The Ingleside children all loved one another--either if some of them did not like one another--and the start of every summer was an orgy of togetherness. They were always together--they climbed trees and went on seaside jaunts together--they made the hills and valleys of the Glen ring with their laughter and singing. There townspeople heard them through their open windows and smiled. There was a saying in Glen St. Mary: "The Blythe will inherit the earth."
But as the summer waxed, the group split off into pairs or small groups. The big boys went West to help Uncle Davy his farm, and the littler boys, who were always together, swaggered and threw back their shoulders for they were the big boys now, at least until the summer was over.
"You know, it's not fair," Owen confided to Cecilia in Rainbow Valley one day. "I'll always be called a little boy, because as long as I live, Gil and Walt will always be older than me."
"Well, they were born first," said the practical Cecilia.
"That's not my fault," said Owen just as practically. "Why should I be punished for it?"
Owen was always asking questions like that.
Joy and Merry, though just a year older than Cecilia, had passed into a mysterious realm where members of the opposite sex were to be gushed over, and discussed. Which they spent most of their time doing, while sewing pretty dresses together on the Ingleside verandah. Cecilia could not understand her cousins' fascination with boys--although she did get a warm feeling in her chest when Blythe looked at her in a certain light or smiled at her when they were sharing a secret. But that was only because they were especial friends.
Seeing the two girls together like that, though, their matching brown heads glistening in the sun, made Cecilia wonder again what someone as nice as Merry could see in someone as awful as Joy. For Merry was very nice, really, and a whiz with her needle and thread. She had made the darlingest blue velvet coat and when she saw Cecilia looking at it enviously, she said,
"When I've grown out of it, it's yours."
She was a duck, was Merry.
Trudy and Cecilia were inseparable, and spent their days exploring every hill and dale in the Glen. They didn't see Bertie as much as they would have liked, but there were other young folks to keep them entertained. Cathy Douglas's house was a wonderful place to play because Mary Vance didn't care how loud you were or how dirty you got. Sometimes she played with the rest of them, even though there was dinner to be cooked and laundry to be folded! She could make the most amazing, hair-raising war-whoops. Cecilia and Trudy had spent a whole evening practicing them in the yard, until Carter Flagg phoned up and asked if someone was being murdered at Ingleside. Then Grandmother had asked them, nicely, to stop, and given them each a cookie and a smile when they did.
Blythe joined them, sometimes, although most of his time was spent on solitary rambles. No one knew what he did on those rambles--but Cecilia. He had shown her a little brown notebook full of poems--delicate, simple, ethereal poems that captured the very spirit and essence of the places and things Blythe wrote about.
"How do you decide what to write about?" Cecilia asked. "I would never have thought to write about that old gnarled oak on the hill--it's ugly--and twisted--but you've made it beautiful. I shall always think of it as an old man keeping watch after this--battered and tired but not giving up hope."
"I don't decide to write poems about things," Blythe said pensively. "It's more like--they come to me. When I look at something especially beautiful my heart snags--it's almost painful--but it's lovely too. And a poem just washes over me. Sometimes I don't feel like I'm writing them at all. More like plucking them out of the air."
Blythe did not say just then, but he often got that feeling when he was looking at Cecilia. He kept another little brown notebook full of odes to her obsidian hair and midnight blue eyes that was getting fuller by the day.
* * *
In the evenings they would all meet in Rainbow Valley and discuss the day. These nights were always pleasant. Even Joy was too tired and contented to be mean. The grownups oftentimes came too, and Cecilia was glad. The Ingleside children didn't dislike or resent their grownups--probably because the Ingleside grownups weren't like regular ones. At times it was almost as if they hadn't grown up themselves. And what a jolly bonfire Uncle Jem could make! How good it felt to have Auntie Rilla stroking her hair.
And they had such interesting stories! Cecilia laughed until her sides ached at the escapades of Uncles Jerry and Carl, Aunt Faith, and Mother. Who could have thought that they would have been so bad when they were children?
"Oh Auntie Faith," Cecilia gasped. "Did--they--really eat your rooster for dinner?"
"'They' did," Uncle Jerry said. "And I remember him being quite good, too."
Aunt Faith swatted him, but laughed herself.
"Do you remember your Good Conduct club?" Uncle Jem asked. "And how you punished yourselves for cleaning in the Methodist graveyard?"
"Tell us, tell us!" the youngsters begged, even the ones who had heard the story before. So Uncle Jerry winked at Auntie Faith, and did.
* * *
"Doesn't Cecilia look like Una in the firelight!" Aunt Faith exclaimed on one of these evenings, as Cecilia lay on the still-sunwarmed grass, drowsy with sleep. "The same nose--those bluely black eyes--the same tilt of the mouth and chin. Doesn't she look like Una?"
"Cecilia is as sweet as Una," Uncle Jerry said. "But I hope she's not touched by the same hand that made Una--so melancholy."
"Shirley's always been jolly," said Auntie Nan. "Maybe Cecilia will take after him."
"Why was Mother always sad?" Cecilia mumbled sleepily, and the grownups were silent for a bit.
"I think Owen looks like Shirley," said Aunt Rilla, still stroking Cecilia's hair. It was as if Cecilia hadn't spoken at all! "I sometimes call him my 'little brown boy'just like Shirley was, do you remember?"
The Ingleside grownups might have been jollier and gentler and dreamier than other grownups, but there were still some things that they did not talk about around the small fry.
They were very like other grownups in that respect.
* * *
Joy was still a dark spot on Cecilia's bright summer. For somehow it had turned into a happy summer. All the letters from Father said that Mother was getting better, slowly but surely. Those at Ingleside thrilled to hear little Cecilia's laughter ring out loud and clear. They'd thought the child would never laugh. And look at her! She was brown as an Indian and her normally peaked face glowed with health.
But Joy--just today Joy had been bragging about going to Queens. She hadn't singled Cecilia out for anything, but she had said what a shame it was that all the Ingleside children couldn't go there. Cecilia loved St. Agnes's, but it was a bit of a sore spot that she didn't get to go to Queens, too. Father had gone there, and all the aunts and uncles, and Grandmother, too!
But Cecilia would not let Joy get the satisfaction of seeing her upset.
"Oh, well, Queens is all right--for and Island school," she said loftily. And then cried all afternoon in Rainbow Valley because she felt disloyal to Father and Grandmother!
"It's not fair," said Cecilia to Trudy as the girls walked along the Shore Road one of those golden summer afternoons, when the air is heavy with contentment and allure. "Joy said today it was such a shame I wasn't born on the Island. She seemed so haughty when she said it that I just gritted my teeth with rage. Uncle Jem and Aunt Faith's children weren't born on the Island--nor were Leslie and Kent--and she doesn't twit them about it. Uncle Jem said Aunt Nan used to tease him about being born at the House of Dreams instead of Ingleside--but being teased because you weren't born on the Island is much, much worse."
"Well, you can't help not being born on the Island," Trudy said amiably, linking her arm through her cousin's. Her big green eyes were consoling, but secretly, she thought not being born on the Island was one of the greatest tragedies that could befall someone. "None of us can help where we were born."
"It's not true, though," said Cecilia. "I was born on the Island. Uncle Bruce showed me the little house on the way in. It's the dearest little red house, Trudy--and very near the Four Winds light."
"Well, let's go and set it, then," said Trudy, who was always up for an afternoon adventure. She grabbed Cecilia's hand and together, the girls set off.
* * *
A/N: Someone asked for a family tree, and I wanted to break it down piece by piece so no one gets confused:
Jem and Faith Blythe:
Walter, Meredith [Merry], John Knox [Jake], Anne Shirley [Nancy]
Nan and Jerry Meredith:
Joyce and Blythe
Di and Jack Wright:
Bertha [Bertie] and Frederick [Teddy]
Shirley and Una Blythe:
Cecilia and Susan.
Carl and Persis Meredith: Leslie and Kenneth [Kent]
Rilla and Ken Ford:
Gilbert, Owen, Gertrude [Trudy], and Anne Shirley [Hannah]
Walter and Gilbert are the oldest grandchildren, and the two Anne Shirleys the youngest. They're 16 and 8 respectively at the start of the story. Some of these 3rd generation Blythes, Merediths, and Fords (Gilbert, Joy, Trudy, Owen, and Hannah, Blythe and Cecilia) are featured in my Juliet of New Moon stories.
Hope that clears things up! Thanks for the comments and reviews. I love them!