Chapter 4 Got your wrappers on,
Called Cousin Stickles,
As Valancy left the house.
Christine Stickles had never once forgotten to ask that question,
When Valancy went out on a damp day.
Yes.
Have you got your flannel petticoat on?
Asked Miss Frederick.
No.
Those,
I really do not understand you.
Do you want to catch your debt of gold again?
Her voice implied that Valancy had died of a cold several times already.
Go upstairs this minute and put it on.
Matter I don't need a flannel petticoat.
My satin one is warm enough.
Does remember you had bronchitis two years ago.
Go and do as you are told.
Valancy went,
Though nobody will ever know,
Just how near she came to hurling the rubber plant into the street before she went.
She hated that grey flannel petticoat more than any other garment she owned.
Olive never had to wear flannel petticoats.
Olive wore ruffled silk and firmly laced flounces.
But Olive's father had merit money and Olive never had bronchitis.
So there you were.
Are you sure you didn't leave the soap in the water?
Demanded Miss Frederick.
But Valancy was gone.
She turned at the corner and looked back down the ugly,
Prim,
Respectable street where she lived.
The sterling house was the ugliest on it,
More like a red brick box than anything else,
Too high for its breadth,
And made still higher by a bulbous glass cupola on top.
About it was the desolate,
Barren piece of an old house whose life is lived.
There was a very pretty little house with leaded casements and duped cables just around the corner.
A new house,
One of those houses you love the minute you see them.
Clayton Markley had built it for his bride.
He was to be married to Jenny Lloyd in June.
The little house,
It was said,
Was furnished from attic to cellar in complete readiness for its mistress.
I don't envy Jenny the man,
Thought Valancy sincerely.
Clayton Markley was not one of her many ideals.
But I do envy her the house.
It is such a nice young house.
Oh,
If I could only have a house of my own.
Ever so poor,
So tiny,
But my own.
But then,
She added bitterly,
There is no use in yowling for the moon when you can't even get a tallow candle.
In dreamland nothing would do Valancy but a castle of pale sapphire.
In real life she would have been fully satisfied with a little house of her own.
She envied Jenny Lloyd more fiercely than ever today.
Jenny was not so much better looking than she was,
And not so very much younger.
Yet she was to have this delightful house,
And the nicest little Wedgewood teacups.
Valancy had seen them,
An open fireplace and monogrammed linen,
Hemstitched table clothes,
And china closets.
Why did everything come to some girls and nothing to others?
It wasn't fair.
Valancy was once more seething with rebellion as she walked along a prim,
Dowdy little figure in her shabby raincoat and three-year-old hat,
Splashed occasionally by the mud of passing mortar with its insulting shrieks.
Mortars were still rather a novelty in Deerwood,
Though they were common in Port Lawrence,
And most of the summer residents up at Muskoka had them.
In Deerwood only some of the smart set had them,
For even Deerwood was divided into sets.
There was the smart set,
The intellectual set,
And the old family set,
Of which the Stirlings were members.
The common run and the few pariahs.
Not one of the Stirling clan had as yet consented to a mortar,
Though all it was teasing her father to have one.
Valancy had never ever been in a mortar car,
But she did not tanker after this.
In truth,
She felt rather afraid of mortar cars,
Especially at night.
They seemed to be too much like big parrying beasts that might turn and crush you,
Or make some terrible savage leap somewhere.
On the steep mountain trails around her blue castle,
Only gaily caparisoned steeds might proudly pace.
In real life Valancy would have been quite contented to drive in a buggy behind a nice horse.
She got a buggy drive only when some uncle or cousin remembered to fling her a chance like a bone to a dog.
