Free The Blue Castle by Lucy Maud Montgomery Page B

spend your life in loving service for others, and Cousin Stickles and Aunt Isabel agreed with her—Aunt Isabel with a resentful air, as if she thought Mrs. Frederick had taken the wind out of her sails by saying it first. “We are all too prone,” continued Mrs. Frederick, determined not to lose so good an opportunity, “to live in selfishness, worldliness and sin.” The other women all felt rebuked for their low ideals, and Uncle James had a conviction that the conversation had been uplifted with a vengeance.
    “The greatest happiness,” said Valancy suddenly and distinctly, “is to sneeze when you want to.”
    Everybody stared. Nobody felt it safe to say anything. Was Valancy trying to be funny? It was incredible. Mrs. Frederick, who had been breathing easier since the dinner had progressed so far without any outbreak on the part of Valancy began to tremble again. But she deemed it the part of prudence to say nothing. Uncle Benjamin was not so prudent. He rashly rushed in where Mrs. Frederick feared to tread.
    “Doss,” he chuckled, “what is the difference between a young girl and an old maid?”
    “One is happy and careless and the other is cappy and hairless,” said Valancy. “You have asked that riddle at least fifty times in my recollection, Uncle Ben. Why don’t you hunt up some new riddles if riddle you MUST? It is such a fatal mistake to try to be funny if you don’t succeed.”
    Uncle Benjamin stared foolishly. Never in his life had he, Benjamin Stirling, of Stirling and Frost, been spoken to so. And by Valancy of all people! He looked feebly around the table to see what the others thought of it. Everybody was looking rather blank. Poor Mrs. Frederick had shut her eyes. And her lips moved tremblingly—as if she were praying. Perhaps she was. The situation was so unprecedented that nobody knew how to meet it. Valancy went on calmly eating her salad as if nothing out of the usual had occurred.
    Aunt Alberta, to save her dinner, plunged into an account of how a dog had bitten her recently. Uncle James, to back her up, asked where the dog had bitten her.
    “Just a little below the Catholic church,” said Aunt Alberta.
    At that point Valancy laughed. Nobody else laughed. What was there to laugh at?
    “Is that a vital part?” asked Valancy.
    “What do you mean?” said bewildered Aunt Alberta, and Mrs. Frederick was almost driven to believe that she had served God all her years for naught.
    Aunt Isabel concluded that it was up to her to suppress Valancy.
    “Doss, you are horribly thin,” she said. “You are ALL corners. Do you EVER try to fatten up a little?”
    “No.” Valancy was not asking quarter or giving it. “But I can tell you where you’ll find a beauty parlour in Port Lawrence where they can reduce the number of your chins.”
    “Val-an-cy!” The protest was wrung from Mrs. Frederick. She meant her tone to be stately and majestic, as usual, but it sounded more like an imploring whine. And she did not say “Doss.”
    “She’s feverish,” said Cousin Stickles to Uncle Benjamin in an agonised whisper. “We’ve thought she’s seemed feverish for several days.”
    “She’s gone dippy, in my opinion,” growled Uncle Benjamin. “If not, she ought to be spanked. Yes, spanked.”
    “You can’t spank her.” Cousin Stickles was much agitated. “She’s twenty-nine years old.”
    “So there is that advantage, at least, in being twenty-nine,” said Valancy, whose ears had caught this aside.
    “Doss,” said Uncle Benjamin, “when I am dead you may say what you please. As long as I am alive I demand to be treated with respect.”
    “Oh, but you know we’re all dead,” said Valancy, “the whole Stirling clan. Some of us are buried and some aren’t—yet. That is the only difference.”
    “Doss,” said Uncle Benjamin, thinking it might cow Valancy, “do you remember the time you stole the raspberry jam?”
    Valancy flushed scarlet—with suppressed laughter, not shame.