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floor after a fashion and peeled the potatoes for dinner,
cutting her finger in the process.
“I wish we had something for dinner besides ditto,” sighed
Una. “I’m so tired of it. e Blythe children don’t know
what ditto is. And we never have any pudding. Nan says
Susan would faint if they had no pudding on Sundays. Why
aren’t we like other people, Faith?”
“I don’t want to be like other people,” laughed Faith,
tying up her bleeding finger. “I like being myself. It’s more
interesting. Jessie Drew is as good a housekeeper as her
mother, but would you want to be as stupid as she is?”
“But our house isn’t right. Mary Vance says so. She says
people talk about it being so untidy.”
Faith had an inspiration.
“We’ll clean it all up,” she cried. “We’ll go right to work
to-morrow. It’s a real good chance when Aunt Martha is laid
up and can’t interfere with us. We’ll have it all lovely and
clean when father comes home, just like it was when Mary
went away. Any one can sweep and dust and wash windows.
People won’t be able to talk about us any more. Jem Blythe
says it’s only old cats that talk, but their talk hurts just as
much as anybody’s.”
“I hope it will be fine to-morrow,” said Una, fired with
enthusiasm. “Oh, Faith, it will be splendid to be all cleaned
up and like other people.”
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Rainbow Valley
“I hope Aunt Martha’s misery will last over to-morrow,”
said Faith. “If it doesn’t we won’t get a single thing done.”
Faith’s amiable wish was fulfilled. e next day found
Aunt Martha still unable to rise. Carl, too, was still sick and
easily prevailed on to stay in bed. Neither Faith nor Una
had any idea how sick the boy really was; a watchful mother
would have had a doctor without delay; but there was no
mother, and poor little Carl, with his sore throat and aching
head and crimson cheeks, rolled himself up in his twisted
bedclothes and suffered alone, somewhat comforted by the
companionship of a small green lizard in the pocket of his
ragged nighty.
e world was full of summer sunshine after the rain. It
was a peerless day for housecleaning and Faith and Una went
gaily to work.
“We’ll clean the dining room and the parlor,” said Faith.
“It wouldn’t do to meddle with the study, and it doesn’t
matter much about the upstairs. e first thing is to take
everything out.”
Accordingly, everything was taken out. e furniture was
piled on the veranda and lawn and the Methodist graveyard
fence was gaily draped with rugs. An orgy of sweeping
followed, with an attempt at dusting on Una’s part, while
Faith washed the windows of the dining room, breaking
one pane and cracking two in the process. Una surveyed the
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streaked result dubiously.
“ey don’t look right, somehow,” she said. “Mrs. Elliott’s
and Susan’s windows just shine and sparkle.”
“Never mind. ey let the sunshine through just as well,”
said Faith cheerfully. “ey must be clean after all the soap
and water I’ve used, and that’s the main thing. Now, it’s past
eleven, so I’ll wipe up this mess on the floor and we’ll go
outside. You dust the furniture and I’ll shake the rugs. I’m
going to do it in the graveyard. I don’t want to send dust
flying all over the lawn.”
Faith enjoyed the rug shaking. To stand on Hezekiah
Pollock’s tombstone, flapping and shaking rugs was real fun.
To be sure, Elder Abraham Clow and his wife, driving past
in their capacious double-seated buggy, seemed to gaze at
her in grim disapproval.
“Isn’t that a terrible sight?” said Elder Abraham solemnly.
“I would never have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my
own eyes,” said Mrs. Elder Abraham, more solemnly still.
Faith waved a door mat cheerily at the Clow party. It did
not worry her that the elder and his wife did not return her
greeting. Everybody knew that Elder Abraham had never been
known to smile since he had been appointed Superintendent
of the Sunday School fourteen years previously. But it hurt
her that Minnie and Adella Clow did not wave back. Faith
liked Minnie and Adella. Next to the Blythes, they were her
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Rainbow Valley
best friends in school and she always helped Adella with
her sums. is was gratitude for you. Her friends cut her
because she was shaking rugs in an old graveyard where, as
Mary Vance said, not a living soul had been buried for years.
Faith flounced around to the veranda, where she found Una
grieved in spirit because the Clow girls had not waved to
her, either.
“I suppose they’re mad over something,” said Faith.
“Perhaps they’re jealous because we play so much in Rainbow
Valley with the Blythes. Well, just wait till school opens and
Adella wants me to show her how to do her sums! We’ll get
square then. Come on, let’s put the things back in. I’m tired
to death and I don’t believe the rooms will look much better
than before we started—though I shook out pecks of dust in
the graveyard. I hate house-cleaning.”
It was two o’clock before the tired girls finished the two
rooms. ey got a dreary bite in the kitchen and intended
to wash the dishes at once. But Faith happened to pick up
a new story book Di Blythe had lent her and was lost to the
world until sunset. Una took a cup of rank tea up to Carl but
found him asleep; so she curled herself up on Jerry’s bed and
went to sleep too. Meanwhile, a weird story flew through
Glen St. Mary and folks asked each other seriously what was
to be done with those manse youngsters.
“is is past laughing at, believe me,” said Miss Cornelia to
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Rainbow Valley
her husband, with a heavy sigh. “I couldn’t believe it at first.
Miranda Drew brought the story home from the Methodist
Sunday School this afternoon and I simply scoffed at it. But
Mrs. Elder Abraham says she and the Elder saw it with their
own eyes.”
“Saw what?” asked Marshall.
“Faith and Una Meredith stayed home from Sunday
School this morning and cleaned house,” said Miss Cornelia,
in accents of despair. “When Elder Abraham went home
from the church—he had stayed behind to straighten out the
library books—he saw them shaking rugs in the Methodist
graveyard. I can never look a Methodist in the face again.
Just think what a scandal it will make!”
A scandal it assuredly did make, growing more scandalous
as it spread, until the over-harbour people heard that the
manse children had not only cleaned house and put out a
washing on Sunday, but had wound up with an afternoon
picnic in the graveyard while the Methodist Sunday School
was going on. e only household which remained in blissful
ignorance of the terrible thing was the manse itself; on
what Faith and Una fondly believed to be Tuesday it rained
again; for the next three days it rained; nobody came near
the manse; the manse folk went nowhere; they might have
waded through the misty Rainbow Valley up to Ingleside,
but all the Blythe family, save Susan and the doctor, were
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Rainbow Valley
away on a visit to Avonlea.
“is is the last of our bread,” said Faith, “and the ditto
is done. If Aunt Martha doesn’t get better soon what will we
do?”
“We can buy some bread in the village and there’s the
codfish Mary dried,” said Una. “But we don’t know how to
cook it.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” laughed Faith. “You just boil it.”
Boil it they did; but as it did not occur to them to soak
it beforehand it was too salt to eat. at night they were
very hungry; but by the following day their troubles were
over. Sunshine returned to the world; Carl was well and
Aunt Martha’s misery left her as suddenly as it had come;
the butcher called at the manse and chased famine away. To
crown all, the Blythes returned home, and that evening they
and the manse children and Mary Vance kept sunset tryst
once more in Rainbow Valley, where the daisies were floating
upon the grass like spirits of the dew and the bells on the
Tree Lovers rang like fairy chimes in the scented twilight.
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CHaPTeR Xi
a DReaDFUl DiSCoVeRy
“WELL, you kids have gone and done it now,” was Mary’s
greeting, as she joined them in the Valley. Miss Cornelia was
up at Ingleside, holding agonized conclave with Anne and
Susan, and Mary hoped that the session might be a long one,
for it was all of two weeks since she had been allowed to revel
with her chums in the dear valley of rainbows.
“Done what?” demanded everybody but Walter, who was
day-dreaming as usual.
“It’s you manse young ones, I mean,” said Mary. “It was
just awful of you. I wouldn’t have done such a thing for
the world, and I weren’t brought up in a manse,—weren’t
brought up anywhere—just come up.”
“What have we done?” asked Faith blankly.
“Done! You’d better ask! e talk is something terrible.
I expect it’s ruined your father in this congregation. He’ll
never be able to live it down, poor man! Everybody blames
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him for it, and that isn’t fair. But nothing is fair in this world.
You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”
“What have we done?” asked Una again, despairingly.
Faith said nothing, but her eyes flashed golden-brown scorn
at Mary.
“Oh, don’t pretend innocence,” said Mary, witheringly.
“Everybody knows what you’ve done.”
“I don’t,” interjected Jem Blythe indignantly. “Don’t let
me catch you making Una cry, Mary Vance. What are you
talking about?”
“I s’pose you don’t know, since you’re just back from up
west,” said Mary, somewhat subdued. Jem could always
manage her. “But everybody else knows, you’d better
believe.”
“Knows what?”
“at Faith and Una stayed home from Sunday School
last Sunday and cleaned house.”
“We didn’t,” cried Faith and Una, in passionate denial.
Mary looked haughtily at them.
“I didn’t suppose you’d deny it, after the way you’ve
combed me down for lying,” she said. “What’s the good of
saying you didn’t? Everybody knows you did. Elder Clow
and his wife saw you. Some people say it will break up the
church, but I don’t go that far. You are nice ones.”
Nan Blythe stood up and put her arms around the dazed
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Rainbow Valley
Faith and Una.
“ey were nice enough to take you in and feed you and
clothe you when you were starving in Mr. Taylor’s barn,
Mary Vance,” she said. “You are very grateful, I must say.”
“I am grateful,” retorted Mary. “You’d know it if you’d
heard me standing up for Mr. Meredith through thick and
thin. I’ve blistered my tongue talking for him this week. I’ve
said again and again that he isn’t to blame if his young ones
did clean house on Sunday. He was away—and they knew
better.”
“But we didn’t,” protested Una. “It was Monday we cleaned
house. Wasn’t it, Faith?”
“Of course it was,” said Faith, with flashing eyes. “We
went to Sunday School in spite of the rain—and no one
came—not even Elder Abraham, for all his talk about fair-
weather Christians.”
“It was Saturday it rained,” said Mary. “Sunday was fine
as silk. I wasn’t at Sunday School because I had toothache,
but every one else was and they saw all your stuff out on the
lawn. And Elder Abraham and Mrs. Elder Abraham saw you
shaking rugs in the graveyard.”
Una sat down among the daisies and began to cry.
“Look here,” said Jem resolutely, “this thing must be
cleared up. Somebody has made a mistake. Sunday was fine,
Faith. How could you have thought Saturday was Sunday?”
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Rainbow Valley
“Prayer meeting was ursday night,” cried Faith, “and
Adam flew into the soup-pot on Friday when Aunt Martha’s
cat chased him, and spoiled our dinner; and Saturday there
was a snake in the cellar and Carl caught it with a forked
stick and carried it out, and Sunday it rained. So there!”
“Prayer meeting was Wednesday night.” said Mary. “Elder
Baxter was to lead and he couldn’t go ursday night and it
was changed to Wednesday. You were just a day out, Faith
Meredith, and you did work on Sunday.”
Suddenly Faith burst into a peal of laughter.
“I suppose we did. What a joke!”
“It isn’t much of a joke for your father,” said Mary
sourly.
“It’ll be all right when people find out it was just a
mistake,” said Faith carelessly. “We’ll explain.”
“You can explain till you’re black in the face,” said Mary,
“but a lie like that’ll travel faster’n further than you ever will.
I’ve seen more of the world than you and I know. Besides,
there are plenty of folks won’t believe it was a mistake.”
“ey will if I tell them,” said Faith.
“You can’t tell everybody,” said Mary. “No, I tell you
you’ve disgraced your father.”
Una’s evening was spoiled by this dire reflection, but Faith
refused to be made uncomfortable. Besides, she had a plan
that would put everything right. So she put the past with its
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