Anne of Windy Willows (21 page)

3

At two o’clock Mr James Grand called. Mr Grand was the chairman of the High School board of trustees, and had matters of importance to talk of, which he wished to discuss fully before he left on Monday to attend an educational conference in Kingsport. Could he come to Windy Willows in the evening? asked Anne. Unfortunately he couldn’t.

Mr Grand was a good sort of man in his own fashion, but Anne had long ago found out that he must be handled with gloves. Moreover, she was very anxious to get him on her side in a battle royal over new equipment that was looming up. She went out to the twins.

‘Darlings, will you play nicely out in the backyard while I have a little talk with Mr Grand? I won’t be very long. And then we’ll have an afternoon tea picnic on the banks of the pond, and I’ll teach you to blow soap-bubbles with red dye in them – the loveliest things.’

‘Will you give us a quarter apiece if we behave?’ demanded Gerald.

‘No, Gerald dear,’ said Anne firmly. ‘I’m not going to bribe you. I know you are going to be good, just because I ask you, as a gentleman should.’

‘We’ll be good, Miss Shirley,’ promised Gerald solemnly.

‘Awful good,’ echoed Geraldine, with equal solemnity.

It is possible they would have kept their promise if Ivy Trent had not arrived almost as soon as Anne was closeted with Mr Grand in the parlour. But Ivy Trent did arrive, and the Raymond twins hated Ivy Trent, the impeccable Ivy Trent who never did anything wrong and always looked as if she had just stepped out of a band-box.

On this particular afternoon there was no doubt that Ivy Trent had come over to show off her beautiful new brown boots and her sash and shoulder bows and hair bows of scarlet ribbon. Mrs Raymond, whatever she lacked in some respects, had fairly sensible ideas about dressing children – her charitable neighbours said she put so much money on herself that she had none to spend on the twins – and Geraldine never had a chance to parade the street in the style of Ivy Trent, who had a dress for every afternoon in the week. Mrs Trent always arrayed her in ‘spotless white’. At least, Ivy was always spotless when she left home. If she was not quite so spotless when she returned that, of course, was the fault of the ‘jealous’ children with whom the neighbourhood abounded.

Geraldine
was
jealous. She longed for a scarlet sash and shoulder bows and white embroidered dresses. What would she not have given for buttoned brown boots like those?

‘How do you like my new sash and shoulder bows?’ asked Ivy proudly.

‘How do you like my new sash and shoulder bows?’ mimicked Geraldine tauntingly.

‘But you haven’t got shoulder bows,’ said Ivy grandly.

‘But you haven’t got shoulder bows,’ squeaked Geraldine.

Ivy looked puzzled. ‘I have so. Can’t you see them?’

‘I have so. Can’t you see them?’ mocked Geraldine, very happy in this brilliant idea of repeating everything Ivy said scornfully.

‘They ain’t paid for,’ said Gerald.

Ivy Trent had a temper. It showed itself in her face, which grew as red as her shoulder bows.

‘They are, too.
My
mother always pays her bills.’

‘
My
mother always pays her bills,’ chanted Geraldine.

Ivy was uncomfortable. She didn’t know exactly how to cope with this. So she turned to Gerald, who was undoubtedly the handsomest boy on the street. Ivy had made up her mind about him.

‘I come over to tell you I’m going to have you for my beau,’ she said, looking eloquently at him out of a pair of brown eyes that, even at seven, Ivy had learned had a devastating effect on most of the small boys of her acquaintance.

Gerald turned crimson. ‘I won’t be your beau,’ he said.

‘But you’ve got to be,’ said Ivy serenely.

‘But you’ve got to be,’ said Geraldine, wagging her head at him.

‘I won’t be!’ shouted Gerald furiously. ‘And don’t you give me any more of your lip, Ivy Trent.’

‘You have to be,’ said Ivy stubbornly.

‘You have to be,’ said Geraldine.

Ivy glared at here. ‘You just shut up, Geraldine Raymond!’

‘I guess I can talk in my own yard,’ said Geraldine.

‘Course she can,’ said Gerald. ‘And if
you
don’t shut up, Ivy Trent, I’ll just go over to your place and dig the eyes out of your doll.’

‘My mother would spank you if you did,’ cried Ivy.

‘Oh, she would, would she? Well, do you know what
my
mother would do to her if she did? She’d just sock her on the nose.’

‘Well, anyway, you’ve got to be my beau,’ said Ivy, returning calmly to the vital subject.

‘I’ll – I’ll duck your head in the rain-barrel!’ yelled the maddened Gerald. ‘I’ll rub your face in an ants’ nest! I’ll – I’ll tear them bows and sash off you!’ – triumphantly, for this at least was feasible.

‘Let’s do it!’ squealed Geraldine.

They pounced like furies on the unfortunate Ivy, who kicked and shrieked and tried to bite, but was no match for the two of them. Together they hauled her across the yard and into the woodshed, where her howls could not be heard.

‘Hurry,’ gasped Geraldine, ‘fore Miss Shirley comes out!’

No time was to be lost. Gerald held Ivy’s legs while Geraldine held her wrists with one hand and tore off her hair bow and shoulder bows and sash with the other.

‘Let’s paint her legs,’ shouted Gerald, his eyes falling on a couple of cans of paint left there by some workmen the previous week. ‘I’ll hold her, and you paint her.’

Ivy shrieked vainly in despair. Her stockings were pulled down, and in a few moments her legs were adorned with wide stripes of red and green paint. In the process a good deal of the paint got spattered over her embroidered dress and new boots. As a finishing touch they filled her curls with burrs.

She was a pitiful sight when they finally released her. The twins howled mirthfully as they looked at her. Long weeks of airs and condescensions from Ivy had been avenged.

‘Now you go home,’ said Gerald. ‘This’ll teach you to go round telling people they have to be your beaux.’

‘I’ll tell my mother,’ wept Ivy. ‘I’ll go straight home and tell my mother on you, you horrid, horrid, hateful,
ugly
boy!’

‘Don’t you call my brother ugly, you stuck-up thing!’ cried Geraldine. ‘You and your shoulder bows! Here, take them with you.
We
don’t want them cluttering up
our
woodshed.’

Ivy, pursued by the bows, which Geraldine pelted after her, ran sobbing out of the yard and down the street.

‘Quick! Let’s sneak up the back stairs to the bathroom and clean up ’fore Miss Shirley sees us,’ gasped Geraldine.

4

Mr Grand had talked himself out and bowed himself away. Anne stood for a moment on the doorstep, wondering uneasily where her charges were. Up the street and in at the gate came a wrathful lady, leading a forlorn and still sobbing atom of humanity by the hand.

‘Miss Shirley, where is Mrs Raymond?’ demanded Mrs Trent.

‘Mrs Raymond is –’

‘I insist on seeing Mrs Raymond. She shall see with her own eyes what
her
children have done to poor helpless, innocent Ivy. Look at her, Miss Shirley, just
look
at her!’

‘Oh, Mrs Trent, I’m so sorry! It is all my fault. Mrs Raymond is away, and I promised to look after them. But Mr Grand came –’

‘No, it isn’t your fault, Miss Shirley. I don’t blame
you
. No one can cope with those diabolical children. The whole street knows them. If Mrs Raymond isn’t here there is no point in my remaining. I shall take my poor child home. But Mrs Raymond shall hear of this; indeed she shall… Listen to
that
, Miss Shirley. Are they tearing each other limb from limb?’

‘That’ was a chorus of shrieks, howls, and yells that came echoing down the stairs. Anne ran upward. On the landing was a twisting, writhing, biting, tearing, scratching mass. Anne separated the furious twins with difficulty, and, holding each firmly by a squirming shoulder, demanded the meaning of such behaviour.

‘She says I’ve got to be Ivy Trent’s beau!’ snarled Gerald.

‘So he has got to be!’ screamed Geraldine.

‘I won’t be –’

‘You’ve got to be –’

‘Children!’ said Anne.

Something in her tone quelled them. They looked at her and saw a Miss Shirley they had not seen before. For the first time in their young lives they felt the force of authority.

‘You, Geraldine,’ said Anne quietly, ‘will go to bed for two hours. You, Gerald, will spend the same length of time in the hall closet. Not a word! You have behaved abominably, and you must take your punishment. Your mother left you in my charge, and you will obey me.’

‘Then punish us
together
,’ said Geraldine, beginning to cry.

‘Yes. You’ve no right to sep’rate us. We’ve never been sep’rated,’ muttered Gerald.

‘You will be now.’ Anne was still very quiet.

Meekly Geraldine took off her clothes and got into one of the cots in their room. Meekly Gerald entered the hall closet. It was a large, airy closet with a window and a chair, and nobody could have called the punishment an unduly severe one. Anne locked the door and sat down with a book by the hall window. At least, for two hours she would know a little peace of mind.

A peep at Geraldine a few minutes later showed her to be sound asleep, looking so lovely in her sleep that Anne almost repented her sternness. Well, a nap would be good for her, anyway. When she wakened she should be permitted to get up, even if the two hours had not expired.

At the end of an hour Geraldine was still sleeping. Gerald had been so quiet that Anne decided that he had taken his punishment like a man, and might be forgiven. After all, Ivy Trent was a vain little monkey, and had probably been very annoying.

Anne unlocked the closet door and opened it. There was no Gerald in the closet. The window was open, and the roof of the side porch was just beneath it. Anne’s lips tightened. She went downstairs and out into the yard. No sign of Gerald. She explored the woodshed and looked up and down the street. Still no sign.

She ran through the garden and through the gate into the lane that led through a patch of scrub woodland to the little pond in Mr Robert Creedmore’s field. Gerald was happily poling himself about on it in the small flat Mr Creedmore kept there. Just as Anne broke through the trees Gerald’s pole, which he had stuck rather deep in the mud, came away with unexpected ease at his third tug, and Gerald promptly shot heels over head backward into the water.

Anne gave an involuntary shriek of dismay, but there was no real cause for alarm. The pond at its deepest would not come up to Gerald’s shoulders, and the spot where he had gone into it was little deeper than his waist. He had somehow got on to his feet, and was standing there rather foolishly, with his aureole plastered drippingly down on his head, when Anne’s shriek was re-echoed behind her, and Geraldine, in her nightgown, tore through the trees and out to the edge of the little wooden platform to which the flat was commonly moored.

With a despairing shriek of ‘Gerald!’ she took a flying leap that landed her with a tremendous splash by Gerald’s side, and almost gave him another ducking.

‘Gerald, are you drowned?’ cried Geraldine. ‘Are you drowned, darling?’

‘No…. no… darling,’ Gerald assured her, through his chattering teeth.

They embraced and kissed passionately.

‘Children, come in here this minute!’ said Anne.

They waded to the shore. The September day, warm in the morning, had turned cold and windy in the late afternoon. They shivered terribly; their faces were blue. Anne, without a word of censure, hurried them home, took off their wet clothes, and put them into Mrs Raymond’s bed, with hotwater bottles at their feet. They still continued to shiver. Had they got a chill? Were they heading for pneumonia?

‘You should have taken better care of us, Miss Shirley,’ said Gerald, still chattering.

‘Course you should,’ said Geraldine.

A distracted Anne flew downstairs and telephoned for the doctor. By the time he came the twins had got warm, and he assured Anne that they were in no danger. If they stayed in bed till tomorrow they would be all right.

He met Mrs Raymond coming up from the station on the way back, and it was a pale, almost hysterical lady who presently rushed in.

‘Oh, Miss Shirley, how
could
you have let my little treasures get into such danger!’

‘That’s just what we told her, Mother,’ chorused the twins.

‘I trusted you. I told you –’

‘I hardly see how I was to blame, Mrs Raymond,’ said Anne, her eyes as cold as grey mist. ‘You will realize this, I think, when you are calmer. The children are quite all right. I simply sent for the doctor as a precautionary measure. If Gerald and Geraldine had obeyed me this would not have happened.’

‘I thought a
teacher
would have a little authority over children,’ said Mrs Raymond bitterly.

‘Other children, perhaps, but not young demons,’ thought Anne. She said only, ‘Since you are here, Mrs Raymond, I think I will go home. I don’t think I can be of any further service, and I have some school work to do this evening.’

As one child the twins hurled themselves out of bed and flung their arms around her.

‘I hope there’ll be a funeral every week,’ cried Gerald, ‘’cause I like you, Miss Shirley, and I hope you’ll come and look after us every time Mother goes away.’

‘So do I,’ said Geraldine.

‘I like you ever so much better than Miss Prouty.’

‘Oh, ever so much!’ said Geraldine.

‘Will you put us in a story?’ demanded Gerald.

‘Oh, do!’ said Geraldine.

‘I’m sure you
meant
well,’ said Mrs Raymond tremulously.

‘Thank you,’ said Anne icily, trying to detach the twins’ clinging arms.

‘Oh, don’t let’s quarrel about it!’ begged Mrs Raymond, her enormous eyes filling with tears. ‘I
can’t
endure quarrelling with anybody.’

‘Certainly not.’ Anne was at her stateliest, and Anne
could
be very stately. ‘I don’t think there is the slightest necessity for quarrelling. I think Gerald and Geraldine have quite enjoyed the day, though I don’t suppose poor little Ivy Trent did.’

Anne went home feeling years older.

‘To think I ever thought Davy was mischievous!’ she reflected.

She found Rebecca in the twilit garden gathering late pansies.

‘Rebecca Dew, I used to think the adage, “Children should be seen and not heard” entirely too harsh. But I see its points now.’

‘My poor darling, I’ll get you a nice supper,’ said Rebecca Dew. And did
not
say, ‘I told you so.’