Further Chronicles of Avonlea

the circle. "Come, everybody."

  They went back with laughter and raillery over the

  quiet autumn fields, faintly silvered now by the moon

  that was rising over the hills. The young bride and

  groom lagged behind; they were very happy, but they

  were not so happy, after all, as the old bride and

  groom who walked swiftly in front. Isabella's hand was

  in her husband's and sometimes she could not see the

  moonlit hills for a mist of glorified tears.

  "David," she whispered, as he helped her over the

  fence, "how can you ever forgive me?"

  "There's nothing to forgive," he said. "We're only just

  married. Who ever heard of a bridegroom talking of

  forgiveness? Everything is beginning over new for us,

  my girl."

  Chapter IV

  Jane's Baby

  MISS ROSETTA ELLIS, with her front hair in curl-papers,

  and her back hair bound with a checked apron, was out

  in her breezy side yard under the firs, shaking her

  parlor rugs, when Mr. Nathan Patterson drove in. Miss

  Rosetta had seen him coming down the long red hill, but

  she had not supposed he would be calling at that time

  of the morning. So she had not run. Miss Rosetta always

  ran if anybody called and her front hair was in curl-

  papers; and, though the errand of the said caller might

  be life or death, he or she had to wait until Miss

  Rosetta had taken her hair out. Everybody in Avonlea

  knew this, because everybody in Avonlea knew everything

  about everybody else.

  But Mr. Patterson had wheeled into the lane so quickly

  and unexpectedly that Miss Rosetta had had no time to

  run; so, twitching off the checked apron, she stood her

  ground as calmly as might be under the disagreeable

  consciousness of curl-papers.

  "Good morning, Miss Ellis," said Mr. Patterson, so

  somberly that Miss Rosetta instantly felt that he was

  the bearer of bad news. Usually Mr. Patterson's face

  was as broad and beaming as a harvest moon. Now his

  expression was very melancholy and his voice positively

  sepulchral.

  "Good morning," returned Miss Rosetta, crisply and

  cheerfully. She, at any rate, would not go into eclipse

  until she knew the reason therefor. "It is a fine day."

  "A very fine day," assented Mr. Patterson, solemnly. "I

  have just come from the Wheeler place, Miss Ellis, and

  I regret to say - "

  "Charlotte is sick!" cried Miss Rosetta, rapidly.

  "Charlotte has got another spell with her heart! I knew

  it! I've been expecting to hear it! Any woman that

  drives about the country as much as she does is liable

  to heart disease at any moment. I never go outside of

  my gate but I meet her gadding off somewhere. Goodness

  knows who looks after her place. I shouldn't like to

  trust as much to a hired man as she does. Well, it is

  very kind of you, Mr. Patterson, to put yourself out to

  the extent of calling to tell me that Charlotte is

  sick, but I don't really see why you should take so

  much trouble - I really don't. It doesn't matter to me

  whether Charlotte is sick or whether she isn't. You

  know that perfectly well, Mr. Patterson, if anybody

  does. When Charlotte went and got married, on the sly,

  to that good-for-nothing Jacob Wheeler - "

  "Mrs. Wheeler is quite well," interrupted Mr. Patterson

  desperately. "Quite well. Nothing at all the matter

  with her, in fact. I only - "

  "Then what do you mean by coming here and telling me

  she wasn't, and frightening me half to death?" demanded

  Miss Rosetta, indignantly. "My own heart isn't very

  strong - it runs in our family - and my doctor warned

  me to avoid all shocks and excitement. I don't want to

  be excited, Mr. Patterson. I won't be excited, not even

  if Charlotte has another spell. It's perfectly useless

  for you to try to excite me, Mr. Patterson."

  "Bless the woman, I'm not trying to excite anybody!"

  declared Mr. Patterson in exasperation. "I merely

  called to tell you - "

  "To tell me what ?" said Miss Rosetta. "How much longer

  do you mean to keep me in suspense, Mr. Patterson. No

  doubt you have abundance of spare time, but - I - have

  not."

  " - that your sister, Mrs. Wheeler, has had a letter

  from a cousin of yours, and she's in Charlottetown.

  Mrs. Roberts, I think her name is - "

  "Jane Roberts," broke in Miss Rosetta. "Jane Ellis she

  was, before she was married. What was she writing to

  Charlotte about? Not that I want to know, of course.

  I'm not interested in Charlotte's correspondence,

  goodness knows. But if Jane had anything in particular

  to write about she should have written to me. I am the

  oldest. Charlotte had no business to get a letter from

  Jane Roberts without consulting me. It's just like her

  underhanded ways. She got married the same way. Never

  said a word to me about it, but just sneaked off with

  that unprincipled Jacob Wheeler - "

  "Mrs. Roberts is very ill. I understand," persisted Mr.

  Patterson, nobly resolved to do what he had come to do,

  "dying, in fact, and - "

  "Jane ill! Jane dying!" exclaimed Miss Rosetta. "Why,

  she was the healthiest girl I ever knew! But then I've

  never seen her, nor heard from her, since she got

  married fifteen years ago. I dare say her husband was a

  brute and neglected her, and she's pined away by slow

  degrees. I've no faith in husbands. Look at Charlotte!

  Everybody knows how Jacob Wheeler used her. To be sure,

  she deserved it, but - "

  "Mrs. Roberts' husband is dead," said Mr. Patterson.

  "Died about two months ago, I understand, and she has a

  little baby six months old, and she thought perhaps

  Mrs. Wheeler would take it for old times' sake - "

  "Did Charlotte ask you to call and tell me this?"

  demanded Miss Rosetta eagerly.

  "No; she just told me what was in the letter. She

  didn't mention you; but I thought, perhaps, you ought

  to be told - "

  "I knew it," said Miss Rosetta in a tone of bitter

  assurance. "I could have told you so. Charlotte

  wouldn't even let me know that Jane was ill. Charlotte

  would be afraid I would want to get the baby, seeing

  that Jane and I were such intimate friends long ago.

  And who has a better right to it than me, I should like

  to know? Ain't I the oldest? And haven't I had

  experience in bringing up babies? Charlotte needn't

  think she is going to run the affairs of our family

  just because she happened to get married. Jacob Wheeler

  - "

  "I must be going," said Mr. Patterson, gathering up his

  reins thankfully.

  "I am much obliged to you for coming to tell me about

  Jane," said Miss Rosetta, "even though you have wasted

  a lot of precious time getting it out. If it hadn't

  been for you I suppose
I should never have known it at

  all. As it is, I shall start for town just as soon as I

  can get ready."

  "You'll have to hurry if you want to get ahead of Mrs.

  Wheeler," advised Mr. Patterson. "She's packing her

  trunk and going on the morning train."

  "I'll pack a valise and go on the afternoon train,"

  retorted Miss Rosetta triumphantly. "I'll show

  Charlotte she isn't running the Ellis affairs. She

  married out of them into the Wheelers. She can attend

  to them. Jacob Wheeler was the most - "

  But Mr. Patterson had driven away. He felt that he had

  done his duty in the face of fearful odds, and he did

  not want to hear anything more about Jacob Wheeler.

  Rosetta Ellis and Charlotte Wheeler had not exchanged a

  word for ten years. Before that time they had been

  devoted to each other, living together in the little

  Ellis cottage on the White Sands road, as they had done

  ever since their parents' death. The trouble began when

  Jacob Wheeler had commenced to pay attention to

  Charlotte, the younger and prettier of two women who

  had both ceased to be either very young or very pretty.

  Rosetta had been bitterly opposed to the match from the

  first. She vowed she had no use for Jacob Wheeler.

  There were not lacking malicious people to hint that

  this was because the aforesaid Jacob Wheeler had

  selected the wrong sister upon whom to bestow his

  affections. Be that as it might, Miss Rosetta certainly

  continued to render the course of Jacob Wheeler's true

  love exceedingly rough and tumultuous. The end of it

  was that Charlotte had gone quietly away one morning

  and married Jacob Wheeler without Miss Rosetta's

  knowing anything about it. Miss Rosetta had never

  forgiven her for it, and Charlotte had never forgiven

  the things Rosetta had said to her when she and Jacob

  returned to the Ellis cottage. Since then the sisters

  had been avowed and open foes, the only difference

  being that Miss Rosetta aired her grievances publicly,

  in season and out of season, while Charlotte was never

  heard to mention Rosetta's name. Even the death of

  Jacob Wheeler, five years after the marriage, had not

  healed the breach.

  Miss Rosetta took out her curl-papers, packed her

  valise, and caught the late afternoon train for

  Charlottetown, as she had threatened. All the way there

  she sat rigidly upright in her seat and held imaginary

  dialogues with Charlotte in her mind, running something

  like this on her part: -

  "No, Charlotte Wheeler, you are not going to have

  Jane's baby, and you're very much mistaken if you think

  so. Oh, all right - we'll see! You don't know anything

  about babies, even if you are married. I do. Didn't I

  take William Ellis's baby, when his wife died? Tell me

  that, Charlotte Wheeler! And didn't the little thing

  thrive with me, and grow strong and healthy? Yes, even

  you have to admit that it did, Charlotte Wheeler. And

  yet you have the presumption to think that you ought to

  have Jane's baby! Yes, it is presumption, Charlotte

  Wheeler. And when William Ellis got married again, and

  took the baby, didn't the child cling to me and cry as

  if I was its real mother? You know it did, Charlotte

  Wheeler. I'm going to get and keep Jane's baby in spite

  of you, Charlotte Wheeler, and I'd like to see you try

  to prevent me - you that went and got married and never

  so much as let your own sister know of it! If I had got

  married in such a fashion, Charlotte Wheeler, I'd be

  ashamed to look anybody in the face for the rest of my

  natural life!"

  Miss Rosetta was so interested in thus laying down the

  law to Charlotte, and in planning out the future life

  of Jane's baby, that she didn't find the journey to

  Charlottetown so long or tedious as might have been

  expected, considering her haste. She soon found her way

  to the house where her cousin lived. There, to her

  dismay and real sorrow, she learned that Mrs. Roberts

  had died at four o'clock that afternoon.

  "She seemed dreadful anxious to live until she heard

  from some of her folks out in Avonlea," said the woman

  who gave Miss Rosetta the information. "She had written

  to them about her little girl. She was my sister-in-

  law, and she lived with me ever since her husband died.

  I've done my best for her; but I've a big family of my

  own and I can't see how I'm to keep the child. Poor

  Jane looked and longed for some one to come from

  Avonlea, but she couldn't hold out. A patient,

  suffering creature she was!"

  "I'm her cousin," said Miss Rosetta, wiping her eyes,

  "and I have come for the baby. I'll take it home with

  me after the funeral; and, if you please, Mrs. Gordon,

  let me see it right away, so it can get accustomed to

  me. Poor Jane! I wish I could have got here in time to

  see her, she and I were such friends long ago. We were

  far more intimate and confidential than ever her and

  Charlotte was. Charlotte knows that, too!"

  The vim with which Miss Rosetta snapped this out rather

  amazed Mrs. Gordon, who couldn't understand it at all.

  But she took Miss Rosetta upstairs to the room where

  the baby was sleeping.

  "Oh, the little darling," cried Miss Rosetta, all her

  old maidishness and oddity falling away from her like a

  garment, and all her innate and denied motherhood

  shining out in her face like a transforming

  illumination. "Oh, the sweet, dear, pretty little

  thing!"

  The baby was a darling - a six-months' old beauty with

  little golden ringlets curling and glistening all over

  its tiny head. As Miss Rosetta hung over it, it opened

  its eyes and then held out its tiny hands to her with a

  gurgle of confidence.

  "Oh, you sweetest!" said Miss Rosetta rapturously,

  gathering it up in her arms. "You belong to me, darling

  - never, never, to that under-handed Charlotte! What is

  its name, Mrs. Gordon?"

  "It wasn't named," said Mrs. Gordon. "Guess you'll have

  to name it yourself, Miss Ellis."

  "Camilla Jane," said Miss Rosetta without a moment's

  hesitation. "Jane after its mother, of course; and I

  have always thought Camilla the prettiest name in the

  world. Charlotte would be sure to give it some

  perfectly heathenish name. I wouldn't put it past her

  calling the poor innocent Mehitable."

  Miss Rosetta decided to stay in Charlottetown until

  after the funeral. That night she lay with the baby on

  her arm, listening with joy to its soft little

  breathing. She did not sleep or wish to sleep. Her

  waking fancies were more alluring than any visions of

  dreamland. Moreover, she gave a spice to them by

  occasionally snapping some vicious sentences out loud

  at Charlotte.

/>   Miss Rosetta fully expected Charlotte along on the

  following morning and girded herself for the fray; but

  no Charlotte appeared. Night came; no Charlotte.

  Another morning and no Charlotte. Miss Rosetta was

  hopelessly puzzled. What had happened? Dear, dear, had

  Charlotte taken a bad heart spell, on hearing that she,

  Rosetta, had stolen a march on her to Charlottetown? It

  was quite likely. You never knew what to expect of a

  woman who had married Jacob Wheeler!

  The truth was, that the very evening Miss Rosetta had

  left Avonlea Mrs. Jacob Wheeler's hired man had broken

  his leg and had had to be conveyed to his distant home on

  a feather bed in an express wagon. Mrs. Wheeler could not

  leave home until she had obtained another hired man.

  Consequently, it was the evening after the funeral when Mrs.

  Wheeler whisked up the steps of the Gordon house and met

  Miss Rosetta coming out with a big white bundle in her arms.

  The eyes of the two women met defiantly. Miss Rosetta's

  face wore an air of triumph, chastened by a remembrance

  of the funeral that afternoon. Mrs. Wheeler's face,

  except for eyes, was as expressionless as it usually

  was. Unlike the tall, fair, fat Miss Rosetta, Mrs.

  Wheeler was small and dark and thin, with an eager,

  careworn face.

  "How is Jane?" she said abruptly, breaking the silence

  of ten years in saying it.

  "Jane is dead and buried, poor thing," said Miss

  Rosetta calmly. "I am taking her baby, little Camilla

  Jane, home with me."

  "The baby belongs to me," cried Mrs. Wheeler

  passionately. "Jane wrote to me about her. Jane meant

  that I should have her. I've come for her."

  "You'll go back without her then," said Miss Rosetta,

  serene in the possession that is nine points of the

  law. "The child is mine, and she is going to stay mine.

  You can make up your mind to that, Charlotte Wheeler. A

  woman who eloped to get married isn't fit to be trusted

  with a baby, anyhow. Jacob Wheeler - "

  But Mrs. Wheeler had rushed past into the house. Miss

  Rosetta composedly stepped into the cab and drove to

  the station. She fairly bridled with triumph; and

  underneath the triumph ran a queer undercurrent of

  satisfaction over the fact that Charlotte had spoken to

  her at last. Miss Rosetta would not look at this

  satisfaction, or give it a name, but it was there.

  Miss Rosetta arrived safely back in Avonlea with

  Camilla Jane and within ten hours everybody in the

  settlement knew the whole story, and every woman who

  could stand on her feet had been up to the Ellis

  cottage to see the baby. Mrs. Wheeler arrived home

  twenty-four hours later, and silently betook herself to

  her farm. When her Avonlea neighbors sympathized with

  her in her disappointment, she said nothing, but looked

  all the more darkly determined. Also, a week later, Mr.

  William J. Blair, the Carmody storekeeper, had an odd

  tale to tell. Mrs. Wheeler had come to the store and

  bought a lot of fine flannel and muslin and

  valenciennes. Now, what in the name of time, did Mrs.

  Wheeler want with such stuff? Mr. William J. Blair

  couldn't make head or tail of it, and it worried him.

  Mr. Blair was so accustomed to know what everybody

  bought anything for that such a mystery quite upset

  him.

  Miss Rosetta had exulted in the possession of little

  Camilla Jane for a month, and had been so happy that

  she had almost given up inveighing against Charlotte.

  Her conversations, instead of tending always to Jacob

  Wheeler, now ran Camilla Janeward; and this, folks

  thought, was an improvement.

  One afternoon, Miss Rosetta, leaving Camilla Jane

  snugly sleeping in her cradle in the kitchen, had

  slipped down to the bottom of the garden to pick her

  currants. The house was hidden from her sight by the

  copse of cherry trees, but she had left the kitchen

  window open, so that she could hear the baby if it

  awakened and cried. Miss Rosetta sang happily as she

  picked her currants. For the first time since Charlotte

  had married Jacob Wheeler Miss Rosetta felt really

  happy - so happy that at there was no room in her heart

  for bitterness. In fancy she looked forward to the

  coming years, and saw Camilla Jane growing up into