Lucy Maud Montgomery - The Complete Novels of Lucy Maud Montgomery - 20 Titles in One Volume - Including Anne of Green Gables Series, Emily Starr Trilogy, The Blue Castle, The Story Girl & Pat of Silver Bush Series

“My name is Elizabeth Grayson.”

There was a silence … a very queer silence. The man looked at her for a moment without saying anything. Then he politely asked her to sit down.

“I’m waiting for Miss Shirley,” she explained. “She’s gone to see Mrs. Thompson about the Ladies’ Aid Supper. When she comes back we are going down to the end of the world.”

Now, if you have any notion of kidnaping me, Mr. Man!

“Of course. But meanwhile you might as well be comfortable. And I must do the honors. What would you like in the way of light refreshment? Mrs. Thompson’s cat has probably brought something in.”

Elizabeth sat down. She felt oddly happy and at home.

“Can I have just what I like?”

“Certainly.”

“Then,” said Elizabeth triumphantly, “I’d like some ice-cream with strawberry jam on it.”

The man rang a bell and gave an order. Yes, this must be Tomorrow … no doubt about it. Ice-cream and strawberry jam didn’t appear in this magical manner in Today, cats or no cats.

“We’ll set a share aside for your Miss Shirley,” said the man.

They were good friends right away. The man didn’t talk a great deal, but he looked at Elizabeth very often. There was a tenderness in his face … a tenderness she had never seen before in anybody’s face, not even Miss Shirley’s. She felt that he liked her. And she knew that she liked him.

Finally he glanced out of the window and stood up.

“I think I must go now,” he said. “I see your Miss Shirley coming up the walk, so you’ll not be alone.”

“Won’t you wait and see Miss Shirley?” asked Elizabeth, licking her spoon to get the last vestige of the jam. Grandmother and the Woman would have died of horror had they seen her.

“Not this time,” said the man.

Elizabeth knew he hadn’t the slightest notion of kidnaping her, and she felt the strangest, most unaccountable sensation of disappointment.

“Good-by and thank you,” she said politely. “It is very nice here in Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“This is Tomorrow,” explained Elizabeth. “I’ve always wanted to get into Tomorrow and now I have.”

“Oh, I see. Well, I’m sorry to say I don’t care much about Tomorrow. I would like to get back into Yesterday.”

Little Elizabeth was sorry for him. But how could he be unhappy? How could any one living in Tomorrow be unhappy?

Elizabeth looked longingly back to Flying Cloud as they rowed away. Just as they pushed through the scrub spruces that fringed the shore to the road, she turned for another farewell look at it. A flying team of horses attached to a truck wagon whirled around the bend, evidently quite beyond their driver’s control.

Elizabeth heard Miss Shirley shriek… .

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The room went around oddly. The furniture nodded and jiggled. The bed … how came she to be in bed? Somebody with a white cap on was just going out of the door. What door? How funny one’s head felt! There were voices somewhere … low voices. She could not see who was talking, but somehow she knew it was Miss Shirley and the man.

What were they saying? Elizabeth heard sentences here and there, bobbing out of a confusion of murmuring.

“Are you really … ?” Miss Shirley’s voice sounded so excited..

“Yes … your letter … see for myself … before approaching Mrs. Campbell … Flying Cloud is the summer home of our General Manager… .”

If that room would only stay put! Really, things behaved rather queerly in Tomorrow. If she could only turn her head and see the talkers … Elizabeth gave a long sigh.

Then they came over to her bed … Miss Shirley and the man. Miss Shirley all tall and white, like a lily, looking as if she had been through some terrible experience but with some inner radiance shining behind it all … a radiance that seemed part of the golden sunset light which suddenly flooded the room. The man was smiling down at her. Elizabeth felt that he loved her very much and that there was some secret, tender and dear, between them which she would learn as soon as she had learned the language spoken in Tomorrow.

“Are you feeling better, darling?” said Miss Shirley.

“Have I been sick?”

“You were knocked down by a team of runaway horses on the mainland road,” said Miss Shirley. “I … I wasn’t quick enough. I thought you were killed. I brought you right back here in the flat and your … this gentleman telephoned for a doctor and nurse.”

“Will I die?” said little Elizabeth.

“No, indeed, darling. You were only stunned and you will be all right soon. And, Elizabeth darling, this is your father.”

“Father is in France. Am I in France, too?” Elizabeth would not have been surprised at it. Wasn’t this Tomorrow? Besides, things were still a bit wobbly.

“Father is very much here, my sweet.” He had such a delightful voice … you loved him for his voice. He bent and kissed her. “I’ve come for you. We’ll never be separated anymore.”

The woman in the white cap was coming in again. Somehow, Elizabeth knew whatever she had to say must be said before she got quite in.

“Will we live together?”

“Always,” said Father.

“And will Grandmother and the Woman live with us?”

“They will not,” said Father.

The sunset gold was fading and the nurse was looking her disapproval. But Elizabeth didn’t care.

“I’ve found Tomorrow,” she said, as the nurse looked Father and Miss Shirley out.

“I’ve found a treasure I didn’t know I possessed,” said Father, as the nurse shut the door on him. “And I can never thank you enough for that letter, Miss Shirley.”

“And so,” wrote Anne to Gilbert that night, “little Elizabeth’s road of mystery has led on to happiness and the end of her old world.”

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“Windy Poplars,

“Spook’s Lane,

“(For the last time),

“June 27th.

“DEAREST:

“I’ve come to another bend in the road. I’ve written you a good many letters in this old tower room these past three years. I suppose this is the last one I will write you for a long, long time. Because after this there won’t be any need of letters. In just a few weeks now we’ll belong to each other forever … we’ll be together. Just think of it … being together … talking, walking, eating. dreaming, planning together … sharing each other’s wonderful moments … making a home out of our house of dreams. Our house! Doesn’t that sound ‘mystic and wonderful,’ Gilbert? I’ve been building dream houses all my life and now one of them is going to come true. As to whom I really want to share my house of dreams with … well, I’ll tell you that at four o’clock next year.

“Three years sounded endless at the beginning, Gilbert. And now they are gone like a watch in the night. They have been very happy years … except for those first few months with the Pringles. After that, life has seemed to flow by like a pleasant golden river. And my old feud with the Pringles seems like a dream. They like me now for myself … they have forgotten they ever hated me. Cora Pringle, one of the Widow Pringle’s brood, brought me a bouquet of roses yesterday and twisted round the stems was a bit of paper bearing the legend, ‘To the sweetest teacher in the whole world.’ Fancy that for a Pringle!

“Jen is brokenhearted because I am leaving. I shall watch Jen’s career with interest. She is brilliant and rather unpredictable. One thing is certain … she will have no commonplace existence. She can’t look so much like Becky Sharp for nothing.

“Lewis Allen is going to McGill. Sophy Sinclair is going to Queen’s. Then she means to teach until she has saved up enough money to go to the School of Dramatic Expression in Kingsport. Myra Pringle is going to ‘enter society’ in the fall. She is so pretty that it won’t matter a bit that she wouldn’t know a past perfect participle if she met it on the street.