the hall below, “what are you doing all by yourself in that room?” Valancy dropped Thistle Harvest like a hot coal and fled downstairs to her patches; but she felt the strange exhilaration of spirit that always came momentarily to her when she dipped into one of John Foster’s books. Valancy did not know much about woods — except the haunted groves of oak and pine around her Blue Castle. But she had always secretly hankered after them and a Foster book about woods was the next best thing to the woods themselves.
At noon it stopped raining, but the sun did not come out until three. Then Valancy timidly said she thought she would go uptown.
“What do you want to go uptown for?” demanded her mother.
“I want to get a book from the library.”
“You got a book from the library only last week.”
“No, it was four weeks.”
“Four weeks. Nonsense!”
“Really it was, Mother.”
“You are mistaken. It cannot possibly have been more than two weeks. I dislike contradiction. And I do not see what you want to get a book for, anyhow. You waste too much time reading.”
“Of what value is my time?” asked Valancy bitterly.
“Doss! Don’t speak in that tone to me.”
“We need some tea,” said Cousin Stickles. “She might go and get that if she wants a walk — though this damp weather is bad for colds.”
They argued the matter for ten minutes longer and finally Mrs. Frederick agreed rather grudgingly that Valancy might go.
“Got your rubbers on?” called Cousin Stickles, as Valancy left the house.
Christine Stickles had never once forgotten to ask that question when Valancy went out on a damp day.
“Yes.”
“Have you got your flannel petticoat on?” asked Mrs. Frederick.
“No.”
“Doss, I really do not understand you. Do you want to catch your death of cold again?” Her voice implied that Valancy had died of a cold several times already. “Go upstairs this minute and put it on!”
“Mother, I don’t need a flannel petticoat. My sateen one is warm enough.”
“Doss, remember you had bronchitis two years ago. Go and do as you are told!”
Valancy went, though nobody will ever know just how near she came to hurling the rubber plant into the street before she went. She hated that grey flannel petticoat more than any other garment she owned. Olive never had to wear flannel petticoats. Olive wore ruffled silk and sheer lawn and filmy laced flounces. But Olive’s father had “married money” and Olive never had bronchitis. So there you were.
“Are you sure you didn’t leave the soap in the water?” demanded Mrs. Frederick. But Valancy was gone. She turned at the corner and looked back down the ugly, prim, respectable street where she lived. The Stirling house was the ugliest on it — more like a red brick box than anything else. Too high for its breadth, and made still higher by a bulbous glass cupola on top. About it was the desolate, barren piece of an old house whose life is lived.
There was a very pretty little house, with leaded casements and dubbed gables, just around the corner — a new house, one of those houses you love the minute you see them. Clayton Markley had built it for his bride. He was to be married to Jennie Lloyd in June. The little house, it was said, was furnished from attic to cellar, in complete readiness for its mistress.
“I don’t envy Jennie the man,” thought Valancy sincerely — Clayton Markley was not one of her many ideals — “but I do envy her the house. It’s such a nice young house. Oh, if I could only have a house of my own — ever so poor, so tiny — but my own! But then,” she added bitterly, “there is no use in yowling for the moon when you can’t even get a tallow candle.”
In dreamland nothing would do Valancy but a castle of pale sapphire. In real life she would have been fully satisfied with a little house of her own. She envied Jennie Lloyd more fiercely than ever today. Jennie was not so much better looking than she was, and not so very much younger. Yet she was to have this delightful house. And the nicest little Wedgwood teacups — Valancy had seen them; an open fireplace, and monogrammed linen; hemstitched tablecloths, and china closets. Why did everything come to some girls and nothing to others? It wasn’t fair.
Valancy was once more seething with rebellion as she walked along, a prim, dowdy little figure in her shabby raincoat and three-year-old hat, splashed occasionally by the mud of a passing motor with its insulting shrieks. Motors were still rather a novelty in Deerwood, though they were common in Port Lawrence, and most of the summer residents up at Muskoka had them. In Deerwood only some of the smart set had them; for even Deerwood was divided into sets. There was the smart set — the intellectual set — the old-family set — of which the Stirlings were members — the common run, and a few pariahs. Not one of the Stirling clan had as yet condescended to a motor, though Olive was teasing her father to have one. Valancy had never even been in a motorcar. But she did not hanker after this. In truth, she felt rather afraid of motorcars, especially at night. They seemed to be too much like big purring beasts that might turn and crush you — or make some terrible savage leap somewhere.
On the steep mountain trails around her Blue Castle only gaily caparisoned steeds might proudly pace; in real life Valancy would have been quite contented to drive in a buggy behind a nice horse. She got a buggy drive only when some uncle or cousin remembered to fling her “a chance,” like a bone to a dog.
Of course she must buy the tea in Uncle Benjamin’s grocery-store. To buy it anywhere else was unthinkable. Yet Valancy hated to go to Uncle Benjamin’s store on her twenty-ninth birthday. There was no hope that he would not remember it.
“Why,” demanded Uncle Benjamin, leeringly, as he tied up her tea, “are young ladies like bad grammarians?”
Valancy, with Uncle Benjamin’s will in the background of her mind, said meekly, “I don’t know. Why?”
“Because,” chuckled Uncle Benjamin, “they can’t decline matrimony.”
The two clerks, Joe Hammond and Claude Bertram, chuckled also, and Valancy disliked them a little more than ever. On the first day Claude Bertram had seen her in the store she had heard him whisper to Joe, “Who is that?” And Joe had said, “Valancy Stirling — one of the Deerwood old maids.” “Curable or incurable?” Claude had asked with a snicker, evidently thinking the question very clever. Valancy smarted anew with the sting of that old recollection.
“Twenty-nine,” Uncle Benjamin was saying. “Dear me, Doss, you’re dangerously near the second corner and not even thinking of getting married yet. Twenty-nine. It seems impossible.”
Then Uncle Benjamin said an original thing. Uncle Benjamin said, “How time does fly!”
“I think it crawls,” said Valancy passionately. Passion was so alien to Uncle Benjamin’s conception of Valancy that he didn’t know what to make of her. To cover his confusion, he asked another conundrum as he tied up her beans — Cousin Stickles had remembered at the last moment that they must have beans. Beans were cheap and filling.
“What two ages are apt to prove illusory?” asked Uncle Benjamin; and, not waiting for Valancy to “give it up,” he added, “Mir-age and marri-age.”
“M-i-r-a-g-e is pronounced mirazh,” said Valancy shortly, picking up her tea and her beans. For the moment she did not care whether Uncle Benjamin cut her out of his will or not. She walked out of the store