Disclaimer: I don't own Magic for Marigold, by L.M. Montgomery; I've just borrowed some of her characters from that novel for this fanfic.
Marigold Lesley danced down the front walk of Cloud of Spruce and leaned over the gate, peering eagerly down the road. Today her friend Budge's uncle, who was
visiting from up the coast, was going to take them out in his new sailboat. This was almost the first time in two weeks she and Budge would be spending together.
The week before last had been sweltering hot. Budge, his friend Tad Austin, and the other boys in Harmony had spent every waking hour down at the local swimming hole. When Marigold had asked if she might join them, she'd been met with an indignant refusal, leading her to suspect that they were bathing au naturel. Budge had brushed off her invitations to go swimming with her at the shore - he and the boys were having ever so much fun holding diving contests and races. Marigold was not permitted to go swimming by herself, and as Mother was extremely busy that week and Uncle Klon and Aunt Marigold were away, she had had almost no opportunity to go swimming during the heat wave. Altogether Marigold had passed a very miserable seven days.
The following week, some mysterious quest had kept Budge and Tad occupied from Monday to Wednesday. They had been searching for hidden treasure - "Real
treasure, not make-believe pirate gold like you and I pretended to hunt for," Budge had deigned to inform her when she went over to the Guest place Wednesday
evening on an errand for Salome.
While exploring the Austins' garret, he and Tad had discovered a box of old letters and journals left behind by the Burnabys when they moved away. Among the
forgotten local history recorded in one of the journals was the account of a lady's jewel box lost over one hundred years before. The lady, an army officer's wife, had been travelling to join her husband in Montreal at the time of the War of 1812 when she fell ill and was taken ashore to the pioneer settlement of Harmony. Not long after, the alarm spread that an American privateer was poised to raid the settlement. Amidst the panic, the lady had risen from her sickbed in the Burnaby cabin, slipped outside with her jewel box, and hidden it - where, it was never learned. She had returned to the cabin more feverish than before, and died soon afterwards, carrying the location of her valuables to her grave. Her husband never came to visit her final resting place or to claim her belongings: he fell in battle at almost the same time, it was later learned. Once the raiders departed and life returned to normal, the Burnabys had searched for the jewels, but without success. As the years passed - busy years of clearing more land and raising more substantial buildings - the episode had grown dim and was forgotten altogether, like the lady's name on the weathered sandstone slab that marked her grave and the yellowed old diary that held her story.
"I wish I could have helped you search for the jewels," Marigold had said wistfully. "It must have been great fun."
"You would have been too scared," was Budge's dismissive reply. "The place out behind the barn where the old cabin used to be is crawling with snakes and spiders.
You've admitted yourself that you're really a coward and only pretended not to be afraid of things like that. Besides, Tad didn't want to let anyone else in on the secret. I guess he won't mind me telling you now, since we never did find anything. Either the lady did such a bad job of hiding her jewel box that the Yankees found it
right off - they got the silver candlesticks the Burnabys hid in the bucket of their well - or else she hid it so well it's lost for good." He then spun an eerie yarn about the
lady's ghost wandering abroad of a dark night in search of her lost jewels, that had Marigold shivering deliciously as she hurried home through the dusk.
Marigold had hoped that Budge might come over to Cloud of Spruce the next day. Thursday, however, was the day of Tad's birthday party.
Budge did drop by on Friday afternoon to help Marigold eat a batch of candy she'd made. But, though she listened faithfully to his account of his and Tad's fishing expedition that morning and went into raptures over the new poems he'd made up, he hadn't seemed much interested when she tried to tell him the latest news of her mercurial friend Paula Pengelly, from whom Marigold had just received a long, dramatic epistle. Paula's current enthusiasm had been inspired by the "Mohawk Princess" Pauline Johnson. After reading a volume of Miss Johnson's poetry, Paula had decided, on the grounds of her reputed Indian blood, that she, too, was an Indian princess. Now all the girls in her neighbourhood and even some of the boys had joined her in playing at Indians (Mats must find that more fun than the religious game, Marigold had thought with a touch of envy as she read Paula's - or, as she had taken to calling herself, the Princess Dawendine's - descriptions of war dances around the campfire in the camp by the lone pine at the head of the pond, of wild battles and solemn pow-wows).
Marigold nevertheless counted the visit a success, for before Budge went away he promised to accompany her to the community picnic on the morrow.
Alas, the picnic fell short of Marigold's expectations. Upon their arrival at the picnic ground, they were immediately joined by Tad, and Budge insisted on sharing the contents of Marigold's hamper with him. That the boys did full justice to her cookery was, almost literally, no more than a crumb of comfort to Marigold, who only managed to secure one raspberry tart, a few cookies, and half a chicken sandwich for herself out of all the delectable things she had taken such pains to prepare that morning. After they had eaten, they took part in the games and contests - or rather, Budge and Tad took part while Marigold watched from the sidelines. "I'm sorry, Marigold, but if you were my partner you'd just slow me down," explained Budge as he and Tad got ready for the three-legged race, in which - despite being cheered on loyally by Marigold - they went on to finish dead last.
Marigold didn't see either boy in Sunday school the next day - they were both at home with violent stomach-aches.
Throughout the long, lonely two weeks of Budge's near-absence, Marigold had fought down her unhappiness and waited bravely, mindful of Aunt Marigold's
admonition that women must always share and her own resolution always to be there for Budge to come back to. And now, finally, her patience was to be rewarded. Tad had departed on a long visit to his grandparents, and it was her turn to enjoy Budge's companionship.
"Marigold! You're wanted on the telephone," her mother called.
Marigold cast one last look down the road in the direction of Budge's house, and then sped back up the walk. "What if Budge arrives while I'm on the phone?" she
asked anxiously, wondering, at the same time, who her caller could be. She had no real friends in Harmony besides Budge. "I wouldn't want to keep him waiting."
"This is Budge, dear," said Mother gently.
Marigold took the receiver with a puzzled frown.
"Hello, Marigold," said Budge breezily. "Look, some more company came last night - relatives from Charlottetown. So now that my cousins Ned and Charlie and their friend Joe are here, there won't be any room for you in the boat. I'm awful sorry about that, but I know you won't mind - you're always such a good sport. Anyway, you'd probably just get seasick. Girls always get seasick. Uncle Edward and Aunt Rhoda and the boys might be going to see friends in Alberton tomorrow, so maybe I'll see you then," he added offhandedly. "I have to go now - everyone's waiting for me. 'Bye!"
Stunned, Marigold replaced the receiver. He can't really mean it, she thought desperately. He knew how much I wanted to go sailing. He must just be teasing me.
She raced past her mother and back out the door, reaching the gate just as the Guests' car turned out of their lane and began whirling down the road towards her.
Wasn't it slowing? Yes, it was! Marigold laughed with relief. She flung open the gate and stood expectantly by the side of the road. But the car didn't stop. As it
drew abreast of her, Budge's uncle merely honked the horn loudly while Budge leaned out of the window, waving and hallooing. Then the car picked up speed again and continued down the harbour road toward the marina at the Summer Hotel by the dunes.
"No, wait! You have to come back!" Marigold burst out involuntarily, beginning to run after the car. After a few moments she stopped and trudged back to the house.
Mother was waiting for her on the step. "I'm so sorry, Marigold," she said softly, her eyes brimming with sympathy.
"It's all right," said Marigold woodenly. She went stiffly up the stairs to her room. There she changed out of her second-best dress. Grandmother had protested over
her wearing a good dress to go out in a sailboat, but Marigold had wanted to look her best and had insisted. After that she sat down by the window and gazed out
unseeingly.
Salome came upstairs half an hour later. "Lazarre just brought the mail from the village. Here's a letter from your cousin Gwen," she said with unwonted gentleness.
"And there's a batch of hop-and-go-fetch-its in the oven."
Marigold took the letter and thanked her listlessly. After a few minutes more, the numbness which had taken possession of her since her crushing disappointment
abated enough for her to take an interest in the letter, and she slit open the envelope.
"Dear Marigold," wrote Gwen in her bold, blotchy scrawl. "I can't understand what you see in this Budge creature you keep raving about in your letters. It sounds like he's just using you. You'd never catch me letting some boy treat me as a shoulder to cry on whenever he's at outs with his chum, and then ignore me most of the rest of the time, going around with me only when it suits him. I didn't think your Lesley pride would let you be such a doormat..."
Marigold threw down the letter. How dare Gwen accuse her of being a doormat! And yet...hadn't she been too willing to put up with Budge's whims? She thought of Mother. Dear, sweet Mother - who always put everyone else's wishes before her own. Did she, Marigold, really want to be like that? Suddenly she had a flashback of herself running after the Guests' car and screaming at the top of her lungs. She crimsoned at the memory. How could she have made such a spectacle of herself, literally chasing after a boy who couldn't be bothered to keep a promise he'd made? Why, she was no better than those silly girls at Owl's Hill, who had made such fools of themselves over Hip Price. At least then she'd had the self-respect not to admit that she, too, had been taken in by him.
She wandered back downstairs. The numbness had worn off completely by now, to replaced with a vague sense of discontent. She dutifully ate two hop-and-go-fetch-its to please Salome, but barely even tasted them, delicious though they were. Then she went out into the orchard.
She paced up and down the flight of shallow sandstone steps that ran through the middle of the orchard, under leafy boughs laden with unripe fruit and full of the song of unseen birds. At last she halted in front of the old green gate set in the fence at the far side of the orchard. Before her rose the spruce hill, like a foothill of the
towering mountain range of clouds in the sky beyond. The wind, sighing among the spruces, seemed to whisper consolingly to her.
Marigold thought wistfully of her imaginary friend Sylvia, the Little White Girl who lived in the spring on the hill, and who had once been so real to her. "Aw, that sounds awful silly," Budge had said when she told him about Sylvia.
At that moment there came the sound of faint, elfin laughter from somewhere up the hill, followed by clear, sweet singing. Sylvia...? But that was impossible! Marigold had pushed open the gate and taken a few faltering steps up the hill when she heard an all-too-human scream. She broke into a run.
At the top of the hill she stopped to catch her breath. Hearing voices off to her left, she sped off in that direction, over the carpet of ferns, mosses, and pinedrops that
spread beneath the spruces. Soon she came to the edge of a clearing...the very clearing of Sylvia's spring. A boy and girl of her own age were there. They stood at the spring's edge, the boy supporting the girl, who was gingerly testing her weight on her right ankle. She had clearly just fallen into the spring, for her dress was sopping.
"Are you all right?" called Marigold.
"I think so," answered the girl. "I hope so! It would be absolutely catastrophic if I were to seriously injure my ankle and go lame. You see, I hope to be a great actress some day. I was dancing around the spring, pretending to be Queen Titania from A Midsummer Night's Dream, when I twisted my foot on a stone and fell in."
"And became Ophelia, drowning in the stream," the boy added with a grin.
She made a face at him.
Marigold realized that they had to be twin brother and sister, so close in age and alike in appearance were they. Their hair was the same rich auburn, though the boy's waved in an unruly manner while the girl's - bobbed like Marigold's-was straight and sleek; their large, wide-set eyes were the same clear violet. Both had firm chins and finely-chiselled noses.
Now the girl was standing on her own and taking a few tentative steps. Then she made an experimental hop. Suddenly, with a radiant smile, she began to trip daintily around the spring. "'First, rehearse your song by rote/To each word a warbling note:/Hand in hand, with fairy grace,/Will we sing, and bless this place'" she chanted. In the twinkling of an eye she changed roles, transforming herself into poor lovesick Helena entreating Demetrius not to forsake her. After that she changed back to Titania, portraying the Fairy Queen after Puck's potion made her fall in love with Bottom. In that short time Marigold found herself moved from enchantment to pity to laughter. She burst into applause. "You will become a great actress!" she cried sincerely.
The girl flashed another dazzling smile and swept Marigold a low bow.
Marigold took a step into the clearing, nearly treading on something lying in the ferns. She bent to pick it up. It was an open sketchbook; the pages before her were covered with bold, sweeping drawings of the PEI countryside and a half-finished sketch of the auburn-haired girl dancing around the spring.
"This is yours?" Marigold asked the boy, who nodded. "You draw as well as she acts!" she said with genuine admiration.
"Thank you!" he said, smiling appreciatively. "My ambition is to become a great landscape painter. By the way, I'm Paul Frazer, and this is my sister, Sylvia."
Marigold gasped, and turned pale.
"You look like you've just seen a ghost," said Sylvia curiously.
"I almost have," Marigold replied, laughing a little shakily. She sat down on the ground, Sylvia and Paul following suit, and introduced herself. Then she found herself telling them all about the imaginary Sylvia. Neither of them thought it sounded "awful silly". They listened attentively, and when she had finished, looked at each other and exclaimed, "Jack and Jill and the World Down the Well!"
"Those were our imaginary friends," explained Sylvia. "They were a brother and sister our own age whom we pretended lived in a magical country at the bottom of
the well at our old house in New Brunswick. They were our special secret. The only other person besides you who I ever told about them was my best friend back
in St. Andrews. I thought she'd understand, but she didn't - she just laughed, and said I must be crazy." Sylvia's sparkling eyes clouded at the memory.
"They didn't seem very real to us anymore," added Paul. "But it was still hard when we had to move away and leave the well behind."
Marigold nodded very sympathetically. "Is your new house nearby?" she asked.
"About half a mile away over the other side of this hill," answered Paul. "But it's not really a 'new' house!"
"That's for certain!" agreed Sylvia. "It's over one hundred years old, and hasn't been lived in for ages. Mum just inherited it from Great-Aunt Eleanor Hamilton. When Great-Auntie's husband died twenty-five years ago, she went to live with her sister in Charlottetown, and the place has been empty ever since."
So, they had moved into the old Hamilton house! Marigold remembered seeing it once during a drive down a winding side road. The once-grand stone house, its
chimneys crumbling, its paintwork peeling, its walls and pillared porch overgrown with vines, stood amidst a garden and lawns gone wild. It had seemed so lonely
and mournful on that overcast November afternoon, peering out from behind its rusted iron fence and screen of venerable maples. She was delighted that the forsaken old house would come to life again.
"...the house is too run-down and musty to live in yet, so we're camping out in tents like gypsies until it's all fixed up," Sylvia was saying. "Dad says it reminds him of
the Great War. He was a pilot - an ace," she said proudly.
"He still flies," said Paul. "He has a de Havilland Cirrus Moth. Right now it's at a hangar back in New Brunswick, but he means to lay out a small airfield in the field
behind the house. When it's up and running you could go for a plane ride if you wanted," he offered.
"I'd love to!" breathed Marigold. The tall, steep spruce hill rose high above the surrounding countryside; Marigold had once fancied that if she climbed to the crest, she could touch the sky, and if she gave a little bound, might even land in heaven. It would be like a dream come true to truly leave the earth behind and soar even higher than the summit of the spruce hill. What was going out in a sailboat to a trip up in an airplane!
"In the meantime," said Sylvia, "you must come over to Maplelawn - that's what the house is called."
"Though Maplejungle is a better name for it just now," Paul put in.
"It's actually rather romantic," said Sylvia thoughtfully, a dreamy look coming into her eyes. "Like something out of a fairytale or an old novel. The back yard really is a perfect wilderness. When we fought our way through all the weeds and overgrown shrubs we discovered an old summerhouse hidden away in the corner of the yard. We felt just like explorers discovering a temple that had been abandoned for hundreds of years.
And the cellar...that was like exploring a dungeon or catacomb. The cellar windows are all boarded up, so the only light was from our candles. But they kept flickering in the drafts - casting the weirdest shadows - and threatening to go out. It was bloodcurdling to think that they could go out at any minute and leave us in pitch
blackness. Anything might have been lurking down there."
"And - and - what was down there...?" ventured Marigold. Sylvia's eloquent "anything" had conjured up any number of fearsome images in her mind.
"Just mice and spiders," said Paul.
"Yes, but they were the largest, hairiest spiders you ever saw," retorted Sylvia. "I'm not afraid of spiders, but I got the scare of my life when a perfectly enormous
one scurried across my arm. It was like the touch of ghostly fingertips. And don't forget how startled you were when that rat brushed past your ankle!"
"Touché!" laughed Paul.
"It's almost as gloomy upstairs, because all the shutters are closed," Sylvia continued. "The hinges are so stiff and rusty that we haven't been able to get them open yet. Of course Great-Auntie took everything with her when she moved away, so the place is completely empty, but it reminds me a bit of Miss Havisham's parlour in Great Expectations - dust and cobwebs everywhere, and such a feeling of decay.
And at nighttime, when I see the house standing there all dark and silent and empty in the moonlight, with bats flitting around the roof, it makes me think of the old
ruined chateaux Dad saw in France during the war. So eerie and mysterious! It almost seems a pity not to leave it the way it is. But then," she said, with an abrupt
shift of mood, "we can't live in tents forever! Or even for very much longer, once the seasons start to change. And you can't imagine what fun it is fixing up an old
house! Most of our relatives thought we should just tear it down and build a new house, but Mum wouldn't hear of it. She's crazy about old buildings and history."
Marigold was about to accept Sylvia's offer and extend a return invitation to Cloud of Spruce when she was struck by an unpleasant thought: suppose Sylvia and Paul
didn't meet with Grandmother's approval and she forbade Marigold to play with them? That would be as terrible as the time she had attempted to cure Marigold of
her belief in the imaginary Sylvia by denying her the key to the Magic Door - worse, since Sylvia and Paul Frazer were real and she could now no longer be satisfied with imaginary playmates. Brief as their acquaintance was, she already knew that she liked Sylvia Frazer better than any other girl she'd ever met except Bernice Willis. She was high-spirited, but not overwhelmingly so like Princess Varvara and Gwen; dramatic, but without being as temperamental as Paula; friendly and engaging like Mats, Amy Joseph, June Page, and Caroline Chrysler, but far more interesting; and she had a sensitivity none of those girls possessed. As for Paul, he was definitely the nicest boy she had ever met. He was the first one who had ever really treated her as a whole person, instead of just as a sympathetic ear or - as Gwen had put it - a shoulder to cry on.
She must continue this new friendship! What did it matter if Sylvia and Paul's pedigree didn't meet Grandmother's exacting standards, thought Marigold mutinously. The fact that Budge's mother had been a Randolph from Charlottetown hadn't stopped him from treating her shabbily. And surely at age twelve she was old enough to start choosing her own friends.
Well, she would deal with Grandmother when the time came. In the meanwhile, she meant to enjoy this chance encounter to the full. "I'd love to visit Maplelawn,
and I will if I can. I'm just not sure what my mother and grandmother have planned for the next while," she said diplomatically. "Anyway, we'll see a lot of each other
at school when it starts up again next month - you're just inside the boundary of the Harmony school district. I'm so glad. I've never had any school chums before."
Until Budge moved in, she thought to herself. But when we went back to school this fall, he probably would have ignored me at recess and spent all his time with Tad.
Marigold told them all about the little country school and its denizens, and then their conversation turned once again to what they wanted to be when they grew up.
Unlike Sylvia and Paul, Marigold didn't have any clear idea about her future path in life. She confided to them how, for several weeks of the previous summer, she had
hankered after a career in the foreign mission field. How, in preparation for her career as a missionary, she had gone to visit poor unhappy - and, as she soon learned, insane - Mrs. Delagarde in South Harmony, only for the woman to mistake Marigold for her dead daughter and lock her in the girl's bedroom, where Marigold had spent a terrifying night and day before escaping.
"Held prisoner by a madwoman...how thrilling!" breathed Sylvia, regarding Marigold with an awed expression. "It's like something in a book!"
"She's not mad any longer," Marigold hastened to add. "She really seemed to think that her daughter had come back to forgive her for punishing her the day
before she got sick and died, and the doctor thinks that pretty well cured her. Then her husband took her away on a long trip, and she recovered completely."
"It's nice that she got better, but it would have been tremendously exciting to have a real live madwoman in the neighbourhood," said Sylvia a little regretfully.
"As long as you're around, we always will," Paul told her teasingly, ducking as she tossed a toadstool at him. Then he turned to Marigold. "You were awfully brave,"
he said admiringly. "Not everyone could have kept their cool like that. Dad says that during the war, he saw the strongest men go to pieces under pressure."
"I wasn't really brave at all," demurred Marigold. "I was really just scared stiff."
Yet she felt a glow of pleasure at his admiration and at Sylvia's awe. After all, being praised for bravery and compared to the heroine of a thriller made a pleasant
change from being belittled as a coward. Some part of her being that had fallen dormant since the advent of Budge began to stir to life again. While she might not be cut out to be a missionary, perhaps she would grow up to be something equally brave and splendid. Maybe she would become a renowned doctor like Aunt Marigold had been before her marriage to Uncle Klon.
For Dr. Marigold Woodruff Richards - who had been offered an important post at a children's hospital in Montreal, and had saved the infant Marigold's life after two male doctors had given up - had stopped practising medicine when she got married. Never before had Marigold questioned her aunt's decision, but now she found
herself wondering if Aunt Marigold had made the right choice. Oh, she was very happily married, there was no question about that - but need she have given up her
rewarding career? Marigold had heard of some woman doctors who kept up their practices after marrying.
And then there was the matter of Aunt Marigold's advice about Budge. Sharing was all very well, but need one be a complete little pushover? Why should the woman always be the one who had to give up and give in? Shouldn't sharing work both ways?
Marigold was thrown into a quandary over these troubling new thoughts. Suddenly she remembered Old Grandmother's advice to her as they sat in the orchard on the
night Old Grandmother died: "Do anything you want to do, Marigold - as long as you can go to your looking-glass afterwards and look yourself in the face. The
oracle has spoken."
All at once the vague sense of dissatisfaction that had been gnawing at her since the shock of Budge's desertion had worn off crystallized into a bold new resolution.
Yes, she would do anything she wanted to do. She suspected that, despite her great-grandmother's instructions for her to do whatever she pleased, that lady would not have approved of the course she was now considering, of following in Aunt Marigold's footsteps - and for that matter, those of her own father, Dr. Leander Lesley, as well as his father's and grandfather's: she knew from clan gossip that neither Old Grandmother nor any other Lesley had had any use for "that woman doctor" until they were forced to send for her as a last resort when Marigold fell deathly ill. But Marigold resolutely banished such doubts. Why should she live her life to please Old Grandmother - or Aunt Marigold, or anyone else?
So often in the past she had allowed herself to be subject to other people's dictates. There was the time Princess Varvara had descended like a whirlwind on Cloud of
Spruce, leaving a trail of devastation while Marigold was swept helplessly along in her wake...the hectic days of Gwen's visit, when Marigold had been dragged
headlong into her cousin's wild escapades...her blind devotion to the mesmerizing Paula when they had played at "getting religion" (save at the time Marigold hadn't
realized it was just a game) during Paula's consecrated phase...the time when, against her better judgement, she had let her cousin Billy talk her into sneaking off
on the Dixons' anniversary picnic, because she hadn't wanted him to think her staid and unadventurous...most recently, her attempts to win Budge's approval by first,
pretending to enjoy things she secretly loathed, like hunting snakes and catching frogs, and then by being always at his beck and call.
Well, never again!
"My aunt used to be a doctor, and so were my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. Maybe I will be, too. That would make me the fourth Dr. Lesley at Cloud of Spruce," she told Paul and Sylvia.
"I think that's a wonderful idea!" said Sylvia enthusiastically.
"So do I," said Paul. "Mum met Dr. Maude Abbott when she was at McGill. She says she's one of the greatest doctors in the world."
They talked on, of anything and everything; in almost no time at all, it seemed, the sun was shining directly down into the little clearing and Sylvia's dress had dried
out completely.
"Noon already!" exclaimed Marigold, springing to her feet. "I have to hurry back home or I'll be late for lunch!"
"We'd better be getting back ourselves," said Sylvia. "We have to help Mum and Dad finish planning out how to fix up the house - the workmen will be coming out
from Charlottetown in a couple of days. Remember, just you run over to see us any time you like, day or night! We don't exactly stand on ceremony at Maplelawn."
Not like at Cloud of Spruce, thought Marigold a trifle ruefully. "I hope I'll be able to!" she said earnestly.
Paul had been sketching busily for the past while, and now he tore a sheet out of his sketchbook and handed it to Marigold with a smile.
It was a drawing of a slender girl with flowing dark hair and dreamy eyes: her dream-friend Sylvia, looking almost exactly as Marigold had always imagined her. How carefully he had heeded her descriptions! She felt as if, in some mysterious way, Sylvia had been restored to her, as a beautiful, unfading memory.
"Thank you!" she said, her eyes aglow. "I'll treasure this always!"
When she got back to Cloud of Spruce she paused in the orchard room to set Paul's sketch down carefully beside the Skinner doll in her glass case, before whirling into the dining room just as Mother, Grandmother, and Salome were sitting down to lunch.
A relieved expression crossed Lorraine Lesley's face as she noted her daughter's buoyant step and laughing eyes. "You look the way you always used to when you
came back from visiting Sylvia," she remarked.
"Oh, I was visiting Sylvia," said Marigold mischievously.
Mother and Grandmother exchanged an alarmed glance. They think I've gone dippy! Clean out of my mind! thought Marigold, suppressing a giggle. "Sylvia Frazer, that is," she said out loud. "She and her brother Paul have just moved into the neighbourhood. Their mother inherited the house that used to belong to their Great Aunt Eleanor Hamilton." She paused, and then continued, respectfully but quite firmly, "They're really very nice. They've asked me over to their place, and I don't see any reason why I shouldn't go - though I waited to see if it was all right with you before saying I would." There was something in her tone that suggested her request for permission was a mere formality.
Grandmother looked at her sharply, somewhat taken aback. Then her expression altered. Well, well, that must be the Blaisdell coming out in her, she thought to herself with some satisfaction. She sounded just like myself when I was her age. I'm glad the girl isn't entirely Winthrop after all; after the way she'd been moping around these past weeks I'd almost concluded that she was going to be poor Lorraine all over again.
"I'm pleased you saw fit to ask my permission," she said dryly. "However, I have no objection to you continuing to associate with these new friends of yours. The
Frazers are a respectable family, and so are the Hamiltons. I knew Eleanor Hamilton well, although her niece Nell - these children's mother - was a little too bohemian for my liking. But perhaps she's settled down by now. It's to be hoped her husband has...Jack Frazer got up to the most hair-raising escapades as a boy. Even as a young man he was a devil of a fellow. Though it must be said for him that he acquitted himself heroically during the War."
"I always admired Nell," said Mother. "She was so vibrant. And Jack may have been wild, but he wasn't bad."
"He certainly was loyal," put in Salome. "For all his mischief, he'd never leave a friend in the lurch - which is more than can be said for a certain young scamp in this neighbourhood."
"Yes," said Mother, "I remember the time Jack refused to go to a classmate's birthday party because a friend of his, a boy from a poor family, wasn't invited. Every other boy in the class had been asked. I'm quite looking forward to seeing him and Nell again."
"So am I," admitted Grandmother. "After lunch I'll write a note inviting them to tea one day this week, and Marigold can run it over to them. I suppose it will be some
time before they have a telephone installed. In fact, I'm surprised the house is even fit for human habitation after standing empty all these years, though it was a real
showplace in old Captain Hamilton's day."
"They're actually living out-of-doors right now, in tents," said Marigold, watching with amusement as Grandmother and Salome looked askance at each other. Even
Mother seemed somewhat perturbed.
"Out of doors? In tents?" repeated Grandmother. "You'd better take them the cake Salome baked this morning, and I'll invite them to supper instead of tea," she said grimly. "Goodness knows how they're living-cooking over an open fire and eating out of cans, I shouldn't wonder."
The phone rang just as Marigold was about to set off for the Frazers' after lunch.
"It's Budge again, Marigold," Mother called.
Now what can he want? thought Marigold in annoyance, setting the basket containing Salome's cake back down on the pantry shelf and going out into the front hall.
"You'll never guess what happened," came Budge's aggrieved voice over the line. "Charlie got seasick, and he made such a fuss that we had to come back early. Then Ned got mad at me for getting mad at Charlie for spoiling all our fun, and neither of them is talking to me right now. And Joe's homesick, so there's no fun in him anymore. Can you come over?"
"I'm sorry, but I have a prior engagement," said Marigold airily. "Some other time, perhaps," and with that she hung up.
"Well, if that isn't just like a girl!" exploded Budge at the other end of the now-dead line. "I s'pose she's in a sulk about being left out this morning. Here I'd thought she was almost as good as a boy, and now I find out that she's just as silly as other girls!"
But if Marigold could have heard him she wouldn't have cared. As she flew up the orchard steps and through the green gate, there opened before her in her mind's
eye a vista as fair as the wondrous Hidden Land of her childhood dreams. Overon the other side of the spruce hill, where she had once imagined the Hidden Land to lie, was a whole new world waiting to be discovered.
The End
A/N: I got the idea for this fic while reading Elizabeth Rollins Epperly's discussion of Magic for Marigold in her book The Fragrance of Sweet-Grass: L.M. Montgomery's Heroines and the Pursuit of Romance. I love Magic for Marigold, but have always found the ending disappointing. It upsets me no end that Marigold winds up with the insensitive Budge for her closest male chum, rather than a true kindred spirit like Teddy or Jingle (and for that matter, that she never gets to have an Ilse or a Bets in her neighbourhood). It seems so unfair: poor Marigold doesn't want to be "put upon" like her mother, but while she can be quite spunky at times (like when she routs her odious third cousin "Johnsy"), so often she's domineered over by the people around her, and she ultimately becomes as much of a Patient Griselda as her mother ever thought of being. Epperly's comments on this matter are very inspiring.
Sylvia and Paul (whom I devoutly hope don't come across as a Mary Sue and a Marty Stu) owe something to the sister and brother in L.M. Montgomery's short story "The Twins Pretend", in The Road to Yesterday.