Miss Sally's Company Page #2

"Miss Sally's Company" is a charming story by Lucy Maud Montgomery that showcases the warmth and complexities of small-town life. Set against the backdrop of the fictional Canadian community, the narrative follows Miss Sally, a spirited woman who opens her home to a group of diverse visitors. Through their interactions, the book explores themes of friendship, love, and the importance of community, all infused with Montgomery's signature lyrical prose and rich character development. As the characters navigate their personal struggles and desires, readers are treated to a heartwarming tale of connection and discovery.

• Short story

								

bedroom beyond it, to put off their hats.

"Now, just excuse me a minute while I run out and tell Juliana that we
are going to have company to tea. She will be so glad, Juliana will.
Make yourselves at home, my dears."

"Isn't she delicious?" said Mary, when Miss Sally had tripped out.
"I'd like to shake Cousin Abner's girls. This is what Dot Halliday
would call an adventure, Ida."

"Isn't it! Miss Sally and this quaint old spot both seem like a
chapter out of the novels our grandmothers cried over. Look here,
Mary, she is lonely and our visit seems like a treat to her. Let us
try to make it one. Let's just chum with her and tell her all about
ourselves and our amusements and our dresses. That sounds frivolous,
but you know what I mean. She'll like it. Let's be company in real
earnest for her."

When Miss Sally came back, she was attended by Juliana carrying a tray
of lemonade glasses. Juliana proved to be a diminutive lass of about
fourteen whose cheerful, freckled face wore an expansive grin of
pleasure. Evidently Juliana was as fond of "company" as her mistress
was. Afterwards, the girls overheard a subdued colloquy between Miss
Sally and Juliana out in the hall.

"Go set the table, Juliana, and put on Grandmother Temple's wedding
china--be sure you dust it carefully--and the best tablecloth--and be
sure you get the crease straight--and put some sweet peas in the
centre--and be sure they are fresh. I want everything extra nice,
Juliana."

"Yes'm, Miss Sally, I'll see to it. Isn't it great to have company,
Miss Sally?" whispered Juliana.

The Seymour girls long remembered that tea table and the delicacies
with which it was heaped. Privately, they did not wonder that Juliana
had indigestion when she had to eat many such unaided. Being hungry,
they did full justice to Miss Sally's good things, much to that little
lady's delight.

She told them all about herself. She had lived at Golden Gate Cottage
only a year.

"Before that, I lived away down the country at Millbridge with a
cousin. My Uncle Ephraim owned Golden Gate Cottage, and when he died
he left it to me and I came here to live. It is a pretty place, isn't
it? You see those two headlands out there? In the morning, when the
sun rises, the water between them is just a sea of gold, and that is
why Uncle Ephraim had a fancy to call his place Golden Gate. I love it
here. It is so nice to have a home of my own. I would be quite content
if I had more company. But I have you today, and perhaps Beatrice and
Helen will come next week. So I've really a great deal to be thankful
for."

"What is your Cousin Abner's other name?" asked Mary, with a vague
recollection of hearing of Beatrice and Helen--somebody--in Trenton.

"Reed--Abner Abimelech Reed," answered Miss Sally promptly. "A.A.
Reed, he signs himself now. He is very well-to-do, I am told, and he
carries on business in town. He was a very fine young man, my Cousin
Abner. I don't know his wife."

Mary and Ida exchanged glances. Beatrice and Helen Reed! They knew
them slightly as the daughters of a new-rich family who were
hangers-on of the fashionable society in Trenton. They were regarded
as decidedly vulgar, and so far their efforts to gain an entry into
the exclusive circle where the Seymours and their like revolved had
not been very successful.

"I'm afraid Miss Sally will wait a long while before she sees Cousin
Abner's girls," said Mary, when they had gone back to the parlour and
Miss Sally had excused herself to superintend the washing of
Grandmother Temple's wedding china. "They probably look on her as a
poor relation to be ignored altogether; whereas, if they were only
like her, Trenton society would have made a place for them long ago."

The Seymour girls enjoyed that visit as much as Miss Sally did. She
was eager to hear all about their girlish lives and amusements. They
told her of their travels, of famous men and women they had seen, of
parties they had attended, the dresses they wore, the little fads and
hobbies of their set--all jumbled up together and all listened to
eagerly by Miss Sally and also by Juliana, who was permitted to sit on
the stairs out in the hall and so gather in the crumbs of this
intellectual feast.

"Oh, you've been such pleasant company," said Miss Sally when the
girls went away.

Mary took the little lady's hands in hers and looked affectionately
down into her face.

"Would you like it--you and Juliana--if we came out to see you often?
And perhaps brought some of our friends with us?"

"Oh, if you only would!" breathed Miss Sally.

Mary laughed and, obeying a sudden impulse, bent and kissed Miss
Sally's cheek.

"We'll come then," she promised. "Please look upon us as your 'steady
company' henceforth."

The girls kept their word. Thereafter, nearly every Saturday of the
summer found them taking tea with Miss Sally at Golden Gate. Sometimes
they came alone; sometimes they brought other girls. It soon became a
decided "fad" in their set to go to see Miss Sally. Everybody who met
her loved her at sight. It was considered a special treat to be taken
by the Seymours to Golden Gate.

As for Miss Sally, her cup of happiness was almost full. She had
"company" to her heart's content and of the very kind she
loved--bright, merry, fun-loving girls who devoured her dainties with
a frank zest that delighted her, filled the quaint old rooms with
laughter and life, and chattered to her of all their plans and frolics
and hopes. There was just one little cloud on Miss Sally's fair sky.

"If only Cousin Abner's girls would come!" she once said wistfully to
Mary. "Nobody can quite take the place of one's own, you know. My
heart yearns after them."

Mary was very silent and thoughtful as she drove back to Trenton that
night. Two days afterwards, she went to Mrs. Gardiner's lawn party.
The Reed girls were there. They were tall, fair, handsome girls,
somewhat too lavishly and pronouncedly dressed in expensive gowns and
hats, and looking, as they felt, very much on the outside of things.
They brightened and bridled, however, when Mrs. Gardiner brought Mary
Seymour up and introduced her. If there was one thing on earth that
the Reed girls longed for more than another it was to "get in" with
the Seymour girls.

After Mary had chatted with them for a few minutes in a friendly way,
she said, "I think we have a mutual friend in Miss Sally Temple of
Golden Gate, haven't we? I'm sure I've heard her speak of you."

The Reed girls flushed. They did not care to have the rich Seymour
girls know of their connection with that queer old cousin of their
father's who lived in that out-of-the-world spot up-country.

"She is a distant cousin of ours," said Beatrice carelessly, "but
we've never met her."
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