Chronicles of Avonlea by Lucy Maud Montgomery (funny books to read .TXT) đ
- Author: Lucy Maud Montgomery
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Salome faltered out her story, and her hearers listened with varying emotions.
âItâs a miracle,â said Sam Lawson in an awed voice.
Dr. Blair shrugged his shoulders. âThere is no miracle about it,â he said bluntly. âItâs all perfectly natural. The disease in the hip has evidently been quite well for a long time; Nature does sometimes work cures like that when she is let alone. The trouble was that the muscles were paralyzed by long disuse. That paralysis was overcome by the force of a strong and instinctive effort. Salome, get up and walk across the kitchen.â
Salome obeyed. She walked across the kitchen and back, slowly, stiffly, falteringly, now that the stimulus of frantic fear was spent; but still she walked. The doctor nodded his satisfaction.
âKeep that up every day. Walk as much as you can without tiring yourself, and youâll soon be as spry as ever. No more need of crutches for you, but thereâs no miracle in the case.â
Judith Marsh turned to him. She had not spoken a word since her question concerning Salomeâs crutch. Now she said passionately:
âIt WAS a miracle. God has worked it to prove His existence for me, and I accept the proof.â
The old doctor shrugged his shoulders again. Being a wise man, he knew when to hold his tongue.
âWell, put Salome to bed, and let her sleep the rest of the day. Sheâs worn out. And for pityâs sake let some one take that poor child and put some dry clothes on him before he catches his death of cold.â
That evening, as Salome Marsh lay in her bed in a glory of sunset light, her heart filled with unutterable gratitude and happiness, Judith came into the room. She wore her best hat and dress, and she held Lionel Hezekiah by the hand. Lionel Hezekiahâs beaming face was scrubbed clean, and his curls fell in beautiful sleekness over the lace collar of his velvet suit.
âHow do you feel now, Salome?â asked Judith gently.
âBetter. Iâve had a lovely sleep. But where are you going, Judith?â
âI am going to church,â said Judith firmly, âand I am going to take Lionel Hezekiah with me.â
XII. The End of a Quarrel
Nancy Rogerson sat down on Louisa Shawâs front doorstep and looked about her, drawing a long breath of delight that seemed tinged with pain. Everything was very much the same; the square garden was as charming bodge-podge of fruit and flowers, and goose-berry bushes and tiger lilies, a gnarled old apple tree sticking up here and there, and a thick cherry copse at the foot. Behind was a row of pointed firs, coming out darkly against the swimming pink sunset sky, not looking a day older than they had looked twenty years ago, when Nancy had been a young girl walking and dreaming in their shadows. The old willow to the left was as big and sweeping and, Nancy thought with a little shudder, probably as caterpillary, as ever. Nancy had learned many things in her twenty years of exile from Avonlea, but she had never learned to conquer her dread of caterpillars.
âNothing is much changed, Louisa,â she said, propping her chin on her plump white hands, and sniffing at the delectable odour of the bruised mint upon which Louisa was trampling. âIâm glad; I was afraid to come back for fear you would have improved the old garden out of existence, or else into some prim, orderly lawn, which would have been worse. Itâs as magnificently untidy as ever, and the fence still wobbles. It CANâT be the same fence, but it looks exactly like it. No, nothing is much changed. Thank you, Louisa.â
Louisa had not the faintest idea what Nancy was thanking her for, but then she had never been able to fathom Nancy, much as she had always liked her in the old girlhood days that now seemed much further away to Louisa than they did to Nancy. Louisa was separated from them by the fulness of wifehood and motherhood, while Nancy looked back only over the narrow gap that empty years make.
âYou havenât changed much yourself, Nancy,â she said, looking admiringly at Nancyâs trim figure, in the nurseâs uniform she had donned to show Louisa what it was like, her firm, pink-and-white face and the the glossy waves of her golden brown hair. âYouâve held your own wonderfully well.â
âHavenât I?â said Nancy complacently. âModern methods of massage and cold cream have kept away the crowsfeet, and fortunately I had the Rogerson complexion to start with. You wouldnât think I was really thirty-eight, would you? Thirty-eight! Twenty years ago I thought anybody who was thirty-eight was a perfect female Methuselah. And now I feel so horribly, ridiculously young, Louisa. Every morning when I get up I have to say solemnly to myself three times, âYouâre an old maid, Nancy Rogerson,â to tone myself down to anything like a becoming attitude for the day.â
âI guess you donât mind being an old maid much,â said Louisa, shrugging her shoulders. She would not have been an old maid herself for anything; yet she inconsistently envied Nancy her freedom, her wide life in the world, her unlined brow, and care-free lightness of spirit.
âOh, but I do mind,â said Nancy frankly. âI hate being an old maid.â
âWhy donât you get married, then?â asked Louisa, paying an unconscious tribute to Nancyâs perennial chance by her use of the present tense.
Nancy shook her head.
âNo, that wouldnât suit me either. I donât want to be married. Do you remember that story Anne Shirley used to tell long ago of the pupil who wanted to be a widow because âif you were married your husband bossed you and if you werenât married people called you an old maid?â Well, that is precisely my opinion. Iâd like to be a widow. Then Iâd have the freedom of the unmarried, with the kudos of the married. I could eat my cake and have it, too. Oh, to be a widow!â
âNancy!â said Louisa in a shocked tone.
Nancy laughed, a mellow gurgle that rippled through the garden like a brook.
âOh, Louisa, I can shock you yet. That was just how you used to say âNancyâ long ago, as if Iâd broken all the commandments at once.â
âYou do say such queer things,â protested Louisa, âand half the time I donât know what you mean.â
âBless you, dear coz, half the time I donât myself. Perhaps the joy of coming back to the old spot has slightly turned my brain, Iâve found my lost girlhood here. Iâm NOT thirty-eight in this gardenâit is a flat impossibility. Iâm sweet eighteen, with a waist line two inches smaller. Look, the sun is just setting. I see he has still his old trick of throwing his last beams over the Wright farmhouse. By the way, Louisa, is Peter Wright still living there?â
âYes.â Louisa threw a sudden interested glance at the apparently placid Nancy.
âMarried, I suppose, with half a dozen children?â said Nancy indifferently, pulling up some more sprigs of mint and pinning them on her breast. Perhaps the exertion of leaning over to do it flushed her face. There was more than the Rogerson colour in it, anyhow, and Louisa, slow though her mental processes might be in some respects, thought she understood the meaning of a blush as well as the next one. All the instinct of the matchmaker flamed up in her.
âIndeed he isnât,â she said promptly. âPeter Wright has never married. He has been faithful to your memory, Nancy.â
âUgh! You make me feel as if I were buried up there in the Avonlea cemetery and had a monument over me with a weeping willow carved on it,â shivered Nancy. âWhen it is said that a man has been faithful to a womanâs memory it generally means that he couldnât get anyone else to take him.â
âThat isnât the case with Peter,â protested Louisa. âHe is a good match, and many a woman would have been glad to take him, and would yet. Heâs only forty-three. But heâs never taken the slightest interest in anyone since you threw him over, Nancy.â
âBut I didnât. He threw me over,â said Nancy, plaintively, looking afar over the lowlying fields and a feathery young spruce valley to the white buildings of the Wright farm, glowing rosily in the sunset light when all the rest of Avonlea was scarfing itself in shadows. There was laughter in her eyes. Louisa could not pierce beneath that laughter to find if there were anything under it.
âFudge!â said Louisa. âWhat on earth did you and Peter quarrel about?â she added, curiously.
âIâve often wondered,â parried Nancy.
âAnd youâve never seen him since?â reflected Louisa.
âNo. Has he changed much?â
âWell, some. He is gray and kind of tired-looking. But it isnât to be wondered atâliving the life he does. He hasnât had a housekeeper for two yearsânot since his old aunt died. He just lives there alone and cooks his own meals. Iâve never been in the house, but folks say the disorder is something awful.â
âYes, I shouldnât think Peter was cut out for a tidy housekeeper,â said Nancy lightly, dragging up more mint. âJust think, Louisa, if it hadnât been for that old quarrel I might be Mrs. Peter Wright at this very moment, mother to the aforesaid supposed half dozen, and vexing my soul over Peterâs meals and socks and cows.â
âI guess you are better off as you are,â said Louisa.
âOh, I donât know.â Nancy looked up at the white house on the hill again. âI have an awfully good time out of life, but it doesnât seem to satisfy, somehow. To be candidâ and oh, Louisa, candour is a rare thing among women when it comes to talking of the menâI believe Iâd rather be cooking Peterâs meals and dusting his house. I wouldnât mind his bad grammar now. Iâve learned one or two valuable little things out yonder, and one is that it doesnât matter if a manâs grammar is askew, so long as he doesnât swear at you. By the way, is Peter as ungrammatical as ever?â
âIâI donât know,â said Louisa helplessly. âI never knew he WAS ungrammatical.â
âDoes he still say, âI seen,â and âthem thingsâ?â demanded Nancy.
âI never noticed,â confessed Louisa.
âEnviable Louisa! Would that I had been born with that blessed faculty of never noticing! It stands a woman in better stead than beauty or brains. I used to notice Peterâs mistakes. When he said âI seen,â it jarred on me in my salad days. I tried, oh, so tactfully, to reform him in that respect. Peter didnât like being reformedâthe Wrights always had a fairly good opinion of themselves, you know. It was really over a question of syntax we quarrelled. Peter told me Iâd have to take him as he was, grammar and all, or go without him. I went without himâand ever since Iâve been wondering if I were really sorry, or if it were merely a pleasantly sentimental regret I was hugging to my heart. I daresay itâs the latter. Now, Louisa, I see the beginning of the plot far down in those placid eyes of yours. Strangle it at birth, dear Louisa. There is no use in your trying to make up a match between Peter and me nowâno, nor in slyly inviting him up here to tea some evening, as you are even this moment thinking of doing.â
âWell, I must go and milk the cows,â gasped Louisa, rather glad to make her escape. Nancyâs power
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