"But, dearie, I don't want help. I'm quite able to do all the work here.
And I never thought I'd like to have a home girl if I did need help."
The light went out of Una's eyes. Her lips trembled. She sat down on her stool again, a pathetic little figure of disappointment, and began to cry.
"Don't—dearie—don't," exclaimed Miss Cornelia in distress. She could never bear to hurt a child. "I don't say I WON'T take her—but the idea is so new it has just kerflummuxed me. I must think it over."
"Mary is SO smart," said Una again.
"Humph! So I've heard. I've heard she swears, too. Is that true?"
"I've never heard her swear EXACTLY," faltered Una uncomfortably. "But
I'm afraid she COULD."
"I believe you! Does she always tell the truth?"
"I think she does, except when she's afraid of a whipping."
"And yet you want me to take her!"
"SOME ONE has to take her," sobbed Una. "SOME ONE has to look after her,
Mrs. Elliott."
"That's true. Perhaps it IS my duty to do it," said Miss Cornelia with a sigh. "Well, I'll have to talk it over with Mr. Elliott. So don't say anything about it just yet. Take another doughnut, dearie."
Una took it and ate it with a better appetite.
"I'm very fond of doughnuts," she confessed "Aunt Martha never makes any. But Miss Susan at Ingleside does, and sometimes she lets us have a plateful in Rainbow Valley. Do you know what I do when I'm hungry for doughnuts and can't get any, Mrs. Elliott?"
"No, dearie. What?"
"I get out mother's old cook book and read the doughnut recipe—and the other recipes. They sound SO nice. I always do that when I'm hungry—especially after we've had ditto for dinner. THEN I read the fried chicken and the roast goose recipes. Mother could make all those nice things."
"Those manse children will starve to death yet if Mr. Meredith doesn't get married," Miss Cornelia told her husband indignantly after Una had gone. "And he won't—and what's to be done? And SHALL we take this Mary-creature, Marshall?"
"Yes, take her," said Marshall laconically.
"Just like a man," said his wife, despairingly. "'Take her'—as if that was all. There are a hundred things to be considered, believe ME."
"Take her—and we'll consider them afterwards, Cornelia," said her husband.
In the end Miss Cornelia did take her and went up to announce her decision to the Ingleside people first.
"Splendid!" said Anne delightedly. "I've been hoping you would do that very thing, Miss Cornelia. I want that poor child to get a good home. I was a homeless little orphan just like her once."
"I don't think this Mary-creature is or ever will be much like you," retorted Miss Cornelia gloomily. "She's a cat of another colour. But she's also a human being with an immortal soul to save. I've got a shorter catechism and a small tooth comb and I'm going to do my duty by her, now that I've set my hand to the plough, believe me."
Mary received the news with chastened satisfaction.
"It's better luck than I expected," she said.
"You'll have to mind your p's and q's with Mrs. Elliott," said Nan.
"Well, I can do that," flashed Mary. "I know how to behave when I want to just as well as you, Nan Blythe."
"You mustn't use bad words, you know, Mary," said Una anxiously.
"I s'pose she'd die of horror if I did," grinned Mary, her white eyes shining with unholy glee over the idea. "But you needn't worry, Una. Butter won't melt in my mouth after this. I'll be all prunes and prisms."
"Nor tell lies," added Faith.
"Not even to get off from a whipping?" pleaded Mary.
"Mrs. Elliott will NEVER whip you—NEVER," exclaimed Di.
"Won't she?" said Mary skeptically. "If I ever find myself in a place where I ain't licked I'll think it's heaven all right. No fear of me telling lies then. I ain't fond of telling 'em—I'd ruther not, if it comes to that."
The day before Mary's departure from the manse they had a picnic in her honour in Rainbow Valley, and that evening all the manse children gave her something from their scanty store of treasured things for a keepsake. Carl gave her his Noah's ark and Jerry his second best jew's-harp. Faith gave her a little hairbrush with a mirror in the back of it, which Mary had always considered very wonderful. Una hesitated between an old beaded purse and a gay picture of Daniel in the lion's den, and finally offered Mary her choice. Mary really hankered after the beaded purse, but she knew Una loved it, so she said,
"Give me Daniel. I'd rusher have it 'cause I'm partial to lions. Only I wish they'd et Daniel up. It would have been more exciting."
At bedtime Mary coaxed Una to sleep with her.
"It's for the last time," she said, "and it's raining tonight, and I hate sleeping up there alone when it's raining on account of that graveyard. I don't mind it on fine nights, but a night like this I can't see anything but the rain pouring down on them old white stones, and the wind round the window sounds as if them dead people were trying to get in and crying 'cause they couldn't."
"I like rainy nights," said Una, when they were cuddled down together in the little attic room, "and so do the Blythe girls."
"I don't mind 'em when I'm not handy to graveyards," said Mary. "If I was alone here I'd cry my eyes out I'd be so lonesome. I feel awful bad to be leaving you all."
"Mrs. Elliott will let you come up and play in Rainbow Valley quite often I'm sure," said Una. "And you WILL be a good girl, won't you, Mary?"
"Oh, I'll try," sighed Mary. "But it won't be as easy for me to be good—inside, I mean, as well as outside—as it is for you. You hadn't such scalawags of relations as I had."
"But your people must have had some good qualities as well as bad ones," argued Una. "You must live up to them and never mind their bad ones."
"I don't believe they had any good qualities," said Mary gloomily. "I never heard of any. My grandfather had money, but they say he was a rascal. No, I'll just have to start out on my own hook and do the best I can."
"And God will help you, you know, Mary, if you ask Him."
"I don't know about that."
"Oh, Mary. You know we asked God to get a home for you and He did."
"I don't see what He had to do with it," retorted Mary. "It was you put it into Mrs. Elliott's head."
"But God put it into her HEART to take you. All my putting it into her
HEAD wouldn't have done any good if He hadn't."
"Well, there may be something in that," admitted Mary. "Mind you, I haven't got anything against God, Una. I'm willing to give Him a chance. But, honest, I think He's an awful lot like your father—just absent-minded and never taking any notice of a body most of the time, but sometimes waking up all of a suddent and being awful good and kind and sensible."
"Oh, Mary, no!" exclaimed horrified Una. "God isn't a bit like father—I mean He's a thousand times better and kinder."
"If He's as good as your father He'll do for me," said Mary. "When your father was talking to me I felt as if I never could be bad any more."
"I wish you'd talk to father about Him," sighed Una. "He can explain it all so much better than I can."
"Why, so I will, next time he wakes up," promised Mary. "That night he talked to me in the study he showed me real clear that my praying didn't kill Mrs. Wiley. My mind's been easy since, but I'm real cautious about praying. I guess the old rhyme is the safest. Say, Una, it seems to me if one has to pray to anybody it'd be better to pray to the devil than to God. God's good, anyhow so you say, so He won't do you any harm, but from all I can make out the devil needs to be pacified. I think the sensible way would be to say to HIM, 'Good devil, please don't tempt me. Just leave me alone, please.' Now, don't you?"
"Oh, no, no, Mary. I'm sure it couldn't be right to pray to the devil. And it wouldn't do any good because he's bad. It might aggravate him and he'd be worse than ever."