Rainbow Valley eBook

not put enough fertilizer on them and we had to pull up a lot of stalks before we got enough, and then they were not much bigger than marbles.  Walter and Di Blythe helped us eat them, but they did not come along until we had them cooked and did not know where we got them, so they were not to blame at all, only us.  We didn’t mean any harm, but if it was stealing we are very sorry and we will pay Mr. Boyd for them if he will wait until we grow up.  We never have any money now because we are not big enough to earn any, and Aunt Martha says it takes every cent of poor father’s salary, even when it is paid up regularly—­and it isn’t often—­to run this house.  But Mr. Boyd must not blame the Lew Baxters any more, when they were quite innocent, and give them a bad name. 
                      Yours respectfully,
                                          faith Meredith.”

CHAPTER XXVI.  MISS CORNELIA GETS A NEW POINT OF VIEW

“Susan, after I’m dead I’m going to come back to earth every time when the daffodils blow in this garden,” said Anne rapturously.  “Nobody may see me, but I’ll be here.  If anybody is in the garden at the time—­I think I’ll come on an evening just like this, but it might be just at dawn—­a lovely, pale-pinky spring dawn—­they’ll just see the daffodils nodding wildly as if an extra gust of wind had blown past them, but it will be I.”

“Indeed, Mrs. Dr. dear, you will not be thinking of flaunting worldly things like daffies after you are dead,” said Susan.  “And I do not believe in ghosts, seen or unseen.”

“Oh, Susan, I shall not be a ghost!  That has such a horrible sound.  I shall just be me.  And I shall run around in the twilight, whether it is morn or eve, and see all the spots I love.  Do you remember how badly I felt when I left our little House of Dreams, Susan?  I thought I could never love Ingleside so well.  But I do.  I love every inch of the ground and every stick and stone on it.”

“I am rather fond of the place myself,” said Susan, who would have died if she had been removed from it, “but we must not set our affections too much on earthly things, Mrs. Dr. dear.  There are such things as fires and earthquakes.  We should always be prepared.  The Tom MacAllisters over-harbour were burned out three nights ago.  Some say Tom MacAllister set the house on fire himself to get the insurance.  That may or may not be.  But I advise the doctor to have our chimneys seen to at once.  An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  But I see Mrs. Marshall Elliott coming in at the gate, looking as if she had been sent for and couldn’t go.”

“Anne dearie, have you seen the Journal to-day?”

Miss Cornelia’s voice was trembling, partly from emotion, partly from the fact that she had hurried up from the store too fast and lost her breath.