A Tangled Blog

Thomas Lynde was done with his share of the plowing for the day and went in to wash his face and have his supper. When he was done with the good meal his mother placed before him he washed his face again, not that it needed it. He was exceptionally tidy. But that was the kind of person Thomas was. He had been told as a small boy once that he must always was his face before and after supper whether it needed to be washed or not and so Thomas did. He was not the sort to question things.

"Well," said Thomas, after carefully hanging the dishtowel back on the hook, as he always did. "It's a nice enough night. I suppose I'll walk down to Cuthbert place."

His father said nothing, just puffed his pipe and nodded. But his mother looked up sharply.

"Mind you don't forget your hat," she warned.

Thomas never went anywhere without his hat. He had a head of pale blond hair that he didn't feel quite right about. The only other person in the town who had such pale, whitish hair was Harmon Andrews' maiden aunt. It looked all right on her, Thomas supposed, but on a boy of just eighteen it was queer. It was a relief to put on his hat and cover it up. In fact, in all of his eighteen years Thomas had never once gone out of the house without his hat. He would not have dreamed of it. Still, his mother always reminded him, as if she was sure he would forget. That was the kind of woman that his mother was.

Mrs. Lynde would not have wanted her son to think she was niggling or bothersome. She did not want him to think she was worrying over him. But the truth of the matter was that Mrs. Lynde had a strong suspicion that it was not little Matthew Cuthbert her son was going to see. Last winter, she would not have thought twice about it. It was nice of her son to go and see the Cuthbert boy, who was a bit of an invalid. Always coming down with something or another. Plus, Pa had his eye on that little field that bordered their south pasture. It would be easier to convince Cuthbert to sell if Thomas was friends with their boy. So Mrs. Lynde had not batted an eyelash.

But now it was spring and the Cuthbert boy was better and they had acquired the south field and set out a little stand of fruit trees in it, but still, here was Thomas, going down to Cuthbert Place almost every night now. The Cuthberts were nice enough, and Presbyterians, but poor as church mice, and just as shiftless as they could be. The father seemed to spend more time playing his fiddle than farming his land, and the mother, for all of her attendance at the church in town, was rumoured to have been a Papist in her youth. The children were hardly ever dressed decently – the boy swathed in layers of clothing, and the girl going round with her hair streaming out behind her. The whole kid and caboodle of them still lived in the little log cabin with the lean-to that George Cuthbert had built for himself when the town was founded, though near every other one of the settlers had built something better and bigger. And he didn't seem to mind. At night, Mrs. Lynde could see the little oil-paper windows lit up and glowing with warmth in the ways that glass window-panes never could.

The Lyndes were not uppity people, and so that was not the root of Mrs. Lynde's worry for her son. He was not going to see Matthew Cuthbert, and he had no especial bond with the father and the mother spoke very little English and so Thomas could not be going to see her. That left only one person, and Mrs. Lynde definitely did not want her son going to visit her.

She did not know what it was about Marilla Cuthbert that bothered her so. Perhaps it was her very name – it had such a weird, outlandish twang. Until last summer, the girl had always walked down the road with her brother on her way to school, wearing a coonskin cap that matched the boy's, and both of them chattering in that weird patois that their mother used. The girl's hair, as long and dark as a Mickmack Indian's, fell down her back and around her shoulders, loose, and whipped against her overly red cheeks. At only fifteen, the Cuthbert girl was taller than her brother – taller than Thomas. This, too, set Mrs. Lynde's teeth, though, again, she could not exactly say why.

Mrs. Lynde would have liked to tell her son to stay at home that night. She would have liked to voice some disapproval against the Cuthbert girl, and his going to see her, but the truth is – the truest truth – is that Mrs. Lynde loved her son more than anything in the world and did not know how to say these things to him. She did not even know how to say how much she loved him. So instead,

"Go on, then," she said disapprovingly. "Mind you don't track dust in when you come home, Thomas, for I've just swept the floor."