A Seaside Wooing by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Part 3
Watch on KineScope.
July Seventeenth
I have ‘talked’ many times with Mr Shelmardine in these past four days. He is staying here for several more weeks. This morning his message sent from the rocks was this:
‘I plan to see you at last. Tomorrow I will walk over and pass you.?
‘You must not. Aunt will wonder what is going on.’
‘No danger. Don’t worry. I will do nothing foolish?
I suppose he will come. He seems to want to very much.
Of course, I cannot stop him walking up and down on our end of the beach all day it he chooses. But if he does, Aunt will just go away and not come back here at all.
I wonder what I should wear tomorrow.
July Nineteenth
Yesterday morning Aunt Martha was happy and peaceful. It is terrible of me to deceive her like this and I do feel bad about it. I sat down on the sand and pretended to read a book called The Story of the Church in Africa – Aunt approves of books like that. I was so nervous!
In a while Aunt said loudly: ‘Marguerite, there is a man coming this way. We will move down the beach.’
And we moved. Poor Aunt!
Mr Shelmardine came bravely on. I felt my heart beating right to the end of my fingers. He stopped by the old fishing boat, lying on its side in the sand. Aunt had turned her back on him.
I lifted my head from my book and took a quick look. He lifted his hat with a smile in his eyes. Just then Aunt said, icily: ‘We will go home, Marguerite. That person clearly plans to push himself in here.’ And so, home we came.
This morning he ‘spoke’ by alphabet from the rocks:
‘Letter from Connie. Message for you. I’m going to give it to you myself. Do you ever go to church?’
Now, at home I go to church every week. But Aunt Martha and Mrs Saxby do not like the church here at Plover Sands, and will not even go in through the door.
And of course, I am not permitted to go either. But it was impossible to explain all this by the alphabet, so I just replied: ‘Not here.’
‘Will you not go tomorrow morning?’
‘Aunt will not let me.’
“Talk to her nicely.’
“Talking nicely never does any good. She doesn’t listen.’
‘Suppose Mrs Allardyce calls and offers to take you to church with her?’
I have said Mrs Allardyce’s name during a conversation with Aunt, and I have discovered that she disapproves of Mrs Allardyce. So I said:
It will be useless. I will ask Aunt to let me go to church, but I feel almost sure that she will not permit me.’
This evening Aunt was unusually kind, so I was brave enough to ask her.
‘Marguerite,’ she said seriously, ‘you know that I do not go to church here.’
‘But, Aunt,’ I went on, nervously, ‘couldn’t I go alone? It is not very far – and I will be very careful?
Aunt just gave me a look which said about forty different things, and I was turning away in misery when Mrs Saxby – wonderful Mrs Saxby – said:
I really think there would be no danger in letting the child go to church.’
Aunt always listens to what Mrs Saxby says, and so she looked at me, and said: ‘Well, I will think about it and let you know in the morning, Marguerite?
I do hope that Aunt Martha has a very good night’s sleep, and wakes up feeling that the world is a pleasant place.