Title:      Magic for Marigold (1929)
Author:     L. M. Montgomery
* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
eBook No.:  0300681.txt
Edition:    1
Language:   English
Character set encoding:     Latin-1(ISO-8859-1)--8 bit
Date first posted:          April 2003
Date most recently updated: April 2003

This eBook was produced by: Don Lainson dlainson@sympatico.ca

Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editions
which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice
is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular
paper edition.

Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this
file.

This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online at
http://gutenberg.net.au/licence.html

To contact Project Gutenberg of Australia go to http://gutenberg.net.au

--------------------------------------------------------------------------


A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook

Title:      Magic for Marigold (1929)
Author:     L. M. Montgomery






TO NORA

IN MEMORY OF A WORLD
THAT HAS PASSED AWAY




Contents

I.  What's in a Name?

II.  Sealed of the Tribe

III.  April Promise

IV.  Marigold Goes A-visiting

V.  The Door That Men Call Death

VI.  The Power of the Dog

VII.  Lost Laughter

VIII.  "It"

IX.  A Lesley Christmas

X.  The Bobbing of Marigold

XI.  A Counsel of Perfection

XII.  Marigold Entertains

XIII.  A Ghost Is Laid

XIV.  Bitterness of Soul

XV.  One Clear Call

XVI.  One of Us

XVII.  Not By Bread Alone

XVIII.  Red Ink or--?

XIX.  How It Came to Pass

XX.  The Punishment of Billy

XXI.  Her Chrism of Womanhood




CHAPTER I

What's in a Name?


1


Once upon a time--which, when you come to think of it, is really
the only proper way to begin a story--the only way that really
smacks of romance and fairyland--all the Harmony members of the
Lesley clan had assembled at Cloud of Spruce to celebrate Old
Grandmother's birthday as usual.  Also to name Lorraine's baby.  It
was a crying shame, as Aunt Nina pathetically said, that the little
darling had been in the world four whole months without a name.
But what could you do, with poor dear Leander dying in that
terribly sudden way just two weeks before his daughter was born and
poor Lorraine being so desperately ill for weeks and weeks
afterwards?  Not very strong yet, for that matter.  And there was
tuberculosis in her family, you know.

Aunt Nina was not really an aunt at all--at least, not of any
Lesley.  She was just a cousin.  It was the custom of the Lesley
caste to call every one "Uncle" or "Aunt" as soon as he or she had
become too old to be fitly called by a first name among the young
fry.  There will be no end of these "aunts" and "uncles" bobbing in
and out of this story--as well as several genuine ones.  I shall
not stop to explain which kind they were.  It doesn't matter.  They
were all Lesleys or married to Lesleys.  THAT was all that
mattered.  You were born to the purple if you were a Lesley.  Even
the pedigrees of their cats were known.

All the Lesleys adored Lorraine's baby.  They had all agreed in
loving Leander--about the only thing they had ever been known to
agree on.  And it was thirty years since there had been a baby at
Cloud of Spruce.  Old Grandmother had more than once said gloomily
that the good old stock was running out.  So this small lady's
advent would have been hailed with delirious delight if it hadn't
been for Leanders death and Lorraine's long illness.  Now that Old
Grandmother's birthday had come, the Lesleys had an excuse for
their long-deferred jollification.  As for the name, no Lesley baby
was ever named until every relative within get-at-able distance had
had his or her say in the matter.  The selection of a suitable name
was, in their eyes, a much more important thing than the mere
christening.  And how much more in the case of a fatherless baby
whose mother was a sweet soul enough--but--you know--a Winthrop!

Cloud of Spruce, the original Lesley homestead, where Old
Grandmother and Young Grandmother and Mrs. Leander and the baby and
Salome Silversides lived, was on the harbour shore, far enough out
of Harmony village to be in the real country; a cream brick house--
a nice chubby old house--so covered with vines that it looked more
like a heap of ivy than a house; a house that had folded its hands
and said, "I will rest."  Before it was the beautiful Harmony
Harbour; with its purring waves, so close that in autumnal storms
the spray dashed over the very doorsteps and encrusted the windows.
Behind it was an orchard that climbed the slope.  And about it
always the soft sighing of the big spruce wood on the hill.

The birthday dinner was eaten in Old Grandmother's room--which had
been the "orchard room" until Old Grandmother, two years back, had
cheerfully and calmly announced that she was tired of getting up
before breakfast and working between meals.

"I'm going to spend the rest of my life being waited on," she said.
"I've had ninety years of slaving for other people--" and bossing
them, the Lesleys said in their hearts.  But not out loud, for it
did really seem at times as if Old Grandmother's ears could hear
for miles.  Uncle Ebenezer said something once about Old
Grandmother, to himself, in his cellar at midnight, when he knew he
was the only human being in the house.  Next Sunday afternoon Old
Grandmother cast it up to him.  She said Lucifer had told her.
Lucifer was her cat.  And Uncle Ebenezer suddenly remembered that
HIS cat had been sitting on the edge of the potato bin when he said
that.

It was safest not to say things about Old Grandmother.

Old Grandmother's room was a long, dim-green apartment running
across the south end of the house, with a glass door opening right
into the orchard.  Its walls were hung with photographs of Lesley
brides for sixty years back, most of them with enormous bouquets
and wonderful veils and trains.  Clementine's photograph was among
them--Clementine, Leander's first wife, who had died six years ago
with HER little unnamed daughter.  Old Grandmother had it hanging
on the wall at the foot of her bed so that she could see it all the
time.  Old Grandmother had been very fond of Clementine.  At least,
she always gave Lorraine that impression.

The picture was good to look at--Clementine Lesley had been very
beautiful.  She was not dressed as a bride--in fact the picture had
been taken just before her marriage and had a clan fame as
"Clementine with the lily."  She was posed standing with her
beautiful arms resting on a pedestal and in one slender, perfect
hand--Clementine's hands had become a tradition of loveliness--she
held a lily, at which she was gazing earnestly.  Old Grandmother
had told Lorraine once that a distinguished guest at Cloud of
Spruce, an artist of international fame, had exclaimed on seeing
that picture,

"Exquisite hands!  Hands into which a man might fearlessly put his
soul!"

Lorraine had sighed and looked at her rather thin little hands.
Not beautiful--scarcely even pretty; yet Leander had once kissed
their finger-tips and said--but Lorraine did not tell Old
Grandmother what Leander had said.  Perhaps Old Grandmother might
have liked her better if she had.

Old Grandmother had her clock in the corner by the bed--a clock
that had struck for the funerals and weddings and goings and
comings and meetings and partings of five generations; the
grandfather clock her husband's father had brought out from
Scotland a hundred and forty years ago; the Lesleys plumed
themselves on being Prince Edward Island pioneer stock.  It was
still keeping excellent time and Old Grandmother got out of bed
every night to wind it.  She would have done that if she had been
dying.

Her other great treasure was in the opposite corner.  A big
glass case with Alicia, the famous Skinner doll, in it.  Old
Grandmother's mother had been a Skinner and the doll had no part in
Lesley traditions, but every Lesley child had been brought up in
the fear and awe of it and knew its story.  Old Grandmother's
mother's sister had lost her only little daughter of three years
and had never been "quite right" afterwards.  She had had a waxen
image of her baby made and kept it beside her always and talked to
it as if it had been alive.  It was dressed in a wonderful
embroidered dress that had belonged to the dead baby, and wore one
of her slippers.  The other slipper was held in one waxen hand
ready for the small bare foot that peeped out under the muslin
flounces.  The doll was so lifelike that Lorraine always shuddered
when she passed it, and Salome Silversides was very doubtful of the
propriety of having such a thing in the house at all, especially as
she knew that Lazarre, the French hired man, thought and told that
it was the Old Lady's "Saint" and believed she prayed before it
regularly.  But all the Lesleys had a certain pride in it.  No
other Prince Edward Island family could boast a doll like that.  It
conferred a certain distinction upon them and tourists wrote it up
in their local papers when they went back home.

Of course the cats were present at the festivity also.  Lucifer and
the Witch of Endor.  Both of black velvet with great round eyes.
Cloud of Spruce was noted for its breed of black cats with topaz-
hued eyes.  Its kittens were not scattered broadcast but given away
with due discrimination.

Lucifer was Old Grandmother's favourite.  A remote, subtle cat.  An
inscrutable cat so full of mystery that it fairly oozed out of him.
The Witch of Endor became her name but compared to Lucifer she was
commonplace.  Salome wondered secretly that Old Grandmother wasn't
afraid of a judgment for calling a cat after the Old Harry.  Salome
"liked cats in their place" but she was furious when Uncle Klon
said to her once,

"Salome Silversides!  Why, you ought to be a cat yourself with a
name like that.  A sleek, purring plushy Maltese."

"I'm sure I don't look like a cat," said Salome, highly insulted.
And Uncle Klon agreed that she did not.

Old Grandmother was a gnomish dame of ninety-two who meant to live
to be a hundred.  A tiny, shrunken, wrinkled thing with flashing
black eyes.  There was a Puckish hint of malice in most things she
said or did.  She ruled the whole Lesley clan and knew everything
that was said and done in it.  If she had given up "slaving" she
certainly had not given up "bossing."  To-day she was propped up on
crimson cushions, with a fresh, frilled, white cap tied around her
face, eating her dinner heartily and thinking things not lawful to
be uttered about her daughters-in-law and her granddaughters-in-law
and her great-grand-daughters-in-law.


2


Young Grandmother, a mere lass of sixty-five, sat at the head of
the long table--a tall, handsome lady with bright, steel-blue eyes
and white hair, whom Old Grandmother thought a somewhat pert young
thing.  There was nothing of the traditional grandmother of caps
and knitting about HER.  She was like a stately old princess in her
purple velvet gown with its wonderful lace collar.  The gown had
been made eight years before, but when Young Grandmother wore
anything it seemed at once in the height of the fashion.  Most of
the Lesleys present thought she should not have laid aside her
black even for a birthday dinner.  But Young Grandmother did not
care what they thought any more than Old Grandmother did.  She had
been a Blaisdell--one of "the stubborn Blaisdells"--and the
Blaisdell traditions were as good as the Lesley traditions any day.

Lorraine sat on the right of Young Grandmother at the table, with
the baby in her cradle beside her.  Because of the baby she had a
certain undeniable importance never before conceded her.  All the
Lesleys had been more or less opposed to Leander's "second choice."
Only the fact that she was a minister's daughter appeased them.
She was a shy, timid, pretty creature--quite insignificant except
for her enormous masses of lustrous, pale gold hair.  Her small
face was sweet and flower-like and she had peculiarly soft grey-
blue eyes with long lashes.  She looked very young and fragile in
her black dress.  But she was beginning to be a little happy once
more.  Her arms, that had reached out so emptily in the silence of
the night, were filled again.  The fields and hills around Cloud of
Spruce that had been so stark and bare and chill when her little
lady came were green and golden now, spilled over with blossoms,
and the orchard was an exquisite perfumed world by itself.  One
could not be altogether unhappy, in springtime, with such a
wonderful, unbelievable baby.

The baby lay in the old Heppelwhite cradle where her father and
grandfather had lain before her--a quite adorable baby, with a
saucy little chin, tiny hands as exquisite as the apple-blossoms,
eyes of fairy blue, and the arrogant, superior smile of babies
before they have forgotten all the marvellous things they know at
first.  Lorraine could hardly eat her dinner for gazing at her
baby--and wondering.  Would this tiny thing ever be a dancing,
starry-eyed girl--a white bride--a mother?  Lorraine shivered.  It
did not do to look so far ahead.  Aunt Anne got up, brought a
shawl, and tenderly put it around Lorraine's shoulders.  Lorraine
was almost melted, for the June day was hot, but she wore the shawl
all through dinner rather than hurt Aunt Anne's feelings.  That one
fact described Lorraine.

On Young Grandmother's left sat Uncle Klondike, the one handsome,
mysterious, unaccountable member of the Lesley clan, with his
straight, heavy eyebrows, his flashing blue eyes, his mane of tawny
hair and the red-gold beard which had caused a sentimental Harmony
lady of uncertain years to say that he made her think of those
splendid old Vikings.

Uncle Klondike's real name was Horace, but ever since he had come
back from the Yukon with gold dropping out of his pockets he had
been known as Klondike Lesley.  His deity was the God of All
Wanderers and in his service Horace Lesley had spent wild,
splendid, adventurous years.

When Klondike had been a boy at school he had a habit of looking at
certain places on the map and saying, "I'll go there."  Go he did.
He had stood on the southernmost boulder of Ceylon and sat on
Buddhist cairns at the edge of Thibet.  The Southern Cross was a
pal and he had heard the songs of nightingales in the gardens of
the Alhambra.  India and the China seas were to him as a tale that
is told, and he had walked alone in great Arctic spaces under
northern lights.  He had lived in many places but he had never
thought of any of them as home.  That name had all unconsciously
been kept sacred to the long, green, seaward-looking glen where he
had been born.

And finally he had come home, sated, to live the rest of his life a
decent law-abiding clansman, whereof the conclusive sign and token
was that he had trimmed his moustache and beard into decency.  The
moustache had been particularly atrocious.  Its ends hung down
nearly as far as his beard did.  When Aunt Anne asked him
despairingly why upon earth he wore a moustache like that he
retorted that he wrapped it round his ears to keep them warm.  The
clan were horribly afraid he meant to go on wearing them--for Uncle
Klon was both Lesley AND Blaisdell.  He finally had them clipped,
though he could never be induced to go the length of a clean-shaven
face, fashion or no fashion.  But, though he went to bed early at
least once a week, he still savoured life with gusto and the clan
were always secretly much afraid of him and his satiric winks and
cynical speeches.  Aunt Nina, in particular, had held him in terror
ever since the day she had told him proudly that her husband had
NEVER lied to her.

"Oh, you poor woman," said Uncle Klon, with real sympathy in his
tone.

Nina supposed there was a joke somewhere but she could never find
it.  She was a W. C. T. U. and an I. O. D. E. and most of the other
letters of the alphabet--but somehow she found it hard to get the
hang of Klondike's jokes.

Klondike Lesley was known to be a woman-hater.  He scoffed openly
at all love, more especially the supreme absurdity of love at first
sight.  This did not prevent his clan from trying for years to
marry him off.  It would be the making of Klondike if he had a good
wife who would stand no nonsense.  They were very obvious about it,
and with the renowned Lesley frankness, recommended several
excellent brides to him.  But Klondike Lesley was notoriously hard
to please.

"Katherine Nichols?"

"But look at the thick ankles of her."

"Emma Goodfellow?"

"Her mother used to call out 'meow' in church whenever the minister
said something she didn't like.  Can't risk heredity."

"Rose Osborn?"

"I can't stand a woman with pudgy hands."

"Sara Jennet?"

"An egg without salt."

"Lottie Parks?"

"I'd like her as a flavouring, not as a dish."

"Ruth Russell?"--triumphantly, as having at last hit on a woman
with whom no reasonable man could find fault.

"Too peculiar.  When she has nothing to say she doesn't talk.
That's really too uncanny in a woman, you know."

"Dorothy Porter?"

"Ornamental by candlelight.  But I don't believe she'd look so well
at breakfast."

"Amy Ray?"

"Always purring, blinking, sidling, clawing.  Nice small pussy-cat
but I'm no mouse."

"Agnes Barr?"

"A woman who says Coué's formula instead of her prayers!"

"Olive Purdy?"

"Tongue--temper--and tears.  Go sparingly, thank you."

Even Old Grandmother took a hand and met with no better success.
She was wiser than to throw any one girl at his head--the men of
the Lesley clan never had married the women picked out for them.
But she had her own way of managing things.

"'He travels the fastest who travels alone,'" was all she could get
out of Klondike.

"Very clever of you," said Old Grandmother, "if travelling fast is
all there is to life."

"Not clever of ME.  Don't you know your Kipling, Grandmother?"

"What is a Kipling?" said Old Grandmother.

Uncle Klondike did not tell her.  He merely said he was doomed to
die a bachelor--and could not escape his kismet.

Old Grandmother was not a stupid woman even if she didn't know what
a Kipling was.

"You've waited too long--you've lost your appetite," she said
shrewdly.

The Lesleys gave it up.  No use trying to fit this exasperating
relative with a wife.  A bachelor Klon remained, with an awful
habit of wiring "sincere sympathy" when any of his friends got
married.  Perhaps it was just as well.  His nephews and nieces
might benefit, especially Lorraine's baby whom he evidently
worshipped.  So here he was, unwedded, light-hearted and content,
watching them all with his amused smile.

Lucifer had leaped on his knee as soon as he had sat down.  Lucifer
condescended to very few but, as he told the Witch of Endor,
Klondike Lesley had a way with him.  Uncle Klon fed Lucifer with
bits from his own plate and Salome, who ate with the family because
she was a fourth cousin of Jane Lyle, who had married the
stepbrother of a Lesley, thought it ghastly.


3


The baby had to be talked all over again and Uncle William-over-
the-bay covered himself with indelible disgrace by saying
dubiously,

"She is not--ahem--really a pretty child, do you think?"

"All the better for her future looks," said Old Grandmother tartly.
She had been biding her moment, like a watchful cat, to give a
timely dig.  "YOU," she added maliciously, "were a very pretty
baby--though you did not have any more hair on your head than you
have now."

"Beauty is a fatal gift.  She will be better without it," sighed
Aunt Nina.

"Then why do you cold-cream your face every night and eat raw
carrots for your complexion and dye your hair?" asked Old
Grandmother.

Aunt Nina couldn't imagine how Old Grandmother knew about the
carrots.  SHE had no cat to tattle to Lucifer.

"We are all as God made us," said Uncle Ebenezer piously.

"Then God botched some of us," snapped Old Grandmother, looking
significantly at Uncle Ebenezer's enormous ears and the frill of
white whisker around his throat that made him look oddly like a
sheep.  But then, reflected Old Grandmother, whoever might be
responsible for the nose, it was hardly fair to blame God for
Ebenezer's whiskers.

"She has a peculiarly shaped hand, hasn't she?" persisted Uncle
William-over-the-bay.

Aunt Anne bent over and kissed one of the little hands.

"The hand of an artist," she said.

Lorraine looked at her gratefully and hated Uncle William-over-the-
bay bitterly for ten minutes under her golden hair.

"Handsome is as handsome does," said Uncle Archibald, who rarely
opened his mouth save to emit a proverb.

"Would you mind telling me, Archibald," said Old Grandmother
pleasantly, "if you really look that solemn when you're asleep."

No one answered her.  Aunt Mary Martha-over-the-bay, the only one
who could have answered, had been dead for ten years.

"Whether she's pretty or not, she's going to have very long
lashes," said Aunt Anne, reverting to the baby as a safer subject
of conversation.  There was no sense in letting Old Grandmother
start a family row for her own amusement so soon after poor
Leander's passing away.

"God help the men then," said Uncle Klon gravely.

Aunt Anne wondered why Old Grandmother was laughing to herself
until the bed shook.  Aunt Anne reflected that it would have been
just as well if Klondike with his untimely sense of humour had not
been present in a serious assemblage like this.

"Well, we must give her a pretty name, anyhow," said Aunt Flora
briskly.  "It's simply a shame that it's been left as long as this.
No Lesley ever was before.  Come, Grandmother, you ought to name
her.  What do you suggest?"

Old Grandmother affected the indifferent.  She had three namesakes
already so she knew Leander's baby wouldn't be named after HER.

"Call it what you like," she said.  "I'm too old to bother about
it.  Fight it out among yourselves."

"But we'd like your advice, Grandmother," unfortunately said Aunt
Leah, whom Old Grandmother was just detesting because she had
noticed the minute Leah shook hands with her that she had had her
nails manicured.

"I have no advice to give.  I have nothing but a little wisdom and
I cannot give you THAT.  Neither can I help it if a woman has a
bargain-counter nose."

"Are you referring to MY nose," inquired Aunt Leah with spirit.
She often said she was the only one in the clan who wasn't afraid
of Old Grandmother.

"The pig that's bit squeals," retorted Old Grandmother.  She leaned
back on her pillows disdainfully and sipped her tea with a
vengeance.  She had got square with Leah for manicuring her nails.

She had insisted on having her dinner first so that she might watch
the others eating theirs.  She knew it made them all more or less
uncomfortable.  Oh, but it was fine to be able to be disagreeable
again.  She had had to be so good and considerate for four months.
Four months was long enough to mourn for anybody.  Four months of
not daring to give anybody a wigging.  They had seemed like four
centuries.

Lorraine sighed.  She knew what SHE wanted to call her baby.  But
she knew that she would never have the courage to say it.  And if
she did she knew they would never consent to it.  When you married
into a family like the Lesleys you had to take the consequences.
It was very hard when you couldn't name your own baby--when you
were not even asked what you'd LIKE it named.  If Lee had only
lived it would have been different.  Lee, who was not a bit like
the other Lesleys--except Uncle Klon, a little--Lee, who loved
wonder and beauty and laughter--laughter that had been hushed so
suddenly.  Surely the jests of Heaven must have had more spice
since he had joined in them.  How he would have howled at this
august conclave over the naming of his baby!  How he would have
brushed them aside!  Lorraine felt sure he would have let her call
her baby--

"_I_ think," said Mrs. David Lesley, throwing her bombshell gravely
and sadly, "that it would only be graceful and fitting that she
should be called after Leander's first wife."

Mrs. David and Clementine had been very intimate friends.  But
Clementine!  Lorraine shivered again and wished she hadn't, for
Aunt Anne's eye looked like another shawl.

Everybody looked at Clementine's picture.

"Poor little Clementine," sighed Aunt Stasia in a tone that made
Lorraine feel she should never have taken poor little Clementine's
place.

"Do you remember what lovely jet black hair she had?" asked Aunt
Marcia.

"And what lovely hands?" said Great-Aunt Matilda.

"She was so young to die," sighed Aunt Josephine.

"She was SUCH a sweet girl," said Great-Aunt Elizabeth.

"A sweet girl all right," agreed Uncle Klon, "but why condemn an
innocent child to carry a name like that all her life?  That would
really be a sin."

The clan, with the exception of Mrs. David, felt grateful to him
and looked it, especially Young Grandmother.  The name simply
wouldn't have done, no matter how sweet Clementine was.  That
horrid old song, for instance--Oh, my darling Clementine, that boys
used to howl along the road at nights.  No, no, not for a Lesley.
But Mrs. David was furious.  Not only because Klondike disagreed
with her but because he was imitating her old lisp, so long
outgrown that it really was mean of him to drag it up again like
this.

"Will you have some more dressing?" inquired Young Grandmother
graciously.

"No, thank you."  Mrs. David was not going to have any more, by way
of signifying displeasure.  Later on she took a still more terrible
revenge by leaving two-thirds of her pudding uneaten, knowing that
Young Grandmother had concocted it.  Young Grandmother woke up in
the night and wondered if anything could really have been the
matter with the pudding.  The others MIGHT have eaten it out of
politeness.

"If Leander's name had been almost anything else she might have
been named for her father," said Great-Uncle Walter.  "Roberta--
Georgina--Johanna--Andrea--Stephanie--Wilhelmina--"

"Or Davidena," said Uncle Klon.  But Great-Uncle Walter ignored
him.

"You can't make anything out of a name like LEANDER.  Whatever did
you call him that for, Marian?"

"His grandfather named him after him who swam the Hellespont," said
Young Grandmother as rebukingly as if she had not, thirty-five
years before, cried all one night because Old Grandfather had given
her baby such a horrid name.

"She might be called Hero," said Uncle Klon.

"We had a dog called that once," said Old Grandmother.

"Leander didn't tell you before he died that he wanted any special
name, did he, Lorraine?" inquired Aunt Nina.

"No," faltered Lorraine.  "He--he had so little time to tell me--
anything."

The clan frowned at Nina as a unit.  They thought she was very
tactless.  But what could you expect of a woman who wrote poetry
and peddled it about the country?  WRITING it might have been
condoned--and concealed.  After all, the Lesleys were not
intolerant and everybody had some shortcomings.  But SELLING it
openly!

"I should like baby to be called Gabriella," persisted Nina.

"There has never been such a name among the Lesleys," said Old
Grandmother.  And that was THAT.

"I think it's time we had some new names," said the poetess
rebelliously.  But every one looked stony, and Nina began to cry.
She cried upon the slightest provocation.  Lorraine remembered that
Leander had always called her Mrs. Gummidge.

"Come, come," said Old Grandmother, "surely we can name this baby
as well comfortably as uncomfortably.  Don't make the mistake,
Nina, of thinking that you are helping things along by making a
martyr of yourself."

"What do YOU think, Miss Silversides?" inquired Uncle Charlie, who
thought Salome was being entirely ignored and didn't like it.

"Oh, it doesn't matter what _I_ think.  _I_ am of no consequence,"
said Salome, ostentatiously helping herself to the pickles.

"Come, come, now, you're one of the family," coaxed Uncle Charlie,
who knew--so he said--how to handle women.

"Well"--Salome relaxed because she was really dying to have her say
in it--"I've always thought names that ended in 'ine' were so
elegant.  MY choice would be Rosaline."

"Or Evangeline," said Great-Uncle Walter.

"Or Eglantine," said Aunt Marcia eagerly.

"Or Gelatine," said Uncle Klon.

There was a pause.

"Juno would be such a nice name," said Cousin Teresa.

"But we are Presbyterians," said Old Grandmother.

"Or Robinette," suggested Uncle Charlie.

"We are English," said Young Grandmother.

"I think Yvonne is such a romantic name," said Aunt Flora.

"Names have really nothing to do with romance," said Uncle Klon.
"The most thrilling and tragic love affair I ever knew was between
a man named Silas Twingletoe and a woman named Kezia Birtwhistle.
It's my opinion children shouldn't be named at all.  They should be
numbered until they're grown up, then choose their own names."

"But then you are not a mother, my dear Horace," said Young
Grandmother tolerantly.

"Besides, there's an Yvonne Clubine keeping a lingerie shop in
Charlottetown," said Aunt Josephine.

"Lingerie?  If you mean underclothes for heaven's sake say so,"
snapped Old Grandmother.

"Juanita is a rather nice uncommon name," suggested John Eddy
Lesley-over-the-bay.  "J-u-a-n-i-t-a."

"Nobody would know how to spell it or pronounce it," said Aunt
Marcia.

"I think," began Uncle Klon--but Aunt Josephine took the road.

"_I_ think--"

"Place aux dames," murmured Uncle Klon.  Aunt Josephine thought he
was swearing but ignored him.

"_I_ think the baby should be called after one of our missionaries.
It's a shame that we have three foreign missionaries in the
connection and not one of them has a namesake--even if they are
only fourth cousins.  _I_ suggest we call her Harriet after the
oldest one."

"But," said Aunt Anne, "that would be slighting Ellen and Louise."

"Well," said Young Grandmother haughtily--Young Grandmother was
haughty because nobody had suggested naming the baby after HER--
"call her the whole three names, Harriet Ellen Louise Lesley.  Then
no fourth cousin need feel slighted."

The suggestion seemed to find favour.  Lorraine caught her breath
anxiously and looked at Uncle Klon.  But rescue came from another
quarter.

"Have you ever," said Old Grandmother with a wicked chuckle,
"thought what the initials spell?"

They hadn't.  They did.  Nothing more was said about missionaries.


4


"Sylvia is a beautiful name," ventured Uncle Howard, whose first
sweetheart had been a Sylvia.

"You couldn't call her that," said Aunt Millicent in a shocked
tone.  "Don't you remember Great-Uncle Marshall's Sylvia went
insane?  She died filling the air with shrieks.  _I_ think Bertha
would be more suitable."

"Why, there's a Bertha in John C. Lesley's family-over-the-bay,"
said Young Grandmother.

John C. was a distant relative who was "at outs" with his clan.  So
Bertha would never do.

"Wouldn't it be nice to name her Adela?" said Aunt Anne.  "You know
Adela is the only really distinguished person the connection has
ever produced.  A famous authoress--"

"_I_ should like the mystery of her husband's death to be cleared
up before any grandchild of mine is called after her," said Young
Grandmother austerely.

"Nonsense, Mother!  You surely don't suspect Adela."

"There WAS arsenic in the porridge," said Young Grandmother darkly.

"I'll tell you what the child should be called," said Aunt Sybilla,
who had been waiting for the psychic moment.  "Theodora!  It was
revealed to me in a vision of the night.  I was awakened by a
feeling of icy coldness on my face.  I came all out in goose flesh.
And I heard a voice distinctly pronounce the name--THEODORA.  I
wrote it down in my diary as soon as I arose."

John Eddy Lesley-over-the-bay laughed.  Sybilla hated him for weeks
for it.

"I wish," said sweet old Great-Aunt Matilda, "that she could be
called after my little girl who died."

Aunt Matilda's voice trembled.  Her little girl had been dead for
fifty years but she was still unforgotten.  Lorraine loved Aunt
Matilda.  She wanted to please her.  But she couldn't--she
COULDN'T--call her dear baby Emmalinza.

"It's unlucky to call a child after a dead person," said Aunt Anne
positively.

"Why not call the baby Jane," said Uncle Peter briskly.  "My
mother's name--a good, plain, sensible name that'll wear.  Nickname
it to suit any age.  Jenny--Janie--Janet--Jeannette--Jean--and Jane
for the seventies."

"Oh, wait till I'm dead--PLEASE," wailed Old Grandmother.  "It
would always make me think of Jane Putkammer."

Nobody knew who Jane Putkammer was or why Old Grandmother didn't
want to think of her.  As nobody asked why--the dessert having just
been begun--Old Grandmother told them.

"When my husband died she sent me a letter of condolence written in
red ink.  Jane, indeed!"

So the baby escaped being Jane.  Lorraine felt really grateful to
Old Grandmother.  She had been afraid Jane might carry the day.
And how fortunate there was such a thing as red ink in the world.

"Funny about nicknames," said Uncle Klon.  "I wonder did they have
nicknames in Biblical times.  Was Jonathan ever shortened into Jo?
Was King David ever called Dave?  And fancy Melchizedek's mother
always calling him that."

"Melchizedek hadn't a mother," said Mrs. David triumphantly--and
forgave Uncle Klon.  But not Young Grandmother.  The pudding
remained uneaten.

"Twenty years ago Jonathan Lesley gave me a book on 'The
Hereafter,'" said Old Grandmother reminiscently.  "And he's been in
the Hereafter eighteen years and I am still in the Here."

"Any one would think you expected to live forever," said Uncle
Jarvis, speaking for the first time.  He had been sitting in
silence, hoping gloomily that Leander's baby was an elect infant.
What mattered a name compared to that?

"I do," said Old Grandmother, chuckling.  That was one for Jarvis,
the solemn old ass.

"We're not really getting anywhere about the baby's name, you
know," said Uncle Paul desperately.

"Why not let Lorraine name her own baby?" said Uncle Klon suddenly.
"Have you any name you'd like her called, dear?"

Again Lorraine caught her breath.  Oh, hadn't she!  She wanted to
call her baby Marigold.  In her girlhood she had had a dear friend
named Marigold.  The only girl-friend she ever had.  Such a dear,
wonderful, bewitching, lovable creature.  She had filled Lorraine's
starved childhood with beauty and mystery and affection.  And she
had died.  If only she might call her baby Marigold!  But she knew
the horror of the clan over such a silly, fanciful, outlandish
name.  Old Grandmother--Young Grandmother--no, they would never
consent.  She knew it.  All her courage exhaled from her in a sigh
of surrender.

"No-o-o," she said in a small, hopeless voice.  Oh, if she were
only not such a miserable coward.

And that terrible Old Grandmother knew it.

"She's fibbing," she thought.  "She has a name but she's too scared
to tell it.  Clementine, now--she would have stood on her own feet
and told them what was what."

Old Grandmother looked at Clementine, forever gazing at her lily,
and forgot that the said Clementine's ability to stand on her own
feet and tell people--even Old Grandmother--what was what had not
especially commended her to Old Grandmother at one time.  But Old
Grandmother liked people with a mind of their own--when they were
dead.

Old Grandmother was beginning to feel bored with the whole matter.
What a fuss over a name.  As if it really mattered what that mite
in the cradle, with the golden fuzz on her head, was called.  Old
Grandmother looked at the tiny sleeping face curiously.  Lorraine's
hair but Leander's chin and brow and nose.  A fatherless baby with
only that foolish Winthrop girl for a mother.

"I MUST live long enough for her to remember me," thought Old
Grandmother.  "It's only a question of keeping on at it.  Marian
has no imagination and Lorraine has too much.  Somebody must give
that child a few hints to live by, whether she's to be minx or
madonna."

"If it was only a boy it would be so easy to name it," said Uncle
Paul.

Then for ten minutes they wrangled over what they would have called
it if it had been a boy.  They were beginning to get quite warm
over it when Aunt Myra took a throbbing in the back of her neck.

"I'm afraid one of my terrible headaches is coming on," she said
faintly.

"What would women do if headaches had never been invented?" asked
Old Grandmother.  "It's the most convenient disease in the world.
It can come on so suddenly--go so conveniently.  And nobody can
prove we haven't got it."

"I'm sure no one has ever suffered as I do," sighed Myra.

"We all think that," said Old Grandmother, seeing a chance to shoot
another poisoned arrow.  "I'll tell you what's the matter with you.
Eye strain.  You should really wear glasses at your age, Myra."

"Why can't those headaches be cured?" said Uncle Paul.  "Why don't
you try a new doctor?"

"Who is there to try now that poor Leander is in his grave?" wailed
Myra.  "I don't know what we Lesleys are ever going to do without
him.  We'll just have to DIE.  Dr. Moorhouse drinks and Dr.
Stackley is an evolutionist.  And you wouldn't have me go to that
woman-doctor, would you?"

No, of course not.  No Lesley would go to that woman-doctor.  Dr.
M. Woodruff Richards had been practising in Harmony for two years,
but no Lesley would have called in a woman-doctor if he had been
dying.  One might as well commit suicide.  Besides, a woman-doctor
was an outrageous portent, not to be tolerated or recognised at
all.  As Great-Uncle Robert said indignantly, "The weemen are
gittin' entirely too intelligent."

Klondike Lesley was especially sarcastic about her.  "An unsexed
creature," he called her.  Klondike had no use for unfeminine women
who aped men.  "Neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring," as
Young Grandfather had been wont to say.  But they talked of her
through their coffee and did not again revert to the subject of the
baby's name.  They were all feeling a trifle sore over THAT.  It
seemed to them all that neither Old Grandmother nor Young
Grandmother nor Lorraine had backed them up properly.  With the
result that all the guests went home with the great question yet
unsettled.

"Just as I expected.  All squawks--nothing but squawks as usual,"
said Old Grandmother.

"We might have known what would happen when we had this on Friday,"
said Salome, as she washed up the dishes.

"Well, the great affair is over," said Lucifer to the Witch of
Endor as they discussed a plate of chicken bones and Pope's noses
on the back veranda, "and that baby hasn't got a name yet.  But
these celebrations are red-letter days for US.  Listen to me purr."



CHAPTER II

Sealed of the Tribe


1


Things were rather edgy in the Lesley clan for a few weeks.  As
Uncle Charlie said, they had their tails up.  Cousin Sybilla was
reported to have gone on a hunger strike--which she called a fast--
about it.  Stasia and Teresa, two affectionate sisters, quarrelled
over it and wouldn't speak to each other.  There was a connubial
rupture between Uncle Thomas and Aunt Katherine because she wanted
to consult Ouija about a name.  Obadiah Lesley, who in thirty years
had never spoken a cross word to his wife, rated her so bitterly
for wanting to call the baby Consuela that she went home to her
mother for three days.  An engagement trembled in the balance.
Myra's throbbings in the neck became more frequent than ever.
Uncle William-over-the-bay vowed he wouldn't play checkers until
the child was named.  Aunt Josephine was known to be praying about
it at a particular hour every day.  Nina cried almost ceaselessly
over it and gave up peddling poetry for the time being, which led
Uncle Paul to remark that it was an ill wind which blew no good.
Young Grandmother preserved an offended silence.  Old Grandmother
laughed to herself until the bed shook.  Salome and the cats held
their peace, though Lucifer carefully kept his tail at half-mast.
Everybody was more or less cool to Lorraine because she had not
taken his or her choice.  It really looked as if Leander's baby was
never going to get a name.

Then--the shadow fell.  One day the little lady of Cloud of Spruce
seemed fretful and feverish.  The next day more so.  The third day
Dr. Moorhouse was called--the first time for years that a Lesley
had to call in an outside doctor.  For three generations there had
been a Dr. Lesley at Cloud of Spruce.  Now that Leander was gone
they were all at sea.  Dr. Moorhouse was brisk and cheerful.  Pooh--
pooh!  No need to worry--not the slightest.  The child would be
all right in a day or two.

She wasn't.  At the end of a week the Lesley clan were thoroughly
alarmed.  Dr. Moorhouse had ceased to pooh-pooh.  He came anxiously
twice a day.  And day by day the shadow deepened.  The baby was
wasting away to skin and bone.  Anguished Lorraine hung over the
cradle with eyes that nobody could bear to look at.  Everybody
proposed a different remedy but nobody was offended if it wasn't
used.  Things were too serious for that.  Only Nina was almost sent
to Coventry because she asked Lorraine one day if infantile
paralysis began like that, and Aunt Marcia was frozen out because
she heard a dog howling one night.  Also, when Flora said she had
found a diamond-shaped crease in a clean tablecloth--a sure sign of
death in the year--Klondike insulted her.  But Klondike was
forgiven because he was nearly beside himself over the baby's
condition.

Dr. Moorhouse called in Dr. Stackley, who might be an evolutionist
but had a reputation of being good with children.  After a long
consultation they changed the treatment; but there was no change
in the little patient.  Klondike brought a specialist from
Charlottetown who looked wise and rubbed his hands and said Dr.
Moorhouse was doing all that could be done and that while there was
life there was always hope, especially in the case of children.

"Whose vitality is sometimes quite extraordinary," he said gravely,
as if enunciating some profound discovery of his own.

It was at this juncture that Great-Uncle Walter, who hadn't gone to
church for thirty years, made a bargain with God that he would go
if the child's life was spared, and that Great-Uncle William-over-
the-bay recklessly began playing checkers again.  Better break a
vow before a death than after it.  Teresa and Stasia had made up as
soon as the baby took ill, but it was only now that the coolness
between Thomas and Katherine totally vanished.  Thomas told her for
goodness' sake to try Ouija or any darned thing that might help.
Even Old Cousin James T., who was a black sheep and never called
"Uncle" even by the most tolerant, came to Salome one evening.

"Do you believe in prayer?" he asked fiercely.

"Of course I do," said Salome indignantly.

"Then PRAY.  _I_ don't--so it's no use for me to pray.  But you
pray your darnedest."


2


A terrible day came when Dr. Moorhouse told Lorraine gently that he
could do nothing more.  After he had gone Young Grandmother looked
at Old Grandmother.

"I suppose," she said in a low voice, "we had better take the
cradle into the spare room."

Lorraine gave a bitter cry.  This was equivalent to a death
sentence.  At Cloud of Spruce, just as with the Murrays down at
Blair Water, it was a tradition that dying people must be taken
into the spare room.

"You'll do one thing before you take her into the spare room," said
Old Grandmother fiercely.  "Moorhouse and Stackley have given up
the case.  They've only half a brain between them anyhow.  Send for
that woman-doctor."

Young Grandmother looked thunderstruck.  She turned to Uncle Klon,
who was sitting by the baby's cradle, his haggard face buried in
his hands.

"Do you suppose--I've HEARD she was very clever--they say she was
offered a splendid post in a children's hospital in Montreal but
preferred general practice--"

"Oh, get her, get her," said Klondike--savage from the bitter
business of hoping against hope.  "Any port in a storm.  She can't
do any harm now."

"Will YOU go for her, Horace," said Young Grandmother quite humbly.

Klondike Lesley uncoiled himself and went.  He had never seen Dr.
Richards before--save at a distance, or spinning past him in her
smart little runabout.  She was in her office and came forward to
meet him gravely sweet.

She had a little, square, wide-lipped, straight-browed face like a
boy's.  Not pretty but haunting.  Wavy brown hair with one teasing,
unruly little curl that WOULD fall down on her forehead, giving her
a youthful look in spite of her thirty-five years.  What a dear
face!  So wide at the cheekbones--so deep grey-eyed.  With such a
lovely, smiling, generous mouth.  Some old text of Sunday-school
days suddenly flitted through Klondike Lesley's dazed brain:

"She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life."

For just a second their eyes met and locked.  Only a second.  But
it did the work of years.  The irresistible woman had met the
immovable man and the inevitable had happened.  She might have had
thick ankles--only she hadn't; her mother might have meowed all
over the church.  Nothing would have mattered to Klondike Lesley.
She made him think of all sorts of lovely things, such as sympathy,
kindness, generosity, and women who were not afraid to grow old.
He had the most extraordinary feeling that he would like to lay his
head on her breast and cry, like a little boy who had got hurt, and
have her stroke his head and say,

"Never mind--be brave--you'll soon feel better, dear."

"Will you come to see my little niece?" he heard himself pleading.
"Dr. Moorhouse has given her up.  We are all very fond of her.  Her
mother will die if she cannot be saved.  Won't you come?"

"Of course I will," said Dr. Richards.

She came.  She said little, but she did some drastic things about
diet and sleeping.  Old and Young Grandmothers gasped when she
ordered the child's cradle moved out on the veranda.  Every day for
two weeks her light, steady footsteps came and went about Cloud of
Spruce.  Lorraine and Salome and Young Grandmother hung
breathlessly on her briefest word.

Old Grandmother saw her once.  She had told Salome to bring "the
woman-doctor in," and they had looked at each other for a few
minutes in silence.  The steady, sweet, grey eyes had gazed
unquailingly into the piercing black ones.

"If a son of mine had met you I would have ordered him to marry
you," Old Grandmother said at last with a chuckle.

The little humorous quirk in Dr. Richards's mouth widened to a
smile.  She looked around her at all the laughing brides of long
ago in their billows of tulle.

"But I would not have married him unless I wanted to," she said.

Old Grandmother chuckled again.

"Trust you for that."  But she never called her "the woman-doctor"
again.  She spoke with her own dignity of "Dr. Richards"--for a
short time.

Klondike brought Dr. Richards to Cloud of Spruce and took her away.
Her own car was laid up for repairs.  But nobody was paying much
attention to Klondike just then.

At the end of the two weeks it seemed to Lorraine that the shadow
had ceased to deepen on the little wasted face.

A few more days--was it not lightening--lifting?  At the end of
three more weeks Dr. Richards told them that the baby was out of
danger.  Lorraine fainted and Young Grandmother shook and Klondike
broke down and cried unashamedly like a schoolboy.


3


A few days later the clan had another conclave--a smaller and
informal one.  The aunts and uncles present were all genuine ones.
And it was not, as Salome thankfully reflected, on a Friday.

"This child must be named at once," said Young Grandmother
authoritatively.  "Do you realize that she might have died without
a name?"

The horror of this kept the Lesleys silent for a few minutes.
Besides, every one dreaded starting up another argument so soon
after those dreadful weeks.  Who knew but what it had been a
judgment on them for quarrelling over it?

"But WHAT shall we call her?" said Aunt Anne timidly.

"There is only one name you can give her," said Old Grandmother,
"and it would be the blackest ingratitude if you didn't.  Call her
after the woman who has saved her life, of course."

The Lesleys looked at each other.  A simple, graceful, natural
solution of the problem--if only--

"But WOODRUFF!" sighed Aunt Marcia.

"She's got another name, hasn't she?" snapped Old Grandmother.
"Ask Horace there what M stands for?  HE can tell you, or I'm much
mistaken."

Every one looked at Klondike.  In the anxiety of the past weeks
everybody in the clan had been blind to Klondike's goings-on--
except perhaps Old Grandmother.

Klondike straightened his shoulders and tossed back his mane.  It
was as good a time as any to tell something that would soon have to
be told.

"Her full name," he said, "is now Marigold Woodruff Richards, but
in a few weeks' time it will be Marigold Woodruff Lesley."

"And that," remarked Lucifer to the Witch of Endor under the milk
bench at sunset, with the air of a cat making up his mind to the
inevitable, "is that."

"What do you think of her?" asked the Witch, a little
superciliously.

"Oh, she has points," conceded Lucifer.  "Kissable enough."

The Witch of Endor, being wise in her generation, licked her black
paws and said no more, but continued to have her own opinion.



CHAPTER III

April Promise


1


On the evening of Old Grandmother's ninety-eighth birthday there
was a sound of laughter on the dark staircase--which meant that
Marigold Lesley, who had lived six years and thought the world a
very charming place, was dancing downstairs.  You generally heard
Marigold before you saw her.  She seldom walked.  A creature of
joy, she ran or danced.  "The child of the singing heart," Aunt
Marigold called her.  Her laughter always seemed to go before her.
Both Young Grandmother and Mother, to say nothing of Salome and
Lazarre, thought that golden trill of laughter echoing through the
somewhat prim and stately rooms of Cloud of Spruce the loveliest
sound in the world.  Mother often said this.  Young Grandmother
never said it.  That was the difference between Young Grandmother
and Mother.

Marigold squatted down on the broad, shallow, uneven sandstone
steps at the front door and proceeded to think things over--or, as
Aunt Marigold, who was a very dear, delightful woman, phrased it,
"make magic for herself."  Marigold was always making magic of some
kind.

Already, even at six, Marigold found this an entrancing occupation--
"int'resting," to use her own pet word.  She had picked it up from
Aunt Marigold and from then to the end of life things would be for
Marigold interesting or uninteresting.  Some people might demand of
life that it be happy or untroubled or successful.  Marigold Lesley
would only ask that it be interesting.  Already she was looking
with avid eyes on all the exits and entrances of the drama of life.

There had been a birthday party for Old Grandmother that day, and
Marigold had enjoyed it--especially that part in the pantry about
which nobody save she and Salome knew.  Young Grandmother would
have died of horror if she had known how many of the whipped cream
tarts Marigold had actually eaten.

But she was glad to be alone now and think things over.  In Young
Grandmother's opinion Marigold did entirely too much thinking for
so small a creature.  Even Mother, who generally understood,
sometimes thought so too.  It couldn't be good for a child to have
its mind prowling in all sorts of corners.  But everybody was too
tired after the party to bother about Marigold and her thoughts
just now, so she was free to indulge in a long delightful reverie.
Marigold was, she would have solemnly told you, "thinking over the
past."  Surely a most fitting thing to do on a birthday, even if it
wasn't your own.  Whether all her thoughts would have pleased Young
Grandmother, or even Mother, if they had known them, there is no
saying.  But then they did not know them.  Long, long ago--when she
was only five and a half--Marigold had horrified her family--at
least the Grandmotherly part of it--by saying in her nightly
prayer, "Thank you, dear God, for 'ranging it so that nobody knows
what I think."  Since then Marigold had learned worldly wisdom and
did not say things like that out loud--in her prayers.  But she
continued to think privately that God was very wise and good in
making thoughts exclusively your own.  Marigold hated to have
people barging in, as Uncle Klon would have said, on her little
soul.

But then, as Young Grandmother would have said and did say,
Marigold always had ways no orthodox Lesley baby ever thought of
having--"the Winthrop coming out in her," Young Grandmother
muttered to herself.  All that was good in Marigold was Lesley and
Blaisdell.  All that was bad or puzzling was Winthrop.  For
instance, that habit of hers of staring into space with a look of
rapture.  WHAT did she see?  And what right had she to see it?  And
when you asked her what she was thinking of she stared at you and
said, "Nothing."  Or else propounded some weird, unanswerable
problem such as, "Where was I before I was me?"

The sky above her was a wonderful soft deep violet.  A wind that
had lately blown over clover-meadows came around the ivied shoulder
of the house in the little purring puffs that Marigold loved.  To
her every wind in the world was a friend--even those wild winter
ones that blew so fiercely up the harbour.  The row of lightning-
rod balls along the top of Mr. Donkin's barn across the road seemed
like silver fairy worlds floating in the afterlight against the
dark trees behind them.  The lights across the harbour were
twinkling out along the shadowy shore.  Marigold loved to watch the
harbour lights.  They fed some secret spring of delight in her
being.  The big spireas that flanked the steps--Old Grandmother
always called them Bridal Wreaths, with a sniff for meaningless
catalogue names--were like twin snowdrifts in the dusk.  The old
thorn hedge back of the apple-barn, the roots of which had been
brought out from Scotland in some past that was to Marigold of
immemorial antiquity, was as white as the spireas, and scented the
air all around it.  Cloud of Spruce was such a place always inside
and out for sweet, wholesome smells.  People found out there that
there was such a thing as honeysuckle left in the world.  There was
the entrancing pale gold of lemon lilies in the shadows under the
lilac-trees, and the proud white iris was blooming all along the
old brick walk worn smooth by the passing of many feet.  Away far
down Marigold knew the misty sea was lapping gladly on the windy
sands of the dunes.  Mr. Donkin's dear little pasture-field, full
of blue-eyed grass, with the birches all around it, was such a
CONTENTED field.  She had always envied Mr. Donkin that field.  It
looked, thought Marigold, as if it just loved being a field and
wouldn't be anything else for the world.  Right over it was the
dearest little grey cloud that was slowly turning to rose like a
Quaker lady blushing.  And all the trees in sight were whispering
in the dusk like old friends--all but the lonely, unsociable
Lombardies.

Salome was singing lustily in the pantry, where she was washing
dishes.  Salome couldn't sing, but she always sang and Marigold
liked to hear her, especially at twilight.  "Shall we ga-a-a-ther
at the ri-ver.  The BEW-tiful-the BEW-tiful river?" warbled Salome.
And Marigold SAW the beautiful river, looking like the harbour
below Cloud of Spruce.  Lazarre was playing his fiddle behind the
copse of young spruces back of the apple-barn--the old brown fiddle
that his great-great-great-grandfather had brought from Grand Pré.
Perhaps Evangeline had danced to it.  Aunt Marigold had told
Marigold the story of Evangeline.  Young Grandmother and Mother and
Aunt Marigold and Uncle Klon were in Old Grandmother's room talking
over clan chit-chat together.  A bit of gossip, Old Grandmother
always averred, was an aid to digestion.  Everybody Marigold loved
was near her.  She hugged her brown knees with delight, and thought
with a vengeance.


2


Marigold had lived her six years, knowing no world but Harmony
Harbour and Cloud of Spruce.  All her clan loved her and petted
her, though some of them occasionally squashed her for her own
good.  And Marigold loved them all--even those she hated she loved
as part of her clan.  And she loved Cloud of Spruce.  How lucky she
had happened to be born there.  She loved everything and everybody
about it.  To-night everything seemed to drift through her
consciousness in a dreamy, jumbled procession of delight, big and
little things, past and present, all tangled up together.

The pigeons circling over the old apple-barn; the apple-barn
itself--such an odd old barn with a tower and oriel window like a
church--and the row of funny little hemlocks beyond it.  "Look at
those hemlocks," Uncle Klon had said once.  "Don't they look like a
row of old-maid schoolteachers with their fingers up admonishing a
class of naughty little boys."  Marigold always thought of them so
after that and walked past them in real half-delicious fear.  What
if they should suddenly shake their fingers so at HER?  She would
die of it, she knew.  But it WOULD be int'resting.

The hemlocks were not the only mysterious trees about Cloud of
Spruce.  That lilac-bush behind the well, for example.  Sometimes
it was just lilac-bush.  And sometimes, especially in the twilight
or early dawn, it was a nodding old woman knitting.  It WAS.  And
the spruce-tree down at the shore which in twilight or on stormy
winter days looked just like a witch leaning out from the bank, her
hair streaming wildly behind her.  Then there were trees that
talked--Marigold heard them.  "Come, come," the pines at the right
of the orchard were always calling.  "We have something to tell
you," whispered the maples at the gate.  "Isn't it enough to look
at us?" crooned the white birches along the road side of the
garden, which Young Grandmother had planted when she came to Cloud
of Spruce as a bride.  And those Lombardies that kept such stately
watch about the old house.  At night the wind wandered through them
like a grieving spirit.  Elfin laughter and fitful moans sounded in
their boughs.  You might say what you liked but Marigold would
never believe that those Lombardies were just TREES.

The old garden that faced the fair blue harbour, with its white
gate set midway, where darling flowers grew and kittens ran
beautiful brief little pilgrimages before they were given away--or
vanished mysteriously.  It had all the beauty of old gardens where
sweet women have aforetime laughed and wept.  Some bit of old clan
history was bound up with almost every clump and walk in it, and
already Marigold knew most of it.  The things that Young
Grandmother and Mother would not tell her Salome would, and the
things that Salome would not Lazarre would.

The road outside the gate--one of the pleasant red roads of "the
Island."  To Marigold, a long red road of mystery.  On the right
hand it ran down to the windy seafields at the harbour's mouth and
stopped there--as if, thought Marigold, the sea had bitten it off.
On the left it ran through a fern valley, up to the shadowy crest
of a steep hill with eager little spruce-trees running up the side
of it as if trying to catch up with the big ones at the top.  And
over it to a new world beyond where there was a church and a school
and the village of Harmony.  Marigold loved that hill road because
it was full of rabbits.  You could never go up it without seeing
some of the darlings.  There was room in Marigold's heart for all
the rabbits of the world.  She had horrible suspicions that Lucifer
caught baby rabbits--and ATE THEM.  Lazarre had as good as given
that dark secret away in his rage over some ruined cabbages in the
kitchen-garden.  "Dem devil rabbit," he had stormed.  "I wish dat
Lucifer, he eat dem ALL."  Marigold COULDN'T feel the same to
Lucifer after that, though she kept on loving him, of course.
Marigold always kept on loving--and hating--when she had once
begun.  "She's got THAT much Lesley in her anyhow," said Uncle
Klon.

The harbour, with its silent mysterious ships that came and went;
Marigold loved it the best of all the outward facts of her life--
better, as yet, than even the wonderful green cloud of spruce on
the hill eastward that gave her home its name.  She loved it when
it was covered with little dancing ripples like songs.  She loved
it when its water was smooth as blue silk; she loved it when summer
showers spun shining threads of rain below its western clouds; she
loved it when its lights blossomed out in the blue of summer dusks
and the bell of the Anglican Church over the bay rang faint and
sweet.  She loved it when the mist mirages changed it to some
strange enchanted haven of "fairylands forlorn"; she loved it when
it was ruffled in rich dark crimson under autumn sunsets; she loved
it when silver sails went out of it in the strange white wonder of
dawn; but she loved it best on late still afternoons, when it lay
like a great gleaming mirror, all faint, prismatic colours like the
world in a soap-bubble.  It was so nice and thrilly to stand down
on the wharf and see the trees upside down in the water and a great
blue sky underneath you.  And what if you couldn't stick on but
fell down into that sky?  WOULD YOU FALL THROUGH IT?

And she loved the purple-hooded hills that cradled it--those long
dark hills that laughed to you and beckoned--but always kept some
secret they would never tell.

"What is over the hills, Mother?" she had asked Mother once.

"Many things--wonderful things--heart-breaking things," Mother had
answered with a sigh.

"I'll go and find them all sometime," Marigold had said
confidently.

And then Mother had sighed again.

But the other side of the harbour--"over the bay"--continued to
hold a lure for Marigold.  Everything, she felt sure, would be
different over there.  Even the people who lived there had a
fascinating name--"over-the-bay-ers"--which when Marigold had been
VERY young, she thought was "over-the-bears."

Marigold had been down to the gulf shore on the other side of the
dreamy dunes once, with Uncle Klon and Aunt Marigold.  They had
lingered there until the sunken sun had sucked all the rosy light
out of the great blue bowl of the sky and twilight came down over
the crash and the white turmoil of the breakers.  For the tide was
high and the winds were out and the sea was thundering its mighty
march of victory.  Marigold would have been terrified if she had
not had Uncle Klon's lean brown hand to hold.  But with him to take
the edge off those terrible thrills it had been all pure rapture.

Next to the harbour Marigold loved the big spruce wood on the hill--
though she had been up there only twice in her life.

As far back as she could remember that spruce hill had held an
irresistible charm for her.  She would sit on the steps of Old
Grandmother's room and look up it by the hour so long and so
steadily that Young Grandmother would wonder uneasily if the child
were just "right."  There had been a half-wit two generations back
in the Winthrops.

The hill was so high.  Long ago she had used to think that if she
could get up on that hill she could touch the sky.  Even yet she
thought if she were there and gave a little spring she MIGHT land
right in heaven.  Nothing lived there except rabbits and squirrels--
and perhaps "de leetle green folk," of whom Lazarre had told her.
But beyond it--ah, beyond it--was the HIDDEN LAND.  It seemed to
Marigold she had always called it that--always known about it.  The
beautiful, wonderful Hidden Land.  Oh, to see it, just to climb up
that hill to the very top and gaze upon it.  And yet when Mother
asked her one day if she would like a walk up the hill Marigold had
shrunk back and exclaimed,

"Oh, Mother, the hill is so high.  If we got to the top we'd be
above EVERYTHING.  I'd rather stay down here with things."

Mother had laughed and humoured her.  But one evening, only two
months later, Marigold had daringly done it alone.  The lure
suddenly proved stronger than the dread.  Nobody was around to
forbid her or call her back.  She walked boldly up the long flight
of flat sandstone steps that led right up the middle of the
orchard, set into the grass.  She paused at the first step to kiss
a young daffodil goodnight--for there were daffodils all about that
orchard.  Away beyond, the loveliest rose-hued clouds were hanging
over the spruces.  They had caught the reflection of the west, but
Marigold thought they shone so because they looked on the Hidden
Land--the land she would see in a moment if her courage only held
out.  She could be brave so long as it was not dark.  She must get
up the hill--and back--before it was dark.  The gallant small
figure ran up the steps to the old lichen-covered fence and sagging
green gate where seven slim poplars grew.  But she did not open it.
Somehow she could not go right into that spruce wood.  Lazarre had
told her a story of that spruce wood--or some other spruce wood.
Old Fidèle the caulker had been cutting down a tree there and his
axe was dull and he swore, "Devil take me," he said, "if I don't
t'row dis dam axe in de pond."  "AN' DE DEVIL TOOK HEEM."  Lazarre
was dreadfully in earnest.

"Did any one see it?" asked Marigold, round-eyed.

"No; but dey see de hoof-prints," said Lazarre conclusively.  "And
stomp in de groun' roun' de tree.  An' you leesten now--where did
Fidèle go if de devil didn't take heem?  Nobody never see heem
again roun' dese parts."

So no spruce wood for Marigold.  In daylight she never really
believed the devil had carried off Fidèle, but one is not so
incredulous after the sun goes down.  And Marigold did not really
want to see the devil, though she thought to herself that it WOULD
be int'resting.

She ran along the fence to the corner of the orchard where the
spruces stopped.  How cool and velvety the young grass felt.  It
FELT green.  But in the Hidden Land it would be ever so much
greener--"living green," as one of Salome's hymns said.  She
scrambled through a lucky hole in the fence, ran out into Mr.
Donkin's wheat-stubble and looked eagerly--confidently for the
Hidden Land.

For a moment she looked--tears welled up in her eyes--her lips
trembled--she almost cried aloud in bitterness of soul.

THERE WAS NO HIDDEN LAND!

Nothing before her but fields and farmhouses and barns and groves--
just the same as along the road to Harmony.  Nothing of the
wonderful secret land of her dreams.  Marigold turned; she must
rush home and find Mother and cry--cry--cry!  But she stopped,
gazing with a suddenly transfigured face at the sunset over Harmony
Harbour.

She had never seen the whole harbour at one time before; and the
sunset was a rare one even in that island of wonderful sunsets.
Marigold plunged her eyes into those lakes of living gold and
supernal crimson and heavenly apple-green--into those rose-coloured
waters--those far-off purple seas--and felt as if she were drowning
ecstatically in loveliness.  Oh, THERE was the Hidden Land--there
beyond those shining hills--beyond that great headland that cut the
radiant sea at the harbours mouth--there in that dream city of
towers and spires whose gates were of pearl.  It was not lost to
her.  How foolish she had been to fancy it just over the hill.  Of
course it couldn't be there--so near home.  But she knew where it
was now.  The horrible disappointment and the sense of bitter loss
that was far worse than the disappointment, had all vanished in
that moment of sheer ecstasy above the world.  She KNEW.

It was growing dark.  She could see the lights of Cloud of Spruce
blooming out in the dusk below her.  And the night was creeping out
of the spruces at her.  She looked once timidly in that direction--
and there, just over a little bay of bracken at the edge of the
wood, beckoning to her from a copse--a Little White Girl.  Marigold
waved back before she saw it was only a branch of wild, white plum-
blossom, wind-shaken.  She ran back to the orchard and down the
steps to meet Mother at the door of Old Grandmother's room.

"Oh, Mother, it's so nice to come home at bedtime," she whispered,
clutching the dear warm hand.

"Where have you been, child?" ask Young Grandmother rather sternly.

"Up on the hill."

"You must not go there alone at this time of night," said Young
Grandmother.

Oh, but she had been there once.  And she had seen the Hidden Land.

Then she had gone up the hill with Mother this spring--only a few
weeks ago--to pick arbutus.  They had had a lovely time and found a
spring there, with ferns thick around its untrampled edges--a
delicate dim thing, half shadow, all loveliness.  Marigold had
pulled the ferns aside and peeped into it--had seen her own face
looking up at her.  No, not her own face.  The Little Girl who
lived in the spring, of course, and came out on moonlit nights to
dance around it.  Marigold knew naught of Grecian myth or Anglo-
Saxon folk-lore but the heart of childhood has its own lovely
interpretation of nature in every age and clime, and Marigold was
born knowing those things that are hidden forever from the wise and
prudent and sceptical.

She and Mother had wandered along dear little paths over gnarled
roots.  They had found a beautiful smooth-trunked beech or two.
They had walked on sheets of green moss velvety enough for the feet
of queens.  Later on, Mother told her, there would be June-bells
and trilliums and wild orchids and lady's slippers there for the
seeking.  Later still, strawberries out in the clearings at the
back.

"When I get big I'm coming here every day," said Marigold.  She
thought of the evening so long ago--a whole year--when she had seen
for a moment the Little White Girl.  It COULDN'T have been a plum-
bough.  Perhaps some day she would see her again.


3


Lucifer was prowling about the bed of striped ribbon-grass, giving
occasional mysterious pounces into it.  The Witch of Endor was
making some dark magic of her own on the white gate-post.  They
were both older than Marigold, who felt therefore that they were
uncannily aged.  Lazarre had confided to her his belief that they
would live as long as the Old Lady did.  "Dey tells her everyt'ing--
everyt'ing," Lazarre had said.  "Haven' I seen dem, sittin' dare
on her bed, wi' deir tail hangin' down, a-talkin' to her lak dey
was Chreestian?  An' every tam dat Weetch she catch a mouse, don'
she go for carry it to de Old Lady to see?  You take care what you
do 'fore dose cats.  I wouldn't lak to be de chap dat would hurt
one of dem.  What dem fellers don' know ain't wort' knowin'."
Marigold loved them but held them in awe.  Their unfailing progeny
gave her more delight.  Little furry creatures were always lying
asleep on the sunwarm grasses or frisking in yard and orchard.
Ebon balls of fluff.  Though not all ebon, alas.  The number of
spotted and striped kittens around led Uncle Klon to have his
serious doubts about the Witch's morals.  But he had the decency to
keep his doubts to himself, and Marigold liked the striped kittens
best--undisturbed by any thought of bends sinister.  Creatures with
such sweet little faces could have no dealings with the devil she
felt quiet sure, whatever their parents might be up to.

Lazarre had given over fiddling and was going home--his little
cottage down in "the hollow," where he had a black-eyed wife and
half a dozen black-eyed children.  Marigold watched him crossing
the field, carrying something tied up in a red hanky, whistling
gaily, as he was always doing when not fiddling, his head and
shoulders stooped because he was continually in such a hurry that
they were always several inches in advance of his feet.  Marigold
was very fond of Lazarre, who had been choreman at Cloud of Spruce
before she was born and so was part of the things that always had
been and always would be.  She liked the quick, cordial twinkle in
his black eyes and the gleam of his white teeth in his brown face.
He was very different from Phidime Gautier, the big blacksmith in
the Hollow, of whom Marigold went in positive dread, with his
fierce black moustaches you could hang your hat on.  There was an
unproved legend that he ate a baby every other day.  But Lazarre
wasn't like that.  He was kind and gentle and gay.

She was sure Lazarre couldn't hurt anything.  To be sure there was
that horrible tale of his killing pigs.  But Marigold never
believed it.  She knew Lazarre couldn't kill pigs--at least, not
pigs he was acquainted with.

He could carve wonderful baskets out of plum-stones and make fairy
horns out of birch-bark, and he always knew the right time of the
moon to do anything.  She loved to talk with him, though if Mother
and the Grandmothers had known what they talked about sometimes
they would have put a sharp and sudden stop to it.  For Lazarre,
who firmly believed in fairies and witches and "ghostises" of all
kinds, lived therefore in a world of romance, and made Marigold's
flesh creep deliciously with his yarns.  She didn't believe them
all, but you HAD to believe what had happened to Lazarre himself.
He had seen his grandmother in the middle of the night standing by
his bed when she was forty miles away.  And next day word had come
that the old lady had "gone daid."

That night Marigold had cried out in terror, when Mother was taking
the lamp out of her room, "Oh, Mother, don't let the dark in--don't
let the dark in.  Oh, Mother, I'm so afraid of the big dark."

She had never been afraid to go to sleep in the dark before, and
Mother and Young Grandmother could not understand what had got into
her.  Finally they compromised by leaving the light in Mother's
room with the door open.  You had to go through Mother's room to
get to Marigold's.  The dusky, golden half-light was a comfort.  If
people came and stood by your bed in the middle of the night--
people who were forty miles away--you could at least SEE them.

Sometimes Lazarre played his fiddle in the orchard on moonlight
nights and Marigold danced to it.  Nobody could play the fiddle
like Lazarre.  Even Salome grudgingly admitted that.

"It's angelic, ma'am, that's what it is," she said with solemn
reluctance as she listened to the bewitching lilts of the unseen
musician up in the orchard.  "And to think that easygoing French
boy can make it.  My good, hardworking brother tried all his life
to learn to play the fiddle and never could.  And this Lazarre can
do it without trying.  Why he can almost make ME dance."

"That would be a miracle indeed," said Uncle Klon.

And Young Grandmother did tell Marigold she spent too much time
with Lazarre.

"But I like him so much, and I want to see as much of him as I can
in this world," explained Marigold.  "Salome says he can't go to
heaven because he's a Frenchman."

"Salome is very wicked and foolish to say such a thing," said Young
Grandmother sternly.  "Of course, Frenchmen go to heaven if they
behave themselves"--not as if she were any too sure of it herself,
however.


4


Salome went through the hall and into the orchard room with a cup
of tea for Old Grandmother.  As the door opened Marigold heard Aunt
Marigold say,

"We'd better go to the graveyard next Sunday."

Marigold hugged herself with delight.  One Sunday in every spring
the Cloud of Spruce folks made a special visit to the little
burying-ground on a western hill with flowers for their graves.
Nobody went with them except Uncle Klon and Aunt Marigold.  And
Marigold loved a visit to the graveyard and particularly to
Father's grave.  She had an uneasy conviction that she ought to
feel sad, as Mother and Young Grandmother did, but she never could
manage it.

It was really such a charming spot.  That smooth grey stone between
the two dear young firs all greened over with their new spring
tips, and the big spirea-bush almost hiding the grave and waving a
hundred white hands to you in the wind that rippled the long
grasses.  The graveyard was full of spirea.  Salome liked this.
"Makes it more cheerful-like," she was wont to say.  Marigold
didn't know whether the graveyard was cheerful or not, but she knew
she loved it.  Especially when Uncle Klon was with her.  Marigold
was very fond of Uncle Klon.  There was such fun in him.  His
sayings were so int'resting.  He had such a delightful way of
saying, "When I was in Ceylon," or "When I was in Borneo," as
another might say, "When I was in Charlottetown" or "When I was
over the bay."  And he occasionally swore such fascinating oaths--
at least Salome said they were oaths, though they didn't sound like
it.  "By the three wise monkeys," was one of them.  So mysterious.
WHAT were the three wise monkeys?  Nobody ever talked to her as he
did.  He told her splendid stories of the brave days of old, and
wonderful yarns of his own adventures.  For instance, that
thrilling tale of the night he was lost on the divide between Gold
Run and Sulphur Valleys in the Klondike.  And that one about the
ivory island in the far northern seas--an island covered with
walrus tusks heaped like driftwood, as if all the walruses went
there to die.  He told her jokes.  He always made her laugh--even
in the graveyard, because he told her such funny stories about the
names on the tombstones and altogether made her feel that these
folks were really all alive somewhere.  Father and all, just as
nice and funny as they were in the world.  So why grieve about
them?  Why sigh as Salome always did when she paused by Mrs. Amos
Reekie's grave and said,

"Ah, many's the cup of tea I've drunk with HER!"

"Won't you drink lots more with her in heaven?" demanded Marigold
once, rather recklessly, after some of Uncle Klon's yarns.

"Good gracious, no, child."  Salome was dreadfully shocked.  Though
in her secret soul she thought heaven would be a much more cheerful
place if one COULD have a good cup of tea with an old crony.

"They drink wine there, don't they?" persisted Marigold.  "The
Bible says so.  Don't you think a cup of tea would be more
RESPECTABLE than wine?"

Salome DID think so, but she would have died the death before she
would have corrupted Marigold's youthful mind by saying so.

"There are mysteries too deep for us poor mortals to understand,"
she said solemnly.

Uncle Klon was third in Marigold's young affections.  Mother of
course came first; and then Aunt Marigold, with her dear wide mouth
quirked up at the corners, so that she always seemed to be laughing
even when very sad.  These three were in the inner sanctum of
Marigold's heart, a very exclusive little sanctum out of which were
shut many who thought they had a perfect right to be there.

Marigold sometimes wondered whom she wanted to be like when she
grew up.  In some moods she wanted to be like Mother.  But Mother
was "put upon."  Generally she thought she wanted to be like Aunt
Marigold--who had a little way of saying things.  Nobody else could
have said them.  Marigold always felt she would recognise one of
Aunt Marigold's sayings if she met it in her porridge.  And when
she said only, "It's a fine day," her voice had a nice confidential
tone that made you feel nobody else knew it was a fine day--that it
was a lovely secret shared between you.  And when you had supper at
Aunt Marigold's she MADE you take a third helping.


5


Marigold hardly knew where the grandmothers came in.  She knew she
ought to love them, but did she?  Even at six Marigold had
discovered that you cannot love by rule o' thumb.

Young Grandmother was not so bad.  She was old, of course, with
that frost-fine, serene old age that is in its way as beautiful as
youth.  Marigold felt this long before she could define it, and was
disposed to admire Young Grandmother.

But Old Grandmother.  To Marigold, Old Grandmother, so incredibly
old, had never seemed like anything human.  She could never have
been born; it was equally unthinkable that she could ever die.
Marigold was thankful she did not have to go into Old Grandmother's
room very often.  Old Grandmother could not be bothered with
children--"unspanked nuisances," she called them.

But she had to go sometimes.  When she had been naughty she was
occasionally sent to sit on a little stool on the floor of Old
Grandmother's room as a punishment.  And a very dreadful punishment
it was--much worse than Mother and Young Grandmother, who thought
they were being lenient, realised.  There she sat for what seemed
like hours, and Old Grandmother sat up against her pillows and
stared at her unwinkingly.  Never speaking.  THAT was what made it
so ghastly.

Though when she did speak it was not very pleasant, either.  How
contemptuous Old Grandmother could be.  Once when she had made
Marigold angry, "Hoity toity, a little pot is soon hot!"  Marigold
winched under the humiliation of it for days.  A little pot indeed!

It was no use trying to keep anything from this terrible old lady
who saw through everything.  Once Marigold had tried to hoodwink
her with a small half-fib.

"You are not a true Lesley.  The Lesleys never lie," said Old
Grandmother.

"Oh, don't they!" cried Marigold, who already knew better.

Suddenly Old Grandmother laughed.  Old Grandmother was surprising
sometimes.  After Marigold had gone into the spare room one day and
tried on the hats of several guests, there was a council in the
orchard room that evening.  Mother and Young Grandmother were
horrified.  But Old Grandmother would not allow Marigold to be
punished.

"I did that myself once," she said.  "But I wasn't found out," she
whispered to Marigold with a chuckle.  She chuckled again on the
day when Young Grandmother had asked Marigold a foolish,
unanswerable question.  "WHY are you so bad?"  But Marigold had
answered it--sulkily.  "It's more INT'RESTING than being good."

Old Grandmother called her back as she was following outraged Young
Grandmother out of the room, and put a tiny blue-veined hand on her
shoulder.

"It may be more interesting," she whispered, "but YOU can't keep it
up because you're a Lesley.  The Lesleys never COULD be bad with
any comfort to themselves.  Too much conscience.  No use making
yourself miserable just for the sake of being bad."

Marigold always went into the orchard room on Sunday mornings to
recite her golden text and catechism questions to Old Grandmother.
Woe betide her if she missed a word.  And in her nervousness she
always did miss, no matter how perfectly she could say them before
she went in.  And she always was sent in there to take pills.
Nobody at Cloud of Spruce could make Marigold take pills except Old
Grandmother.  SHE had no trouble.  "Don't screw up your face like
that.  I hate ugly children.  Open your mouth."  Marigold opened
it.  "Pop it in."  Popped in it was.  "Swallow it."  It was
swallowed--somehow.  And then Old Grandmother would put her hand
somewhere about the bed and produce a handful of big fat juicy blue
raisins.

For she was not always unamiable.  And sometimes she showed
Marigold the big family Bible--a sort of Golden Book where all the
clan names were written, and where all sorts of yellowed old
clippings were kept.  And sometimes she told her stories about the
brides on the walls and the hair wreaths where the brown and gold
and black locks of innumerable dead and gone Lesleys bloomed in
weird, unfading buds and blossoms.

Old Grandmother was always saying things, too--queer, odd speeches
with a tang in them Marigold somehow liked.  They generally shocked
Young Grandmother and Mother, but Marigold remembered and pondered
over them though she seldom understood them fully.  They did not
seem related to anything in her small experience.  In after life
they were to come back to her.  In many a crisis some speech of Old
Grandmother's suddenly popped into mind and saved her from making a
mistake.

But on the whole Marigold always breathed a sigh of relief when the
door of the orchard room closed behind her.


6


Marigold at six had already experienced most of the passions that
make life vivid and dreadful and wonderful--none the less vivid and
dreadful at six than at sixteen or sixty.  Probably she was born
knowing that you were born to the purple if you were a Lesley.  But
pride of race blossomed to full stature in her the day she talked
with little May Kemp from the Hollow.

"Do you wash your face EVERY day?" asked May incredulously.

"Yes," said Marigold.

"Whether it needs it or not?"

"Of course.  Don't you?"

"Not me," said May contemptuously.  "I just wash mine when its
dirty."

THEN Marigold realised the difference between the Lesley caste and
outsiders as all Young Grandmother's homilies had not been able to
make her.

Shame?  Oh, she had known it to the full--drunk its cup to the
dregs.  Would she ever forget that terrible supper-table when she
had slipped, red and breathless, into her seat, apologising for
being late?  An inexcusable thing when there were company to tea--
two ministers and two ministers' wives.

"I couldn't help it, Mother.  I went to help Kate Blacquierre drive
Mr. Donkin's cows to water and we had such a time chasing that
bloody heifer."

At once Marigold knew she had said something dreadful.  The frozen
horror on the faces of her family told her that.  One minister
looked aghast, one hid a grin.

WHAT HAD SHE SAID?

"Marigold, you may leave the table and go to your room," said
Mother, who seemed almost on the point of tears.  Marigold obeyed
wretchedly, having no idea in the world what it was all about.
Later on she found out.

"But Kate said it," she wailed.  "Kate said she'd like to break
every bloody bone in that bloody heifer's body.  I never thought
'bloody' was swearing, though it's an ugly word."

She had SWORN before the minister--before two ministers.  And their
wives!  Marigold did not think she could ever live it down.  A hot
wave of shame ran over her whenever she thought about it.  It did
not matter that she was never allowed to go with Kate again; she
had not cared much for Kate anyhow.  But to have disgraced herself
and Mother and the Lesley name!  She had thought it bad enough when
she had asked Mr. Lord of Charlottetown, with awe and reverence,
"Please, ARE YOU GOD?"  She had been laughed at so for that and had
suffered keen humiliation.  But this!  And yet she could not
understand why "bloody" was swearing.  Even Old Grandmother--who
had laughed herself sick over the incident--couldn't explain that.

The spirit of jealousy had claimed her, too.  She was secretly
jealous of Clementine, the girl who had once been Father's wife--
whose grave was beside his on the hill under the spireas--jealous
for her mother.  Father had belonged to Clementine once.  Perhaps
he belonged to her again now.  There were times when Marigold was
absolutely possessed with this absurd jealousy.  When she went into
Old Grandmother's room and saw Clementine's beautiful picture on
the wall, she hated it.  She wanted to go up and tear it down and
trample on it.  Lorraine would have been horrified if she had
dreamed of Marigold's feelings in this respect.  But Marigold kept
her secret fiercely and went on hating Clementine--especially her
beautiful hands.  Marigold thought her mother quite as beautiful as
Clementine.  She always felt so sorry for little girls whose
mothers were not beautiful.  And Mother had the loveliest feet.
Uncle Klon had said more than once that Lorraine had the daintiest
little foot and ankle he had ever seen in a woman.  This did not
count for much among the Lesleys.  Ankles were better not spoken
of, even if the present-day fashion of skirts did show them
shamelessly.  But Mother's hands weren't pretty; they were too
thin--too small; and Marigold felt sometimes she just couldn't BEAR
Clementine's hands.  Especially when some of the clan praised them.
Old Grandmother referred to them constantly; it really did seem as
if Old Grandmother sensed Marigold's jealousy and liked to tease
her.

"I don't think she was so pretty," Marigold had been tortured into
saying once.

Old Grandmother smiled.

"Clementine Lawrence was a beauty, my dear.  Not an insignificant
little thing like--like her sister up there in Harmony."

But Marigold felt sure Old Grandmother had started to say "like
your mother," and she hated Clementine and her hands and her
fadeless white lily more poisonously than ever.

Grief?  Sorrow?  Why, her heart nearly broke when her dear grey
kitten had died.  She had never known before that anything SHE
loved could die.  "Has yesterday gone to heaven, Mother?" she had
sobbed the next day.

"I--I suppose so," said Mother.

"Then I don't want to go to heaven," Marigold had cried stormily.
"I never want to meet that dreadful day again."

"You'll probably have to meet far harder days than that," had been
Young Grandmother's comforting remark.

As for fear, had she not always known it?  One of her very earliest
memories was of being shut up in the dim shuttered parlor because
she had spilled some of her jam pudding on Young Grandmother's best
tablecloth.  How such a little bit of pudding could have spread
itself over so much territory she could not understand.  But into
the parlour she went--a terrible room with its queer streaky lights
and shadows.  And as she huddled against the door in the gloom she
saw a dreadful thing.  To the day of her death Marigold believed it
happened.  All the chairs in the room suddenly began dancing around
the table in a circle headed by the big horsehair rocking-chair.
And every time the rocking-chair galloped past her it bowed to her
with awful, exaggerated politeness.  Marigold screamed so wildly
that they came and took her out--disgusted that she could not
endure so easy a punishment.

"That's the Winthrop coming out in her," said Young Grandmother
nastily.

The Lesleys and Blaisdells had more pluck.  Marigold never told
what had frightened her.  She knew they would not believe her.  But
it was to be years before she could go into the parlour without a
shudder, and she would have died rather than sit in that horsehair
rocking-chair.

She had never been quite so vindictive over anything as over the
affair of the Skinner doll.  That had happened last August.  May
Kemp's mother had come up to clean the apple-barn, and May had come
with her.  May and Marigold had played happily for awhile in the
playhouse in the square of currant-bushes--a beautiful playhouse in
that you could sit in it and eat ruby-hued fruit off your own
walls--and then May had said she would give one of her eyes to see
the famous Skinner doll.  Marigold had gone bravely into the
orchard room to ask Old Grandmother if May might come in and see
it.  She found Old Grandmother asleep--really asleep, not
pretending as she sometimes did.  Marigold was turning away when
her eyes fell on Alicia.  Somehow Alicia looked so lovely and
appealing--as if she were ASKING for a little fun.  Impulsively
Marigold ran to the glass case, opened the door and took Alicia
out.  She even slipped the shoe out of the hand that had held it
for years, and put it on the waiting foot.

"Ain't you the bold one?" said May admiringly, when Marigold
appeared among the red currants with Alicia in her arms.

But Marigold did not feel so bold when Salome, terrible and regal
in her new plum-coloured drugget and starched white apron, had
appeared before them and haled her into Old Grandmother's room.

"I should have known she was too quiet," said Salome.  "There was
the two of 'em--with HER on a chair for a throne, offering HER red
currants on lettuce leaves and kissing HER hands.  And a crown of
flowers on HER head.  And both HER boots on.  You could 'a' knocked
me down with a feather.  HER, that's never been out o' that glass
case since I came to Cloud o' Spruce."

"Why did you do such a naughty thing?" said Old Grandmother
snappily.

"She--she wanted to be loved so much," sobbed Marigold.  "Nobody
has loved her for so long."

"You might wait till I'm dead before meddling with her.  She will
be yours then to 'love' all you want to."

"But you will live forever," cried Marigold.  "Lazarre says so.
And I didn't hurt her one bit."

"You might have broken her to fragments."

"Oh, no, no, I couldn't hurt her by loving her."

"I'm not so sure of that," muttered Old Grandmother, who was
constantly saying things Marigold was to understand twenty years
later.

But Old Grandmother was very angry, and she decreed that Marigold
was to have her meals alone in the kitchen for three days.
Marigold resented this bitterly.  There seemed to be something
especially degrading about it.  This was one of the times when it
was just as well God had arranged it so that nobody knew what you
thought.

That night when Marigold went to bed she was determined she would
not say all her prayers.  Not the part about blessing Old
Grandmother.  "Bless Mother and Young Grandmother and Salome."
Marigold got up then and got into bed, having carefully placed her
two shoes close together under the bed so that they wouldn't be
lonesome.  She did that every night.  She couldn't have slept a
wink if those shoes had been far apart, missing each other all
night.

But she couldn't sleep to-night.  In vain she tried to.  In vain
she counted sheep jumping over a wall.  They WOULDN'T jump.  They
turned back at the wall and made faces at her--a bad girl who
wouldn't pray for her old grandmother.  Marigold stubbornly fought
her Lesley conscience for an hour; then she got out of bed, knelt
down and said, "Please bless Mother and Young Grandmother and
Salome and everybody who needs a blessing."

Surely that took in Old Grandmother.  Surely she could go to sleep
now.  But just as surely she couldn't.  This time she surrendered
after half an hour's fight.  "Please bless Mother and Young
Grandmother and Salome--and you can bless Old Grandmother if you
like."

There now.  She wouldn't yield another inch.

Fifteen minutes later Marigold was out of bed again.

"Please bless Mother and Young Grandmother and Salome and Old
Grandmother for Jesus' sake, amen."

The sheep jumped now.  Faster and faster and faster--they were like
a long flowing white stream--Marigold was asleep.


7


The stars were coming out.  Marigold loved to watch them--though
the first time she had seen stars to realise them she had been
terribly frightened.  She had wakened up as Mother stepped out of
Uncle Klon's car when he had brought them home from a visit in
South Harmony.  She had looked up through the darkness and
shrieked.

"Oh, Mother, the sky has burned up and nothing but the sparks are
left."

How they had all laughed and how ashamed she had been.  But now
Uncle Klon had taught her things about them and she knew the names
of Betelguese and Rigel, Saiph and Alnita better than she could
pronounce them.  Oh, spring was a lovely time, when the harbour was
a quivering, shimmering reach of blue and the orchard was sprinkled
with violets and the nights were like a web of starlight.

But all the seasons were lovely.  Summer, when strawberries were
red on the hill-field and the rain was so sweet in the wild rose
cups, and the faint sweetness of new-mown hay was everywhere, and
the full moon made such pretty dapples under the orchard trees, and
the great fields of daisies across the harbour were white as snow.

Of all the seasons Marigold loved autumn best.  Then the Gaffer
Wind of her favourite fairy-tale blew his trumpet over the harbour
and the glossy black crows sat in rows on the fences, and the
yellow leaves began to fall from the aspens at the green gate, and
there was the silk of frost on the orchard grass in the mornings.
In the evenings there was a nice reek of burning leaves from
Lazarre's bonfires and the ploughed fields on the hill gleamed
redly against the dark spruces.  And some night you went to bed in
a drab dull world and wakened up to see a white miraculous one.
Winter had touched it in the darkness and transformed it.

Marigold loved winter, too, with the mysterious silence of its
moonlit snow-fields and the spell of its stormy skies.  And the big
black cats creeping mysteriously through the twilit glades where
the shadows of the trees were lovelier than the trees themselves,
while the haystacks in Mr. Donkin's yard looked like a group of
humpy old men with white hair.  The pasture-fields which had been
green and gold in June were cold and white, with ghost-flowers
sticking up above the snow.  Marigold always felt so sorry for
those dead flowerstalks.  She wanted to whisper to them, "Spring
will come."

The winter mornings were int'resting because they had breakfast by
candlelight.  The winter evenings were dear when the wind howled
outside, determined to get into Cloud of Spruce.  It clawed at the
doors--shrieked at the windows--gave Marigold delicious little
thrills.  But it never got in.  It was so nice to sit in the warm
bright room with the cats toasting their furry flanks before the
fire and the pleasant purr of Salome's spinning-wheel in the
kitchen.  And then to bed in the little room off Mother's, with
sweet, sleepy kisses, to snuggle down in soft, creamy blankets and
hear the storm outside.  Yes, the world WAS a lovely place to be
alive in, even if the devil did occasionally carry off people who
swore.



CHAPTER IV

Marigold Goes A-visiting


1


Marigold, for the first time in her small life, was going on what
she called a "real" visit.  That is, she was going to Uncle Paul's
to stay all night, without Mother or Young Grandmother.  In this
fact its "realness" consisted for Marigold.  Visiting with
Grandmother was int'resting and visiting with Mother int'resting
AND pleasant, but to go somewhere on your own like this made you
feel old and adventurous.

Besides, she had never been at Uncle Paul's, and there were things
there she wanted to see.  There was a "water-garden," which was a
hobby of Uncle Paul's and much talked of in the clan.  Marigold
hadn't the least idea what a "water-garden" was.  There was a case
of stuffed hummingbirds.  And, more int'resting than all else,
there was a skeleton in the closet.  She had heard Uncle Paul speak
of it and hoped madly that she might get a glimpse of it.

Uncle Paul was not an over-the-bear, so was not invested with such
romance as they, who lived so near the Hidden Land, were.  He lived
only at the head of the Bay, but that was six miles away, so it was
really "travelling" to go there.  She liked Uncle Paul, though she
was a little in awe of Aunt Flora; and she liked Frank.

Frank was Uncle Paul's young half-brother.  He had curly black hair
and "romantic" grey eyes.  So Marigold had heard Aunt Nina say.
She didn't know what romantic meant, but she liked Frank's eyes.
He had a nice, slow smile and a nice, soft drawling voice.
Marigold had heard he was going to marry Hilda Wright.  Then that
he wasn't.  Then that he had sold his farm and was going to some
mysterious region called "the West."  Lazarre told Salome it was
because Hilda had jilted him.  Marigold didn't know what jilted
was, but whatever it was she hated Hilda for doing it to Frank.
She had never liked Hilda much anyway, even if she were some
distant kind of a cousin by reason of her great-grandmother being a
Blaisdell.  She was a pale pretty girl with russet hair and a mouth
that never pleased Marigold.  A stubborn mouth and a bitter mouth.
Yet very pleasant when she laughed.  Marigold almost liked Hilda
when she laughed.

"Dey're too stubborn, dat pair," Lazarre told Salome.  "Hilda say
Frank he mus' spik first an' Frank he say he be dam if he do."

Marigold was sorry Frank was going West, which, as far as she was
concerned, was something "beyond the bourne of time and space," but
she looked forward to this visit with him.  He would show her the
humming-birds and the water-garden, and she believed she could coax
him to let her have a peep at the skeleton.  And he would take her
on his knee and tell her funny stories; perhaps he might even take
her for a drive in his new buggy behind his little black mare
Jenny.  Marigold thought this ever so much more fun than riding in
a car.

Of course she was sorry to leave Mother even for a night, and sorry
to leave her new kitten.  But to go for a real visit!  Marigold
spent a raptured week looking forward to it and living it in
imagination.


2


And it was horrid--horrid.  There was nothing nice about it from
the very beginning, except the drive to the Head with Uncle Klon
and Aunt Marigold, over wood-roads spicy with the fern scent of the
warm summer afternoon.  As soon as they left her there the
horridness began.  Marigold did not know that she was homesick, but
she knew she was unhappy from her head to her toes and that
everything was disappointing.  What good was a case of humming-
birds if there were no one to talk them over with?  Even the water-
garden did not interest her, and there were no signs of a skeleton
anywhere.  As for Frank, he was the worst disappointment of all.
He hardly took any notice of her at all.  And he was so changed--so
gruff and smileless, with a horrible little moustache which looked
just like a dab of soot on his upper lip.  It was the moustache
over which he and Hilda had quarrelled, though nobody knew about it
but themselves.

Marigold ate very little supper.  She thought every mouthful would
choke her.  She took only two bites of Aunt Flora's nut cake with
whipped cream on top, and Aunt Flora, who had made it on purpose
for her, never really forgave her.  After supper she went out and
leaned forlornly against the gate, looking wistfully up the long
red road of mystery that led back home.  Oh, if she were only home--
with Mother.  The west wind stirring in the grasses--the robin-
vesper calls--the long tree shadows across a field of wheaten gold--
all hurt her now because Mother wasn't here.

"Nothing is ever like what you think it's going to be," she thought
dismally.

It was after supper at home now, too.  Grandmother would be weaving
in the garret--and Salome would be giving the cats their milk--and
Mother--Marigold ran in to Aunt Flora.

"Aunt Flora, I must go home right away--please--PLEASE."

"Nonsense, child," said Aunt Flora stiffly.  "Don't take a fit of
the fidgets now."

Marigold wondered why she had never noticed before what a great
beaky nose Aunt Flora had.

"Oh, PLEASE take me home," she begged desperately.

"You can't go home to-night," said Aunt Flora impatiently.  The car
isn't working right.  Don't get lonesome now.  I guess you're
tired.  You'd better go to bed.  Frank'll drive you home to-morrow
if it doesn't rain.  Come now, seven's your bedtime at home, isn't
it?"

"Seven's your bedtime at home."  At HOME--lying in her own bed,
with the light shining from Mother's room--with a delicious golden
ball of fluff that curled and purred all over your bed and finally
went to sleep on your legs.  Marigold couldn't bear it.

"Oh, I want to go home.  I want to go home," she sobbed.

"I can't have any nonsense now," said Aunt Flora firmly.  Aunt
Flora was noted for her admirable firmness with children.  "Surely
you're not going to be a crybaby.  I'll take you up and help you
undress."


3


Marigold was lying alone in a huge room in a huge bed that was
miles from the floor.  She was suddenly half wild with terror and
altogether wild with unendurable homesickness.  It was dark with a
darkness that could be felt.  She had never gone to bed in the dark
before.  Always that friendly light in Mother's room--and sometimes
Mother stayed with her till she went to sleep, though Young
Grandmother disapproved of that.  Marigold had been afraid to ask
Aunt Flora to leave the light.  Aunt Flora had tucked her in and
told her to be a good girl.

"Shut your eyes and go right to sleep, and it will be morning
before you know it--and you can go home."

Then she had gone out and shut the door.  Aunt Flora flattered
herself she knew how to deal with children.

Marigold COULDN'T go to sleep in the dark.  And it would be years
and YEARS before morning came--if it ever did.

"There's nobody here who loves me," she thought passionately.

The black endless hours dragged on.  They really were hours, though
to Marigold they seemed like centuries.  It must surely be nearly
morning.

How the wind was wailing round the house!  Marigold loved the wind
at home, especially at this time of the year when it made her cosy
little bed seem cosier.  But was this some terrible wind that
Lazarre called "de ghos' wind"?

"It blows at de tam of de year when de dead peop' get out of dare
grave for a lil' while," he told her.

Was this the time of year?  And that man-hole she had seen in the
ceiling before Aunt Flora took the light out?  Lazarre had told her
a dreadful story about seeing a horrible face "wit long hairy ear"
looking down at him from a man-hole.

There was a closet in the room.  WAS THAT THE CLOSET WHERE THE
SKELETON WAS?  Suppose the door opened and it fell out.  Or walked
out.  Suppose its bones rattled--Uncle Paul said they did
sometimes.  What was it she had heard about Uncle Paul keeping a
pet rat in the barn?  Suppose he brought it into the house at
night!  Suppose it wandered about!  Wasn't that a rat gnawing
somewhere?

Would she ever see home again?  Suppose mother died before morning.
Suppose it rained--rained for a week--and they wouldn't take her
home.  She knew how Aunt Flora hated to get mud on the new car.
And wasn't that thunder?

It was only wagons rumbling across the long bridge over the East
River below the house, but Marigold did not know that.  She did
know she was going to scream--she knew she couldn't live another
minute in that strange bed in that dark, haunted room.  WHAT WAS
THAT?  Queer scratches on the window.  Oh--Lazarre's story of the
devil coming to carry off a bad child and scratching on the window
to get in.  Because she hadn't said her prayers.  Marigold hadn't
said hers.  She had been too homesick and miserable to think of
them.  She couldn't say them now--but she could sit up in bed and
scream like a thing demented.  And she did.


4


Uncle Paul and Aunt Flora, wakened out of their first sound sleep
after a hard day's work, came running in.  Marigold stopped
screaming when she saw them.

"The child's trembling--she must be cold," said Uncle Paul.

"I'm not cold," said Marigold through her chattering teeth, "but I
must go home."

"Now, Marigold, you must be a reasonable little girl," soothed Aunt
Flora firmly.  "It's eleven o'clock.  You can't get home to-night.
Would you like some raisins?"

"I want to go home," repeated Marigold.

"Who's raising the Old Harry here?" said Frank, coming in.  He had
heard Marigold's shrieks when he was getting ready for bed.  "Here,
sis, is a chocolate mouse for you.  Eat it and shut your little
trap."

It was a lovely, brown chocolate mouse with soft, creamy insides--
the kind of confection the soul of the normal Marigold loved.  But
now it only suggested Uncle Paul's mythical rat.

"I don't want it--I want to go home."

"Perhaps if you bring her up a kitten," suggested Uncle Paul in
desperation.

"I don't want a kitten," wailed Marigold.  "I want to go home."

"I'll give you my coloured egg-dish if you'll stay quietly till
morning," implored Aunt Flora, casting firmness to the winds.

"I don't want the coloured egg-dish.  I want to go home."

"Well, go," said Uncle Paul, finally losing his patience with this
exasperating child.  "There's plenty of good road."

But Aunt Flora had realised that Marigold was on the verge of
hysterics, and to have a hysterical child on her hands was a
prospect that made even her firmness quail.  She had never approved
of Paul's whim of bringing the child here anyhow.  This was a
Winthrop trick if ever there was one.

"I think Frank had better hitch up and take her home.  She may cry
herself sick."

"She's a great big baby and I'm ashamed of her," said Uncle Paul
crushingly.  That speech was to rankle in Marigold's soul for many
a day, but at the moment she was only concerned with the fact that
Uncle Paul told Frank to go out and hitch up.

"Well, this IS the limit," said Frank grouchily.

Aunt Flora helped the sobbing Marigold to dress.  Uncle Paul was so
annoyed that he wouldn't even say good-bye to her.  Aunt Flora said
it very stiffly.  When Mother had kissed Marigold good-bye she had
whispered, "When you come home be sure to thank Aunt Flora for the
lovely time she has given you."  But it did not seem just the right
thing to say, so Marigold said nothing.

"Cut out the weeps," ordered Frank as he lifted her into the buggy.
"Upon my word, I admire Herod."

Frank was abominably cross.  He had had a hard day's work in the
harvest-field and was in no mood for a twelve-mile ride, all for
the whim of a silly kid.  Lord, what nuisances kids were.  He was
glad he would never have any.  Marigold conquered her sobs with an
effort.  She was going home.  Nothing else mattered.  Frank sent
his black mare spinning along the road and never spoke a word, but
Marigold didn't care.  She was going home.

Half-way home they turned the corner at the school, and Martin
Richard's house was just beyond--a little, old-fashioned white
house with a tall Lombardy standing sentinel at either corner, and
a tangle of rose-bushes fringing its short lane.

"Why, Frank," cried Marigold, "what's the matter with the house?"

Frank looked--shouted, "My Golly!"--stopped the mare--sprang out of
the buggy--tore into the yard--hammered on the door.  A window over
the door opened--Marigold saw a girl lean out.  It was Hilda
Wright, who must have been staying all night with her cousin, Jean
Richards.  Frank saw her, too.

"The house is on fire," he shouted.  "Get them up--quick.  There's
no time to lose."

A wild half-hour followed--a most int'resting half-hour.  Luckily
Frank's mare had been trained to stand without hitching, and
Marigold sat there watching greedily.  The house suddenly sparkled
with lights.  Men rushed out for buckets and ladders.  Gigantic
grotesque shadows went hurtling over the barns in the lantern-
light.  Dogs barked their heads off.  It was very satisfying while
it lasted.  The fire was soon put out.  The kitchen roof had caught
from a spark.  But after it was out, Marigold could see Frank and
Hilda standing very close together by one of the Lombardies.

Marigold sat in the buggy and enjoyed the sudden swoops of wind.
It was not a stormy night after all--it was a windy, starry night.
How thick the stars were.  Marigold would have liked to count them
but she did not dare.  Lazarre had told her that if you tried to
count the stars you would drop down dead.  Suppose--somewhere--a
star fell down at your feet.  Suppose a lot of them did.  Suppose
you were chasing stars all over the meadows--over the hills--over
the dunes.  Till you picked up handfuls of them.

Frank and Hilda came out to the buggy together.  Hilda was carrying
a little lantern, and the red silk scarf around her head fluttered
about her face like a scarlet flame.  The bitterness had gone out
of her mouth and she was smiling.  So was Frank.

"And you've sat here all this time alone without a word.  And Jenny
not even hitched.  Well, you're a plucky little kid after all.  I
don't wonder you were homesick and scared in that big barn Flora
calls a spare room.  I'll get you home now in two shakes.  Nighty-
night, honey."

The "honey" was not for Marigold but for Hilda, who after being
kissed, leaned forward and squeezed Marigold's hand.

"I'm GLAD you were homesick," she whispered.  "But I hope you won't
ever be homesick again."

"I guess Frank won't go West now," whispered Marigold.

"If he does I'll go with him," whispered Hilda.  "I'll go to the
ends of the earth with him."

"Look here, darling, you'll catch cold," interrupted Frank
considerately.  "Hop in and finish your beauty sleep.  I'll be up
to-morrow night.  Just now I've got to get this little poppet home.
She saved your uncle's house to-night with her monkey didoes,
anyway."

Frank was so nice and jolly and funny all the rest of the way home
that Marigold was almost sorry when they got there.  Every one at
Cloud of Spruce was in bed, but Mother was not asleep.  She came
down at once and hugged Marigold when she heard Frank's story--at
least as much as he chose to tell.  He said nothing about Hilda,
but he gave Marigold a fierce parting hug and put two chocolate
mice in her hand.

"Guess you can eat these fellows now without choking," he said.

Marigold, safe in her own dear bed, with her kitten at her feet,
ate her mice and fell asleep wondering if Frank were "dam" because
he had, after all, spoken first.



CHAPTER V

The Door That Men Call Death


1


After all Old Grandmother did not live out her hundred years--much
to the disappointment of the clan, who all wanted to be able to
brag that one of them had "attained the century mark."  The
McAllisters over-the-bay had a centenarian aunt and put on airs
about it.  It was intolerable that they should go the Lesleys one
better in anything when they were comparative newcomers, only three
generations out from Scotland, when the Lesleys were five.

But Death was not concerned about clan rivalry and somehow even Old
Grandmother's "will to live" could not carry her so far.  She
failed rapidly after that ninety-eighth birthday-party and nobody
expected her to get through the next winter--except Marigold, to
whom it had never occurred that Old Grandmother would not go on
living forever.  But in the spring Old Grandmother rallied
amazingly.

"Mebbe she'll make it yet," said Mrs. Kemp to Salome.  Salome shook
her head.

"No; she's done.  It's the last flicker of the candle.  I wish she
COULD live out the century.  It's disgusting to think of old
Christine McAllister, who's been deaf and blind and with no more
mind than a baby for ten years, living to be a hundred and Lesley
with all her faculties dying at only ninety-nine."

Marigold in the wash-house doorway caught her breath.  Was Old
Grandmother going to DIE--could such a thing happen?  Oh, it
couldn't.  It COULDN'T.  The bottom seemed to have dropped out of
everything for Marigold.  Not that she was conscious of any
particular love for Old Grandmother.  But she was one of The Things
That Always Have Been.  And when one of The Things That Always Have
Been disappear, it is a shock.  It makes you feel as if NOTHING
could be depended on.

She had got a little used to the idea by next Saturday, when she
went in to say her verses to Old Grandmother.  Old Grandmother was
propped up on her rosy pillows, knitting furiously on a blue jacket
for a new great-grandson at the Coast.  Her eyes were as bright and
boring as ever.

"Sit down.  I can't hear your verses till I've finished counting."

Marigold sat down and looked at the brides.  She did not want to
look at Clementine's picture but she had to.  She couldn't keep her
eyes from it.  She clenched her small hands and set her teeth.
Hateful, hateful Clementine, who had more beautiful hands than
Mother.  And that endless dreamy smile at the lily--as if nothing
else mattered.  If she had only had the self-conscious smirk of the
other brides, Marigold might not have hated her so much.  THEY
cared what people thought about them.  Clementine didn't.  She was
so sure of herself--so sure of having Father--so sure of being
flawlessly beautiful, she never thought for a moment of anybody's
opinion.  She KNEW that people couldn't help looking at her and
admiring her even though they hated her.  Marigold wrenched her
eyes away and fastened them on the picture of an angel over Old
Grandmother's bed--a radiant being with long white wings and halo
of golden curls, soaring easily through sunset skies.  WAS Old
Grandmother going to die?  And if she did, would she be like that?
Marigold had a daring little imagination but it faltered before
such a conception.

"What are you thinking of?" demanded Old Grandmother so suddenly
and sharply that Marigold spoke out the question in her mind before
she could prevent herself.

"Will you be an angel when you die, ma'am?"

Old Granny sighed.  "I suppose so.  How it will bore me.  Who's
been telling you I was going to die?"

"Nobody," faltered Marigold, alive to what she had done.  "Only--
only--"

"Out with it," ordered Old Grandmother.

"Mrs. Kemp said it was a pity you couldn't live to be the hundred
when old Chris McAllister did."

"Since when," demanded Old Grandmother in an awful tone, "have the
Lesleys been the rivals of the McAllisters?  THE MCALLISTERS!  And
does anybody suppose that Chris McAllister has been LIVING for the
last ten years?  Why, she's been deader than I'll be when I've been
under the sod for a century!  For that matter she never WAS alive.
As for dying, I'm not going to die till I get good and ready.  For
one thing, I'm going to finish this jacket first.  What else did
Mrs. Kemp say?  Not that I care.  I'm done with curiosity about
life.  I'm only curious now about death.  Still, she was always an
amusing old devil."

She didn't say much more--only that the Lawson baby couldn't live
and Mrs. Gray-over-the-bay had a cancer and Young Sam Marr had
appendicitis."

"Cheerful little budget.  I dreamed last night I went to heaven and
saw Old Sam Marr there and it made me so mad I woke up.  The idea
of Old Sam Marr in heaven."

Old Grandmother shook her knitting-needle ferociously at a
shrinking little bride who seemed utterly lost in the clouds of
tulle and satin that swirled around her.

"Why don't you want him in heaven?" asked Marigold.

"If it comes to that I don't know.  I never disliked Old Sam.  It's
only--he couldn't BELONG in heaven.  No business there at all."

Marigold had some difficulty in imagining Old Grandmother
"belonging" in heaven either.

"You wouldn't want him in--the other place."

"Of course not.  Poor old harmless, doddering Sam.  Always spewing
tobacco-juice over everything.  The only thing he had to be proud
of was the way he could spit.  There really ought to be a betwixt-
and-between place.  Only," added Granny with a grin, "if there
were, most of us would be in it."

She knitted a round of her jacket sleeve before she spoke again.
Marigold put in the time hating Clementine.

"I was sorry when Old Sam Marr died, though," said Granny abruptly.
"Do you know why?  He was the last person alive who could remember
me when I was young and handsome."

Marigold looked at Old Grandmother.  Could this ugly little old
woman ever have been young and pretty?  Old Grandmother caught the
scepticism in her eyes.

"You don't believe I ever was.  Why, child, my hair was red-gold
and my arms were the boast of the clan.  No Lesley man ever married
an ugly woman.  Some of us were fools and some shrews, but we never
shirked a woman's first duty--to please a man's eyes.  To be sure,
the Lesley men knew how to pick wives.  Come here and let me have a
look at you."

Marigold went and stood by the bed.  Old Grandmother put a skinny
hand under her chin, tilted up her face and looked very searchingly
at her.

"Hmm.  The Winthrop hair--too pale a gold, but it may darken--the
Lesley blue eyes--the Blaisdell ears--too early to say whose nose
you have--MY complexion.  Well, thank goodness, I don't think
you'll be hard to look at."

Old Grandmother chuckled as she always did when achieving a bit of
modern slang.  Marigold went out feeling more cheerful.  She didn't
believe Old Grandmother had any idea of dying.


2


Granny continued to improve.  She sat up in bed and knit.  She saw
everybody who came and chattered to them.  She held long pow-wows
with Lucifer.  She wouldn't let Young Grandmother have her new silk
dress made without a high collar.  She had Lazarre in and hauled
him over the coals because he was said to have been drunk and given
his wife a black eye.

"She won't die dese twenty year," said the aggrieved Lazarre.
"Dere's only room for wan of dem down dare."

Then Aunt Harriet in Charlottetown gave a party in honour of her
husband's sister, and Young Grandmother and Mother were going in
Uncle Klon's car.  They would not be back before three o'clock that
night, but Salome would be there and Old Grandmother was amazingly
well and brisk.  And then at the last moment Salome was summoned to
the deathbed of an aunt in South Harmony.  Young Grandmother in her
silken magnificence and Mother looking like a slender lily in her
green crêpe, with the blossom of her face atop of it, came to the
orchard room.

"Of course we can't go now," said Young Grandmother regretfully.
She had wanted to go--the said husbands sister had been a girlhood
friend of hers.

"Why can't you go?" snapped Old Grandmother.  "I've finished my
jacket and I'm going to die at three o'clock tonight, but that
isn't any reason why you shouldn't go to the party, is it?  Of
course you'll go.  Don't dare stay home on my account."

Young Grandmother was not much worried over Old Grandmother's
prediction.  That was just one of her characteristic remarks.

"Do you feel any worse?" she asked perfunctorily.

"When I'm perfectly well there's not much the matter with me," said
Old Grandmother cryptically.  "There's no earthly sense in your
staying home on my account.  If I need anything Marigold can get it
for me.  I hope you ate a good supper.  You won't get much at
Harriet's.  She thinks starving her guests is living the simple
life.  And she always fills the cups too full on purpose--so
there'll be no room for cream.  Harriet can make a pitcher of cream
go farther than any woman I know."

"WE are not going there for what we will get to eat," said Young
Grandmother majestically.

Old Grandmother chuckled.

"Of course not.  Anyhow, you'll GO.  I want to hear all about that
party.  It'll be amusing.  I'd rather be amused than loved now.
You take notice whether Grace and Marjory are speaking to each
other yet or not.  And whether Kathleen Lesley has had her eyebrows
plucked.  I heard she was going to when she went to New York.  And
if Louisa has on that awful pink georgette dress with green worms
on it--try to see if you can't spill some coffee over it."

"If you think we'd better not go--" began Young Grandmother.

"Marian Blaisdell, if you don't get out of this room instantly I'll
throw something at you.  There's Klon honking now.  You know he
doesn't like to wait.  Be off, both of you, and send Marigold in.
She can sit here and keep me company till her bedtime."

Old Grandmother watched Young Grandmother and Mother out with a
curious expression in her old black eyes.

"She hates to think of me dying because she won't be YOUNG
Grandmother any longer.  It's a promotion she's not anxious for,"
she told Marigold, who had come reluctantly in.  "Get your picture
book and sit down, child.  I want to think for awhile.  Later on
I've got some things to say to you."

"Yes, ma'am."  Marigold always said "Yes, ma'am" to Old Grandmother
and "Yes, Grandmother" to Young Grandmother.  She sat down
obediently but unwillingly.  It was a lovely spring evening and
Sylvia would be waiting at the Green Gate.  They had planned to
make a special new kind of magic by the White Fountain that night.
And now she would have to spend the whole evening sitting here with
Old Grandmother, who wouldn't even talk but lay there with her eyes
closed.  Was she asleep?  If she were, couldn't she, Marigold, run
up through the orchard to the Green Gate for a moment to tell
Sylvia why she couldn't come.  Sylvia mightn't understand
otherwise.  The Magic Door was open right beside her chair--she
could slip through it--be back in a minute.

"Are you asleep, ma'am?" she whispered cautiously.

"Shut up.  Of course I'm asleep," snapped Old Grandmother.

Marigold sighed and resigned herself.  Dear knows what Sylvia would
do.  Never come again perhaps.  Marigold had never broken tryst
with her before.  She turned her chair softly around so that her
back would be toward Clementine, and looked at the other brides in
the crinolines and flower-lined poke bonnets of the sixties, the
bustles and polonaises of the eighties, the balloon sleeves and
bell skirts of the nineties, the hobbles and huge hats of the tens.
Marigold knew nothing of their respective dates, of course.  They
all belonged to that legendary time before she was born, when
people wore all kinds of absurd dresses.  The only one who didn't
look funny was Clementine, in her lace-shrouded shoulders, her
sleek cap of hair and her fadeless, fashionless lily.  She came
back to Clementine every time--somehow she couldn't help it.  It
was like a sore tooth you HAD to bite on.  But she would not turn
round to look at her.  She WOULD not.


3


"What are you staring at Clementine like that for?"  Old
Grandmother was sitting erectly up in bed.  "Handsome, wasn't she?
The handsomest of all the Lesley brides.  Such colour--such
expression--and the charming gestures of her wonderful hands.  It
was such a pity--"  Old Grandmother stopped abruptly.  Marigold
felt sure she had meant to say, "It was such a pity she died."

Old Grandmother threw back the blankets and slipped two tiny feet
over the edge of the bed.

"Get me my clothes and stockings," she ordered.  "There in the top
bureau drawer.  And the black silk dress hanging in the closet.
And the prunella shoes in the blue box.  Quick, now."

"You're not going to get up?" gasped Marigold in amazement.  She
had never seen Old Grandmother up in her life.  She hadn't supposed
Old Grandmother could get up.

"I'm going to get up and I'm going to take a walk in the orchard,"
said Old Grandmother.  "You just do as I tell you and no back talk.
I did what I pleased before you were born or thought of, and I'll
do what I please to-night.  That's why I made them go to the party.
Hop."

Marigold hopped.  She brought the clothes and the black dress and
the prunella boots and helped Old Grandmother put them on.  Not
that Old Grandmother required much assistance.  She stood up
triumphantly, holding to the bed post.

"Bring me my black silk scarf and one of the canes in the old
clock.  I've walked about this room every night after the rest were
in bed--to keep my legs in working order--but I haven't been out of
doors for nine years."

Marigold, feeling as if she must be in a dream, brought the cane,
and followed Old Grandmother out of The Magic Door and down the
shallow steps.  Old Grandmother paused and looked around her.  The
moon was not yet up, though there was silvery brightness behind the
spruces on the hill.  To the west there was a little streak of
soft, dear gold behind the birches.  There was a cold clear dew on
the grass.  The Witch of Endor was shrieking insults at somebody
out behind the apple-barn.

Old Grandmother sniffed.

"Oh, the salt tang of the sea!  It's good to smell it again.  And
the apple-blossoms.  I had forgotten what spring was like.  Is that
old stone bench still in the orchard under the cedar-tree?  Take me
there.  I want to see one more moon rise over that cloud of
spru