The Complete Works of L M Montgomery

by L. M. Montgomery

  “You can never tell what they’ll like. But it is probable he will if it is only as something to set the cat chasing.”

  “I shall not have a cat. I don’t like them... I can hardly wait to move out. I can’t imagine how I could have existed so long cooped up in that apartment. And now with Willow Run and a child of my own...”

  “Don’t forget he isn’t really a child of your own, Penny. And if he were there would be problems, too.”

  Dr. Galbraith looked up at her as she stood on the step above him. His good-natured, black-grey eyes had suddenly grown very tender.

  “It’s such a glorious day, Penny, that I can’t help proposing to you again,” he said lightly. “You needn’t refuse me unless you want to.”

  Penelope’s lips curled at the corners, a bit mockingly but kindly.

  “I could like you so much, if you didn’t want me to love you, Roger. Our friendship is so pleasant... why will you persist in trying to spoil it? Once for all, there is no place for men in my life.” Then, for no reason she could ever give, even to herself, she added,

  “It’s such a pity Mrs. Blythe isn’t a widow.”

  “I shouldn’t have thought you capable of saying such a thing, Penny,” said Roger quietly. “If Mrs. Blythe were a widow it wouldn’t matter a sixpence to me in that way. I’ve never cared for red-haired women.”

  “Mrs. Blythe’s hair isn’t red... it’s a most charming auburn,” protested Penelope, suddenly feeling that Mrs. Blythe was a delightful creature.

  “Well, call it any shade you like, Penny.” Dr. Galbraith’s tone was several degrees lighter. He believed that Penny had really felt jealous of Mrs. Blythe... and where there is jealousy there is hope. But he was more silent than usual on the way back, while Penelope discoursed blithely about the child mind, the wisdom of letting a child do what he wanted to do... “exhibiting his ego,” she summed it up... and the importance of seeing that he ate enough spinach.

  “Mrs. Blythe has given up trying to make Jem eat spinach,” said the doctor on purpose.

  But Penelope no longer cared what Mrs. Blythe did or didn’t do. She condescended, however, to ask the doctor what he thought about the power of suggestion... especially when a child was asleep.

  “If a child was asleep I’d let him sleep. Most mothers are only too glad when a child does go to sleep.”

  “Oh, most mothers! I don’t mean for you to wake him up, of course. You just sit beside him and very quietly and calmly suggest what you want to impress on his mind in a low, controlled tone.”

  “I don’t,” said Dr. Galbraith.

  Penelope could have bitten her tongue out. How could she have forgotten that Roger’s wife had died in childbirth?

  “There may be something in it,” said Dr. Galbraith, who had once remarked rather cynically to Dr. Blythe that the secret of any success he might have had was due to the fact that he always advised people to do what he knew they really wanted to do.

  “It will be wonderful to watch his little mind develop,” said Penelope dreamily.

  “He’s eight, so you tell me,” said Dr. Galbraith dryly. “Probably his mind has already developed to a considerable extent. You know what the Roman Catholic Church says of a child... the first seven years, etc. However, it is never forbidden to hope.”

  “You lose so much out of life by being cynical, Roger,” rebuked Penelope gently.

  Though Penelope would not have admitted it, even to herself, she was glad that Dr. Galbraith was away when Lionel came. He had gone for a vacation and would be gone several weeks. Long before he came back she would have been used to Lionel and all the problems would have been worked out. For of course there would be problems... Penelope did not blink at that. But she was quite sure that, given patience and under-standing, both of which she felt she possessed in abundance, they would be easily solved.

  The first sight of Lionel, when she went to the station in the early morning, to take him over from the man who had brought him from Winnipeg, was a bit of a shock. She had somehow been expecting to see Ella’s golden curls and baby-blue eyes and willowy grace in miniature. Lionel must look like the father she had never seen. He was short and stocky, with thick black hair and unchildishly thick black eyebrows, almost meeting across his nose. His eyes were black and smouldering, and his mouth was set in an obstinate line which broke into no smile at her affectionate greeting.

  “I am your Aunt Penelope, darling.”

  “No, you ain’t,” said Lionel. “We ain’t no relation.”

  “Well...” Penelope was slightly taken aback... “not really an aunt, of course, but won’t it be nicer to call me that? I was your mother’s dearest friend. Did you have a nice trip, dear?”

  “Nope,” said Lionel.

  He got into the runabout beside her and looked neither to the right nor to the left on the road to Willow Run.

  “Are you tired, dear?”

  “Nope.”

  “Hungry, then? Marta will...”

  “I ain’t hungry.”

  Penelope gave it up. There was a good deal in child psychology about letting children alone. She would let Lionel alone since he evidently did not want to talk. They covered the distance in silence but Lionel broke it just as Penelope brought her car to a halt before the door where Marta was waiting.

  “Who is that ugly old woman?” he asked distinctly.

  “Why... why... that’s Marta, my cousin who lives with me. You can call her Aunty, too. You’ll like her when you know her.”

  “I won’t,” said Lionel.

  “And you mustn’t...” Penelope remembered just in time that you must never say “must not” to children. It does something dreadful to their ego... “please don’t call her ugly.”

  “Why not?” asked Lionel.

  “Why... why... oh, because you don’t want to hurt her feelings, do you? Nobody likes to be called ugly, you know, darling. You wouldn’t, would you?”

  “But I ain’t ugly,” said Lionel.

  This was true enough. In his own way he was rather a handsome child.

  Marta came forward grimly and held out her hand. Lionel put his hand behind his back.

  “Shake hands with Aunt Marta, darling.”

  “Nope,” said Lionel, and added, “She ain’t my aunt.”

  Penelope felt something she had never felt before in her life... a desire to shake somebody. It was so important that he should make a good impression on Marta. But just in time she remembered her patterns.

  “Let us have some breakfast, dear,” she said brightly. “We’ll all feel better afterwards.”

  “I ain’t sick,” said Lionel... and added, “I ain’t going to be called ‘dear.’”

  There was orange juice and a coddled egg for Lionel. He looked at it with aversion.

  “Gimme some sausages,” he said.

  As there were no sausages Lionel couldn’t have any. That being the case he would not have anything else. Penelope again decided to leave him alone... “A little wholesome neglect sometimes does a child good,” she said, remembering her books on the bringing up of children. But when lunch hour came and Lionel still demanded sausages a dreadful feeling of helplessness crept over her. Lionel had spent the entire morning sitting on the front porch staring straight ahead of him. Since Dr. Galbraith’s departure she had paid a visit to Ingleside at Glen St. Mary, and she could not help recalling the different behaviour of the Ingleside youngsters.

  After lunch... Lionel still stubbornly refused to eat anything because there were still no sausages... he went back to the steps.

  “I suppose he has no appetite,” said Penelope anxiously. “I wonder if he needs a pill.”

  “He doesn’t need a pill. What he needs... and needs bad... is a good spanking,” said Marta. Her expression indicated that she would enjoy being the spanker.

  Had it come to this so soon? Lionel had been at Willow Run only six hours and Marta was calling for spankings. Penelope lifted her head proudly.

  “D
o you suppose, Marta, I could ever spank poor Ella’s child?”

  “I’d attend to it for you,” said Marta with an undoubted relish.

  “Nonsense. The poor child is likely very tired and homesick. When he gets adjusted he will eat what he should. We’ll just stick to our policy of leaving him alone, Marta.”

  “Best thing to do, since you won’t spank him,” agreed Marta. “He’s a stubborn one... I saw that the first moment I laid eyes on him. Will I order some sausages for his dinner?”

  Penelope would not dip her colours.

  “No,” she said shortly. “Sausages are most unwholesome for children.”

  “I et plenty of them when I was a child,” said Marta shortly, “and they never did me any harm.”

  Lionel, who had probably not slept very well on the train, fell asleep on the steps so soundly that he did not waken when Penelope lifted him in unaccustomed arms and carried him to a couch in the sunroom. His face was rosy and in sleep looked childlike. His close-shut lips had parted and Penelope saw that one front tooth was missing. After all, he was only a little fellow.

  “He must be five pounds overweight,” she thought anxiously. “I daresay it won’t do him a bit of harm to go without food for a little while. He’s very different from what I expected him to be... but in spite of everything there is something attractive about him. Poor Ella didn’t know anything about child psychology... I suppose she never really found the right approach to him.”

  For dinner there was a delicious roasted chicken, with spinach for Lionel, and ice cream for dessert.

  “Sausages,” said Lionel.

  Penelope was in despair. It was all very well to say let a child alone... let him learn for himself the consequences of certain acts... but you couldn’t let him starve to death. That might be learning consequences too late.

  “I’ll... there’ll be some sausages for your breakfast, darling. Try a bit of this nice chicken.”

  “Sausages,” said Lionel. “And my name ain’t darling. The boys at home called me Bumps.”

  Marta went out and brought in a platterful of sausages, with a defiant glance at Penelope.

  “I got ’em just to be on the safe side,” she said. “My cousin’s wife, Mary Peters, out at Mowbray Narrows, made them. They’re of good clean pork. You couldn’t let him go with an empty stomach all night. He might come down sick.”

  Lionel fell to on the sausages and ate every one of them. He accepted a helping of peas but said “Nope” to the spinach.

  “I’ll give you a nickel if you’ll eat your spinach,” said Marta, to Penelope’s horror. Bribing a child to do right!

  “Make it a dime,” said Lionel.

  He got the dime and he ate the spinach... every scrap of it. At least Lionel believed in fulfilling his part of the contract. He did very well by his ice cream but reverted to sulks when Penelope refused to give him coffee.

  “I’ve always had coffee,” he said.

  “Coffee is not good for little boys, darling,” she said, and stuck to it. But she did not enjoy her own. Especially as Lionel said,

  “You must be awful old. You can’t seem to remember that my name isn’t darling.”

  Penelope never forgot those first two weeks of Lionel’s existence at Willow Run. By dint of giving him some bacon with his egg he was induced to refrain from demanding sausages, and, apart from that, his appetite seemed normal enough. He even ate his spinach without bribes, apparently to save argument. But the problem of his meals being partially solved there remained the problem of amusing him. For it had come to that. He would not make friends with any of the neighbouring youngsters and he sat on the porch steps and stared into vacancy or wandered idly around the grounds of Willow Run. Penelope took him out to Ingleside one day and he seemed to hit it off with Jem Blythe, whom he called a “good bean,” but you couldn’t go to Ingleside every day. He never looked at the squirrels and the swing which Penelope had erected for him in the backyard he disdained. He would not talk. He would not play with the mechanical donkey or the electric train or the toy airplane she bought him. Only once he threw a stone. Unluckily he picked the exact time when Mrs. Raynor, the wife of the Anglican minister, was coming in at the gate. It just missed her nose by an inch.

  “You mustn’t throw stones at people, dar... Lionel,” said Penelope miserably (forgetting that you “mustn’t” use “mustn’t”) after a very stately lady had gone.

  “I didn’t throw it at her,” said Lionel dourly. “I just threw it. It wasn’t my fault she was there.”

  Penelope took to going into the sleeping porch every night... Lionel refused to sleep anywhere else... and “suggesting.” Marta thought it was some kind of witchcraft. Penelope “suggested” that Lionel should feel happy... should not want sausages or coffee... should like spinach... should realize they loved him...

  “Old Marta doesn’t,” said Lionel one night suddenly, when she had supposed him sound asleep.

  “He won’t let us love him,” said Penelope despairingly. “And as for letting him do what he wants to do, he doesn’t want to do anything. He doesn’t want to go driving... he won’t play with his toys... and he doesn’t laugh enough. He doesn’t laugh at all, Marta. Do you notice that?”

  “Well, some kids don’t,” said Marta. “What that kind want is a man to bring them up. They don’t take to women.”

  Penelope disdained to reply. But it was after this that she suggested a dog. She had always rather hankered for a dog herself but her father had not liked dogs. Neither did Marta and an apartment was really no place for a dog. Surely Lionel would like a dog... a boy should have a dog.

  “I’m going to get you a dog, dar... Lionel.”

  She hoped to see Lionel’s face light up for once. But he only looked at her out of lacklustre black eyes.

  “A dog? Who wants a dog?” he said sulkily.

  “I thought all boys liked dogs,” faltered Penelope.

  “I don’t. A dog bit me once. I’d like a kitten,” said Lionel. “They have heaps of kittens at Ingleside.”

  Neither Penelope nor Marta liked cats but this was the first thing Lionel had wanted apart from sausages. Penelope was afraid it would not do to thwart him.

  “If you thwart a child you don’t know what kind of a fixation you may set up,” she remembered.

  The kitten was procured... Mrs. Blythe sent one in from Ingleside and Lionel announced that he would call it George.

  “But, dar... Lionel, it’s a lady kitten,” faltered Penelope. “Susan Baker told me so. Better call it Fluffy... its fur is so soft... or Topsy...”

  “Its name is George,” said Lionel.

  Lionel kept George by him and took her to bed with him... much to Penelope’s horror... but he still prowled darkly about Willow Run and refused to enjoy himself. They had got used to his silence... evidently he was a taciturn child by nature... but Penelope could not get used to his smouldering discon-tent. She felt it to the marrow of her bones. Suggestion seemed of no avail. Ella’s child was not happy. She had tried everything. She had tried amusing him... she had tried leaving him alone.

  “When he begins to go to school it will be better,” she told Marta hopefully. “He will mingle with other boys then and have playmates. He seemed quite different that day we spent at Ingleside.”

  “The doctor and Mrs. Blythe have no theories, I’m told,” said Marta.

  “They must have some. Their children are very well behaved... I admit that. I’d have had some boys in before but the children hereabouts have some kind of spots... I don’t know if it’s catching... but I thought it best not to expose Lionel to it. I... I wish Roger were back.”

  “There are plenty other doctors in town,” said Marta. “And you can’t keep a child wrapped up in cotton wool all his life. I may be an old maid but I know that. Anyhow, it’s two months yet till school opens.”

  Marta was taking things easily. Marta rather approved of Lionel, in spite of his calling her an ugly old woman.

 
; He didn’t get into mischief and he didn’t say impolite things to you if you left him alone. He had to be bribed to drink his nightly glass of milk sometimes... Marta did that oftener than Penelope had any idea of... but he hoarded the dimes he got.

  Once he asked Marta how much a ticket to Winnipeg cost and would not eat any lunch after he had been told. That night he told Marta he was “through with guzzling milk.”

  “I ain’t a baby,” he said.

  “What will your Aunt Penelope say?” admonished Marta.

  “Do you think I care?” said Lionel.

  “You ought to care. She is very good to you,” said Marta.

  Penelope came to a certain decision on the day Lionel came in with a bad bruise on his knee. Not that he made any fuss over it but when he was asked how he got hurt he said the church steeple fell on him.

  “Oh, but Lionel, that isn’t true,” said Penelope, horrified. “You couldn’t expect us to believe that.”

  “I know it ain’t true. When Walter Blythe says things that ain’t true his mother calls it imagination.”

  “But there is a difference. He doesn’t expect her to believe them true.”

  “I didn’t expect you to either,” said Lionel. “But nothing ever happens here. You’ve just got to pretend things happen.”

  Penelope gave up the argument. She bathed and disinfected the knee. She was conscious as she did so of a queer desire to kiss it. It was such an adorable, fat, little brown knee. But she was afraid if she did it Lionel would look at her with that fine trickle of disdain which sometimes appeared so disconcertingly in his expression.

  He refused to let her put a bandage on it although Penelope felt sure it should be done to prevent possible infection.

  “I’ll rub some toad spit on it,” said Lionel.

  “Where did you ever hear of such a thing?” exclaimed Penelope in horror.

  “Jem Blythe told me. But he wouldn’t tell his father,” added Lionel. “His father has some queer notions just like you and Marta.”

  “If only Roger were here!” came unbidden and unwelcomely into Penelope’s mind.

  She thought hard that afternoon and announced the result to Marta at night, after Lionel and George were in bed.