Chapter 1

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_Title:_ By the Grace of Sarah Maud
_Date of first publication:_ 1905
_Author:_ L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery (1874-1942)
_Date first posted:_ Mar. 22, 2017
_Date last updated:_ Oct. 9, 2019
Faded Page eBook #20170334

This ebook was produced by: Alex White & the online Distributed
Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net

By the Grace of Sarah Maud
L. M. Montgomery
Drawings by Maud Tousey (1881-1968).
First published _Modern Women_, June 1905

[Illustration: “Betty said ‘good-evening’ very icily and completely
ignored the fact of Sarah Maud”]

Nesbitt panted into the station—too late. The train, with its load of
picnickers, was gone and there was no other train going west until late
in the afternoon.

“Confound it,” he said blackly. “And confound Murchison,” he added,
thinking of the acquaintance who had delayed him on the street to
discuss a slight matter of business.

He was left—there was no blinking that fact. The selected picnic ground
was fifty miles away, so that the wild notion that had crossed his brain
of getting a team and driving thereto had to be dismissed. No, there was
no picnic for him, and, as things had fallen out, much depended on that
picnic.

Nesbitt left the station in a mood of sickening depression. All the hope
and exhilaration of the morning had vanished. Betty would think he did
not care—and Clark was on the train. For a whole day Clark could wander
with Betty through romantic haunts, while he, Nesbitt, sulked in town.
Only a fool could fail to make use of such a golden opportunity, and
Clark was no fool.

“That is _my_ role,” Nesbitt thought miserably.

He was in love with Betty Stewart. But Betty was independent. They had
had some tiffs with a resulting half coolness. Nesbitt had not been sure
enough of his welcome to call for a fortnight. Then, with her usual
caprice, Betty unbent. She had sent him a note the previous day inviting
him to join a private picnic party to Maiden Lake.

“We will leave on the 10:15 train,” she wrote, “so be a good boy, stop
sulking, and come with us. If you come I shall know how to be very nice
to you, but if you don’t I shall know you are still sulking and I shall
be nice—to other people.”

Nesbitt had not been sulking, take his word for it, he was merely on his
dignity. That, of course, went to the winds at Betty’s beck. And this
was the result—he was wandering homeward alone through the People’s
Square behind the station and Betty and Clark were on their way to
Maiden Lake.

Nesbitt sat down on a bench in the square and was about to give himself
over to sulking in right good earnest, when he heard somebody crying.
Some twisting of neck discovered a small girl of about eight or nine
curled up on a bench across the walk behind him, with her face buried in
her arms and the ragged sailor hat on her head shaking in the emphasis
of her woe. She was sniffling in an unrestrained luxury of grief,
evidently thinking herself alone.

“Hello,” said Nesbitt, who hated to see children or animals suffering,
“it seems there is somebody besides myself in the world who is miserable
after all. This must be seen to.”

He went over and sat down on the other bench.

“What is the matter, sissy?” he asked gently.

Sissy squirmed around with a start, revealing a freckled, tear-spotted
face, and a very red little nose. She was not shy and she did not at all
resent his intrusion into her private troubles.

“I—can’t—get to the—pickernic,” she said between sobs.

“Did you miss your train, too?” asked Nesbitt with a smile. He could
still smile even in the wreck of all things, and his smile was very
winning. It won Sarah Maud Molloy’s young heart on the spot.

“Train nothing. We wasn’t goin’ on a train. We was goin’ to ride out to
Deerville in livery rigs—all Miss Beecham’s mission school kids. We was
goin’ to have a bully time. Ice cream, you know. Oh, gee! And I can’t
go!”

Sarah Maud’s pale blue eyes brimmed up with tears again.

“Won’t you tell me why?” implored Nesbitt. “That is—if it isn’t a
secret, I’d like to know.”

“Say, you’re funny! ’Tain’t any secret. I hain’t got any dress but
this,” touching the faded print she wore—“and Ma, she said at first I
could go. And then the Jones kids got _new white_ dresses for to wear
and Ma, she says she won’t lemme go ’cause she can’t git me a new dress,
and she ain’t goin’ to have the Jones kids better dressed than hern at a
pickernic. And I just howled and Ma, she said she’d skelp me if I didn’t
dry up, so I kem out here and I feel awful bad. I’d gone to the
pickernic ’thout any dress _at all_ ruther’n miss it. I never was in the
country afore and I wanted to see it.”

“I’m very sorry for you,” said Nesbitt gravely. “I can sympathize with
you for I also have missed my picnic today.”

“_Your_ clothes look pretty good,” said Sarah Maud, eying them
critically.

“It’s not a matter of clothes in my case—but the principle remains the
same. Now, look here—but first what’s your name?”

“It’s a good one—Sarah Maud Molly.”

“Very well, Sarah Maud, listen to me. We have both been
disappointed—let us cool our disappointment and have a strictly
exclusive picnic of our own. There’s a train leaving in half an hour for
the east. Come with me and we’ll go out to the Junction and turn
ourselves loose in the woods there. I don’t know whether I can manage
any ice cream, but we’ll have heaps of good things.”

Sarah Maud put her finger in her mouth.

“Say, are you bluffin’?”

“No, indeed! I’m in downright earnest. Go and ask your mother if she’ll
lend you to me for the day.”

“Can’t do that ’cause she’s gone up to the North End to scrub for a
woman and she won’t be back till night. But she won’t care. If you ain’t
puttin’ up a job I’ll go, Mister.”

“It’s a bargain. You wait here while I rush up town and invest all my
loose cash in some ready-to-wear eatables. We’ve been unjustly cheated
out of our picnic, Sarah Maud, but we’ll get even with Fate yet.”