Free Anne of Ingleside by Lucy Maud Montgomery Page B

to Jen Parker.
    ‘Oh, Mummy, you’re not going to die… and you still love me, don’t you?’
    ‘Darling, I’ve no notion of dying, and I love you so much it hurts. To think that you walked all the way from Lowbridge in the night!’
    ‘And on an empty stomach,’ shuddered Susan. ‘The wonder is he’s alive to tell it. The days of miracles are not yet over and that you may tie to.’
    ‘A spunky little lad,’ laughed Dad, who had come in with Shirley on his shoulder. He patted Walter’s head and Walter caught his hand and hugged it. There was no one like Dad in the world. But nobody must ever know how scared he had really been.
    ‘I needn’t ever go away from home again, need I, Mummy?’
    ‘Not till you want to,’ promised Mother.
    ‘I’ll never…’ began Walter… and then stopped. After all, he wouldn’t mind seeing Alice again.
    ‘Look you here, lamb,’ said Susan, ushering in a rosy young lady in a white apron and cap who carried a basket.
    Walter looked. A baby! A plump, roly-poly baby, with silky damp curls all over her head and such tiny, cunning hands.
    ‘Is she not a beauty?’ said Susan proudly. ‘Look at her eyelashes… never did I see such long eyelashes on a baby. And her pretty little ears. I always look at their ears first.’
    Walter hesitated.
    ‘She’s sweet, Susan… oh, look at her darling little curly toes! But… isn’t she rather small?’
    Susan laughed.
    ‘Eight pounds isn’t small, lamb. And she has begun to take notice already. That child wasn’t an hour old when she raised her head and
looked
at the doctor. I have never seen the like of it in all my life.’
    ‘She’s going to have red hair,’ said the doctor in a tone of satisfaction. ‘Lovely red-gold hair like her mother’s.’
    ‘And hazel eyes like her father’s,’ said the doctor’s wife jubilantly.
    ‘I don’t see why one of us can’t have yellow hair,’ said Walter dreamily, thinking of Alice.
    ‘Yellow hair! Like the Drews!’ said Susan in measureless contempt.
    ‘She looks so cunning when she is asleep,’ crooned the nurse. ‘I never saw a baby that crinkled its eyes like that when it went to sleep.’
    ‘She is a miracle. All our babies were sweet, Gilbert, but she is the sweetest of them all.’
    ‘Lord love you,’ said Aunt Mary Maria with a sniff, ‘there’s been a few babies in the world before, you know, Annie.’
    ‘
Our
baby has never been in the world before, Aunt Mary Maria,’ said Walter proudly. ‘Susan, may I kiss her… just once… please?’
    ‘That you may,’ said Susan, glaring after Aunt Mary Maria’s retreating back. ‘And now I’m going down to make a cherry pie for dinner. Mary Maria Blythe made one yesterday afternoon… I wish you could see it, Mrs Doctor dear. It looks like something the cat dragged in. I shall eat as much of it myself as I can rather than waste it, but such a pie shall never be set before the doctor as long as I have my health and strength and that you may tie to.’
    ‘It isn’t everybody that has your knack with pastry, you know,’ said Anne.
    ‘Mummy,’ said Walter, as the door closed behind a gratified Susan, ‘I think we are a very nice family, don’t you?’
    A very nice family, Anne reflected happily as she lay in her bed, with the baby beside her. Soon she would be about with them again, light-footed as of yore, loving them, teaching them, comforting them. They would be coming to her with their little joys and sorrows, their budding hopes, their new fears, their little problems that seemed so big to them, and their little heart-breaks that seemed so bitter. She would hold all the threads of the Ingleside life in her hands again to weave into a tapestry of beauty. And Aunt Mary Maria should have no cause to say, as Anne had heard her say two days ago, ‘You look dreadful tired, Gilbert. Does
anybody
ever look after you?’
    Downstairs Aunt Mary Maria was shaking her head despondently.
    ‘All new-born infants’ legs