MARY BRINGS EVIL TIDINGS

Mary Vance, whom Mrs. Elliott had sent up to the manse on an errand, came tripping down Rainbow Valley on her way to Ingleside where she was to spend the afternoon with Nan and Di as a Saturday treat. Nan and Di had been picking spruce gum with Faith and Una in the manse woods and the four of them were now sitting on a fallen pine by the brook, all, it must be admitted, chewing rather vigorously. The Ingleside twins were not allowed to chew spruce gum anywhere but in the seclusion of Rainbow Valley, but Faith and Una were unrestricted by such rules of etiquette and cheerfully chewed it everywhere, at home and abroad, to the very proper horror of the Glen. Faith had been chewing it in church one day; but Jerry had realized the enormity of that, and had given her such an older-brotherly scolding that she never did it again.

“I was so hungry I just felt as if I had to chew something,” she protested. “You know well enough what breakfast was like, Jerry Meredith. I couldn’t eat scorched porridge and my stomach just felt so queer and empty. The gum helped a lot—and I didn’t chew very hard. I didn’t make any noise and I never cracked the gum once.”

“You mustn’t chew gum in church, anyhow,” insisted Jerry. “Don’t let me catch you at it again.”

“You chewed yourself in prayer-meeting last week,” cried Faith.

“that’s different,” said Jerry loftily. “Prayer-meeting isn’t on Sunday. Besides, I sat away at the back in a dark seat and nobody saw me. You were sitting right up front where every one saw you. And I took the gum out of my mouth for the last hymn and stuck it on the back of the pew right up in front where every one saw you. Then I came away and forgot it. I went back to get it next morning, but it was gone. I suppose Rod Warren swiped it. And it was a dandy chew.”

Mary Vance walked down the Valley with her head held high. She had on a new blue velvet cap with a scarlet rosette in it, a coat of navy blue cloth and a little squirrel-fur muff. She was very conscious of her new clothes and very well pleased with herself. Her hair was elaborately crimped, her face was quite plump, her cheeks rosy, her white eyes shining. She did not look much like the forlorn and ragged waif the Merediths had found in the old Taylor barn. Una tried not to feel envious. Here was Mary with a new velvet cap, but she and Faith had to wear their shabby old gray tams again this winter. Nobody ever thought of getting them new ones and they were afraid to ask their father for them for fear that he might be short of money and then he would feel badly. Mary had told them once that ministers were always short of money, and found it “awful hard” to make ends meet. Since then Faith and Una would have gone in rags rather than ask their father for anything if they could help it. They did not worry a great deal over their shabbiness; but it was rather trying to see Mary Vance coming out in such style and putting on such airs about it, too. The new squirrel muff was really the last straw. Neither Faith nor Una had ever had a muff, counting themselves lucky if they could compass mittens without holes in them. Aunt Martha could not see to darn holes and though Una tried to, she made sad cobbling. Somehow, they could not make their greeting of Mary very cordial. But Mary did not mind or notice that; she was not overly sensitive. She vaulted lightly to a seat on the pine tree, and laid the offending muff on a bough. Una saw that it was lined with shirred red satin and had red tassels. She looked down at her own rather purple, chapped, little hands and wondered if she would ever, ever be able to put them into a muff like that.

“Give us a chew,” said Mary companionably. Nan, Di and Faith all produced an amber-hued knot or two from their pockets and passed them to Mary. Una sat very still. She had four lovely big knots in the pocket of her tight, thread-bare little jacket, but she wasn’t going to give one of them to Mary Vance—not one Let Mary pick her own gum! People with squirrel muffs needn’t expect to get everything in the world.

“Great day, isn’t it?” said Mary, swinging her legs, the better, perhaps, to display new boots with very smart cloth tops. Una tucked her feet under her. There was a hole in the toe of one of her boots and both laces were much knotted. But they were the best she had. Oh, this Mary Vance! Why hadn’t they left her in the old barn?

Una never felt badly because the Ingleside twins were better dressed than she and Faith were. They wore their pretty clothes with careless grace and never seemed to think about them at all. Somehow, they did not make other people feel shabby. But when Mary Vance was dressed up she seemed fairly to exude clothes—to walk in an atmosphere of clothes—to make everybody else feel and think clothes. Una, as she sat there in the honey-tinted sunshine of the gracious December afternoon, was acutely and miserably conscious of everything she had on—the faded tam, which was yet her best, the skimpy jacket she had worn for three winters, the holes in her skirt and her boots, the shivering insufficiency of her poor little undergarments. Of course, Mary was going out for a visit and she was not. But even if she had been she had nothing better to put on and in this lay the sting.

“Say, this is great gum. Listen to me cracking it. There ain’t any gum spruces down at Four Winds,” said Mary. “Sometimes I just hanker after a chew. Mrs. Elliott won’t let me chew gum if she sees me. She says it ain’t lady-like. This lady-business puzzles me. I can’t get on to all its kinks. Say, Una, what’s the matter with you? Cat got your tongue?”

“No,” said Una, who could not drag her fascinated eyes from that squirrel muff. Mary leaned past her, picked it up and thrust it into Una’s hands.

“Stick your paws in that for a while,” she ordered. “They look sorter pinched. Ain’t that a dandy muff? Mrs. Elliott give it to me last week for a birthday present. I’m to get the collar at Christmas. I heard her telling Mr. Elliott that.”

“Mrs. Elliott is very good to you,” said Faith.

“You bet she is. And I’m good to her, too,” retorted Mary. “I work like a nigger to make it easy for her and have everything just as she likes it. We was made for each other. ‘Tisn’t every one could get along with her as well as I do. She’s pizen neat, but so am I, and so we agree fine.”

“I told you she would never whip you.”

“So you did. She’s never tried to lay a finger on me and I ain’t never told a lie to her—not one, true’s you live. She combs me down with her tongue sometimes though, but that just slips off me like water off a duck’s back. Say, Una, why didn’t you hang on to the muff?”

Una had put it back on the bough.

“My hands aren’t cold, thank you,” she said stiffly.

“Well, if you’re satisfied, I am. Say, old Kitty Alec has come back to church as meek as Moses and nobody knows why. But everybody is saying it was Faith brought Norman Douglas out. His housekeeper says you went there and gave him an awful tongue-lashing. Did you?”

“I went and asked him to come to church,” said Faith uncomfortably.

“Fancy your spunk!” said Mary admiringly. “I wouldn’t have dared do that and I’m not so slow. Mrs. Wilson says the two of you jawed something scandalous, but you come off best and then he just turned round and like to eat you up. Say, is your father going to preach here to-morrow?”

“No. He’s going to exchange with Mr. Perry from Charlottetown. Father went to town this morning and Mr. Perry is coming out to-night.”

“I thought there was something in the wind, though old Martha wouldn’t give me any satisfaction. But I felt sure she wouldn’t have been killing that rooster for nothing.”

“What rooster? What do you mean?” cried Faith, turning pale.

“I don’t know what rooster. I didn’t see it. When she took the butter Mrs. Elliott sent up she said she’d been out to the barn killing a rooster for dinner tomorrow.”

Faith sprang down from the pine.

“It’s Adam—we have no other rooster—she has killed Adam.”

“Now, don’t fly off the handle. Martha said the butcher at the Glen had no meat this week and she had to have something and the hens were all laying and too poor.”

“If she has killed Adam—” Faith began to run up the hill.

Mary shrugged her shoulders.

“She’ll go crazy now. She was so fond of that Adam. He ought to have been in the pot long ago—he’ll be as tough as sole leather. But I wouldn’t like to be in Martha’s shoes. Faith’s just white with rage; Una, you’d better go after her and try to peacify her.”

Mary had gone a few steps with the Blythe girls when Una suddenly turned and ran after her.

“Here’s some gum for you, Mary,” she said, with a little repentant catch in her voice, thrusting all her four knots into Mary’s hands, “and I’m glad you have such a pretty muff.”

“Why, thanks,” said Mary, rather taken by surprise. To the Blythe girls, after Una had gone, she said, “Ain’t she a queer little mite? But I’ve always said she had a good heart.”