Anne of Ingleside by Lucy Maud Montgomery

great Sea itself that was always changing and never changed… the dark, mysterious Tide. They were all entities to Walter. Ingleside and the Hollow and the maple grove and the Marsh and the harbour shore were full of elves and kelpies and dryads and mermaids and goblins. The black plaster-of-paris cat on the library mantelpiece was a fairy witch. It came alive at night and prowled about the house, grown to enormous size. Walter ducked his head under the bedclothes and shivered. He was always scaring himself with his own fancies. Perhaps Aunt Mary Maria was right when she said he was ‘far too nervous and high-strung’, though Susan would never forgive her for it. Perhaps Aunt Kitty MacGregor of the Upper Glen, who was reported to have ‘the second sight’, was right when, having once taken a deep look into Walter’s long-lashed, smoky grey eyes, she said he ‘did be having an old soul in a young body’. It might be that the old soul knew too much for the young brain to understand always.
    Walter was told in the morning that Dad would take him to Lowbridge after dinner. He said nothing, but during dinner a choky sensation came over him and he dropped his eyes quickly to hide a sudden mist of tears. Not quickly enough, however.
    ‘You’re not going to
cry
, Walter?’ said Aunt Mary Maria, as if a six-year-old mite would be disgraced for ever if he cried. ‘If there’s anything I
do
despise it’s a cry-baby. And you haven’t eaten your meat.’
    ‘All but the fat,’ said Walter, blinking valiantly, but not yet daring to look up. ‘I don’t like fat.’
    ‘When
I
was a child,’ said Aunt Mary Maria, ‘I was not allowed to have likes and dislikes. Well, Mrs Doctor Parker will probably cure you of some of your notions. She was a Winter, I think… or was she a Clark?… no, she must have been a Campbell. But the Winters and Campbells are all tarred with the same brush, and they don’t put up with any nonsense.’
    ‘Oh, please, Aunt Mary Maria, don’t frighten Walter about his visit to Lowbridge,’ said Anne, a little spark kindling far down in her eyes.
    ‘I’m sorry, Annie,’ said Aunt Mary Maria with great humility. ‘I should of course have remembered that
I
have no right to try to teach your children
anything
.’
    ‘Drat her hide,’ muttered Susan as she went out for the dessert… Walter’s favourite Queen pudding.
    Anne felt miserably guilty. Gilbert had shot her a slightly reproachful glance as if to imply she might have been more patient with a poor lonely old lady.
    Gilbert himself was feeling a bit seedy. The truth, as everyone knew, was that he had been terribly overworked all summer: and perhaps Aunt Mary Maria was more of a strain than he would admit. Anne made up her mind that in the autumn, if all was well, she would pack him off willy-nilly for a month’s snipe shooting in Nova Scotia.
    ‘How is your tea?’ she asked Aunt Mary Maria repentantly.
    Aunt Mary Maria pursed her lips.
    ‘Too weak. But it doesn’t matter. Who cares whether a poor old woman gets her tea to her liking or not? Some folks, however, think I’m real good company.’
    Whatever the connection between Aunt Mary Maria’s two sentences was Anne felt she was beyond ferreting it out just then. She had turned very pale.
    ‘I think I’ll go upstairs and lie down,’ she said a trifle faintly as she rose from the table. ‘And I think, Gilbert… perhaps you’d better not stay long in Lowbridge… and suppose you give Miss Carson a ring.’
    She kissed Walter good-bye rather casually and hurriedly, very much as if she were not thinking about him at all. Walter
would not
cry. Aunt Mary Maria kissed him on the forehead – Walter hated to be moistly kissed on the forehead – and said:
    ‘Mind your table manners at Lowbridge, Walter. Mind you ain’t greedy. If you are, a Big Black Man will come along with a big black bag to pop naughty children into.’
    It was perhaps as well that Gilbert had gone out to