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edwindvinas
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She was not even allowed to go to church. And Valancy took cold after
cold and ended up with bronchitis in June.
“None of _my_ family were ever like that,” said Mrs. Frederick,
implying that it must be a Stirling tendency.
“The Stirlings seldom take colds,” said Cousin Stickles resentfully.
_She_ had been a Stirling.
“I think,” said Mrs. Frederick, “that if a person makes up her mind
_not_ to have colds she will not _have_ colds.”
So that was the trouble. It was all Valancy’s own fault.
But on this particular morning Valancy’s unbearable grievance was that
she was called Doss. She had endured it for twenty-nine years, and all
at once she felt she could not endure it any longer. Her full name was
Valancy Jane. Valancy Jane was rather terrible, but she liked Valancy,
with its odd, out-land tang. It was always a wonder to Valancy that the
Stirlings had allowed her to be so christened. She had been told that
her maternal grandfather, old Amos Wansbarra, had chosen the name for
her. Her father had tacked on the Jane by way of civilising it, and the
whole connection got out of the difficulty by nicknaming her Doss. She
never got Valancy from any one but outsiders.
“Mother,” she said timidly, “would you mind calling me Valancy after
this? Doss seems so—so—I don’t like it.”
Mrs. Frederick looked at her daughter in astonishment. She wore glasses
with enormously strong lenses that gave her eyes a peculiarly
disagreeable appearance.
“What is the matter with Doss?”
“It—seems so childish,” faltered Valancy.
“Oh!” Mrs. Frederick had been a Wansbarra and the Wansbarra smile was
not an asset. “I see. Well, it should suit _you_ then. You are childish
enough in all conscience, my dear child.”
“I am twenty-nine,” said the dear child desperately.
“I wouldn’t proclaim it from the house-tops if I were you, dear,” said
Mrs. Frederick. “Twenty-nine! _I_ had been married nine years when I
was twenty-nine.”
“_I_ was married at seventeen,” said Cousin Stickles proudly.
Valancy looked at them furtively. Mrs. Frederick, except for those
terrible glasses and the hooked nose that made her look more like a
parrot than a parrot itself could look, was not ill-looking. At twenty
she might have been quite pretty. But Cousin Stickles! And yet
Christine Stickles had once been desirable in some man’s eyes. Valancy
felt that Cousin Stickles, with her broad, flat, wrinkled face, a mole
right on the end of her dumpy nose, bristling hairs on her chin,
wrinkled yellow neck, pale, protruding eyes, and thin, puckered mouth,
had yet this advantage over her—this right to look down on her. And
even yet Cousin Stickles was necessary to Mrs. Frederick. Valancy
wondered pitifully what it would be like to be wanted by some
one—needed by some one. No one in the whole world needed her, or would
miss anything from life if she dropped suddenly out of it. She was a
disappointment to her mother. No one loved her. She had never so much
as had a girl friend.
“I haven’t even a gift for friendship,” she had once admitted to
herself pitifully.
“Doss, you haven’t eaten your crusts,” said Mrs. Frederick rebukingly.
It rained all the forenoon without cessation. Valancy pieced a quilt.
Valancy hated piecing quilts. And there was no need of it. The house
was full of quilts. There were three big chests, packed with quilts, in
the attic. Mrs. Frederick had begun storing away quilts when Valancy
was seventeen and she kept on storing them, though it did not seem
likely that Valancy would ever need them. But Valancy must be at work
and fancy work materials were too expensive. Idleness was a cardinal
sin in the Stirling household. When Valancy had been a child she had
been made to write down every night, in a small, hated, black notebook,
all the minutes she had spent in idleness that day. On Sundays her
mother made her tot them up and pray over them.
On this particular forenoon of this day of destiny Valancy spent only
ten minutes in idleness. At least, Mrs. Frederick and Cousin Stickles
would have called it idleness. She went to her room to get a better
thimble and she opened _Thistle Harvest_ guiltily at random.
“The woods are so human,” wrote John Foster, “that to know them one
must live with them. An occasional saunter through them, keeping to the
well-trodden paths, will never admit us to their intimacy. If we wish
to be friends we must seek them out and win them by frequent, reverent
visits at all hours; by morning, by noon, and by night; and at all
seasons, in spring, in summer, in autumn, in winter. Otherwise we can
never really know them and any pretence we may make to the contrary
will never impose on them. They have their own effective way of keeping
aliens at a distance and shutting their hearts to mere casual
sightseers. It is of no use to seek the woods from any motive except
sheer love of them; they will find us out at once and hide all their
sweet, old-world secrets from us. But if they know we come to them
because we love them they will be very kind to us and give us such
treasures of beauty and delight as are not bought or sold in any