Mother ran and caught her in her arms.
"Darling, what a fright you have given us! Oh, where have you been?”
"I only hope Jem and Walter won't catch their deaths out in that rain searching for you," said Susan, the sharpness of strain in her voice.
Nan had almost had the breath battered out of her. She could only gasp, as she felt Mother's arms enfolding her:
"Oh, Mother, I'm me ... really me. I'm not Cassie Thomas and I'll never be anybody but me again.”
"The poor pet is delirious," said Susan. "She must have et something that disagreed with her.”
Anne bathed Nan and put her to bed before she would let her talk.
Then she heard the whole story.
"Oh, Mummy, am I really your child?”
"Of course, darling. How could you think anything else?”
"I didn't ever think Dovie would tell me a story ... not DOVIE.
Mummy, can you believe ANYBODY? Jen Penny told Di awful stories ...”
"They are only two girls out of all the little girls you know, dear. None of your other playmates has ever told you what wasn't true. There ARE people in the world like that, grown-ups as well as children. When you are a little older you will be better able to 'tell the gold from the tinsel.'“
"Mummy, I wish Walter and Jem and Di needn't know what a silly I was.”
"They needn't. Di went to Lowbridge with Daddy, and the boys need only know you went too far down the Harbour Road and were caught in the storm. You were foolish to believe Dovie but you were a very fine brave little girl to go and offer what you thought her rightful place to poor little Cassie Thomas. Mother is proud of you.”
The storm was over. The moon was looking down on a cool happy world.
"Oh, I'm so glad I'm ME!" was Nan's last thought as she fell on sleep.
Gilbert and Anne came in later to look on the little sleeping faces that were so sweetly close to each other. Diana slept with the corners of her firm little mouth tucked in but Nan had gone to sleep smiling. Gilbert had heard the story and was so angry that it was well for Dovie Johnson that she was a good thirty miles away from him. But Anne was feeling conscience-stricken.
"I should have found out what was troubling her. But I've been too much taken up with other things this week ... things that really mattered nothing compared to a child's unhappiness. Think of what the poor darling has suffered.”
She stooped repentantly, gloatingly over them. They were still hers ... wholly hers, to mother and love and protect. They still came to her with every love and grief of their little hearts. For a few years longer they would be hers ... and then? Anne shivered. Motherhood was very sweet ... but very terrible.
"I wonder what life holds for them," she whispered.
"At least, let's hope and trust they'll each get as good a husband as their mother got," said Gilbert teasingly.
Chapter 32
"So the Ladies' Aid is going to have their quilting at Ingleside,” said the doctor. "Bring out all your lordly dishes, Susan, and provide several brooms to sweep up the fragments of reputations afterwards.”
Susan smiled wanly, as a woman tolerant of a man's lack of all understanding of vital things, but she did not feel like smiling ... at least, until everything concerning the Aid supper had been settled.
"Hot chicken pie," she went about murmuring, "mashed potatoes and creamed peas for the main course. And it will be such a good chance to use your new lace tablecloth, Mrs. Dr. dear. Such a thing has never been seen in the Glen and I am confident it will make a sensation. I am looking forward to Annabel Clow's face when she sees it. And will you be using your blue and silver basket for the flowers?”
"Yes, full of pansies and yellow-green ferns from the maple grove.
And I want you to put those three magnificent pink geraniums of yours somewhere around ... in the living-room if we quilt there or on the balustrade of the verandah if it's warm enough to work out there. I'm glad we have so many flowers left. The garden has never been so beautiful as it has been this summer, Susan. But then I say that every autumn, don't I?”
There were many things to be settled. Who should sit by whom ... it would never do, for instance, to have Mrs. Simon Millison sit beside Mrs. William McCreery, for they never spoke to each other because of some obscure old feud dating back to schooldays. Then there was the question of whom to invite ... for it was the hostess' privilege to ask a few guests apart from the members of the Aid.
"I'm going to have Mrs. Best and Mrs. Campbell," said Anne.
Susan looked doubtful.
"They are newcomers, Mrs. Dr. dear," ... much as she might have said, "They are crocodiles.”
"The doctor and I were newcomers once, Susan.”
"But the doctor's uncle was here for years before that. Nobody knows anything about these Bests and Campbells. But it is your house, Mrs. Dr. dear, and whom am I to object to anyone you wish to have? I remember one quilting at Mrs. Carter Flagg's many years ago when Mrs. Flagg invited a strange woman. She came in WINCEY, Mrs. Dr. dear ... said she didn't think a Ladies' Aid worth dressing up for! At least there will be no fear of that with Mrs.
Campbell. She is very dressy ... though I could never see myself wearing hydrangea blue to church.”
Anne could not either, but she dared not smile.
"I thought that dress was lovely with Mrs. Campbell's silver hair, Susan. And by the way, she wants your recipe for spiced gooseberry relish. She says she had some of it at the Harvest Home supper and it was delicious.”
"Oh, well, Mrs. Dr. dear, it is not everyone who can make spiced gooseberry ..." and no more disapproval was expressed of hydrangea blue dresses. Mrs. Campbell might henceforth appear in the costume of a Fiji Islander if she chose and Susan would find excuses for it.
The young months had grown old but autumn was still remembering summer and the quilting day was more like June than October. Every member of the Ladies' Aid who could possibly come came, looking forward pleasurably to a good dish of gossip and an Ingleside supper, besides, possibly, seeing some sweet new thing in fashions since the doctor's wife had recently been to town.
Susan, unbowed by the culinary cares that were heaped upon her, stalked about, showing the ladies to the guest-room, serene in the knowledge that not one of them possessed an apron trimmed with crochet lace five inches deep made from Number One Hundred thread.
Susan had captured first prize at the Charlottetown Exhibition the week before with that lace. She and Rebecca Dew had trysted there and made a day of it, and Susan had come home that night the proudest woman in Prince Edward Island.
Susan's face was perfectly controlled but her thoughts were her own, sometimes spiced with a trifle of mild malice.
"Celia Reese is here, looking for something to laugh at as usual.
Well, she will not find it at our supper table and that you may tie to. Myra Murray in red velvet ... a little too sumptuous for a quilting in my opinion but I am not denying she looks well in it.
At least it is not wincey. Agatha Drew ... and her glasses tied on with a string as usual. Sarah Taylor ... it may be her last quilting ... she has got a terrible heart, the doctor says, but the spirit of her! Mrs. Donald Reese ... thank the Good Lord she didn't bring Mary Anna with her but no doubt we will hear plenty.
Jane Burr from the Upper Glen. She isn't a member of the Aid.
Well, I shall count the spoons after supper and that you may tie to. That family were all light-fingered. Candace Crawford ... she doesn't often trouble an Aid meeting but a quilting is a good place to show off her pretty hands and her diamond ring. Emma Pollock with her petticoat showing below her dress, of course ... a pretty woman but flimsy-minded like all that tribe. Tillie MacAllister, don't you go and upset the jelly on the tablecloth like you did at Mrs. Palmer's quilting. Martha Crothers, you will have a decent meal for once. It is too bad your husband could not have come too ... I hear he has to live on nuts or something like that. Mrs. Elder Baxter ... I hear the elder has scared Harold Reese away from Mina at last. Harold always had a wishbone in place of a backbone and faint heart never won fair lady as the Good Book says. Well, we have enough for two quilts and some over to thread needles.”