Marigold Entertains
1
“No more fat for me. I’ve nearly died eating fat this week,” was Gwendolen’s declaration of independence that night at supper. Grandmother, who hadn’t noticed the gate yet—Phidime had wired it up rather cleverly—wondered what had happened to her.
“You should eat the fat with the lean,” she said severely.
Gwennie stuck out her tongue at Grandmother. It gave Marigold a shock to realize that anybody could do that and live. Grandmother actually said nothing. What was there to say? But she reflected that Annie Vincent’s child possibly ran truer to form than they had supposed after all. Grandmother would never have admitted it, but she was almost as tired of Gwennie’s perfection as Marigold was. So she pretended not to see the grimace.
Grandmother had to pretend blindness a good many times in the days that followed, rather than outrage hospitality and incur Annie Vincent’s eternal wrath by spanking her offspring or sending her home with a flea in her ear. The famed serenity of Cloud of Spruce was smashed to smithereens. A day without a thrill was a lost day for Gwennie.
Marigold enjoyed it—with reservations. Gwennie cared nothing for storybooks or kittens and knew nothing whatever about the dryads that lived in the beech clump or the wind spirits that came up the harbor on stormy nights. Marigold would never have dreamed of telling her about Sylvia or taking her along the secret paths of her enchanted groves. But still Gwennie was a good little scout. There was always something doing when she was about, and she was funny. She was always “taking off” someone. She could imitate anyone to perfection. It was very amusing—though you always had a little uneasy feeling that the minute your back was turned she might be imitating you. Grandmother really was very cross the day Gwennie spilled soup over Mrs. Dr. Emsley’s silk dress at the dinner-table because she was “taking off” the old doctor’s way of eating soup and sending poor Marigold into convulsions of unholy mirth.
Of course fun was all right. But Gwennie laughed at so many things Marigold had been taught to hold sacred, and giggled when she should be reverent. It was awful to go to church with her. She said such funny things about everybody and it was so wicked to laugh in church, even silently. Yet laugh Marigold sometimes had to till the pew shook and Grandmother glared at her.
But Marigold would not allow Gwennie to baptize the kittens. Gwen thought it would be “such fun” and had the bowl of water and everything ready. She was to be the minister and Marigold was to hold the kittens.
But Marigold had put her foot down firmly. No kittens were going to be baptized and that was that.
“Grandmother wouldn’t allow it,” said Marigold.
“I don’t care a hang for Grandmother,” said Gwennie.
“I do.”
“You’re just afraid of her,” said Gwennie contemptuously. “Do have some spunk.”
“I’ve lots of spunk,” retorted Marigold. “And it isn’t because I’m afraid of her that I won’t have the kittens baptized. It just isn’t right.”
“Do you know,” said Gwennie, “what I do at home when Father or Mother won’t let me do things. I just sit down and yell at the top of my voice till they give in.”
“You couldn’t yell Grandmother out,” said Marigold proudly.
Gwennie sulked all the evening and Marigold felt badly because she really liked Gwennie very much. But there were some things that simply were not done and baptizing kittens was one of them. Gwennie announced in the morning that she would forgive Marigold.
“I don’t want to be forgiven. I haven’t done anything wrong,” retorted Marigold. “I won’t be forgiven.”
“I will forgive you. You can’t prevent me,” said Gwennie virtuously. “And now let’s arrange for something different to happen today. I’m tired of everything we’ve been doing. Look here, was there ever a day in your life you did everything you wanted to?”
Marigold reflected. “No.”
“Well, let’s do everything we want to today. Every single thing.”
“Everything you want or everything I want?” queried Marigold significantly.
“Everything I want,” declared Gwennie. “I’m the visitor, so you ought to let me do as I want. Now, come on, don’t be a ’fraid-cat. I won’t ask you to baptize kittens. We’ll leave the holy things out since you’re so squeamish. I’ll tell you what I am going to do. I’m dying to taste some of that blueberry wine. I asked your Grandmother yesterday for some but she said it wasn’t good for little girls. That’s all in my eye. I’m just going to get a bottle out right now and open it. We’ll take a glass apiece and put the bottle back. Nobody’ll ever know.”
Marigold knew quite well this wasn’t right. But it was a different kind of wrongness from the kitten-project. And she knew that Gwennie would do it whether it was right or not; and Marigold had a secret hankering to see what blueberry wine was like. They would never give her any of it, which she thought very mean. Grandmother’s blueberry wine was famous, and when evening callers came they were always treated to blueberry wine with their cake.
Grandmother and Mother and Salome were all far up in the orchard picking the August apples. It was a good chance and, as Gwennie said, likely nobody would miss the two glassfuls if they put the bottle away back on the pantry shelf in the dark corner.
The dining-room was cool and shadowy. It had been newly papered in the spring, and Mother had just put up the new cream net curtains that waved softly in the August breezes. Grandmother’s beautiful bluebird centerpiece, which Aunt Dorothy had sent her all the way from Vancouver, was on the table under the bowl of purple delphiniums. Hanging over a chair was Salome’s freshly laundered blue and white print dress.
Marigold lingered to whisper something to the delphiniums, while Gwennie popped into the pantry and came out with a bottle.
“The cork is wired down,” she said. “I’ll have to run out to the apple-barn and get the pliers. You wait here and if you hear any one coming pop the bottle back into the pantry.”
Nobody came and Marigold watched the bottle with its beautiful purplish-red glow. At last she was going to know what blueberry wine was like. It was really rather jolly to have someone round who dared fly in Grandmother’s face.
Gwennie saw nobody but Lazarre on her trip to the apple-barn. Lazarre, whose opinion of Gwennie’s ancestry was sulfurous, knew something was in the wind.
“Dat kid she always look special lak de angel w’en she plannin’ some devil-work,” he muttered. But he said nothing. If three women couldn’t look after her it was none of his business.
“I’ve brought a corkscrew, too,” said Gwennie, twisting the wire deftly around with the pliers.
As it happened, there was no need of the corkscrew. None whatever.
Gwennie and Marigold hardly knew what had happened. There had been a noise like a gun-shot—and they were standing in the middle of the dining-room looking wildly at each other. There was not much blueberry wine left in that bottle. The rest of it was on the ceiling—on the walls—on the new curtains—on Salome’s dress—on the blue bird centerpiece—on Gwennie’s face—on Marigold’s pretty pink linen dress! Gwennie had learned something she had never known before about blueberry wine. And if thrills were what she was after, she had had enough in one moment to last several weeks.
For an instant she stood in dismay. Then she seized Marigold’s hand. “Come quick,” she hissed, “get that dress off—get something on—hurry.”
Marigold let herself be whisked upstairs. What dreadful thing had happened? Blueberry stains never came out, she had heard Salome say. But Gwennie gave her no time to think. The stained dress was dragged off and thrown into the closet—Marigold’s old tan one was thrown over her head—Gwennie wiped the blueberry wine off her face with one of Mother’s towels. There were some spots on her dress, too, but that did not matter.
“Come,” she said imperiously, snatching Marigold’s hand.
“Where are we going?” gasped Marigold as they tore down the road.
“Anywhere. We’ve got to vamoose until they get over that dining-room. They’d kill us if they saw us when they see it. We’ll stay away till evening. Their fit will be over by then and maybe we’ll get off with whole hides. But I’d like to be a fly on the ceiling when Grandmother sees that room.”
“We can’t stay away all day. We’ve nothing to eat,” groaned Marigold.
“We’ll eat berries and roots—and things,” said Gwennie. “We’ll be Gipsies and live in the woods. Come to think of it, it will be fun.”
“Will you take a drive,” said a voice above them.
It was Mr. Abel Derusha, the Weed Man, on his double-seated wagon, bareheaded as always, with his dog Buttons beside him!
2
The Weed Man was one of the few romantic personages the country around the harbor could boast. He lived somewhere up at the Head but was well known all over the surrounding communities—at least people thought they knew him well, whereas perhaps nobody really knew him at all. In his youth Abel Derusha had gone to college and studied for the ministry. Then that was given up. There was a heresy hunt and the result was that Abel Derusha came home, lived at the Head with his old-maid sister Tabby and set up his weed-wagon. Soon he was known as the “Weed Man.” In summer he drove all over the Island gathering medicinal plants and herbs and selling them and the decoctions he made from them. He made only a pittance by it. But he and Tabby had enough to live on, and Abel Derusha’s weed-fad was little more than an excuse to live in the open. Marigold thought him very “int’resting” and often felt that it would be a delightful thing to drive about with him on his red wagon. She always felt the strange charm of his personality though she knew little of his history—just what she had heard Salome say to Mrs. Kemp one day.
“Abel Derusha always took things easy. Never seemed to worry over trials and disappointments as most folks do. Seems to me that as long as he can wander over the country hunting weeds and talking to that old red dog of his as if it was a human being he don’t care how the world wags on. Didn’t even worry when they put him out of the ministry. Said God was in the woods as well as any church. He favors his mother’s people, the Courteloes. Sort of shiftless and dreamy. All born with hang-nails on their heels. The Derushas were all ashamed of him. ’Tisn’t the way to get on in the world.”
No, good and worthy Salome. It is not the way to get on in your world, but there may be other worlds where getting on is estimated by different standards, and Abel Derusha lived in one of these—a world far beyond the ken of the thrifty Harbor farmers. Marigold knew that world, though she knew it didn’t do to live in it all the time as Abel did. Though you were very happy there. Abel Derusha was the happiest person she knew.
He had a face so short it positively looked square, a long, rippling, silky red beard and an odd, spiky, truculent mustache that didn’t seem to belong to the beard at all. There was no doubt he was ugly, but Marigold had always thought it was a nice kind of ugliness. He had beautiful clear blue eyes that told he had kept the child-heart. The red squirrels would come to him in the woods and he called all the dogs in the country by their first name. When he came to Cloud of Spruce—which he did not always do, being “pernickety” in regard to his ports of call—he sat in his red wagon and talked with Lazarre and Salome and Mother and Grandmother by the hour, if they would linger to talk with him, though he would never enter the house. After he had gone Lazarre would shrug his shoulders and say contemptuously,
“Dat man, he’s crack.” Whereat Salome would inform Lazarre, by way of standing by her race, that Abel Derusha had forgotten more than he, the said Lazarre, ever knew. He had promised once to take Marigold for a drive with him and Marigold hankered after it, though she knew she would never be let go. And now here she and Gwennie were out to do as they liked for a whole day and here was the Weed Man offering them a drive.
“Sure,” said Gwennie promptly. But Marigold, in spite of her secret wishes, hung back.
“Where are you going?”
“Anywhere—anywhere,” said Abel easily. “I’m just poking along today—just poking along, thinking how I’d have made the world if I had made it. And if you two small skeesicks want to come along why just come.”
“But they wouldn’t know what had happened to us at home,” said Marigold doubtfully.
“They’ll know what has happened to the dining-room,” giggled Gwen. “Come on now, Marigold. Be a sport.”
“Marigold’s right,” said the Weed Man. “Doesn’t do to worry folks who worry. I never worry myself. Here’s Jim Donkin coming along. I’ll ask him to drop over to Cloud of Spruce and tell the folks you’ve come for a day with me. We’ll get our dinners somewhere along the road and we’ll go home to my place for supper, and I’ll bring you back in the evening. How’s that?”
Nobody but the Weed Man would have proposed such a plan. But Abel didn’t see any reason if the girls wanted a drive why they shouldn’t have it on a day God had made specially for people who wanted to be out. Gwennie had quite made up her mind to go and Marigold couldn’t help thinking it would be very int’resting.
So Jim Donkin was asked to take the word to Cloud of Spruce, and Marigold and Gwennie were in the back seat of the red wagon, amid fragrant bundles of Abel’s harvest, bowling along the road, quite delighted with themselves. Marigold resolved to forget the catastrophe of the blueberry wine. It had been Gwen’s doings, anyway. They wouldn’t kill Gwen because she was a visitor and meanwhile here was a whole golden day, with the very air seeming alive, flung into their laps as a gift. Perhaps Marigold had a spice of Uncle Klon’s wanderlust in her. At any rate the prospect of driving about with the Weed Man filled her with secret delight. She had always known she would like the Weed Man.
“What road are you going to take?” demanded Gwen.
“Whatever road pleases me,” said the Weed Man, looking disdainfully at a car that passed. “Look at that critter insulting the daylight. I’ve no use at all for them. Nor your aeroplanes. If God had meant us to fly He’d have given us wings.”
“Did God mean you to drive this poor old horse when He gave you legs?” said Gwen pertly.
“Yes, when He gave him four legs to my two,” was the retort. Abel was so well pleased with himself that he chuckled for a mile. Then he turned into a red side road, narrow and woodsy, with daisies blowing by the longer fences, little pole-gates under the spruces, stone dykes overgrown with things he loved to rifle, looping brooks and grassy fields girdled by woods. It was all very dear and remote and lovely and the Weed Man told them tales of every kink and turn, talking sometimes like the educated man he really was and sometimes lapsing into the vernacular of his childhood.
There was one lovely, gruesome tale of a hollow where a murdered woman’s body had been found, and at a certain corner of the road a “ go-preacher” had been stoned.
“What did they stone him for?” asked Gwen.
“For preaching the truth—or what he believed the truth, anyhow. They always do that if you preach the truth—stone you or crucify you.”
“You meant to be a preacher once yourself, didn’t you?” Gwen was possessed of a questioning devil.
“The preaching was Tabby’s idea. I never wanted to myself—not enough to tell lies for it anyhow. See that house in the hollow. There was a man lived there who used to say his prayers every morning and then get up and kick his wife.”
“Why did he kick her?”
“Ah, that’s the point, now. Nobody ever knew. Mebbe ’twas just his way of saying ‘amen.’”
“He wouldn’t have kicked me twice,” said Gwen.
“I believe you.” The Weed Man grinned at her over his shoulder. “Here’s the old Malloy place. Used to be a leprechaun living there—the Malloys brought him out from Ireland among their bits of furniture, ’twas said. Guess ’twas true. Never heard of any native leprechauns in Prince Edward Island.”
“What is a leprechaun?” asked Marigold who had a thrill at the name.
“A liddle dwarf fairy dressed in red with a peaky cap. If you could see him and keep on seeing him he’d lead you to a pot of buried gold. Jimmy Malloy saw him once but he tuk his eyes off him for a second and the liddle fellow vanished. Howsomever, Jimmy could always wiggle his ears after that. He got that much out of it.”
“What good did wiggling his ears do him?”
“Very few can do it. I can. Look.”
“Oh, will you show me how to do that?” cried Gwennie.
“Tisn’t an accomplishment—it’s a gift,” said the Weed Man solemnly. “Tom Squirely lives over there. Always bragging he doesn’t owe a cent. Good reason why. Nobody would lend him one.”
“I heard Lazarre say the same thing about you,” said Gwen impudently. “If you live in glass houses you shouldn’t throw stones.”
“Why not now? Somebody’ll be sure to throw a stone at your house whether or no, so you might as well have your fun, too. C. C. Vessey lives on that hill. Not a bad feller—not so mean as his dad. When old Vessey’s wife died she was buried with a little gold brooch unbeknown to him. When he found it out he went one night to the graveyard and opened up the grave and casket to get that brooch. Here, wait you a minute. I’ve got to run in and see Captain Simons for a second. He wanted me to bring him a south-west wind today. I have to tell him I couldn’t bring it today but I’ll send him one tomorrow.”
“Do you suppose he really sells the winds?” whispered Marigold.
“No,” scornfully. “I see through your Weed Man. His head isn’t screwed on very tight. But he’s good fun and his stories are great. I don’t believe that leprechaun yarn though.”
“Don’t you now?” said the Weed Man, returning creepily from behind, though they had never seen him leave the house, and looking at Gwennie compassionately. “What a lot you’re going to miss if you don’t believe things. Now, I just drive round believing everything and such fun as I have.”
“Lazarre says you’re lazy,” commented Gwen.
“No, no, not lazy. Just contented. I’m the biggest toad in my own puddle, so it don’t worry me none if there’s bigger toads in other puddles. I’m king of myself. Now look-a-here. Suppose we call and see old Granny Phin. I haven’t seen her for a long while. And maybe she’ll let Lily give us a bite of dinner.”
Gwen and Marigold surveyed rather dubiously the little house before which the Weed Man was stopping. It was a tumbledown little place with too many brown paper windowpanes. The gate hung by one hinge, the yard was overgrown with Scotch thistle and tansy, and even at a distance the old woman who sat on the crazy veranda did not seem attractive.
“I don’t like the look of the place much,” whispered Gwen. “Hope we don’t catch the itch.”
“What is that?”
“Marigold, don’t you know anything?”
Marigold thought gloatingly of certain things she did know—lovely things—things Gwennie never would or could know. But she only said,
“I don’t know what that is.”
“Then pray heaven you never do know,” said Gwen importantly. “I know. Caught it from a kid going to school who lived in just such a place as this. Ugh! Lard and sulphur till you could die.”
“Come on, now, and don’t you be whispering to each other,” said the Weed Man. “Granny Phin won’t like that. You don’t want to get on the rough side of her tongue. She’s eighty-seven years old, but she’s every inch alive.”
3
Physically, Granny Phin was hardly every inch alive, for she could not walk alone, having, as she told her visitors later, “paralattics of the hips.” But, mentally, her strength had not abated. She was of striking appearance, with snow-white hair in elf-locks around her dead-white face and flashing greenish-blue eyes. She still possessed all her teeth, but they were discolored and fang-like and when she drew back her lips in a smile she was certainly a rather wolf-like old dame. She wore a frilled widow’s cap tied tightly under her chin, a red calico blouse, and a voluminous skirt of red-and-black checked homespun, and was evidently addicted to bare feet. She liked to sit on the veranda, where she could scream maledictions and shake her long black stick at any persons or objects that incurred her dislike or displeasure. Marigold had heard of Granny Phin, but she had never expected to see her. Curiosity mingled with her trepidation as she followed the Weed Man up the path. What a difference there was in old women, she thought, comparing Old Grandmother and Grandmother to this crone.
“Well, this is a treat,” said Granny Phin.
“It’s a warm day, Mistress Phin,” said the Weed Man.
“Ye’ll be in a warmer place ere long, no doubt,” retorted Granny, “and I’ll sit in my high seat in heaven and laugh at yez. Hev ye forgot the last time ye was here that dog o’ yourn bit me?”
“Yes, and the poor liddle brute has been ill almost ever since,” said the Weed Man rather sternly. “He’s only just got well. Don’t let me see you letting him bite you again.”
“The devil himself can’t get the better of yer tongue,” chuckled Granny admiringly. “Well, come up, come up. Lucky for you I’m in a good humor today. I’ve had such fun watching old Poc Ramsay’s funeral go past. Ten years ago today he told me I’d only a year to live. Interduce yer family, please.”
“Miss Marigold Lesley of Cloud of Spruce—Miss Gwennie Lesley of Rush Hill.”
“Cloud o’ Spruce folk, eh? I worked at Cloud o’ Spruce in my young days. The old lady was a bigotty one. Yer Aunt Adela was there that summer. She looked like an angel, but they do be saying she p’isened her man.”
“She isn’t our Aunt Adela. She’s only a third cousin,” said Gwen. “And she didn’t poison her husband.”
“Well, well, take it easy. Half the husbands in the world ought to be p’isened, anyhow. I had four so I ought to know something of the breed. Sit down all of yez on the floor of the veranda and let yer feet hang down, till dinner’s ready. That’s what ye’ve come for, I reckon. Lily—Lily.”
In response to Granny’s yells a tall, thin, slatternly woman with a sullen face showed herself for a moment in the doorway.
“Company for dinner, Lily—quality folks from Cloud o’ Spruce. Put on a tablecloth and bring out the frog pie. And mind ye brew some skeewiddle tea. And send T. B. out to talk to the girls.”
“Lily’s peeved today,” grinned Granny as Lily disappeared without a word. “I boxed her ears this morning ’cause she left the soap in the water.”
“And her past sixty. Come, come,” protested the Weed Man.
“I believe ye. Ye’d think she could have larned sense in sixty years,” said Granny, choosing to misunderstand him. “But some folks never larn sense. Yerself now—ye was a young fool once and now ye’re an old one. Sad that. T. B., come here and entertain the young ladies.”
T. B. came rather sulkily and squatted down by Gwennie. He was a shock-headed urchin with his Grandmother’s wicked green eyes. Marigold took little notice of him. She was absorbed in awful visions of frog pie. And what was skeewiddle tea? It sounded worse than frog pie because she hadn’t the least idea what it was. But Gwennie, who had a flair for all kinds of boys, was soon quite at home, bandying slang with Timothy Benjamin Phin—T. B. for short. T. B. soon learned that there were “no flies on her,” even if she were one of those “bigotty Lesleys,” and also no great need to be overfussy as to what he said. When a plain “damn” slipped out Gwen only giggled.
“Oh, T. B., aren’t you afraid you’ll go to the bad place if you say such words?”
“Nix on that,” contemptuously. “I don’t believe there’s any heaven or hell. When you die there’s an end of you.”
“Wouldn’t you like to go on living?”
“Nope. There’s no fun in it,” said the youthful misanthrope. “And heaven’s a dull place from all the accounts I’ve heard.”
“You’ve never been there or you wouldn’t call it dull,” said Marigold suddenly.
“Have you been there?”
Marigold thought of the Hidden Land and the spruce hill and Sylvia.
“Yes,” she said.
T. B. looked at her. This Marigold-girl was not as pretty as the Gwen one and there wasn’t as much “go” in her; but there was something that made T. B. rather cautious, so instead of saying what he would have said to Gwen, he merely remarked politely,
“You’re lying.”
“Mind yer manners,” Granny suddenly shot at T. B. from her conversation with the Weed Man. “Don’t ye let me catch ye calling ladies liars.”
“Oh, give your face a rest,” retorted T. B.
“No shrimp sauce if ye please,” said Granny.
T. B. shrugged his shoulders and turned to Gwen.
“She was picking on Aunt Lily all day ’cause Aunt Lily left the soap in the wash-pan. She used to smack her, but I stopped that. I wasn’t going to have Granny abuse Aunt Lily.”
“How did you stop her?” queried Gwen.
“The last time she smacked Aunt Lily I went up to her and bit her,” said T. B. coolly.
“You ought to bite her oftener, if that will stop her,” giggled Gwen.
“There ain’t nothing else worth standing up to her for,” grinned T. B. “Granny’s tough biting. No, I let her alone and she lets me alone—mostly. She gave me a jaw last week when I got drunk.”
“Apple-sauce. You never,” scoffed Gwen.
T. B. had—as a sort of experiment, it appeared.
“Jest wanted to see what it was like. And it was awful disppointing. I jest went to sleep. Could do that without getting drunk. No fear of my getting jagged again. No kick in it. Nothing is ever like what you expect it to be in this world. It’s a dull old hole.”
“Tisn’t,” interjected Granny again. “It’s an int’resting world. Vi’lent int’resting.”
Marigold felt there was one thing she had in common with Granny at least. In a sense Marigold was enjoying herself. All this was a glimpse into a kind of life she had never known existed, but it was int’resting—vi’lent int’resting, as Granny said.
Granny and the Weed Man appeared to be enjoying themselves, too, in spite of an occasional passage-at-arms.
“Going to the Baptist church, are yez?” snarled Granny. “Well, if ye do yer dog’ll go to heaven afore ye do. Catch me going to a Baptist church. I’m a Episcopalian—always was and always will be, world without end, amen.”
“I don’t believe you ever saw the inside of an Episcopalian church in your life,” taunted the Weed Man.
“Yah, I’d tweak yer nose for that if I could reach it,” retorted Granny. “Go to yer Baptist church—go to yer Baptist church. Ye son of a monkey-faced rabbit. And I’ll sit here and imagine yez all being fried.”
She suddenly turned to Marigold.
“If this Weed Man was as rich as he’s poor he’d be riding over the heads of all of us. I tell you the real pride of this man is rildic’lous.”
“Dinner’s ready,” Aunt Lily called sulkily from inside.
“Come and help me in,” said Granny, reaching briskly for her black stick. “All that keeps me alive is the little bit I eat.”
Before the Weed Man could go gallantly to her assistance a shining new car, filled with gaily dressed people, suddenly swung in at the gate and stopped in front of the veranda. The driver bent from the car to make some request, but Granny, crouched like an old tigress, did not allow him to utter a word. She caught up the nearest missile—which happened to be a plate filled with gravy and bacon scraps—from the bench beside her and hurled it at him. It missed his face by a hair’s breadth and landed squarely, gravy and all, in a fashionable lady’s silken lap. Granny Phin followed this up by a series of fearsome yells and maledictions of which the mildest were, “May all yer pittaties be rotten” and “May ye always be looking for something and never finding it” and—finally, “May ye all have the seven-year itch. I’ll pray for it, that I will.”
The half-dazed driver backed his car out of the gate and broke all speed-limits down the road. Gwen was squealing with delight, the Weed Man was grinning and Marigold was trying hard to feel shocked.
Granny was in high good humor.
“My, but that did me good. I kin hold up my end of a row yit. Ye could tell by the look of that fellow his grandfather hanged himself in the horse-stable. Come to dinner, all of yez. If we’d known ye were comin’ we’d a killed the old rooster. It’s time he was used anyway. But there’s always frog pie, hey? Now for the frog pie.”
To Marigold’s relief and Gwen’s disappointment there was no frog pie. Indeed, there wasn’t much of anything but fried ham and potatoes with some blueberry jam—which suggested rather dismal recollections to Marigold. The dinner was a dull affair, for Aunt Lily was still sulky, Granny was busy gobbling and the Weed Man was silent. It was one of his peculiarities that he seldom talked inside any house.
“Can’t think or talk right with walls round me—never could,” he had told Salome once.
After dinner the Weed Man paid for their meal with a bottle of liniment for Granny’s “paralattics,” and Granny bade them a friendly good-bye.
“It’s sorry I am that ye’re goin’ instead o’ comin’,” she said graciously.
She pulled Marigold so close to her that Marigold had a horrible idea that Granny Phin was going to kiss her. If that happened Marigold knew she would, never be the same girl again. But Granny only whispered,
“She’s a bit purtier than you, but I like you best—ye look like a bit o’ spring.”
Which was a nicer compliment than one would have expected old Granny Phin to pay.
4
Their afternoon drive led along the winding shore of a little river running into the Head of the Bay. Far down was the blue, beckoning harbor and beyond it the sunny dunes and the misty gulf. The Weed Man shook his whip at it mournfully.
“One poetry has vanished from the gulf forever,” he said, more to himself than to the girls. “When I was a boy that gulf there would be dotted with white sails on a day like this. Now there’s nothing but gasoline boats and they’re not on speaking terms with romance at all. Romance is vanishing—romance is vanishing out of our world.”
He shook his head gloomily. But Marigold, looking on the world with the eyes of youth, saw romance everywhere. As for Gwennie she was not concerned with romance or the lack of it but only with her stomach.
“Gee, I’m hungry,” she said. “I didn’t get half enough at the Phins’s. Where’ll we have supper?”
“Down at my place,” said the Weed Man. “We’re going there now. Tabby’ll have a bite for us. After supper I’ll take you home—if the weather keeps good-humored. Those weather-gaws aren’t out for nothing. It’ll rain cats and dogs tomorrow.”
Marigold wondered what weather-gaws were—and then forgot in thinking how interesting it would be if it really rained cats and dogs. Little silk-eared kittens everywhere by the basketful—loads of darling pudgy puppies.
The Weed Man’s “place” was at the end of a wood road far down by the red harbor shore. He did not like to have his fellow-mortals too close to him. The little white-washed house seemed to be cuddled down among shrubs and blossoms. There were trees everywhere—the Weed Man would never have any cut down—and four blinking, topaz-eyed kittens in a row on the window-sill, all looking as if they had been cut out of black velvet by the same pattern.
“Cloud o’ Spruce breed,” said the Weed Man as he lifted the girls down. “Your Old Grandmother gave me the great-Grandmother of them. You are very welcome to my poor house, young ladies. Here, Tabby, we’ve company for supper. Bring along a glass o’ water apiece.”
“Goodness, aren’t we going to have anything for supper but a glass of water?” whispered Gwen.
But Marigold was taken up with Tabby Derusha, about whom she had heard her elders talking. She was not, so Salome said, “all there.” She was reported to go Abel one better in the matter of heresy, for she didn’t believe in God at all. She laughed a great deal and seldom went from home.
Tabby was very stout and wore a dress of bright red-and-white striped material. Her face was round and blank but her red hair was abundant and beautiful, and she had her brother’s kind, childlike blue eyes. She laughed pleasantly at the girls as she brought them the water.
“Down with it—every drop,” ordered the Weed Man. “Everyone who comes into my house has to drink a full glass of water first thing. People never drink half enough water. If they did they wouldn’t have to pay as many doctors’ bills. Drink, I say.”
Marigold was not in the least thirsty and she found the second half of the generous tumbler hard to “down.” Gwennie drank half of hers.
“Finish,” said the Weed Man sternly.
“There, then,” said Gwennie, and threw the rest of her water in the Weed Man’s face.
“Oh, Gwennie!” cried Marigold reproachfully. Miss Tabby laughed. The Weed Man stood quite still, looking comical enough with the water dripping from his whiskers.
“That’ll save me washing my face,” he said—and it was all he did say.
“How does Gwennie do such things and get away with it?” wondered Marigold. “Is it because she’s so pretty?”
She was ashamed of Gwennie’s manners. Perhaps Gwen was a little ashamed of herself—if shame were possible to her—for she behaved beautifully at the table—making only one break, when she asked Tabby curiously if it were true she didn’t believe in God.
“As long as I can laugh at things I can get along without God,” said Tabby mysteriously. “When I can’t laugh I’ll have to believe in Him.”
They had a good supper with plenty of Tabby’s applecake and cinnamon buns and raisin-bread and the Weed Man’s stories in between. But when he came in after supper and said the rain was very near and they must wait till morning to go home, it was not so very pleasant.
“Oh, we must go home,” cried Marigold. “Please, please take us home, Mr. Derusha.”
“I can’t drive you home and then drive back fourteen miles in a rainstorm. I am content with my allotted portion but I am poor—I can’t afford a buggy. And my umbrella’s full of holes. You’re all right here. Your folks know where you are and won’t worry. They know we’re clean. Your Grandmother was rained in here one night herself seven years ago. You go right to bed and sleep, and morning’ll be here ’fore you know it.”
5
“I know I won’t sleep a wink in this horrid place,” said Gwen snappily, looking scornfully around the tiny bedroom and seeing only the bare uneven floor with its round, braided rug, the cheap little bureau with its cracked mirror, the chipped pitcher and bowl, the stained and cracked ceiling, the old-fashioned knitted lace that trimmed the pillow slips. Marigold saw these things, too, but she saw something else—the view of the harbor through the little window, splendid in the savage sunset of approaching storm. Marigold was tired and rather inclined to think that doing everything you wanted wasn’t such fun after all; but under the spell of an outlook like that, the sense of romance and adventure persisted. Why couldn’t Gwen make the best of things? She had been grumbling ever since supper. She wasn’t such a sport after all.
“If the wind changes, your face will always look like that.”
“Oh, don’t try to be smart,” snapped Gwen. “Old Abel should have taken us home. He promised to. I’m scared to death to sleep in the same house with Tabby Derusha. Anyone can see she’s cracked. She might come in and smother us with a pillow.”
Marigold was a little frightened of Tabby herself—now that it was dark. But all she said was,
“I do hope Salome won’t forget to give the cats their strippings.”
“I do hope there aren’t any bed-bugs in this bed,” said Gwen, looking at it with disfavor. “It looks like it.”
“Oh, no, I’m sure there isn’t. Everything is so clean,” said Marigold. “Let’s just say our prayer and get into bed.”
“I wonder you aren’t afraid to say your prayers after that lie you told T. B. today about having been in Heaven,” said Gwen—who was tired and out of sorts and determined to wreak it on somebody.
“It wasn’t a lie—it wasn’t—oh, you don’t understand,” cried Marigold, “It was Sylvia—”
She stopped short. She had never told Gwennie about Sylvia. Gwen had somehow got an inkling that Marigold had some secret connected with the spruce wood and teased her to tell it at intervals. She pounced on Marigold’s inadvertent sentence.
“Sylvia! You’ve some secret about Sylvia, whoever she is. You’re mean and dirty not to tell me. Friends always tell each other secrets.”
“Not some kinds of secrets. I’m not going to tell you about Sylvia, and you needn’t coax. I guess I have a right to my own secrets.”
Gwen threw one of her boots at the wall.
“All right then. Keep it to yourself Do you think I want to know your horrid secrets? I do know one of them, anyhow. You’re jealous of Clementine Lawrence.”
Marigold colored hotly. How on earth had Gwennie found that out? She had never mentioned Clementine to her.
“Oh-h-h!” Gwennie chuckled maliciously. She had to torment somebody as an outlet to her nerves, and Marigold was the only one handy. “You didn’t think I knew that. You can’t hide things from me. Gee, how sour you looked when I praised her picture! Fancy being jealous of a dead woman you never saw! It is the funniest thing I ever heard of.”
Marigold writhed. The worst of it was it was true. She seemed to hate Clementine more bitterly every day of her life. She wished she could stop it. It was a torture when she thought of it. And it was torture to think that Gwennie had stumbled on it.
“Of course,” went on Gwen, “the first Mrs. Leander was ever so much handsomer than your mother. Of course your father would love her best. Ma says widowers just marry the second time for a housekeeper. I could just stand and look at Clementine’s picture for hours. When I grow up I’m going to have mine taken just like that, looking at a lily, with my hair done the same way. I’m never going to have my hair bobbed. It’s common.”
“The Princess Varvara had hers bobbed,” retorted Marigold.
“Russian princesses don’t count.”
“She is a grand-niece of Queen Victoria.”
“So she said. You needn’t put on any airs with me, Marigold Lesley, because you had a princess visiting you. I’m a—a—Democrat.”
“You’re not. Its only in the States there are Democrats.”
“Well, it’s something that doesn’t take stock in kings and queens, anyway. I forget the right word. And as for politics, do you know I’m going to be a Tory after this. Sir John Carter is ever so much better looking than our Liberal man.”
“You can’t be a To—Conservative,” cried Marigold, outraged at this topsy-turvy idea. “Why—why—you were born a Grit.”
“You’ll see if I can’t. Well—” Gwen had got her clothes off and wriggled into one of the rather skimpy little cotton nightgowns Tabby had unearthed from somewhere for them, “now for prayers. I’m awful tired of saying the same old prayer. I’m going to invent a new one of my own.”
“Do you think it’s—safe?” asked Marigold dubiously. When you were a stranger in a strange land wouldn’t it be best to stick to the tried and tested in prayers as well as politics.
“Why not? But I know what I’ll do. I’m going to say your prayer—the one your Aunt Marigold made up for you.”
“You shan’t,” cried Marigold. “That’s my very own special prayer.”
“Selfish pig,” said Gwennie.
Marigold said no more. Perhaps it was selfish. And anyway Gwennie would say it if she wanted to. She knew her Gwennie. But she also knew her own dear prayer would be spoiled for her forever if that imp from Rush Hill said it.
Gwennie knelt down with one eye on Marigold. And at the last moment she relented. Gwen wasn’t such a bad sort after all. But having said that she was going to invent a new prayer it was up to her to invent one. She wouldn’t back down altogether, but Gwen suddenly discovered that it was not such an easy thing to invent a prayer.
“Dear God,” she said slowly, “please—please—oh, please never let me have moles like Tabby Derusha’s. And never mind about the daily bread—I’m sure to have lots of that—but please give me lots of pudding and cake and jam. And please bless all the folks who deserve it.”
“There, that’s done,” she announced, hopping into bed.
“I’m sure God will think that a funny prayer,” said Marigold.
“Well, don’t you suppose He wants a little amusement sometimes?” demanded Gwennie. “Anyway, it’s my own prayer. It isn’t one somebody else made up for me. Gee, Marigold, what if there should be a nest of mice in this bed? There’s a chaff tick.”
What gruesome things Gwennie did think of. They had blown out their lamp and it was very dark. They were fourteen miles from home. The raindrops began to thud against the little windows. Was Tabby Derusha “cracked.”
“Abel sent in some apples for you.”
Gwennie, to use her own expression, let out a yelp. Tabby was standing by their bed. How could she have got there without their hearing her? Certainly it was eerie. And when she had gone out again they did not dare eat the apples for fear there were worms in them.
“What’s that snuffing at the door?” whispered Gwen. “Do you s’pose its old Abel Derusha turned into a wolf?”
“It’s only Buttons,” scoffed Marigold. But she was glad when a sudden snore proclaimed that Gwen had fallen asleep. Before she went to sleep herself Tabby Derusha came in again—silently as a shadow, with a little candle this time. She bent over the bed. Marigold, cold with sudden terror, kept her eyes shut and held her breath. Were they going to be killed? Smothered with pillows?
“Dear little children,” said Tabby Derusha, lifting one of Gwen’s lovely curls gently. “Hair soft as silk—sweet little faces—pretty little dears.”
There was a touch soft as a rose-leaf on Marigold’s cheek. Tabby gloated over them for a few minutes longer. Then she was gone, as noiselessly as she had come. But Marigold was no longer afraid. She felt as safe and as much at home as if she were in her own blue room at Cloud of Spruce. After all, it had been an int’resting day. And Gwen was all right. She hadn’t stolen her prayer. Marigold said it over again under her breath—the beautiful little prayer she loved because it was so beautiful and because Aunt Marigold had made it up for her—and went to sleep.
6
“I didn’t sleep a wink the whole night,” vowed Gwen.
“Never mind, here’s a new morning—such a lovely new morning,” said Marigold.
The rain was over. The southwest wind the Weed Man had promised Captain Simons was blowing. The clouds were racing before it. Down on the beach the water was purring in little blue ripples. The sky in the east was all rosy silver. The grass was green and wet on the high red cliffs. Over the harbor hung a milky mist. Then the rising sun rent it apart and made a rainbow of it. A vessel came sailing through it over a glistening path. Never, thought Marigold, had the world seemed so lovely.
“What are you doing?” said Gwen, struggling impatiently into her clothes, much annoyed because Buttons had got in after all and slept on her dress.
“I—I think—I’m praying,” said Marigold dreamily.
7
Uncle Klon came for them in his car before breakfast was over.
“Are they very mad at Cloud of Spruce?” asked Gwennie. Rather soberly for her. She did not like Uncle Klon. He was always too many for her.
“There’s a special Providence for children and idiots,” said Uncle Klon gently. “Jim Donkin forgot to give the message till late last night and they were so relieved to find out where you had gone, that the dining-room rather sank into the background. You’d better not look again on blueberry wine when it is purple, Miss Gwen.”
“It’s a good thing we’re too big to be spanked,” whispered Gwen, when she saw Grandmother’s face.
“I believe you,” said Lucifer.