The Harrison kitchen wore a very unfamiliar look to Anne. The floor was indeed scrubbed to a wonderful pitch of purity and so was every article of furniture in the room; the stove was polished until she could see her face in it; the walls were whitewashed and the window panes sparkled in the sunlight. By the table sat Mr. Harrison in his working clothes, which on Friday had been noted for sundry rents and tatters but which were now neatly patched and brushed. He was sprucely shaved and what little hair he had was carefully trimmed.
“Sit down, Anne, sit down,” said Mr. Harrison in a tone but two degrees removed from that which Avonlea people used at funerals. “Emily’s gone over to Carmody with Rachel Lynde … she’s struck up a lifelong friendship already with Rachel Lynde. Beats all how contrary women are. Well, Anne, my easy times are over … all over. It’s neatness and tidiness for me for the rest of my natural life, I suppose.”
Mr. Harrison did his best to speak dolefully, but an irrepressible twinkle in his eye betrayed him.
“Mr. Harrison, you are glad your wife is come back,” cried Anne, shaking her finger at him. “You needn’t pretend you’re not, because I can see it plainly.”
Mr. Harrison relaxed into a sheepish smile.
“Well … well … I’m getting used to it,” he conceded. “I can’t say I was sorry to see Emily. A man really needs some protection in a community like this, where he can’t play a game of checkers with a neighbour without being accused of wanting to marry that neighbour’s sister and having it put in the paper.”
“Nobody would have supposed you went to see Isabella Andrews if you hadn’t pretended to be unmarried,” said Anne severely.
“I didn’t pretend I was. If anybody’d have asked me if I was married I’d have said I was. But they just took it for granted. I wasn’t anxious to talk about the matter … I was feeling too sore over it. It would have been nuts for Mrs. Rachel Lynde if she had known my wife had left me, wouldn’t it now?”
“But some people say that you left her.”
“She started it, Anne, she started it. I’m going to tell you the whole story, for I don’t want you to think worse of me than I deserve … nor of Emily neither. But let’s go out on the veranda. Everything is so fearful neat in here that it kind of makes me homesick. I suppose I’ll get used to it after awhile but it eases me up to look at the yard. Emily hasn’t had time to tidy it up yet.”
As soon as they were comfortably seated on the veranda Mr. Harrison began his tale of woe.
“I lived in Scottsford, New Brunswick, before I came here, Anne. My sister kept house for me and she suited me fine; she was just reasonably tidy and she let me alone and spoiled me … so Emily says. But three years ago she died. Before she died she worried a lot about what was to become of me and finally she got me to promise I’d get married. She advised me to take Emily Scott because Emily had money of her own and was a pattern housekeeper. I said, says I, ‘Emily Scott wouldn’t look at me.’ ‘You ask her and see,’ says my sister; and just to ease her mind I promised her I would … and I did. And Emily said she’d have me. Never was so surprised in my life, Anne … a smart pretty little woman like her and an old fellow like me. I tell you I thought at first I was in luck. Well, we were married and took a little wedding trip to St. John for a fortnight and then we went home. We got home at ten o’clock at night, and I give you my word, Anne, that in half an hour that woman was at work housecleaning. Oh, I know you’re thinking my house needed it … you’ve got a very expressive face, Anne; your thoughts just come out on it like print … but it didn’t, not that bad. It had got pretty mixed up while I was keeping bachelor’s hall, I admit, but I’d got a woman to come in and clean it up before I was married and there’d been considerable painting and fixing done. I tell you if you took Emily into a brand new white marble palace she’d be into the scrubbing as soon as she could get an old dress on. Well, she cleaned house till one o’clock that night and at four she was up and at it again. And she kept on that way … far’s I could see she never stopped. It was scour and sweep and dust everlasting, except on Sundays, and then she was just longing for Monday to begin again. But it was her way of amusing herself and I could have reconciled myself to it if she’d left me alone. But that she wouldn’t do. She’d set out to make me over but she hadn’t caught me young enough. I wasn’t allowed to come into the house unless I changed my boots for slippers at the door. I darsn’t smoke a pipe for my life unless I went to the barn. And I didn’t use good enough grammar. Emily’d been a schoolteacher in her early life and she’d never got over it. Then she hated to see me eating with my knife. Well, there it was, pick and nag everlasting. But I s’pose, Anne, to be fair, I was cantankerous too. I didn’t try to improve as I might have done … I just got cranky and disagreeable when she found fault. I told her one day she hadn’t complained of my grammar when I proposed to
