Their Girl Josie

"Their Girl Josie" is a heartwarming novella by Lucy Maud Montgomery, featuring the spirited and imaginative Josie Pye, a character familiar to fans of the "Anne of Green Gables" series. Set in the charming world of Prince Edward Island, the story follows Josie's adventures as she navigates the complexities of friendship, love, and self-discovery. With Montgomery's signature blend of humor and emotional depth, the novella explores themes of identity and belonging, showcasing Josie's growth as she learns to embrace her unique qualities and find her place in the world.

• Short story

								
When Paul Morgan, a rising young lawyer with justifiable political
aspirations, married Elinor Ashton, leading woman at the Green Square
Theatre, his old schoolmates and neighbours back in Spring Valley held
up their hands in horror, and his father and mother up in the
weather-grey Morgan homestead were crushed in the depths of
humiliation. They had been too proud of Paul ... their only son and
such a clever fellow ... and this was their punishment! He had married
an actress! To Cyrus and Deborah Morgan, brought up and nourished all
their lives on the strictest and straightest of old-fashioned beliefs
both as regards this world and that which is to come, this was a
tragedy.

They could not be brought to see it in any other light. As their
neighbours said, "Cy Morgan never hilt up his head again after Paul
married the play-acting woman." But perhaps it was less his
humiliation than his sorrow which bowed down his erect form and
sprinkled grey in his thick black hair that fifty years had hitherto
spared. For Paul, forgetting the sacrifices his mother and father had
made for him, had bitterly resented the letter of protest his father
had written concerning his marriage. He wrote one angry, unfilial
letter back and then came silence. Between grief and shame Cyrus and
Deborah Morgan grew old rapidly in the year that followed.

At the end of that time Elinor Morgan, the mother of an hour, died;
three months later Paul Morgan was killed in a railroad collision.
After the funeral Cyrus Morgan brought home to his wife their son's
little daughter, Joscelyn Morgan.

Her aunt, Annice Ashton, had wanted the baby. Cyrus Morgan had been
almost rude in his refusal. His son's daughter should never be brought
up by an actress; it was bad enough that her mother had been one and
had doubtless transmitted the taint to her child. But in Spring
Valley, if anywhere, it might be eradicated.

At first neither Cyrus nor Deborah cared much for Joscelyn. They
resented her parentage, her strange, un-Morgan-like name, and the
pronounced resemblance she bore to the dark-haired, dark-eyed mother
they had never seen. All the Morgans had been fair. If Joscelyn had
had Paul's blue eyes and golden curls her grandfather and grandmother
would have loved her sooner.

But the love came ... it had to. No living mortal could have resisted
Joscelyn. She was the most winsome and lovable little mite of babyhood
that ever toddled. Her big dark eyes overflowed with laughter before
she could speak, her puckered red mouth broke constantly into dimples
and cooing sounds. She had ways that no orthodox Spring Valley baby
ever thought of having. Every smile was a caress, every gurgle of
attempted speech a song. Her grandparents came to worship her and were
stricter than ever with her by reason of their love. Because she was
so dear to them she must be saved from her mother's blood.

Joscelyn shot up through a roly-poly childhood into slim, bewitching
girlhood in a chill repressive atmosphere. Cyrus and Deborah were
nothing if not thorough. The name of Joscelyn's mother was never
mentioned to her; she was never called anything but Josie, which
sounded more "Christian-like" than Joscelyn; and all the flowering out
of her alien beauty was repressed as far as might be in the plainest
and dullest of dresses and the primmest arrangement possible to
riotous ripe-brown curls.

The girl was never allowed to visit her Aunt Annice, although
frequently invited. Miss Ashton, however, wrote to her occasionally,
and every Christmas sent a box of presents which even Cyrus and
Deborah Morgan could not forbid her to accept, although they looked
with disapproving eyes and ominously set lips at the dainty, frivolous
trifles the actress woman sent. They would have liked to cast those
painted fans and lace frills and beflounced lingerie into the fire as
if they had been infected rags from a pest-house.

The path thus set for Joscelyn's dancing feet to walk in was indeed
sedate and narrow. She was seldom allowed to mingle with the young
people of even quiet, harmless Spring Valley; she was never allowed to
attend local concerts, much less take part in them; she was forbidden
to read novels, and Cyrus Morgan burned an old copy of Shakespeare
which Paul had given him years ago and which he had himself read and
treasured, lest its perusal should awaken unlawful instincts in
Joscelyn's heart. The girl's passion for reading was so marked that
her grandparents felt that it was their duty to repress it as far as
lay in their power.

But Joscelyn's vitality was such that all her bonds and bands served
but little to check or retard the growth of her rich nature. Do what
they might they could not make a Morgan of her. Her every step was a
dance, her every word and gesture full of a grace and virility that
filled the old folks with uneasy wonder. She seemed to them charged
with dangerous tendencies all the more potent from repression. She was
sweet-tempered and sunny, truthful and modest, but she was as little
like the trim, simple Spring Valley girls as a crimson rose is like a
field daisy, and her unlikeness bore heavily on her grandparents.

Yet they loved her and were proud of her. "Our girl Josie," as they
called her, was more to them than they would have admitted even to
themselves, and in the main they were satisfied with her, although the
grandmother grumbled because Josie did not take kindly to patchwork
and rug-making and the grandfather would fain have toned down that
exuberance of beauty and vivacity into the meeker pattern of
maidenhood he had been accustomed to.

When Joscelyn was seventeen Deborah Morgan noticed a change in her.
The girl became quieter and more brooding, falling at times into
strange, idle reveries, with her hands clasped over her knee and her
big eyes fixed unseeingly on space; or she would creep away for
solitary rambles in the beech wood, going away droopingly and
returning with dusky glowing cheeks and a nameless radiance, as of
some newly discovered power, shining through every muscle and motion.
Mrs. Morgan thought the child needed a tonic and gave her sulphur and
molasses.

One day the revelation came. Cyrus and Deborah had driven across the
valley to visit their married daughter. Not finding her at home they
returned. Mrs. Morgan went into the house while her husband went to
the stable. Joscelyn was not in the kitchen, but the grandmother heard
the sound of voices and laughter in the sitting room across the hall.

"What company has Josie got?" she wondered, as she opened the hall
door and paused for a moment on the threshold to listen. As she
listened her old face grew grey and pinched; she turned noiselessly
and left the house, and flew to her husband as one distracted.

"Cyrus, Josie is play-acting in the room ... laughing and reciting and
going on. I heard her. Oh, I've always feared it would break out in
her and it has! Come you and listen to her."

The old couple crept through the kitchen and across the hall to the

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