Anne Of Ingleside √ (Project K.)

CHAPTER 30

"I know something you don't know . . . something you don't know . . . something you don't know," chanted Dovie Johnson, as she teetered back and forth on the very edge of the wharf.

It was Nan's turn for the spotlight . . . Nan's turn to add a tale to the do-you-remembers of after Ingleside years. Though Nan to the day of her death would blush to be reminded of it. She had been so silly.

Nan shuddered to see Dovie teetering . . . and yet it had a fascination. She was so sure Dovie would fall off sometime and then what? But Dovie never fell. Her luck always held.

Everything Dovie did, or said she did . . . which were, perhaps, two very different things, although Nan, brought up at Ingleside where nobody ever told anything but the truth even as a joke, was too innocent and credulous to know that . . . had a fascination for Nan. Dovie, who was eleven and had lived in Charlottetown all her life knew so much more than Nan, who was only eight. Charlottetown, Dovie said, was the only place where people knew anything. What could you know, shut off in a one-horse place like Glen St. Mary?

Dovie was spending part of her vacation with her Aunt Ella in the Glen and she and Nan had struck up a very intimate friendship in spite of the difference in their ages. Perhaps because Nan looked up to Dovie, who seemed to her to be almost grown up, with the adoration we needs must give the highest when we see it . . . or think we see it. Dovie liked her humble and adoring little satellite.

"There's no harm in Nan Blythe . . . she's only a bit soft," she told Aunt Ella.

The watchful folks at Ingleside could not see anything out of the way about Dovie . . . even if, as Anne reflected, her mother was a cousin of the Avonlea Pyes . . . and made no objection to Nan's chumming with her, though Susan from the first mistrusted those gooseberry-green eyes with their pale golden lashes. But what would you? Dovie was "nice-mannered," well-dressed, ladylike, and did not talk too much. Susan could not give any reason for her mistrust and held her peace. Dovie would be going home when school opened and in the meantime there was certainly no need of fine-tooth combs in this case.

So Nan and Dovie spent most of their spare time together at the wharf, where there was generally a ship or two with their folded wings, and Rainbow Valley hardly knew Nan that August. The other Ingleside children did not care greatly for Dovie and no love was lost. She had played a practical joke on Walter and Di had been furious and "said things." Dovie was, it seemed, fond of playing practical jokes. Perhaps that was why none of the Glen girls ever tried to lure her from Nan.

"Oh, please tell me," pleaded Nan.

But Dovie only winked a wicked eye and said that Nan was far too young to be told such a thing. This was just maddening.

"Please tell me, Dovie."

"Can't. It was told me as a secret by Aunt Kate and she's dead. I'm the only person in the world that knows it now. I promised when I heard it that I'd never tell a soul. You'd tell somebody . . . you couldn't help it."

"I wouldn't . . . I could so!" cried Nan.

"People say you folks at Ingleside tell each other everything. Susan'd pick it out of you in no time."

"She wouldn't. I know lots of things I've never told Susan. Secrets. I'll tell mine to you if you'll tell me yours."

"Oh, I'm not int'rested in the secrets of a little girl like you," said Dovie.

A nice insult that! Nan thought her little secrets were lovely . . . that one wild cherry trees she had found blooming in the spruce wood away back behind Mr. Taylor's hay barn . . . her dream of a tiny white fairy lying on a lily pad in the marsh . . . her fancy of a boat coming up the harbour drawn by swans attached to silver chains . . . the romance she was beginning to weave about the beautiful lady at the old MacAllister place. They were all very wonderful and magical to Nan and she felt glad, when she thought it over, that she did not have to tell them to Dovie after all.