“Janet told me I could have the use of the parlour when any young men called! I don’t think there are many to call. I haven’t seen a young man in Valley Road yet, except the next-door hired boy—Sam Tolliver, a very tall, lank, tow-haired youth. He came over one evening recently and sat for an hour on the garden fence, near the front porch where Janet and I were doing fancywork. The only remarks he volunteered in all that time were, ‘Hev a peppermint, miss! Dew now—fine thing for catarrh, peppermints,’ and, ‘Powerful lot o’ jump-grasses round here ter-night. Yep.’
“But there is a love affair going on here. It seems to be my fortune to be mixed up, more or less actively, with elderly love affairs. Mr. and Mrs. Irving always say that I brought about their marriage. Mrs. Stephen Clark of Carmody persists in being most grateful to me for a suggestion which somebody else would probably have made if I hadn’t. I do really think, though, that Ludovic Speed would never have got any further along than placid courtship if I had not helped him and Theodora Dix out.
“In the present affair I am only a passive spectator. I’ve tried once to help things along and made an awful mess of it. So I shall not meddle again. I’ll tell you all about it when we meet.”
XXXII
Tea with Mrs. Douglas
On the first Thursday night of Anne’s sojourn in Valley Road Janet asked her to go to prayer meeting. Janet blossomed out like a rose to attend that prayer meeting. She wore a pale-blue, pansy-sprinkled muslin dress with more ruffles than one would ever have supposed economical Janet could be guilty of, and a white leghorn hat with pink roses and three ostrich feathers on it. Anne felt quite amazed. Later on she found out Janet’s motive in so arraying herself—a motive as old as Eden.
Valley Road prayer meetings seemed to be essentially feminine. There were thirty-two women present, two half-grown boys, and one solitary man, beside the minister. Anne found herself studying this man. He was not handsome or young or graceful; he had remarkably long legs—so long that he had to keep them coiled up under his chair to dispose of them—and he was stoop-shouldered. His hands were big, his hair wanted barbering, and his moustache was unkempt. But Anne thought she liked his face; it was kind and honest and tender; there was something else in it, too—just what, Anne found it hard to define. She finally concluded that this man had suffered and been strong, and it had been made manifest in his face. There was a sort of patient, humorous endurance in his expression which indicated that he would go to the stake if need be, but would keep on looking pleasant until he really had to begin squirming.
When prayer meeting was over this man came up to Janet and said,
“May I see you home, Janet?”
Janet took his arm—“as primly and shyly as if she were no more than sixteen, having her first escort home,” Anne told the girls at Patty’s Place later on.
“Miss Shirley, permit me to introduce Mr. Douglas,” she said stiffly.
Mr. Douglas nodded and said,
“I was looking at you in prayer meeting, miss, and thinking what a nice little girl you were.”
Such a speech from ninety-nine people out of a hundred would have annoyed Anne bitterly; but the way in which Mr. Douglas said it made her feel that she had received a very real and pleasing compliment. She smiled appreciatively at him and dropped obligingly behind on the moonlit road.
So Janet had a beau! Anne was delighted. Janet would make a paragon of a wife—cheery, economical, tolerant, and a very queen of cooks. It would be a flagrant waste on Nature’s part to keep her a permanent old maid.
“John Douglas asked me to take you up to see his mother,” said Janet the next day. “She’s bed-rid a lot of the time and never goes out of the house. But she’s powerful fond of company and always wants to see my boarders. Can you go up this evening?”
Anne assented; but later in the day Mr. Douglas called on his mother’s behalf to invite them up to tea on Saturday evening.
“Oh, why didn’t you put on your pretty pansy dress?” asked Anne, when they left home. It was a hot day, and poor Janet, between her excitement and her heavy black cashmere dress, looked as if she were being broiled alive.
“Old Mrs. Douglas would think it terrible frivolous and unsuitable, I’m afraid. John likes that dress, though,” she added wistfully.
The old Douglas homestead was half a mile from “Wayside” cresting a windy hill. The house itself was large and comfortable, old enough to be dignified, and girdled with maple groves and orchards. There were big, trim barns behind it, and everything bespoke prosperity. Whatever the patient endurance in Mr. Douglas’ face had meant it hadn’t, so Anne reflected, meant debts and duns.
John Douglas met them at the door and took them into the sitting-room, where his mother was enthroned in an armchair.
Anne had expected old Mrs. Douglas to be tall and thin, because Mr. Douglas was. Instead, she was a tiny scrap of a woman, with soft pink cheeks, mild blue eyes, and a mouth like a baby’s. Dressed in a beautiful, fashionably-made black silk dress, with a fluffy white shawl over her shoulders, and her snowy hair surmounted by a dainty lace cap, she might have posed as a grandmother doll.
“How do you do, Janet dear?” she said sweetly. “I am so glad to see you again, dear.” She put up her pretty old face to be kissed. “And this is our new teacher. I’m delighted to meet you. My son has been singing
