When Gwen Blake heard that her parents were going to India for the year, and she and her three younger siblings were going to spend the year with Grandmother and Grandfather Blythe at Ingleside, she met the news with mixed feelings.
First and foremost was disappointment. How she would have loved to spend a year in India! The land of Kipling's Kim, that exotic, far-off place where Aunt Una lived and worked as a missionary.
"But you see, darling," Mother explained, "We can't possibly afford to take all four of you, though we'd dearly love to if we could! And if we can't take all of you—"
"You certainly can't take just one. I know," Gwen finished for her. She smiled lovingly at Mother—dear, sweet Mums, more chum than parent these days, now that Gwen was nearly fifteen. Mums, with her beautiful red hair just as vibrant as it was when she was fifteen, and her green eyes as loving, and her lithe figure just as trim as though she hadn't had four babies in the first four years of her marriage!
"What we were thinking, I don't know," she used to say laughingly, shaking her head. But then she would pull them all close to her in a giant hug and insist she wouldn't have it any other way.
If Gwen couldn't go to India with Mother and Dad, then she was glad to be going to Ingleside. She had no particular love for her home there in Kingsport. It was the manse Dad's church provided, but it wasn't theirs, and it had never felt like a home the way Ingleside did, or the House of Dreams where Uncle Shirley and Aunt Persis lived, or Uncle Bruce and Aunt Ruth's Westwind.
Nor did Gwen feel any compunction about leaving her school and her friends for a year. She didn't have any close friends among her schoolmates—some girl chums, but no kindred spirits, as Grandmother was wont to say. Gwen was the sort of girl everyone liked well enough, but not enough to be a bosom friend. If there was a party, they wanted Gwen there. If it was a matter of talking secrets, she was left out.
Sometimes Gwen wondered why this was. It wasn't that she blabbed secrets, or ever betrayed a friendship!
"I think, dear heart, it's because you are too satisfied in your family," Aunt Jenny told her once. "Girls don't always like to be friends with someone who seems happier with her brothers and little sister than with lassies her own age."
"That's just silly," Gwen had said. "Of course I'm always going to love Lee and Phil and Jo the best, but that doesn't mean I can't love other people too."
Aunt Jenny had laughed and given her a hug and said that she knew that, but schoolgirls weren't always so sensible. And then Jeremy had called Gwen out for a game of basketball, and she'd flown out the door, and Aunt Jenny thought that perhaps part of Gwen's problem was that she was just as happy to play sports with the boys as talk secrets with the girls, and had no dreams of romance yet filling that golden head.
Which was, her aunt reflected, just as well.
Thinking of Aunt Jenny and Uncle Jeremiah (never Jerry! He was very stern about that, and Gwen and her siblings never confused him with their Uncle Jerry on Mum's side, who was really Gerald) made Gwen realize that she would at least miss her Blake cousins, if nobody else. Jeremy was her age exactly, and her best friend who wasn't a brother or sister, and Patty and Rachel were almost as good. It would be dreadful to be separated from them for a year.
"I don't suppose Jeremy and the rest could come with us?" she suggested without much hope to Mum.
Mother laughed sympathetically. "No, dearest heart, I don't think they could. Aunt Jenny did mention, however, the possibility that they might rent a house at Harbour Head this summer for a few weeks, so you'll at least see them then."
When Gwen was happy, her father often said, her smile produced enough power to light up the entire Canadian Maritimes. She turned that smile on her mother now, who, used to it though she was, still staggered a bit under its light. "Oh, that would be wonderful! That almost makes up for being separated from you and Dad for a whole year."
Mother and daughter both gave a sudden sigh at the thought.
"Never mind, Mums," Gwen said, recovering enough to pat her mother's arm. "I'll take good care of the kids, I promise."
"I know you will, darling."
"The kids" were Philip (named in honour of Dad's mother, the beautiful Philippa Gordon Blake), usually called Phil, age thirteen-and-a-half; Leslie, age twelve-and-a-half, and most often called Lee; and Jo, age eleven, who was only Josiah on his birth certificate and in the family Bible. When they heard the news, they reacted in typical manner.
Phil: "But Mother, how will you write your column for the paper in India?" And upon being told that she would do a special foreign version for a year, he calmly accepted that and began to pack.
Lee: "But what if I get homesick?" Mother comforted her by telling her that she would still have Gwen and her brothers, and that Grandmother, Grandfather, and all the aunts and uncles and cousins would do their part to keep her entertained. Lee was delighted at the thought of so much family around to love, and managed to push the thought of no Mother and Dad into the back of her mind.
Jo: "Will you send letters? With stamps? And maybe pictures too, so I can show them to the boys at school so they'll like me?" Mother assured him she would, and then added that he wouldn't need all those things if he was just kind and friendly to all the other boys. Jo smiled calmly. "You have to say that because you're a minister's wife, Mumsie," he said, and patted her cheek.
And all of them, from Gwen down to Jo, determined to her or himself that she or he would do nothing to make it harder for Mum and Dad to leave.
The usual agonies of packing—what to bring, what to leave, how much could one fit in a trunk, and how could one bear to leave that treasure behind?—were increased tenfold by the fact that the children were going to be gone a full year. One year! Gwen was just starting to comprehend how long a year really was. Why … when Mum and Dad returned, she would be nearly sixteen. That was practically an adult!
She gulped down the stinging tears at the thought and turned her attention to Jo's dilemma of whether he should bring Teddy or Bluebell the Bunny, or whether a big boy of almost-twelve should leave his animals at home, after all.
"What if the other boys think I'm a sissy because of my animals?" he asked her worriedly.
Gwen knew that Teddy and Bluebell weren't just toys to her brother. They were his friends, his companions since birth; he whispered stories to them at night and insisted they understood every word he said.
"Bring them both, Jo-Jo, and we just won't tell the other boys about them. They can be our family secret."
Jo found the idea of a family secret satisfactory, but was scandalized at the thought of bringing both. Dad, alarmed at the thought of Jo's numerous prized possessions accompanying them everywhere, had long-ago issued the decree that Jo was only ever allowed to bring one item from each collection with him on family trips.
"It's a year, Jo, I don't think Dad will mind. If you like, I'll pack one in my trunk, so it will be like I'm bringing one and you're bringing one, instead of you bringing both."
That satisfied Jo's ethics, and left dangling only the question of which animal would be subjected to riding in Gwen's trunk. Jo left her with the solemn declaration that he would ask his animals which one was willing to make that sacrifice, and before Gwen could think again of an entire year without Mum and Dad, Lee came bursting in.
Lee was the only one out of the four Blake children who had inherited her mother's looks. She had refused to let her mother bob her hair back when it was popular, and now her red curls fell almost to her waist. Unlike Mother, her grey-green eyes were dreamy instead of snapping, and with her pointed chin and high cheekbones gave her the look of an imaginative elf. "The picture of her grandmother at that age," Grandfather Blythe always said with satisfaction. Lee was the only grandchild with Grandmother's colouring—Isaac Ford had the red curls, but his eyes were hazel, like Aunt Rilla's and Grandfather's; Phil had the eyes that were grey or green depending on his mood, but his hair, like his siblings and his father, was a rich golden blond.
Grandfather sometimes called Lee "Little Anne," and Gwen suspected she was his favourite out of all his granddaughters—though of course Grandfather would never admit to having favourites!
Now, though, Lee's dreamy eyes were drowned in unshed tears.
"What's wrong, dearest?" Gwen asked, without much alarm. Lee was almost too tender-hearted for her own good; not a day passed without her crying over something. Her siblings were all very gentle with her, but they never knew what would set her off. Once, even seeing a dog howling in the street had caused her to burst into tears over how very sad the poor thing must be.
"Oh Gwennie," Lee gasped, and it was a mark of how much they all loved her that Gwen let the babyish nickname pass without comment. Anyone else would have been pummelled for calling her Gwennie. "Gwen, I just can't bear the thought of leaving school for a year. What if all my friends forget about me?"
Gwen sat down on the edge of her bed, ignoring the clothing scattered all over her pretty green and white bedspread, and smoothed Lee's curls out of her flushed face. "You can write them letters, darling, and if you being gone for only one year in enough for them to forget about you, they weren't true friends to begin with. Anyone who really loves you would never stop being your friend, not if you were gone for ten years."
This comforted Lee, and she went back to her room to add stationary and her fountain pen to her bags.
Phil was the next one in, frowning at the wild confusion in Gwen's room. "This is no way to pack," he said sternly. "You're going to bring all sorts of things you don't need, and leave behind half of what you do. I wrote out a list for you," holding it out to her, "because I knew you wouldn't think to do it."
"Thank you, Phil," Gwen said meekly, taking the list and looking over Phil's neat handwriting. "Philip Blake!" she cried, scandalized. "You even wrote down what undergarments I should bring!"
"Of course," Phil said, unperturbed. "Knowing you, you'd forget about those and end up having to go naked underneath your skirts."
Gwen tried to glare at him, but her sense of humour got the best of her, and she collapsed in a heap of laughter. Phil couldn't see what was so funny, but he joined in agreeably, and when Mother came by to see how things were going, she smiled to see her two eldest piled atop each other, helpless with giggles.
As long as they had each other, they would be just fine.
The last few weeks flew by, and before they knew it, the Blakes were kissing their cousins and Aunt Jenny and Uncle Jeremiah goodbye at the train station and trying not think about the fact that in just a few hours, Mother and Dad would be going one way, and the children another.
Later that night, after a splendid meal in the train's dining car, while the children were asleep and Dad was puffing his pipe (a disgusting habit, Mother called it, but she thought that every person should be allowed one vile trait in his or her life) out on the observation deck, Gwen sat with Mother for one final heart-to-heart.
"I'll take good care of the rest," she promised Mother.
Mother smiled. "I know you will, my Gwen. Just make sure to take care of yourself, too. Take time to run in the woods, and dream in Rainbow Valley, and explore the seashore. After all, Grandmother and Grandfather will be there, too, and you needn't take all the responsibility on yourself."
Gwen nodded. "I'll try," she said.
Mother shook her head ruefully. "When Una wrote, this seemed like such a marvellous idea … a chance for your father to take a break from his everyday duties, some fresh materiel for my column, almost a second honeymoon for us. I don't think either of us fully considered just how hard it was going to be to not see you rapscallions for a full year. You were born just a year after you father and I were married, you know. There's never really been a time in our lives when we haven't had you children with us!"
Gwen suddenly felt very grown-up and strong, patting her mother's hand and reassuring her. "Then it's high time you were without us, Mums. And I'm sure, with all the new and exciting things you'll be doing in India, you'll hardly notice that we're not there, and it'll be time to come back before you know it!"
Mother laughed a little and hugged her. "When did you get so wise, daughter o'mine? Oh Gwen, look at you, you're almost a woman! Wasn't it just yesterday that I was holding this newly-born bundle in my arms? And now … well, just look at you."
Gwen did, in fact, look at her reflection in the mirror hanging on the wall of their car. She saw a pale face, with skin that never darkened into the fashionable tan, no matter how much time she spent in the sun; enormous blue-grey eyes taking up about half her face, and soft fair hair that she had kept bobbing so long after the style went out of popularity that even now it barely reached her pointed chin. She couldn't see her body in the small, round mirror, but she knew what she would see if she could: long, gangly arms and legs that always got in her way and made her clumsy.
No matter what Mother said, she didn't think she looked like a woman. She certainly didn't feel like one … but then, she didn't really feel like a child anymore, either. With these new responsibilities, and the excitement of a new place, she wasn't sure what, or sometimes even who, she was anymore.
"Oh Mums," she suddenly sighed, despite her resolve not to. "I will miss you so this year."
And Mother hugged her again, hard this time, and a quiver was noticeable in her voice, too. "And I you, my dearest eldest daughter."
