CHAPTER 22
MISS CORNELIA ARRANGES MATTERS
Gilbert insisted that Susan should be kept on at the
little house for the summer. Anne protested at first.
"Life here with just the two of us is so sweet,
Gilbert. It spoils it a little to have anyone else.
Susan is a dear soul, but she is an outsider. It won't
hurt me to do the work here."
"You must take your doctor's advice," said Gilbert.
"There's an old proverb to the effect that shoemakers'
wives go barefoot and doctors' wives die young. I
don't mean that it shall be true in my household. You
will keep Susan until the old spring comes back into
your step, and those little hollows on your cheeks fill
out."
"You just take it easy, Mrs. Doctor, dear," said
Susan, coming abruptly in. "Have a good time and do
not worry about the pantry. Susan is at the helm.
There is no use in keeping a dog and doing your own
barking. I am going to take your breakfast up to you
every morning."
"Indeed you are not," laughed Anne. "I agree with
Miss Cornelia that it's a scandal for a woman who isn't
sick to eat her breakfast in bed, and almost justifies
the men in any enormities."
"Oh, Cornelia!" said Susan, with ineffable contempt.
"I think you have better sense, Mrs. Doctor, dear, than
to heed what Cornelia Bryant says. I cannot see why
she must be always running down the men, even if she is
an old maid. _I_ am an old maid, but you never hear ME
abusing the men. I like 'em. I would have married one
if I could. Is it not funny nobody ever asked me to
marry him, Mrs. Doctor, dear? I am no beauty, but I am
as good-looking as most of the married women you see.
But I never had a beau. What do you suppose is the
reason?"
"It may be predestination," suggested Anne, with
unearthly solemnity.
Susan nodded.
"That is what I have often thought, Mrs. Doctor, dear,
and a great comfort it is. I do not mind nobody
wanting me if the Almighty decreed it so for His own
wise purposes. But sometimes doubt creeps in, Mrs.
Doctor, dear, and I wonder if maybe the Old Scratch has
not more to do with it than anyone else. I cannot feel
resigned THEN. But maybe," added Susan, brightening
up, "I will have a chance to get married yet. I often
and often think of the old verse my aunt used to
repeat:
There never was a goose so gray but sometime soon or
late Some honest gander came her way and took her for
his mate!
A woman cannot ever be sure of not being married till
she is buried, Mrs. Doctor, dear, and meanwhile I will
make a batch of cherry pies. I notice the doctor
favors 'em, and I DO like cooking for a man who
appreciates his victuals."
Miss Cornelia dropped in that afternoon, puffing a
little.
"I don't mind the world or the devil much, but the
flesh DOES rather bother me," she admitted. "You
always look as cool as a cucumber, Anne, dearie. Do I
smell cherry pie? If I do, ask me to stay to tea.
Haven't tasted a cherry pie this summer. My cherries
have all been stolen by those scamps of Gilman boys
from the Glen."
"Now, now, Cornelia," remonstrated Captain Jim, who
had been reading a sea novel in a corner of the living
room, "you shouldn't say that about those two poor,
motherless Gilman boys, unless you've got certain
proof. Jest because their father ain't none too honest
isn't any reason for calling them thieves. It's more
likely it's been the robins took your cherries.
They're turrible thick this year."
"Robins!" said Miss Cornelia disdainfully. "Humph!
Two- legged robins, believe ME!"
"Well, most of the Four Winds robins ARE constructed on
that principle," said Captain Jim gravely.
Miss Cornelia stared at him for a moment. Then she
leaned back in her rocker and laughed long and
ungrudgingly.
"Well, you HAVE got one on me at last, Jim Boyd, I'll
admit. Just look how pleased he is, Anne, dearie,
grinning like a Chessy-cat. As for the robins' legs if
robins have great, big, bare, sunburned legs, with
ragged trousers hanging on 'em, such as I saw up in my
cherry tree one morning at sunrise last week, I'll beg
the Gilman boys' pardon. By the time I got down they
were gone. I couldn't understand how they had
disappeared so quick, but Captain Jim has enlightened
me. They flew away, of course."
Captain Jim laughed and went away, regretfully
declining an invitation to stay to supper and partake
of cherry pie.
"I'm on my way to see Leslie and ask her if she'll take
a boarder," Miss Cornelia resumed. "I'd a letter
yesterday from a Mrs. Daly in Toronto, who boarded a
spell with me two years ago. She wanted me to take a
friend of hers for the summer. His name is Owen Ford,
and he's a newspaper man, and it seems he's a grandson
of the schoolmaster who built this house. John
Selwyn's oldest daughter married an Ontario man named
Ford, and this is her son. He wants to see the old
place his grandparents lived in. He had a bad spell of
typhoid in the spring and hasn't got rightly over it,
so his doctor has ordered him to the sea. He doesn't
want to go to the hotel--he just wants a quiet home
place. I can't take him, for I have to be away in
August. I've been appointed a delegate to the W.F.M.S.
convention in Kingsport and I'm going. I don't know
whether Leslie'll want to be bothered with him, either,
but there's no one else. If she can't take him he'll
have to go over the harbor."
"When you've seen her come back and help us eat our
cherry pies," said Anne. "Bring Leslie and Dick, too,
if they can come. And so you're going to Kingsport?
What a nice time you will have. I must give you a
letter to a friend of mine there--Mrs. Jonas Blake."
"I've prevailed on Mrs. Thomas Holt to go with me,"
said Miss Cornelia complacently. "It's time she had a
little holiday, believe ME. She has just about worked
herself to death. Tom Holt can crochet beautifully,
but he can't make a living for his family. He never
seems to be able to get up early enough to do any work,
but I notice he can always get up early to go fishing.
Isn't that like a man?"
Anne smiled. She had learned to discount largely Miss
Cornelia's opinions of the Four Winds men. Otherwise
she must have believed them the most hopeless
assortment of reprobates and ne'er-do-wells in the
world, with veritable slaves and martyrs for wives.
This particular Tom Holt, for example, she knew to be a
kind husband, a much loved father, and an excellent
neighbor. If he were rather inclined to be lazy,
liking better the fishing he had been born for than the
farming he had not, and if he had a harmless
eccentricity for doing fancy work, nobody save Miss
Cornelia seemed to hold it against him. His wife was
a "hustler," who gloried in hustling; his family got a
comfortable living off the farm; and his strapping sons
and daughters, inheriting their mother's energy, were
all in a fair way to do well in the world. There was
not a happier household in Glen St. Mary than the
Holts'.
Miss Cornelia returned satisfied from the house up the
brook.
"Leslie's going to take him," she announced. "She
jumped at the chance. She wants to make a little money
to shingle the roof of her house this fall, and she
didn't know how she was going to manage it. I expect
Captain Jim'll be more than interested when he hears
that a grandson of the Selwyns' is coming here. Leslie
said to tell you she hankered after cherry pie, but she
couldn't come to tea because she has to go and hunt up
her turkeys. They've strayed away. But she said, if
there was a piece left, for you to put it in the pantry
and she'd run over in the cat's light, when prowling's
in order, to get it. You don't know, Anne, dearie,
what good it did my heart to hear Leslie send you a
message like that, laughing like she used to long ago.
There's a great change come over her lately. She
laughs and jokes like a girl, and from her talk I
gather she's here real often."
"Every day--or else I'm over there," said Anne. "I
don't know what I'd do without Leslie, especially just
now when Gilbert is so busy. He's hardly ever home
except for a few hours in the wee sma's. He's really
working himself to death. So many of the over-harbor
people send for him now."
"They might better be content with their own doctor,"
said Miss Cornelia. "Though to be sure I can't blame
them, for he's a Methodist. Ever since Dr. Blythe
brought Mrs. Allonby round folks think he can raise the
dead. I believe Dr. Dave is a mite jealous--just like
a man. He thinks Dr. Blythe has too many new-fangled
notions! `Well,' I says to him, `it was a new-fangled
notion saved Rhoda Allonby. If YOU'D been attending
her she'd have died, and had a tombstone saying it had
pleased God to take her away.' Oh, I DO like to speak
my mind to Dr. Dave! He's bossed the Glen for years,
and he thinks he's forgotten more than other people
ever knew. Speaking of doctors, I wish Dr. Blythe'd
run over and see to that boil on Dick Moore's neck.
It's getting past Leslie's skill. I'm sure I don't
know what Dick Moore wants to start in having boils
for--as if he wasn't enough trouble without that!"
"Do you know, Dick has taken quite a fancy to me,"
said Anne. "He follows me round like a dog, and smiles
like a pleased child when I notice him."
"Does it make you creepy?"
"Not at all. I rather like poor Dick Moore. He seems
so pitiful and appealing, somehow."
"You wouldn't think him very appealing if you'd see him
on his cantankerous days, believe ME. But I'm glad you
don't mind him-- it's all the nicer for Leslie. She'll
have more to do when her boarder comes. I hope he'll
be a decent creature. You'll probably like him--he's a
writer."
"I wonder why people so commonly suppose that if two
individuals are both writers they must therefore be
hugely congenial," said Anne, rather scornfully.
"Nobody would expect two blacksmiths to be violently
attracted toward each other merely because they were
both blacksmiths."
Nevertheless, she looked forward to the advent of Owen
Ford with a pleasant sense of expectation. If he were
young and likeable he might prove a very pleasant
addition to society in Four Winds. The latch-string of
the little house was always out for the race of Joseph.
