How strange the world was after dark! Was everyone in it asleep but her? The large white roses on the bush by the steps looked like small human faces in the night. The smell of the mint was like a friend. There was a glint of firefly in the orchard. After all, she would be able to brag that she had "slept out all night.”
But it was not to be. Two dark figures came through the gate and up the driveway. Gilbert went around by the back way to force open a kitchen window but Anne came up the steps and stood looking in amazement at the poor mite who sat there, with her armful of cat.
"Mummy ... oh, Mummy!" She was safe in Mother's arms.
"Di, darling! What does this mean?”
"Oh, Mummy, I was bad ... but I'm so sorry ... and you were right ... and Gammy was so dreadful--but I thought you wouldn't be back till tomorrow.”
"Daddy got a telephone from Lowbridge ... they have to operate on Mrs. Parker tomorrow and Dr. Parker wanted him to be there. So we caught the evening train and walked up from the station. Now tell me ...”
The whole story was sobbed out by the time Gilbert had got in and opened the front door. He thought he had effected a very silent entrance, but Susan had ears that could hear a bat squeak when the safety of Ingleside was concerned, and she came limping downstairs with a wrapper over her nightgown.
There were exclamations and explanations, but Anne cut them short.
"Nobody is blaming you, Susan dear. Di has been very naughty but she knows it and I think she has had her punishment. I'm sorry we've disturbed you ... you must go straight back to bed and the doctor will see to your ankle.”
"I was not asleep, Mrs. Dr. dear. Do you think I could sleep, knowing where that blessed child was? And ankle or no ankle I am going to get you both a cup of tea.”
"Mummy," said Di, from her own white pillow, "is Daddy ever cruel to you?”
"Cruel! To me? Why, Di ...”
"The Pennys said he was ... said he beat you ...”
"Dear, you know what the Pennys are now, so you know better than to worry your small head over anything they said. There is always a bit of malicious gossip floating round in any place ... people like that INVENT it. You must never bother about it.”
"Are you going to scold me in the morning, Mummy?”
"No. I think you've learned your lesson. Now go to sleep, precious.”
"Mummy is so SENSIBLE," was Di's last conscious thought. But Susan, as she stretched out peacefully in bed, with her ankle expertly and comfortably bandaged, was saying to herself:
"I must hunt up the fine-tooth comb in the morning ... and when I see my fine Miss Jenny Penny I shall give her a ticking off she will not forget.”
Jenny Penny never got the promised ticking off, for she came no more to the Glen school. Instead, she went with the other Pennys to Mowbray Narrows school, whence rumours drifted back of her yarns, among them being one of how Di Blythe, who lived in the "big house" at Glen St. Mary but was always coming down to sleep with her, had fainted one night and had been carried home at midnight pick-a-back, by her, Jenny Penny, alone and unassisted. The Ingleside people had knelt and kissed her hands out of gratitude and the doctor himself had got out his fringed-top buggy and his famous dappled grey span and driven her home. "And if there is ever ANYTHING I can do for you, Miss Penny, for your kindness to my beloved child you have only to name it. My best heart's blood would not be enough to repay you. I would go to Equatorial Africa to reward you for what you have done," the doctor had vowed.
Chapter 30
"I know something you don't know ... something YOU don't know ... something YOU don't know," chanted Dovie Johnson, as she teetered back and forth on the very edge of the wharf.
It was Nan's turn for the spotlight ... Nan's turn to add a tale to the do-you-remembers of after Ingleside years. Though Nan to the day of her death would blush to be reminded of it. She HAD been so silly.
Nan shuddered to see Dovie teetering ... and yet it had a fascination. She was so sure Dovie would fall off sometime and then what? But Dovie never fell. Her luck always held.
Everything Dovie did, or said she did ... which were, perhaps, two very different things, although Nan, brought up at Ingleside where nobody ever told anything but the truth even as a joke, was too innocent and credulous to know that ... had a fascination for Nan. Dovie, who was eleven and had lived in Charlottetown all her life knew so much more than Nan, who was only eight. Charlottetown, Dovie said, was the only place where people knew anything. What could you know, shut off in a one-horse place like Glen St. Mary?
Dovie was spending part of her vacation with her Aunt Ella in the Glen and she and Nan had struck up a very intimate friendship in spite of the difference in their ages. Perhaps because Nan looked up to Dovie, who seemed to her to be almost grown up, with the adoration we needs must give the highest when we see it ... or think we see it. Dovie liked her humble and adoring little satellite.
"There's no harm in Nan Blythe ... she's only a bit soft," she told Aunt Ella.
The watchful folks at Ingleside could not see anything out of the way about Dovie ... even if, as Anne reflected, her mother was a cousin of the Avonlea Pyes ... and made no objection to Nan's chumming with her, though Susan from the first mistrusted those gooseberry-green eyes with their pale golden lashes. But what would you? Dovie was "nice-mannered," well-dressed, ladylike, and did not talk too much. Susan could not give any reason for her mistrust and held her peace. Dovie would be going home when school opened and in the meantime there was certainly no need of fine- tooth combs in this case.
So Nan and Dovie spent most of their spare time together at the wharf, where there was generally a ship or two with their folded wings, and Rainbow Valley hardly knew Nan that August. The other Ingleside children did not care greatly for Dovie and no love was lost. She had played a practical joke on Walter and Di had been furious and "said things." Dovie was, it seemed, fond of playing practical jokes. Perhaps that was why none of the Glen girls ever tried to lure her from Nan.
"Oh, please tell me," pleaded Nan.
But Dovie only winked a wicked eye and said that Nan was far too young to be told such a thing. This was just maddening.
"PLEASE tell me, Dovie.”
"Can't. It was told me as a secret by Aunt Kate and she's dead.
I'm the only person in the world that knows it now. I promised when I heard it that I'd never tell a soul. You'd tell somebody ... you couldn't help it.”
"I wouldn't ... I could so!" cried Nan.
"People say you folks at Ingleside tell each other everything.
Susan'd pick it out of you in no time.”
"She wouldn't. I know lots of things I've never told Susan.
Secrets. I'll tell mine to you if you'll tell me yours.”