"I don't care much for daffodils. They are such flaunting things,” said Aunt Mary Maria, drawing her shawl around her and going indoors to protect her back.
"Do you know, Mrs. Dr. dear," said Susan ominously, "what has become of those new irises you wanted to plant in that shady corner? SHE planted them this afternoon when you were out right in the sunniest part of the back yard.”
"Oh, Susan! And we can't move them because she'd be so hurt!”
"If you will just give ME the word, Mrs. Dr. dear ...”
"No, no, Susan, we'll leave them there for the time being. She cried, you remember, when I hinted that she shouldn't have pruned the spirea BEFORE blooming.”
"But sneering at our daffodils, Mrs. Dr. dear ... and them famous all around the harbour ...”
"And deserve to be. Look at them laughing at you for minding Aunt Mary Maria. Susan, the nasturtiums are coming up in this corner, after all. It's such fun when you've given up hope of a thing to find it has suddenly popped up. I'm going to have a little rose garden made in the southwest corner. The very name of rose garden thrills to my toes. Did you ever see such a BLUE blueness of sky before, Susan? And if you listen very carefully now at night you can hear all the little brooks of the countryside gossiping. I've half a notion to sleep in the Hollow tonight with a pillow of wild violets.”
"You would find it very damp," said Susan patiently. Mrs. Dr. was always like this in the spring. It would pass.
"Susan," said Anne coaxingly, "I want to have a birthday party next week.”
"Well, and why should you not?" asked Susan. To be sure, none of the family had a birthday the last week in May, but if Mrs. Dr.
wanted a birthday party why boggle over that?
"For Aunt Mary Maria," went on Anne, as one determined to get the worst over. "Her birthday is next week. Gilbert says she is fifty-five and I've been thinking.”
"Mrs. Dr. dear, do you really mean to get up a party for that ...”
"Count a hundred, Susan ... count a hundred, Susan dear. It would please her so. What has she in life, after all?”
"That is her own fault ...”
"Perhaps so. But, Susan, I really want to do this for her.”
"Mrs. Dr. dear," said Susan ominously, "you have always been kind enough to give me a week's vacation whenever I felt I needed it.
Perhaps I had better take it next week! I will ask my niece Gladys to come and help you out. And then Miss Mary Maria Blythe can have a dozen birthday parties, for all of me.”
"If you feel like that about it, Susan, I'll give up the idea, of course," said Anne slowly.
"Mrs. Dr. dear, that woman has foisted herself upon you and means to stay here forever. She has worried you ... and henpecked the doctor ... and made the children's lives miserable. I say nothing about myself, for who am I? She has scolded and nagged and insinuated and whined ... and now you want to get up a birthday party for her! Well, all I can say is, if you want to do that ... we'll just have to go ahead and have it!”
"Susan, you old duck!”
Plotting and planning followed. Susan, having yielded, was determined that for the honour of Ingleside the party must be something that even Mary Maria Blythe could not find fault with.
"I think we'll have a luncheon, Susan. Then they'll be away early enough for me to go to the concert at Lowbridge with the doctor.
We'll keep it a secret and surprise her. She shan't know a thing about it till the last minute. I'll invite all the people in the Glen she likes...”
"And who may THEY be, Mrs. Dr. dear?”
"Well, tolerates, then. And her cousin, Adella Carey from Lowbridge, and some people from town. We'll have a big plummy birthday cake with fifty-five candles on it ...”
"Which I am to make, of course ...”
"Susan, you KNOW you make the best fruit-cake in P. E. Island ...”
"I know that I am as wax in your hands, Mrs. Dr. dear.”
A mysterious week followed. An air of hush-hush pervaded Ingleside.
Everybody was sworn not to give the secret away to Aunt Mary Maria.
But Anne and Susan had reckoned without gossip. The night before the party Aunt Mary Maria came home from a call in the Glen to find them sitting rather wearily in the unlighted sun-room.
"All in the dark, Annie? It beats me how anyone can like sitting in the dark. It gives me the blues.”
"It isn't dark ... it's twilight ... there has been a love-match between light and dark and beautiful exceedingly is the offspring thereof," said Anne, more to herself than anybody else.
"I suppose you know what you mean yourself, Annie. And so you're having a party tomorrow?”
Anne suddenly sat bolt upright. Susan, already sitting so, could not sit any uprighter.
"Why ... why ... Aunty ...”
"You always leave me to hear things from outsiders," said Aunt Mary Maria, but seemingly more in sorrow than in anger.
"We ... we meant it for a surprise, Aunty ...”
"I don't know what you want of a party this time of year when you can't depend on the weather, Annie.”
Anne drew a breath of relief. Evidently Aunt Mary Maria knew only that there was to be a party, not that it had any connexion with her.
"I ... I wanted to have it before the spring flowers were done, Aunty.”
"I shall wear my garnet taffeta. I suppose, Annie, if I had not heard of this in the village I should have been caught by all your fine friends tomorrow in a cotton dress.”
"Oh, no, Aunty. We meant to tell you in time to dress, of course ...”
"Well, if MY advice means anything to you, Annie ... and sometimes I am almost compelled to think it does not ... I would say that in future it would be better for you not to be QUITE SO SECRETIVE about things. By the way, are you aware that they are saying in the village that it was Jem who threw the stone through the window of the Methodist church?”
"He did not," said Anne quietly. "He told me he did not.”
"Are you sure, Annie dear, that he was not fibbing?”
"Annie dear" still spoke quietly.
"Quite sure, Aunt Mary Maria. Jem has never told me an untruth in his life.”
"Well, I thought you ought to know what was being said.”
Aunt Mary Maria stalked off in her usual gracious manner, ostentatiously avoiding the Shrimp, who was lying on his back on the floor entreating someone to tickle his stomach.
Susan and Anne drew a long breath.
"I think I'll go to bed, Susan. And I do hope it is going to be fine tomorrow. I don't like the look of that dark cloud over the harbour.”
"It will be fine, Mrs. Dr. dear," reassured Susan. "The almanack says so.”
Susan had an almanack which foretold the whole year's weather and was right often enough to keep up its credit.
"Leave the side door unlocked for the doctor, Susan. He may be late getting home from town. He went in for the roses ... fifty- five golden roses, Susan ... I've heard Aunt Mary Maria say that yellow roses were the only flowers she liked.”
Half an hour later, Susan, reading her nightly chapter in her Bible, came across the verse, "Withdraw thy foot from thy neighbour's house lest he weary of thee and hate thee." She put a sprig of southernwood in it to mark the spot. "Even in those days,” she reflected.
Anne and Susan were both up early, desiring to complete certain last preparations before Aunt Mary Maria should be about. Anne always liked to get up early and catch that mystical half-hour before sunrise when the world belongs to the fairies and the old gods. She liked to see the morning sky of pale rose and gold behind the church spire, the thin, translucent glow of sunrise spreading over the dunes, the first violet spirals of smoke floating up from the village roofs.