Walter was told in the morning that Dad would take him to Lowbridge after dinner. He said nothing, but during dinner a choky sensation came over him and he dropped his eyes quickly to hide a sudden mist of tears. Not quickly enough, however.
"You're not going to CRY, Walter?" said Aunt Mary Maria, as if a six-year-old mite would be disgraced forever if he cried. "If there's anything I DO despise it's a cry-baby. And you haven't eaten your meat.”
"All but the fat," said Walter, blinking valiantly but not yet daring to look up. "I don't like fat.”
"When I was a child," said Aunt Mary Maria, "I was not allowed to have likes and dislikes. Well, Mrs. Dr. Parker will probably cure you of some of your notions. She was a Winter, I think ... or was she a Clark? ... no, she must have been a Campbell. But the Winters and the Campbells are all tarred with the same brush and they don't put up with any nonsense.”
"Oh, please, Aunt Mary Maria, don't frighten Walter about his visit to Lowbridge," said Anne, a little spark kindling far down in her eyes.
"I'm sorry, Annie," said Aunt Mary Maria with great humility. "I should of course have remembered that I have no right to try to teach your children ANYTHING.”
"Drat her hide," muttered Susan as she went out for the dessert ... Walter's favourite Queen pudding.
Anne felt miserably guilty. Gilbert had shot her a slightly reproachful glance as if to imply she might have been more patient with a poor lonely old lady.
Gilbert himself was feeling a bit seedy. The truth, as everyone knew, was that he had been terribly overworked all summer; and perhaps Aunt Mary Maria was more of a strain than he would admit.
Anne made up her mind that in the fall, if all was well, she would pack him off willy-nilly for a month's snipe-shooting in Nova Scotia.
"How is your tea?" she asked Aunt Mary Maria repentantly.
Aunt Mary Maria pursed her lips.
"Too weak. But it doesn't matter. Who cares whether a poor old woman gets her tea to her liking or not? Some folks, however, think I'm real good company.”
Whatever the connexion between Aunt Mary Maria's two sentences was, Anne felt she was beyond ferreting it out just then. She had turned very pale.
"I think I'll go upstairs and lie down," she said, a trifle faintly, as she rose from the table. "And I think, Gilbert ... perhaps you'd better not stay long in Lowbridge ... and suppose you give Miss Carson a ring.”
She kissed Walter good-bye rather casually and hurriedly ... very much as if she were not thinking about him at all. Walter WOULD NOT cry. Aunt Mary Maria kissed him on the forehead ... Walter hated to be moistly kissed on the forehead ... and said:
"Mind your table manners at Lowbridge, Walter. Mind you ain't greedy. If you are, a Big Black Man will come along with a big black bag to pop naughty children into.”
It was perhaps as well that Gilbert had gone out to harness Grey Tom and did not hear this. He and Anne had always made a point of never frightening their children with such ideas or allowing anyone else to do it. Susan did hear it as she cleared the table and Aunt Mary Maria never knew what a narrow escape she had of having the gravy boat and its contents flung at her head.
Chapter 8
Generally Walter enjoyed a drive with Dad. He loved beauty, and the roads around Glen St. Mary were beautiful. The road to Lowbridge was a double ribbon of dancing buttercups, with here and there the ferny green rim of an inviting grove. But today Dad didn't seem to want to talk much and he drove Grey Tom as Walter never remembered seeing him driven before. When they reached Lowbridge he said a few hurried words aside to Mrs. Parker and rushed out without bidding Walter good-bye. Walter had again hard work to keep from crying. It was only too plain that nobody loved him. Mother and Father used to, but they didn't any longer.
The big, untidy Parker house at Lowbridge did not seem friendly to Walter. But perhaps no house would have seemed that just then.
Mrs. Parker took him out to the back yard, where shrieks of noisy mirth were resounding, and introduced him to the children who seemed to fill it. Then she promptly went back to her sewing, leaving them to "get acquainted by themselves" ... a proceeding that worked very well in nine cases out of ten. Perhaps she could not be blamed for failing to see that little Walter Blythe was the tenth. She liked him ... her own children were jolly little tads ... Fred and Opal were inclined to put on Montreal airs, but she felt quite sure they wouldn't be unkind to anyone. Everything would go swimmingly. She was so glad she could help "poor Anne Blythe" out, even if it was only by taking one of her children off her hands. Mrs. Parker hoped "all would go well." Anne's friends were a good deal more worried over her than she was over herself, reminding each other of Shirley's birth.
A sudden hush had fallen over the back yard ... a yard which ran off into a big, bowery apple orchard. Walter stood looking gravely and shyly at the Parker children and their Johnson cousins from Montreal. Bill Parker was ten ... a ruddy, round-faced urchin who "took after" his mother and seemed very old and big in Walter's eyes. Andy Parker was nine and Lowbridge children could have told you that he was "the nasty Parker one" and was nicknamed "Pig" for reasons good. Walter did not like his looks from the first ... his short-cropped fair bristles, his impish freckled face, his bulging blue eyes. Fred Johnson was Bill's age and Walter didn't like him either, though he was a good-looking chap with tawny curls and black eyes. His nine-year-old sister, Opal, had curls and black eyes, too ... snapping black eyes. She stood with her arm about tow-headed, eight-year-old Cora Parker and they both looked Walter over condescendingly. If it had not been for Alice Parker Walter might very conceivably have turned and fled.
Alice was seven; Alice had the loveliest little ripples of golden curls all over her head; Alice had eyes as blue and soft as the violets in the Hollow; Alice had pink, dimpled cheeks; Alice wore a little frilled yellow dress in which she looked like a dancing buttercup; Alice smiled at him as if she had known him all her life; Alice was a friend.
Fred opened the conversation.
"Hello, sonny," he said condescendingly.
Walter felt the condescension at once and retreated into himself.
"My name is Walter," he said distinctly.
Fred turned to the others with a well-done air of amazement. HE'D show this country lad!
"He says his name is WALTER," he told Bill with a comical twist of his mouth.
"He says his name is WALTER," Bill told Opal in turn.
"He says his name is WALTER," Opal told the delighted Andy.
"He says his name is WALTER," Andy told Cora.
"He says his name is WALTER," Cora giggled to Alice.
Alice said nothing. She just looked admiringly at Walter and her look enabled him to bear up when all the rest chanted together, "He says his name is WALTER," and then burst into shrieks of derisive laughter.
"What fun the dear little folks are having!" thought Mrs. Parker complacently over her shining.
"I heard Mom say you believed in fairies," Andy said, leering impudently.
Walter gazed levelly at him. He was not going to be downed before Alice.
"There ARE fairies," he said stoutly.
"There ain't," said Andy.
"There ARE," said Walter.
"He says there are FAIRIES," Andy told Fred.
"He says there are FAIRIES," Fred told Bill ... and they went through the whole performance again.
It was torture to Walter, who had never been made fun of before and couldn't take it. He bit his lips to keep the tears back. He must not cry before Alice.