsympathetically.
“Ah, I hope it’s only that, Miss Dew. But I’m afraid I’m like poor Mrs. Oliver Gage. She et mushrooms last summer but there must-a been a toadstool among them, for she’s never felt the same since.
“But you can’t have been eating mushrooms as early as this,” said Aunt Chatty.
“No, but I’m afraid I’ve et something else. Don’t try to cheer me up, Charlotte. You mean well, but it ain’t no use. I’ve been through too much. Are you sure there ain’t a spider in that cream jug, Kate? I’m afraid I saw one when you poured my cup.”
“We never have spiders in our cream jugs,” said Rebecca Dew ominously, and slammed the kitchen door.
“Mebbe it was only a shadder,” said Cousin Ernestine meekly. “My eyes ain’t what they were. I’m afraid I’ll soon be blind. That reminds me … I dropped in to see Martha MacKay this afternoon and she was feeling feverish and all out in some kind of a rash. ‘Looks to me as though you had the measles,’ I told her. ‘Likely they’ll leave you almost blind. Your family all have weak eyes.’ I thought she ought to be prepared. Her mother isn’t well either. The doctor says it’s indigestion, but I’m afraid it’s a growth. ‘And if you have to have an operation and take chloroform,’ I told her, ‘I’m afraid you’ll never come out of it. Remember you’re a Hillis and the Hillises all had weak hearts. Your father died of heart-failure, you know.’”
“At eighty-seven!” said Rebecca Dew, whisking away a plate.
“And you know three score and ten is the Bible limit,” said Aunt Chatty cheerfully.
Cousin Ernestine helped herself to a third teaspoonful of sugar and stirred her tea sadly.
“So King David said, Charlotte, but I’m afraid David wasn’t a very nice man in some respects.”
Anne caught Aunt Chatty’s eye and laughed before she could help herself.
Cousin Ernestine looked at her disapprovingly.
“I’ve heerd you was a great girl to laugh. Well, I hope it’ll last, but I’m afraid it won’t. I’m afraid you’ll find out all too soon that life’s a melancholy business. Ah well, I was young myself once.”
“Was you really?” inquired Rebecca Dew sarcastically, bringing in the muffins. “Seems to me you must always have been afraid to be young. It takes courage, I can tell you that, Miss Bugle.”
“Rebecca Dew has such an odd way of putting things,” complained Cousin Ernestine. “Not that I mind her of course. And it’s well to laugh when you can, Miss Shirley, but I’m afraid you’re tempting Providence by being so happy. You’re awful like our last minister’s wife’s aunt … she was always laughing and she died of a parralattic stroke. The third one kills you. I’m afraid our new minister
