Anne Of Ingleside √ (Project K.)

CHAPTER 32

"So the Ladies' Aid is going to have their quilting at Ingleside," said the doctor. "Bring out all your lordly dishes, Susan, and provide several brooms to sweep up the fragments of reputations afterwards."

Susan smiled wanly, as a woman tolerant of a man's lack of all understanding of vital things, but she did not feel like smiling . . . at least, until everything concerning the Aid supper had been settled.

"Hot chicken pie," she went about murmuring, "mashed potatoes and creamed peas for the main course. And it will be such a good chance to use your new lace tablecloth, Mrs. Dr. dear. Such a thing has never been seen in the Glen and I am confident it will make a sensation. I am looking forward to Annabel Clow's face when she sees it. And will you be using your blue and silver basket for the flowers?"

"Yes, full of pansies and yellow-green ferns from the maple grove. And I want you to put those three magnificent pink geraniums of yours somewhere around . . . in the living-room if we quilt there or on the balustrade of the verandah if it's warm enough to work out there. I'm glad we have so many flowers left. The garden has never been so beautiful as it has been this summer, Susan. But then I say that every autumn, don't I?"

There were many things to be settled. Who should sit by whom . . . it would never do, for instance, to have Mrs. Simon Millison sit beside Mrs. William McCreery, for they never spoke to each other because of some obscure old feud dating back to schooldays. Then there was the question of whom to invite . . . for it was the hostess' privilege to ask a few guests apart from the members of the Aid.

"I'm going to have Mrs. Best and Mrs. Campbell," said Anne.

Susan looked doubtful.

"They are newcomers, Mrs. Dr. dear," . . . much as she might have said, "They are crocodiles."

"The doctor and I were newcomers once, Susan."

"But the doctor's uncle was here for years before that. Nobody knows anything about these Bests and Campbells. But it is your house, Mrs. Dr. dear, and whom am I to object to anyone you wish to have? I remember one quilting at Mrs. Carter Flagg's many years ago when Mrs. Flagg invited a strange woman. She came in wincey, Mrs. Dr. dear . . . said she didn't think a Ladies' Aid worth dressing up for! At least there will be no fear of that with Mrs. Campbell. She is very dressy . . . though I could never see myself wearing hydrangea blue to church."

Anne could not either, but she dared not smile.

"I thought that dress was lovely with Mrs. Campbell's silver hair, Susan. And by the way, she wants your recipe for spiced gooseberry relish. She says she had some of it at the Harvest Home supper and it was delicious."

"Oh, well, Mrs. Dr. dear, it is not everyone who can make spiced gooseberry . . ." and no more disapproval was expressed of hydrangea blue dresses. Mrs. Campbell might henceforth appear in the costume of a Fiji Islander if she chose and Susan would find excuses for it.

The young months had grown old but autumn was still remembering summer and the quilting day was more like June than October. Every member of the Ladies' Aid who could possibly come came, looking forward pleasurably to a good dish of gossip and an Ingleside supper, besides, possibly, seeing some sweet new thing in fashions since the doctor's wife had recently been to town.

Susan, unbowed by the culinary cares that were heaped upon her, stalked about, showing the ladies to the guest-room, serene in the knowledge that not one of them possessed an apron trimmed with crochet lace five inches deep made from Number One Hundred thread. Susan had captured first prize at the Charlottetown Exhibition the week before with that lace. She and Rebecca Dew had trysted there and made a day of it, and Susan had come home that night the proudest woman in Prince Edward Island.