Don't ask me why Rilla felt she would rather die than carry a cake through the village to the Glen St. Mary Presbyterian church. Tots get odd notions into their little pates at times and somehow Rilla had got it into hers that it was a shameful and humiliating thing to be seen carrying a cake ANYWHERE. Perhaps it was because, one day when she was only five, she had met old Tillie Pake carrying a cake down the street with all the little village boys yelping at her heels and making fun of her. Old Tillie lived down at the Harbour Mouth and was a very dirty ragged old woman.
"Old Tillie Pake Up and stole a cake And it give her stomach-ache,”
chanted the boys.
To be classed with Tillie Pake was something Rilla just could not bear. The idea had become lodged in her mind that you just "couldn't be a lady" and carry cakes about. So this was why she sat disconsolately on the steps and the dear little mouth, with one front tooth missing, was without its usual smile. Instead of looking as if she understood what daffodils were thinking about or as if she shared with the golden rose a secret they alone knew, she looked like one crushed forever. Even her big hazel eyes that almost shut up when she laughed, were mournful and tormented, instead of being the usual pools of allurement. "It's the fairies that have touched your eyes," Aunt Kitty MacAllister told her once.
Her father vowed she was born a charmer and had smiled at Dr.
Parker half an hour after she was born. Rilla could, as yet, talk better with her eyes than her tongue, for she had a decided lisp.
But she would grow out of that ... she was growing fast. Last year Daddy had measured her by a rosebush; this year it was the phlox; soon it would be the hollyhocks and she would be going to school. Rilla had been very happy and very well-contented with herself until this terrible announcement of Susan's. Really, Rilla told the sky indignantly, Susan had no sense of shame. To be sure, Rilla pronounced it "thenth of thame" but the lovely soft-blue sky looked as if it understood.
Mummy and Daddy had gone to Charlottetown that morning and all the other children were in school, so Rilla and Susan were alone at Ingleside. Ordinarily Rilla would have been delighted under such circumstances. She was never lonely; she would have been glad to sit there on the steps or on her own particular mossy green stone in Rainbow Valley, with a fairy kitten or two for company, and spin fancies about everything she saw ... the corner of the lawn that looked like a merry little land of butterflies ... the poppies floating over the garden ... that great fluffy cloud all alone in the sky ... the big bumblebees booming over the nasturtiums ... the honeysuckle that hung down to touch her red-brown curls with a yellow finger ... the wind that blew ... where did it blow to?
... Cock Robin, who was back again and was strutting importantly along the railing of the verandah, wondering why Rilla would not play with him ... Rilla who could think of nothing but the terrible fact that she must carry a cake ... a CAKE ... through the village to the church for the old social they were getting up for the orphans. Rilla was dimly aware that the Orphanage was at Lowbridge and that poor little children lived there who had no fathers or mothers. She felt terribly sorry for them. But not even for the orphanest of orphans was small Rilla Blythe willing to be seen in public CARRYING A CAKE.
Perhaps if it rained she wouldn't have to go. It didn't LOOK like rain but Rilla clasped her hands together ... there was a dimple at the root of every finger ... and said earnestly:
"Plethe, dear God, make it rain hard. Make it rain pitchforkth.
Or elth ..." Rilla thought of another saving possibility, "make Thusanth cake burn ... burn to a crithp.”
Alas, when dinner time came the cake, done to a turn, filled and iced, was sitting triumphantly on the kitchen table. It was a favourite cake of Rilla's ... "Gold-and-silver cake" did sound so LUXURIANT ... but she felt that never again would she be able to eat a mouthful of it.
Still ... wasn't that thunder rolling over the low hills across the harbour? Perhaps God had heard her prayer ... perhaps there would be an earthquake before it was time to go. Couldn't she take a pain in her stomach if worst came to worst? No. Rilla shuddered. That would mean castor-oil. Better the earthquake!
The rest of the children did not notice that Rilla, sitting in her own dear chair, with the saucy white duck worked in crewels on the back, was very quiet. Thelfith pigth! If Mummy had been home SHE would have noticed it. Mummy had seen right away how troubled she was that dreadful day when Dad's picture had come out in the Enterprise. Rilla was crying bitterly in bed when Mummy came in and found out that Rilla thought it was only murderers that had their pictures in the papers. It had not taken Mummy long to put THAT to rights. Would Mummy like to see HER daughter carrying cake through the Glen like old Tillie Pake?
Rilla found it hard to eat any dinner, though Susan had put down her own lovely blue plate with the wreath of rosebuds on it that Aunt Rachel Lynde had sent her on her last birthday and which she was generally allowed to have only on Sundays. Blue plateth and rothbudth! When you had to do such a shameful thing! Still, the fruit puffs Susan had made for dessert WERE nice.
"Thuthan, can't Nan and Di take the cake after thchool?" she pleaded.
"Di is going home from school with Jessie Reese and Nan has a bone in her leg," said Susan, under the impression that she was being joky. "Besides it would be too late. The committee wants all the cakes in by three so they can cut them up and arrange the tables before they go home to have their suppers. Why in the world don't you want to go, Roly-poly? You always think it is such fun to go for the mail.”
Rilla WAS a bit of a roly-poly but she hated to be called that.
"I don't want to hurt my feelingth" she explained stiffly.
Susan laughed. Rilla was beginning to say things that made the family laugh. She never could understand why they laughed because she was always in earnest. Only Mummy never laughed; she hadn't laughed even when she found out that Rilla thought Daddy was a murderer.
"The social is to make money for poor little boys and girls who haven't any kind fathers or mothers," explained Susan ... as if she was a baby who didn't understand!
"I'm next thing to an orphan," said Rilla. "I've only got one father and mother.”
Susan just laughed again. NOBODY understood.
"You know your mother PROMISED the committee that cake, pet. I have not time to take it myself and it MUST go. So put on your blue gingham and toddle off.”
"My doll hath been tooken ill," said Rilla desperately. "I mutht put her to bed and thtay with her. Maybe itth ammonia.”
"Your doll will do very well till you get back. You can go and come in half an hour," was Susan's heartless response.
There was no hope. Even God had failed her ... there wasn't a sign of rain. Rilla, too near tears to protest any further, went up and put on her new smocked organdy and her Sunday hat, trimmed with daisies. Perhaps if she looked RESPECTABLE people wouldn't think she was like old Tillie Pake.
"I think my fathe itth clean if you will kindly look behind my earth," she told Susan with great stateliness.
She was afraid Susan might scold her for putting on her best dress and hat. But Susan merely inspected her ears, handed her a basket containing the cake, told her to mind her pretty manners and for goodness' sake not to stop to talk to every cat she met.
Rilla made a rebellious "face" at Gag and Magog and marched away.
Susan looked after her tenderly.