No Mrs. Wiley appeared, however, and in a few day the children forgot to look for her. Mary was apparently a fixture at the manse. But she refused to go to school with the others.
“Nope. I’ve finished my education,” she said, when Faith urged her to go. “I went to school four winters since I come to Mrs. Wiley’s and I’ve had all I want of that. I’m sick and tired of being everlastingly jawed at ‘cause I didn’t get my home-lessons done. I’d no time to do home-lessons.”
“Our teacher won’t jaw you. He is awfully nice,” said Faith.
“Well, I ain’t going. I can read and write and cipher up to fractions. That’s all I want. You fellows go and I’ll stay home. You needn’t be scared I’ll steal anything. I swear I’m honest.”
Mary employed herself while the others were at school in cleaning up the manse. In a few days it was a different place. Floors were swept, furniture dusted, everything straightened out. She mended the spare-room bed-tick, she sewed on missing buttons, she patched clothes neatly, she even invaded the study with broom and dustpan and ordered Mr. Meredith out while she put it to rights. But there was one department with which Aunt Martha refused to let her interfere. Aunt Martha might be deaf and half blind and very childish, but she was resolved to keep the commissariat in her own hands, in spite of all Mary’s wiles and stratagems.
“I can tell you if old Martha’d let me cook you’d have some decent meals,” she told the manse children indignantly. “There’d be no more ‘ditto’—and no more lumpy porridge and blue milk either. What does she do with all the cream?”
“She gives it to the cat. He’s hers, you know,” said Faith.
“I’d like to cat her,” exclaimed Mary bitterly. “I’ve no use for cats anyhow. They belong to the old Nick. You can tell that by their eyes. Well, if old Martha won’t, she won’t, I s’pose. But it gits on my nerves to see good vittles spoiled.”
When school came out they always went to Rainbow Valley. Mary refused to play in the graveyard. She declared she was afraid of ghosts.
“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” declared Jem Blythe.