Early one morning, in the sweet, misty Ingleside dawn, two visitors arrived at the sleeping house. One was a little gray cat, tired, and thin, who pulled himself up the porch steps and then, finally, slept--a contented cat-smile on his face. This was where he wanted to be. His little ribs showed through his matted coat and his paws were sore from the long journey from whence he came--but on the Ingleside verandah he purred like the King of Cats, in the palace of a Pharoah.
He was not discovered until later. The second visitor came first. She bent over Cecilia's bed, laughed, and kissed her, and tickled her awake. Cecilia's blue eyes flew open--the first thing she saw was another laughing pair of blue eyes--hair like ropes of burnished gold--and an apple-blossom, gap-toothed smile.
"Surprise!" the vision cried joyfully.
"Leslie!" Cecilia shrieked, throwing her covers off, scarecely believing her eyes. The cousins danced around the room and laughed--laughed until tears were leaking from the corners of their eyes.
"I've been on that train all night," Leslie said, pushing Cecilia back into bed and slipping in beside her. "I see you looking at that other bed--I know you were saving it for me--it is a very nice bed. But I'd rather cuddle up to you, dear one. I miss miss missed you! You smell nice--you look sweeter than ever. But your feet are so cold!"
"I'm sorry!" Cecilia laughed. "Oh, Leslie, I didn't even know you were coming."
"Neither did I, until last week." Leslie yawned and streched, her shining, living hair spreading over the pillow like a fan. "Mother and Father are going to a conference in Guelph and they're taking Kent with them, but Uncle Shirley thought it might be nice for me to come and visit you. He said you'd been doing well but sounded a bit down in your letters. What's wrong, Sis?"
"Oh--nothing--everything." Cecilia sighed--her lip trembled--she laughed. "I'll tell you about it all--when I get it straightened in my own mind. Leslie, how is Father? And Mother, have you heard anything about Mother? And the house--and my cat--?"
"Your Dad's fine." Leslie snuggled up to Cecilia under the blankets. "My, I'm toasty warm! And I haven't seen Auntie Una--" Leslie wisely broke off there and did not say what she had heard her parents saying in low voices about Auntie Una from her bedroom one night. She did not want to make the sparkly, hopeful look go out of her cousin's eyes. "Your cat's fatter than ever--Mrs. Perkins next door is watching him this week. Speaking of cats, there's a little gray one out on the verandah right now. He doesn't look like he belongs to Ingleside. I hissed at him when I came up--Grandfather Meredith picked me up at the station and drove me straight here. But that cat won't budge. He yowled at me and wrapped himself around my legs--he wanted to come in but I shook him off. I think he would have bowled past me if I could have gotten the door open--but it was locked. When did Ingleside folk start locking their doors?"
"How did you get in?" Cecilia asked timidly. She wasn't sure she wanted to know.
"I climbed up the trellis," said Leslie with a cheeky grin. "I only stepped on some of the flowers, too--I was careful. Anyway, is that cat yours? The little gray cat? If not, I'm going to take him over to the manse--Grandmother and Grandfather Meredith don't have any cats and that house could use one."
"A gray cat, you said?" Cecilia asked pensively. "No, it isn't mine--all of the Ingleside cats are calicoes."
"No, this was a gray cat, all right," said Leslie. "He was awful dirty--and he had white feet and a white spot by his nose. And one white ear--Cecilia? Where are you going?"
"It's Judah!" Cecilia cried as she floated down the hall like a white spectre. "It is my cat--oh, it's my Green Gables cat! He must have followed us here--you missed me, didn't you sweetums? I hated to leave you behind--and now you're here and I'll never let you go!" She held the little cat near her chest and never was there a more contented cat in the world than Judah at that moment.
Grandmother and Grandfather Blythe opened their eyes wide when they came down for breakfast to see the two girls awake and eating breakfast, the little cat lapping up milk from a saucer on the table between them.
"Leslie!" Grandmother Blythe said. "Where on earth did you come from?"
Grandfather Blythe said, "Where did that cat come from?"
"I came from Montreal," said Leslie impishly.
"The cat came from Avonlea," said Cecilia. "He walked the whole way here--his pads are all bruised and sore--oh, can't he stay, Grandfather? Please?"
"You--have--a cat already," Grandfather said, bemused. "I got you one for your birthday."
"And I love him, Grandfather--but that cat is a wild cat. He doesn't like being inside and doesn't like cuddling. Some cats aren't built that way--but Judah is. Here, stroke him--he's the sweetest cat that ever meowed. See, Grandfather?"
Cecilia deposited the little ball of gray fluff into Grandfather Blythe's hand and the kitten pressed its pink nose to the doctor's neck and closed its eyes in happiness. Gilbert Blythe remembered once how he had said that the most contented sound in the world was a cat's purr--and how could he say no to the pleading little blue-eyed face of his granddaughter--his sweetest granddaughter.
"It can stay," he laughed, ruffling her hair.
"What about me, Uncle Gil, Aunt Anne?" Leslie said through a mouthful of cereal. "Can I stay, too? At least until I finish breakfast?"
"Leslie," said Grandmother Blythe with a grin, petting the purring cat's ears. "You can stay as long as you like."
Everyday was a rainbow with Leslie there. She haunted the manse and Ingleside like a small, cheerful imp. Early each morning, before anyone else was up, she stood under the window and called to Cecilia in a loud, unearthly voice--or worse, tried to climb the trellis--until Grandmother Blythe noticed her flattened roses and gave Leslie her very own key so she could come in through the door like a normal person.
All of the cousins loved the laughing, rollicking Leslie. Hannah and Nancy didn't know what to make of her yodels and war-whoops and stared at her, mesmerized--but without getting too close. She could climb higher and run faster than any of the boys--and Owen and Jake were proud of her--if not a little jealous. Girls shouldn't be able to do those things! But Leslie was not all noise and fury--she could sit still for hours while Merry brushed and plaited her hair, and was careful and meticulous when helping Gil and Walter build models.
Even Joy was nice to Leslie! Cecilia had expected them to clash--there was no doubt that Leslie was very pretty--prettier even than Joy, with her hair of burnished gold and fine, porcelain features. Joyce did not like being outclassed, but she didn't seem to view Leslie as a threat. Perhaps it was because Leslie "had no use" for Blythe. This pronouncement made Cecilia gasp in consternation.
"But--Leslie--Bly is so good."
"I know," said Leslie. "That's why I don't like him. He's too good. There's no tang in him. I like boys to be wild and bad--they can. They don't have to sit around being sweet all day. When I marry, I'm going to marry a man who is dashing and bad."
In years to come, when Cecilia was to meet Leslie's rougish fiance, who was every bit as dashing as either of them could home, she would remember those words. But right now, her heart fell.
"But," Cecilia said desperately, wanting her two favorite cousins to get along. "Bly's going to be a poet, Leslie. He has the most wonderful way of putting words together."
"He's always sitting around, mooning at trees and sunsets," Leslie sniffed. "He's so busy writing about them that he doesn't have time to enjoy them. You can't see much of a sunset with your head in a book."
After more protestrations and more of Leslie's rebuttals, Cecilia gave up. Leslie and Blythe were simply not of the same kindred. Besides, Cecilia hadn't spoken to Blythe at all since that day she found Joy in Red Apple Farm. She turned her head icily away when he spoke to her and the sorry look in Bly's eyes made her heart ache--even so, she stood stuanchly, steadily firm. But no one would no how that look tortured her when she was lying in her little narrow bed each night.
But even though Joy liked Leslie, Leslie did not like Joy. "My mother doesn't need to wear makeup," she said when Joy offered to paint her face with some make-up from Aunt Nan's dressing table.
"Well, my mother doesn't need to," said Joy. "She just likes to."
Leslie waved her hand dismissively.
"Your mother isn't a whit prettier than mine, Leslie West Meredith!" said Joy hotly, finally, seeing Leslie wouldn't give in.
To which Leslie said, airily, "My, you're awful excitable. That must be the Blythe in you. Fords and Merediths don't get all bent out of shape over little, tiny things!"
After Joy had stomped off, Leslie bent double with laughter.
"Oh, why would you tease her like that?" said Cecilia, pleased that Leslie could do what she couldn't but torn because she knew it was wrong.
"I tease her because I can," Leslie stretched out on the green grass of Rainbow Valley--two pale, twin rainbows were stretched over head, a reminder of a recent summer rainstorm and why Rainbow Valley had its name. "She's so prim--all prunes and prisms--and she takes my ribbing so seriously. And besides." Leslie rolled so that her bright blue eyes pierced Cecilia's dark, mysterious ones. "I can tell that she doesn't like you. And I don't like anyone who doesn't like you."
"Why--do you--think she doesn't like me?"
"I dunno," said Leslie pensively, scrunching her face. "Probably because you're the best. And your grandmom and pop sure pay a lot of attention to you. Likely she's jealous."
"Yes," said Cecilia, disappointed. Leslie was usually so much more astute.
"But there's hope for you yet," Leslie said comfortingly. "Remember how I didn't like Lynnie Perkins at home for ever so long? And then, all of a sudden, one day, I liked her? Cheer up, Cee. It could happen to you."
Cecilia showed Leslie Red Apple Farm, of course--but she stood firm to her promise. They didn't go inside.
"It's wonderful," Leslie breathed. "They're heaps of trees--I love trees. That birch looks like a good climbing tree. Let's go in!"
"We can't," Cecilia said dully. "It's--locked."
Her heart ached to climb up the drainpipe and slip through the skylight--but she would not give Joy the satisfaction. Or Blythe! What had he been thinking, bringing his sister here?
"Well, I bet there's all sorts of neat things in the attic," Leslie said mournfully, with a backward glance.
Cecilia might not have been the poet Blythe was, but she had a way with words, that she used to describe the house in great detail to Leslie. One she had given her cousin the basic details of how it was at the present time, the girls spent hours talking about how they would do it up if it was theirs. A darling slate roof--new red plantation shutters--a tile floor in the kitchen. Leslie, who was good with her pencils, drew elaborate sketches of the moldings and windows they would install. The girls made a pact that when they were old--about thirty or so--and not married, they would buy the house and live there together.
"Oh, I hope we do it!" said Leslie, coloring a little peaked gable over the new slate roof.
"Me--too," said Cecilia doubtfully. It would be nice to live with Leslie always--but she would like to be married--someday. She wanted a husband--and dear sweet babies of her own, to coo and sing over. And for some odd reason, she couldn't picture her dream man, who would inhabit the house with her, but Blythe persisted in hanging around, helping her sweep the hearth and lay heart-of-pine floors.
Cecilia had saved two of the things from the house and she showed them to Leslie one rainy day in the little room they were sharing--Grandmother and Grandfather Meredith couldn't keep Leslie cooped up in the manse every night. She snuck out--it was better just to let her go.
"Just an old book and a few pieces of yellow paper," said Leslie disappointedly.
"Read them," succinctly said Cecilia.
Leslie did--and read the name of the author and the addressee--and got into the mystery. "Why would Auntie Una have Aunt Rilla's letter?" she wondered. "Do you think she stole it?"
"No!" Cecilia cried. "Mother wouldn't steal. Probably Aunt Rilla gave it to her. But I wonder why she would do that. If it was Uncle Walter's last lettershe'd want to keep it," Leslie finished. "Let's go and ask her."
"Leslie--no!" Cecilia cried, but it was too late. Leslie had taken the bit of paper and flown down to the parlor, where Aunt Rilla was sewing with Grandmother and Aunt Nan.
"What's this?" she asked cheerfully, presenting the letter to Aunt Rilla. Cecilia hovered behind.
"I don't know, you monkey," Auntie Rilla laughed, interrupting her conversation with the other women. "Let's see."
She read for a bit, and then her face went slack. Quietly she said, "Walter," and laughed--softly and horribly--and folded the letter, handing it back to Leslie. Her eyes were suspiciously, suddenly pink.
"Well?" said Leslie, her own eyes bright and curious.
Grandmother got up to get tea, and Aunt Nan turned back to her embroidery, humming a sad little song under her breath. "Put this back where you found it," was all that Auntie Rilla said, with regards to the letter, and that was the end of that.