“O Anna, won’t you please tell it to us!” cried Alice, and her mother looked acquiescent and perhaps eager.
Anna complied. The tale had, indeed, been told many a time before in Farleigh to the end of the Hollow; but though no narrator had ever before employed such a jargon of slang as the other Miller girl used, perhaps none had ever told it better nor more sympathetically. The telling of it amused and interested Alice Lorraine, who was already more drawn towards Anna Miller than she had been to any girl she had known before, but it affected her mother more powerfully. Henrietta Lorraine (‘Hetty’ was the little girl of the farm) had been for years a cold, proud woman, a slave, unconsciously, to her husband’s vast possessions. During the past six months, following the disgrace of her husband and his commitment to prison, her pride had become a sort of fierce arrogance, while her sense of injury, her bitterness towards all the world had shut her within bars hard as iron. But now as she sat quiet, the tension of months relaxed, with the kitten in her arms, and listened to the tale the odd, droll, charmingly pretty, appealing young girl rattled off so flippantly, something began to melt within her. Nor was it merely the icy crust that had protected her crushed feelings of late. As the kindly folk of the story rose compellingly before her, called forth by the wand of humourous sympathy of the yellow-haired fairy, and she saw not only Reuben Cartwright and the forlorn cat, but Miss Penny and Mr. Langley, the fat pony and the fat janitor who later was nearly to burn the grammar school building to the ground,—as she saw all this and more, the woman she had been for years was so moved that she felt almost like the woman she might and should have been. Alice got only the story Anna told. Her mother, who had been a country child herself and whose natural sympathy was with country folk and ways, got a broader view and a deeper vision. She felt something genuine and fine and sincere and worth while in this bit of village life,—something that was attainable to others. And it came to her that possibly Alice’s life and even her own weren’t irretrievably ruined and wrecked. In any event, terrible as had been the storm which had overwhelmed them, in the restful atmosphere of this place to which they had been forced to crawl for refuge, they could at least draw long breaths of relief, and Alice might later find more than refuge and relief.
At the end of the story, Anna rose hastily. “I must hike or Miss Penny will be limping round to get tea,” she said. “Poor dear! She doesn’t drive the fat pony herself now-a-days and can’t get out of the phaeton alone for she has rheumatism; but she is as crazy about kittens as I am and will be as pleased to hear that this mite has a home.”
Holding out her hand a bit timidly, the girl was surprised to have Mrs. Lorraine press it warmly.
“We are very grateful to you, Anna Miller, not only for the kitten but for other things, for changing the current of our thoughts,” she said.
The following Sunday, Alice Lorraine appeared at church with Miss Penny and Anna. Her suit was not new but it was more elegant than anything worn in Farleigh. Alice was extremely pretty and had the look of one who has, so to speak, always lain on rose leaves, and Anna felt proud to walk up the aisle with such a distinguished-looking girl. Miss Penny begged her to go home with them after service but Alice wouldn’t leave her mother. She walked down to the Hollow the next afternoon, however.
She couldn’t stay for tea, but Anna gave her a piece of cake and a cup of chocolate. As Anna walked part way home with her, she spoke of the cake.
“I wish I could cook,” she said. “I know nothing whatever about it, and mother knows only what she learned before she was twelve, and cook-books are such queer things to follow. I don’t mind eating tinned things, but it’s hard on mother, though she never says anything. And besides,—O Anna, you wouldn’t believe it, but I hardly know my mother. At home after I was through with nurses and governesses, she went her way and I mine as everyone seems to do in the city. And now—I care for her more than I ever dreamed, but I don’t seem to be able to show it or to take care of her.”
Anna talked it over with Miss Penny that night and on Saturday morning Alice came over and watched Anna make bread, cake and cookies. Miss Penny was in the kitchen the greater part of the time and Alice took to the odd, inconsecutive, warm-hearted little lady as warmly as others had always done, so that on a second Saturday they were like three girls together. Alice began to frequent the house at all hours. And Miss Penny, who was one of the best housewives in the two villages and who had taught Rusty and Anna and through them their mother, gave the girl the best of instruction in cooking and all sorts of domestic matters, besides amusing and entertaining her with other stories than the tale of Reuben and the tramp cat which she gravely related to Alice the first time the two were alone together.
“O Miss Penny, the days fly by as they never did before and I wake so happy every morning that I am ashamed of myself!” Alice cried one afternoon as she waited for Anna to come from the academy.