CHAPTER V

Of course she must buy the tea in Uncle Benjamin’s grocery-store. To
buy it anywhere else was unthinkable. Yet Valancy hated to go to Uncle
Benjamin’s store on her twenty-ninth birthday. There was no hope that
he would not remember it.

“Why,” demanded Uncle Benjamin, leeringly, as he tied up her tea, “are
young ladies like bad grammarians?”

Valancy, with Uncle Benjamin’s will in the background of her mind, said
meekly, “I don’t know. Why?”

“Because,” chuckled Uncle Benjamin, “they can’t decline matrimony.”

The two clerks, Joe Hammond and Claude Bertram, chuckled also, and
Valancy disliked them a little more than ever. On the first day Claude
Bertram had seen her in the store she had heard him whisper to Joe,
“Who is that?” And Joe had said, “Valancy Stirling—one of the Deerwood
old maids.” “Curable or incurable?” Claude had asked with a snicker,
evidently thinking the question very clever. Valancy smarted anew with
the sting of that old recollection.

“Twenty-nine,” Uncle Benjamin was saying. “Dear me, Doss, you’re
dangerously near the second corner and not even thinking of getting
married yet. Twenty-nine. It seems impossible.”

Then Uncle Benjamin said an original thing. Uncle Benjamin said, “How
time does fly!”

“_I_ think it _crawls_,” said Valancy passionately. Passion was so
alien to Uncle Benjamin’s conception of Valancy that he didn’t know
what to make of her. To cover his confusion, he asked another conundrum
as he tied up her beans—Cousin Stickles had remembered at the last
moment that they must have beans. Beans were cheap and filling.

“What two ages are apt to prove illusory?” asked Uncle Benjamin; and,
not waiting for Valancy to “give it up,” he added, “Mir-age and
marri-age.”

“M-i-r-a-g-e is pronounced _mirazh_,” said Valancy shortly, picking up
her tea and her beans. For the moment she did not care whether Uncle
Benjamin cut her out of his will or not. She walked out of the store
while Uncle Benjamin stared after her with his mouth open. Then he
shook his head.

“Poor Doss is taking it hard,” he said.

Valancy was sorry by the time she reached the next crossing. Why had
she lost her patience like that? Uncle Benjamin would be annoyed and
would likely tell her mother that Doss had been impertinent—“to
_me_!”—and her mother would lecture her for a week.

“I’ve held my tongue for twenty years,” thought Valancy. “Why couldn’t
I have held it once more?”

Yes, it was just twenty, Valancy reflected, since she had first been
twitted with her loverless condition. She remembered the bitter moment
perfectly. She was just nine years old and she was standing alone on
the school playground while the other little girls of her class were
playing a game in which you must be chosen by a boy as his partner
before you could play. Nobody had chosen Valancy—little, pale,
black-haired Valancy, with her prim, long-sleeved apron and odd,
slanted eyes.

“Oh,” said a pretty little girl to her, “I’m so sorry for you. You
haven’t got a beau.”

Valancy had said defiantly, as she continued to say for twenty years,
“I don’t _want_ a beau.” But this afternoon Valancy once and for all
stopped saying that.

“I’m going to be honest with myself anyhow,” she thought savagely.
“Uncle Benjamin’s riddles hurt me because they are true. I _do_ want to
be married. I want a house of my own—I want a husband of my own—I want
sweet, little fat _babies_ of my own—” Valancy stopped suddenly aghast
at her own recklessness. She felt sure that Rev. Dr. Stalling, who
passed her at this moment, read her thoughts and disapproved of them
thoroughly. Valancy was afraid of Dr. Stalling—had been afraid of him
ever since the Sunday, twenty-three years before, when he had first
come to St. Albans’. Valancy had been too late for Sunday School that
day and she had gone into the church timidly and sat in their pew. No
one else was in the church—nobody except the new rector, Dr. Stalling.
Dr. Stalling stood up in front of the choir door, beckoned to her, and
said sternly, “Little boy, come up here.”

Valancy had stared around her. There was no little boy—there was no one
in all the huge church but herself. This strange man with the blue
glasses couldn’t mean her. She was not a boy.

“Little boy,” repeated Dr. Stalling, more sternly still, shaking his
forefinger fiercely at her, “come up here at once!”

Valancy arose as if hypnotised and walked up the aisle. She was too
terrified to do anything else. What dreadful thing was going to happen
to her? What _had_ happened to her? Had she actually turned into a boy?
She came to a stop in front of Dr. Stalling. Dr. Stalling shook his
forefinger—such a long, knuckly forefinger—at her and said:

“Little boy, take off your hat.”

Valancy took off her hat. She had a scrawny little pigtail hanging down
her back, but Dr. Stalling was shortsighted and did not perceive it.

“Little boy, go back to your seat and _always_ take off your hat in
church. _Remember!_”

Valancy went back to her seat carrying her hat like an automaton.
Presently her mother came in.

“Doss,” said Mrs. Stirling, “what do you mean by taking off your hat?
Put it on instantly!”

Valancy put it on instantly. She was cold with fear lest Dr. Stalling
should immediately summon her up front again. She would have to go, of
course—it never occurred to her that one could disobey the rector—and
the church was full of people now. Oh, what would she do if that
horrible, stabbing forefinger were shaken at her again before all those
people? Valancy sat through the whole service in an agony of dread and
was sick for a week afterwards. Nobody knew why—Mrs. Frederick again
bemoaned herself of her delicate child.

Dr. Stalling found out his mistake and laughed over it to Valancy—who
did not laugh. She never got over her dread of Dr. Stalling. And now to
be caught by him on the street corner, thinking such things!

Valancy got her John Foster book—_Magic of Wings_. “His latest—all
about birds,” said Miss Clarkson. She had almost decided that she would
go home, instead of going to see Dr. Trent. Her courage had failed her.
She was afraid of offending Uncle James—afraid of angering her
mother—afraid of facing gruff, shaggy-browed old Dr. Trent, who would
probably tell her, as he had told Cousin Gladys, that her trouble was
entirely imaginary and that she only had it because she liked to have
it. No, she would not go; she would get a bottle of Redfern’s Purple
Pills instead. Redfern’s Purple Pills were the standard medicine of the
Stirling clan. Had they not cured Second Cousin Geraldine when five
doctors had given her up? Valancy always felt very sceptical concerning
the virtues of the Purple Pills; but there _might_ be something in
them; and it was easier to take them than to face Dr. Trent alone. She
would glance over the magazines in the reading-room a few minutes and
then go home.

Valancy tried to read a story, but it made her furious. On every page
was a picture of the heroine surrounded by adoring men. And here was
she, Valancy Stirling, who could not get a solitary beau! Valancy
slammed the magazine shut; she opened _Magic of Wings_. Her eyes fell
on the paragraph that changed her life.

“_Fear is the original sin_,” wrote John Foster. “_Almost all the evil
in the world has its origin in the fact that some one is afraid of
something._ It is a cold, slimy serpent coiling about you. It is
horrible to live with fear; and it is of all things degrading.”

Valancy shut _Magic of Wings_ and stood up. She would go and see Dr.
Trent.