Lilac was doubtful, for Cuddingham was a long way off, but she promised to do her best, and Miss Ellen’s last words to her were:
“Bring moon daisies if you can’t get it, but remember I should like white lilac much the best.”
Lilac herself thought the moon daisies would be prettier, with their bright yellow middles; but Miss Ellen’s word was law, and as she had set her heart on white lilac, some way of going to Cuddingham must be found since it was too far to walk. There were only two days now to the great event, and during them Lilac did her best to make her wants known everywhere. In vain, however. No one was going to or coming from that place; always the same disappointing answers:
“Cuddingham! No, thank goodness; I was there last week. I don’t want to see that hill again yet a while.” Or, “Well now, if I’d known yesterday I might a suited you.” And so on.
Lilac began to despair. She thought of Orchards Farm, but she had not courage to ask any favour there while Agnetta was so vexed with her. Even Uncle Joshua, who had always helped her at need, had nothing to suggest now, and did not even seem to think it of much importance. He dropped in to see Mrs White on the evening before May Day, and with her usual faith in him Lilac at once began to place her difficulty before him. But for once he was not ready to listen, and she was obliged to wait impatiently while he carried on a long conversation with her mother. They had a great deal to talk of, and it was most uninteresting to Lilac, for it was all about things of the past in which she had had no share. She might have liked it at another time, but just now she was full of the present, and she became more and more impatient as Uncle Joshua went on. He had to call back the first celebration of May Day which he “minded”, and the smallest event connected with it; and when he had done Mrs White took up the tale, dwelling specially on Jem’s musical talent, and how he had been the very soul of the drum-and-fife band.
“They’re all at sixes and sevens now, to my thinking,” she said. “Jem, he kep’ ’em together and made ’em do their best.”
“Aye, that’s where it is,” said the cobbler with an approving nod; “that’s what we’ve all on us got to do.”
His eye rested as he spoke on Lilac’s eager face, and seizing the opportunity of a pause she rushed in with what she had so much on her mind:
“Oh, Uncle Joshua! to-morrow’s the day, and I can’t get no white lilac for Miss Ellen to make my garland with. What shall I do?”
But Joshua was in a moralising mood, and though Lilac’s question gave him another subject to discourse on, he was more bent on hearing himself talk than in getting over her difficulty. He raised one finger and began to speak slowly, and when Mrs White saw that, she paused with the kettle in her hand and stood quite still to listen. Joshua was going to say something “good.”