"And her past sixty. Come, come," protested the Weed Man.
"I believe ye. Ye'd think she could have larned sense in sixty years," said Granny, choosing to misunderstand him. "But some folks never larn sense. Yerself now - ye was a young fool once and now ye're an old one. Sad that. T. B., come here and entertain the young ladies."
T. B. came rather sulkily and squatted down by Gwennie. He was a shock-headed urchin with his grandmother's wicked green eyes. Marigold took little notice of him. She was absorbed in awful visions of frog pie. And WHAT was skeewiddle tea? It sounded worse than frog pie because she hadn't the least idea what it was. But Gwennie, who had a flair for all kinds of boys, was soon quite at home, bandying slang with Timothy Benjamin Phin - T. B. for short. T. B. soon learned that there were "no flies on her," even if she were one of those "bigotty Lesleys," and also no great need to be overfussy as to what he said. When a plain "damn" slipped out Gwen only giggled.
"Oh, T. B., aren't you afraid you'll go to the bad place if you say such words?"
"Nix on that," contemptuously. "I don't believe there's any heaven or hell. When you die there's an end of you."
"Wouldn't you like to go on living?"
"Nope. There's no fun in it," said the youthful misanthrope. "And heaven's a dull place from all the accounts I've heard."
"You've never been there or you wouldn't call it dull," said Marigold suddenly.
"Have YOU been there?"
Marigold thought of the Hidden Land and the spruce hill and Sylvia.
"Yes," she said.
T. B. looked at her. This Marigold-girl was not as pretty as the Gwen one and there wasn't as much "go" in her; but there was something that made T. B. rather cautious, so instead of saying what he would have said to Gwen, he merely remarked politely,
"You're lying."
"Mind yer manners," Granny suddenly shot at T. B. from her conversation with the Weed Man. "Don't ye let me catch ye calling ladies liars."
"Oh, give your face a rest," retorted T. B.
"No shrimp sauce if ye please," said Granny.
T. B. shrugged his shoulders and turned to Gwen.
"She was picking on Aunt Lily all day 'cause Aunt Lily left the soap in the wash-pan. She used to smack her, but I stopped that. I wasn't going to have Granny abuse Aunt Lily."
"How did you stop her?" queried Gwen.
"The last time she smacked Aunt Lily I went up to her and bit her," said T. B. coolly.
"You ought to bite her oftener, if that will stop her," giggled Gwen.
"There ain't nothing else worth standing up to her for," grinned T. B. "Granny's tough biting. No, I let her alone and she lets me alone - mostly. She gave me a jaw last week when I got drunk."
"Apple-sauce. You never," scoffed Gwen.
T. B. HAD - as a sort of experiment, it appeared.
"Jest wanted to see what it was like. And it was awful disappointing. I jest went to sleep. Could do that without getting drunk. No fear of my getting jagged again. No kick in it. Nothing IS ever like what you expect it to be in this world. It's a dull old hole."
"'Tisn't," interjected Granny again. "It's an int'resting world. Vi'lent int'resting."
Marigold felt there was one thing she had in common with Granny at least. In a sense Marigold was enjoying herself. All this was a glimpse into a kind of life she had never known existed, but it was int'resting - "vi'lent int'resting," as Granny said.
Granny and the Weed Man appeared to be enjoying themselves, too, in spite of an occasional passage-at-arms.
"Going to the Baptist church, are yez?" snarled Granny. "Well, if ye do yer dog'll go to heaven afore ye do. Catch ME going to a Baptist church. I'm a Episcopalian - always was and always will be, world without end, amen."
"I don't believe you ever saw the inside of an Episcopalian church in your life," taunted the Weed Man.
"Yah, I'd tweak yer nose for that if I could reach it," retorted Granny. "Go to yer Baptist church - go to yer Baptist church. Ye son of a monkey-faced rabbit. And I'll sit here and imagine yez all being fried."
She suddenly turned to Marigold.
"If this Weed Man was as rich as he's poor he'd be riding over the heads of all of us. I tell you the real pride of this man is ridic'lous."
"Dinner's ready," Aunt Lily called sulkily from inside.
"Come and help me in," said Granny, reaching briskly for her black stick. "All that keeps me alive is the little bit I eat."
Before the Weed Man could go gallantly to her assistance a shining new car, filled with gaily dressed people, suddenly swung in at the gate and stopped in front of the veranda. The driver bent from the car to make some request, but Granny, crouched like an old tigress, did not allow him to utter a word. She caught up the nearest missile - which happened to be a plate filled with gravy and bacon scraps - from the bench beside her and hurled it at him. It missed his face by a hair's breadth and landed squarely, gravy and all, in a fashionable lady's silken lap. Granny Phin followed this up by a series of fearsome yells and maledictions of which the mildest were, "May all yer pittaties be rotten" and "May ye always be looking for something and never finding it" and - finally, "May ye all have the seven-year itch. I'll pray for it, that I will."
The half-dazed driver backed his car out of the gate and broke all speed-limits down the road. Gwen was squealing with delight, the Weed Man was grinning and Marigold was trying hard to feel shocked.
Granny was in high good humour.
"My, but that did me good. I kin hold up my end of a row yit. Ye could tell by the look of that fellow his grandfather hanged himself in the horse-stable. Come to dinner, all of yez. If we'd known ye were comin' we'd a killed the old rooster. It's time he was used anyway. But there's always frog pie, hey? Now for the frog pie."
To Marigold's relief and Gwen's disappointment there was no frog pie. Indeed, there wasn't much of anything but fried ham and potatoes with some blueberry jam - which suggested rather dismal recollections to Marigold. The dinner was a dull affair, for Aunt Lily was still sulky, Granny was busy gobbling and the Weed Man was silent. It was one of his peculiarities that he seldom talked inside any house.
"Can't think or talk right with walls round me - never could," he had told Salome once.
After dinner the Weed Man paid for their meal with a bottle of liniment for Granny's "paralattics," and Granny bade them a friendly good-bye.
"It's sorry I am that ye're goin' instead o' comin'," she said graciously.
She pulled Marigold so close to her that Marigold had a horrible idea that Granny Phin was going to kiss her. If THAT happened Marigold knew she would never be the same girl again. But Granny only whispered,
"She's a bit purtier than you, but I like YOU best - ye look like a bit o' spring."
Which was a nicer compliment than one would have expected old Granny Phin to pay.
4
Their afternoon drive led along the winding shore of a little river running into the Head of the Bay. Far down was the blue, beckoning harbour and beyond it the sunny dunes and the misty gulf. The Weed Man shook his whip at it mournfully.
"One poetry has vanished from the gulf forever," he said, more to himself than to the girls. "When I was a boy that gulf there would be dotted with white sails on a day like this. Now there's nothing but gasoline boats and they're not on speaking terms with romance at all. Romance is vanishing - romance is vanishing out of our world."
He shook his head gloomily. But Marigold, looking on the world with the eyes of youth, saw romance everywhere. As for Gwennie she was not concerned with romance or the lack of it but only with her stomach.
"Gee, I'm hungry," she said. "I didn't get half enough at the Phins's. Where'll we have supper?"