"You don't s'pose I'm blaming God for THIS?" said Jem sternly.
"You haven't any sense of proportion, Nan Blythe.”
Nan went away quite crushed through she hadn't the least glimmering what Jem meant, and Jem scowled at the embers of the smouldering sunset. Dogs were barking all over the Glen. The Jenkins down the road were out calling theirs ... all of them took turns at it.
Everyone, even the Jenkins tribe, could have a dog ... everyone but him. Life stretched before him like a desert where there would be no dogs.
Anne came and sat down on a lower step, carefully not looking at him. Jem FELT her sympathy.
"Motherest," he said in a choked voice, "WHY wouldn't Bruno love me when I loved him so much? Am I ... do you think I am the kind of boy dogs don't like?”
"No, darling. Remember how Gyp loved you. It was just that Bruno had only so much love to give ... and he had given it all. There are dogs like that ... one-man dogs.”
"Anyhow, Bruno and Roddy are happy," said Jem with grim satisfaction, as he bent over and kissed the top of Mother's smooth ripply head.
"But I'll never have another dog.”
Anne thought this would pass; he had felt the same when Gyppy died.
But it did not. The iron had bitten deeply into Jem's soul. Dogs were to come and go at Ingleside ... dogs that belonged just to the family and were nice dogs, whom Jem petted and played with as the others did. But there was to be no "Jem's dog" until a certain "Little Dog Monday" was to take possession of his heart and love him with a devotion passing Bruno's love ... a devotion that was to make history in the Glen. But that was still many a long year away; and a very lonely boy climbed into Jem's bed that night.
"I wish I was a girl," he thought fiercely, "so's I could cry AND cry!”
Chapter 25
Nan and Di were going to school. They started the last week in August.
"Will we know EVERYTHING by night, Mummy?" asked Di solemnly the first morning.
Now, in early September, Anne and Susan had got used to it, and even took pleasure in seeing the two mites trip off every morning, so tiny and carefree and neat, thinking going to school quite an adventure. They always took an apple in their basket for teacher and they wore frocks of pink and blue ruffled gingham. Since they did not look in the least alike they were never dressed alike.
Diana, with her red hair, could not wear pink, but it suited Nan, who was much the prettier of the Ingleside twins. She had brown eyes, brown hair and a lovely complexion, of which she was quite aware even at seven. A certain starriness had gone to the fashioning of her. She held her head proudly, with her little saucy chin a wee bit in evidence, and so was already thought rather "stuck-up.”
"She'll imitate all her mother's tricks and poses," said Mrs. Alec Davies. "She has all her airs and graces already, if you ask me.”
The twins were dissimilar in more than looks. Di, in spite of her physical resemblance to her mother, was very much her father's child, so far as disposition and qualities went. She had the beginnings of his practical bent, his plain common sense, his twinkling sense of humour. Nan had inherited in full her mother's gift of imagination and was already making life interesting for herself in her own way. For example, she had had no end of excitement this summer making bargains with God, the gist of the matter being, "If you'll do such-and-such a thing I'll do such-and- such a thing.”
All the Ingleside children had been started in life with the old classic, "Now I lay me" ... then promoted to "Our Father" ... then encouraged to make their own small petitions also in whatever language they chose. What gave Nan the idea that God might be induced to grant her petitions by promises of good behaviour or displays of fortitude would be hard to say. Perhaps a certain rather young and pretty Sunday School teacher was indirectly responsible for it by her frequent admonitions that if they were not good girls God would not do this or that for them. It was easy to turn this idea inside out and come to the conclusion that if you WERE this or that, DID this or that, you had a right to expect that God would do the things you wanted. Nan's first "bargain" in the spring had been so successful that it outweighed some failures and she had gone on all summer. Nobody knew of it, not even Di. Nan hugged her secret and took to praying at sundry times and in divers places, instead of only at night. Di did not approve of this and said so.
"Don't mix God up with EVERYTHING," she told Nan severely. "You make Him too COMMON.”
Anne, overhearing this, rebuked her and said, "God IS in everything, dear. He is the Friend who is always near us to give strength and courage. And Nan is quite right in praying to Him and where she wants to." Though, if Anne had known the truth about her small daughter's devotions, she would have been rather horrified.
Nan had said one night in May, "If you'll make my tooth grow in before Amy Taylor's party next week, dear God, I'll take every dose of castor-oil Susan gives me without a bit of fuss.”
The very next day the tooth, whose absence had made such an unsightly and too prolonged gap in Nan's pretty mouth, had appeared and by the day of the party was fully through. What more certain sign could you want than that? Nan kept her side of the compact faithfully and Susan was amazed and delighted whenever she administered castor-oil after that. Nan took it without a grimace or protest, though she sometimes wished she had set a time limit ... say for three months.
God did not always respond. But when she asked Him to send her a special button for her button-string ... collecting buttons had broken out everywhere among the Glen small girls like the measles ... assuring Him that if He did she would never make a fuss when Susan set the chipped plate for her ... the button came the very next day, Susan having found one on an old dress in the attic. A beautiful red button set with tiny diamonds, or what Nan believed to be diamonds. She was the envied of all because of that elegant button and when Di refused the chipped plate that night Nan said virtuously, "Give it to me, Susan. I'll ALWAYS take it after this." Susan thought she was angelically unselfish and said so.
Whereupon Nan both looked and felt smug. She got a fine day for the Sunday School picnic, when everyone predicted rain the night before, by promising to brush her teeth every morning without being told. Her lost ring was restored on the condition that she kept her fingernails scrupulously clean; and when Walter handed over his picture of a flying angel which Nan had long coveted she ate the fat with the lean uncomplainingly at dinner thereafter.
When, however, she asked God to make her battered and patched Teddy Bear young again, promising to keep her bureau drawer tidy, something struck a snag. Teddy did not grow young though Nan looked for the miracle anxiously every morning and wished God would hurry. Finally she resigned herself to Teddy's age. After all, he was a nice old bear and it would be awfully hard to keep that old bureau drawer tidy. When Dad brought her home a new Teddy Bear she didn't really like it and, though with sundry misgivings of her small conscience, decided she need not take any special pains with the bureau drawer. Her faith returned when, having prayed that the missing eye of her china cat would be restored, the eye was in its place next morning, though somewhat askew, giving the cat a rather cross-eyed aspect. Susan had found it when sweeping and stuck it in with glue, but Nan did not know this and cheerfully carried out her promise of walking fourteen times around the barn on all fours.
What good walking fourteen times around the barn on all fours could do God or anybody else Nan did not stop to consider. But she hated doing it ... the boys were always wanting her and Di to pretend they were some kind of animals in Rainbow Valley ... and perhaps there was some vague thought in her budding mind that penance might be pleasing to the mysterious Being who gave or withheld at pleasure. At any rate, she thought out several weird stunts that summer, causing Susan to wonder frequently where on earth children got the notions they did.