Anne of Green Gables

ANNE OF GREEN GABLES

CHAPTER I. Mrs. Rachel Lynde Is Surprised

MRS. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down

into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies’ eardrops and

traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the

old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook

in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool

and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde’s Hollow it was a quiet,

well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs.

Rachel Lynde’s door without due regard for decency and decorum; it

probably was conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at her window,

keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children

up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never

rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof.

There are plenty of people, in Avonlea and out of it, who can attend

closely to their neighbors’ business by dint of neglecting their own;

but Mrs. Rachel Lynde was one of those capable creatures who can manage

their own concerns and those of other folks into the bargain. She was a

notable housewife; her work was always done and well done; she “ran” the

Sewing Circle, helped run the Sunday-school, and was the strongest prop

of the Church Aid Society and Foreign Missions Auxiliary. Yet with all

this Mrs. Rachel found abundant time to sit for hours at her kitchen

window, knitting “cotton warp” quilts--she had knitted sixteen of them,

as Avonlea housekeepers were wont to tell in awed voices--and keeping

a sharp eye on the main road that crossed the hollow and wound up

the steep red hill beyond. Since Avonlea occupied a little triangular

peninsula jutting out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, with water on two

sides of it, anybody who went out of it or into it had to pass over that

hill road and so run the unseen gauntlet of Mrs. Rachel’s all-seeing

eye.

She was sitting there one afternoon in early June. The sun was coming in

at the window warm and bright; the orchard on the slope below the house

was in a bridal flush of pinky-white bloom, hummed over by a myriad of

bees. Thomas Lynde--a meek little man whom Avonlea people called “Rachel

Lynde’s husband”--was sowing his late turnip seed on the hill field

beyond the barn; and Matthew Cuthbert ought to have been sowing his on

the big red brook field away over by Green Gables. Mrs. Rachel knew

that he ought because she had heard him tell Peter Morrison the evening

before in William J. Blair’s store over at Carmody that he meant to sow

his turnip seed the next afternoon. Peter had asked him, of course, for

Matthew Cuthbert had never been known to volunteer information about

anything in his whole life.

And yet here was Matthew Cuthbert, at half-past three on the afternoon

of a busy day, placidly driving over the hollow and up the hill;

moreover, he wore a white collar and his best suit of clothes, which was

plain proof that he was going out of Avonlea; and he had the buggy

and the sorrel mare, which betokened that he was going a considerable

distance. Now, where was Matthew Cuthbert going and why was he going

there?

Had it been any other man in Avonlea, Mrs. Rachel, deftly putting this

and that together, might have given a pretty good guess as to both

questions. But Matthew so rarely went from home that it must be

something pressing and unusual which was taking him; he was the shyest

man alive and hated to have to go among strangers or to any place where

he might have to talk. Matthew, dressed up with a white collar and

driving in a buggy, was something that didn’t happen often. Mrs. Rachel,

ponder as she might, could make nothing of it and her afternoon’s

enjoyment was spoiled.

“I’ll just step over to Green Gables after tea and find out from Marilla

where he’s gone and why,” the worthy woman finally concluded. “He

doesn’t generally go to town this time of year and he _never_ visits; if

he’d run out of turnip seed he wouldn’t dress up and take the buggy to

go for more; he wasn’t driving fast enough to be going for a doctor.

Yet something must have happened since last night to start him off. I’m

clean puzzled, that’s what, and I won’t know a minute’s peace of mind or

conscience until I know what has taken Matthew Cuthbert out of Avonlea

today.”

Accordingly after tea Mrs. Rachel set out; she had not far to go; the

big, rambling, orchard-embowered house where the Cuthberts lived was a

scant quarter of a mile up the road from Lynde’s Hollow. To be sure, the

long lane made it a good deal further. Matthew Cuthbert’s father, as

shy and silent as his son after him, had got as far away as he possibly

could from his fellow men without actually retreating into the woods

when he founded his homestead. Green Gables was built at the furthest

edge of his cleared land and there it was to this day, barely visible

from the main road along which all the other Avonlea houses were so

sociably situated. Mrs. Rachel Lynde did not call living in such a place

_living_ at all.

“It’s just _staying_, that’s what,” she said as she stepped along the

deep-rutted, grassy lane bordered with wild rose bushes. “It’s no wonder

Matthew and Marilla are both a little odd, living away back here by

themselves. Trees aren’t much company, though dear knows if they were

there’d be enough of them. I’d ruther look at people. To be sure, they

seem contented enough; but then, I suppose, they’re used to it. A body

can get used to anything, even to being hanged, as the Irishman said.”

With this Mrs. Rachel stepped out of the lane into the backyard of

Green Gables. Very green and neat and precise was that yard, set about

on one side with great patriarchal willows and on the other with prim

Lombardies. Not a stray stick nor stone was to be seen, for Mrs. Rachel

would have seen it if there had been. Privately she was of the opinion

that Marilla Cuthbert swept that yard over as often as she swept her

house. One could have eaten a meal off the ground without overbrimming

the proverbial peck of dirt.

Mrs. Rachel rapped smartly at the kitchen door and stepped in

when bidden to do so. The kitchen at Green Gables was a cheerful

apartment--or would have been cheerful if it had not been so painfully

clean as to give it something of the appearance of an unused parlor. Its

windows looked east and west; through the west one, looking out on

the back yard, came a flood of mellow June sunlight; but the east one,

whence you got a glimpse of the bloom white cherry-trees in the left

orchard and nodding, slender birches down in the hollow by the brook,

was greened over by a tangle of vines. Here sat Marilla Cuthbert, when

she sat at all, always slightly distrustful of sunshine, which seemed to

her too dancing and irresponsible a thing for a world which was meant to

be taken seriously; and here she sat now, knitting, and the table behind

her was laid for supper.

Mrs. Rachel, before she had fairly closed the door, had taken a mental

note of everything that was on that table. There were three plates laid,

so that Marilla must be expecting some one home with Matthew to tea; but

the dishes were everyday dishes and there was only crab-apple preserves

and one kind of cake, so that the expected company could not be any

particular company. Yet what of Matthew’s white collar and the sorrel

mare? Mrs. Rachel was getting fairly dizzy with this unusual mystery

about quiet, unmysterious Green Gables.

“Good evening, Rachel,” Marilla said briskly. “This is a real fine

evening, isn’t it? Won’t you sit down? How are all your folks?”

Something that for lack of any other name might be called friendship

existed and always had existed between Marilla Cuthbert and Mrs. Rachel,

in spite of--or perhaps because of--their dissimilarity.

Marilla was a tall, thin woman, with angles and without curves; her dark

hair showed some gray streaks and was always twisted up in a hard little

knot behind with two wire hairpins stuck aggressively through it. She

looked like a woman of narrow experience and rigid conscience, which she

was; but there was a saving something about her mouth which, if it had

been ever so slightly developed, might have been considered indicative

of a sense of humor.

“We’re all pretty well,” said Mrs. Rachel. “I was kind of afraid _you_

weren’t, though, when I saw Matthew starting off today. I thought maybe

he was going to the doctor’s.”

Marilla’s lips twitched understandingly. She had expected Mrs.

Rachel up; she had known that the sight of Matthew jaunting off so

unaccountably would be too much for her neighbor’s curiosity.

“Oh, no, I’m quite well although I had a bad headache yesterday,” she

said. “Matthew went to Bright River. We’re getting a little boy from an

orphan asylum in Nova Scotia and he’s coming on the train tonight.”

If Marilla had said that Matthew had gone to Bright River to meet a

kangaroo from Australia Mrs. Rachel could not have been more astonished.

She was actually stricken dumb for five seconds. It was unsupposable

that Marilla was making fun of her, but Mrs. Rachel was almost forced to

suppose it.

“Are you in earnest, Marilla?” she demanded when voice returned to her.

“Yes, of course,” said Marilla, as if getting boys from orphan asylums

in Nova Scotia were part of the usual spring work on any well-regulated

Avonlea farm instead of being an unheard of innovation.

Mrs. Rachel felt that she had received a severe mental jolt. She thought

in exclamation points. A boy! Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert of all people

adopting a boy! From an orphan asylum! Well, the world was certainly

turning upside down! She would be surprised at nothing after this!

Nothing!

“What on earth put such a notion into your head?” she demanded

disapprovingly.

This had been done without her advice being asked, and must perforce be

disapproved.

“Well, we’ve been thinking about it for some time--all winter in fact,”

returned Marilla. “Mrs. Alexander Spencer was up here one day before

Christmas and she said she was going to get a little girl from the

asylum over in Hopeton in the spring. Her cousin lives there and Mrs.

Spencer has visited her and knows all about it. So Matthew and I have

talked it over off and on ever since. We thought we’d get a boy. Matthew

is getting up in years, you know--he’s sixty--and he isn’t so spry as he

once was. His heart troubles him a good deal. And you know how desperate

hard it’s got to be to get hired help. There’s never anybody to be had

but those stupid, half-grown little French boys; and as soon as you do

get one broke into your ways and taught something he’s up and off to the

lobster canneries or the States. At first Matthew suggested getting a

Home boy. But I said ‘no’ flat to that. ‘They may be all right--I’m not

saying they’re not--but no London street Arabs for me,’ I said. ‘Give

me a native born at least. There’ll be a risk, no matter who we get. But

I’ll feel easier in my mind and sleep sounder at nights if we get a born

Canadian.’ So in the end we decided to ask Mrs. Spencer to pick us out

one when she went over to get her little girl. We heard last week she

was going, so we sent her word by Richard Spencer’s folks at Carmody

to bring us a smart, likely boy of about ten or eleven. We decided that

would be the best age--old enough to be of some use in doing chores

right off and young enough to be trained up proper. We mean to give him

a good home and schooling. We had a telegram from Mrs. Alexander Spencer

today--the mail-man brought it from the station--saying they were coming

on the five-thirty train tonight. So Matthew went to Bright River to

meet him. Mrs. Spencer will drop him off there. Of course she goes on to

White Sands station herself.”

Mrs. Rachel prided herself on always speaking her mind; she proceeded to

speak it now, having adjusted her mental attitude to this amazing piece

of news.

“Well, Marilla, I’ll just tell you plain that I think you’re doing a

mighty foolish thing--a risky thing, that’s what. You don’t know what

you’re getting. You’re bringing a strange child into your house and home

and you don’t know a single thing about him nor what his disposition is

like nor what sort of parents he had nor how he’s likely to turn out.

Why, it was only last week I read in the paper how a man and his wife up

west of the Island took a boy out of an orphan asylum and he set fire to

the house at night--set it _on purpose_, Marilla--and nearly burnt them to

a crisp in their beds. And I know another case where an adopted boy used

to suck the eggs--they couldn’t break him of it. If you had asked my

advice in the matter--which you didn’t do, Marilla--I’d have said for

mercy’s sake not to think of such a thing, that’s what.”

This Job’s comforting seemed neither to offend nor to alarm Marilla. She

knitted steadily on.

“I don’t deny there’s something in what you say, Rachel. I’ve had some

qualms myself. But Matthew was terrible set on it. I could see that, so

I gave in. It’s so seldom Matthew sets his mind on anything that when he

does I always feel it’s my duty to give in. And as for the risk, there’s

risks in pretty near everything a body does in this world. There’s risks

in people’s having children of their own if it comes to that--they don’t

always turn out well. And then Nova Scotia is right close to the Island.

It isn’t as if we were getting him from England or the States. He can’t

be much different from ourselves.”

“Well, I hope it will turn out all right,” said Mrs. Rachel in a tone

that plainly indicated her painful doubts. “Only don’t say I didn’t

warn you if he burns Green Gables down or puts strychnine in the well--I

heard of a case over in New Brunswick where an orphan asylum child did

that and the whole family died in fearful agonies. Only, it was a girl

in that instance.”

“Well, we’re not getting a girl,” said Marilla, as if poisoning wells

were a purely feminine accomplishment and not to be dreaded in the case

of a boy. “I’d never dream of taking a girl to bring up. I wonder at

Mrs. Alexander Spencer for doing it. But there, _she_ wouldn’t shrink

from adopting a whole orphan asylum if she took it into her head.”

Mrs. Rachel would have liked to stay until Matthew came home with his

imported orphan. But reflecting that it would be a good two hours at

least before his arrival she concluded to go up the road to Robert

Bell’s and tell the news. It would certainly make a sensation second

to none, and Mrs. Rachel dearly loved to make a sensation. So she took

herself away, somewhat to Marilla’s relief, for the latter felt

her doubts and fears reviving under the influence of Mrs. Rachel’s

pessimism.

“Well, of all things that ever were or will be!” ejaculated Mrs. Rachel

when she was safely out in the lane. “It does really seem as if I must

be dreaming. Well, I’m sorry for that poor young one and no mistake.

Matthew and Marilla don’t know anything about children and they’ll

expect him to be wiser and steadier than his own grandfather, if so be’s

he ever had a grandfather, which is doubtful. It seems uncanny to think

of a child at Green Gables somehow; there’s never been one there, for

Matthew and Marilla were grown up when the new house was built--if they

ever _were_ children, which is hard to believe when one looks at them.

I wouldn’t be in that orphan’s shoes for anything. My, but I pity him,

that’s what.”

So said Mrs. Rachel to the wild rose bushes out of the fulness of her

heart; but if she could have seen the child who was waiting patiently

at the Bright River station at that very moment her pity would have been

still deeper and more profound.

CHAPTER II. Matthew Cuthbert Is Surprised

MATTHEW Cuthbert and the sorrel mare jogged comfortably over the eight

miles to Bright River. It was a pretty road, running along between

snug farmsteads, with now and again a bit of balsamy fir wood to drive

through or a hollow where wild plums hung out their filmy bloom. The air

was sweet with the breath of many apple orchards and the meadows sloped

away in the distance to horizon mists of pearl and purple; while

“The little birds sang as if it were

The one day of summer in all the year.”

Matthew enjoyed the drive after his own fashion, except during the

moments when he met women and had to nod to them--for in Prince Edward

Island you are supposed to nod to all and sundry you meet on the road

whether you know them or not.

Matthew dreaded all women except Marilla and Mrs. Rachel; he had an

uncomfortable feeling that the mysterious creatures were secretly

laughing at him. He may have been quite right in thinking so, for he

was an odd-looking personage, with an ungainly figure and long iron-gray

hair that touched his stooping shoulders, and a full, soft brown beard

which he had worn ever since he was twenty. In fact, he had looked

at twenty very much as he looked at sixty, lacking a little of the

grayness.

When he reached Bright River there was no sign of any train; he thought

he was too early, so he tied his horse in the yard of the small Bright

River hotel and went over to the station house. The long platform was

almost deserted; the only living creature in sight being a girl who was

sitting on a pile of shingles at the extreme end. Matthew, barely noting

that it _was_ a girl, sidled past her as quickly as possible without

looking at her. Had he looked he could hardly have failed to notice the

tense rigidity and expectation of her attitude and expression. She was

sitting there waiting for something or somebody and, since sitting and

waiting was the only thing to do just then, she sat and waited with all

her might and main.

Matthew encountered the stationmaster locking up the ticket office

preparatory to going home for supper, and asked him if the five-thirty

train would soon be along.

“The five-thirty train has been in and gone half an hour ago,” answered

that brisk official. “But there was a passenger dropped off for you--a

little girl. She’s sitting out there on the shingles. I asked her to

go into the ladies’ waiting room, but she informed me gravely that she

preferred to stay outside. ‘There was more scope for imagination,’ she

said. She’s a case, I should say.”

“I’m not expecting a girl,” said Matthew blankly. “It’s a boy I’ve come

for. He should be here. Mrs. Alexander Spencer was to bring him over

from Nova Scotia for me.”

The stationmaster whistled.

“Guess there’s some mistake,” he said. “Mrs. Spencer came off the train

with that girl and gave her into my charge. Said you and your sister

were adopting her from an orphan asylum and that you would be along for

her presently. That’s all I know about it--and I haven’t got any more

orphans concealed hereabouts.”

“I don’t understand,” said Matthew helplessly, wishing that Marilla was

at hand to cope with the situation.

“Well, you’d better question the girl,” said the stationmaster

carelessly. “I dare say she’ll be able to explain--she’s got a tongue

of her own, that’s certain. Maybe they were out of boys of the brand you

wanted.”

He walked jauntily away, being hungry, and the unfortunate Matthew was

left to do that which was harder for him than bearding a lion in its

den--walk up to a girl--a strange girl--an orphan girl--and demand of

her why she wasn’t a boy. Matthew groaned in spirit as he turned about

and shuffled gently down the platform towards her.

She had been watching him ever since he had passed her and she had her

eyes on him now. Matthew was not looking at her and would not have seen

what she was really like if he had been, but an ordinary observer would

have seen this: A child of about eleven, garbed in a very short, very

tight, very ugly dress of yellowish-gray wincey. She wore a faded brown

sailor hat and beneath the hat, extending down her back, were two braids

of very thick, decidedly red hair. Her face was small, white and thin,

also much freckled; her mouth was large and so were her eyes, which

looked green in some lights and moods and gray in others.

So far, the ordinary observer; an extraordinary observer might have seen

that the chin was very pointed and pronounced; that the big eyes

were full of spirit and vivacity; that the mouth was sweet-lipped

and expressive; that the forehead was broad and full; in short,

our discerning extraordinary observer might have concluded that no

commonplace soul inhabited the body of this stray woman-child of whom

shy Matthew Cuthbert was so ludicrously afraid.

Matthew, however, was spared the ordeal of speaking first, for as soon

as she concluded that he was coming to her she stood up, grasping with

one thin brown hand the handle of a shabby, old-fashioned carpet-bag;

the other she held out to him.

“I suppose you are Mr. Matthew Cuthbert of Green Gables?” she said in

a peculiarly clear, sweet voice. “I’m very glad to see you. I was

beginning to be afraid you weren’t coming for me and I was imagining

all the things that might have happened to prevent you. I had made up

my mind that if you didn’t come for me tonight I’d go down the track to

that big wild cherry-tree at the bend, and climb up into it to stay all

night. I wouldn’t be a bit afraid, and it would be lovely to sleep in a

wild cherry-tree all white with bloom in the moonshine, don’t you think?

You could imagine you were dwelling in marble halls, couldn’t you? And

I was quite sure you would come for me in the morning, if you didn’t

tonight.”

Matthew had taken the scrawny little hand awkwardly in his; then and

there he decided what to do. He could not tell this child with the

glowing eyes that there had been a mistake; he would take her home and

let Marilla do that. She couldn’t be left at Bright River anyhow, no

matter what mistake had been made, so all questions and explanations

might as well be deferred until he was safely back at Green Gables.

“I’m sorry I was late,” he said shyly. “Come along. The horse is over in

the yard. Give me your bag.”

“Oh, I can carry it,” the child responded cheerfully. “It isn’t heavy.

I’ve got all my worldly goods in it, but it isn’t heavy. And if it isn’t

carried in just a certain way the handle pulls out--so I’d better

keep it because I know the exact knack of it. It’s an extremely old

carpet-bag. Oh, I’m very glad you’ve come, even if it would have been

nice to sleep in a wild cherry-tree. We’ve got to drive a long piece,

haven’t we? Mrs. Spencer said it was eight miles. I’m glad because I

love driving. Oh, it seems so wonderful that I’m going to live with you

and belong to you. I’ve never belonged to anybody--not really. But the

asylum was the worst. I’ve only been in it four months, but that was

enough. I don’t suppose you ever were an orphan in an asylum, so you

can’t possibly understand what it is like. It’s worse than anything you

could imagine. Mrs. Spencer said it was wicked of me to talk like

that, but I didn’t mean to be wicked. It’s so easy to be wicked without

knowing it, isn’t it? They were good, you know--the asylum people. But

there is so little scope for the imagination in an asylum--only just

in the other orphans. It was pretty interesting to imagine things about

them--to imagine that perhaps the girl who sat next to you was really

the daughter of a belted earl, who had been stolen away from her parents

in her infancy by a cruel nurse who died before she could confess. I

used to lie awake at nights and imagine things like that, because

I didn’t have time in the day. I guess that’s why I’m so thin--I _am_

dreadful thin, ain’t I? There isn’t a pick on my bones. I do love to

imagine I’m nice and plump, with dimples in my elbows.”

With this Matthew’s companion stopped talking, partly because she was

out of breath and partly because they had reached the buggy. Not another

word did she say until they had left the village and were driving down

a steep little hill, the road part of which had been cut so deeply into

the soft soil that the banks, fringed with blooming wild cherry-trees

and slim white birches, were several feet above their heads.

The child put out her hand and broke off a branch of wild plum that

brushed against the side of the buggy.

“Isn’t that beautiful? What did that tree, leaning out from the bank,

all white and lacy, make you think of?” she asked.

“Well now, I dunno,” said Matthew.

“Why, a bride, of course--a bride all in white with a lovely misty veil.

I’ve never seen one, but I can imagine what she would look like. I don’t

ever expect to be a bride myself. I’m so homely nobody will ever want to

marry me--unless it might be a foreign missionary. I suppose a foreign

missionary mightn’t be very particular. But I do hope that some day I

shall have a white dress. That is my highest ideal of earthly bliss. I

just love pretty clothes. And I’ve never had a pretty dress in my life

that I can remember--but of course it’s all the more to look forward

to, isn’t it? And then I can imagine that I’m dressed gorgeously. This

morning when I left the asylum I felt so ashamed because I had to wear

this horrid old wincey dress. All the orphans had to wear them, you

know. A merchant in Hopeton last winter donated three hundred yards of

wincey to the asylum. Some people said it was because he couldn’t sell

it, but I’d rather believe that it was out of the kindness of his heart,

wouldn’t you? When we got on the train I felt as if everybody must be

looking at me and pitying me. But I just went to work and imagined that

I had on the most beautiful pale blue silk dress--because when you _are_

imagining you might as well imagine something worth while--and a big

hat all flowers and nodding plumes, and a gold watch, and kid gloves and

boots. I felt cheered up right away and I enjoyed my trip to the Island

with all my might. I wasn’t a bit sick coming over in the boat. Neither

was Mrs. Spencer, although she generally is. She said she hadn’t time

to get sick, watching to see that I didn’t fall overboard. She said she

never saw the beat of me for prowling about. But if it kept her from

being seasick it’s a mercy I did prowl, isn’t it? And I wanted to see

everything that was to be seen on that boat, because I didn’t know

whether I’d ever have another opportunity. Oh, there are a lot more

cherry-trees all in bloom! This Island is the bloomiest place. I just

love it already, and I’m so glad I’m going to live here. I’ve always

heard that Prince Edward Island was the prettiest place in the world,

and I used to imagine I was living here, but I never really expected I

would. It’s delightful when your imaginations come true, isn’t it?

But those red roads are so funny. When we got into the train at

Charlottetown and the red roads began to flash past I asked Mrs. Spencer

what made them red and she said she didn’t know and for pity’s sake not

to ask her any more questions. She said I must have asked her a thousand

already. I suppose I had, too, but how are you going to find out about

things if you don’t ask questions? And what _does_ make the roads red?”

“Well now, I dunno,” said Matthew.

“Well, that is one of the things to find out sometime. Isn’t it splendid

to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes

me feel glad to be alive--it’s such an interesting world. It wouldn’t be

half so interesting if we knew all about everything, would it? There’d

be no scope for imagination then, would there? But am I talking too

much? People are always telling me I do. Would you rather I didn’t

talk? If you say so I’ll stop. I can _stop_ when I make up my mind to it,

although it’s difficult.”

Matthew, much to his own surprise, was enjoying himself. Like most quiet

folks he liked talkative people when they were willing to do the talking

themselves and did not expect him to keep up his end of it. But he had

never expected to enjoy the society of a little girl. Women were bad

enough in all conscience, but little girls were worse. He detested the

way they had of sidling past him timidly, with sidewise glances, as if

they expected him to gobble them up at a mouthful if they ventured to

say a word. That was the Avonlea type of well-bred little girl. But

this freckled witch was very different, and although he found it rather

difficult for his slower intelligence to keep up with her brisk mental

processes he thought that he “kind of liked her chatter.” So he said as

shyly as usual:

“Oh, you can talk as much as you like. I don’t mind.”

“Oh, I’m so glad. I know you and I are going to get along together

fine. It’s such a relief to talk when one wants to and not be told

that children should be seen and not heard. I’ve had that said to me a

million times if I have once. And people laugh at me because I use big

words. But if you have big ideas you have to use big words to express

them, haven’t you?”

“Well now, that seems reasonable,” said Matthew.

“Mrs. Spencer said that my tongue must be hung in the middle. But it

isn’t--it’s firmly fastened at one end. Mrs. Spencer said your place was

named Green Gables. I asked her all about it. And she said there were

trees all around it. I was gladder than ever. I just love trees. And

there weren’t any at all about the asylum, only a few poor weeny-teeny

things out in front with little whitewashed cagey things about them.

They just looked like orphans themselves, those trees did. It used to

make me want to cry to look at them. I used to say to them, ‘Oh, you

_poor_ little things! If you were out in a great big woods with other

trees all around you and little mosses and June bells growing over your

roots and a brook not far away and birds singing in your branches, you

could grow, couldn’t you? But you can’t where you are. I know just

exactly how you feel, little trees.’ I felt sorry to leave them behind

this morning. You do get so attached to things like that, don’t you? Is

there a brook anywhere near Green Gables? I forgot to ask Mrs. Spencer

that.”

“Well now, yes, there’s one right below the house.”

“Fancy. It’s always been one of my dreams to live near a brook. I

never expected I would, though. Dreams don’t often come true, do they?

Wouldn’t it be nice if they did? But just now I feel pretty nearly

perfectly happy. I can’t feel exactly perfectly happy because--well,

what color would you call this?”

She twitched one of her long glossy braids over her thin shoulder and

held it up before Matthew’s eyes. Matthew was not used to deciding on

the tints of ladies’ tresses, but in this case there couldn’t be much

doubt.

“It’s red, ain’t it?” he said.

The girl let the braid drop back with a sigh that seemed to come from

her very toes and to exhale forth all the sorrows of the ages.

“Yes, it’s red,” she said resignedly. “Now you see why I can’t be

perfectly happy. Nobody could who has red hair. I don’t mind the other

things so much--the freckles and the green eyes and my skinniness. I

can imagine them away. I can imagine that I have a beautiful rose-leaf

complexion and lovely starry violet eyes. But I _cannot_ imagine that

red hair away. I do my best. I think to myself, ‘Now my hair is a

glorious black, black as the raven’s wing.’ But all the time I _know_ it

is just plain red and it breaks my heart. It will be my lifelong sorrow.

I read of a girl once in a novel who had a lifelong sorrow but it wasn’t

red hair. Her hair was pure gold rippling back from her alabaster brow.

What is an alabaster brow? I never could find out. Can you tell me?”

“Well now, I’m afraid I can’t,” said Matthew, who was getting a little

dizzy. He felt as he had once felt in his rash youth when another boy

had enticed him on the merry-go-round at a picnic.

“Well, whatever it was it must have been something nice because she was

divinely beautiful. Have you ever imagined what it must feel like to be

divinely beautiful?”

“Well now, no, I haven’t,” confessed Matthew ingenuously.

“I have, often. Which would you rather be if you had the

choice--divinely beautiful or dazzlingly clever or angelically good?”

“Well now, I--I don’t know exactly.”

“Neither do I. I can never decide. But it doesn’t make much real

difference for it isn’t likely I’ll ever be either. It’s certain I’ll

never be angelically good. Mrs. Spencer says--oh, Mr. Cuthbert! Oh, Mr.

Cuthbert!! Oh, Mr. Cuthbert!!!”

That was not what Mrs. Spencer had said; neither had the child tumbled

out of the buggy nor had Matthew done anything astonishing. They had

simply rounded a curve in the road and found themselves in the “Avenue.”

The “Avenue,” so called by the Newbridge people, was a stretch of road

four or five hundred yards long, completely arched over with huge,

wide-spreading apple-trees, planted years ago by an eccentric old

farmer. Overhead was one long canopy of snowy fragrant bloom. Below the

boughs the air was full of a purple twilight and far ahead a glimpse

of painted sunset sky shone like a great rose window at the end of a

cathedral aisle.

Its beauty seemed to strike the child dumb. She leaned back in the

buggy, her thin hands clasped before her, her face lifted rapturously to

the white splendor above. Even when they had passed out and were driving

down the long slope to Newbridge she never moved or spoke. Still with

rapt face she gazed afar into the sunset west, with eyes that saw

visions trooping splendidly across that glowing background. Through

Newbridge, a bustling little village where dogs barked at them and small

boys hooted and curious faces peered from the windows, they drove, still

in silence. When three more miles had dropped away behind them the child

had not spoken. She could keep silence, it was evident, as energetically

as she could talk.

“I guess you’re feeling pretty tired and hungry,” Matthew ventured to

say at last, accounting for her long visitation of dumbness with the

only reason he could think of. “But we haven’t very far to go now--only

another mile.”

She came out of her reverie with a deep sigh and looked at him with the

dreamy gaze of a soul that had been wondering afar, star-led.

“Oh, Mr. Cuthbert,” she whispered, “that place we came through--that

white place--what was it?”

“Well now, you must mean the Avenue,” said Matthew after a few moments’

profound reflection. “It is a kind of pretty place.”

“Pretty? Oh, _pretty_ doesn’t seem the right word to use. Nor beautiful,

either. They don’t go far enough. Oh, it was wonderful--wonderful.

It’s the first thing I ever saw that couldn’t be improved upon by

imagination. It just satisfied me here”--she put one hand on her

breast--“it made a queer funny ache and yet it was a pleasant ache. Did

you ever have an ache like that, Mr. Cuthbert?”

“Well now, I just can’t recollect that I ever had.”

“I have it lots of times--whenever I see anything royally beautiful.

But they shouldn’t call that lovely place the Avenue. There is no

meaning in a name like that. They should call it--let me see--the

White Way of Delight. Isn’t that a nice imaginative name? When I don’t

like the name of a place or a person I always imagine a new one and

always think of them so. There was a girl at the asylum whose name was

Hepzibah Jenkins, but I always imagined her as Rosalia DeVere. Other

people may call that place the Avenue, but I shall always call it the

White Way of Delight. Have we really only another mile to go before we

get home? I’m glad and I’m sorry. I’m sorry because this drive has been

so pleasant and I’m always sorry when pleasant things end. Something

still pleasanter may come after, but you can never be sure. And it’s so

often the case that it isn’t pleasanter. That has been my experience

anyhow. But I’m glad to think of getting home. You see, I’ve never had

a real home since I can remember. It gives me that pleasant ache again

just to think of coming to a really truly home. Oh, isn’t that pretty!”

They had driven over the crest of a hill. Below them was a pond, looking

almost like a river so long and winding was it. A bridge spanned it

midway and from there to its lower end, where an amber-hued belt of

sand-hills shut it in from the dark blue gulf beyond, the water was a

glory of many shifting hues--the most spiritual shadings of crocus and

rose and ethereal green, with other elusive tintings for which no name

has ever been found. Above the bridge the pond ran up into fringing

groves of fir and maple and lay all darkly translucent in their wavering

shadows. Here and there a wild plum leaned out from the bank like a

white-clad girl tiptoeing to her own reflection. From the marsh at the

head of the pond came the clear, mournfully-sweet chorus of the frogs.

There was a little gray house peering around a white apple orchard on

a slope beyond and, although it was not yet quite dark, a light was

shining from one of its windows.

“That’s Barry’s pond,” said Matthew.

“Oh, I don’t like that name, either. I shall call it--let me see--the

Lake of Shining Waters. Yes, that is the right name for it. I know

because of the thrill. When I hit on a name that suits exactly it gives

me a thrill. Do things ever give you a thrill?”

Matthew ruminated.

“Well now, yes. It always kind of gives me a thrill to see them ugly

white grubs that spade up in the cucumber beds. I hate the look of

them.”

“Oh, I don’t think that can be exactly the same kind of a thrill. Do you

think it can? There doesn’t seem to be much connection between grubs

and lakes of shining waters, does there? But why do other people call it

Barry’s pond?”

“I reckon because Mr. Barry lives up there in that house. Orchard

Slope’s the name of his place. If it wasn’t for that big bush behind it

you could see Green Gables from here. But we have to go over the bridge

and round by the road, so it’s near half a mile further.”

“Has Mr. Barry any little girls? Well, not so very little either--about

my size.”

“He’s got one about eleven. Her name is Diana.”

“Oh!” with a long indrawing of breath. “What a perfectly lovely name!”

“Well now, I dunno. There’s something dreadful heathenish about it,

seems to me. I’d ruther Jane or Mary or some sensible name like that.

But when Diana was born there was a schoolmaster boarding there and they

gave him the naming of her and he called her Diana.”

“I wish there had been a schoolmaster like that around when I was born,

then. Oh, here we are at the bridge. I’m going to shut my eyes tight.

I’m always afraid going over bridges. I can’t help imagining that

perhaps, just as we get to the middle, they’ll crumple up like a

jack-knife and nip us. So I shut my eyes. But I always have to open them

for all when I think we’re getting near the middle. Because, you see, if

the bridge _did_ crumple up I’d want to _see_ it crumple. What a jolly

rumble it makes! I always like the rumble part of it. Isn’t it splendid

there are so many things to like in this world? There, we’re over. Now

I’ll look back. Good night, dear Lake of Shining Waters. I always say

good night to the things I love, just as I would to people. I think they

like it. That water looks as if it was smiling at me.”

When they had driven up the further hill and around a corner Matthew

said:

“We’re pretty near home now. That’s Green Gables over--”

“Oh, don’t tell me,” she interrupted breathlessly, catching at his

partially raised arm and shutting her eyes that she might not see his

gesture. “Let me guess. I’m sure I’ll guess right.”

She opened her eyes and looked about her. They were on the crest of a

hill. The sun had set some time since, but the landscape was still

clear in the mellow afterlight. To the west a dark church spire rose

up against a marigold sky. Below was a little valley and beyond a long,

gently-rising slope with snug farmsteads scattered along it. From one

to another the child’s eyes darted, eager and wistful. At last they

lingered on one away to the left, far back from the road, dimly white

with blossoming trees in the twilight of the surrounding woods. Over it,

in the stainless southwest sky, a great crystal-white star was shining

like a lamp of guidance and promise.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” she said, pointing.

Matthew slapped the reins on the sorrel’s back delightedly.

“Well now, you’ve guessed it! But I reckon Mrs. Spencer described it

so’s you could tell.”

“No, she didn’t--really she didn’t. All she said might just as well have

been about most of those other places. I hadn’t any real idea what it

looked like. But just as soon as I saw it I felt it was home. Oh, it

seems as if I must be in a dream. Do you know, my arm must be black and

blue from the elbow up, for I’ve pinched myself so many times today.

Every little while a horrible sickening feeling would come over me and

I’d be so afraid it was all a dream. Then I’d pinch myself to see if it

was real--until suddenly I remembered that even supposing it was only

a dream I’d better go on dreaming as long as I could; so I stopped

pinching. But it _is_ real and we’re nearly home.”

With a sigh of rapture she relapsed into silence. Matthew stirred

uneasily. He felt glad that it would be Marilla and not he who would

have to tell this waif of the world that the home she longed for was

not to be hers after all. They drove over Lynde’s Hollow, where it was

already quite dark, but not so dark that Mrs. Rachel could not see them

from her window vantage, and up the hill and into the long lane of Green

Gables. By the time they arrived at the house Matthew was shrinking from

the approaching revelation with an energy he did not understand. It was

not of Marilla or himself he was thinking or of the trouble this mistake

was probably going to make for them, but of the child’s disappointment.

When he thought of that rapt light being quenched in her eyes he had

an uncomfortable feeling that he was going to assist at murdering

something--much the same feeling that came over him when he had to kill

a lamb or calf or any other innocent little creature.

The yard was quite dark as they turned into it and the poplar leaves

were rustling silkily all round it.

“Listen to the trees talking in their sleep,” she whispered, as he

lifted her to the ground. “What nice dreams they must have!”

Then, holding tightly to the carpet-bag which contained “all her worldly

goods,” she followed him into the house.

CHAPTER III. Marilla Cuthbert Is Surprised

MARILLA came briskly forward as Matthew opened the door. But when her

eyes fell on the odd little figure in the stiff, ugly dress, with the

long braids of red hair and the eager, luminous eyes, she stopped short

in amazement.

“Matthew Cuthbert, who’s that?” she ejaculated. “Where is the boy?”

“There wasn’t any boy,” said Matthew wretchedly. “There was only _her_.”

He nodded at the child, remembering that he had never even asked her

name.

“No boy! But there _must_ have been a boy,” insisted Marilla. “We sent

word to Mrs. Spencer to bring a boy.”

“Well, she didn’t. She brought _her_. I asked the stationmaster. And I

had to bring her home. She couldn’t be left there, no matter where the

mistake had come in.”

“Well, this is a pretty piece of business!” ejaculated Marilla.

During this dialogue the child had remained silent, her eyes roving from

one to the other, all the animation fading out of her face. Suddenly

she seemed to grasp the full meaning of what had been said. Dropping her

precious carpet-bag she sprang forward a step and clasped her hands.

“You don’t want me!” she cried. “You don’t want me because I’m not a

boy! I might have expected it. Nobody ever did want me. I might have

known it was all too beautiful to last. I might have known nobody really

did want me. Oh, what shall I do? I’m going to burst into tears!”

Burst into tears she did. Sitting down on a chair by the table, flinging

her arms out upon it, and burying her face in them, she proceeded to cry

stormily. Marilla and Matthew looked at each other deprecatingly across

the stove. Neither of them knew what to say or do. Finally Marilla

stepped lamely into the breach.

“Well, well, there’s no need to cry so about it.”

“Yes, there _is_ need!” The child raised her head quickly, revealing a

tear-stained face and trembling lips. “_You_ would cry, too, if you were

an orphan and had come to a place you thought was going to be home and

found that they didn’t want you because you weren’t a boy. Oh, this is

the most _tragical_ thing that ever happened to me!”

Something like a reluctant smile, rather rusty from long disuse,

mellowed Marilla’s grim expression.

“Well, don’t cry any more. We’re not going to turn you out-of-doors

tonight. You’ll have to stay here until we investigate this affair.

What’s your name?”

The child hesitated for a moment.

“Will you please call me Cordelia?” she said eagerly.

“_Call_ you Cordelia? Is that your name?”

“No-o-o, it’s not exactly my name, but I would love to be called

Cordelia. It’s such a perfectly elegant name.”

“I don’t know what on earth you mean. If Cordelia isn’t your name, what

is?”

“Anne Shirley,” reluctantly faltered forth the owner of that name, “but,

oh, please do call me Cordelia. It can’t matter much to you what you

call me if I’m only going to be here a little while, can it? And Anne is

such an unromantic name.”

“Unromantic fiddlesticks!” said the unsympathetic Marilla. “Anne is a

real good plain sensible name. You’ve no need to be ashamed of it.”

“Oh, I’m not ashamed of it,” explained Anne, “only I like Cordelia

better. I’ve always imagined that my name was Cordelia--at least, I

always have of late years. When I was young I used to imagine it was

Geraldine, but I like Cordelia better now. But if you call me Anne

please call me Anne spelled with an E.”

“What difference does it make how it’s spelled?” asked Marilla with

another rusty smile as she picked up the teapot.

“Oh, it makes _such_ a difference. It _looks_ so much nicer. When you hear

a name pronounced can’t you always see it in your mind, just as if it

was printed out? I can; and A-n-n looks dreadful, but A-n-n-e looks so

much more distinguished. If you’ll only call me Anne spelled with an E I

shall try to reconcile myself to not being called Cordelia.”

“Very well, then, Anne spelled with an E, can you tell us how this

mistake came to be made? We sent word to Mrs. Spencer to bring us a boy.

Were there no boys at the asylum?”

“Oh, yes, there was an abundance of them. But Mrs. Spencer said

_distinctly_ that you wanted a girl about eleven years old. And the

matron said she thought I would do. You don’t know how delighted I was.

I couldn’t sleep all last night for joy. Oh,” she added reproachfully,

turning to Matthew, “why didn’t you tell me at the station that you

didn’t want me and leave me there? If I hadn’t seen the White Way of

Delight and the Lake of Shining Waters it wouldn’t be so hard.”

“What on earth does she mean?” demanded Marilla, staring at Matthew.

“She--she’s just referring to some conversation we had on the road,”

said Matthew hastily. “I’m going out to put the mare in, Marilla. Have

tea ready when I come back.”

“Did Mrs. Spencer bring anybody over besides you?” continued Marilla

when Matthew had gone out.

“She brought Lily Jones for herself. Lily is only five years old and she

is very beautiful and had nut-brown hair. If I was very beautiful and

had nut-brown hair would you keep me?”

“No. We want a boy to help Matthew on the farm. A girl would be of

no use to us. Take off your hat. I’ll lay it and your bag on the hall

table.”

Anne took off her hat meekly. Matthew came back presently and they sat

down to supper. But Anne could not eat. In vain she nibbled at the

bread and butter and pecked at the crab-apple preserve out of the little

scalloped glass dish by her plate. She did not really make any headway

at all.

“You’re not eating anything,” said Marilla sharply, eying her as if it

were a serious shortcoming. Anne sighed.

“I can’t. I’m in the depths of despair. Can you eat when you are in the

depths of despair?”

“I’ve never been in the depths of despair, so I can’t say,” responded

Marilla.

“Weren’t you? Well, did you ever try to _imagine_ you were in the depths

of despair?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Then I don’t think you can understand what it’s like. It’s a very

uncomfortable feeling indeed. When you try to eat a lump comes right

up in your throat and you can’t swallow anything, not even if it was a

chocolate caramel. I had one chocolate caramel once two years ago and it

was simply delicious. I’ve often dreamed since then that I had a lot

of chocolate caramels, but I always wake up just when I’m going to eat

them. I do hope you won’t be offended because I can’t eat. Everything is

extremely nice, but still I cannot eat.”

“I guess she’s tired,” said Matthew, who hadn’t spoken since his return

from the barn. “Best put her to bed, Marilla.”

Marilla had been wondering where Anne should be put to bed. She had

prepared a couch in the kitchen chamber for the desired and expected

boy. But, although it was neat and clean, it did not seem quite the

thing to put a girl there somehow. But the spare room was out of the

question for such a stray waif, so there remained only the east gable

room. Marilla lighted a candle and told Anne to follow her, which Anne

spiritlessly did, taking her hat and carpet-bag from the hall table as

she passed. The hall was fearsomely clean; the little gable chamber in

which she presently found herself seemed still cleaner.

Marilla set the candle on a three-legged, three-cornered table and

turned down the bedclothes.

“I suppose you have a nightgown?” she questioned.

Anne nodded.

“Yes, I have two. The matron of the asylum made them for me. They’re

fearfully skimpy. There is never enough to go around in an asylum, so

things are always skimpy--at least in a poor asylum like ours. I hate

skimpy night-dresses. But one can dream just as well in them as

in lovely trailing ones, with frills around the neck, that’s one

consolation.”

“Well, undress as quick as you can and go to bed. I’ll come back in a

few minutes for the candle. I daren’t trust you to put it out yourself.

You’d likely set the place on fire.”

When Marilla had gone Anne looked around her wistfully. The whitewashed

walls were so painfully bare and staring that she thought they must

ache over their own bareness. The floor was bare, too, except for a

round braided mat in the middle such as Anne had never seen before.

In one corner was the bed, a high, old-fashioned one, with four dark,

low-turned posts. In the other corner was the aforesaid three-cornered

table adorned with a fat, red velvet pincushion hard enough to turn the

point of the most adventurous pin. Above it hung a little six-by-eight

mirror. Midway between table and bed was the window, with an icy white

muslin frill over it, and opposite it was the wash-stand. The whole

apartment was of a rigidity not to be described in words, but which

sent a shiver to the very marrow of Anne’s bones. With a sob she

hastily discarded her garments, put on the skimpy nightgown and sprang

into bed where she burrowed face downward into the pillow and pulled

the clothes over her head. When Marilla came up for the light various

skimpy articles of raiment scattered most untidily over the floor and a

certain tempestuous appearance of the bed were the only indications of

any presence save her own.

She deliberately picked up Anne’s clothes, placed them neatly on a prim

yellow chair, and then, taking up the candle, went over to the bed.

“Good night,” she said, a little awkwardly, but not unkindly.

Anne’s white face and big eyes appeared over the bedclothes with a

startling suddenness.

“How can you call it a _good_ night when you know it must be the very

worst night I’ve ever had?” she said reproachfully.

Then she dived down into invisibility again.

Marilla went slowly down to the kitchen and proceeded to wash the supper

dishes. Matthew was smoking--a sure sign of perturbation of mind. He

seldom smoked, for Marilla set her face against it as a filthy habit;

but at certain times and seasons he felt driven to it and then Marilla

winked at the practice, realizing that a mere man must have some vent

for his emotions.

“Well, this is a pretty kettle of fish,” she said wrathfully. “This is

what comes of sending word instead of going ourselves. Richard Spencer’s

folks have twisted that message somehow. One of us will have to drive

over and see Mrs. Spencer tomorrow, that’s certain. This girl will have

to be sent back to the asylum.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” said Matthew reluctantly.

“You _suppose_ so! Don’t you know it?”

“Well now, she’s a real nice little thing, Marilla. It’s kind of a pity

to send her back when she’s so set on staying here.”

“Matthew Cuthbert, you don’t mean to say you think we ought to keep

her!”

Marilla’s astonishment could not have been greater if Matthew had

expressed a predilection for standing on his head.

“Well, now, no, I suppose not--not exactly,” stammered Matthew,

uncomfortably driven into a corner for his precise meaning. “I

suppose--we could hardly be expected to keep her.”

“I should say not. What good would she be to us?”

“We might be some good to her,” said Matthew suddenly and unexpectedly.

“Matthew Cuthbert, I believe that child has bewitched you! I can see as

plain as plain that you want to keep her.”

“Well now, she’s a real interesting little thing,” persisted Matthew.

“You should have heard her talk coming from the station.”

“Oh, she can talk fast enough. I saw that at once. It’s nothing in her

favor, either. I don’t like children who have so much to say. I don’t

want an orphan girl and if I did she isn’t the style I’d pick out.

There’s something I don’t understand about her. No, she’s got to be

despatched straightway back to where she came from.”

“I could hire a French boy to help me,” said Matthew, “and she’d be

company for you.”

“I’m not suffering for company,” said Marilla shortly. “And I’m not

going to keep her.”

“Well now, it’s just as you say, of course, Marilla,” said Matthew

rising and putting his pipe away. “I’m going to bed.”

To bed went Matthew. And to bed, when she had put her dishes away, went

Marilla, frowning most resolutely. And up-stairs, in the east gable, a

lonely, heart-hungry, friendless child cried herself to sleep.

CHAPTER IV. Morning at Green Gables

IT was broad daylight when Anne awoke and sat up in bed, staring

confusedly at the window through which a flood of cheery sunshine was

pouring and outside of which something white and feathery waved across

glimpses of blue sky.

For a moment she could not remember where she was. First came a

delightful thrill, as of something very pleasant; then a horrible

remembrance. This was Green Gables and they didn’t want her because she

wasn’t a boy!

But it was morning and, yes, it was a cherry-tree in full bloom outside

of her window. With a bound she was out of bed and across the floor.

She pushed up the sash--it went up stiffly and creakily, as if it hadn’t

been opened for a long time, which was the case; and it stuck so tight

that nothing was needed to hold it up.

Anne dropped on her knees and gazed out into the June morning, her eyes

glistening with delight. Oh, wasn’t it beautiful? Wasn’t it a lovely

place? Suppose she wasn’t really going to stay here! She would imagine

she was. There was scope for imagination here.

A huge cherry-tree grew outside, so close that its boughs tapped against

the house, and it was so thick-set with blossoms that hardly a leaf

was to be seen. On both sides of the house was a big orchard, one of

apple-trees and one of cherry-trees, also showered over with blossoms;

and their grass was all sprinkled with dandelions. In the garden below

were lilac-trees purple with flowers, and their dizzily sweet fragrance

drifted up to the window on the morning wind.

Below the garden a green field lush with clover sloped down to the

hollow where the brook ran and where scores of white birches grew,

upspringing airily out of an undergrowth suggestive of delightful

possibilities in ferns and mosses and woodsy things generally. Beyond it

was a hill, green and feathery with spruce and fir; there was a gap in

it where the gray gable end of the little house she had seen from the

other side of the Lake of Shining Waters was visible.

Off to the left were the big barns and beyond them, away down over

green, low-sloping fields, was a sparkling blue glimpse of sea.

Anne’s beauty-loving eyes lingered on it all, taking everything greedily

in. She had looked on so many unlovely places in her life, poor child;

but this was as lovely as anything she had ever dreamed.

She knelt there, lost to everything but the loveliness around her, until

she was startled by a hand on her shoulder. Marilla had come in unheard

by the small dreamer.

“It’s time you were dressed,” she said curtly.

Marilla really did not know how to talk to the child, and her

uncomfortable ignorance made her crisp and curt when she did not mean to

be.

Anne stood up and drew a long breath.

“Oh, isn’t it wonderful?” she said, waving her hand comprehensively at

the good world outside.

“It’s a big tree,” said Marilla, “and it blooms great, but the fruit

don’t amount to much never--small and wormy.”

“Oh, I don’t mean just the tree; of course it’s lovely--yes, it’s

_radiantly_ lovely--it blooms as if it meant it--but I meant everything,

the garden and the orchard and the brook and the woods, the whole big

dear world. Don’t you feel as if you just loved the world on a morning

like this? And I can hear the brook laughing all the way up here.

Have you ever noticed what cheerful things brooks are? They’re always

laughing. Even in winter-time I’ve heard them under the ice. I’m so glad

there’s a brook near Green Gables. Perhaps you think it doesn’t make any

difference to me when you’re not going to keep me, but it does. I shall

always like to remember that there is a brook at Green Gables even if

I never see it again. If there wasn’t a brook I’d be _haunted_ by the

uncomfortable feeling that there ought to be one. I’m not in the depths

of despair this morning. I never can be in the morning. Isn’t it a

splendid thing that there are mornings? But I feel very sad. I’ve just

been imagining that it was really me you wanted after all and that I was

to stay here for ever and ever. It was a great comfort while it lasted.

But the worst of imagining things is that the time comes when you have

to stop and that hurts.”

“You’d better get dressed and come down-stairs and never mind your

imaginings,” said Marilla as soon as she could get a word in edgewise.

“Breakfast is waiting. Wash your face and comb your hair. Leave the

window up and turn your bedclothes back over the foot of the bed. Be as

smart as you can.”

Anne could evidently be smart to some purpose for she was down-stairs

in ten minutes’ time, with her clothes neatly on, her hair brushed and

braided, her face washed, and a comfortable consciousness pervading her

soul that she had fulfilled all Marilla’s requirements. As a matter of

fact, however, she had forgotten to turn back the bedclothes.

“I’m pretty hungry this morning,” she announced as she slipped into the

chair Marilla placed for her. “The world doesn’t seem such a howling

wilderness as it did last night. I’m so glad it’s a sunshiny morning.

But I like rainy mornings real well, too. All sorts of mornings are

interesting, don’t you think? You don’t know what’s going to happen

through the day, and there’s so much scope for imagination. But I’m

glad it’s not rainy today because it’s easier to be cheerful and bear

up under affliction on a sunshiny day. I feel that I have a good deal

to bear up under. It’s all very well to read about sorrows and imagine

yourself living through them heroically, but it’s not so nice when you

really come to have them, is it?”

“For pity’s sake hold your tongue,” said Marilla. “You talk entirely too

much for a little girl.”

Thereupon Anne held her tongue so obediently and thoroughly that her

continued silence made Marilla rather nervous, as if in the presence of

something not exactly natural. Matthew also held his tongue,--but this

was natural,--so that the meal was a very silent one.

As it progressed Anne became more and more abstracted, eating

mechanically, with her big eyes fixed unswervingly and unseeingly on the

sky outside the window. This made Marilla more nervous than ever; she

had an uncomfortable feeling that while this odd child’s body might

be there at the table her spirit was far away in some remote airy

cloudland, borne aloft on the wings of imagination. Who would want such

a child about the place?

Yet Matthew wished to keep her, of all unaccountable things! Marilla

felt that he wanted it just as much this morning as he had the night

before, and that he would go on wanting it. That was Matthew’s way--take

a whim into his head and cling to it with the most amazing silent

persistency--a persistency ten times more potent and effectual in its

very silence than if he had talked it out.

When the meal was ended Anne came out of her reverie and offered to wash

the dishes.

“Can you wash dishes right?” asked Marilla distrustfully.

“Pretty well. I’m better at looking after children, though. I’ve had so

much experience at that. It’s such a pity you haven’t any here for me to

look after.”

“I don’t feel as if I wanted any more children to look after than I’ve

got at present. _You’re_ problem enough in all conscience. What’s to be

done with you I don’t know. Matthew is a most ridiculous man.”

“I think he’s lovely,” said Anne reproachfully. “He is so very

sympathetic. He didn’t mind how much I talked--he seemed to like it. I

felt that he was a kindred spirit as soon as ever I saw him.”

“You’re both queer enough, if that’s what you mean by kindred spirits,”

said Marilla with a sniff. “Yes, you may wash the dishes. Take plenty of

hot water, and be sure you dry them well. I’ve got enough to attend to

this morning for I’ll have to drive over to White Sands in the afternoon

and see Mrs. Spencer. You’ll come with me and we’ll settle what’s to be

done with you. After you’ve finished the dishes go up-stairs and make

your bed.”

Anne washed the dishes deftly enough, as Marilla, who kept a sharp eye

on the process, discerned. Later on she made her bed less successfully,

for she had never learned the art of wrestling with a feather tick.

But it was done somehow and smoothed down; and then Marilla, to get

rid of her, told her she might go out-of-doors and amuse herself until

dinnertime.

Anne flew to the door, face alight, eyes glowing. On the very threshold

she stopped short, wheeled about, came back and sat down by the table,

light and glow as effectually blotted out as if some one had clapped an

extinguisher on her.

“What’s the matter now?” demanded Marilla.

“I don’t dare go out,” said Anne, in the tone of a martyr relinquishing

all earthly joys. “If I can’t stay here there is no use in my loving

Green Gables. And if I go out there and get acquainted with all those

trees and flowers and the orchard and the brook I’ll not be able to help

loving it. It’s hard enough now, so I won’t make it any harder. I want

to go out so much--everything seems to be calling to me, ‘Anne, Anne,

come out to us. Anne, Anne, we want a playmate’--but it’s better not.

There is no use in loving things if you have to be torn from them, is

there? And it’s so hard to keep from loving things, isn’t it? That was

why I was so glad when I thought I was going to live here. I thought

I’d have so many things to love and nothing to hinder me. But that brief

dream is over. I am resigned to my fate now, so I don’t think I’ll

go out for fear I’ll get unresigned again. What is the name of that

geranium on the window-sill, please?”

“That’s the apple-scented geranium.”

“Oh, I don’t mean that sort of a name. I mean just a name you gave it

yourself. Didn’t you give it a name? May I give it one then? May I call

it--let me see--Bonny would do--may I call it Bonny while I’m here? Oh,

do let me!”

“Goodness, I don’t care. But where on earth is the sense of naming a

geranium?”

“Oh, I like things to have handles even if they are only geraniums. It

makes them seem more like people. How do you know but that it hurts a

geranium’s feelings just to be called a geranium and nothing else? You

wouldn’t like to be called nothing but a woman all the time. Yes, I

shall call it Bonny. I named that cherry-tree outside my bedroom window

this morning. I called it Snow Queen because it was so white. Of course,

it won’t always be in blossom, but one can imagine that it is, can’t

one?”

“I never in all my life saw or heard anything to equal her,” muttered

Marilla, beating a retreat down to the cellar after potatoes. “She

_is_ kind of interesting, as Matthew says. I can feel already that I’m

wondering what on earth she’ll say next. She’ll be casting a spell over

me, too. She’s cast it over Matthew. That look he gave me when he went

out said everything he said or hinted last night over again. I wish he

was like other men and would talk things out. A body could answer back

then and argue him into reason. But what’s to be done with a man who

just _looks?_”

Anne had relapsed into reverie, with her chin in her hands and her eyes

on the sky, when Marilla returned from her cellar pilgrimage. There

Marilla left her until the early dinner was on the table.

“I suppose I can have the mare and buggy this afternoon, Matthew?” said

Marilla.

Matthew nodded and looked wistfully at Anne. Marilla intercepted the

look and said grimly:

“I’m going to drive over to White Sands and settle this thing. I’ll take

Anne with me and Mrs. Spencer will probably make arrangements to send

her back to Nova Scotia at once. I’ll set your tea out for you and I’ll

be home in time to milk the cows.”

Still Matthew said nothing and Marilla had a sense of having wasted

words and breath. There is nothing more aggravating than a man who won’t

talk back--unless it is a woman who won’t.

Matthew hitched the sorrel into the buggy in due time and Marilla and

Anne set off. Matthew opened the yard gate for them and as they drove

slowly through, he said, to nobody in particular as it seemed:

“Little Jerry Buote from the Creek was here this morning, and I told him

I guessed I’d hire him for the summer.”

Marilla made no reply, but she hit the unlucky sorrel such a vicious

clip with the whip that the fat mare, unused to such treatment, whizzed

indignantly down the lane at an alarming pace. Marilla looked back once

as the buggy bounced along and saw that aggravating Matthew leaning over

the gate, looking wistfully after them.

CHAPTER V. Anne’s History

DO you know,” said Anne confidentially, “I’ve made up my mind to enjoy

this drive. It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy

things if you make up your mind firmly that you will. Of course, you

must make it up _firmly_. I am not going to think about going back to

the asylum while we’re having our drive. I’m just going to think about

the drive. Oh, look, there’s one little early wild rose out! Isn’t it

lovely? Don’t you think it must be glad to be a rose? Wouldn’t it be

nice if roses could talk? I’m sure they could tell us such lovely

things. And isn’t pink the most bewitching color in the world? I love

it, but I can’t wear it. Redheaded people can’t wear pink, not even in

imagination. Did you ever know of anybody whose hair was red when she

was young, but got to be another color when she grew up?”

“No, I don’t know as I ever did,” said Marilla mercilessly, “and I

shouldn’t think it likely to happen in your case either.”

Anne sighed.

“Well, that is another hope gone. ‘My life is a perfect graveyard of

buried hopes.’ That’s a sentence I read in a book once, and I say it

over to comfort myself whenever I’m disappointed in anything.”

“I don’t see where the comforting comes in myself,” said Marilla.

“Why, because it sounds so nice and romantic, just as if I were a

heroine in a book, you know. I am so fond of romantic things, and a

graveyard full of buried hopes is about as romantic a thing as one can

imagine, isn’t it? I’m rather glad I have one. Are we going across the

Lake of Shining Waters today?”

“We’re not going over Barry’s pond, if that’s what you mean by your Lake

of Shining Waters. We’re going by the shore road.”

“Shore road sounds nice,” said Anne dreamily. “Is it as nice as it

sounds? Just when you said ‘shore road’ I saw it in a picture in my

mind, as quick as that! And White Sands is a pretty name, too; but I

don’t like it as well as Avonlea. Avonlea is a lovely name. It just

sounds like music. How far is it to White Sands?”

“It’s five miles; and as you’re evidently bent on talking you might as

well talk to some purpose by telling me what you know about yourself.”

“Oh, what I _know_ about myself isn’t really worth telling,” said Anne

eagerly. “If you’ll only let me tell you what I _imagine_ about myself

you’ll think it ever so much more interesting.”

“No, I don’t want any of your imaginings. Just you stick to bald facts.

Begin at the beginning. Where were you born and how old are you?”

“I was eleven last March,” said Anne, resigning herself to bald facts

with a little sigh. “And I was born in Bolingbroke, Nova Scotia.

My father’s name was Walter Shirley, and he was a teacher in the

Bolingbroke High School. My mother’s name was Bertha Shirley. Aren’t

Walter and Bertha lovely names? I’m so glad my parents had nice names.

It would be a real disgrace to have a father named--well, say Jedediah,

wouldn’t it?”

“I guess it doesn’t matter what a person’s name is as long as he behaves

himself,” said Marilla, feeling herself called upon to inculcate a good

and useful moral.

“Well, I don’t know.” Anne looked thoughtful. “I read in a book once

that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I’ve never

been able to believe it. I don’t believe a rose _would_ be as nice if

it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage. I suppose my father could

have been a good man even if he had been called Jedediah; but I’m sure

it would have been a cross. Well, my mother was a teacher in the High

School, too, but when she married father she gave up teaching, of

course. A husband was enough responsibility. Mrs. Thomas said that they

were a pair of babies and as poor as church mice. They went to live in

a weeny-teeny little yellow house in Bolingbroke. I’ve never seen that

house, but I’ve imagined it thousands of times. I think it must have

had honeysuckle over the parlor window and lilacs in the front yard and

lilies of the valley just inside the gate. Yes, and muslin curtains in

all the windows. Muslin curtains give a house such an air. I was born

in that house. Mrs. Thomas said I was the homeliest baby she ever saw,

I was so scrawny and tiny and nothing but eyes, but that mother thought

I was perfectly beautiful. I should think a mother would be a better

judge than a poor woman who came in to scrub, wouldn’t you? I’m glad

she was satisfied with me anyhow; I would feel so sad if I thought I

was a disappointment to her--because she didn’t live very long after

that, you see. She died of fever when I was just three months old. I

do wish she’d lived long enough for me to remember calling her mother.

I think it would be so sweet to say ‘mother,’ don’t you? And father

died four days afterwards from fever too. That left me an orphan and

folks were at their wits’ end, so Mrs. Thomas said, what to do with

me. You see, nobody wanted me even then. It seems to be my fate.

Father and mother had both come from places far away and it was well

known they hadn’t any relatives living. Finally Mrs. Thomas said she’d

take me, though she was poor and had a drunken husband. She brought

me up by hand. Do you know if there is anything in being brought up

by hand that ought to make people who are brought up that way better

than other people? Because whenever I was naughty Mrs. Thomas would

ask me how I could be such a bad girl when she had brought me up by

hand--reproachful-like.

“Mr. and Mrs. Thomas moved away from Bolingbroke to Marysville, and I

lived with them until I was eight years old. I helped look after the

Thomas children--there were four of them younger than me--and I can tell

you they took a lot of looking after. Then Mr. Thomas was killed

falling under a train and his mother offered to take Mrs. Thomas and the

children, but she didn’t want me. Mrs. Thomas was at _her_ wits’ end, so

she said, what to do with me. Then Mrs. Hammond from up the river came

down and said she’d take me, seeing I was handy with children, and

I went up the river to live with her in a little clearing among the

stumps. It was a very lonesome place. I’m sure I could never have

lived there if I hadn’t had an imagination. Mr. Hammond worked a little

sawmill up there, and Mrs. Hammond had eight children. She had twins

three times. I like babies in moderation, but twins three times in

succession is _too much_. I told Mrs. Hammond so firmly, when the last

pair came. I used to get so dreadfully tired carrying them about.

“I lived up river with Mrs. Hammond over two years, and then Mr. Hammond

died and Mrs. Hammond broke up housekeeping. She divided her children

among her relatives and went to the States. I had to go to the asylum

at Hopeton, because nobody would take me. They didn’t want me at the

asylum, either; they said they were overcrowded as it was. But they had

to take me and I was there four months until Mrs. Spencer came.”

Anne finished up with another sigh, of relief this time. Evidently

she did not like talking about her experiences in a world that had not

wanted her.

“Did you ever go to school?” demanded Marilla, turning the sorrel mare

down the shore road.

“Not a great deal. I went a little the last year I stayed with Mrs.

Thomas. When I went up river we were so far from a school that I

couldn’t walk it in winter and there was vacation in summer, so I could

only go in the spring and fall. But of course I went while I was at

the asylum. I can read pretty well and I know ever so many pieces of

poetry off by heart--‘The Battle of Hohenlinden’ and ‘Edinburgh after

Flodden,’ and ‘Bingen on the Rhine,’ and lots of the ‘Lady of the Lake’

and most of ‘The Seasons,’ by James Thompson. Don’t you just love

poetry that gives you a crinkly feeling up and down your back? There

is a piece in the Fifth Reader--‘The Downfall of Poland’--that is just

full of thrills. Of course, I wasn’t in the Fifth Reader--I was only in

the Fourth--but the big girls used to lend me theirs to read.”

“Were those women--Mrs. Thomas and Mrs. Hammond--good to you?” asked

Marilla, looking at Anne out of the corner of her eye.

“O-o-o-h,” faltered Anne. Her sensitive little face suddenly flushed

scarlet and embarrassment sat on her brow. “Oh, they _meant_ to be--I

know they meant to be just as good and kind as possible. And when

people mean to be good to you, you don’t mind very much when they’re

not quite--always. They had a good deal to worry them, you know. It’s

very trying to have a drunken husband, you see; and it must be very

trying to have twins three times in succession, don’t you think? But I

feel sure they meant to be good to me.”

Marilla asked no more questions. Anne gave herself up to a silent

rapture over the shore road and Marilla guided the sorrel abstractedly

while she pondered deeply. Pity was suddenly stirring in her heart for

the child. What a starved, unloved life she had had--a life of drudgery

and poverty and neglect; for Marilla was shrewd enough to read between

the lines of Anne’s history and divine the truth. No wonder she had been

so delighted at the prospect of a real home. It was a pity she had to be

sent back. What if she, Marilla, should indulge Matthew’s unaccountable

whim and let her stay? He was set on it; and the child seemed a nice,

teachable little thing.

“She’s got too much to say,” thought Marilla, “but she might be trained

out of that. And there’s nothing rude or slangy in what she does say.

She’s ladylike. It’s likely her people were nice folks.”

The shore road was “woodsy and wild and lonesome.” On the right hand,

scrub firs, their spirits quite unbroken by long years of tussle with

the gulf winds, grew thickly. On the left were the steep red sandstone

cliffs, so near the track in places that a mare of less steadiness than

the sorrel might have tried the nerves of the people behind her. Down

at the base of the cliffs were heaps of surf-worn rocks or little sandy

coves inlaid with pebbles as with ocean jewels; beyond lay the sea,

shimmering and blue, and over it soared the gulls, their pinions

flashing silvery in the sunlight.

“Isn’t the sea wonderful?” said Anne, rousing from a long, wide-eyed

silence. “Once, when I lived in Marysville, Mr. Thomas hired an express

wagon and took us all to spend the day at the shore ten miles away.

I enjoyed every moment of that day, even if I had to look after the

children all the time. I lived it over in happy dreams for years.

But this shore is nicer than the Marysville shore. Aren’t those gulls

splendid? Would you like to be a gull? I think I would--that is, if I

couldn’t be a human girl. Don’t you think it would be nice to wake up at

sunrise and swoop down over the water and away out over that lovely blue

all day; and then at night to fly back to one’s nest? Oh, I can just

imagine myself doing it. What big house is that just ahead, please?”

“That’s the White Sands Hotel. Mr. Kirke runs it, but the season hasn’t

begun yet. There are heaps of Americans come there for the summer. They

think this shore is just about right.”

“I was afraid it might be Mrs. Spencer’s place,” said Anne mournfully.

“I don’t want to get there. Somehow, it will seem like the end of

everything.”

CHAPTER VI. Marilla Makes Up Her Mind

GET there they did, however, in due season. Mrs. Spencer lived in a big

yellow house at White Sands Cove, and she came to the door with surprise

and welcome mingled on her benevolent face.

“Dear, dear,” she exclaimed, “you’re the last folks I was looking for

today, but I’m real glad to see you. You’ll put your horse in? And how

are you, Anne?”

“I’m as well as can be expected, thank you,” said Anne smilelessly. A

blight seemed to have descended on her.

“I suppose we’ll stay a little while to rest the mare,” said Marilla,

“but I promised Matthew I’d be home early. The fact is, Mrs. Spencer,

there’s been a queer mistake somewhere, and I’ve come over to see where

it is. We sent word, Matthew and I, for you to bring us a boy from the

asylum. We told your brother Robert to tell you we wanted a boy ten or

eleven years old.”

“Marilla Cuthbert, you don’t say so!” said Mrs. Spencer in distress.

“Why, Robert sent word down by his daughter Nancy and she said you

wanted a girl--didn’t she, Flora Jane?” appealing to her daughter who

had come out to the steps.

“She certainly did, Miss Cuthbert,” corroborated Flora Jane earnestly.

“I’m dreadful sorry,” said Mrs. Spencer. “It’s too bad; but it certainly

wasn’t my fault, you see, Miss Cuthbert. I did the best I could and I

thought I was following your instructions. Nancy is a terrible flighty

thing. I’ve often had to scold her well for her heedlessness.”

“It was our own fault,” said Marilla resignedly. “We should have come

to you ourselves and not left an important message to be passed along

by word of mouth in that fashion. Anyhow, the mistake has been made and

the only thing to do now is to set it right. Can we send the child back

to the asylum? I suppose they’ll take her back, won’t they?”

“I suppose so,” said Mrs. Spencer thoughtfully, “but I don’t think

it will be necessary to send her back. Mrs. Peter Blewett was up here

yesterday, and she was saying to me how much she wished she’d sent by me

for a little girl to help her. Mrs. Peter has a large family, you know,

and she finds it hard to get help. Anne will be the very girl for her. I

call it positively providential.”

Marilla did not look as if she thought Providence had much to do with

the matter. Here was an unexpectedly good chance to get this unwelcome

orphan off her hands, and she did not even feel grateful for it.

She knew Mrs. Peter Blewett only by sight as a small, shrewish-faced

woman without an ounce of superfluous flesh on her bones. But she had

heard of her. “A terrible worker and driver,” Mrs. Peter was said to

be; and discharged servant girls told fearsome tales of her temper and

stinginess, and her family of pert, quarrelsome children. Marilla felt

a qualm of conscience at the thought of handing Anne over to her tender

mercies.

“Well, I’ll go in and we’ll talk the matter over,” she said.

“And if there isn’t Mrs. Peter coming up the lane this blessed minute!”

exclaimed Mrs. Spencer, bustling her guests through the hall into the

parlor, where a deadly chill struck on them as if the air had been

strained so long through dark green, closely drawn blinds that it had

lost every particle of warmth it had ever possessed. “That is real

lucky, for we can settle the matter right away. Take the armchair,

Miss Cuthbert. Anne, you sit here on the ottoman and don’t wriggle.

Let me take your hats. Flora Jane, go out and put the kettle on. Good

afternoon, Mrs. Blewett. We were just saying how fortunate it was you

happened along. Let me introduce you two ladies. Mrs. Blewett, Miss

Cuthbert. Please excuse me for just a moment. I forgot to tell Flora

Jane to take the buns out of the oven.”

Mrs. Spencer whisked away, after pulling up the blinds. Anne, sitting

mutely on the ottoman, with her hands clasped tightly in her lap,

stared at Mrs. Blewett as one fascinated. Was she to be given into the

keeping of this sharp-faced, sharp-eyed woman? She felt a lump coming

up in her throat and her eyes smarted painfully. She was beginning to

be afraid she couldn’t keep the tears back when Mrs. Spencer returned,

flushed and beaming, quite capable of taking any and every difficulty,

physical, mental or spiritual, into consideration and settling it out

of hand.

“It seems there’s been a mistake about this little girl, Mrs. Blewett,”

she said. “I was under the impression that Mr. and Miss Cuthbert wanted

a little girl to adopt. I was certainly told so. But it seems it was a

boy they wanted. So if you’re still of the same mind you were yesterday,

I think she’ll be just the thing for you.”

Mrs. Blewett darted her eyes over Anne from head to foot.

“How old are you and what’s your name?” she demanded.

“Anne Shirley,” faltered the shrinking child, not daring to make any

stipulations regarding the spelling thereof, “and I’m eleven years old.”

“Humph! You don’t look as if there was much to you. But you’re wiry. I

don’t know but the wiry ones are the best after all. Well, if I take you

you’ll have to be a good girl, you know--good and smart and respectful.

I’ll expect you to earn your keep, and no mistake about that. Yes, I

suppose I might as well take her off your hands, Miss Cuthbert. The

baby’s awful fractious, and I’m clean worn out attending to him. If you

like I can take her right home now.”

Marilla looked at Anne and softened at sight of the child’s pale face

with its look of mute misery--the misery of a helpless little creature

who finds itself once more caught in the trap from which it had escaped.

Marilla felt an uncomfortable conviction that, if she denied the appeal

of that look, it would haunt her to her dying day. Moreover, she did

not fancy Mrs. Blewett. To hand a sensitive, “highstrung” child over to

such a woman! No, she could not take the responsibility of doing that!

“Well, I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I didn’t say that Matthew and

I had absolutely decided that we wouldn’t keep her. In fact, I may say

that Matthew is disposed to keep her. I just came over to find out how

the mistake had occurred. I think I’d better take her home again and

talk it over with Matthew. I feel that I oughtn’t to decide on anything

without consulting him. If we make up our mind not to keep her we’ll

bring or send her over to you tomorrow night. If we don’t you may know

that she is going to stay with us. Will that suit you, Mrs. Blewett?”

“I suppose it’ll have to,” said Mrs. Blewett ungraciously.

During Marilla’s speech a sunrise had been dawning on Anne’s face. First

the look of despair faded out; then came a faint flush of hope;

her eyes grew deep and bright as morning stars. The child was quite

transfigured; and, a moment later, when Mrs. Spencer and Mrs. Blewett

went out in quest of a recipe the latter had come to borrow, she sprang

up and flew across the room to Marilla.

“Oh, Miss Cuthbert, did you really say that perhaps you would let me

stay at Green Gables?” she said, in a breathless whisper, as if speaking

aloud might shatter the glorious possibility. “Did you really say it? Or

did I only imagine that you did?”

“I think you’d better learn to control that imagination of yours, Anne,

if you can’t distinguish between what is real and what isn’t,” said

Marilla crossly. “Yes, you did hear me say just that and no more. It

isn’t decided yet and perhaps we will conclude to let Mrs. Blewett take

you after all. She certainly needs you much more than I do.”

“I’d rather go back to the asylum than go to live with her,” said Anne

passionately. “She looks exactly like a--like a gimlet.”

Marilla smothered a smile under the conviction that Anne must be

reproved for such a speech.

“A little girl like you should be ashamed of talking so about a lady and

a stranger,” she said severely. “Go back and sit down quietly and hold

your tongue and behave as a good girl should.”

“I’ll try to do and be anything you want me, if you’ll only keep me,”

said Anne, returning meekly to her ottoman.

When they arrived back at Green Gables that evening Matthew met them in

the lane. Marilla from afar had noted him prowling along it and guessed

his motive. She was prepared for the relief she read in his face when

he saw that she had at least brought Anne back with her. But she said

nothing, to him, relative to the affair, until they were both out in

the yard behind the barn milking the cows. Then she briefly told him

Anne’s history and the result of the interview with Mrs. Spencer.

“I wouldn’t give a dog I liked to that Blewett woman,” said Matthew with

unusual vim.

“I don’t fancy her style myself,” admitted Marilla, “but it’s that

or keeping her ourselves, Matthew. And, since you seem to want her, I

suppose I’m willing--or have to be. I’ve been thinking over the idea

until I’ve got kind of used to it. It seems a sort of duty. I’ve never

brought up a child, especially a girl, and I dare say I’ll make a

terrible mess of it. But I’ll do my best. So far as I’m concerned,

Matthew, she may stay.”

Matthew’s shy face was a glow of delight.

“Well now, I reckoned you’d come to see it in that light, Marilla,” he

said. “She’s such an interesting little thing.”

“It’d be more to the point if you could say she was a useful little

thing,” retorted Marilla, “but I’ll make it my business to see she’s

trained to be that. And mind, Matthew, you’re not to go interfering with

my methods. Perhaps an old maid doesn’t know much about bringing up

a child, but I guess she knows more than an old bachelor. So you just

leave me to manage her. When I fail it’ll be time enough to put your oar

in.”

“There, there, Marilla, you can have your own way,” said Matthew

reassuringly. “Only be as good and kind to her as you can without

spoiling her. I kind of think she’s one of the sort you can do anything

with if you only get her to love you.”

Marilla sniffed, to express her contempt for Matthew’s opinions

concerning anything feminine, and walked off to the dairy with the

pails.

“I won’t tell her tonight that she can stay,” she reflected, as she

strained the milk into the creamers. “She’d be so excited that she

wouldn’t sleep a wink. Marilla Cuthbert, you’re fairly in for it. Did

you ever suppose you’d see the day when you’d be adopting an orphan

girl? It’s surprising enough; but not so surprising as that Matthew

should be at the bottom of it, him that always seemed to have such a

mortal dread of little girls. Anyhow, we’ve decided on the experiment

and goodness only knows what will come of it.”

CHAPTER VII. Anne Says Her Prayers

WHEN Marilla took Anne up to bed that night she said stiffly:

“Now, Anne, I noticed last night that you threw your clothes all about

the floor when you took them off. That is a very untidy habit, and I

can’t allow it at all. As soon as you take off any article of clothing

fold it neatly and place it on the chair. I haven’t any use at all for

little girls who aren’t neat.”

“I was so harrowed up in my mind last night that I didn’t think about my

clothes at all,” said Anne. “I’ll fold them nicely tonight. They always

made us do that at the asylum. Half the time, though, I’d forget, I’d be

in such a hurry to get into bed nice and quiet and imagine things.”

“You’ll have to remember a little better if you stay here,” admonished

Marilla. “There, that looks something like. Say your prayers now and get

into bed.”

“I never say any prayers,” announced Anne.

Marilla looked horrified astonishment.

“Why, Anne, what do you mean? Were you never taught to say your prayers?

God always wants little girls to say their prayers. Don’t you know who

God is, Anne?”

“‘God is a spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable, in His being,

wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth,’” responded Anne

promptly and glibly.

Marilla looked rather relieved.

“So you do know something then, thank goodness! You’re not quite a

heathen. Where did you learn that?”

“Oh, at the asylum Sunday-school. They made us learn the whole

catechism. I liked it pretty well. There’s something splendid about some

of the words. ‘Infinite, eternal and unchangeable.’ Isn’t that grand? It

has such a roll to it--just like a big organ playing. You couldn’t quite

call it poetry, I suppose, but it sounds a lot like it, doesn’t it?”

“We’re not talking about poetry, Anne--we are talking about saying your

prayers. Don’t you know it’s a terrible wicked thing not to say your

prayers every night? I’m afraid you are a very bad little girl.”

“You’d find it easier to be bad than good if you had red hair,” said

Anne reproachfully. “People who haven’t red hair don’t know what trouble

is. Mrs. Thomas told me that God made my hair red _on purpose_, and I’ve

never cared about Him since. And anyhow I’d always be too tired at night

to bother saying prayers. People who have to look after twins can’t be

expected to say their prayers. Now, do you honestly think they can?”

Marilla decided that Anne’s religious training must be begun at once.

Plainly there was no time to be lost.

“You must say your prayers while you are under my roof, Anne.”

“Why, of course, if you want me to,” assented Anne cheerfully. “I’d do

anything to oblige you. But you’ll have to tell me what to say for this

once. After I get into bed I’ll imagine out a real nice prayer to say

always. I believe that it will be quite interesting, now that I come to

think of it.”

“You must kneel down,” said Marilla in embarrassment.

Anne knelt at Marilla’s knee and looked up gravely.

“Why must people kneel down to pray? If I really wanted to pray

I’ll tell you what I’d do. I’d go out into a great big field all

alone or into the deep, deep woods, and I’d look up into the

sky--up--up--up--into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was

no end to its blueness. And then I’d just _feel_ a prayer. Well, I’m

ready. What am I to say?”

Marilla felt more embarrassed than ever. She had intended to teach Anne

the childish classic, “Now I lay me down to sleep.” But she had, as I

have told you, the glimmerings of a sense of humor--which is simply

another name for a sense of the fitness of things; and it suddenly

occurred to her that that simple little prayer, sacred to white-robed

childhood lisping at motherly knees, was entirely unsuited to this

freckled witch of a girl who knew and cared nothing about God’s love,

since she had never had it translated to her through the medium of

human love.

“You’re old enough to pray for yourself, Anne,” she said finally. “Just

thank God for your blessings and ask Him humbly for the things you

want.”

“Well, I’ll do my best,” promised Anne, burying her face in Marilla’s

lap. “Gracious heavenly Father--that’s the way the ministers say it in

church, so I suppose it’s all right in private prayer, isn’t it?” she

interjected, lifting her head for a moment. “Gracious heavenly Father,

I thank Thee for the White Way of Delight and the Lake of Shining

Waters and Bonny and the Snow Queen. I’m really extremely grateful for

them. And that’s all the blessings I can think of just now to thank

Thee for. As for the things I want, they’re so numerous that it would

take a great deal of time to name them all, so I will only mention the

two most important. Please let me stay at Green Gables; and please let

me be good-looking when I grow up. I remain,

“Yours respectfully,

Anne Shirley.

“There, did I do all right?” she asked eagerly, getting up. “I could

have made it much more flowery if I’d had a little more time to think it

over.”

Poor Marilla was only preserved from complete collapse by remembering

that it was not irreverence, but simply spiritual ignorance on the part

of Anne that was responsible for this extraordinary petition. She tucked

the child up in bed, mentally vowing that she should be taught a prayer

the very next day, and was leaving the room with the light when Anne

called her back.

“I’ve just thought of it now. I should have said ‘Amen’ in place

of ‘yours respectfully,’ shouldn’t I?--the way the ministers do. I’d

forgotten it, but I felt a prayer should be finished off in some way, so

I put in the other. Do you suppose it will make any difference?”

“I--I don’t suppose it will,” said Marilla. “Go to sleep now like a good

child. Good night.”

“I can say good night tonight with a clear conscience,” said Anne,

cuddling luxuriously down among her pillows.

Marilla retreated to the kitchen, set the candle firmly on the table,

and glared at Matthew.

“Matthew Cuthbert, it’s about time somebody adopted that child and

taught her something. She’s next door to a perfect heathen. Will you

believe that she never said a prayer in her life till tonight? I’ll

send to the manse tomorrow and borrow the Peep of the Day series,

that’s what I’ll do. And she shall go to Sunday-school just as soon as

I can get some suitable clothes made for her. I foresee that I shall

have my hands full. Well, well, we can’t get through this world without

our share of trouble. I’ve had a pretty easy life of it so far, but my

time has come at last and I suppose I’ll just have to make the best of

it.”

CHAPTER VIII. Anne’s Bringing-up Is Begun

FOR reasons best known to herself, Marilla did not tell Anne that

she was to stay at Green Gables until the next afternoon. During the

forenoon she kept the child busy with various tasks and watched over her

with a keen eye while she did them. By noon she had concluded that Anne

was smart and obedient, willing to work and quick to learn; her most

serious shortcoming seemed to be a tendency to fall into daydreams in

the middle of a task and forget all about it until such time as she was

sharply recalled to earth by a reprimand or a catastrophe.

When Anne had finished washing the dinner dishes she suddenly confronted

Marilla with the air and expression of one desperately determined to

learn the worst. Her thin little body trembled from head to foot; her

face flushed and her eyes dilated until they were almost black; she

clasped her hands tightly and said in an imploring voice:

“Oh, please, Miss Cuthbert, won’t you tell me if you are going to send

me away or not? I’ve tried to be patient all the morning, but I really

feel that I cannot bear not knowing any longer. It’s a dreadful feeling.

Please tell me.”

“You haven’t scalded the dishcloth in clean hot water as I told you to

do,” said Marilla immovably. “Just go and do it before you ask any more

questions, Anne.”

Anne went and attended to the dishcloth. Then she returned to Marilla

and fastened imploring eyes on the latter’s face.

“Well,” said Marilla, unable to find any excuse for deferring her

explanation longer, “I suppose I might as well tell you. Matthew and I

have decided to keep you--that is, if you will try to be a good little

girl and show yourself grateful. Why, child, whatever is the matter?”

“I’m crying,” said Anne in a tone of bewilderment. “I can’t think why.

I’m glad as glad can be. Oh, _glad_ doesn’t seem the right word at all. I

was glad about the White Way and the cherry blossoms--but this! Oh, it’s

something more than glad. I’m so happy. I’ll try to be so good. It

will be uphill work, I expect, for Mrs. Thomas often told me I was

desperately wicked. However, I’ll do my very best. But can you tell me

why I’m crying?”

“I suppose it’s because you’re all excited and worked up,” said Marilla

disapprovingly. “Sit down on that chair and try to calm yourself. I’m

afraid you both cry and laugh far too easily. Yes, you can stay here and

we will try to do right by you. You must go to school; but it’s only a

fortnight till vacation so it isn’t worth while for you to start before

it opens again in September.”

“What am I to call you?” asked Anne. “Shall I always say Miss Cuthbert?

Can I call you Aunt Marilla?”

“No; you’ll call me just plain Marilla. I’m not used to being called

Miss Cuthbert and it would make me nervous.”

“It sounds awfully disrespectful to just say Marilla,” protested Anne.

“I guess there’ll be nothing disrespectful in it if you’re careful

to speak respectfully. Everybody, young and old, in Avonlea calls me

Marilla except the minister. He says Miss Cuthbert--when he thinks of

it.”

“I’d love to call you Aunt Marilla,” said Anne wistfully. “I’ve never

had an aunt or any relation at all--not even a grandmother. It would

make me feel as if I really belonged to you. Can’t I call you Aunt

Marilla?”

“No. I’m not your aunt and I don’t believe in calling people names that

don’t belong to them.”

“But we could imagine you were my aunt.”

“I couldn’t,” said Marilla grimly.

“Do you never imagine things different from what they really are?” asked

Anne wide-eyed.

“No.”

“Oh!” Anne drew a long breath. “Oh, Miss--Marilla, how much you miss!”

“I don’t believe in imagining things different from what they really

are,” retorted Marilla. “When the Lord puts us in certain circumstances

He doesn’t mean for us to imagine them away. And that reminds me. Go

into the sitting room, Anne--be sure your feet are clean and don’t

let any flies in--and bring me out the illustrated card that’s on the

mantelpiece. The Lord’s Prayer is on it and you’ll devote your spare

time this afternoon to learning it off by heart. There’s to be no more

of such praying as I heard last night.”

“I suppose I was very awkward,” said Anne apologetically, “but then, you

see, I’d never had any practice. You couldn’t really expect a person

to pray very well the first time she tried, could you? I thought out a

splendid prayer after I went to bed, just as I promised you I would.

It was nearly as long as a minister’s and so poetical. But would you

believe it? I couldn’t remember one word when I woke up this morning.

And I’m afraid I’ll never be able to think out another one as good.

Somehow, things never are so good when they’re thought out a second

time. Have you ever noticed that?”

“Here is something for you to notice, Anne. When I tell you to do

a thing I want you to obey me at once and not stand stock-still and

discourse about it. Just you go and do as I bid you.”

Anne promptly departed for the sitting-room across the hall; she

failed to return; after waiting ten minutes Marilla laid down her

knitting and marched after her with a grim expression. She found Anne

standing motionless before a picture hanging on the wall between the

two windows, with her eyes astar with dreams. The white and green light

strained through apple-trees and clustering vines outside fell over the

rapt little figure with a half-unearthly radiance.

“Anne, whatever are you thinking of?” demanded Marilla sharply.

Anne came back to earth with a start.

“That,” she said, pointing to the picture--a rather vivid chromo

entitled, “Christ Blessing Little Children”--“and I was just imagining I

was one of them--that I was the little girl in the blue dress, standing

off by herself in the corner as if she didn’t belong to anybody, like

me. She looks lonely and sad, don’t you think? I guess she hadn’t any

father or mother of her own. But she wanted to be blessed, too, so she

just crept shyly up on the outside of the crowd, hoping nobody would

notice her--except Him. I’m sure I know just how she felt. Her heart

must have beat and her hands must have got cold, like mine did when I

asked you if I could stay. She was afraid He mightn’t notice her. But

it’s likely He did, don’t you think? I’ve been trying to imagine it all

out--her edging a little nearer all the time until she was quite close

to Him; and then He would look at her and put His hand on her hair and

oh, such a thrill of joy as would run over her! But I wish the artist

hadn’t painted Him so sorrowful-looking. All His pictures are like that,

if you’ve noticed. But I don’t believe He could really have looked so

sad or the children would have been afraid of Him.”

“Anne,” said Marilla, wondering why she had not broken into this speech

long before, “you shouldn’t talk that way. It’s irreverent--positively

irreverent.”

Anne’s eyes marveled.

“Why, I felt just as reverent as could be. I’m sure I didn’t mean to be

irreverent.”

“Well, I don’t suppose you did--but it doesn’t sound right to talk so

familiarly about such things. And another thing, Anne, when I send you

after something you’re to bring it at once and not fall into mooning and

imagining before pictures. Remember that. Take that card and come right

to the kitchen. Now, sit down in the corner and learn that prayer off by

heart.”

Anne set the card up against the jugful of apple blossoms she had

brought in to decorate the dinner table--Marilla had eyed that

decoration askance, but had said nothing--propped her chin on her hands,

and fell to studying it intently for several silent minutes.

“I like this,” she announced at length. “It’s beautiful. I’ve heard it

before--I heard the superintendent of the asylum Sunday-school say it

over once. But I didn’t like it then. He had such a cracked voice and

he prayed it so mournfully. I really felt sure he thought praying was a

disagreeable duty. This isn’t poetry, but it makes me feel just the same

way poetry does. ‘Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.’

That is just like a line of music. Oh, I’m so glad you thought of making

me learn this, Miss--Marilla.”

“Well, learn it and hold your tongue,” said Marilla shortly.

Anne tipped the vase of apple blossoms near enough to bestow a soft

kiss on a pink-cupped bud, and then studied diligently for some moments

longer.

“Marilla,” she demanded presently, “do you think that I shall ever have

a bosom friend in Avonlea?”

“A--a what kind of friend?”

“A bosom friend--an intimate friend, you know--a really kindred spirit

to whom I can confide my inmost soul. I’ve dreamed of meeting her all

my life. I never really supposed I would, but so many of my loveliest

dreams have come true all at once that perhaps this one will, too. Do

you think it’s possible?”

“Diana Barry lives over at Orchard Slope and she’s about your age. She’s

a very nice little girl, and perhaps she will be a playmate for you when

she comes home. She’s visiting her aunt over at Carmody just now. You’ll

have to be careful how you behave yourself, though. Mrs. Barry is a

very particular woman. She won’t let Diana play with any little girl who

isn’t nice and good.”

Anne looked at Marilla through the apple blossoms, her eyes aglow with

interest.

“What is Diana like? Her hair isn’t red, is it? Oh, I hope not. It’s bad

enough to have red hair myself, but I positively couldn’t endure it in a

bosom friend.”

“Diana is a very pretty little girl. She has black eyes and hair and

rosy cheeks. And she is good and smart, which is better than being

pretty.”

Marilla was as fond of morals as the Duchess in Wonderland, and was

firmly convinced that one should be tacked on to every remark made to a

child who was being brought up.

But Anne waved the moral inconsequently aside and seized only on the

delightful possibilities before it.

“Oh, I’m so glad she’s pretty. Next to being beautiful oneself--and

that’s impossible in my case--it would be best to have a beautiful bosom

friend. When I lived with Mrs. Thomas she had a bookcase in her sitting

room with glass doors. There weren’t any books in it; Mrs. Thomas kept

her best china and her preserves there--when she had any preserves to

keep. One of the doors was broken. Mr. Thomas smashed it one night

when he was slightly intoxicated. But the other was whole and I used to

pretend that my reflection in it was another little girl who lived in

it. I called her Katie Maurice, and we were very intimate. I used to

talk to her by the hour, especially on Sunday, and tell her everything.

Katie was the comfort and consolation of my life. We used to pretend

that the bookcase was enchanted and that if I only knew the spell I

could open the door and step right into the room where Katie Maurice

lived, instead of into Mrs. Thomas’ shelves of preserves and china. And

then Katie Maurice would have taken me by the hand and led me out into a

wonderful place, all flowers and sunshine and fairies, and we would have

lived there happy for ever after. When I went to live with Mrs. Hammond

it just broke my heart to leave Katie Maurice. She felt it dreadfully,

too, I know she did, for she was crying when she kissed me good-bye

through the bookcase door. There was no bookcase at Mrs. Hammond’s. But

just up the river a little way from the house there was a long green

little valley, and the loveliest echo lived there. It echoed back every

word you said, even if you didn’t talk a bit loud. So I imagined that it

was a little girl called Violetta and we were great friends and I loved

her almost as well as I loved Katie Maurice--not quite, but almost, you

know. The night before I went to the asylum I said good-bye to Violetta,

and oh, her good-bye came back to me in such sad, sad tones. I had

become so attached to her that I hadn’t the heart to imagine a bosom

friend at the asylum, even if there had been any scope for imagination

there.”

“I think it’s just as well there wasn’t,” said Marilla drily. “I

don’t approve of such goings-on. You seem to half believe your own

imaginations. It will be well for you to have a real live friend to

put such nonsense out of your head. But don’t let Mrs. Barry hear you

talking about your Katie Maurices and your Violettas or she’ll think you

tell stories.”

“Oh, I won’t. I couldn’t talk of them to everybody--their memories are

too sacred for that. But I thought I’d like to have you know about them.

Oh, look, here’s a big bee just tumbled out of an apple blossom. Just

think what a lovely place to live--in an apple blossom! Fancy going to

sleep in it when the wind was rocking it. If I wasn’t a human girl I

think I’d like to be a bee and live among the flowers.”

“Yesterday you wanted to be a sea-gull,” sniffed Marilla. “I think you

are very fickle minded. I told you to learn that prayer and not talk.

But it seems impossible for you to stop talking if you’ve got anybody

that will listen to you. So go up to your room and learn it.”

“Oh, I know it pretty nearly all now--all but just the last line.”

“Well, never mind, do as I tell you. Go to your room and finish learning

it well, and stay there until I call you down to help me get tea.”

“Can I take the apple blossoms with me for company?” pleaded Anne.

“No; you don’t want your room cluttered up with flowers. You should have

left them on the tree in the first place.”

“I did feel a little that way, too,” said Anne. “I kind of felt I

shouldn’t shorten their lovely lives by picking them--I wouldn’t want

to be picked if I were an apple blossom. But the temptation was

_irresistible_. What do you do when you meet with an irresistible

temptation?”

“Anne, did you hear me tell you to go to your room?”

Anne sighed, retreated to the east gable, and sat down in a chair by the

window.

“There--I know this prayer. I learned that last sentence coming

upstairs. Now I’m going to imagine things into this room so that they’ll

always stay imagined. The floor is covered with a white velvet carpet

with pink roses all over it and there are pink silk curtains at the

windows. The walls are hung with gold and silver brocade tapestry. The

furniture is mahogany. I never saw any mahogany, but it does sound _so_

luxurious. This is a couch all heaped with gorgeous silken cushions,

pink and blue and crimson and gold, and I am reclining gracefully on it.

I can see my reflection in that splendid big mirror hanging on the wall.

I am tall and regal, clad in a gown of trailing white lace, with a

pearl cross on my breast and pearls in my hair. My hair is of midnight

darkness and my skin is a clear ivory pallor. My name is the Lady

Cordelia Fitzgerald. No, it isn’t--I can’t make _that_ seem real.”

She danced up to the little looking-glass and peered into it. Her

pointed freckled face and solemn gray eyes peered back at her.

“You’re only Anne of Green Gables,” she said earnestly, “and I see you,

just as you are looking now, whenever I try to imagine I’m the Lady

Cordelia. But it’s a million times nicer to be Anne of Green Gables than

Anne of nowhere in particular, isn’t it?”

She bent forward, kissed her reflection affectionately, and betook

herself to the open window.

“Dear Snow Queen, good afternoon. And good afternoon, dear birches down

in the hollow. And good afternoon, dear gray house up on the hill.

I wonder if Diana is to be my bosom friend. I hope she will, and I

shall love her very much. But I must never quite forget Katie Maurice

and Violetta. They would feel so hurt if I did and I’d hate to hurt

anybody’s feelings, even a little bookcase girl’s or a little echo

girl’s. I must be careful to remember them and send them a kiss every

day.”

Anne blew a couple of airy kisses from her fingertips past the cherry

blossoms and then, with her chin in her hands, drifted luxuriously out

on a sea of daydreams.

CHAPTER IX. Mrs. Rachel Lynde Is Properly Horrified

ANNE had been a fortnight at Green Gables before Mrs. Lynde arrived to

inspect her. Mrs. Rachel, to do her justice, was not to blame for this.

A severe and unseasonable attack of grippe had confined that good lady

to her house ever since the occasion of her last visit to Green Gables.

Mrs. Rachel was not often sick and had a well-defined contempt for

people who were; but grippe, she asserted, was like no other illness on

earth and could only be interpreted as one of the special visitations

of Providence. As soon as her doctor allowed her to put her foot

out-of-doors she hurried up to Green Gables, bursting with curiosity to

see Matthew and Marilla’s orphan, concerning whom all sorts of stories

and suppositions had gone abroad in Avonlea.

Anne had made good use of every waking moment of that fortnight. Already

she was acquainted with every tree and shrub about the place. She had

discovered that a lane opened out below the apple orchard and ran up

through a belt of woodland; and she had explored it to its furthest end

in all its delicious vagaries of brook and bridge, fir coppice and wild

cherry arch, corners thick with fern, and branching byways of maple and

mountain ash.

She had made friends with the spring down in the hollow--that wonderful

deep, clear icy-cold spring; it was set about with smooth red sandstones

and rimmed in by great palm-like clumps of water fern; and beyond it was

a log bridge over the brook.

That bridge led Anne’s dancing feet up over a wooded hill beyond, where

perpetual twilight reigned under the straight, thick-growing firs and

spruces; the only flowers there were myriads of delicate “June bells,”

those shyest and sweetest of woodland blooms, and a few pale, aerial

starflowers, like the spirits of last year’s blossoms. Gossamers

glimmered like threads of silver among the trees and the fir boughs and

tassels seemed to utter friendly speech.

All these raptured voyages of exploration were made in the odd half

hours which she was allowed for play, and Anne talked Matthew and

Marilla half-deaf over her discoveries. Not that Matthew complained, to

be sure; he listened to it all with a wordless smile of enjoyment on his

face; Marilla permitted the “chatter” until she found herself becoming

too interested in it, whereupon she always promptly quenched Anne by a

curt command to hold her tongue.

Anne was out in the orchard when Mrs. Rachel came, wandering at her

own sweet will through the lush, tremulous grasses splashed with ruddy

evening sunshine; so that good lady had an excellent chance to talk

her illness fully over, describing every ache and pulse beat with

such evident enjoyment that Marilla thought even grippe must bring its

compensations. When details were exhausted Mrs. Rachel introduced the

real reason of her call.

“I’ve been hearing some surprising things about you and Matthew.”

“I don’t suppose you are any more surprised than I am myself,” said

Marilla. “I’m getting over my surprise now.”

“It was too bad there was such a mistake,” said Mrs. Rachel

sympathetically. “Couldn’t you have sent her back?”

“I suppose we could, but we decided not to. Matthew took a fancy to her.

And I must say I like her myself--although I admit she has her faults.

The house seems a different place already. She’s a real bright little

thing.”

Marilla said more than she had intended to say when she began, for she

read disapproval in Mrs. Rachel’s expression.

“It’s a great responsibility you’ve taken on yourself,” said that

lady gloomily, “especially when you’ve never had any experience with

children. You don’t know much about her or her real disposition, I

suppose, and there’s no guessing how a child like that will turn out.

But I don’t want to discourage you I’m sure, Marilla.”

“I’m not feeling discouraged,” was Marilla’s dry response, “when I make

up my mind to do a thing it stays made up. I suppose you’d like to see

Anne. I’ll call her in.”

Anne came running in presently, her face sparkling with the delight of

her orchard rovings; but, abashed at finding the delight herself in

the unexpected presence of a stranger, she halted confusedly inside

the door. She certainly was an odd-looking little creature in the short

tight wincey dress she had worn from the asylum, below which her thin

legs seemed ungracefully long. Her freckles were more numerous and

obtrusive than ever; the wind had ruffled her hatless hair into

over-brilliant disorder; it had never looked redder than at that moment.

“Well, they didn’t pick you for your looks, that’s sure and certain,”

was Mrs. Rachel Lynde’s emphatic comment. Mrs. Rachel was one of those

delightful and popular people who pride themselves on speaking their

mind without fear or favor. “She’s terrible skinny and homely, Marilla.

Come here, child, and let me have a look at you. Lawful heart, did

any one ever see such freckles? And hair as red as carrots! Come here,

child, I say.”

Anne “came there,” but not exactly as Mrs. Rachel expected. With one

bound she crossed the kitchen floor and stood before Mrs. Rachel, her

face scarlet with anger, her lips quivering, and her whole slender form

trembling from head to foot.

“I hate you,” she cried in a choked voice, stamping her foot on the

floor. “I hate you--I hate you--I hate you--” a louder stamp with each

assertion of hatred. “How dare you call me skinny and ugly? How dare

you say I’m freckled and redheaded? You are a rude, impolite, unfeeling

woman!”

“Anne!” exclaimed Marilla in consternation.

But Anne continued to face Mrs. Rachel undauntedly, head up, eyes

blazing, hands clenched, passionate indignation exhaling from her like

an atmosphere.

“How dare you say such things about me?” she repeated vehemently. “How

would you like to have such things said about you? How would you like

to be told that you are fat and clumsy and probably hadn’t a spark of

imagination in you? I don’t care if I do hurt your feelings by saying

so! I hope I hurt them. You have hurt mine worse than they were ever

hurt before even by Mrs. Thomas’ intoxicated husband. And I’ll _never_

forgive you for it, never, never!”

Stamp! Stamp!

“Did anybody ever see such a temper!” exclaimed the horrified Mrs.

Rachel.

“Anne go to your room and stay there until I come up,” said Marilla,

recovering her powers of speech with difficulty.

Anne, bursting into tears, rushed to the hall door, slammed it until the

tins on the porch wall outside rattled in sympathy, and fled through the

hall and up the stairs like a whirlwind. A subdued slam above told that

the door of the east gable had been shut with equal vehemence.

“Well, I don’t envy you your job bringing _that_ up, Marilla,” said Mrs.

Rachel with unspeakable solemnity.

Marilla opened her lips to say she knew not what of apology or

deprecation. What she did say was a surprise to herself then and ever

afterwards.

“You shouldn’t have twitted her about her looks, Rachel.”

“Marilla Cuthbert, you don’t mean to say that you are upholding her in

such a terrible display of temper as we’ve just seen?” demanded Mrs.

Rachel indignantly.

“No,” said Marilla slowly, “I’m not trying to excuse her. She’s been

very naughty and I’ll have to give her a talking to about it. But we

must make allowances for her. She’s never been taught what is right. And

you _were_ too hard on her, Rachel.”

Marilla could not help tacking on that last sentence, although she was

again surprised at herself for doing it. Mrs. Rachel got up with an air

of offended dignity.

“Well, I see that I’ll have to be very careful what I say after this,

Marilla, since the fine feelings of orphans, brought from goodness

knows where, have to be considered before anything else. Oh, no, I’m not

vexed--don’t worry yourself. I’m too sorry for you to leave any room for

anger in my mind. You’ll have your own troubles with that child. But

if you’ll take my advice--which I suppose you won’t do, although I’ve

brought up ten children and buried two--you’ll do that ‘talking to’ you

mention with a fair-sized birch switch. I should think _that_ would be the

most effective language for that kind of a child. Her temper matches her

hair I guess. Well, good evening, Marilla. I hope you’ll come down to

see me often as usual. But you can’t expect me to visit here again in a

hurry, if I’m liable to be flown at and insulted in such a fashion. It’s

something new in _my_ experience.”

Whereat Mrs. Rachel swept out and away--if a fat woman who always

waddled _could_ be said to sweep away--and Marilla with a very solemn face

betook herself to the east gable.

On the way upstairs she pondered uneasily as to what she ought to do.

She felt no little dismay over the scene that had just been enacted.

How unfortunate that Anne should have displayed such temper before Mrs.

Rachel Lynde, of all people! Then Marilla suddenly became aware of an

uncomfortable and rebuking consciousness that she felt more humiliation

over this than sorrow over the discovery of such a serious defect

in Anne’s disposition. And how was she to punish her? The amiable

suggestion of the birch switch--to the efficiency of which all of Mrs.

Rachel’s own children could have borne smarting testimony--did not

appeal to Marilla. She did not believe she could whip a child. No,

some other method of punishment must be found to bring Anne to a proper

realization of the enormity of her offense.

Marilla found Anne face downward on her bed, crying bitterly, quite

oblivious of muddy boots on a clean counterpane.

“Anne,” she said not ungently.

No answer.

“Anne,” with greater severity, “get off that bed this minute and listen

to what I have to say to you.”

Anne squirmed off the bed and sat rigidly on a chair beside it, her face

swollen and tear-stained and her eyes fixed stubbornly on the floor.

“This is a nice way for you to behave. Anne! Aren’t you ashamed of

yourself?”

“She hadn’t any right to call me ugly and redheaded,” retorted Anne,

evasive and defiant.

“You hadn’t any right to fly into such a fury and talk the way you did

to her, Anne. I was ashamed of you--thoroughly ashamed of you. I

wanted you to behave nicely to Mrs. Lynde, and instead of that you have

disgraced me. I’m sure I don’t know why you should lose your temper like

that just because Mrs. Lynde said you were red-haired and homely. You

say it yourself often enough.”

“Oh, but there’s such a difference between saying a thing yourself and

hearing other people say it,” wailed Anne. “You may know a thing is

so, but you can’t help hoping other people don’t quite think it is. I

suppose you think I have an awful temper, but I couldn’t help it. When

she said those things something just rose right up in me and choked me.

I _had_ to fly out at her.”

“Well, you made a fine exhibition of yourself I must say. Mrs. Lynde

will have a nice story to tell about you everywhere--and she’ll tell

it, too. It was a dreadful thing for you to lose your temper like that,

Anne.”

“Just imagine how you would feel if somebody told you to your face that

you were skinny and ugly,” pleaded Anne tearfully.

An old remembrance suddenly rose up before Marilla. She had been a very

small child when she had heard one aunt say of her to another, “What a

pity she is such a dark, homely little thing.” Marilla was every day of

fifty before the sting had gone out of that memory.

“I don’t say that I think Mrs. Lynde was exactly right in saying what

she did to you, Anne,” she admitted in a softer tone. “Rachel is too

outspoken. But that is no excuse for such behavior on your part. She

was a stranger and an elderly person and my visitor--all three very good

reasons why you should have been respectful to her. You were rude and

saucy and”--Marilla had a saving inspiration of punishment--“you must go

to her and tell her you are very sorry for your bad temper and ask her

to forgive you.”

“I can never do that,” said Anne determinedly and darkly. “You can

punish me in any way you like, Marilla. You can shut me up in a dark,

damp dungeon inhabited by snakes and toads and feed me only on bread and

water and I shall not complain. But I cannot ask Mrs. Lynde to forgive

me.”

“We’re not in the habit of shutting people up in dark damp dungeons,”

said Marilla drily, “especially as they’re rather scarce in Avonlea. But

apologize to Mrs. Lynde you must and shall and you’ll stay here in your

room until you can tell me you’re willing to do it.”

“I shall have to stay here forever then,” said Anne mournfully, “because

I can’t tell Mrs. Lynde I’m sorry I said those things to her. How can

I? I’m _not_ sorry. I’m sorry I’ve vexed you; but I’m _glad_ I told her just

what I did. It was a great satisfaction. I can’t say I’m sorry when I’m

not, can I? I can’t even _imagine_ I’m sorry.”

“Perhaps your imagination will be in better working order by the

morning,” said Marilla, rising to depart. “You’ll have the night to

think over your conduct in and come to a better frame of mind. You said

you would try to be a very good girl if we kept you at Green Gables, but

I must say it hasn’t seemed very much like it this evening.”

Leaving this Parthian shaft to rankle in Anne’s stormy bosom, Marilla

descended to the kitchen, grievously troubled in mind and vexed in

soul. She was as angry with herself as with Anne, because, whenever she

recalled Mrs. Rachel’s dumbfounded countenance her lips twitched with

amusement and she felt a most reprehensible desire to laugh.

CHAPTER X. Anne’s Apology

MARILLA said nothing to Matthew about the affair that evening; but when

Anne proved still refractory the next morning an explanation had to be

made to account for her absence from the breakfast table. Marilla told

Matthew the whole story, taking pains to impress him with a due sense of

the enormity of Anne’s behavior.

“It’s a good thing Rachel Lynde got a calling down; she’s a meddlesome

old gossip,” was Matthew’s consolatory rejoinder.

“Matthew Cuthbert, I’m astonished at you. You know that Anne’s behavior

was dreadful, and yet you take her part! I suppose you’ll be saying next

thing that she oughtn’t to be punished at all!”

“Well now--no--not exactly,” said Matthew uneasily. “I reckon she

ought to be punished a little. But don’t be too hard on her, Marilla.

Recollect she hasn’t ever had anyone to teach her right. You’re--you’re

going to give her something to eat, aren’t you?”

“When did you ever hear of me starving people into good behavior?”

demanded Marilla indignantly. “She’ll have her meals regular, and

I’ll carry them up to her myself. But she’ll stay up there until she’s

willing to apologize to Mrs. Lynde, and that’s final, Matthew.”

Breakfast, dinner, and supper were very silent meals--for Anne still

remained obdurate. After each meal Marilla carried a well-filled tray

to the east gable and brought it down later on not noticeably depleted.

Matthew eyed its last descent with a troubled eye. Had Anne eaten

anything at all?

When Marilla went out that evening to bring the cows from the back

pasture, Matthew, who had been hanging about the barns and watching,

slipped into the house with the air of a burglar and crept upstairs. As

a general thing Matthew gravitated between the kitchen and the little

bedroom off the hall where he slept; once in a while he ventured

uncomfortably into the parlor or sitting room when the minister came to

tea. But he had never been upstairs in his own house since the spring he

helped Marilla paper the spare bedroom, and that was four years ago.

He tiptoed along the hall and stood for several minutes outside the

door of the east gable before he summoned courage to tap on it with his

fingers and then open the door to peep in.

Anne was sitting on the yellow chair by the window gazing mournfully out

into the garden. Very small and unhappy she looked, and Matthew’s heart

smote him. He softly closed the door and tiptoed over to her.

“Anne,” he whispered, as if afraid of being overheard, “how are you

making it, Anne?”

Anne smiled wanly.

“Pretty well. I imagine a good deal, and that helps to pass the time. Of

course, it’s rather lonesome. But then, I may as well get used to that.”

Anne smiled again, bravely facing the long years of solitary

imprisonment before her.

Matthew recollected that he must say what he had come to say without

loss of time, lest Marilla return prematurely. “Well now, Anne, don’t

you think you’d better do it and have it over with?” he whispered.

“It’ll have to be done sooner or later, you know, for Marilla’s a

dreadful determined woman--dreadful determined, Anne. Do it right off,

I say, and have it over.”

“Do you mean apologize to Mrs. Lynde?”

“Yes--apologize--that’s the very word,” said Matthew eagerly. “Just

smooth it over so to speak. That’s what I was trying to get at.”

“I suppose I could do it to oblige you,” said Anne thoughtfully. “It

would be true enough to say I am sorry, because I _am_ sorry now. I wasn’t

a bit sorry last night. I was mad clear through, and I stayed mad all

night. I know I did because I woke up three times and I was just

furious every time. But this morning it was over. I wasn’t in a temper

anymore--and it left a dreadful sort of goneness, too. I felt so ashamed

of myself. But I just couldn’t think of going and telling Mrs. Lynde

so. It would be so humiliating. I made up my mind I’d stay shut up here

forever rather than do that. But still--I’d do anything for you--if you

really want me to--”

“Well now, of course I do. It’s terrible lonesome downstairs without

you. Just go and smooth things over--that’s a good girl.”

“Very well,” said Anne resignedly. “I’ll tell Marilla as soon as she

comes in I’ve repented.”

“That’s right--that’s right, Anne. But don’t tell Marilla I said

anything about it. She might think I was putting my oar in and I

promised not to do that.”

“Wild horses won’t drag the secret from me,” promised Anne solemnly.

“How would wild horses drag a secret from a person anyhow?”

But Matthew was gone, scared at his own success. He fled hastily to the

remotest corner of the horse pasture lest Marilla should suspect what

he had been up to. Marilla herself, upon her return to the house, was

agreeably surprised to hear a plaintive voice calling, “Marilla” over

the banisters.

“Well?” she said, going into the hall.

“I’m sorry I lost my temper and said rude things, and I’m willing to go

and tell Mrs. Lynde so.”

“Very well.” Marilla’s crispness gave no sign of her relief. She had

been wondering what under the canopy she should do if Anne did not give

in. “I’ll take you down after milking.”

Accordingly, after milking, behold Marilla and Anne walking down the

lane, the former erect and triumphant, the latter drooping and dejected.

But halfway down Anne’s dejection vanished as if by enchantment. She

lifted her head and stepped lightly along, her eyes fixed on the sunset

sky and an air of subdued exhilaration about her. Marilla beheld the

change disapprovingly. This was no meek penitent such as it behooved her

to take into the presence of the offended Mrs. Lynde.

“What are you thinking of, Anne?” she asked sharply.

“I’m imagining out what I must say to Mrs. Lynde,” answered Anne

dreamily.

This was satisfactory--or should have been so. But Marilla could not

rid herself of the notion that something in her scheme of punishment was

going askew. Anne had no business to look so rapt and radiant.

Rapt and radiant Anne continued until they were in the very presence

of Mrs. Lynde, who was sitting knitting by her kitchen window. Then the

radiance vanished. Mournful penitence appeared on every feature. Before

a word was spoken Anne suddenly went down on her knees before the

astonished Mrs. Rachel and held out her hands beseechingly.

“Oh, Mrs. Lynde, I am so extremely sorry,” she said with a quiver in

her voice. “I could never express all my sorrow, no, not if I used up

a whole dictionary. You must just imagine it. I behaved terribly to

you--and I’ve disgraced the dear friends, Matthew and Marilla, who have

let me stay at Green Gables although I’m not a boy. I’m a dreadfully

wicked and ungrateful girl, and I deserve to be punished and cast out

by respectable people forever. It was very wicked of me to fly into a

temper because you told me the truth. It _was_ the truth; every word you

said was true. My hair is red and I’m freckled and skinny and ugly.

What I said to you was true, too, but I shouldn’t have said it. Oh, Mrs.

Lynde, please, please, forgive me. If you refuse it will be a lifelong

sorrow on a poor little orphan girl, would you, even if she had a

dreadful temper? Oh, I am sure you wouldn’t. Please say you forgive me,

Mrs. Lynde.”

Anne clasped her hands together, bowed her head, and waited for the word

of judgment.

There was no mistaking her sincerity--it breathed in every tone of her

voice. Both Marilla and Mrs. Lynde recognized its unmistakable ring.

But the former understood in dismay that Anne was actually enjoying

her valley of humiliation--was reveling in the thoroughness of her

abasement. Where was the wholesome punishment upon which she, Marilla,

had plumed herself? Anne had turned it into a species of positive

pleasure.

Good Mrs. Lynde, not being overburdened with perception, did not see

this. She only perceived that Anne had made a very thorough apology and

all resentment vanished from her kindly, if somewhat officious, heart.

“There, there, get up, child,” she said heartily. “Of course I forgive

you. I guess I was a little too hard on you, anyway. But I’m such an

outspoken person. You just mustn’t mind me, that’s what. It can’t be

denied your hair is terrible red; but I knew a girl once--went to school

with her, in fact--whose hair was every mite as red as yours when she

was young, but when she grew up it darkened to a real handsome auburn. I

wouldn’t be a mite surprised if yours did, too--not a mite.”

“Oh, Mrs. Lynde!” Anne drew a long breath as she rose to her feet. “You

have given me a hope. I shall always feel that you are a benefactor. Oh,

I could endure anything if I only thought my hair would be a handsome

auburn when I grew up. It would be so much easier to be good if one’s

hair was a handsome auburn, don’t you think? And now may I go out into

your garden and sit on that bench under the apple-trees while you and

Marilla are talking? There is so much more scope for imagination out

there.”

“Laws, yes, run along, child. And you can pick a bouquet of them white

June lilies over in the corner if you like.”

As the door closed behind Anne, Mrs. Lynde got briskly up to light a

lamp.

“She’s a real odd little thing. Take this chair, Marilla; it’s easier

than the one you’ve got; I just keep that for the hired boy to sit

on. Yes, she certainly is an odd child, but there is something kind of

taking about her after all. I don’t feel so surprised at you and Matthew

keeping her as I did--nor so sorry for you, either. She may turn out all

right. Of course, she has a queer way of expressing herself--a little

too--well, too kind of forcible, you know; but she’ll likely get over

that now that she’s come to live among civilized folks. And then, her

temper’s pretty quick, I guess; but there’s one comfort, a child that

has a quick temper, just blaze up and cool down, ain’t never likely to

be sly or deceitful. Preserve me from a sly child, that’s what. On the

whole, Marilla, I kind of like her.”

When Marilla went home Anne came out of the fragrant twilight of the

orchard with a sheaf of white narcissi in her hands.

“I apologized pretty well, didn’t I?” she said proudly as they went

down the lane. “I thought since I had to do it I might as well do it

thoroughly.”

“You did it thoroughly, all right enough,” was Marilla’s comment.

Marilla was dismayed at finding herself inclined to laugh over the

recollection. She had also an uneasy feeling that she ought to scold

Anne for apologizing so well; but then, that was ridiculous! She

compromised with her conscience by saying severely:

“I hope you won’t have occasion to make many more such apologies. I hope

you’ll try to control your temper now, Anne.”

“That wouldn’t be so hard if people wouldn’t twit me about my looks,”

said Anne with a sigh. “I don’t get cross about other things; but I’m

_so_ tired of being twitted about my hair and it just makes me boil right

over. Do you suppose my hair will really be a handsome auburn when I

grow up?”

“You shouldn’t think so much about your looks, Anne. I’m afraid you are

a very vain little girl.”

“How can I be vain when I know I’m homely?” protested Anne. “I love

pretty things; and I hate to look in the glass and see something that

isn’t pretty. It makes me feel so sorrowful--just as I feel when I look

at any ugly thing. I pity it because it isn’t beautiful.”

“Handsome is as handsome does,” quoted Marilla. “I’ve had that said

to me before, but I have my doubts about it,” remarked skeptical Anne,

sniffing at her narcissi. “Oh, aren’t these flowers sweet! It was lovely

of Mrs. Lynde to give them to me. I have no hard feelings against Mrs.

Lynde now. It gives you a lovely, comfortable feeling to apologize and

be forgiven, doesn’t it? Aren’t the stars bright tonight? If you could

live in a star, which one would you pick? I’d like that lovely clear big

one away over there above that dark hill.”

“Anne, do hold your tongue,” said Marilla, thoroughly worn out trying to

follow the gyrations of Anne’s thoughts.

Anne said no more until they turned into their own lane. A little gypsy

wind came down it to meet them, laden with the spicy perfume of young

dew-wet ferns. Far up in the shadows a cheerful light gleamed out

through the trees from the kitchen at Green Gables. Anne suddenly came

close to Marilla and slipped her hand into the older woman’s hard palm.

“It’s lovely to be going home and know it’s home,” she said. “I love

Green Gables already, and I never loved any place before. No place ever

seemed like home. Oh, Marilla, I’m so happy. I could pray right now and

not find it a bit hard.”

Something warm and pleasant welled up in Marilla’s heart at touch of

that thin little hand in her own--a throb of the maternity she had

missed, perhaps. Its very unaccustomedness and sweetness disturbed

her. She hastened to restore her sensations to their normal calm by

inculcating a moral.

“If you’ll be a good girl you’ll always be happy, Anne. And you should

never find it hard to say your prayers.”

“Saying one’s prayers isn’t exactly the same thing as praying,” said

Anne meditatively. “But I’m going to imagine that I’m the wind that is

blowing up there in those tree tops. When I get tired of the trees I’ll

imagine I’m gently waving down here in the ferns--and then I’ll fly over

to Mrs. Lynde’s garden and set the flowers dancing--and then I’ll go

with one great swoop over the clover field--and then I’ll blow over the

Lake of Shining Waters and ripple it all up into little sparkling waves.

Oh, there’s so much scope for imagination in a wind! So I’ll not talk

any more just now, Marilla.”

“Thanks be to goodness for that,” breathed Marilla in devout relief.

CHAPTER XI. Anne’s Impressions of Sunday-school

WELL, how do you like them?” said Marilla.

Anne was standing in the gable room, looking solemnly at three new

dresses spread out on the bed. One was of snuffy colored gingham which

Marilla had been tempted to buy from a peddler the preceding summer

because it looked so serviceable; one was of black-and-white checkered

sateen which she had picked up at a bargain counter in the winter; and

one was a stiff print of an ugly blue shade which she had purchased that

week at a Carmody store.

She had made them up herself, and they were all made alike--plain skirts

fulled tightly to plain waists, with sleeves as plain as waist and skirt

and tight as sleeves could be.

“I’ll imagine that I like them,” said Anne soberly.

“I don’t want you to imagine it,” said Marilla, offended. “Oh, I can see

you don’t like the dresses! What is the matter with them? Aren’t they

neat and clean and new?”

“Yes.”

“Then why don’t you like them?”

“They’re--they’re not--pretty,” said Anne reluctantly.

“Pretty!” Marilla sniffed. “I didn’t trouble my head about getting

pretty dresses for you. I don’t believe in pampering vanity, Anne, I’ll

tell you that right off. Those dresses are good, sensible, serviceable

dresses, without any frills or furbelows about them, and they’re all

you’ll get this summer. The brown gingham and the blue print will do

you for school when you begin to go. The sateen is for church and

Sunday-school. I’ll expect you to keep them neat and clean and not to

tear them. I should think you’d be grateful to get most anything after

those skimpy wincey things you’ve been wearing.”

“Oh, I _am_ grateful,” protested Anne. “But I’d be ever so much

gratefuller if--if you’d made just one of them with puffed sleeves.

Puffed sleeves are so fashionable now. It would give me such a thrill,

Marilla, just to wear a dress with puffed sleeves.”

“Well, you’ll have to do without your thrill. I hadn’t any material

to waste on puffed sleeves. I think they are ridiculous-looking things

anyhow. I prefer the plain, sensible ones.”

“But I’d rather look ridiculous when everybody else does than plain and

sensible all by myself,” persisted Anne mournfully.

“Trust you for that! Well, hang those dresses carefully up in your

closet, and then sit down and learn the Sunday-school lesson. I got

a quarterly from Mr. Bell for you and you’ll go to Sunday-school

tomorrow,” said Marilla, disappearing downstairs in high dudgeon.

Anne clasped her hands and looked at the dresses.

“I did hope there would be a white one with puffed sleeves,” she

whispered disconsolately. “I prayed for one, but I didn’t much expect it

on that account. I didn’t suppose God would have time to bother about

a little orphan girl’s dress. I knew I’d just have to depend on

Marilla for it. Well, fortunately I can imagine that one of them is of

snow-white muslin with lovely lace frills and three-puffed sleeves.”

The next morning warnings of a sick headache prevented Marilla from

going to Sunday-school with Anne.

“You’ll have to go down and call for Mrs. Lynde, Anne,” she said.

“She’ll see that you get into the right class. Now, mind you behave

yourself properly. Stay to preaching afterwards and ask Mrs. Lynde to

show you our pew. Here’s a cent for collection. Don’t stare at people

and don’t fidget. I shall expect you to tell me the text when you come

home.”

Anne started off irreproachable, arrayed in the stiff black-and-white

sateen, which, while decent as regards length and certainly not open to

the charge of skimpiness, contrived to emphasize every corner and angle

of her thin figure. Her hat was a little, flat, glossy, new sailor, the

extreme plainness of which had likewise much disappointed Anne, who

had permitted herself secret visions of ribbon and flowers. The latter,

however, were supplied before Anne reached the main road, for being

confronted halfway down the lane with a golden frenzy of wind-stirred

buttercups and a glory of wild roses, Anne promptly and liberally

garlanded her hat with a heavy wreath of them. Whatever other people

might have thought of the result it satisfied Anne, and she tripped

gaily down the road, holding her ruddy head with its decoration of pink

and yellow very proudly.

When she had reached Mrs. Lynde’s house she found that lady gone.

Nothing daunted, Anne proceeded onward to the church alone. In the porch

she found a crowd of little girls, all more or less gaily attired in

whites and blues and pinks, and all staring with curious eyes at this

stranger in their midst, with her extraordinary head adornment. Avonlea

little girls had already heard queer stories about Anne. Mrs. Lynde said

she had an awful temper; Jerry Buote, the hired boy at Green Gables,

said she talked all the time to herself or to the trees and flowers

like a crazy girl. They looked at her and whispered to each other behind

their quarterlies. Nobody made any friendly advances, then or later

on when the opening exercises were over and Anne found herself in Miss

Rogerson’s class.

Miss Rogerson was a middle-aged lady who had taught a Sunday-school

class for twenty years. Her method of teaching was to ask the printed

questions from the quarterly and look sternly over its edge at the

particular little girl she thought ought to answer the question. She

looked very often at Anne, and Anne, thanks to Marilla’s drilling,

answered promptly; but it may be questioned if she understood very much

about either question or answer.

She did not think she liked Miss Rogerson, and she felt very miserable;

every other little girl in the class had puffed sleeves. Anne felt that

life was really not worth living without puffed sleeves.

“Well, how did you like Sunday-school?” Marilla wanted to know when Anne

came home. Her wreath having faded, Anne had discarded it in the lane,

so Marilla was spared the knowledge of that for a time.

“I didn’t like it a bit. It was horrid.”

“Anne Shirley!” said Marilla rebukingly.

Anne sat down on the rocker with a long sigh, kissed one of Bonny’s

leaves, and waved her hand to a blossoming fuchsia.

“They might have been lonesome while I was away,” she explained. “And

now about the Sunday-school. I behaved well, just as you told me. Mrs.

Lynde was gone, but I went right on myself. I went into the church, with

a lot of other little girls, and I sat in the corner of a pew by the

window while the opening exercises went on. Mr. Bell made an awfully

long prayer. I would have been dreadfully tired before he got through

if I hadn’t been sitting by that window. But it looked right out on the

Lake of Shining Waters, so I just gazed at that and imagined all sorts

of splendid things.”

“You shouldn’t have done anything of the sort. You should have listened

to Mr. Bell.”

“But he wasn’t talking to me,” protested Anne. “He was talking to God

and he didn’t seem to be very much interested in it, either. I think

he thought God was too far off though. There was a long row of white

birches hanging over the lake and the sunshine fell down through them,

‘way, ‘way down, deep into the water. Oh, Marilla, it was like a

beautiful dream! It gave me a thrill and I just said, ‘Thank you for

it, God,’ two or three times.”

“Not out loud, I hope,” said Marilla anxiously.

“Oh, no, just under my breath. Well, Mr. Bell did get through at last

and they told me to go into the classroom with Miss Rogerson’s class.

There were nine other girls in it. They all had puffed sleeves. I tried

to imagine mine were puffed, too, but I couldn’t. Why couldn’t I? It was

as easy as could be to imagine they were puffed when I was alone in

the east gable, but it was awfully hard there among the others who had

really truly puffs.”

“You shouldn’t have been thinking about your sleeves in Sunday-school.

You should have been attending to the lesson. I hope you knew it.”

“Oh, yes; and I answered a lot of questions. Miss Rogerson asked ever so

many. I don’t think it was fair for her to do all the asking. There were

lots I wanted to ask her, but I didn’t like to because I didn’t think

she was a kindred spirit. Then all the other little girls recited a

paraphrase. She asked me if I knew any. I told her I didn’t, but I could

recite, ‘The Dog at His Master’s Grave’ if she liked. That’s in the

Third Royal Reader. It isn’t a really truly religious piece of poetry,

but it’s so sad and melancholy that it might as well be. She said it

wouldn’t do and she told me to learn the nineteenth paraphrase for next

Sunday. I read it over in church afterwards and it’s splendid. There are

two lines in particular that just thrill me.

“‘Quick as the slaughtered squadrons fell

In Midian’s evil day.’

“I don’t know what ‘squadrons’ means nor ‘Midian,’ either, but it sounds

_so_ tragical. I can hardly wait until next Sunday to recite it.

I’ll practice it all the week. After Sunday-school I asked Miss

Rogerson--because Mrs. Lynde was too far away--to show me your pew.

I sat just as still as I could and the text was Revelations, third

chapter, second and third verses. It was a very long text. If I was a

minister I’d pick the short, snappy ones. The sermon was awfully long,

too. I suppose the minister had to match it to the text. I didn’t think

he was a bit interesting. The trouble with him seems to be that he

hasn’t enough imagination. I didn’t listen to him very much. I just let

my thoughts run and I thought of the most surprising things.”

Marilla felt helplessly that all this should be sternly reproved, but

she was hampered by the undeniable fact that some of the things Anne had

said, especially about the minister’s sermons and Mr. Bell’s prayers,

were what she herself had really thought deep down in her heart for

years, but had never given expression to. It almost seemed to her that

those secret, unuttered, critical thoughts had suddenly taken visible

and accusing shape and form in the person of this outspoken morsel of

neglected humanity.

CHAPTER XII. A Solemn Vow and Promise

IT was not until the next Friday that Marilla heard the story of the

flower-wreathed hat. She came home from Mrs. Lynde’s and called Anne to

account.

“Anne, Mrs. Rachel says you went to church last Sunday with your hat

rigged out ridiculous with roses and buttercups. What on earth put you

up to such a caper? A pretty-looking object you must have been!”

“Oh. I know pink and yellow aren’t becoming to me,” began Anne.

“Becoming fiddlesticks! It was putting flowers on your hat at all,

no matter what color they were, that was ridiculous. You are the most

aggravating child!”

“I don’t see why it’s any more ridiculous to wear flowers on your hat

than on your dress,” protested Anne. “Lots of little girls there had

bouquets pinned on their dresses. What’s the difference?”

Marilla was not to be drawn from the safe concrete into dubious paths of

the abstract.

“Don’t answer me back like that, Anne. It was very silly of you to do

such a thing. Never let me catch you at such a trick again. Mrs. Rachel

says she thought she would sink through the floor when she saw you come

in all rigged out like that. She couldn’t get near enough to tell you

to take them off till it was too late. She says people talked about it

something dreadful. Of course they would think I had no better sense

than to let you go decked out like that.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Anne, tears welling into her eyes. “I never

thought you’d mind. The roses and buttercups were so sweet and pretty

I thought they’d look lovely on my hat. Lots of the little girls had

artificial flowers on their hats. I’m afraid I’m going to be a dreadful

trial to you. Maybe you’d better send me back to the asylum. That would

be terrible; I don’t think I could endure it; most likely I would go

into consumption; I’m so thin as it is, you see. But that would be

better than being a trial to you.”

“Nonsense,” said Marilla, vexed at herself for having made the child

cry. “I don’t want to send you back to the asylum, I’m sure. All I want

is that you should behave like other little girls and not make yourself

ridiculous. Don’t cry any more. I’ve got some news for you. Diana Barry

came home this afternoon. I’m going up to see if I can borrow a skirt

pattern from Mrs. Barry, and if you like you can come with me and get

acquainted with Diana.”

Anne rose to her feet, with clasped hands, the tears still glistening on

her cheeks; the dish towel she had been hemming slipped unheeded to the

floor.

“Oh, Marilla, I’m frightened--now that it has come I’m actually

frightened. What if she shouldn’t like me! It would be the most tragical

disappointment of my life.”

“Now, don’t get into a fluster. And I do wish you wouldn’t use such long

words. It sounds so funny in a little girl. I guess Diana ‘ll like you

well enough. It’s her mother you’ve got to reckon with. If she doesn’t

like you it won’t matter how much Diana does. If she has heard about

your outburst to Mrs. Lynde and going to church with buttercups round

your hat I don’t know what she’ll think of you. You must be polite and

well behaved, and don’t make any of your startling speeches. For pity’s

sake, if the child isn’t actually trembling!”

Anne _was_ trembling. Her face was pale and tense.

“Oh, Marilla, you’d be excited, too, if you were going to meet a little

girl you hoped to be your bosom friend and whose mother mightn’t like

you,” she said as she hastened to get her hat.

They went over to Orchard Slope by the short cut across the brook and up

the firry hill grove. Mrs. Barry came to the kitchen door in answer to

Marilla’s knock. She was a tall black-eyed, black-haired woman, with a

very resolute mouth. She had the reputation of being very strict with

her children.

“How do you do, Marilla?” she said cordially. “Come in. And this is the

little girl you have adopted, I suppose?”

“Yes, this is Anne Shirley,” said Marilla.

“Spelled with an E,” gasped Anne, who, tremulous and excited as she was,

was determined there should be no misunderstanding on that important

point.

Mrs. Barry, not hearing or not comprehending, merely shook hands and

said kindly:

“How are you?”

“I am well in body although considerable rumpled up in spirit, thank you

ma’am,” said Anne gravely. Then aside to Marilla in an audible whisper,

“There wasn’t anything startling in that, was there, Marilla?”

Diana was sitting on the sofa, reading a book which she dropped when the

callers entered. She was a very pretty little girl, with her mother’s

black eyes and hair, and rosy cheeks, and the merry expression which was

her inheritance from her father.

“This is my little girl Diana,” said Mrs. Barry. “Diana, you might take

Anne out into the garden and show her your flowers. It will be better

for you than straining your eyes over that book. She reads entirely

too much--” this to Marilla as the little girls went out--“and I can’t

prevent her, for her father aids and abets her. She’s always poring over

a book. I’m glad she has the prospect of a playmate--perhaps it will

take her more out-of-doors.”

Outside in the garden, which was full of mellow sunset light streaming

through the dark old firs to the west of it, stood Anne and Diana,

gazing bashfully at each other over a clump of gorgeous tiger lilies.

The Barry garden was a bowery wilderness of flowers which would have

delighted Anne’s heart at any time less fraught with destiny. It was

encircled by huge old willows and tall firs, beneath which flourished

flowers that loved the shade. Prim, right-angled paths neatly bordered

with clamshells, intersected it like moist red ribbons and in the beds

between old-fashioned flowers ran riot. There were rosy bleeding-hearts

and great splendid crimson peonies; white, fragrant narcissi and thorny,

sweet Scotch roses; pink and blue and white columbines and lilac-tinted

Bouncing Bets; clumps of southernwood and ribbon grass and mint; purple

Adam-and-Eve, daffodils, and masses of sweet clover white with its

delicate, fragrant, feathery sprays; scarlet lightning that shot

its fiery lances over prim white musk-flowers; a garden it was where

sunshine lingered and bees hummed, and winds, beguiled into loitering,

purred and rustled.

“Oh, Diana,” said Anne at last, clasping her hands and speaking almost

in a whisper, “oh, do you think you can like me a little--enough to be

my bosom friend?”

Diana laughed. Diana always laughed before she spoke.

“Why, I guess so,” she said frankly. “I’m awfully glad you’ve come to

live at Green Gables. It will be jolly to have somebody to play with.

There isn’t any other girl who lives near enough to play with, and I’ve

no sisters big enough.”

“Will you swear to be my friend forever and ever?” demanded Anne

eagerly.

Diana looked shocked.

“Why it’s dreadfully wicked to swear,” she said rebukingly.

“Oh no, not my kind of swearing. There are two kinds, you know.”

“I never heard of but one kind,” said Diana doubtfully.

“There really is another. Oh, it isn’t wicked at all. It just means

vowing and promising solemnly.”

“Well, I don’t mind doing that,” agreed Diana, relieved. “How do you do

it?”

“We must join hands--so,” said Anne gravely. “It ought to be over

running water. We’ll just imagine this path is running water. I’ll

repeat the oath first. I solemnly swear to be faithful to my bosom

friend, Diana Barry, as long as the sun and moon shall endure. Now you

say it and put my name in.”

Diana repeated the “oath” with a laugh fore and aft. Then she said:

“You’re a queer girl, Anne. I heard before that you were queer. But I

believe I’m going to like you real well.”

When Marilla and Anne went home Diana went with them as far as the log

bridge. The two little girls walked with their arms about each other.

At the brook they parted with many promises to spend the next afternoon

together.

“Well, did you find Diana a kindred spirit?” asked Marilla as they went

up through the garden of Green Gables.

“Oh yes,” sighed Anne, blissfully unconscious of any sarcasm on

Marilla’s part. “Oh Marilla, I’m the happiest girl on Prince Edward

Island this very moment. I assure you I’ll say my prayers with a right

good-will tonight. Diana and I are going to build a playhouse in Mr.

William Bell’s birch grove tomorrow. Can I have those broken pieces of

china that are out in the woodshed? Diana’s birthday is in February and

mine is in March. Don’t you think that is a very strange coincidence?

Diana is going to lend me a book to read. She says it’s perfectly

splendid and tremendously exciting. She’s going to show me a place back

in the woods where rice lilies grow. Don’t you think Diana has got very

soulful eyes? I wish I had soulful eyes. Diana is going to teach me to

sing a song called ‘Nelly in the Hazel Dell.’ She’s going to give me a

picture to put up in my room; it’s a perfectly beautiful picture, she

says--a lovely lady in a pale blue silk dress. A sewing-machine agent

gave it to her. I wish I had something to give Diana. I’m an inch taller

than Diana, but she is ever so much fatter; she says she’d like to be

thin because it’s so much more graceful, but I’m afraid she only said

it to soothe my feelings. We’re going to the shore some day to gather

shells. We have agreed to call the spring down by the log bridge the

Dryad’s Bubble. Isn’t that a perfectly elegant name? I read a story

once about a spring called that. A dryad is sort of a grown-up fairy, I

think.”

“Well, all I hope is you won’t talk Diana to death,” said Marilla. “But

remember this in all your planning, Anne. You’re not going to play all

the time nor most of it. You’ll have your work to do and it’ll have to

be done first.”

Anne’s cup of happiness was full, and Matthew caused it to overflow. He

had just got home from a trip to the store at Carmody, and he sheepishly

produced a small parcel from his pocket and handed it to Anne, with a

deprecatory look at Marilla.

“I heard you say you liked chocolate sweeties, so I got you some,” he

said.

“Humph,” sniffed Marilla. “It’ll ruin her teeth and stomach. There,

there, child, don’t look so dismal. You can eat those, since Matthew

has gone and got them. He’d better have brought you peppermints. They’re

wholesomer. Don’t sicken yourself eating all them at once now.”

“Oh, no, indeed, I won’t,” said Anne eagerly. “I’ll just eat one

tonight, Marilla. And I can give Diana half of them, can’t I? The

other half will taste twice as sweet to me if I give some to her. It’s

delightful to think I have something to give her.”

“I will say it for the child,” said Marilla when Anne had gone to

her gable, “she isn’t stingy. I’m glad, for of all faults I detest

stinginess in a child. Dear me, it’s only three weeks since she came,

and it seems as if she’d been here always. I can’t imagine the place

without her. Now, don’t be looking I told-you-so, Matthew. That’s bad

enough in a woman, but it isn’t to be endured in a man. I’m perfectly

willing to own up that I’m glad I consented to keep the child and that

I’m getting fond of her, but don’t you rub it in, Matthew Cuthbert.”

CHAPTER XIII. The Delights of Anticipation

IT’S time Anne was in to do her sewing,” said Marilla, glancing at the

clock and then out into the yellow August afternoon where everything

drowsed in the heat. “She stayed playing with Diana more than half an

hour more ‘n I gave her leave to; and now she’s perched out there on

the woodpile talking to Matthew, nineteen to the dozen, when she knows

perfectly well she ought to be at her work. And of course he’s listening

to her like a perfect ninny. I never saw such an infatuated man.

The more she talks and the odder the things she says, the more he’s

delighted evidently. Anne Shirley, you come right in here this minute,

do you hear me!”

A series of staccato taps on the west window brought Anne flying in from

the yard, eyes shining, cheeks faintly flushed with pink, unbraided hair

streaming behind her in a torrent of brightness.

“Oh, Marilla,” she exclaimed breathlessly, “there’s going to be a

Sunday-school picnic next week--in Mr. Harmon Andrews’s field, right

near the lake of Shining Waters. And Mrs. Superintendent Bell and Mrs.

Rachel Lynde are going to make ice cream--think of it, Marilla--_ice

cream!_ And, oh, Marilla, can I go to it?”

“Just look at the clock, if you please, Anne. What time did I tell you

to come in?”

“Two o’clock--but isn’t it splendid about the picnic, Marilla? Please

can I go? Oh, I’ve never been to a picnic--I’ve dreamed of picnics, but

I’ve never--”

“Yes, I told you to come at two o’clock. And it’s a quarter to three.

I’d like to know why you didn’t obey me, Anne.”

“Why, I meant to, Marilla, as much as could be. But you have no idea

how fascinating Idlewild is. And then, of course, I had to tell Matthew

about the picnic. Matthew is such a sympathetic listener. Please can I

go?”

“You’ll have to learn to resist the fascination of

Idle-whatever-you-call-it. When I tell you to come in at a certain time

I mean that time and not half an hour later. And you needn’t stop to

discourse with sympathetic listeners on your way, either. As for the

picnic, of course you can go. You’re a Sunday-school scholar, and it’s

not likely I’d refuse to let you go when all the other little girls are

going.”

“But--but,” faltered Anne, “Diana says that everybody must take a basket

of things to eat. I can’t cook, as you know, Marilla, and--and--I don’t

mind going to a picnic without puffed sleeves so much, but I’d feel

terribly humiliated if I had to go without a basket. It’s been preying

on my mind ever since Diana told me.”

“Well, it needn’t prey any longer. I’ll bake you a basket.”

“Oh, you dear good Marilla. Oh, you are so kind to me. Oh, I’m so much

obliged to you.”

Getting through with her “ohs” Anne cast herself into Marilla’s arms and

rapturously kissed her sallow cheek. It was the first time in her whole

life that childish lips had voluntarily touched Marilla’s face. Again

that sudden sensation of startling sweetness thrilled her. She was

secretly vastly pleased at Anne’s impulsive caress, which was probably

the reason why she said brusquely:

“There, there, never mind your kissing nonsense. I’d sooner see you

doing strictly as you’re told. As for cooking, I mean to begin giving

you lessons in that some of these days. But you’re so featherbrained,

Anne, I’ve been waiting to see if you’d sober down a little and learn

to be steady before I begin. You’ve got to keep your wits about you in

cooking and not stop in the middle of things to let your thoughts rove

all over creation. Now, get out your patchwork and have your square done

before teatime.”

“I do _not_ like patchwork,” said Anne dolefully, hunting out her

workbasket and sitting down before a little heap of red and white

diamonds with a sigh. “I think some kinds of sewing would be nice; but

there’s no scope for imagination in patchwork. It’s just one little seam

after another and you never seem to be getting anywhere. But of course

I’d rather be Anne of Green Gables sewing patchwork than Anne of any

other place with nothing to do but play. I wish time went as quick

sewing patches as it does when I’m playing with Diana, though. Oh, we

do have such elegant times, Marilla. I have to furnish most of the

imagination, but I’m well able to do that. Diana is simply perfect in

every other way. You know that little piece of land across the brook

that runs up between our farm and Mr. Barry’s. It belongs to Mr. William

Bell, and right in the corner there is a little ring of white birch

trees--the most romantic spot, Marilla. Diana and I have our playhouse

there. We call it Idlewild. Isn’t that a poetical name? I assure you it

took me some time to think it out. I stayed awake nearly a whole night

before I invented it. Then, just as I was dropping off to sleep, it came

like an inspiration. Diana was _enraptured_ when she heard it. We have got

our house fixed up elegantly. You must come and see it, Marilla--won’t

you? We have great big stones, all covered with moss, for seats, and

boards from tree to tree for shelves. And we have all our dishes on

them. Of course, they’re all broken but it’s the easiest thing in the

world to imagine that they are whole. There’s a piece of a plate with a

spray of red and yellow ivy on it that is especially beautiful. We keep

it in the parlor and we have the fairy glass there, too. The fairy glass

is as lovely as a dream. Diana found it out in the woods behind their

chicken house. It’s all full of rainbows--just little young rainbows

that haven’t grown big yet--and Diana’s mother told her it was broken

off a hanging lamp they once had. But it’s nice to imagine the fairies

lost it one night when they had a ball, so we call it the fairy glass.

Matthew is going to make us a table. Oh, we have named that little round

pool over in Mr. Barry’s field Willowmere. I got that name out of the

book Diana lent me. That was a thrilling book, Marilla. The heroine

had five lovers. I’d be satisfied with one, wouldn’t you? She was very

handsome and she went through great tribulations. She could faint as

easy as anything. I’d love to be able to faint, wouldn’t you, Marilla?

It’s so romantic. But I’m really very healthy for all I’m so thin. I

believe I’m getting fatter, though. Don’t you think I am? I look at my

elbows every morning when I get up to see if any dimples are coming.

Diana is having a new dress made with elbow sleeves. She is going to

wear it to the picnic. Oh, I do hope it will be fine next Wednesday. I

don’t feel that I could endure the disappointment if anything happened

to prevent me from getting to the picnic. I suppose I’d live through it,

but I’m certain it would be a lifelong sorrow. It wouldn’t matter if

I got to a hundred picnics in after years; they wouldn’t make up for

missing this one. They’re going to have boats on the Lake of Shining

Waters--and ice cream, as I told you. I have never tasted ice cream.

Diana tried to explain what it was like, but I guess ice cream is one of

those things that are beyond imagination.”

“Anne, you have talked even on for ten minutes by the clock,” said

Marilla. “Now, just for curiosity’s sake, see if you can hold your

tongue for the same length of time.”

Anne held her tongue as desired. But for the rest of the week she talked

picnic and thought picnic and dreamed picnic. On Saturday it rained and

she worked herself up into such a frantic state lest it should keep

on raining until and over Wednesday that Marilla made her sew an extra

patchwork square by way of steadying her nerves.

On Sunday Anne confided to Marilla on the way home from church that she

grew actually cold all over with excitement when the minister announced

the picnic from the pulpit.

“Such a thrill as went up and down my back, Marilla! I don’t think I’d

ever really believed until then that there was honestly going to be

a picnic. I couldn’t help fearing I’d only imagined it. But when a

minister says a thing in the pulpit you just have to believe it.”

“You set your heart too much on things, Anne,” said Marilla, with a

sigh. “I’m afraid there’ll be a great many disappointments in store for

you through life.”

“Oh, Marilla, looking forward to things is half the pleasure of them,”

exclaimed Anne. “You mayn’t get the things themselves; but nothing can

prevent you from having the fun of looking forward to them. Mrs.

Lynde says, ‘Blessed are they who expect nothing for they shall not be

disappointed.’ But I think it would be worse to expect nothing than to

be disappointed.”

Marilla wore her amethyst brooch to church that day as usual. Marilla

always wore her amethyst brooch to church. She would have thought it

rather sacrilegious to leave it off--as bad as forgetting her Bible or

her collection dime. That amethyst brooch was Marilla’s most treasured

possession. A seafaring uncle had given it to her mother who in turn

had bequeathed it to Marilla. It was an old-fashioned oval, containing

a braid of her mother’s hair, surrounded by a border of very fine

amethysts. Marilla knew too little about precious stones to realize how

fine the amethysts actually were; but she thought them very beautiful

and was always pleasantly conscious of their violet shimmer at her

throat, above her good brown satin dress, even although she could not

see it.

Anne had been smitten with delighted admiration when she first saw that

brooch.

“Oh, Marilla, it’s a perfectly elegant brooch. I don’t know how you

can pay attention to the sermon or the prayers when you have it on. I

couldn’t, I know. I think amethysts are just sweet. They are what I used

to think diamonds were like. Long ago, before I had ever seen a diamond,

I read about them and I tried to imagine what they would be like. I

thought they would be lovely glimmering purple stones. When I saw a

real diamond in a lady’s ring one day I was so disappointed I cried. Of

course, it was very lovely but it wasn’t my idea of a diamond. Will you

let me hold the brooch for one minute, Marilla? Do you think amethysts

can be the souls of good violets?”

CHAPTER XIV. Anne’s Confession

ON the Monday evening before the picnic Marilla came down from her room

with a troubled face.

“Anne,” she said to that small personage, who was shelling peas by the

spotless table and singing, “Nelly of the Hazel Dell” with a vigor and

expression that did credit to Diana’s teaching, “did you see anything

of my amethyst brooch? I thought I stuck it in my pincushion when I came

home from church yesterday evening, but I can’t find it anywhere.”

“I--I saw it this afternoon when you were away at the Aid Society,” said

Anne, a little slowly. “I was passing your door when I saw it on the

cushion, so I went in to look at it.”

“Did you touch it?” said Marilla sternly.

“Y-e-e-s,” admitted Anne, “I took it up and I pinned it on my breast

just to see how it would look.”

“You had no business to do anything of the sort. It’s very wrong in a

little girl to meddle. You shouldn’t have gone into my room in the first

place and you shouldn’t have touched a brooch that didn’t belong to you

in the second. Where did you put it?”

“Oh, I put it back on the bureau. I hadn’t it on a minute. Truly, I

didn’t mean to meddle, Marilla. I didn’t think about its being wrong to

go in and try on the brooch; but I see now that it was and I’ll never

do it again. That’s one good thing about me. I never do the same naughty

thing twice.”

“You didn’t put it back,” said Marilla. “That brooch isn’t anywhere on

the bureau. You’ve taken it out or something, Anne.”

“I did put it back,” said Anne quickly--pertly, Marilla thought. “I

don’t just remember whether I stuck it on the pincushion or laid it in

the china tray. But I’m perfectly certain I put it back.”

“I’ll go and have another look,” said Marilla, determining to be just.

“If you put that brooch back it’s there still. If it isn’t I’ll know you

didn’t, that’s all!”

Marilla went to her room and made a thorough search, not only over the

bureau but in every other place she thought the brooch might possibly

be. It was not to be found and she returned to the kitchen.

“Anne, the brooch is gone. By your own admission you were the last

person to handle it. Now, what have you done with it? Tell me the truth

at once. Did you take it out and lose it?”

“No, I didn’t,” said Anne solemnly, meeting Marilla’s angry gaze

squarely. “I never took the brooch out of your room and that is the

truth, if I was to be led to the block for it--although I’m not very

certain what a block is. So there, Marilla.”

Anne’s “so there” was only intended to emphasize her assertion, but

Marilla took it as a display of defiance.

“I believe you are telling me a falsehood, Anne,” she said sharply. “I

know you are. There now, don’t say anything more unless you are prepared

to tell the whole truth. Go to your room and stay there until you are

ready to confess.”

“Will I take the peas with me?” said Anne meekly.

“No, I’ll finish shelling them myself. Do as I bid you.”

When Anne had gone Marilla went about her evening tasks in a very

disturbed state of mind. She was worried about her valuable brooch. What

if Anne had lost it? And how wicked of the child to deny having taken

it, when anybody could see she must have! With such an innocent face,

too!

“I don’t know what I wouldn’t sooner have had happen,” thought Marilla,

as she nervously shelled the peas. “Of course, I don’t suppose she meant

to steal it or anything like that. She’s just taken it to play with

or help along that imagination of hers. She must have taken it, that’s

clear, for there hasn’t been a soul in that room since she was in it, by

her own story, until I went up tonight. And the brooch is gone, there’s

nothing surer. I suppose she has lost it and is afraid to own up for

fear she’ll be punished. It’s a dreadful thing to think she tells

falsehoods. It’s a far worse thing than her fit of temper. It’s a

fearful responsibility to have a child in your house you can’t trust.

Slyness and untruthfulness--that’s what she has displayed. I declare I

feel worse about that than about the brooch. If she’d only have told the

truth about it I wouldn’t mind so much.”

Marilla went to her room at intervals all through the evening and

searched for the brooch, without finding it. A bedtime visit to the

east gable produced no result. Anne persisted in denying that she knew

anything about the brooch but Marilla was only the more firmly convinced

that she did.

She told Matthew the story the next morning. Matthew was confounded and

puzzled; he could not so quickly lose faith in Anne but he had to admit

that circumstances were against her.

“You’re sure it hasn’t fell down behind the bureau?” was the only

suggestion he could offer.

“I’ve moved the bureau and I’ve taken out the drawers and I’ve looked

in every crack and cranny” was Marilla’s positive answer. “The brooch

is gone and that child has taken it and lied about it. That’s the plain,

ugly truth, Matthew Cuthbert, and we might as well look it in the face.”

“Well now, what are you going to do about it?” Matthew asked forlornly,

feeling secretly thankful that Marilla and not he had to deal with the

situation. He felt no desire to put his oar in this time.

“She’ll stay in her room until she confesses,” said Marilla grimly,

remembering the success of this method in the former case. “Then we’ll

see. Perhaps we’ll be able to find the brooch if she’ll only tell

where she took it; but in any case she’ll have to be severely punished,

Matthew.”

“Well now, you’ll have to punish her,” said Matthew, reaching for his

hat. “I’ve nothing to do with it, remember. You warned me off yourself.”

Marilla felt deserted by everyone. She could not even go to Mrs. Lynde

for advice. She went up to the east gable with a very serious face and

left it with a face more serious still. Anne steadfastly refused to

confess. She persisted in asserting that she had not taken the brooch.

The child had evidently been crying and Marilla felt a pang of pity

which she sternly repressed. By night she was, as she expressed it,

“beat out.”

“You’ll stay in this room until you confess, Anne. You can make up your

mind to that,” she said firmly.

“But the picnic is tomorrow, Marilla,” cried Anne. “You won’t keep me

from going to that, will you? You’ll just let me out for the afternoon,

won’t you? Then I’ll stay here as long as you like _afterwards_

cheerfully. But I _must_ go to the picnic.”

“You’ll not go to picnics nor anywhere else until you’ve confessed,

Anne.”

“Oh, Marilla,” gasped Anne.

But Marilla had gone out and shut the door.

Wednesday morning dawned as bright and fair as if expressly made to

order for the picnic. Birds sang around Green Gables; the Madonna lilies

in the garden sent out whiffs of perfume that entered in on viewless

winds at every door and window, and wandered through halls and rooms

like spirits of benediction. The birches in the hollow waved joyful

hands as if watching for Anne’s usual morning greeting from the east

gable. But Anne was not at her window. When Marilla took her breakfast

up to her she found the child sitting primly on her bed, pale and

resolute, with tight-shut lips and gleaming eyes.

“Marilla, I’m ready to confess.”

“Ah!” Marilla laid down her tray. Once again her method had succeeded;

but her success was very bitter to her. “Let me hear what you have to

say then, Anne.”

“I took the amethyst brooch,” said Anne, as if repeating a lesson she

had learned. “I took it just as you said. I didn’t mean to take it when

I went in. But it did look so beautiful, Marilla, when I pinned it on my

breast that I was overcome by an irresistible temptation. I imagined how

perfectly thrilling it would be to take it to Idlewild and play I was

the Lady Cordelia Fitzgerald. It would be so much easier to imagine I

was the Lady Cordelia if I had a real amethyst brooch on. Diana and

I make necklaces of roseberries but what are roseberries compared to

amethysts? So I took the brooch. I thought I could put it back before

you came home. I went all the way around by the road to lengthen out the

time. When I was going over the bridge across the Lake of Shining Waters

I took the brooch off to have another look at it. Oh, how it did shine

in the sunlight! And then, when I was leaning over the bridge, it

just slipped through my fingers--so--and went down--down--down, all

purply-sparkling, and sank forevermore beneath the Lake of Shining

Waters. And that’s the best I can do at confessing, Marilla.”

Marilla felt hot anger surge up into her heart again. This child had

taken and lost her treasured amethyst brooch and now sat there calmly

reciting the details thereof without the least apparent compunction or

repentance.

“Anne, this is terrible,” she said, trying to speak calmly. “You are the

very wickedest girl I ever heard of.”

“Yes, I suppose I am,” agreed Anne tranquilly. “And I know I’ll have to

be punished. It’ll be your duty to punish me, Marilla. Won’t you please

get it over right off because I’d like to go to the picnic with nothing

on my mind.”

“Picnic, indeed! You’ll go to no picnic today, Anne Shirley. That shall

be your punishment. And it isn’t half severe enough either for what

you’ve done!”

“Not go to the picnic!” Anne sprang to her feet and clutched Marilla’s

hand. “But you _promised_ me I might! Oh, Marilla, I must go to the

picnic. That was why I confessed. Punish me any way you like but that.

Oh, Marilla, please, please, let me go to the picnic. Think of the ice

cream! For anything you know I may never have a chance to taste ice

cream again.”

Marilla disengaged Anne’s clinging hands stonily.

“You needn’t plead, Anne. You are not going to the picnic and that’s

final. No, not a word.”

Anne realized that Marilla was not to be moved. She clasped her hands

together, gave a piercing shriek, and then flung herself face

downward on the bed, crying and writhing in an utter abandonment of

disappointment and despair.

“For the land’s sake!” gasped Marilla, hastening from the room. “I

believe the child is crazy. No child in her senses would behave as she

does. If she isn’t she’s utterly bad. Oh dear, I’m afraid Rachel was

right from the first. But I’ve put my hand to the plow and I won’t look

back.”

That was a dismal morning. Marilla worked fiercely and scrubbed the

porch floor and the dairy shelves when she could find nothing else to

do. Neither the shelves nor the porch needed it--but Marilla did. Then

she went out and raked the yard.

When dinner was ready she went to the stairs and called Anne. A

tear-stained face appeared, looking tragically over the banisters.

“Come down to your dinner, Anne.”

“I don’t want any dinner, Marilla,” said Anne, sobbingly. “I couldn’t

eat anything. My heart is broken. You’ll feel remorse of conscience

someday, I expect, for breaking it, Marilla, but I forgive you. Remember

when the time comes that I forgive you. But please don’t ask me to eat

anything, especially boiled pork and greens. Boiled pork and greens are

so unromantic when one is in affliction.”

Exasperated, Marilla returned to the kitchen and poured out her tale

of woe to Matthew, who, between his sense of justice and his unlawful

sympathy with Anne, was a miserable man.

“Well now, she shouldn’t have taken the brooch, Marilla, or told stories

about it,” he admitted, mournfully surveying his plateful of unromantic

pork and greens as if he, like Anne, thought it a food unsuited to

crises of feeling, “but she’s such a little thing--such an interesting

little thing. Don’t you think it’s pretty rough not to let her go to the

picnic when she’s so set on it?”

“Matthew Cuthbert, I’m amazed at you. I think I’ve let her off entirely

too easy. And she doesn’t appear to realize how wicked she’s been at

all--that’s what worries me most. If she’d really felt sorry it wouldn’t

be so bad. And you don’t seem to realize it, neither; you’re making

excuses for her all the time to yourself--I can see that.”

“Well now, she’s such a little thing,” feebly reiterated Matthew. “And

there should be allowances made, Marilla. You know she’s never had any

bringing up.”

“Well, she’s having it now” retorted Marilla.

The retort silenced Matthew if it did not convince him. That dinner was

a very dismal meal. The only cheerful thing about it was Jerry Buote,

the hired boy, and Marilla resented his cheerfulness as a personal

insult.

When her dishes were washed and her bread sponge set and her hens fed

Marilla remembered that she had noticed a small rent in her best black

lace shawl when she had taken it off on Monday afternoon on returning

from the Ladies’ Aid.

She would go and mend it. The shawl was in a box in her trunk. As

Marilla lifted it out, the sunlight, falling through the vines that

clustered thickly about the window, struck upon something caught in the

shawl--something that glittered and sparkled in facets of violet light.

Marilla snatched at it with a gasp. It was the amethyst brooch, hanging

to a thread of the lace by its catch!

“Dear life and heart,” said Marilla blankly, “what does this mean?

Here’s my brooch safe and sound that I thought was at the bottom of

Barry’s pond. Whatever did that girl mean by saying she took it and lost

it? I declare I believe Green Gables is bewitched. I remember now that

when I took off my shawl Monday afternoon I laid it on the bureau for a

minute. I suppose the brooch got caught in it somehow. Well!”

Marilla betook herself to the east gable, brooch in hand. Anne had cried

herself out and was sitting dejectedly by the window.

“Anne Shirley,” said Marilla solemnly, “I’ve just found my brooch

hanging to my black lace shawl. Now I want to know what that rigmarole

you told me this morning meant.”

“Why, you said you’d keep me here until I confessed,” returned Anne

wearily, “and so I decided to confess because I was bound to get to the

picnic. I thought out a confession last night after I went to bed and

made it as interesting as I could. And I said it over and over so that I

wouldn’t forget it. But you wouldn’t let me go to the picnic after all,

so all my trouble was wasted.”

Marilla had to laugh in spite of herself. But her conscience pricked

her.

“Anne, you do beat all! But I was wrong--I see that now. I shouldn’t

have doubted your word when I’d never known you to tell a story.

Of course, it wasn’t right for you to confess to a thing you hadn’t

done--it was very wrong to do so. But I drove you to it. So if you’ll

forgive me, Anne, I’ll forgive you and we’ll start square again. And now

get yourself ready for the picnic.”

Anne flew up like a rocket.

“Oh, Marilla, isn’t it too late?”

“No, it’s only two o’clock. They won’t be more than well gathered yet

and it’ll be an hour before they have tea. Wash your face and comb your

hair and put on your gingham. I’ll fill a basket for you. There’s plenty

of stuff baked in the house. And I’ll get Jerry to hitch up the sorrel

and drive you down to the picnic ground.”

“Oh, Marilla,” exclaimed Anne, flying to the wash-stand. “Five minutes

ago I was so miserable I was wishing I’d never been born and now I

wouldn’t change places with an angel!”

That night a thoroughly happy, completely tired-out Anne returned to

Green Gables in a state of beatification impossible to describe.

“Oh, Marilla, I’ve had a perfectly scrumptious time. Scrumptious is a

new word I learned today. I heard Mary Alice Bell use it. Isn’t it very

expressive? Everything was lovely. We had a splendid tea and then Mr.

Harmon Andrews took us all for a row on the Lake of Shining Waters--six

of us at a time. And Jane Andrews nearly fell overboard. She was leaning

out to pick water lilies and if Mr. Andrews hadn’t caught her by her

sash just in the nick of time she’d fallen in and prob’ly been drowned.

I wish it had been me. It would have been such a romantic experience to

have been nearly drowned. It would be such a thrilling tale to tell. And

we had the ice cream. Words fail me to describe that ice cream. Marilla,

I assure you it was sublime.”

That evening Marilla told the whole story to Matthew over her stocking

basket.

“I’m willing to own up that I made a mistake,” she concluded candidly,

“but I’ve learned a lesson. I have to laugh when I think of Anne’s

‘confession,’ although I suppose I shouldn’t for it really was a

falsehood. But it doesn’t seem as bad as the other would have been,

somehow, and anyhow I’m responsible for it. That child is hard to

understand in some respects. But I believe she’ll turn out all right

yet. And there’s one thing certain, no house will ever be dull that

she’s in.”

CHAPTER XV. A Tempest in the School Teapot

WHAT a splendid day!” said Anne, drawing a long breath. “Isn’t it good

just to be alive on a day like this? I pity the people who aren’t born

yet for missing it. They may have good days, of course, but they can

never have this one. And it’s splendider still to have such a lovely way

to go to school by, isn’t it?”

“It’s a lot nicer than going round by the road; that is so dusty

and hot,” said Diana practically, peeping into her dinner basket and

mentally calculating if the three juicy, toothsome, raspberry tarts

reposing there were divided among ten girls how many bites each girl

would have.

The little girls of Avonlea school always pooled their lunches, and

to eat three raspberry tarts all alone or even to share them only with

one’s best chum would have forever and ever branded as “awful mean” the

girl who did it. And yet, when the tarts were divided among ten girls

you just got enough to tantalize you.

The way Anne and Diana went to school _was_ a pretty one. Anne thought

those walks to and from school with Diana couldn’t be improved upon

even by imagination. Going around by the main road would have been so

unromantic; but to go by Lover’s Lane and Willowmere and Violet Vale and

the Birch Path was romantic, if ever anything was.

Lover’s Lane opened out below the orchard at Green Gables and stretched

far up into the woods to the end of the Cuthbert farm. It was the way by

which the cows were taken to the back pasture and the wood hauled home

in winter. Anne had named it Lover’s Lane before she had been a month at

Green Gables.

“Not that lovers ever really walk there,” she explained to Marilla,

“but Diana and I are reading a perfectly magnificent book and there’s a

Lover’s Lane in it. So we want to have one, too. And it’s a very pretty

name, don’t you think? So romantic! We can’t imagine the lovers into it,

you know. I like that lane because you can think out loud there without

people calling you crazy.”

Anne, starting out alone in the morning, went down Lover’s Lane as far

as the brook. Here Diana met her, and the two little girls went on

up the lane under the leafy arch of maples--“maples are such sociable

trees,” said Anne; “they’re always rustling and whispering to

you”--until they came to a rustic bridge. Then they left the lane

and walked through Mr. Barry’s back field and past Willowmere. Beyond

Willowmere came Violet Vale--a little green dimple in the shadow of Mr.

Andrew Bell’s big woods. “Of course there are no violets there now,”

Anne told Marilla, “but Diana says there are millions of them in spring.

Oh, Marilla, can’t you just imagine you see them? It actually takes away

my breath. I named it Violet Vale. Diana says she never saw the beat

of me for hitting on fancy names for places. It’s nice to be clever at

something, isn’t it? But Diana named the Birch Path. She wanted to, so

I let her; but I’m sure I could have found something more poetical than

plain Birch Path. Anybody can think of a name like that. But the Birch

Path is one of the prettiest places in the world, Marilla.”

It was. Other people besides Anne thought so when they stumbled on it.

It was a little narrow, twisting path, winding down over a long hill

straight through Mr. Bell’s woods, where the light came down sifted

through so many emerald screens that it was as flawless as the heart

of a diamond. It was fringed in all its length with slim young birches,

white stemmed and lissom boughed; ferns and starflowers and wild

lilies-of-the-valley and scarlet tufts of pigeonberries grew thickly

along it; and always there was a delightful spiciness in the air and

music of bird calls and the murmur and laugh of wood winds in the trees

overhead. Now and then you might see a rabbit skipping across the road

if you were quiet--which, with Anne and Diana, happened about once in

a blue moon. Down in the valley the path came out to the main road and

then it was just up the spruce hill to the school.

The Avonlea school was a whitewashed building, low in the eaves and

wide in the windows, furnished inside with comfortable substantial

old-fashioned desks that opened and shut, and were carved all over their

lids with the initials and hieroglyphics of three generations of school

children. The schoolhouse was set back from the road and behind it was

a dusky fir wood and a brook where all the children put their bottles of

milk in the morning to keep cool and sweet until dinner hour.

Marilla had seen Anne start off to school on the first day of September

with many secret misgivings. Anne was such an odd girl. How would she

get on with the other children? And how on earth would she ever manage

to hold her tongue during school hours?

Things went better than Marilla feared, however. Anne came home that

evening in high spirits.

“I think I’m going to like school here,” she announced. “I don’t think

much of the master, though. He’s all the time curling his mustache

and making eyes at Prissy Andrews. Prissy is grown up, you know. She’s

sixteen and she’s studying for the entrance examination into Queen’s

Academy at Charlottetown next year. Tillie Boulter says the master is

_dead gone_ on her. She’s got a beautiful complexion and curly brown hair

and she does it up so elegantly. She sits in the long seat at the back

and he sits there, too, most of the time--to explain her lessons, he

says. But Ruby Gillis says she saw him writing something on her slate

and when Prissy read it she blushed as red as a beet and giggled; and

Ruby Gillis says she doesn’t believe it had anything to do with the

lesson.”

“Anne Shirley, don’t let me hear you talking about your teacher in that

way again,” said Marilla sharply. “You don’t go to school to criticize

the master. I guess he can teach _you_ something, and it’s your business

to learn. And I want you to understand right off that you are not to

come home telling tales about him. That is something I won’t encourage.

I hope you were a good girl.”

“Indeed I was,” said Anne comfortably. “It wasn’t so hard as you might

imagine, either. I sit with Diana. Our seat is right by the window and

we can look down to the Lake of Shining Waters. There are a lot of nice

girls in school and we had scrumptious fun playing at dinnertime. It’s

so nice to have a lot of little girls to play with. But of course I like

Diana best and always will. I _adore_ Diana. I’m dreadfully far behind the

others. They’re all in the fifth book and I’m only in the fourth. I feel

that it’s kind of a disgrace. But there’s not one of them has such an

imagination as I have and I soon found that out. We had reading and

geography and Canadian history and dictation today. Mr. Phillips said my

spelling was disgraceful and he held up my slate so that everybody could

see it, all marked over. I felt so mortified, Marilla; he might have

been politer to a stranger, I think. Ruby Gillis gave me an apple and

Sophia Sloane lent me a lovely pink card with ‘May I see you home?’ on

it. I’m to give it back to her tomorrow. And Tillie Boulter let me wear

her bead ring all the afternoon. Can I have some of those pearl beads

off the old pincushion in the garret to make myself a ring? And oh,

Marilla, Jane Andrews told me that Minnie MacPherson told her that she

heard Prissy Andrews tell Sara Gillis that I had a very pretty nose.

Marilla, that is the first compliment I have ever had in my life and you

can’t imagine what a strange feeling it gave me. Marilla, have I really

a pretty nose? I know you’ll tell me the truth.”

“Your nose is well enough,” said Marilla shortly. Secretly she thought

Anne’s nose was a remarkable pretty one; but she had no intention of

telling her so.

That was three weeks ago and all had gone smoothly so far. And now, this

crisp September morning, Anne and Diana were tripping blithely down the

Birch Path, two of the happiest little girls in Avonlea.

“I guess Gilbert Blythe will be in school today,” said Diana. “He’s been

visiting his cousins over in New Brunswick all summer and he only came

home Saturday night. He’s _aw’fly_ handsome, Anne. And he teases the

girls something terrible. He just torments our lives out.”

Diana’s voice indicated that she rather liked having her life tormented

out than not.

“Gilbert Blythe?” said Anne. “Isn’t his name that’s written up on the

porch wall with Julia Bell’s and a big ‘Take Notice’ over them?”

“Yes,” said Diana, tossing her head, “but I’m sure he doesn’t like Julia

Bell so very much. I’ve heard him say he studied the multiplication

table by her freckles.”

“Oh, don’t speak about freckles to me,” implored Anne. “It isn’t

delicate when I’ve got so many. But I do think that writing take-notices

up on the wall about the boys and girls is the silliest ever. I should

just like to see anybody dare to write my name up with a boy’s. Not, of

course,” she hastened to add, “that anybody would.”

Anne sighed. She didn’t want her name written up. But it was a little

humiliating to know that there was no danger of it.

“Nonsense,” said Diana, whose black eyes and glossy tresses had played

such havoc with the hearts of Avonlea schoolboys that her name figured

on the porch walls in half a dozen take-notices. “It’s only meant as

a joke. And don’t you be too sure your name won’t ever be written up.

Charlie Sloane is _dead gone_ on you. He told his mother--his _mother_,

mind you--that you were the smartest girl in school. That’s better than

being good-looking.”

“No, it isn’t,” said Anne, feminine to the core. “I’d rather be pretty

than clever. And I hate Charlie Sloane, I can’t bear a boy with goggle

eyes. If anyone wrote my name up with his I’d _never_ get over it, Diana

Barry. But it _is_ nice to keep head of your class.”

“You’ll have Gilbert in your class after this,” said Diana, “and he’s

used to being head of his class, I can tell you. He’s only in the fourth

book although he’s nearly fourteen. Four years ago his father was sick

and had to go out to Alberta for his health and Gilbert went with him.

They were there three years and Gil didn’t go to school hardly any

until they came back. You won’t find it so easy to keep head after this,

Anne.”

“I’m glad,” said Anne quickly. “I couldn’t really feel proud of keeping

head of little boys and girls of just nine or ten. I got up yesterday

spelling ‘ebullition.’ Josie Pye was head and, mind you, she peeped

in her book. Mr. Phillips didn’t see her--he was looking at Prissy

Andrews--but I did. I just swept her a look of freezing scorn and she

got as red as a beet and spelled it wrong after all.”

“Those Pye girls are cheats all round,” said Diana indignantly, as they

climbed the fence of the main road. “Gertie Pye actually went and put

her milk bottle in my place in the brook yesterday. Did you ever? I

don’t speak to her now.”

When Mr. Phillips was in the back of the room hearing Prissy Andrews’s

Latin, Diana whispered to Anne, “That’s Gilbert Blythe sitting right

across the aisle from you, Anne. Just look at him and see if you don’t

think he’s handsome.”

Anne looked accordingly. She had a good chance to do so, for the said

Gilbert Blythe was absorbed in stealthily pinning the long yellow braid

of Ruby Gillis, who sat in front of him, to the back of her seat. He

was a tall boy, with curly brown hair, roguish hazel eyes, and a mouth

twisted into a teasing smile. Presently Ruby Gillis started up to take

a sum to the master; she fell back into her seat with a little shriek,

believing that her hair was pulled out by the roots. Everybody looked at

her and Mr. Phillips glared so sternly that Ruby began to cry. Gilbert

had whisked the pin out of sight and was studying his history with the

soberest face in the world; but when the commotion subsided he looked at

Anne and winked with inexpressible drollery.

“I think your Gilbert Blythe _is_ handsome,” confided Anne to Diana,

“but I think he’s very bold. It isn’t good manners to wink at a strange

girl.”

But it was not until the afternoon that things really began to happen.

Mr. Phillips was back in the corner explaining a problem in algebra to

Prissy Andrews and the rest of the scholars were doing pretty much as

they pleased eating green apples, whispering, drawing pictures on their

slates, and driving crickets harnessed to strings, up and down aisle.

Gilbert Blythe was trying to make Anne Shirley look at him and failing

utterly, because Anne was at that moment totally oblivious not only

to the very existence of Gilbert Blythe, but of every other scholar in

Avonlea school itself. With her chin propped on her hands and her eyes

fixed on the blue glimpse of the Lake of Shining Waters that the west

window afforded, she was far away in a gorgeous dreamland hearing and

seeing nothing save her own wonderful visions.

Gilbert Blythe wasn’t used to putting himself out to make a girl look

at him and meeting with failure. She _should_ look at him, that red-haired

Shirley girl with the little pointed chin and the big eyes that weren’t

like the eyes of any other girl in Avonlea school.

Gilbert reached across the aisle, picked up the end of Anne’s long red

braid, held it out at arm’s length and said in a piercing whisper:

“Carrots! Carrots!”

Then Anne looked at him with a vengeance!

She did more than look. She sprang to her feet, her bright fancies

fallen into cureless ruin. She flashed one indignant glance at Gilbert

from eyes whose angry sparkle was swiftly quenched in equally angry

tears.

“You mean, hateful boy!” she exclaimed passionately. “How dare you!”

And then--thwack! Anne had brought her slate down on Gilbert’s head and

cracked it--slate not head--clear across.

Avonlea school always enjoyed a scene. This was an especially enjoyable

one. Everybody said “Oh” in horrified delight. Diana gasped. Ruby

Gillis, who was inclined to be hysterical, began to cry. Tommy

Sloane let his team of crickets escape him altogether while he stared

open-mouthed at the tableau.

Mr. Phillips stalked down the aisle and laid his hand heavily on Anne’s

shoulder.

“Anne Shirley, what does this mean?” he said angrily. Anne returned no

answer. It was asking too much of flesh and blood to expect her to tell

before the whole school that she had been called “carrots.” Gilbert it

was who spoke up stoutly.

“It was my fault Mr. Phillips. I teased her.”

Mr. Phillips paid no heed to Gilbert.

“I am sorry to see a pupil of mine displaying such a temper and such

a vindictive spirit,” he said in a solemn tone, as if the mere fact of

being a pupil of his ought to root out all evil passions from the hearts

of small imperfect mortals. “Anne, go and stand on the platform in front

of the blackboard for the rest of the afternoon.”

Anne would have infinitely preferred a whipping to this punishment under

which her sensitive spirit quivered as from a whiplash. With a white,

set face she obeyed. Mr. Phillips took a chalk crayon and wrote on the

blackboard above her head.

“Ann Shirley has a very bad temper. Ann Shirley must learn to control

her temper,” and then read it out loud so that even the primer class,

who couldn’t read writing, should understand it.

Anne stood there the rest of the afternoon with that legend above her.

She did not cry or hang her head. Anger was still too hot in her heart

for that and it sustained her amid all her agony of humiliation. With

resentful eyes and passion-red cheeks she confronted alike Diana’s

sympathetic gaze and Charlie Sloane’s indignant nods and Josie Pye’s

malicious smiles. As for Gilbert Blythe, she would not even look at him.

She would _never_ look at him again! She would never speak to him!!

When school was dismissed Anne marched out with her red head held high.

Gilbert Blythe tried to intercept her at the porch door.

“I’m awfully sorry I made fun of your hair, Anne,” he whispered

contritely. “Honest I am. Don’t be mad for keeps, now.”

Anne swept by disdainfully, without look or sign of hearing. “Oh

how could you, Anne?” breathed Diana as they went down the road half

reproachfully, half admiringly. Diana felt that _she_ could never have

resisted Gilbert’s plea.

“I shall never forgive Gilbert Blythe,” said Anne firmly. “And Mr.

Phillips spelled my name without an e, too. The iron has entered into my

soul, Diana.”

Diana hadn’t the least idea what Anne meant but she understood it was

something terrible.

“You mustn’t mind Gilbert making fun of your hair,” she said soothingly.

“Why, he makes fun of all the girls. He laughs at mine because it’s

so black. He’s called me a crow a dozen times; and I never heard him

apologize for anything before, either.”

“There’s a great deal of difference between being called a crow and

being called carrots,” said Anne with dignity. “Gilbert Blythe has hurt

my feelings _excruciatingly_, Diana.”

It is possible the matter might have blown over without more

excruciation if nothing else had happened. But when things begin to

happen they are apt to keep on.

Avonlea scholars often spent noon hour picking gum in Mr. Bell’s spruce

grove over the hill and across his big pasture field. From there they

could keep an eye on Eben Wright’s house, where the master boarded. When

they saw Mr. Phillips emerging therefrom they ran for the schoolhouse;

but the distance being about three times longer than Mr. Wright’s lane

they were very apt to arrive there, breathless and gasping, some three

minutes too late.

On the following day Mr. Phillips was seized with one of his spasmodic

fits of reform and announced before going home to dinner, that he should

expect to find all the scholars in their seats when he returned. Anyone

who came in late would be punished.

All the boys and some of the girls went to Mr. Bell’s spruce grove as

usual, fully intending to stay only long enough to “pick a chew.” But

spruce groves are seductive and yellow nuts of gum beguiling; they

picked and loitered and strayed; and as usual the first thing that

recalled them to a sense of the flight of time was Jimmy Glover shouting

from the top of a patriarchal old spruce “Master’s coming.”

The girls who were on the ground, started first and managed to reach the

schoolhouse in time but without a second to spare. The boys, who had to

wriggle hastily down from the trees, were later; and Anne, who had not

been picking gum at all but was wandering happily in the far end of the

grove, waist deep among the bracken, singing softly to herself, with a

wreath of rice lilies on her hair as if she were some wild divinity

of the shadowy places, was latest of all. Anne could run like a deer,

however; run she did with the impish result that she overtook the boys

at the door and was swept into the schoolhouse among them just as Mr.

Phillips was in the act of hanging up his hat.

Mr. Phillips’s brief reforming energy was over; he didn’t want the

bother of punishing a dozen pupils; but it was necessary to do something

to save his word, so he looked about for a scapegoat and found it

in Anne, who had dropped into her seat, gasping for breath, with a

forgotten lily wreath hanging askew over one ear and giving her a

particularly rakish and disheveled appearance.

“Anne Shirley, since you seem to be so fond of the boys’ company we

shall indulge your taste for it this afternoon,” he said sarcastically.

“Take those flowers out of your hair and sit with Gilbert Blythe.”

The other boys snickered. Diana, turning pale with pity, plucked the

wreath from Anne’s hair and squeezed her hand. Anne stared at the master

as if turned to stone.

“Did you hear what I said, Anne?” queried Mr. Phillips sternly.

“Yes, sir,” said Anne slowly “but I didn’t suppose you really meant it.”

“I assure you I did”--still with the sarcastic inflection which all the

children, and Anne especially, hated. It flicked on the raw. “Obey me at

once.”

For a moment Anne looked as if she meant to disobey. Then, realizing

that there was no help for it, she rose haughtily, stepped across the

aisle, sat down beside Gilbert Blythe, and buried her face in her arms

on the desk. Ruby Gillis, who got a glimpse of it as it went down,

told the others going home from school that she’d “acksually never seen

anything like it--it was so white, with awful little red spots in it.”

To Anne, this was as the end of all things. It was bad enough to be

singled out for punishment from among a dozen equally guilty ones; it

was worse still to be sent to sit with a boy, but that that boy should

be Gilbert Blythe was heaping insult on injury to a degree utterly

unbearable. Anne felt that she could not bear it and it would be of

no use to try. Her whole being seethed with shame and anger and

humiliation.

At first the other scholars looked and whispered and giggled and nudged.

But as Anne never lifted her head and as Gilbert worked fractions as if

his whole soul was absorbed in them and them only, they soon returned

to their own tasks and Anne was forgotten. When Mr. Phillips called the

history class out Anne should have gone, but Anne did not move, and

Mr. Phillips, who had been writing some verses “To Priscilla” before he

called the class, was thinking about an obstinate rhyme still and never

missed her. Once, when nobody was looking, Gilbert took from his desk

a little pink candy heart with a gold motto on it, “You are sweet,” and

slipped it under the curve of Anne’s arm. Whereupon Anne arose, took the

pink heart gingerly between the tips of her fingers, dropped it on the

floor, ground it to powder beneath her heel, and resumed her position

without deigning to bestow a glance on Gilbert.

When school went out Anne marched to her desk, ostentatiously took out

everything therein, books and writing tablet, pen and ink, testament and

arithmetic, and piled them neatly on her cracked slate.

“What are you taking all those things home for, Anne?” Diana wanted to

know, as soon as they were out on the road. She had not dared to ask the

question before.

“I am not coming back to school any more,” said Anne. Diana gasped and

stared at Anne to see if she meant it.

“Will Marilla let you stay home?” she asked.

“She’ll have to,” said Anne. “I’ll _never_ go to school to that man

again.”

“Oh, Anne!” Diana looked as if she were ready to cry. “I do think you’re

mean. What shall I do? Mr. Phillips will make me sit with that horrid

Gertie Pye--I know he will because she is sitting alone. Do come back,

Anne.”

“I’d do almost anything in the world for you, Diana,” said Anne sadly.

“I’d let myself be torn limb from limb if it would do you any good. But

I can’t do this, so please don’t ask it. You harrow up my very soul.”

“Just think of all the fun you will miss,” mourned Diana. “We are going

to build the loveliest new house down by the brook; and we’ll be playing

ball next week and you’ve never played ball, Anne. It’s tremendously

exciting. And we’re going to learn a new song--Jane Andrews is

practicing it up now; and Alice Andrews is going to bring a new Pansy

book next week and we’re all going to read it out loud, chapter about,

down by the brook. And you know you are so fond of reading out loud,

Anne.”

Nothing moved Anne in the least. Her mind was made up. She would not go

to school to Mr. Phillips again; she told Marilla so when she got home.

“Nonsense,” said Marilla.

“It isn’t nonsense at all,” said Anne, gazing at Marilla with solemn,

reproachful eyes. “Don’t you understand, Marilla? I’ve been insulted.”

“Insulted fiddlesticks! You’ll go to school tomorrow as usual.”

“Oh, no.” Anne shook her head gently. “I’m not going back, Marilla. I’ll

learn my lessons at home and I’ll be as good as I can be and hold my

tongue all the time if it’s possible at all. But I will not go back to

school, I assure you.”

Marilla saw something remarkably like unyielding stubbornness looking

out of Anne’s small face. She understood that she would have trouble in

overcoming it; but she resolved wisely to say nothing more just then.

“I’ll run down and see Rachel about it this evening,” she thought.

“There’s no use reasoning with Anne now. She’s too worked up and I’ve

an idea she can be awful stubborn if she takes the notion. Far as I can

make out from her story, Mr. Phillips has been carrying matters with

a rather high hand. But it would never do to say so to her. I’ll just

talk it over with Rachel. She’s sent ten children to school and she

ought to know something about it. She’ll have heard the whole story,

too, by this time.”

Marilla found Mrs. Lynde knitting quilts as industriously and cheerfully

as usual.

“I suppose you know what I’ve come about,” she said, a little

shamefacedly.

Mrs. Rachel nodded.

“About Anne’s fuss in school, I reckon,” she said. “Tillie Boulter was

in on her way home from school and told me about it.”

“I don’t know what to do with her,” said Marilla. “She declares she

won’t go back to school. I never saw a child so worked up. I’ve been

expecting trouble ever since she started to school. I knew things were

going too smooth to last. She’s so high strung. What would you advise,

Rachel?”

“Well, since you’ve asked my advice, Marilla,” said Mrs. Lynde

amiably--Mrs. Lynde dearly loved to be asked for advice--“I’d just

humor her a little at first, that’s what I’d do. It’s my belief that

Mr. Phillips was in the wrong. Of course, it doesn’t do to say so to the

children, you know. And of course he did right to punish her yesterday

for giving way to temper. But today it was different. The others who

were late should have been punished as well as Anne, that’s what. And I

don’t believe in making the girls sit with the boys for punishment. It

isn’t modest. Tillie Boulter was real indignant. She took Anne’s part

right through and said all the scholars did too. Anne seems real popular

among them, somehow. I never thought she’d take with them so well.”

“Then you really think I’d better let her stay home,” said Marilla in

amazement.

“Yes. That is I wouldn’t say school to her again until she said it

herself. Depend upon it, Marilla, she’ll cool off in a week or so and

be ready enough to go back of her own accord, that’s what, while, if

you were to make her go back right off, dear knows what freak or tantrum

she’d take next and make more trouble than ever. The less fuss made the

better, in my opinion. She won’t miss much by not going to school, as

far as _that_ goes. Mr. Phillips isn’t any good at all as a teacher. The

order he keeps is scandalous, that’s what, and he neglects the young

fry and puts all his time on those big scholars he’s getting ready for

Queen’s. He’d never have got the school for another year if his uncle

hadn’t been a trustee--_the_ trustee, for he just leads the other two

around by the nose, that’s what. I declare, I don’t know what education

in this Island is coming to.”

Mrs. Rachel shook her head, as much as to say if she were only at the

head of the educational system of the Province things would be much

better managed.

Marilla took Mrs. Rachel’s advice and not another word was said to Anne

about going back to school. She learned her lessons at home, did her

chores, and played with Diana in the chilly purple autumn twilights;

but when she met Gilbert Blythe on the road or encountered him in

Sunday-school she passed him by with an icy contempt that was no whit

thawed by his evident desire to appease her. Even Diana’s efforts as

a peacemaker were of no avail. Anne had evidently made up her mind to

hate Gilbert Blythe to the end of life.

As much as she hated Gilbert, however, did she love Diana, with all the

love of her passionate little heart, equally intense in its likes and

dislikes. One evening Marilla, coming in from the orchard with a basket

of apples, found Anne sitting along by the east window in the twilight,

crying bitterly.

“Whatever’s the matter now, Anne?” she asked.

“It’s about Diana,” sobbed Anne luxuriously. “I love Diana so, Marilla.

I cannot ever live without her. But I know very well when we grow up

that Diana will get married and go away and leave me. And oh, what shall

I do? I hate her husband--I just hate him furiously. I’ve been imagining

it all out--the wedding and everything--Diana dressed in snowy garments,

with a veil, and looking as beautiful and regal as a queen; and me the

bridesmaid, with a lovely dress too, and puffed sleeves, but with a

breaking heart hid beneath my smiling face. And then bidding Diana

goodbye-e-e--” Here Anne broke down entirely and wept with increasing

bitterness.

Marilla turned quickly away to hide her twitching face; but it was no

use; she collapsed on the nearest chair and burst into such a hearty and

unusual peal of laughter that Matthew, crossing the yard outside, halted

in amazement. When had he heard Marilla laugh like that before?

“Well, Anne Shirley,” said Marilla as soon as she could speak, “if you

must borrow trouble, for pity’s sake borrow it handier home. I should

think you had an imagination, sure enough.”

CHAPTER XVI. Diana Is Invited to Tea with Tragic Results

OCTOBER was a beautiful month at Green Gables, when the birches in the

hollow turned as golden as sunshine and the maples behind the orchard

were royal crimson and the wild cherry-trees along the lane put on the

loveliest shades of dark red and bronzy green, while the fields sunned

themselves in aftermaths.

Anne reveled in the world of color about her.

“Oh, Marilla,” she exclaimed one Saturday morning, coming dancing in

with her arms full of gorgeous boughs, “I’m so glad I live in a world

where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from

September to November, wouldn’t it? Look at these maple branches. Don’t

they give you a thrill--several thrills? I’m going to decorate my room

with them.”

“Messy things,” said Marilla, whose aesthetic sense was not noticeably

developed. “You clutter up your room entirely too much with out-of-doors

stuff, Anne. Bedrooms were made to sleep in.”

“Oh, and dream in too, Marilla. And you know one can dream so much

better in a room where there are pretty things. I’m going to put these

boughs in the old blue jug and set them on my table.”

“Mind you don’t drop leaves all over the stairs then. I’m going on a

meeting of the Aid Society at Carmody this afternoon, Anne, and I won’t

likely be home before dark. You’ll have to get Matthew and Jerry their

supper, so mind you don’t forget to put the tea to draw until you sit

down at the table as you did last time.”

“It was dreadful of me to forget,” said Anne apologetically, “but that

was the afternoon I was trying to think of a name for Violet Vale and it

crowded other things out. Matthew was so good. He never scolded a bit.

He put the tea down himself and said we could wait awhile as well as

not. And I told him a lovely fairy story while we were waiting, so

he didn’t find the time long at all. It was a beautiful fairy story,

Marilla. I forgot the end of it, so I made up an end for it myself and

Matthew said he couldn’t tell where the join came in.”

“Matthew would think it all right, Anne, if you took a notion to get up

and have dinner in the middle of the night. But you keep your wits about

you this time. And--I don’t really know if I’m doing right--it may make

you more addlepated than ever--but you can ask Diana to come over and

spend the afternoon with you and have tea here.”

“Oh, Marilla!” Anne clasped her hands. “How perfectly lovely! You _are_

able to imagine things after all or else you’d never have understood how

I’ve longed for that very thing. It will seem so nice and grown-uppish.

No fear of my forgetting to put the tea to draw when I have company. Oh,

Marilla, can I use the rosebud spray tea set?”

“No, indeed! The rosebud tea set! Well, what next? You know I never use

that except for the minister or the Aids. You’ll put down the old brown

tea set. But you can open the little yellow crock of cherry preserves.

It’s time it was being used anyhow--I believe it’s beginning to work.

And you can cut some fruit cake and have some of the cookies and snaps.”

“I can just imagine myself sitting down at the head of the table and

pouring out the tea,” said Anne, shutting her eyes ecstatically. “And

asking Diana if she takes sugar! I know she doesn’t but of course I’ll

ask her just as if I didn’t know. And then pressing her to take another

piece of fruit cake and another helping of preserves. Oh, Marilla, it’s

a wonderful sensation just to think of it. Can I take her into the spare

room to lay off her hat when she comes? And then into the parlor to

sit?”

“No. The sitting room will do for you and your company. But there’s a

bottle half full of raspberry cordial that was left over from the church

social the other night. It’s on the second shelf of the sitting-room

closet and you and Diana can have it if you like, and a cooky to eat

with it along in the afternoon, for I daresay Matthew ‘ll be late coming

in to tea since he’s hauling potatoes to the vessel.”

Anne flew down to the hollow, past the Dryad’s Bubble and up the spruce

path to Orchard Slope, to ask Diana to tea. As a result just after

Marilla had driven off to Carmody, Diana came over, dressed in _her_

second-best dress and looking exactly as it is proper to look when asked

out to tea. At other times she was wont to run into the kitchen without

knocking; but now she knocked primly at the front door. And when Anne,

dressed in her second best, as primly opened it, both little girls

shook hands as gravely as if they had never met before. This unnatural

solemnity lasted until after Diana had been taken to the east gable to

lay off her hat and then had sat for ten minutes in the sitting room,

toes in position.

“How is your mother?” inquired Anne politely, just as if she had not

seen Mrs. Barry picking apples that morning in excellent health and

spirits.

“She is very well, thank you. I suppose Mr. Cuthbert is hauling potatoes

to the _lily sands_ this afternoon, is he?” said Diana, who had ridden

down to Mr. Harmon Andrews’s that morning in Matthew’s cart.

“Yes. Our potato crop is very good this year. I hope your father’s crop

is good too.”

“It is fairly good, thank you. Have you picked many of your apples yet?”

“Oh, ever so many,” said Anne forgetting to be dignified and jumping up

quickly. “Let’s go out to the orchard and get some of the Red Sweetings,

Diana. Marilla says we can have all that are left on the tree. Marilla

is a very generous woman. She said we could have fruit cake and cherry

preserves for tea. But it isn’t good manners to tell your company what

you are going to give them to eat, so I won’t tell you what she said we

could have to drink. Only it begins with an R and a C and it’s bright

red color. I love bright red drinks, don’t you? They taste twice as good

as any other color.”

The orchard, with its great sweeping boughs that bent to the ground

with fruit, proved so delightful that the little girls spent most of the

afternoon in it, sitting in a grassy corner where the frost had spared

the green and the mellow autumn sunshine lingered warmly, eating apples

and talking as hard as they could. Diana had much to tell Anne of what

went on in school. She had to sit with Gertie Pye and she hated

it; Gertie squeaked her pencil all the time and it just made

her--Diana’s--blood run cold; Ruby Gillis had charmed all her warts

away, true’s you live, with a magic pebble that old Mary Joe from the

Creek gave her. You had to rub the warts with the pebble and then throw

it away over your left shoulder at the time of the new moon and the

warts would all go. Charlie Sloane’s name was written up with Em White’s

on the porch wall and Em White was _awful mad_ about it; Sam Boulter had

“sassed” Mr. Phillips in class and Mr. Phillips whipped him and Sam’s

father came down to the school and dared Mr. Phillips to lay a hand on

one of his children again; and Mattie Andrews had a new red hood and a

blue crossover with tassels on it and the airs she put on about it were

perfectly sickening; and Lizzie Wright didn’t speak to Mamie Wilson

because Mamie Wilson’s grown-up sister had cut out Lizzie Wright’s

grown-up sister with her beau; and everybody missed Anne so and wished

she’s come to school again; and Gilbert Blythe--

But Anne didn’t want to hear about Gilbert Blythe. She jumped up

hurriedly and said suppose they go in and have some raspberry cordial.

Anne looked on the second shelf of the room pantry but there was no

bottle of raspberry cordial there. Search revealed it away back on the

top shelf. Anne put it on a tray and set it on the table with a tumbler.

“Now, please help yourself, Diana,” she said politely. “I don’t believe

I’ll have any just now. I don’t feel as if I wanted any after all those

apples.”

Diana poured herself out a tumblerful, looked at its bright-red hue

admiringly, and then sipped it daintily.

“That’s awfully nice raspberry cordial, Anne,” she said. “I didn’t know

raspberry cordial was so nice.”

“I’m real glad you like it. Take as much as you want. I’m going to

run out and stir the fire up. There are so many responsibilities on a

person’s mind when they’re keeping house, isn’t there?”

When Anne came back from the kitchen Diana was drinking her second

glassful of cordial; and, being entreated thereto by Anne, she offered

no particular objection to the drinking of a third. The tumblerfuls were

generous ones and the raspberry cordial was certainly very nice.

“The nicest I ever drank,” said Diana. “It’s ever so much nicer than

Mrs. Lynde’s, although she brags of hers so much. It doesn’t taste a bit

like hers.”

“I should think Marilla’s raspberry cordial would prob’ly be much nicer

than Mrs. Lynde’s,” said Anne loyally. “Marilla is a famous cook. She is

trying to teach me to cook but I assure you, Diana, it is uphill work.

There’s so little scope for imagination in cookery. You just have to go

by rules. The last time I made a cake I forgot to put the flour in. I

was thinking the loveliest story about you and me, Diana. I thought you

were desperately ill with smallpox and everybody deserted you, but I

went boldly to your bedside and nursed you back to life; and then I took

the smallpox and died and I was buried under those poplar trees in the

graveyard and you planted a rosebush by my grave and watered it with

your tears; and you never, never forgot the friend of your youth who

sacrificed her life for you. Oh, it was such a pathetic tale, Diana.

The tears just rained down over my cheeks while I mixed the cake. But

I forgot the flour and the cake was a dismal failure. Flour is so

essential to cakes, you know. Marilla was very cross and I don’t wonder.

I’m a great trial to her. She was terribly mortified about the pudding

sauce last week. We had a plum pudding for dinner on Tuesday and there

was half the pudding and a pitcherful of sauce left over. Marilla said

there was enough for another dinner and told me to set it on the pantry

shelf and cover it. I meant to cover it just as much as could be, Diana,

but when I carried it in I was imagining I was a nun--of course I’m a

Protestant but I imagined I was a Catholic--taking the veil to bury a

broken heart in cloistered seclusion; and I forgot all about covering

the pudding sauce. I thought of it next morning and ran to the pantry.

Diana, fancy if you can my extreme horror at finding a mouse drowned in

that pudding sauce! I lifted the mouse out with a spoon and threw it out

in the yard and then I washed the spoon in three waters. Marilla was out

milking and I fully intended to ask her when she came in if I’d give the

sauce to the pigs; but when she did come in I was imagining that I was

a frost fairy going through the woods turning the trees red and yellow,

whichever they wanted to be, so I never thought about the pudding sauce

again and Marilla sent me out to pick apples. Well, Mr. and Mrs. Chester

Ross from Spencervale came here that morning. You know they are very

stylish people, especially Mrs. Chester Ross. When Marilla called me in

dinner was all ready and everybody was at the table. I tried to be as

polite and dignified as I could be, for I wanted Mrs. Chester Ross to

think I was a ladylike little girl even if I wasn’t pretty. Everything

went right until I saw Marilla coming with the plum pudding in one hand

and the pitcher of pudding sauce _warmed up_, in the other. Diana, that

was a terrible moment. I remembered everything and I just stood up in

my place and shrieked out ‘Marilla, you mustn’t use that pudding sauce.

There was a mouse drowned in it. I forgot to tell you before.’ Oh,

Diana, I shall never forget that awful moment if I live to be a hundred.

Mrs. Chester Ross just _looked_ at me and I thought I would sink through

the floor with mortification. She is such a perfect housekeeper and

fancy what she must have thought of us. Marilla turned red as fire but

she never said a word--then. She just carried that sauce and pudding out

and brought in some strawberry preserves. She even offered me some, but

I couldn’t swallow a mouthful. It was like heaping coals of fire on

my head. After Mrs. Chester Ross went away, Marilla gave me a dreadful

scolding. Why, Diana, what is the matter?”

Diana had stood up very unsteadily; then she sat down again, putting her

hands to her head.

“I’m--I’m awful sick,” she said, a little thickly. “I--I--must go right

home.”

“Oh, you mustn’t dream of going home without your tea,” cried Anne in

distress. “I’ll get it right off--I’ll go and put the tea down this very

minute.”

“I must go home,” repeated Diana, stupidly but determinedly.

“Let me get you a lunch anyhow,” implored Anne. “Let me give you a bit

of fruit cake and some of the cherry preserves. Lie down on the sofa for

a little while and you’ll be better. Where do you feel bad?”

“I must go home,” said Diana, and that was all she would say. In vain

Anne pleaded.

“I never heard of company going home without tea,” she mourned. “Oh,

Diana, do you suppose that it’s possible you’re really taking the

smallpox? If you are I’ll go and nurse you, you can depend on that. I’ll

never forsake you. But I do wish you’d stay till after tea. Where do you

feel bad?”

“I’m awful dizzy,” said Diana.

And indeed, she walked very dizzily. Anne, with tears of disappointment

in her eyes, got Diana’s hat and went with her as far as the Barry

yard fence. Then she wept all the way back to Green Gables, where she

sorrowfully put the remainder of the raspberry cordial back into the

pantry and got tea ready for Matthew and Jerry, with all the zest gone

out of the performance.

The next day was Sunday and as the rain poured down in torrents from

dawn till dusk Anne did not stir abroad from Green Gables. Monday

afternoon Marilla sent her down to Mrs. Lynde’s on an errand. In a very

short space of time Anne came flying back up the lane with tears rolling

down her cheeks. Into the kitchen she dashed and flung herself face

downward on the sofa in an agony.

“Whatever has gone wrong now, Anne?” queried Marilla in doubt and

dismay. “I do hope you haven’t gone and been saucy to Mrs. Lynde again.”

No answer from Anne save more tears and stormier sobs!

“Anne Shirley, when I ask you a question I want to be answered. Sit

right up this very minute and tell me what you are crying about.”

Anne sat up, tragedy personified.

“Mrs. Lynde was up to see Mrs. Barry today and Mrs. Barry was in an

awful state,” she wailed. “She says that I set Diana _drunk_ Saturday

and sent her home in a disgraceful condition. And she says I must be a

thoroughly bad, wicked little girl and she’s never, never going to let

Diana play with me again. Oh, Marilla, I’m just overcome with woe.”

Marilla stared in blank amazement.

“Set Diana drunk!” she said when she found her voice. “Anne are you or

Mrs. Barry crazy? What on earth did you give her?”

“Not a thing but raspberry cordial,” sobbed Anne. “I never thought

raspberry cordial would set people drunk, Marilla--not even if they

drank three big tumblerfuls as Diana did. Oh, it sounds so--so--like

Mrs. Thomas’s husband! But I didn’t mean to set her drunk.”

“Drunk fiddlesticks!” said Marilla, marching to the sitting-room

pantry. There on the shelf was a bottle which she at once recognized

as one containing some of her three-year-old homemade currant wine for

which she was celebrated in Avonlea, although certain of the stricter

sort, Mrs. Barry among them, disapproved strongly of it. And at the

same time Marilla recollected that she had put the bottle of raspberry

cordial down in the cellar instead of in the pantry as she had told

Anne.

She went back to the kitchen with the wine bottle in her hand. Her face

was twitching in spite of herself.

“Anne, you certainly have a genius for getting into trouble. You went

and gave Diana currant wine instead of raspberry cordial. Didn’t you

know the difference yourself?”

“I never tasted it,” said Anne. “I thought it was the cordial. I meant

to be so--so--hospitable. Diana got awfully sick and had to go home.

Mrs. Barry told Mrs. Lynde she was simply dead drunk. She just laughed

silly-like when her mother asked her what was the matter and went to

sleep and slept for hours. Her mother smelled her breath and knew she

was drunk. She had a fearful headache all day yesterday. Mrs. Barry is

so indignant. She will never believe but what I did it on purpose.”

“I should think she would better punish Diana for being so greedy as to

drink three glassfuls of anything,” said Marilla shortly. “Why, three

of those big glasses would have made her sick even if it had only been

cordial. Well, this story will be a nice handle for those folks who are

so down on me for making currant wine, although I haven’t made any for

three years ever since I found out that the minister didn’t approve. I

just kept that bottle for sickness. There, there, child, don’t cry. I

can’t see as you were to blame although I’m sorry it happened so.”

“I must cry,” said Anne. “My heart is broken. The stars in their courses

fight against me, Marilla. Diana and I are parted forever. Oh, Marilla,

I little dreamed of this when first we swore our vows of friendship.”

“Don’t be foolish, Anne. Mrs. Barry will think better of it when she

finds you’re not to blame. I suppose she thinks you’ve done it for a

silly joke or something of that sort. You’d best go up this evening and

tell her how it was.”

“My courage fails me at the thought of facing Diana’s injured mother,”

sighed Anne. “I wish you’d go, Marilla. You’re so much more dignified

than I am. Likely she’d listen to you quicker than to me.”

“Well, I will,” said Marilla, reflecting that it would probably be the

wiser course. “Don’t cry any more, Anne. It will be all right.”

Marilla had changed her mind about it being all right by the time she

got back from Orchard Slope. Anne was watching for her coming and flew

to the porch door to meet her.

“Oh, Marilla, I know by your face that it’s been no use,” she said

sorrowfully. “Mrs. Barry won’t forgive me?”

“Mrs. Barry indeed!” snapped Marilla. “Of all the unreasonable women

I ever saw she’s the worst. I told her it was all a mistake and you

weren’t to blame, but she just simply didn’t believe me. And she rubbed

it well in about my currant wine and how I’d always said it couldn’t

have the least effect on anybody. I just told her plainly that currant

wine wasn’t meant to be drunk three tumblerfuls at a time and that if a

child I had to do with was so greedy I’d sober her up with a right good

spanking.”

Marilla whisked into the kitchen, grievously disturbed, leaving a very

much distracted little soul in the porch behind her. Presently Anne

stepped out bareheaded into the chill autumn dusk; very determinedly and

steadily she took her way down through the sere clover field over the

log bridge and up through the spruce grove, lighted by a pale little

moon hanging low over the western woods. Mrs. Barry, coming to the door

in answer to a timid knock, found a white-lipped eager-eyed suppliant on

the doorstep.

Her face hardened. Mrs. Barry was a woman of strong prejudices and

dislikes, and her anger was of the cold, sullen sort which is always

hardest to overcome. To do her justice, she really believed Anne had

made Diana drunk out of sheer malice prepense, and she was honestly

anxious to preserve her little daughter from the contamination of

further intimacy with such a child.

“What do you want?” she said stiffly.

Anne clasped her hands.

“Oh, Mrs. Barry, please forgive me. I did not mean to--to--intoxicate

Diana. How could I? Just imagine if you were a poor little orphan girl

that kind people had adopted and you had just one bosom friend in all

the world. Do you think you would intoxicate her on purpose? I thought

it was only raspberry cordial. I was firmly convinced it was raspberry

cordial. Oh, please don’t say that you won’t let Diana play with me any

more. If you do you will cover my life with a dark cloud of woe.”

This speech which would have softened good Mrs. Lynde’s heart in a

twinkling, had no effect on Mrs. Barry except to irritate her still

more. She was suspicious of Anne’s big words and dramatic gestures and

imagined that the child was making fun of her. So she said, coldly and

cruelly:

“I don’t think you are a fit little girl for Diana to associate with.

You’d better go home and behave yourself.”

Anne’s lips quivered.

“Won’t you let me see Diana just once to say farewell?” she implored.

“Diana has gone over to Carmody with her father,” said Mrs. Barry, going

in and shutting the door.

Anne went back to Green Gables calm with despair.

“My last hope is gone,” she told Marilla. “I went up and saw Mrs. Barry

myself and she treated me very insultingly. Marilla, I do _not_ think she

is a well-bred woman. There is nothing more to do except to pray and I

haven’t much hope that that’ll do much good because, Marilla, I do not

believe that God Himself can do very much with such an obstinate person

as Mrs. Barry.”

“Anne, you shouldn’t say such things” rebuked Marilla, striving to

overcome that unholy tendency to laughter which she was dismayed to find

growing upon her. And indeed, when she told the whole story to Matthew

that night, she did laugh heartily over Anne’s tribulations.

But when she slipped into the east gable before going to bed and found

that Anne had cried herself to sleep an unaccustomed softness crept into

her face.

“Poor little soul,” she murmured, lifting a loose curl of hair from the

child’s tear-stained face. Then she bent down and kissed the flushed

cheek on the pillow.

CHAPTER XVII. A New Interest in Life

THE next afternoon Anne, bending over her patchwork at the kitchen

window, happened to glance out and beheld Diana down by the Dryad’s

Bubble beckoning mysteriously. In a trice Anne was out of the house

and flying down to the hollow, astonishment and hope struggling in

her expressive eyes. But the hope faded when she saw Diana’s dejected

countenance.

“Your mother hasn’t relented?” she gasped.

Diana shook her head mournfully.

“No; and oh, Anne, she says I’m never to play with you again. I’ve cried

and cried and I told her it wasn’t your fault, but it wasn’t any use. I

had ever such a time coaxing her to let me come down and say good-bye to

you. She said I was only to stay ten minutes and she’s timing me by the

clock.”

“Ten minutes isn’t very long to say an eternal farewell in,” said Anne

tearfully. “Oh, Diana, will you promise faithfully never to forget

me, the friend of your youth, no matter what dearer friends may caress

thee?”

“Indeed I will,” sobbed Diana, “and I’ll never have another bosom

friend--I don’t want to have. I couldn’t love anybody as I love you.”

“Oh, Diana,” cried Anne, clasping her hands, “do you _love_ me?”

“Why, of course I do. Didn’t you know that?”

“No.” Anne drew a long breath. “I thought you _liked_ me of course but I

never hoped you _loved_ me. Why, Diana, I didn’t think anybody could

love me. Nobody ever has loved me since I can remember. Oh, this is

wonderful! It’s a ray of light which will forever shine on the darkness

of a path severed from thee, Diana. Oh, just say it once again.”

“I love you devotedly, Anne,” said Diana stanchly, “and I always will,

you may be sure of that.”

“And I will always love thee, Diana,” said Anne, solemnly extending her

hand. “In the years to come thy memory will shine like a star over my

lonely life, as that last story we read together says. Diana, wilt

thou give me a lock of thy jet-black tresses in parting to treasure

forevermore?”

“Have you got anything to cut it with?” queried Diana, wiping away the

tears which Anne’s affecting accents had caused to flow afresh, and

returning to practicalities.

“Yes. I’ve got my patchwork scissors in my apron pocket fortunately,”

said Anne. She solemnly clipped one of Diana’s curls. “Fare thee well,

my beloved friend. Henceforth we must be as strangers though living side

by side. But my heart will ever be faithful to thee.”

Anne stood and watched Diana out of sight, mournfully waving her hand

to the latter whenever she turned to look back. Then she returned to

the house, not a little consoled for the time being by this romantic

parting.

“It is all over,” she informed Marilla. “I shall never have another

friend. I’m really worse off than ever before, for I haven’t Katie

Maurice and Violetta now. And even if I had it wouldn’t be the same.

Somehow, little dream girls are not satisfying after a real friend.

Diana and I had such an affecting farewell down by the spring. It will

be sacred in my memory forever. I used the most pathetic language I

could think of and said ‘thou’ and ‘thee.’ ‘Thou’ and ‘thee’ seem so

much more romantic than ‘you.’ Diana gave me a lock of her hair and I’m

going to sew it up in a little bag and wear it around my neck all my

life. Please see that it is buried with me, for I don’t believe I’ll

live very long. Perhaps when she sees me lying cold and dead before her

Mrs. Barry may feel remorse for what she has done and will let Diana

come to my funeral.”

“I don’t think there is much fear of your dying of grief as long as you

can talk, Anne,” said Marilla unsympathetically.

The following Monday Anne surprised Marilla by coming down from her room

with her basket of books on her arm and hip and her lips primmed up into

a line of determination.

“I’m going back to school,” she announced. “That is all there is left

in life for me, now that my friend has been ruthlessly torn from me. In

school I can look at her and muse over days departed.”

“You’d better muse over your lessons and sums,” said Marilla, concealing

her delight at this development of the situation. “If you’re going back

to school I hope we’ll hear no more of breaking slates over people’s

heads and such carryings on. Behave yourself and do just what your

teacher tells you.”

“I’ll try to be a model pupil,” agreed Anne dolefully. “There won’t be

much fun in it, I expect. Mr. Phillips said Minnie Andrews was a model

pupil and there isn’t a spark of imagination or life in her. She is

just dull and poky and never seems to have a good time. But I feel so

depressed that perhaps it will come easy to me now. I’m going round by

the road. I couldn’t bear to go by the Birch Path all alone. I should

weep bitter tears if I did.”

Anne was welcomed back to school with open arms. Her imagination had

been sorely missed in games, her voice in the singing and her dramatic

ability in the perusal aloud of books at dinner hour. Ruby Gillis

smuggled three blue plums over to her during testament reading; Ella May

MacPherson gave her an enormous yellow pansy cut from the covers of a

floral catalogue--a species of desk decoration much prized in Avonlea

school. Sophia Sloane offered to teach her a perfectly elegant new

pattern of knit lace, so nice for trimming aprons. Katie Boulter gave

her a perfume bottle to keep slate water in, and Julia Bell copied

carefully on a piece of pale pink paper scalloped on the edges the

following effusion:

“TO ANNE

“When twilight drops her curtain down

And pins it with a star

Remember that you have a friend

Though she may wander far.”

“It’s so nice to be appreciated,” sighed Anne rapturously to Marilla

that night.

The girls were not the only scholars who “appreciated” her. When Anne

went to her seat after dinner hour--she had been told by Mr. Phillips to

sit with the model Minnie Andrews--she found on her desk a big luscious

“strawberry apple.” Anne caught it up all ready to take a bite when she

remembered that the only place in Avonlea where strawberry apples grew

was in the old Blythe orchard on the other side of the Lake of Shining

Waters. Anne dropped the apple as if it were a red-hot coal and

ostentatiously wiped her fingers on her handkerchief. The apple lay

untouched on her desk until the next morning, when little Timothy

Andrews, who swept the school and kindled the fire, annexed it as one

of his perquisites. Charlie Sloane’s slate pencil, gorgeously bedizened

with striped red and yellow paper, costing two cents where ordinary

pencils cost only one, which he sent up to her after dinner hour, met

with a more favorable reception. Anne was graciously pleased to accept

it and rewarded the donor with a smile which exalted that infatuated

youth straightway into the seventh heaven of delight and caused him to

make such fearful errors in his dictation that Mr. Phillips kept him in

after school to rewrite it.

But as,

The Cæsar’s pageant shorn of Brutus’ bust

Did but of Rome’s best son remind her more,

so the marked absence of any tribute or recognition from Diana Barry who

was sitting with Gertie Pye embittered Anne’s little triumph.

“Diana might just have smiled at me once, I think,” she mourned to

Marilla that night. But the next morning a note most fearfully and

wonderfully twisted and folded, and a small parcel were passed across to

Anne.

“Dear Anne, ran the former, “Mother says I’m not to play with you or

talk to you even in school. It isn’t my fault and don’t be cross at

me, because I love you as much as ever. I miss you awfully to tell

all my secrets to and I don’t like Gertie Pye one bit. I made you

one of the new bookmarkers out of red tissue paper. They are awfully

fashionable now and only three girls in school know how to make

them. When you look at it remember

Your true friend,

Diana Barry.

Anne read the note, kissed the bookmark, and dispatched a prompt reply

back to the other side of the school.

My own darling Diana:--

Of course I am not cross at you because you have to obey your

mother. Our spirits can commune. I shall keep your lovely present

forever. Minnie Andrews is a very nice little girl--although she

has no imagination--but after having been Diana’s busum friend I

cannot be Minnie’s. Please excuse mistakes because my spelling

isn’t very good yet, although much improoved.

Yours until death us do part

Anne or Cordelia Shirley.

P.S. I shall sleep with your letter under my pillow tonight.

A. _or_ C.S.

Marilla pessimistically expected more trouble since Anne had again begun

to go to school. But none developed. Perhaps Anne caught something of

the “model” spirit from Minnie Andrews; at least she got on very well

with Mr. Phillips thenceforth. She flung herself into her studies heart

and soul, determined not to be outdone in any class by Gilbert Blythe.

The rivalry between them was soon apparent; it was entirely good natured

on Gilbert’s side; but it is much to be feared that the same thing

cannot be said of Anne, who had certainly an unpraiseworthy tenacity for

holding grudges. She was as intense in her hatreds as in her loves. She

would not stoop to admit that she meant to rival Gilbert in schoolwork,

because that would have been to acknowledge his existence which Anne

persistently ignored; but the rivalry was there and honors fluctuated

between them. Now Gilbert was head of the spelling class; now Anne, with

a toss of her long red braids, spelled him down. One morning Gilbert had

all his sums done correctly and had his name written on the blackboard

on the roll of honor; the next morning Anne, having wrestled wildly with

decimals the entire evening before, would be first. One awful day they

were ties and their names were written up together. It was almost as bad

as a take-notice and Anne’s mortification was as evident as Gilbert’s

satisfaction. When the written examinations at the end of each month

were held the suspense was terrible. The first month Gilbert came out

three marks ahead. The second Anne beat him by five. But her triumph was

marred by the fact that Gilbert congratulated her heartily before the

whole school. It would have been ever so much sweeter to her if he had

felt the sting of his defeat.

Mr. Phillips might not be a very good teacher; but a pupil so inflexibly

determined on learning as Anne was could hardly escape making progress

under any kind of teacher. By the end of the term Anne and Gilbert were

both promoted into the fifth class and allowed to begin studying the

elements of “the branches”--by which Latin, geometry, French, and

algebra were meant. In geometry Anne met her Waterloo.

“It’s perfectly awful stuff, Marilla,” she groaned. “I’m sure I’ll never

be able to make head or tail of it. There is no scope for imagination in

it at all. Mr. Phillips says I’m the worst dunce he ever saw at it.

And Gil--I mean some of the others are so smart at it. It is extremely

mortifying, Marilla.

“Even Diana gets along better than I do. But I don’t mind being beaten

by Diana. Even although we meet as strangers now I still love her with

an _inextinguishable_ love. It makes me very sad at times to think about

her. But really, Marilla, one can’t stay sad very long in such an

interesting world, can one?”

CHAPTER XVIII. Anne to the Rescue

ALL things great are wound up with all things little. At first glance

it might not seem that the decision of a certain Canadian Premier to

include Prince Edward Island in a political tour could have much or

anything to do with the fortunes of little Anne Shirley at Green Gables.

But it had.

It was a January the Premier came, to address his loyal supporters and

such of his nonsupporters as chose to be present at the monster mass

meeting held in Charlottetown. Most of the Avonlea people were on

Premier’s side of politics; hence on the night of the meeting nearly

all the men and a goodly proportion of the women had gone to town thirty

miles away. Mrs. Rachel Lynde had gone too. Mrs. Rachel Lynde was a

red-hot politician and couldn’t have believed that the political rally

could be carried through without her, although she was on the opposite

side of politics. So she went to town and took her husband--Thomas would

be useful in looking after the horse--and Marilla Cuthbert with her.

Marilla had a sneaking interest in politics herself, and as she thought

it might be her only chance to see a real live Premier, she promptly

took it, leaving Anne and Matthew to keep house until her return the

following day.

Hence, while Marilla and Mrs. Rachel were enjoying themselves hugely

at the mass meeting, Anne and Matthew had the cheerful kitchen at Green

Gables all to themselves. A bright fire was glowing in the old-fashioned

Waterloo stove and blue-white frost crystals were shining on the

windowpanes. Matthew nodded over a _Farmers’ Advocate_ on the sofa and

Anne at the table studied her lessons with grim determination, despite

sundry wistful glances at the clock shelf, where lay a new book that

Jane Andrews had lent her that day. Jane had assured her that it was

warranted to produce any number of thrills, or words to that effect, and

Anne’s fingers tingled to reach out for it. But that would mean Gilbert

Blythe’s triumph on the morrow. Anne turned her back on the clock shelf

and tried to imagine it wasn’t there.

“Matthew, did you ever study geometry when you went to school?”

“Well now, no, I didn’t,” said Matthew, coming out of his doze with a

start.

“I wish you had,” sighed Anne, “because then you’d be able to sympathize

with me. You can’t sympathize properly if you’ve never studied it. It is

casting a cloud over my whole life. I’m such a dunce at it, Matthew.”

“Well now, I dunno,” said Matthew soothingly. “I guess you’re all right

at anything. Mr. Phillips told me last week in Blair’s store at Carmody

that you was the smartest scholar in school and was making rapid

progress. ‘Rapid progress’ was his very words. There’s them as runs down

Teddy Phillips and says he ain’t much of a teacher, but I guess he’s all

right.”

Matthew would have thought anyone who praised Anne was “all right.”

“I’m sure I’d get on better with geometry if only he wouldn’t change

the letters,” complained Anne. “I learn the proposition off by heart and

then he draws it on the blackboard and puts different letters from what

are in the book and I get all mixed up. I don’t think a teacher should

take such a mean advantage, do you? We’re studying agriculture now and

I’ve found out at last what makes the roads red. It’s a great comfort.

I wonder how Marilla and Mrs. Lynde are enjoying themselves. Mrs. Lynde

says Canada is going to the dogs the way things are being run at Ottawa

and that it’s an awful warning to the electors. She says if women were

allowed to vote we would soon see a blessed change. What way do you

vote, Matthew?”

“Conservative,” said Matthew promptly. To vote Conservative was part of

Matthew’s religion.

“Then I’m Conservative too,” said Anne decidedly. “I’m glad because

Gil--because some of the boys in school are Grits. I guess Mr. Phillips

is a Grit too because Prissy Andrews’s father is one, and Ruby Gillis

says that when a man is courting he always has to agree with the girl’s

mother in religion and her father in politics. Is that true, Matthew?”

“Well now, I dunno,” said Matthew.

“Did you ever go courting, Matthew?”

“Well now, no, I dunno’s I ever did,” said Matthew, who had certainly

never thought of such a thing in his whole existence.

Anne reflected with her chin in her hands.

“It must be rather interesting, don’t you think, Matthew? Ruby Gillis

says when she grows up she’s going to have ever so many beaus on the

string and have them all crazy about her; but I think that would be too

exciting. I’d rather have just one in his right mind. But Ruby Gillis

knows a great deal about such matters because she has so many big

sisters, and Mrs. Lynde says the Gillis girls have gone off like hot

cakes. Mr. Phillips goes up to see Prissy Andrews nearly every evening.

He says it is to help her with her lessons but Miranda Sloane is

studying for Queen’s too, and I should think she needed help a lot more

than Prissy because she’s ever so much stupider, but he never goes to

help her in the evenings at all. There are a great many things in this

world that I can’t understand very well, Matthew.”

“Well now, I dunno as I comprehend them all myself,” acknowledged

Matthew.

“Well, I suppose I must finish up my lessons. I won’t allow myself to

open that new book Jane lent me until I’m through. But it’s a terrible

temptation, Matthew. Even when I turn my back on it I can see it there

just as plain. Jane said she cried herself sick over it. I love a book

that makes me cry. But I think I’ll carry that book into the sitting

room and lock it in the jam closet and give you the key. And you must

_not_ give it to me, Matthew, until my lessons are done, not even if

I implore you on my bended knees. It’s all very well to say resist

temptation, but it’s ever so much easier to resist it if you can’t get

the key. And then shall I run down the cellar and get some russets,

Matthew? Wouldn’t you like some russets?”

“Well now, I dunno but what I would,” said Matthew, who never ate

russets but knew Anne’s weakness for them.

Just as Anne emerged triumphantly from the cellar with her plateful of

russets came the sound of flying footsteps on the icy board walk outside

and the next moment the kitchen door was flung open and in rushed Diana

Barry, white faced and breathless, with a shawl wrapped hastily around

her head. Anne promptly let go of her candle and plate in her surprise,

and plate, candle, and apples crashed together down the cellar ladder

and were found at the bottom embedded in melted grease, the next day,

by Marilla, who gathered them up and thanked mercy the house hadn’t been

set on fire.

“Whatever is the matter, Diana?” cried Anne. “Has your mother relented

at last?”

“Oh, Anne, do come quick,” implored Diana nervously. “Minnie May is

awful sick--she’s got croup. Young Mary Joe says--and Father and Mother

are away to town and there’s nobody to go for the doctor. Minnie May is

awful bad and Young Mary Joe doesn’t know what to do--and oh, Anne, I’m

so scared!”

Matthew, without a word, reached out for cap and coat, slipped past

Diana and away into the darkness of the yard.

“He’s gone to harness the sorrel mare to go to Carmody for the doctor,”

said Anne, who was hurrying on hood and jacket. “I know it as well as

if he’d said so. Matthew and I are such kindred spirits I can read his

thoughts without words at all.”

“I don’t believe he’ll find the doctor at Carmody,” sobbed Diana. “I

know that Dr. Blair went to town and I guess Dr. Spencer would go too.

Young Mary Joe never saw anybody with croup and Mrs. Lynde is away. Oh,

Anne!”

“Don’t cry, Di,” said Anne cheerily. “I know exactly what to do for

croup. You forget that Mrs. Hammond had twins three times. When you look

after three pairs of twins you naturally get a lot of experience. They

all had croup regularly. Just wait till I get the ipecac bottle--you

mayn’t have any at your house. Come on now.”

The two little girls hastened out hand in hand and hurried through

Lover’s Lane and across the crusted field beyond, for the snow was too

deep to go by the shorter wood way. Anne, although sincerely sorry

for Minnie May, was far from being insensible to the romance of the

situation and to the sweetness of once more sharing that romance with a

kindred spirit.

The night was clear and frosty, all ebony of shadow and silver of snowy

slope; big stars were shining over the silent fields; here and there the

dark pointed firs stood up with snow powdering their branches and the

wind whistling through them. Anne thought it was truly delightful to go

skimming through all this mystery and loveliness with your bosom friend

who had been so long estranged.

Minnie May, aged three, was really very sick. She lay on the kitchen

sofa feverish and restless, while her hoarse breathing could be heard

all over the house. Young Mary Joe, a buxom, broad-faced French girl

from the creek, whom Mrs. Barry had engaged to stay with the children

during her absence, was helpless and bewildered, quite incapable of

thinking what to do, or doing it if she thought of it.

Anne went to work with skill and promptness.

“Minnie May has croup all right; she’s pretty bad, but I’ve seen them

worse. First we must have lots of hot water. I declare, Diana, there

isn’t more than a cupful in the kettle! There, I’ve filled it up, and,

Mary Joe, you may put some wood in the stove. I don’t want to hurt your

feelings but it seems to me you might have thought of this before if

you’d any imagination. Now, I’ll undress Minnie May and put her to bed

and you try to find some soft flannel cloths, Diana. I’m going to give

her a dose of ipecac first of all.”

Minnie May did not take kindly to the ipecac but Anne had not brought up

three pairs of twins for nothing. Down that ipecac went, not only once,

but many times during the long, anxious night when the two little girls

worked patiently over the suffering Minnie May, and Young Mary Joe,

honestly anxious to do all she could, kept up a roaring fire and heated

more water than would have been needed for a hospital of croupy babies.

It was three o’clock when Matthew came with a doctor, for he had been

obliged to go all the way to Spencervale for one. But the pressing need

for assistance was past. Minnie May was much better and was sleeping

soundly.

“I was awfully near giving up in despair,” explained Anne. “She got

worse and worse until she was sicker than ever the Hammond twins were,

even the last pair. I actually thought she was going to choke to death.

I gave her every drop of ipecac in that bottle and when the last dose

went down I said to myself--not to Diana or Young Mary Joe, because I

didn’t want to worry them any more than they were worried, but I had

to say it to myself just to relieve my feelings--‘This is the last

lingering hope and I fear, tis a vain one.’ But in about three minutes

she coughed up the phlegm and began to get better right away. You must

just imagine my relief, doctor, because I can’t express it in words. You

know there are some things that cannot be expressed in words.”

“Yes, I know,” nodded the doctor. He looked at Anne as if he were

thinking some things about her that couldn’t be expressed in words.

Later on, however, he expressed them to Mr. and Mrs. Barry.

“That little redheaded girl they have over at Cuthbert’s is as smart as

they make ‘em. I tell you she saved that baby’s life, for it would have

been too late by the time I got there. She seems to have a skill and

presence of mind perfectly wonderful in a child of her age. I never saw

anything like the eyes of her when she was explaining the case to me.”

Anne had gone home in the wonderful, white-frosted winter morning, heavy

eyed from loss of sleep, but still talking unweariedly to Matthew as

they crossed the long white field and walked under the glittering fairy

arch of the Lover’s Lane maples.

“Oh, Matthew, isn’t it a wonderful morning? The world looks like

something God had just imagined for His own pleasure, doesn’t it? Those

trees look as if I could blow them away with a breath--pouf! I’m so glad

I live in a world where there are white frosts, aren’t you? And I’m so

glad Mrs. Hammond had three pairs of twins after all. If she hadn’t I

mightn’t have known what to do for Minnie May. I’m real sorry I was

ever cross with Mrs. Hammond for having twins. But, oh, Matthew, I’m so

sleepy. I can’t go to school. I just know I couldn’t keep my eyes open

and I’d be so stupid. But I hate to stay home, for Gil--some of

the others will get head of the class, and it’s so hard to get up

again--although of course the harder it is the more satisfaction you

have when you do get up, haven’t you?”

“Well now, I guess you’ll manage all right,” said Matthew, looking at

Anne’s white little face and the dark shadows under her eyes. “You just

go right to bed and have a good sleep. I’ll do all the chores.”

Anne accordingly went to bed and slept so long and soundly that it

was well on in the white and rosy winter afternoon when she awoke and

descended to the kitchen where Marilla, who had arrived home in the

meantime, was sitting knitting.

“Oh, did you see the Premier?” exclaimed Anne at once. “What did he look

like Marilla?”

“Well, he never got to be Premier on account of his looks,” said

Marilla. “Such a nose as that man had! But he can speak. I was proud of

being a Conservative. Rachel Lynde, of course, being a Liberal, had no

use for him. Your dinner is in the oven, Anne, and you can get yourself

some blue plum preserve out of the pantry. I guess you’re hungry.

Matthew has been telling me about last night. I must say it was

fortunate you knew what to do. I wouldn’t have had any idea myself, for

I never saw a case of croup. There now, never mind talking till you’ve

had your dinner. I can tell by the look of you that you’re just full up

with speeches, but they’ll keep.”

Marilla had something to tell Anne, but she did not tell it just then

for she knew if she did Anne’s consequent excitement would lift her

clear out of the region of such material matters as appetite or dinner.

Not until Anne had finished her saucer of blue plums did Marilla say:

“Mrs. Barry was here this afternoon, Anne. She wanted to see you, but I

wouldn’t wake you up. She says you saved Minnie May’s life, and she is

very sorry she acted as she did in that affair of the currant wine. She

says she knows now you didn’t mean to set Diana drunk, and she hopes

you’ll forgive her and be good friends with Diana again. You’re to go

over this evening if you like for Diana can’t stir outside the door

on account of a bad cold she caught last night. Now, Anne Shirley, for

pity’s sake don’t fly up into the air.”

The warning seemed not unnecessary, so uplifted and aerial was Anne’s

expression and attitude as she sprang to her feet, her face irradiated

with the flame of her spirit.

“Oh, Marilla, can I go right now--without washing my dishes? I’ll wash

them when I come back, but I cannot tie myself down to anything so

unromantic as dishwashing at this thrilling moment.”

“Yes, yes, run along,” said Marilla indulgently. “Anne Shirley--are you

crazy? Come back this instant and put something on you. I might as well

call to the wind. She’s gone without a cap or wrap. Look at her tearing

through the orchard with her hair streaming. It’ll be a mercy if she

doesn’t catch her death of cold.”

Anne came dancing home in the purple winter twilight across the snowy

places. Afar in the southwest was the great shimmering, pearl-like

sparkle of an evening star in a sky that was pale golden and ethereal

rose over gleaming white spaces and dark glens of spruce. The tinkles

of sleigh bells among the snowy hills came like elfin chimes through

the frosty air, but their music was not sweeter than the song in Anne’s

heart and on her lips.

“You see before you a perfectly happy person, Marilla,” she announced.

“I’m perfectly happy--yes, in spite of my red hair. Just at present I

have a soul above red hair. Mrs. Barry kissed me and cried and said she

was so sorry and she could never repay me. I felt fearfully embarrassed,

Marilla, but I just said as politely as I could, ‘I have no hard

feelings for you, Mrs. Barry. I assure you once for all that I did not

mean to intoxicate Diana and henceforth I shall cover the past with the

mantle of oblivion.’ That was a pretty dignified way of speaking wasn’t

it, Marilla?”

“I felt that I was heaping coals of fire on Mrs. Barry’s head. And Diana

and I had a lovely afternoon. Diana showed me a new fancy crochet stitch

her aunt over at Carmody taught her. Not a soul in Avonlea knows it but

us, and we pledged a solemn vow never to reveal it to anyone else. Diana

gave me a beautiful card with a wreath of roses on it and a verse of

poetry:”

“If you love me as I love you

Nothing but death can part us two.”

“And that is true, Marilla. We’re going to ask Mr. Phillips to let us

sit together in school again, and Gertie Pye can go with Minnie Andrews.

We had an elegant tea. Mrs. Barry had the very best china set out,

Marilla, just as if I was real company. I can’t tell you what a thrill

it gave me. Nobody ever used their very best china on my account before.

And we had fruit cake and pound cake and doughnuts and two kinds of

preserves, Marilla. And Mrs. Barry asked me if I took tea and said ‘Pa,

why don’t you pass the biscuits to Anne?’ It must be lovely to be grown

up, Marilla, when just being treated as if you were is so nice.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Marilla, with a brief sigh.

“Well, anyway, when I am grown up,” said Anne decidedly, “I’m always

going to talk to little girls as if they were too, and I’ll never laugh

when they use big words. I know from sorrowful experience how that hurts

one’s feelings. After tea Diana and I made taffy. The taffy wasn’t very

good, I suppose because neither Diana nor I had ever made any before.

Diana left me to stir it while she buttered the plates and I forgot and

let it burn; and then when we set it out on the platform to cool the cat

walked over one plate and that had to be thrown away. But the making of

it was splendid fun. Then when I came home Mrs. Barry asked me to come

over as often as I could and Diana stood at the window and threw kisses

to me all the way down to Lover’s Lane. I assure you, Marilla, that I

feel like praying tonight and I’m going to think out a special brand-new

prayer in honor of the occasion.”

CHAPTER XIX. A Concert, a Catastrophe, and a Confession

MARILLA, can I go over to see Diana just for a minute?” asked Anne,

running breathlessly down from the east gable one February evening.

“I don’t see what you want to be traipsing about after dark for,” said

Marilla shortly. “You and Diana walked home from school together and

then stood down there in the snow for half an hour more, your tongues

going the whole blessed time, clickety-clack. So I don’t think you’re

very badly off to see her again.”

“But she wants to see me,” pleaded Anne. “She has something very

important to tell me.”

“How do you know she has?”

“Because she just signaled to me from her window. We have arranged a

way to signal with our candles and cardboard. We set the candle on the

window sill and make flashes by passing the cardboard back and forth. So

many flashes mean a certain thing. It was my idea, Marilla.”

“I’ll warrant you it was,” said Marilla emphatically. “And the next

thing you’ll be setting fire to the curtains with your signaling

nonsense.”

“Oh, we’re very careful, Marilla. And it’s so interesting. Two flashes

mean, ‘Are you there?’ Three mean ‘yes’ and four ‘no.’ Five mean, ‘Come

over as soon as possible, because I have something important to reveal.’

Diana has just signaled five flashes, and I’m really suffering to know

what it is.”

“Well, you needn’t suffer any longer,” said Marilla sarcastically. “You

can go, but you’re to be back here in just ten minutes, remember that.”

Anne did remember it and was back in the stipulated time, although

probably no mortal will ever know just what it cost her to confine the

discussion of Diana’s important communication within the limits of ten

minutes. But at least she had made good use of them.

“Oh, Marilla, what do you think? You know tomorrow is Diana’s birthday.

Well, her mother told her she could ask me to go home with her from

school and stay all night with her. And her cousins are coming over from

Newbridge in a big pung sleigh to go to the Debating Club concert at

the hall tomorrow night. And they are going to take Diana and me to the

concert--if you’ll let me go, that is. You will, won’t you, Marilla? Oh,

I feel so excited.”

“You can calm down then, because you’re not going. You’re better at home

in your own bed, and as for that club concert, it’s all nonsense, and

little girls should not be allowed to go out to such places at all.”

“I’m sure the Debating Club is a most respectable affair,” pleaded Anne.

“I’m not saying it isn’t. But you’re not going to begin gadding about

to concerts and staying out all hours of the night. Pretty doings for

children. I’m surprised at Mrs. Barry’s letting Diana go.”

“But it’s such a very special occasion,” mourned Anne, on the verge of

tears. “Diana has only one birthday in a year. It isn’t as if birthdays

were common things, Marilla. Prissy Andrews is going to recite ‘Curfew

Must Not Ring Tonight.’ That is such a good moral piece, Marilla, I’m

sure it would do me lots of good to hear it. And the choir are going to

sing four lovely pathetic songs that are pretty near as good as hymns.

And oh, Marilla, the minister is going to take part; yes, indeed, he is;

he’s going to give an address. That will be just about the same thing as

a sermon. Please, mayn’t I go, Marilla?”

“You heard what I said, Anne, didn’t you? Take off your boots now and go

to bed. It’s past eight.”

“There’s just one more thing, Marilla,” said Anne, with the air of

producing the last shot in her locker. “Mrs. Barry told Diana that we

might sleep in the spare-room bed. Think of the honor of your little

Anne being put in the spare-room bed.”

“It’s an honor you’ll have to get along without. Go to bed, Anne, and

don’t let me hear another word out of you.”

When Anne, with tears rolling over her cheeks, had gone sorrowfully

upstairs, Matthew, who had been apparently sound asleep on the lounge

during the whole dialogue, opened his eyes and said decidedly:

“Well now, Marilla, I think you ought to let Anne go.”

“I don’t then,” retorted Marilla. “Who’s bringing this child up,

Matthew, you or me?”

“Well now, you,” admitted Matthew.

“Don’t interfere then.”

“Well now, I ain’t interfering. It ain’t interfering to have your own

opinion. And my opinion is that you ought to let Anne go.”

“You’d think I ought to let Anne go to the moon if she took the notion,

I’ve no doubt,” was Marilla’s amiable rejoinder. “I might have let her

spend the night with Diana, if that was all. But I don’t approve of this

concert plan. She’d go there and catch cold like as not, and have her

head filled up with nonsense and excitement. It would unsettle her for

a week. I understand that child’s disposition and what’s good for it

better than you, Matthew.”

“I think you ought to let Anne go,” repeated Matthew firmly. Argument

was not his strong point, but holding fast to his opinion certainly was.

Marilla gave a gasp of helplessness and took refuge in silence. The

next morning, when Anne was washing the breakfast dishes in the pantry,

Matthew paused on his way out to the barn to say to Marilla again:

“I think you ought to let Anne go, Marilla.”

For a moment Marilla looked things not lawful to be uttered. Then she

yielded to the inevitable and said tartly:

“Very well, she can go, since nothing else ‘ll please you.”

Anne flew out of the pantry, dripping dishcloth in hand.

“Oh, Marilla, Marilla, say those blessed words again.”

“I guess once is enough to say them. This is Matthew’s doings and I

wash my hands of it. If you catch pneumonia sleeping in a strange bed or

coming out of that hot hall in the middle of the night, don’t blame me,

blame Matthew. Anne Shirley, you’re dripping greasy water all over the

floor. I never saw such a careless child.”

“Oh, I know I’m a great trial to you, Marilla,” said Anne repentantly.

“I make so many mistakes. But then just think of all the mistakes I

don’t make, although I might. I’ll get some sand and scrub up the spots

before I go to school. Oh, Marilla, my heart was just set on going to

that concert. I never was to a concert in my life, and when the other

girls talk about them in school I feel so out of it. You didn’t know

just how I felt about it, but you see Matthew did. Matthew understands

me, and it’s so nice to be understood, Marilla.”

Anne was too excited to do herself justice as to lessons that morning in

school. Gilbert Blythe spelled her down in class and left her clear out

of sight in mental arithmetic. Anne’s consequent humiliation was

less than it might have been, however, in view of the concert and the

spare-room bed. She and Diana talked so constantly about it all day that

with a stricter teacher than Mr. Phillips dire disgrace must inevitably

have been their portion.

Anne felt that she could not have borne it if she had not been going

to the concert, for nothing else was discussed that day in school. The

Avonlea Debating Club, which met fortnightly all winter, had had several

smaller free entertainments; but this was to be a big affair, admission

ten cents, in aid of the library. The Avonlea young people had been

practicing for weeks, and all the scholars were especially interested in

it by reason of older brothers and sisters who were going to take part.

Everybody in school over nine years of age expected to go, except Carrie

Sloane, whose father shared Marilla’s opinions about small girls going

out to night concerts. Carrie Sloane cried into her grammar all the

afternoon and felt that life was not worth living.

For Anne the real excitement began with the dismissal of school and

increased therefrom in crescendo until it reached to a crash of positive

ecstasy in the concert itself. They had a “perfectly elegant tea;” and

then came the delicious occupation of dressing in Diana’s little room

upstairs. Diana did Anne’s front hair in the new pompadour style and

Anne tied Diana’s bows with the especial knack she possessed; and they

experimented with at least half a dozen different ways of arranging

their back hair. At last they were ready, cheeks scarlet and eyes

glowing with excitement.

True, Anne could not help a little pang when she contrasted her plain

black tam and shapeless, tight-sleeved, homemade gray-cloth coat with

Diana’s jaunty fur cap and smart little jacket. But she remembered in

time that she had an imagination and could use it.

Then Diana’s cousins, the Murrays from Newbridge, came; they all crowded

into the big pung sleigh, among straw and furry robes. Anne reveled in

the drive to the hall, slipping along over the satin-smooth roads with

the snow crisping under the runners. There was a magnificent sunset, and

the snowy hills and deep-blue water of the St. Lawrence Gulf seemed to

rim in the splendor like a huge bowl of pearl and sapphire brimmed with

wine and fire. Tinkles of sleigh bells and distant laughter, that seemed

like the mirth of wood elves, came from every quarter.

“Oh, Diana,” breathed Anne, squeezing Diana’s mittened hand under the

fur robe, “isn’t it all like a beautiful dream? Do I really look the

same as usual? I feel so different that it seems to me it must show in

my looks.”

“You look awfully nice,” said Diana, who having just received a

compliment from one of her cousins, felt that she ought to pass it on.

“You’ve got the loveliest color.”

The program that night was a series of “thrills” for at least one

listener in the audience, and, as Anne assured Diana, every succeeding

thrill was thrillier than the last. When Prissy Andrews, attired in

a new pink-silk waist with a string of pearls about her smooth white

throat and real carnations in her hair--rumor whispered that the master

had sent all the way to town for them for her--“climbed the slimy

ladder, dark without one ray of light,” Anne shivered in luxurious

sympathy; when the choir sang “Far Above the Gentle Daisies” Anne gazed

at the ceiling as if it were frescoed with angels; when Sam Sloane

proceeded to explain and illustrate “How Sockery Set a Hen” Anne laughed

until people sitting near her laughed too, more out of sympathy with her

than with amusement at a selection that was rather threadbare even in

Avonlea; and when Mr. Phillips gave Mark Antony’s oration over the

dead body of Cæsar in the most heart-stirring tones--looking at Prissy

Andrews at the end of every sentence--Anne felt that she could rise and

mutiny on the spot if but one Roman citizen led the way.

Only one number on the program failed to interest her. When Gilbert

Blythe recited “Bingen on the Rhine” Anne picked up Rhoda Murray’s

library book and read it until he had finished, when she sat rigidly

stiff and motionless while Diana clapped her hands until they tingled.

It was eleven when they got home, sated with dissipation, but with the

exceeding sweet pleasure of talking it all over still to come. Everybody

seemed asleep and the house was dark and silent. Anne and Diana tiptoed

into the parlor, a long narrow room out of which the spare room opened.

It was pleasantly warm and dimly lighted by the embers of a fire in the

grate.

“Let’s undress here,” said Diana. “It’s so nice and warm.”

“Hasn’t it been a delightful time?” sighed Anne rapturously. “It must

be splendid to get up and recite there. Do you suppose we will ever be

asked to do it, Diana?”

“Yes, of course, someday. They’re always wanting the big scholars to

recite. Gilbert Blythe does often and he’s only two years older than us.

Oh, Anne, how could you pretend not to listen to him? When he came to

the line,

‘There’s Another, _not_ a sister,’

he looked right down at you.”

“Diana,” said Anne with dignity, “you are my bosom friend, but I cannot

allow even you to speak to me of that person. Are you ready for bed?

Let’s run a race and see who’ll get to the bed first.”

The suggestion appealed to Diana. The two little white-clad figures flew

down the long room, through the spare-room door, and bounded on the bed

at the same moment. And then--something--moved beneath them, there was a

gasp and a cry--and somebody said in muffled accents:

“Merciful goodness!”

Anne and Diana were never able to tell just how they got off that bed

and out of the room. They only knew that after one frantic rush they

found themselves tiptoeing shiveringly upstairs.

“Oh, who was it--_what_ was it?” whispered Anne, her teeth chattering with

cold and fright.

“It was Aunt Josephine,” said Diana, gasping with laughter. “Oh, Anne,

it was Aunt Josephine, however she came to be there. Oh, and I know she

will be furious. It’s dreadful--it’s really dreadful--but did you ever

know anything so funny, Anne?”

“Who is your Aunt Josephine?”

“She’s father’s aunt and she lives in Charlottetown. She’s awfully

old--seventy anyhow--and I don’t believe she was _ever_ a little girl. We

were expecting her out for a visit, but not so soon. She’s awfully prim

and proper and she’ll scold dreadfully about this, I know. Well, we’ll

have to sleep with Minnie May--and you can’t think how she kicks.”

Miss Josephine Barry did not appear at the early breakfast the next

morning. Mrs. Barry smiled kindly at the two little girls.

“Did you have a good time last night? I tried to stay awake until you

came home, for I wanted to tell you Aunt Josephine had come and that you

would have to go upstairs after all, but I was so tired I fell asleep. I

hope you didn’t disturb your aunt, Diana.”

Diana preserved a discreet silence, but she and Anne exchanged furtive

smiles of guilty amusement across the table. Anne hurried home after

breakfast and so remained in blissful ignorance of the disturbance which

presently resulted in the Barry household until the late afternoon, when

she went down to Mrs. Lynde’s on an errand for Marilla.

“So you and Diana nearly frightened poor old Miss Barry to death last

night?” said Mrs. Lynde severely, but with a twinkle in her eye. “Mrs.

Barry was here a few minutes ago on her way to Carmody. She’s feeling

real worried over it. Old Miss Barry was in a terrible temper when she

got up this morning--and Josephine Barry’s temper is no joke, I can tell

you that. She wouldn’t speak to Diana at all.”

“It wasn’t Diana’s fault,” said Anne contritely. “It was mine. I

suggested racing to see who would get into bed first.”

“I knew it!” said Mrs. Lynde, with the exultation of a correct guesser.

“I knew that idea came out of your head. Well, it’s made a nice lot of

trouble, that’s what. Old Miss Barry came out to stay for a month, but

she declares she won’t stay another day and is going right back to town

tomorrow, Sunday and all as it is. She’d have gone today if they could

have taken her. She had promised to pay for a quarter’s music lessons

for Diana, but now she is determined to do nothing at all for such a

tomboy. Oh, I guess they had a lively time of it there this morning. The

Barrys must feel cut up. Old Miss Barry is rich and they’d like to keep

on the good side of her. Of course, Mrs. Barry didn’t say just that to

me, but I’m a pretty good judge of human nature, that’s what.”

“I’m such an unlucky girl,” mourned Anne. “I’m always getting into

scrapes myself and getting my best friends--people I’d shed my heart’s

blood for--into them too. Can you tell me why it is so, Mrs. Lynde?”

“It’s because you’re too heedless and impulsive, child, that’s what. You

never stop to think--whatever comes into your head to say or do you say

or do it without a moment’s reflection.”

“Oh, but that’s the best of it,” protested Anne. “Something just flashes

into your mind, so exciting, and you must out with it. If you stop to

think it over you spoil it all. Haven’t you never felt that yourself,

Mrs. Lynde?”

No, Mrs. Lynde had not. She shook her head sagely.

“You must learn to think a little, Anne, that’s what. The proverb you

need to go by is ‘Look before you leap’--especially into spare-room

beds.”

Mrs. Lynde laughed comfortably over her mild joke, but Anne remained

pensive. She saw nothing to laugh at in the situation, which to her

eyes appeared very serious. When she left Mrs. Lynde’s she took her way

across the crusted fields to Orchard Slope. Diana met her at the kitchen

door.

“Your Aunt Josephine was very cross about it, wasn’t she?” whispered

Anne.

“Yes,” answered Diana, stifling a giggle with an apprehensive glance

over her shoulder at the closed sitting-room door. “She was fairly

dancing with rage, Anne. Oh, how she scolded. She said I was the

worst-behaved girl she ever saw and that my parents ought to be ashamed

of the way they had brought me up. She says she won’t stay and I’m sure

I don’t care. But Father and Mother do.”

“Why didn’t you tell them it was my fault?” demanded Anne.

“It’s likely I’d do such a thing, isn’t it?” said Diana with just scorn.

“I’m no telltale, Anne Shirley, and anyhow I was just as much to blame

as you.”

“Well, I’m going in to tell her myself,” said Anne resolutely.

Diana stared.

“Anne Shirley, you’d never! why--she’ll eat you alive!”

“Don’t frighten me any more than I am frightened,” implored Anne. “I’d

rather walk up to a cannon’s mouth. But I’ve got to do it, Diana. It

was my fault and I’ve got to confess. I’ve had practice in confessing,

fortunately.”

“Well, she’s in the room,” said Diana. “You can go in if you want to. I

wouldn’t dare. And I don’t believe you’ll do a bit of good.”

With this encouragement Anne bearded the lion in its den--that is to

say, walked resolutely up to the sitting-room door and knocked faintly.

A sharp “Come in” followed.

Miss Josephine Barry, thin, prim, and rigid, was knitting fiercely by

the fire, her wrath quite unappeased and her eyes snapping through her

gold-rimmed glasses. She wheeled around in her chair, expecting to see

Diana, and beheld a white-faced girl whose great eyes were brimmed up

with a mixture of desperate courage and shrinking terror.

“Who are you?” demanded Miss Josephine Barry, without ceremony.

“I’m Anne of Green Gables,” said the small visitor tremulously, clasping

her hands with her characteristic gesture, “and I’ve come to confess, if

you please.”

“Confess what?”

“That it was all my fault about jumping into bed on you last night. I

suggested it. Diana would never have thought of such a thing, I am sure.

Diana is a very ladylike girl, Miss Barry. So you must see how unjust it

is to blame her.”

“Oh, I must, hey? I rather think Diana did her share of the jumping at

least. Such carryings on in a respectable house!”

“But we were only in fun,” persisted Anne. “I think you ought to forgive

us, Miss Barry, now that we’ve apologized. And anyhow, please forgive

Diana and let her have her music lessons. Diana’s heart is set on her

music lessons, Miss Barry, and I know too well what it is to set your

heart on a thing and not get it. If you must be cross with anyone, be

cross with me. I’ve been so used in my early days to having people cross

at me that I can endure it much better than Diana can.”

Much of the snap had gone out of the old lady’s eyes by this time

and was replaced by a twinkle of amused interest. But she still said

severely:

“I don’t think it is any excuse for you that you were only in fun.

Little girls never indulged in that kind of fun when I was young. You

don’t know what it is to be awakened out of a sound sleep, after a long

and arduous journey, by two great girls coming bounce down on you.”

“I don’t _know_, but I can _imagine_,” said Anne eagerly. “I’m sure it must

have been very disturbing. But then, there is our side of it too. Have

you any imagination, Miss Barry? If you have, just put yourself in

our place. We didn’t know there was anybody in that bed and you nearly

scared us to death. It was simply awful the way we felt. And then we

couldn’t sleep in the spare room after being promised. I suppose you are

used to sleeping in spare rooms. But just imagine what you would feel

like if you were a little orphan girl who had never had such an honor.”

All the snap had gone by this time. Miss Barry actually laughed--a

sound which caused Diana, waiting in speechless anxiety in the kitchen

outside, to give a great gasp of relief.

“I’m afraid my imagination is a little rusty--it’s so long since I used

it,” she said. “I dare say your claim to sympathy is just as strong as

mine. It all depends on the way we look at it. Sit down here and tell me

about yourself.”

“I am very sorry I can’t,” said Anne firmly. “I would like to, because

you seem like an interesting lady, and you might even be a kindred

spirit although you don’t look very much like it. But it is my duty to

go home to Miss Marilla Cuthbert. Miss Marilla Cuthbert is a very kind

lady who has taken me to bring up properly. She is doing her best, but

it is very discouraging work. You must not blame her because I jumped on

the bed. But before I go I do wish you would tell me if you will forgive

Diana and stay just as long as you meant to in Avonlea.”

“I think perhaps I will if you will come over and talk to me

occasionally,” said Miss Barry.

That evening Miss Barry gave Diana a silver bangle bracelet and told the

senior members of the household that she had unpacked her valise.

“I’ve made up my mind to stay simply for the sake of getting better

acquainted with that Anne-girl,” she said frankly. “She amuses me, and

at my time of life an amusing person is a rarity.”

Marilla’s only comment when she heard the story was, “I told you so.”

This was for Matthew’s benefit.

Miss Barry stayed her month out and over. She was a more agreeable guest

than usual, for Anne kept her in good humor. They became firm friends.

When Miss Barry went away she said:

“Remember, you Anne-girl, when you come to town you’re to visit me and

I’ll put you in my very sparest spare-room bed to sleep.”

“Miss Barry was a kindred spirit, after all,” Anne confided to Marilla.

“You wouldn’t think so to look at her, but she is. You don’t find it

right out at first, as in Matthew’s case, but after a while you come

to see it. Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It’s

splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.”

CHAPTER XX. A Good Imagination Gone Wrong

SPRING had come once more to Green Gables--the beautiful capricious,

reluctant Canadian spring, lingering along through April and May in a

succession of sweet, fresh, chilly days, with pink sunsets and miracles

of resurrection and growth. The maples in Lover’s Lane were red budded

and little curly ferns pushed up around the Dryad’s Bubble. Away up in

the barrens, behind Mr. Silas Sloane’s place, the Mayflowers blossomed

out, pink and white stars of sweetness under their brown leaves. All the

school girls and boys had one golden afternoon gathering them, coming

home in the clear, echoing twilight with arms and baskets full of

flowery spoil.

“I’m so sorry for people who live in lands where there are no

Mayflowers,” said Anne. “Diana says perhaps they have something better,

but there couldn’t be anything better than Mayflowers, could there,

Marilla? And Diana says if they don’t know what they are like they don’t

miss them. But I think that is the saddest thing of all. I think it

would be _tragic_, Marilla, not to know what Mayflowers are like and _not_

to miss them. Do you know what I think Mayflowers are, Marilla? I think

they must be the souls of the flowers that died last summer and this

is their heaven. But we had a splendid time today, Marilla. We had our

lunch down in a big mossy hollow by an old well--such a _romantic_ spot.

Charlie Sloane dared Arty Gillis to jump over it, and Arty did because

he wouldn’t take a dare. Nobody would in school. It is very _fashionable_

to dare. Mr. Phillips gave all the Mayflowers he found to Prissy Andrews

and I heard him to say ‘sweets to the sweet.’ He got that out of a

book, I know; but it shows he has some imagination. I was offered some

Mayflowers too, but I rejected them with scorn. I can’t tell you the

person’s name because I have vowed never to let it cross my lips. We

made wreaths of the Mayflowers and put them on our hats; and when the

time came to go home we marched in procession down the road, two by two,

with our bouquets and wreaths, singing ‘My Home on the Hill.’ Oh, it was

so thrilling, Marilla. All Mr. Silas Sloane’s folks rushed out to see us

and everybody we met on the road stopped and stared after us. We made a

real sensation.”

“Not much wonder! Such silly doings!” was Marilla’s response.

After the Mayflowers came the violets, and Violet Vale was empurpled

with them. Anne walked through it on her way to school with reverent

steps and worshiping eyes, as if she trod on holy ground.

“Somehow,” she told Diana, “when I’m going through here I don’t really

care whether Gil--whether anybody gets ahead of me in class or not. But

when I’m up in school it’s all different and I care as much as ever.

There’s such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is

why I’m such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would

be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn’t be half so

interesting.”

One June evening, when the orchards were pink blossomed again, when the

frogs were singing silverly sweet in the marshes about the head of the

Lake of Shining Waters, and the air was full of the savor of clover

fields and balsamic fir woods, Anne was sitting by her gable window.

She had been studying her lessons, but it had grown too dark to see the

book, so she had fallen into wide-eyed reverie, looking out past the

boughs of the Snow Queen, once more bestarred with its tufts of blossom.

In all essential respects the little gable chamber was unchanged. The

walls were as white, the pincushion as hard, the chairs as stiffly

and yellowly upright as ever. Yet the whole character of the room was

altered. It was full of a new vital, pulsing personality that seemed to

pervade it and to be quite independent of schoolgirl books and dresses

and ribbons, and even of the cracked blue jug full of apple blossoms

on the table. It was as if all the dreams, sleeping and waking, of its

vivid occupant had taken a visible although unmaterial form and had

tapestried the bare room with splendid filmy tissues of rainbow and

moonshine. Presently Marilla came briskly in with some of Anne’s freshly

ironed school aprons. She hung them over a chair and sat down with

a short sigh. She had had one of her headaches that afternoon, and

although the pain had gone she felt weak and “tuckered out,” as she

expressed it. Anne looked at her with eyes limpid with sympathy.

“I do truly wish I could have had the headache in your place, Marilla. I

would have endured it joyfully for your sake.”

“I guess you did your part in attending to the work and letting me

rest,” said Marilla. “You seem to have got on fairly well and made fewer

mistakes than usual. Of course it wasn’t exactly necessary to starch

Matthew’s handkerchiefs! And most people when they put a pie in the oven

to warm up for dinner take it out and eat it when it gets hot instead of

leaving it to be burned to a crisp. But that doesn’t seem to be your way

evidently.”

Headaches always left Marilla somewhat sarcastic.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Anne penitently. “I never thought about that

pie from the moment I put it in the oven till now, although I felt

_instinctively_ that there was something missing on the dinner table. I

was firmly resolved, when you left me in charge this morning, not to

imagine anything, but keep my thoughts on facts. I did pretty well until

I put the pie in, and then an irresistible temptation came to me to

imagine I was an enchanted princess shut up in a lonely tower with a

handsome knight riding to my rescue on a coal-black steed. So that

is how I came to forget the pie. I didn’t know I starched the

handkerchiefs. All the time I was ironing I was trying to think of a

name for a new island Diana and I have discovered up the brook. It’s the

most ravishing spot, Marilla. There are two maple trees on it and the

brook flows right around it. At last it struck me that it would be

splendid to call it Victoria Island because we found it on the Queen’s

birthday. Both Diana and I are very loyal. But I’m sorry about that pie

and the handkerchiefs. I wanted to be extra good today because it’s an

anniversary. Do you remember what happened this day last year, Marilla?”

“No, I can’t think of anything special.”

“Oh, Marilla, it was the day I came to Green Gables. I shall never

forget it. It was the turning point in my life. Of course it wouldn’t

seem so important to you. I’ve been here for a year and I’ve been so

happy. Of course, I’ve had my troubles, but one can live down troubles.

Are you sorry you kept me, Marilla?”

“No, I can’t say I’m sorry,” said Marilla, who sometimes wondered how

she could have lived before Anne came to Green Gables, “no, not exactly

sorry. If you’ve finished your lessons, Anne, I want you to run over and

ask Mrs. Barry if she’ll lend me Diana’s apron pattern.”

“Oh--it’s--it’s too dark,” cried Anne.

“Too dark? Why, it’s only twilight. And goodness knows you’ve gone over

often enough after dark.”

“I’ll go over early in the morning,” said Anne eagerly. “I’ll get up at

sunrise and go over, Marilla.”

“What has got into your head now, Anne Shirley? I want that pattern to

cut out your new apron this evening. Go at once and be smart too.”

“I’ll have to go around by the road, then,” said Anne, taking up her hat

reluctantly.

“Go by the road and waste half an hour! I’d like to catch you!”

“I can’t go through the Haunted Wood, Marilla,” cried Anne desperately.

Marilla stared.

“The Haunted Wood! Are you crazy? What under the canopy is the Haunted

Wood?”

“The spruce wood over the brook,” said Anne in a whisper.

“Fiddlesticks! There is no such thing as a haunted wood anywhere. Who

has been telling you such stuff?”

“Nobody,” confessed Anne. “Diana and I just imagined the wood was

haunted. All the places around here are so--so--_commonplace_. We just got

this up for our own amusement. We began it in April. A haunted wood is

so very romantic, Marilla. We chose the spruce grove because it’s so

gloomy. Oh, we have imagined the most harrowing things. There’s a white

lady walks along the brook just about this time of the night and wrings

her hands and utters wailing cries. She appears when there is to be a

death in the family. And the ghost of a little murdered child haunts the

corner up by Idlewild; it creeps up behind you and lays its cold fingers

on your hand--so. Oh, Marilla, it gives me a shudder to think of it. And

there’s a headless man stalks up and down the path and skeletons glower

at you between the boughs. Oh, Marilla, I wouldn’t go through the

Haunted Wood after dark now for anything. I’d be sure that white things

would reach out from behind the trees and grab me.”

“Did ever anyone hear the like!” ejaculated Marilla, who had

listened in dumb amazement. “Anne Shirley, do you mean to tell me you

believe all that wicked nonsense of your own imagination?”

“Not believe _exactly_,” faltered Anne. “At least, I don’t believe it in

daylight. But after dark, Marilla, it’s different. That is when ghosts

walk.”

“There are no such things as ghosts, Anne.”

“Oh, but there are, Marilla,” cried Anne eagerly. “I know people who

have seen them. And they are respectable people. Charlie Sloane says

that his grandmother saw his grandfather driving home the cows one night

after he’d been buried for a year. You know Charlie Sloane’s grandmother

wouldn’t tell a story for anything. She’s a very religious woman. And

Mrs. Thomas’s father was pursued home one night by a lamb of fire with

its head cut off hanging by a strip of skin. He said he knew it was the

spirit of his brother and that it was a warning he would die within nine

days. He didn’t, but he died two years after, so you see it was really

true. And Ruby Gillis says--”

“Anne Shirley,” interrupted Marilla firmly, “I never want to hear you

talking in this fashion again. I’ve had my doubts about that imagination

of yours right along, and if this is going to be the outcome of it, I

won’t countenance any such doings. You’ll go right over to Barry’s, and

you’ll go through that spruce grove, just for a lesson and a warning to

you. And never let me hear a word out of your head about haunted woods

again.”

Anne might plead and cry as she liked--and did, for her terror was very

real. Her imagination had run away with her and she held the spruce

grove in mortal dread after nightfall. But Marilla was inexorable. She

marched the shrinking ghost-seer down to the spring and ordered her

to proceed straightway over the bridge and into the dusky retreats of

wailing ladies and headless specters beyond.

“Oh, Marilla, how can you be so cruel?” sobbed Anne. “What would you

feel like if a white thing did snatch me up and carry me off?”

“I’ll risk it,” said Marilla unfeelingly. “You know I always mean what I

say. I’ll cure you of imagining ghosts into places. March, now.”

Anne marched. That is, she stumbled over the bridge and went shuddering

up the horrible dim path beyond. Anne never forgot that walk. Bitterly

did she repent the license she had given to her imagination. The goblins

of her fancy lurked in every shadow about her, reaching out their cold,

fleshless hands to grasp the terrified small girl who had called them

into being. A white strip of birch bark blowing up from the hollow over

the brown floor of the grove made her heart stand still. The long-drawn

wail of two old boughs rubbing against each other brought out the

perspiration in beads on her forehead. The swoop of bats in the darkness

over her was as the wings of unearthly creatures. When she reached Mr.

William Bell’s field she fled across it as if pursued by an army of

white things, and arrived at the Barry kitchen door so out of breath

that she could hardly gasp out her request for the apron pattern.

Diana was away so that she had no excuse to linger. The dreadful

return journey had to be faced. Anne went back over it with shut eyes,

preferring to take the risk of dashing her brains out among the boughs

to that of seeing a white thing. When she finally stumbled over the log

bridge she drew one long shivering breath of relief.

“Well, so nothing caught you?” said Marilla unsympathetically.

“Oh, Mar--Marilla,” chattered Anne, “I’ll b-b-be contt-tented with

c-c-commonplace places after this.”

CHAPTER XXI. A New Departure in Flavorings

DEAR me, there is nothing but meetings and partings in this world, as

Mrs. Lynde says,” remarked Anne plaintively, putting her slate and books

down on the kitchen table on the last day of June and wiping her red

eyes with a very damp handkerchief. “Wasn’t it fortunate, Marilla, that

I took an extra handkerchief to school today? I had a presentiment that

it would be needed.”

“I never thought you were so fond of Mr. Phillips that you’d require two

handkerchiefs to dry your tears just because he was going away,” said

Marilla.

“I don’t think I was crying because I was really so very fond of him,”

reflected Anne. “I just cried because all the others did. It was

Ruby Gillis started it. Ruby Gillis has always declared she hated Mr.

Phillips, but just as soon as he got up to make his farewell speech she

burst into tears. Then all the girls began to cry, one after the other.

I tried to hold out, Marilla. I tried to remember the time Mr. Phillips

made me sit with Gil--with a boy; and the time he spelled my name

without an ‘e’ on the blackboard; and how he said I was the worst dunce

he ever saw at geometry and laughed at my spelling; and all the times he

had been so horrid and sarcastic; but somehow I couldn’t, Marilla, and I

just had to cry too. Jane Andrews has been talking for a month about how

glad she’d be when Mr. Phillips went away and she declared she’d never

shed a tear. Well, she was worse than any of us and had to borrow a

handkerchief from her brother--of course the boys didn’t cry--because

she hadn’t brought one of her own, not expecting to need it. Oh,

Marilla, it was heartrending. Mr. Phillips made such a beautiful

farewell speech beginning, ‘The time has come for us to part.’ It was

very affecting. And he had tears in his eyes too, Marilla. Oh, I felt

dreadfully sorry and remorseful for all the times I’d talked in school

and drawn pictures of him on my slate and made fun of him and Prissy.

I can tell you I wished I’d been a model pupil like Minnie Andrews. She

hadn’t anything on her conscience. The girls cried all the way home from

school. Carrie Sloane kept saying every few minutes, ‘The time has come

for us to part,’ and that would start us off again whenever we were in

any danger of cheering up. I do feel dreadfully sad, Marilla. But one

can’t feel quite in the depths of despair with two months’ vacation

before them, can they, Marilla? And besides, we met the new minister and

his wife coming from the station. For all I was feeling so bad about Mr.

Phillips going away I couldn’t help taking a little interest in a new

minister, could I? His wife is very pretty. Not exactly regally lovely,

of course--it wouldn’t do, I suppose, for a minister to have a regally

lovely wife, because it might set a bad example. Mrs. Lynde says the

minister’s wife over at Newbridge sets a very bad example because she

dresses so fashionably. Our new minister’s wife was dressed in blue

muslin with lovely puffed sleeves and a hat trimmed with roses.

Jane Andrews said she thought puffed sleeves were too worldly for

a minister’s wife, but I didn’t make any such uncharitable remark,

Marilla, because I know what it is to long for puffed sleeves. Besides,

she’s only been a minister’s wife for a little while, so one should

make allowances, shouldn’t they? They are going to board with Mrs. Lynde

until the manse is ready.”

If Marilla, in going down to Mrs. Lynde’s that evening, was actuated by

any motive save her avowed one of returning the quilting frames she had

borrowed the preceding winter, it was an amiable weakness shared by most

of the Avonlea people. Many a thing Mrs. Lynde had lent, sometimes

never expecting to see it again, came home that night in charge of the

borrowers thereof. A new minister, and moreover a minister with a wife,

was a lawful object of curiosity in a quiet little country settlement

where sensations were few and far between.

Old Mr. Bentley, the minister whom Anne had found lacking in

imagination, had been pastor of Avonlea for eighteen years. He was a

widower when he came, and a widower he remained, despite the fact that

gossip regularly married him to this, that, or the other one, every year

of his sojourn. In the preceding February he had resigned his charge and

departed amid the regrets of his people, most of whom had the affection

born of long intercourse for their good old minister in spite of his

shortcomings as an orator. Since then the Avonlea church had enjoyed a

variety of religious dissipation in listening to the many and various

candidates and “supplies” who came Sunday after Sunday to preach on

trial. These stood or fell by the judgment of the fathers and mothers

in Israel; but a certain small, red-haired girl who sat meekly in the

corner of the old Cuthbert pew also had her opinions about them and

discussed the same in full with Matthew, Marilla always declining from

principle to criticize ministers in any shape or form.

“I don’t think Mr. Smith would have done, Matthew” was Anne’s final

summing up. “Mrs. Lynde says his delivery was so poor, but I think his

worst fault was just like Mr. Bentley’s--he had no imagination. And Mr.

Terry had too much; he let it run away with him just as I did mine in

the matter of the Haunted Wood. Besides, Mrs. Lynde says his theology

wasn’t sound. Mr. Gresham was a very good man and a very religious man,

but he told too many funny stories and made the people laugh in church;

he was undignified, and you must have some dignity about a minister,

mustn’t you, Matthew? I thought Mr. Marshall was decidedly attractive;

but Mrs. Lynde says he isn’t married, or even engaged, because she made

special inquiries about him, and she says it would never do to have

a young unmarried minister in Avonlea, because he might marry in the

congregation and that would make trouble. Mrs. Lynde is a very farseeing

woman, isn’t she, Matthew? I’m very glad they’ve called Mr. Allan. I

liked him because his sermon was interesting and he prayed as if he

meant it and not just as if he did it because he was in the habit of it.

Mrs. Lynde says he isn’t perfect, but she says she supposes we couldn’t

expect a perfect minister for seven hundred and fifty dollars a year,

and anyhow his theology is sound because she questioned him thoroughly

on all the points of doctrine. And she knows his wife’s people and they

are most respectable and the women are all good housekeepers. Mrs. Lynde

says that sound doctrine in the man and good housekeeping in the woman

make an ideal combination for a minister’s family.”

The new minister and his wife were a young, pleasant-faced couple, still

on their honeymoon, and full of all good and beautiful enthusiasms for

their chosen lifework. Avonlea opened its heart to them from the start.

Old and young liked the frank, cheerful young man with his high ideals,

and the bright, gentle little lady who assumed the mistress-ship of the

manse. With Mrs. Allan Anne fell promptly and wholeheartedly in love.

She had discovered another kindred spirit.

“Mrs. Allan is perfectly lovely,” she announced one Sunday afternoon.

“She’s taken our class and she’s a splendid teacher. She said right away

she didn’t think it was fair for the teacher to ask all the questions,

and you know, Marilla, that is exactly what I’ve always thought. She

said we could ask her any question we liked and I asked ever so many.

I’m good at asking questions, Marilla.”

“I believe you,” was Marilla’s emphatic comment.

“Nobody else asked any except Ruby Gillis, and she asked if there was

to be a Sunday-school picnic this summer. I didn’t think that was a

very proper question to ask because it hadn’t any connection with the

lesson--the lesson was about Daniel in the lions’ den--but Mrs. Allan

just smiled and said she thought there would be. Mrs. Allan has a

lovely smile; she has such _exquisite_ dimples in her cheeks. I wish I had

dimples in my cheeks, Marilla. I’m not half so skinny as I was when I

came here, but I have no dimples yet. If I had perhaps I could influence

people for good. Mrs. Allan said we ought always to try to influence

other people for good. She talked so nice about everything. I never knew

before that religion was such a cheerful thing. I always thought it

was kind of melancholy, but Mrs. Allan’s isn’t, and I’d like to be a

Christian if I could be one like her. I wouldn’t want to be one like Mr.

Superintendent Bell.”

“It’s very naughty of you to speak so about Mr. Bell,” said Marilla

severely. “Mr. Bell is a real good man.”

“Oh, of course he’s good,” agreed Anne, “but he doesn’t seem to get any

comfort out of it. If I could be good I’d dance and sing all day because

I was glad of it. I suppose Mrs. Allan is too old to dance and sing and

of course it wouldn’t be dignified in a minister’s wife. But I can just

feel she’s glad she’s a Christian and that she’d be one even if she

could get to heaven without it.”

“I suppose we must have Mr. and Mrs. Allan up to tea someday soon,” said

Marilla reflectively. “They’ve been most everywhere but here. Let me

see. Next Wednesday would be a good time to have them. But don’t say a

word to Matthew about it, for if he knew they were coming he’d find some

excuse to be away that day. He’d got so used to Mr. Bentley he didn’t

mind him, but he’s going to find it hard to get acquainted with a new

minister, and a new minister’s wife will frighten him to death.”

“I’ll be as secret as the dead,” assured Anne. “But oh, Marilla, will

you let me make a cake for the occasion? I’d love to do something for

Mrs. Allan, and you know I can make a pretty good cake by this time.”

“You can make a layer cake,” promised Marilla.

Monday and Tuesday great preparations went on at Green Gables.

Having the minister and his wife to tea was a serious and important

undertaking, and Marilla was determined not to be eclipsed by any of

the Avonlea housekeepers. Anne was wild with excitement and delight. She

talked it all over with Diana Tuesday night in the twilight, as they

sat on the big red stones by the Dryad’s Bubble and made rainbows in the

water with little twigs dipped in fir balsam.

“Everything is ready, Diana, except my cake which I’m to make in the

morning, and the baking-powder biscuits which Marilla will make just

before teatime. I assure you, Diana, that Marilla and I have had a busy

two days of it. It’s such a responsibility having a minister’s family to

tea. I never went through such an experience before. You should just see

our pantry. It’s a sight to behold. We’re going to have jellied chicken

and cold tongue. We’re to have two kinds of jelly, red and yellow, and

whipped cream and lemon pie, and cherry pie, and three kinds of cookies,

and fruit cake, and Marilla’s famous yellow plum preserves that she

keeps especially for ministers, and pound cake and layer cake, and

biscuits as aforesaid; and new bread and old both, in case the minister

is dyspeptic and can’t eat new. Mrs. Lynde says ministers are dyspeptic,

but I don’t think Mr. Allan has been a minister long enough for it to

have had a bad effect on him. I just grow cold when I think of my layer

cake. Oh, Diana, what if it shouldn’t be good! I dreamed last night that

I was chased all around by a fearful goblin with a big layer cake for a

head.”

“It’ll be good, all right,” assured Diana, who was a very comfortable

sort of friend. “I’m sure that piece of the one you made that we had for

lunch in Idlewild two weeks ago was perfectly elegant.”

“Yes; but cakes have such a terrible habit of turning out bad just

when you especially want them to be good,” sighed Anne, setting a

particularly well-balsamed twig afloat. “However, I suppose I shall

just have to trust to Providence and be careful to put in the flour. Oh,

look, Diana, what a lovely rainbow! Do you suppose the dryad will come

out after we go away and take it for a scarf?”

“You know there is no such thing as a dryad,” said Diana. Diana’s mother

had found out about the Haunted Wood and had been decidedly angry over

it. As a result Diana had abstained from any further imitative flights

of imagination and did not think it prudent to cultivate a spirit of

belief even in harmless dryads.

“But it’s so easy to imagine there is,” said Anne. “Every night before

I go to bed, I look out of my window and wonder if the dryad is really

sitting here, combing her locks with the spring for a mirror. Sometimes

I look for her footprints in the dew in the morning. Oh, Diana, don’t

give up your faith in the dryad!”

Wednesday morning came. Anne got up at sunrise because she was too

excited to sleep. She had caught a severe cold in the head by reason of

her dabbling in the spring on the preceding evening; but nothing short

of absolute pneumonia could have quenched her interest in culinary

matters that morning. After breakfast she proceeded to make her cake.

When she finally shut the oven door upon it she drew a long breath.

“I’m sure I haven’t forgotten anything this time, Marilla. But do you

think it will rise? Just suppose perhaps the baking powder isn’t good? I

used it out of the new can. And Mrs. Lynde says you can never be sure of

getting good baking powder nowadays when everything is so adulterated.

Mrs. Lynde says the Government ought to take the matter up, but she says

we’ll never see the day when a Tory Government will do it. Marilla, what

if that cake doesn’t rise?”

“We’ll have plenty without it” was Marilla’s unimpassioned way of

looking at the subject.

The cake did rise, however, and came out of the oven as light and

feathery as golden foam. Anne, flushed with delight, clapped it together

with layers of ruby jelly and, in imagination, saw Mrs. Allan eating it

and possibly asking for another piece!

“You’ll be using the best tea set, of course, Marilla,” she said. “Can I

fix the table with ferns and wild roses?”

“I think that’s all nonsense,” sniffed Marilla. “In my opinion it’s the

eatables that matter and not flummery decorations.”

“Mrs. Barry had _her_ table decorated,” said Anne, who was not entirely

guiltless of the wisdom of the serpent, “and the minister paid her an

elegant compliment. He said it was a feast for the eye as well as the

palate.”

“Well, do as you like,” said Marilla, who was quite determined not to

be surpassed by Mrs. Barry or anybody else. “Only mind you leave enough

room for the dishes and the food.”

Anne laid herself out to decorate in a manner and after a fashion that

should leave Mrs. Barry’s nowhere. Having abundance of roses and ferns

and a very artistic taste of her own, she made that tea table such a

thing of beauty that when the minister and his wife sat down to it they

exclaimed in chorus over it loveliness.

“It’s Anne’s doings,” said Marilla, grimly just; and Anne felt that Mrs.

Allan’s approving smile was almost too much happiness for this world.

Matthew was there, having been inveigled into the party only goodness

and Anne knew how. He had been in such a state of shyness and

nervousness that Marilla had given him up in despair, but Anne took him

in hand so successfully that he now sat at the table in his best clothes

and white collar and talked to the minister not uninterestingly.

He never said a word to Mrs. Allan, but that perhaps was not to be

expected.

All went merry as a marriage bell until Anne’s layer cake was passed.

Mrs. Allan, having already been helped to a bewildering variety,

declined it. But Marilla, seeing the disappointment on Anne’s face, said

smilingly:

“Oh, you must take a piece of this, Mrs. Allan. Anne made it on purpose

for you.”

“In that case I must sample it,” laughed Mrs. Allan, helping herself to

a plump triangle, as did also the minister and Marilla.

Mrs. Allan took a mouthful of hers and a most peculiar expression

crossed her face; not a word did she say, however, but steadily ate away

at it. Marilla saw the expression and hastened to taste the cake.

“Anne Shirley!” she exclaimed, “what on earth did you put into that

cake?”

“Nothing but what the recipe said, Marilla,” cried Anne with a look of

anguish. “Oh, isn’t it all right?”

“All right! It’s simply horrible. Mr. Allan, don’t try to eat it. Anne,

taste it yourself. What flavoring did you use?”

“Vanilla,” said Anne, her face scarlet with mortification after tasting

the cake. “Only vanilla. Oh, Marilla, it must have been the baking

powder. I had my suspicions of that bak--”

“Baking powder fiddlesticks! Go and bring me the bottle of vanilla you

used.”

Anne fled to the pantry and returned with a small bottle partially

filled with a brown liquid and labeled yellowly, “Best Vanilla.”

Marilla took it, uncorked it, smelled it.

“Mercy on us, Anne, you’ve flavored that cake with _Anodyne Liniment_. I

broke the liniment bottle last week and poured what was left into an

old empty vanilla bottle. I suppose it’s partly my fault--I should have

warned you--but for pity’s sake why couldn’t you have smelled it?”

Anne dissolved into tears under this double disgrace.

“I couldn’t--I had such a cold!” and with this she fairly fled to the

gable chamber, where she cast herself on the bed and wept as one who

refuses to be comforted.

Presently a light step sounded on the stairs and somebody entered the

room.

“Oh, Marilla,” sobbed Anne, without looking up, “I’m disgraced forever.

I shall never be able to live this down. It will get out--things always

do get out in Avonlea. Diana will ask me how my cake turned out and I

shall have to tell her the truth. I shall always be pointed at as the

girl who flavored a cake with anodyne liniment. Gil--the boys in school

will never get over laughing at it. Oh, Marilla, if you have a spark

of Christian pity don’t tell me that I must go down and wash the dishes

after this. I’ll wash them when the minister and his wife are gone, but

I cannot ever look Mrs. Allan in the face again. Perhaps she’ll think I

tried to poison her. Mrs. Lynde says she knows an orphan girl who tried

to poison her benefactor. But the liniment isn’t poisonous. It’s meant

to be taken internally--although not in cakes. Won’t you tell Mrs. Allan

so, Marilla?”

“Suppose you jump up and tell her so yourself,” said a merry voice.

Anne flew up, to find Mrs. Allan standing by her bed, surveying her with

laughing eyes.

“My dear little girl, you mustn’t cry like this,” she said, genuinely

disturbed by Anne’s tragic face. “Why, it’s all just a funny mistake

that anybody might make.”

“Oh, no, it takes me to make such a mistake,” said Anne forlornly. “And

I wanted to have that cake so nice for you, Mrs. Allan.”

“Yes, I know, dear. And I assure you I appreciate your kindness and

thoughtfulness just as much as if it had turned out all right. Now,

you mustn’t cry any more, but come down with me and show me your flower

garden. Miss Cuthbert tells me you have a little plot all your own. I

want to see it, for I’m very much interested in flowers.”

Anne permitted herself to be led down and comforted, reflecting that it

was really providential that Mrs. Allan was a kindred spirit. Nothing

more was said about the liniment cake, and when the guests went away

Anne found that she had enjoyed the evening more than could have been

expected, considering that terrible incident. Nevertheless, she sighed

deeply.

“Marilla, isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no

mistakes in it yet?”

“I’ll warrant you’ll make plenty in it,” said Marilla. “I never saw your

beat for making mistakes, Anne.”

“Yes, and well I know it,” admitted Anne mournfully. “But have you ever

noticed one encouraging thing about me, Marilla? I never make the same

mistake twice.”

“I don’t know as that’s much benefit when you’re always making new

ones.”

“Oh, don’t you see, Marilla? There must be a limit to the mistakes one

person can make, and when I get to the end of them, then I’ll be through

with them. That’s a very comforting thought.”

“Well, you’d better go and give that cake to the pigs,” said Marilla.

“It isn’t fit for any human to eat, not even Jerry Boute.”

CHAPTER XXII. Anne Is Invited Out to Tea

AND what are your eyes popping out of your head about. Now?” asked

Marilla, when Anne had just come in from a run to the post office. “Have

you discovered another kindred spirit?” Excitement hung around Anne like

a garment, shone in her eyes, kindled in every feature. She had come

dancing up the lane, like a wind-blown sprite, through the mellow

sunshine and lazy shadows of the August evening.

“No, Marilla, but oh, what do you think? I am invited to tea at the

manse tomorrow afternoon! Mrs. Allan left the letter for me at the post

office. Just look at it, Marilla. ‘Miss Anne Shirley, Green Gables.’

That is the first time I was ever called ‘Miss.’ Such a thrill as it

gave me! I shall cherish it forever among my choicest treasures.”

“Mrs. Allan told me she meant to have all the members of her

Sunday-school class to tea in turn,” said Marilla, regarding the

wonderful event very coolly. “You needn’t get in such a fever over it.

Do learn to take things calmly, child.”

For Anne to take things calmly would have been to change her nature. All

“spirit and fire and dew,” as she was, the pleasures and pains of life

came to her with trebled intensity. Marilla felt this and was vaguely

troubled over it, realizing that the ups and downs of existence would

probably bear hardly on this impulsive soul and not sufficiently

understanding that the equally great capacity for delight might more

than compensate. Therefore Marilla conceived it to be her duty to drill

Anne into a tranquil uniformity of disposition as impossible and alien

to her as to a dancing sunbeam in one of the brook shallows. She did not

make much headway, as she sorrowfully admitted to herself. The downfall

of some dear hope or plan plunged Anne into “deeps of affliction.” The

fulfillment thereof exalted her to dizzy realms of delight. Marilla had

almost begun to despair of ever fashioning this waif of the world into

her model little girl of demure manners and prim deportment. Neither

would she have believed that she really liked Anne much better as she

was.

Anne went to bed that night speechless with misery because Matthew had

said the wind was round northeast and he feared it would be a rainy day

tomorrow. The rustle of the poplar leaves about the house worried her,

it sounded so like pattering raindrops, and the full, faraway roar of

the gulf, to which she listened delightedly at other times, loving its

strange, sonorous, haunting rhythm, now seemed like a prophecy of storm

and disaster to a small maiden who particularly wanted a fine day. Anne

thought that the morning would never come.

But all things have an end, even nights before the day on which you are

invited to take tea at the manse. The morning, in spite of Matthew’s

predictions, was fine and Anne’s spirits soared to their highest.

“Oh, Marilla, there is something in me today that makes me just love

everybody I see,” she exclaimed as she washed the breakfast dishes.

“You don’t know how good I feel! Wouldn’t it be nice if it could last? I

believe I could be a model child if I were just invited out to tea every

day. But oh, Marilla, it’s a solemn occasion too. I feel so anxious.

What if I shouldn’t behave properly? You know I never had tea at a

manse before, and I’m not sure that I know all the rules of etiquette,

although I’ve been studying the rules given in the Etiquette Department

of the Family Herald ever since I came here. I’m so afraid I’ll do

something silly or forget to do something I should do. Would it be

good manners to take a second helping of anything if you wanted to _very_

much?”

“The trouble with you, Anne, is that you’re thinking too much about

yourself. You should just think of Mrs. Allan and what would be nicest

and most agreeable to her,” said Marilla, hitting for once in her life

on a very sound and pithy piece of advice. Anne instantly realized this.

“You are right, Marilla. I’ll try not to think about myself at all.”

Anne evidently got through her visit without any serious breach of

“etiquette,” for she came home through the twilight, under a great,

high-sprung sky gloried over with trails of saffron and rosy cloud, in

a beatified state of mind and told Marilla all about it happily, sitting

on the big red-sandstone slab at the kitchen door with her tired curly

head in Marilla’s gingham lap.

A cool wind was blowing down over the long harvest fields from the rims

of firry western hills and whistling through the poplars. One clear star

hung over the orchard and the fireflies were flitting over in Lover’s

Lane, in and out among the ferns and rustling boughs. Anne watched them

as she talked and somehow felt that wind and stars and fireflies were

all tangled up together into something unutterably sweet and enchanting.

“Oh, Marilla, I’ve had a most _fascinating_ time. I feel that I have not

lived in vain and I shall always feel like that even if I should never

be invited to tea at a manse again. When I got there Mrs. Allan met me

at the door. She was dressed in the sweetest dress of pale-pink organdy,

with dozens of frills and elbow sleeves, and she looked just like a

seraph. I really think I’d like to be a minister’s wife when I grow up,

Marilla. A minister mightn’t mind my red hair because he wouldn’t be

thinking of such worldly things. But then of course one would have to

be naturally good and I’ll never be that, so I suppose there’s no use in

thinking about it. Some people are naturally good, you know, and others

are not. I’m one of the others. Mrs. Lynde says I’m full of original

sin. No matter how hard I try to be good I can never make such a success

of it as those who are naturally good. It’s a good deal like geometry,

I expect. But don’t you think the trying so hard ought to count for

something? Mrs. Allan is one of the naturally good people. I love her

passionately. You know there are some people, like Matthew and Mrs.

Allan that you can love right off without any trouble. And there are

others, like Mrs. Lynde, that you have to try very hard to love. You

know you _ought_ to love them because they know so much and are such

active workers in the church, but you have to keep reminding yourself of

it all the time or else you forget. There was another little girl at the

manse to tea, from the White Sands Sunday-school. Her name was Laurette

Bradley, and she was a very nice little girl. Not exactly a kindred

spirit, you know, but still very nice. We had an elegant tea, and I

think I kept all the rules of etiquette pretty well. After tea Mrs.

Allan played and sang and she got Lauretta and me to sing too.

Mrs. Allan says I have a good voice and she says I must sing in the

Sunday-school choir after this. You can’t think how I was thrilled at

the mere thought. I’ve longed so to sing in the Sunday-school choir,

as Diana does, but I feared it was an honor I could never aspire to.

Lauretta had to go home early because there is a big concert in the

White Sands Hotel tonight and her sister is to recite at it. Lauretta

says that the Americans at the hotel give a concert every fortnight in

aid of the Charlottetown hospital, and they ask lots of the White

Sands people to recite. Lauretta said she expected to be asked herself

someday. I just gazed at her in awe. After she had gone Mrs. Allan and I

had a heart-to-heart talk. I told her everything--about Mrs. Thomas and

the twins and Katie Maurice and Violetta and coming to Green Gables and

my troubles over geometry. And would you believe it, Marilla? Mrs.

Allan told me she was a dunce at geometry too. You don’t know how that

encouraged me. Mrs. Lynde came to the manse just before I left, and what

do you think, Marilla? The trustees have hired a new teacher and it’s

a lady. Her name is Miss Muriel Stacy. Isn’t that a romantic name? Mrs.

Lynde says they’ve never had a female teacher in Avonlea before and she

thinks it is a dangerous innovation. But I think it will be splendid

to have a lady teacher, and I really don’t see how I’m going to live

through the two weeks before school begins. I’m so impatient to see

her.”

CHAPTER XXIII. Anne Comes to Grief in an Affair of Honor

ANNE had to live through more than two weeks, as it happened. Almost a

month having elapsed since the liniment cake episode, it was high time

for her to get into fresh trouble of some sort, little mistakes, such as

absentmindedly emptying a pan of skim milk into a basket of yarn balls

in the pantry instead of into the pigs’ bucket, and walking clean over

the edge of the log bridge into the brook while wrapped in imaginative

reverie, not really being worth counting.

A week after the tea at the manse Diana Barry gave a party.

“Small and select,” Anne assured Marilla. “Just the girls in our class.”

They had a very good time and nothing untoward happened until after tea,

when they found themselves in the Barry garden, a little tired of all

their games and ripe for any enticing form of mischief which might

present itself. This presently took the form of “daring.”

Daring was the fashionable amusement among the Avonlea small fry just

then. It had begun among the boys, but soon spread to the girls, and all

the silly things that were done in Avonlea that summer because the doers

thereof were “dared” to do them would fill a book by themselves.

First of all Carrie Sloane dared Ruby Gillis to climb to a certain point

in the huge old willow tree before the front door; which Ruby Gillis,

albeit in mortal dread of the fat green caterpillars with which said

tree was infested and with the fear of her mother before her eyes if she

should tear her new muslin dress, nimbly did, to the discomfiture of the

aforesaid Carrie Sloane. Then Josie Pye dared Jane Andrews to hop on her

left leg around the garden without stopping once or putting her right

foot to the ground; which Jane Andrews gamely tried to do, but gave out

at the third corner and had to confess herself defeated.

Josie’s triumph being rather more pronounced than good taste permitted,

Anne Shirley dared her to walk along the top of the board fence which

bounded the garden to the east. Now, to “walk” board fences requires

more skill and steadiness of head and heel than one might suppose who

has never tried it. But Josie Pye, if deficient in some qualities

that make for popularity, had at least a natural and inborn gift, duly

cultivated, for walking board fences. Josie walked the Barry fence with

an airy unconcern which seemed to imply that a little thing like that

wasn’t worth a “dare.” Reluctant admiration greeted her exploit, for

most of the other girls could appreciate it, having suffered many things

themselves in their efforts to walk fences. Josie descended from her

perch, flushed with victory, and darted a defiant glance at Anne.

Anne tossed her red braids.

“I don’t think it’s such a very wonderful thing to walk a little, low,

board fence,” she said. “I knew a girl in Marysville who could walk the

ridgepole of a roof.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Josie flatly. “I don’t believe anybody could

walk a ridgepole. _You_ couldn’t, anyhow.”

“Couldn’t I?” cried Anne rashly.

“Then I dare you to do it,” said Josie defiantly. “I dare you to climb

up there and walk the ridgepole of Mr. Barry’s kitchen roof.”

Anne turned pale, but there was clearly only one thing to be done. She

walked toward the house, where a ladder was leaning against the kitchen

roof. All the fifth-class girls said, “Oh!” partly in excitement, partly

in dismay.

“Don’t you do it, Anne,” entreated Diana. “You’ll fall off and be

killed. Never mind Josie Pye. It isn’t fair to dare anybody to do

anything so dangerous.”

“I must do it. My honor is at stake,” said Anne solemnly. “I shall walk

that ridgepole, Diana, or perish in the attempt. If I am killed you are

to have my pearl bead ring.”

Anne climbed the ladder amid breathless silence, gained the ridgepole,

balanced herself uprightly on that precarious footing, and started to

walk along it, dizzily conscious that she was uncomfortably high up

in the world and that walking ridgepoles was not a thing in which your

imagination helped you out much. Nevertheless, she managed to take

several steps before the catastrophe came. Then she swayed, lost her

balance, stumbled, staggered, and fell, sliding down over the sun-baked

roof and crashing off it through the tangle of Virginia creeper

beneath--all before the dismayed circle below could give a simultaneous,

terrified shriek.

If Anne had tumbled off the roof on the side up which she had ascended

Diana would probably have fallen heir to the pearl bead ring then and

there. Fortunately she fell on the other side, where the roof extended

down over the porch so nearly to the ground that a fall therefrom was

a much less serious thing. Nevertheless, when Diana and the other

girls had rushed frantically around the house--except Ruby Gillis, who

remained as if rooted to the ground and went into hysterics--they found

Anne lying all white and limp among the wreck and ruin of the Virginia

creeper.

“Anne, are you killed?” shrieked Diana, throwing herself on her knees

beside her friend. “Oh, Anne, dear Anne, speak just one word to me and

tell me if you’re killed.”

To the immense relief of all the girls, and especially of Josie Pye,

who, in spite of lack of imagination, had been seized with horrible

visions of a future branded as the girl who was the cause of Anne

Shirley’s early and tragic death, Anne sat dizzily up and answered

uncertainly:

“No, Diana, I am not killed, but I think I am rendered unconscious.”

“Where?” sobbed Carrie Sloane. “Oh, where, Anne?” Before Anne could

answer Mrs. Barry appeared on the scene. At sight of her Anne tried to

scramble to her feet, but sank back again with a sharp little cry of

pain.

“What’s the matter? Where have you hurt yourself?” demanded Mrs. Barry.

“My ankle,” gasped Anne. “Oh, Diana, please find your father and ask him

to take me home. I know I can never walk there. And I’m sure I couldn’t

hop so far on one foot when Jane couldn’t even hop around the garden.”

Marilla was out in the orchard picking a panful of summer apples when

she saw Mr. Barry coming over the log bridge and up the slope, with Mrs.

Barry beside him and a whole procession of little girls trailing after

him. In his arms he carried Anne, whose head lay limply against his

shoulder.

At that moment Marilla had a revelation. In the sudden stab of fear that

pierced her very heart she realized what Anne had come to mean to her.

She would have admitted that she liked Anne--nay, that she was very fond

of Anne. But now she knew as she hurried wildly down the slope that Anne

was dearer to her than anything else on earth.

“Mr. Barry, what has happened to her?” she gasped, more white and shaken

than the self-contained, sensible Marilla had been for many years.

Anne herself answered, lifting her head.

“Don’t be very frightened, Marilla. I was walking the ridgepole and I

fell off. I expect I have sprained my ankle. But, Marilla, I might have

broken my neck. Let us look on the bright side of things.”

“I might have known you’d go and do something of the sort when I let you

go to that party,” said Marilla, sharp and shrewish in her very relief.

“Bring her in here, Mr. Barry, and lay her on the sofa. Mercy me, the

child has gone and fainted!”

It was quite true. Overcome by the pain of her injury, Anne had one more

of her wishes granted to her. She had fainted dead away.

Matthew, hastily summoned from the harvest field, was straightway

dispatched for the doctor, who in due time came, to discover that the

injury was more serious than they had supposed. Anne’s ankle was broken.

That night, when Marilla went up to the east gable, where a white-faced

girl was lying, a plaintive voice greeted her from the bed.

“Aren’t you very sorry for me, Marilla?”

“It was your own fault,” said Marilla, twitching down the blind and

lighting a lamp.

“And that is just why you should be sorry for me,” said Anne, “because

the thought that it is all my own fault is what makes it so hard. If I

could blame it on anybody I would feel so much better. But what would

you have done, Marilla, if you had been dared to walk a ridgepole?”

“I’d have stayed on good firm ground and let them dare away. Such

absurdity!” said Marilla.

Anne sighed.

“But you have such strength of mind, Marilla. I haven’t. I just felt

that I couldn’t bear Josie Pye’s scorn. She would have crowed over me

all my life. And I think I have been punished so much that you needn’t

be very cross with me, Marilla. It’s not a bit nice to faint, after all.

And the doctor hurt me dreadfully when he was setting my ankle. I won’t

be able to go around for six or seven weeks and I’ll miss the new lady

teacher. She won’t be new any more by the time I’m able to go to school.

And Gil--everybody will get ahead of me in class. Oh, I am an afflicted

mortal. But I’ll try to bear it all bravely if only you won’t be cross

with me, Marilla.”

“There, there, I’m not cross,” said Marilla. “You’re an unlucky child,

there’s no doubt about that; but as you say, you’ll have the suffering

of it. Here now, try and eat some supper.”

“Isn’t it fortunate I’ve got such an imagination?” said Anne. “It will

help me through splendidly, I expect. What do people who haven’t any

imagination do when they break their bones, do you suppose, Marilla?”

Anne had good reason to bless her imagination many a time and oft during

the tedious seven weeks that followed. But she was not solely dependent

on it. She had many visitors and not a day passed without one or more of

the schoolgirls dropping in to bring her flowers and books and tell her

all the happenings in the juvenile world of Avonlea.

“Everybody has been so good and kind, Marilla,” sighed Anne happily,

on the day when she could first limp across the floor. “It isn’t very

pleasant to be laid up; but there is a bright side to it, Marilla. You

find out how many friends you have. Why, even Superintendent Bell came

to see me, and he’s really a very fine man. Not a kindred spirit, of

course; but still I like him and I’m awfully sorry I ever criticized his

prayers. I believe now he really does mean them, only he has got into

the habit of saying them as if he didn’t. He could get over that if he’d

take a little trouble. I gave him a good broad hint. I told him how hard

I tried to make my own little private prayers interesting. He told me

all about the time he broke his ankle when he was a boy. It does seem

so strange to think of Superintendent Bell ever being a boy. Even my

imagination has its limits, for I can’t imagine _that_. When I try to

imagine him as a boy I see him with gray whiskers and spectacles, just

as he looks in Sunday-school, only small. Now, it’s so easy to imagine

Mrs. Allan as a little girl. Mrs. Allan has been to see me fourteen

times. Isn’t that something to be proud of, Marilla? When a minister’s

wife has so many claims on her time! She is such a cheerful person to

have visit you, too. She never tells you it’s your own fault and she

hopes you’ll be a better girl on account of it. Mrs. Lynde always told

me that when she came to see me; and she said it in a kind of way that

made me feel she might hope I’d be a better girl but didn’t really

believe I would. Even Josie Pye came to see me. I received her as

politely as I could, because I think she was sorry she dared me to walk

a ridgepole. If I had been killed she would had to carry a dark burden

of remorse all her life. Diana has been a faithful friend. She’s been

over every day to cheer my lonely pillow. But oh, I shall be so glad

when I can go to school for I’ve heard such exciting things about the

new teacher. The girls all think she is perfectly sweet. Diana says she

has the loveliest fair curly hair and such fascinating eyes. She dresses

beautifully, and her sleeve puffs are bigger than anybody else’s in

Avonlea. Every other Friday afternoon she has recitations and everybody

has to say a piece or take part in a dialogue. Oh, it’s just glorious to

think of it. Josie Pye says she hates it but that is just because Josie

has so little imagination. Diana and Ruby Gillis and Jane Andrews are

preparing a dialogue, called ‘A Morning Visit,’ for next Friday. And the

Friday afternoons they don’t have recitations Miss Stacy takes them

all to the woods for a ‘field’ day and they study ferns and flowers

and birds. And they have physical culture exercises every morning and

evening. Mrs. Lynde says she never heard of such goings on and it all

comes of having a lady teacher. But I think it must be splendid and I

believe I shall find that Miss Stacy is a kindred spirit.”

“There’s one thing plain to be seen, Anne,” said Marilla, “and that is

that your fall off the Barry roof hasn’t injured your tongue at all.”

CHAPTER XXIV. Miss Stacy and Her Pupils Get Up a Concert

IT was October again when Anne was ready to go back to school--a

glorious October, all red and gold, with mellow mornings when the

valleys were filled with delicate mists as if the spirit of autumn had

poured them in for the sun to drain--amethyst, pearl, silver, rose, and

smoke-blue. The dews were so heavy that the fields glistened like cloth

of silver and there were such heaps of rustling leaves in the hollows of

many-stemmed woods to run crisply through. The Birch Path was a canopy

of yellow and the ferns were sear and brown all along it. There was a

tang in the very air that inspired the hearts of small maidens tripping,

unlike snails, swiftly and willingly to school; and it _was_ jolly to

be back again at the little brown desk beside Diana, with Ruby Gillis

nodding across the aisle and Carrie Sloane sending up notes and Julia

Bell passing a “chew” of gum down from the back seat. Anne drew a long

breath of happiness as she sharpened her pencil and arranged her picture

cards in her desk. Life was certainly very interesting.

In the new teacher she found another true and helpful friend. Miss Stacy

was a bright, sympathetic young woman with the happy gift of winning and

holding the affections of her pupils and bringing out the best that was

in them mentally and morally. Anne expanded like a flower under this

wholesome influence and carried home to the admiring Matthew and the

critical Marilla glowing accounts of schoolwork and aims.

“I love Miss Stacy with my whole heart, Marilla. She is so ladylike

and she has such a sweet voice. When she pronounces my name I feel

_instinctively_ that she’s spelling it with an E. We had recitations

this afternoon. I just wish you could have been there to hear me recite

‘Mary, Queen of Scots.’ I just put my whole soul into it. Ruby Gillis

told me coming home that the way I said the line, ‘Now for my father’s

arm,’ she said, ‘my woman’s heart farewell,’ just made her blood run

cold.”

“Well now, you might recite it for me some of these days, out in the

barn,” suggested Matthew.

“Of course I will,” said Anne meditatively, “but I won’t be able to do

it so well, I know. It won’t be so exciting as it is when you have a

whole schoolful before you hanging breathlessly on your words. I know I

won’t be able to make your blood run cold.”

“Mrs. Lynde says it made _her_ blood run cold to see the boys climbing to

the very tops of those big trees on Bell’s hill after crows’ nests last

Friday,” said Marilla. “I wonder at Miss Stacy for encouraging it.”

“But we wanted a crow’s nest for nature study,” explained Anne. “That

was on our field afternoon. Field afternoons are splendid, Marilla.

And Miss Stacy explains everything so beautifully. We have to write

compositions on our field afternoons and I write the best ones.”

“It’s very vain of you to say so then. You’d better let your teacher say

it.”

“But she _did_ say it, Marilla. And indeed I’m not vain about it. How can

I be, when I’m such a dunce at geometry? Although I’m really beginning

to see through it a little, too. Miss Stacy makes it so clear. Still,

I’ll never be good at it and I assure you it is a humbling reflection.

But I love writing compositions. Mostly Miss Stacy lets us choose

our own subjects; but next week we are to write a composition on some

remarkable person. It’s hard to choose among so many remarkable people

who have lived. Mustn’t it be splendid to be remarkable and have

compositions written about you after you’re dead? Oh, I would dearly

love to be remarkable. I think when I grow up I’ll be a trained nurse

and go with the Red Crosses to the field of battle as a messenger of

mercy. That is, if I don’t go out as a foreign missionary. That would

be very romantic, but one would have to be very good to be a missionary,

and that would be a stumbling block. We have physical culture exercises

every day, too. They make you graceful and promote digestion.”

“Promote fiddlesticks!” said Marilla, who honestly thought it was all

nonsense.

But all the field afternoons and recitation Fridays and physical culture

contortions paled before a project which Miss Stacy brought forward in

November. This was that the scholars of Avonlea school should get up

a concert and hold it in the hall on Christmas Night, for the laudable

purpose of helping to pay for a schoolhouse flag. The pupils one and

all taking graciously to this plan, the preparations for a program

were begun at once. And of all the excited performers-elect none was so

excited as Anne Shirley, who threw herself into the undertaking heart

and soul, hampered as she was by Marilla’s disapproval. Marilla thought

it all rank foolishness.

“It’s just filling your heads up with nonsense and taking time that

ought to be put on your lessons,” she grumbled. “I don’t approve of

children’s getting up concerts and racing about to practices. It makes

them vain and forward and fond of gadding.”

“But think of the worthy object,” pleaded Anne. “A flag will cultivate a

spirit of patriotism, Marilla.”

“Fudge! There’s precious little patriotism in the thoughts of any of

you. All you want is a good time.”

“Well, when you can combine patriotism and fun, isn’t it all right? Of

course it’s real nice to be getting up a concert. We’re going to have

six choruses and Diana is to sing a solo. I’m in two dialogues--‘The

Society for the Suppression of Gossip’ and ‘The Fairy Queen.’ The boys

are going to have a dialogue too. And I’m to have two recitations,

Marilla. I just tremble when I think of it, but it’s a nice thrilly kind

of tremble. And we’re to have a tableau at the last--‘Faith, Hope and

Charity.’ Diana and Ruby and I are to be in it, all draped in white with

flowing hair. I’m to be Hope, with my hands clasped--so--and my eyes

uplifted. I’m going to practice my recitations in the garret. Don’t be

alarmed if you hear me groaning. I have to groan heartrendingly in one

of them, and it’s really hard to get up a good artistic groan, Marilla.

Josie Pye is sulky because she didn’t get the part she wanted in

the dialogue. She wanted to be the fairy queen. That would have been

ridiculous, for who ever heard of a fairy queen as fat as Josie? Fairy

queens must be slender. Jane Andrews is to be the queen and I am to be

one of her maids of honor. Josie says she thinks a red-haired fairy is

just as ridiculous as a fat one, but I do not let myself mind what Josie

says. I’m to have a wreath of white roses on my hair and Ruby Gillis

is going to lend me her slippers because I haven’t any of my own. It’s

necessary for fairies to have slippers, you know. You couldn’t imagine

a fairy wearing boots, could you? Especially with copper toes? We are

going to decorate the hall with creeping spruce and fir mottoes with

pink tissue-paper roses in them. And we are all to march in two by two

after the audience is seated, while Emma White plays a march on the

organ. Oh, Marilla, I know you are not so enthusiastic about it as I am,

but don’t you hope your little Anne will distinguish herself?”

“All I hope is that you’ll behave yourself. I’ll be heartily glad when

all this fuss is over and you’ll be able to settle down. You are simply

good for nothing just now with your head stuffed full of dialogues and

groans and tableaus. As for your tongue, it’s a marvel it’s not clean

worn out.”

Anne sighed and betook herself to the back yard, over which a young new

moon was shining through the leafless poplar boughs from an apple-green

western sky, and where Matthew was splitting wood. Anne perched herself

on a block and talked the concert over with him, sure of an appreciative

and sympathetic listener in this instance at least.

“Well now, I reckon it’s going to be a pretty good concert. And I

expect you’ll do your part fine,” he said, smiling down into her eager,

vivacious little face. Anne smiled back at him. Those two were the best

of friends and Matthew thanked his stars many a time and oft that he had

nothing to do with bringing her up. That was Marilla’s exclusive duty;

if it had been his he would have been worried over frequent conflicts

between inclination and said duty. As it was, he was free to, “spoil

Anne”--Marilla’s phrasing--as much as he liked. But it was not such a

bad arrangement after all; a little “appreciation” sometimes does quite

as much good as all the conscientious “bringing up” in the world.

CHAPTER XXV. Matthew Insists on Puffed Sleeves

MATTHEW was having a bad ten minutes of it. He had come into the

kitchen, in the twilight of a cold, gray December evening, and had sat

down in the woodbox corner to take off his heavy boots, unconscious of

the fact that Anne and a bevy of her schoolmates were having a practice

of “The Fairy Queen” in the sitting room. Presently they came trooping

through the hall and out into the kitchen, laughing and chattering

gaily. They did not see Matthew, who shrank bashfully back into the

shadows beyond the woodbox with a boot in one hand and a bootjack in the

other, and he watched them shyly for the aforesaid ten minutes as they

put on caps and jackets and talked about the dialogue and the concert.

Anne stood among them, bright eyed and animated as they; but Matthew

suddenly became conscious that there was something about her different

from her mates. And what worried Matthew was that the difference

impressed him as being something that should not exist. Anne had a

brighter face, and bigger, starrier eyes, and more delicate features

than the other; even shy, unobservant Matthew had learned to take note

of these things; but the difference that disturbed him did not consist

in any of these respects. Then in what did it consist?

Matthew was haunted by this question long after the girls had gone, arm

in arm, down the long, hard-frozen lane and Anne had betaken herself

to her books. He could not refer it to Marilla, who, he felt, would be

quite sure to sniff scornfully and remark that the only difference she

saw between Anne and the other girls was that they sometimes kept their

tongues quiet while Anne never did. This, Matthew felt, would be no

great help.

He had recourse to his pipe that evening to help him study it out, much

to Marilla’s disgust. After two hours of smoking and hard reflection

Matthew arrived at a solution of his problem. Anne was not dressed like

the other girls!

The more Matthew thought about the matter the more he was convinced that

Anne never had been dressed like the other girls--never since she had

come to Green Gables. Marilla kept her clothed in plain, dark dresses,

all made after the same unvarying pattern. If Matthew knew there was

such a thing as fashion in dress it was as much as he did; but he was

quite sure that Anne’s sleeves did not look at all like the sleeves the

other girls wore. He recalled the cluster of little girls he had seen

around her that evening--all gay in waists of red and blue and pink

and white--and he wondered why Marilla always kept her so plainly and

soberly gowned.

Of course, it must be all right. Marilla knew best and Marilla was

bringing her up. Probably some wise, inscrutable motive was to be served

thereby. But surely it would do no harm to let the child have one pretty

dress--something like Diana Barry always wore. Matthew decided that

he would give her one; that surely could not be objected to as an

unwarranted putting in of his oar. Christmas was only a fortnight off.

A nice new dress would be the very thing for a present. Matthew, with a

sigh of satisfaction, put away his pipe and went to bed, while Marilla

opened all the doors and aired the house.

The very next evening Matthew betook himself to Carmody to buy the

dress, determined to get the worst over and have done with it. It would

be, he felt assured, no trifling ordeal. There were some things Matthew

could buy and prove himself no mean bargainer; but he knew he would be

at the mercy of shopkeepers when it came to buying a girl’s dress.

After much cogitation Matthew resolved to go to Samuel Lawson’s store

instead of William Blair’s. To be sure, the Cuthberts always had gone to

William Blair’s; it was almost as much a matter of conscience with them

as to attend the Presbyterian church and vote Conservative. But William

Blair’s two daughters frequently waited on customers there and Matthew

held them in absolute dread. He could contrive to deal with them when he

knew exactly what he wanted and could point it out; but in such a matter

as this, requiring explanation and consultation, Matthew felt that he

must be sure of a man behind the counter. So he would go to Lawson’s,

where Samuel or his son would wait on him.

Alas! Matthew did not know that Samuel, in the recent expansion of his

business, had set up a lady clerk also; she was a niece of his wife’s

and a very dashing young person indeed, with a huge, drooping pompadour,

big, rolling brown eyes, and a most extensive and bewildering smile. She

was dressed with exceeding smartness and wore several bangle bracelets

that glittered and rattled and tinkled with every movement of her hands.

Matthew was covered with confusion at finding her there at all; and

those bangles completely wrecked his wits at one fell swoop.

“What can I do for you this evening, Mr. Cuthbert?” Miss Lucilla Harris

inquired, briskly and ingratiatingly, tapping the counter with both

hands.

“Have you any--any--any--well now, say any garden rakes?” stammered

Matthew.

Miss Harris looked somewhat surprised, as well she might, to hear a man

inquiring for garden rakes in the middle of December.

“I believe we have one or two left over,” she said, “but they’re

upstairs in the lumber room. I’ll go and see.” During her absence

Matthew collected his scattered senses for another effort.

When Miss Harris returned with the rake and cheerfully inquired:

“Anything else tonight, Mr. Cuthbert?” Matthew took his courage in

both hands and replied: “Well now, since you suggest it, I might as

well--take--that is--look at--buy some--some hayseed.”

Miss Harris had heard Matthew Cuthbert called odd. She now concluded

that he was entirely crazy.

“We only keep hayseed in the spring,” she explained loftily. “We’ve none

on hand just now.”

“Oh, certainly--certainly--just as you say,” stammered unhappy

Matthew, seizing the rake and making for the door. At the threshold he

recollected that he had not paid for it and he turned miserably back.

While Miss Harris was counting out his change he rallied his powers for

a final desperate attempt.

“Well now--if it isn’t too much trouble--I might as well--that is--I’d

like to look at--at--some sugar.”

“White or brown?” queried Miss Harris patiently.

“Oh--well now--brown,” said Matthew feebly.

“There’s a barrel of it over there,” said Miss Harris, shaking her

bangles at it. “It’s the only kind we have.”

“I’ll--I’ll take twenty pounds of it,” said Matthew, with beads of

perspiration standing on his forehead.

Matthew had driven halfway home before he was his own man again. It had

been a gruesome experience, but it served him right, he thought, for

committing the heresy of going to a strange store. When he reached

home he hid the rake in the tool house, but the sugar he carried in to

Marilla.

“Brown sugar!” exclaimed Marilla. “Whatever possessed you to get so

much? You know I never use it except for the hired man’s porridge or

black fruit cake. Jerry’s gone and I’ve made my cake long ago. It’s not

good sugar, either--it’s coarse and dark--William Blair doesn’t usually

keep sugar like that.”

“I--I thought it might come in handy sometime,” said Matthew, making

good his escape.

When Matthew came to think the matter over he decided that a woman was

required to cope with the situation. Marilla was out of the question.

Matthew felt sure she would throw cold water on his project at once.

Remained only Mrs. Lynde; for of no other woman in Avonlea would Matthew

have dared to ask advice. To Mrs. Lynde he went accordingly, and that

good lady promptly took the matter out of the harassed man’s hands.

“Pick out a dress for you to give Anne? To be sure I will. I’m going to

Carmody tomorrow and I’ll attend to it. Have you something particular in

mind? No? Well, I’ll just go by my own judgment then. I believe a nice

rich brown would just suit Anne, and William Blair has some new gloria

in that’s real pretty. Perhaps you’d like me to make it up for her, too,

seeing that if Marilla was to make it Anne would probably get wind of it

before the time and spoil the surprise? Well, I’ll do it. No, it isn’t

a mite of trouble. I like sewing. I’ll make it to fit my niece, Jenny

Gillis, for she and Anne are as like as two peas as far as figure goes.”

“Well now, I’m much obliged,” said Matthew, “and--and--I dunno--but I’d

like--I think they make the sleeves different nowadays to what they used

to be. If it wouldn’t be asking too much I--I’d like them made in the

new way.”

“Puffs? Of course. You needn’t worry a speck more about it, Matthew.

I’ll make it up in the very latest fashion,” said Mrs. Lynde. To herself

she added when Matthew had gone:

“It’ll be a real satisfaction to see that poor child wearing something

decent for once. The way Marilla dresses her is positively ridiculous,

that’s what, and I’ve ached to tell her so plainly a dozen times. I’ve

held my tongue though, for I can see Marilla doesn’t want advice and she

thinks she knows more about bringing children up than I do for all

she’s an old maid. But that’s always the way. Folks that has brought up

children know that there’s no hard and fast method in the world that’ll

suit every child. But them as never have think it’s all as plain and

easy as Rule of Three--just set your three terms down so fashion, and

the sum ‘ll work out correct. But flesh and blood don’t come under the

head of arithmetic and that’s where Marilla Cuthbert makes her mistake.

I suppose she’s trying to cultivate a spirit of humility in Anne by

dressing her as she does; but it’s more likely to cultivate envy and

discontent. I’m sure the child must feel the difference between her

clothes and the other girls’. But to think of Matthew taking notice of

it! That man is waking up after being asleep for over sixty years.”

Marilla knew all the following fortnight that Matthew had something on

his mind, but what it was she could not guess, until Christmas Eve, when

Mrs. Lynde brought up the new dress. Marilla behaved pretty well on the

whole, although it is very likely she distrusted Mrs. Lynde’s diplomatic

explanation that she had made the dress because Matthew was afraid Anne

would find out about it too soon if Marilla made it.

“So this is what Matthew has been looking so mysterious over and

grinning about to himself for two weeks, is it?” she said a little

stiffly but tolerantly. “I knew he was up to some foolishness. Well, I

must say I don’t think Anne needed any more dresses. I made her three

good, warm, serviceable ones this fall, and anything more is sheer

extravagance. There’s enough material in those sleeves alone to make a

waist, I declare there is. You’ll just pamper Anne’s vanity, Matthew,

and she’s as vain as a peacock now. Well, I hope she’ll be satisfied

at last, for I know she’s been hankering after those silly sleeves ever

since they came in, although she never said a word after the first. The

puffs have been getting bigger and more ridiculous right along; they’re

as big as balloons now. Next year anybody who wears them will have to go

through a door sideways.”

Christmas morning broke on a beautiful white world. It had been a very

mild December and people had looked forward to a green Christmas; but

just enough snow fell softly in the night to transfigure Avonlea. Anne

peeped out from her frosted gable window with delighted eyes. The firs

in the Haunted Wood were all feathery and wonderful; the birches

and wild cherry-trees were outlined in pearl; the plowed fields were

stretches of snowy dimples; and there was a crisp tang in the air that

was glorious. Anne ran downstairs singing until her voice reechoed

through Green Gables.

“Merry Christmas, Marilla! Merry Christmas, Matthew! Isn’t it a lovely

Christmas? I’m so glad it’s white. Any other kind of Christmas doesn’t

seem real, does it? I don’t like green Christmases. They’re not

green--they’re just nasty faded browns and grays. What makes people call

them green? Why--why--Matthew, is that for me? Oh, Matthew!”

Matthew had sheepishly unfolded the dress from its paper swathings and

held it out with a deprecatory glance at Marilla, who feigned to be

contemptuously filling the teapot, but nevertheless watched the scene

out of the corner of her eye with a rather interested air.

Anne took the dress and looked at it in reverent silence. Oh, how pretty

it was--a lovely soft brown gloria with all the gloss of silk; a skirt

with dainty frills and shirrings; a waist elaborately pintucked in the

most fashionable way, with a little ruffle of filmy lace at the neck.

But the sleeves--they were the crowning glory! Long elbow cuffs, and

above them two beautiful puffs divided by rows of shirring and bows of

brown-silk ribbon.

“That’s a Christmas present for you, Anne,” said Matthew shyly.

“Why--why--Anne, don’t you like it? Well now--well now.”

For Anne’s eyes had suddenly filled with tears.

“Like it! Oh, Matthew!” Anne laid the dress over a chair and clasped

her hands. “Matthew, it’s perfectly exquisite. Oh, I can never thank you

enough. Look at those sleeves! Oh, it seems to me this must be a happy

dream.”

“Well, well, let us have breakfast,” interrupted Marilla. “I must say,

Anne, I don’t think you needed the dress; but since Matthew has got it

for you, see that you take good care of it. There’s a hair ribbon Mrs.

Lynde left for you. It’s brown, to match the dress. Come now, sit in.”

“I don’t see how I’m going to eat breakfast,” said Anne rapturously.

“Breakfast seems so commonplace at such an exciting moment. I’d rather

feast my eyes on that dress. I’m so glad that puffed sleeves are still

fashionable. It did seem to me that I’d never get over it if they went

out before I had a dress with them. I’d never have felt quite satisfied,

you see. It was lovely of Mrs. Lynde to give me the ribbon too. I feel

that I ought to be a very good girl indeed. It’s at times like this I’m

sorry I’m not a model little girl; and I always resolve that I will

be in future. But somehow it’s hard to carry out your resolutions when

irresistible temptations come. Still, I really will make an extra effort

after this.”

When the commonplace breakfast was over Diana appeared, crossing the

white log bridge in the hollow, a gay little figure in her crimson

ulster. Anne flew down the slope to meet her.

“Merry Christmas, Diana! And oh, it’s a wonderful Christmas. I’ve

something splendid to show you. Matthew has given me the loveliest

dress, with _such_ sleeves. I couldn’t even imagine any nicer.”

“I’ve got something more for you,” said Diana breathlessly. “Here--this

box. Aunt Josephine sent us out a big box with ever so many things in

it--and this is for you. I’d have brought it over last night, but it

didn’t come until after dark, and I never feel very comfortable coming

through the Haunted Wood in the dark now.”

Anne opened the box and peeped in. First a card with “For the Anne-girl

and Merry Christmas,” written on it; and then, a pair of the daintiest

little kid slippers, with beaded toes and satin bows and glistening

buckles.

“Oh,” said Anne, “Diana, this is too much. I must be dreaming.”

“I call it providential,” said Diana. “You won’t have to borrow Ruby’s

slippers now, and that’s a blessing, for they’re two sizes too big for

you, and it would be awful to hear a fairy shuffling. Josie Pye would

be delighted. Mind you, Rob Wright went home with Gertie Pye from the

practice night before last. Did you ever hear anything equal to that?”

All the Avonlea scholars were in a fever of excitement that day, for the

hall had to be decorated and a last grand rehearsal held.

The concert came off in the evening and was a pronounced success. The

little hall was crowded; all the performers did excellently well, but

Anne was the bright particular star of the occasion, as even envy, in

the shape of Josie Pye, dared not deny.

“Oh, hasn’t it been a brilliant evening?” sighed Anne, when it was all

over and she and Diana were walking home together under a dark, starry

sky.

“Everything went off very well,” said Diana practically. “I guess we

must have made as much as ten dollars. Mind you, Mr. Allan is going to

send an account of it to the Charlottetown papers.”

“Oh, Diana, will we really see our names in print? It makes me thrill to

think of it. Your solo was perfectly elegant, Diana. I felt prouder than

you did when it was encored. I just said to myself, ‘It is my dear bosom

friend who is so honored.’”

“Well, your recitations just brought down the house, Anne. That sad one

was simply splendid.”

“Oh, I was so nervous, Diana. When Mr. Allan called out my name I really

cannot tell how I ever got up on that platform. I felt as if a million

eyes were looking at me and through me, and for one dreadful moment I

was sure I couldn’t begin at all. Then I thought of my lovely puffed

sleeves and took courage. I knew that I must live up to those sleeves,

Diana. So I started in, and my voice seemed to be coming from ever so

far away. I just felt like a parrot. It’s providential that I practiced

those recitations so often up in the garret, or I’d never have been able

to get through. Did I groan all right?”

“Yes, indeed, you groaned lovely,” assured Diana.

“I saw old Mrs. Sloane wiping away tears when I sat down. It was

splendid to think I had touched somebody’s heart. It’s so romantic

to take part in a concert, isn’t it? Oh, it’s been a very memorable

occasion indeed.”

“Wasn’t the boys’ dialogue fine?” said Diana. “Gilbert Blythe was just

splendid. Anne, I do think it’s awful mean the way you treat Gil. Wait

till I tell you. When you ran off the platform after the fairy dialogue

one of your roses fell out of your hair. I saw Gil pick it up and put

it in his breast pocket. There now. You’re so romantic that I’m sure you

ought to be pleased at that.”

“It’s nothing to me what that person does,” said Anne loftily. “I simply

never waste a thought on him, Diana.”

That night Marilla and Matthew, who had been out to a concert for the

first time in twenty years, sat for a while by the kitchen fire after

Anne had gone to bed.

“Well now, I guess our Anne did as well as any of them,” said Matthew

proudly.

“Yes, she did,” admitted Marilla. “She’s a bright child, Matthew. And

she looked real nice too. I’ve been kind of opposed to this concert

scheme, but I suppose there’s no real harm in it after all. Anyhow, I

was proud of Anne tonight, although I’m not going to tell her so.”

“Well now, I was proud of her and I did tell her so ‘fore she went

upstairs,” said Matthew. “We must see what we can do for her some of

these days, Marilla. I guess she’ll need something more than Avonlea

school by and by.”

“There’s time enough to think of that,” said Marilla. “She’s only

thirteen in March. Though tonight it struck me she was growing quite a

big girl. Mrs. Lynde made that dress a mite too long, and it makes Anne

look so tall. She’s quick to learn and I guess the best thing we can do

for her will be to send her to Queen’s after a spell. But nothing need

be said about that for a year or two yet.”

“Well now, it’ll do no harm to be thinking it over off and on,” said

Matthew. “Things like that are all the better for lots of thinking

over.”

CHAPTER XXVI. The Story Club Is Formed

JUNIOR Avonlea found it hard to settle down to humdrum existence

again. To Anne in particular things seemed fearfully flat, stale, and

unprofitable after the goblet of excitement she had been sipping for

weeks. Could she go back to the former quiet pleasures of those faraway

days before the concert? At first, as she told Diana, she did not really

think she could.

“I’m positively certain, Diana, that life can never be quite the

same again as it was in those olden days,” she said mournfully, as if

referring to a period of at least fifty years back. “Perhaps after a

while I’ll get used to it, but I’m afraid concerts spoil people for

everyday life. I suppose that is why Marilla disapproves of them.

Marilla is such a sensible woman. It must be a great deal better to be

sensible; but still, I don’t believe I’d really want to be a sensible

person, because they are so unromantic. Mrs. Lynde says there is no

danger of my ever being one, but you can never tell. I feel just now

that I may grow up to be sensible yet. But perhaps that is only because

I’m tired. I simply couldn’t sleep last night for ever so long. I just

lay awake and imagined the concert over and over again. That’s one

splendid thing about such affairs--it’s so lovely to look back to them.”

Eventually, however, Avonlea school slipped back into its old groove

and took up its old interests. To be sure, the concert left traces. Ruby

Gillis and Emma White, who had quarreled over a point of precedence in

their platform seats, no longer sat at the same desk, and a promising

friendship of three years was broken up. Josie Pye and Julia Bell did

not “speak” for three months, because Josie Pye had told Bessie Wright

that Julia Bell’s bow when she got up to recite made her think of a

chicken jerking its head, and Bessie told Julia. None of the Sloanes

would have any dealings with the Bells, because the Bells had declared

that the Sloanes had too much to do in the program, and the Sloanes had

retorted that the Bells were not capable of doing the little they had to

do properly. Finally, Charlie Sloane fought Moody Spurgeon MacPherson,

because Moody Spurgeon had said that Anne Shirley put on airs about

her recitations, and Moody Spurgeon was “licked”; consequently Moody

Spurgeon’s sister, Ella May, would not “speak” to Anne Shirley all the

rest of the winter. With the exception of these trifling frictions, work

in Miss Stacy’s little kingdom went on with regularity and smoothness.

The winter weeks slipped by. It was an unusually mild winter, with so

little snow that Anne and Diana could go to school nearly every day by

way of the Birch Path. On Anne’s birthday they were tripping lightly

down it, keeping eyes and ears alert amid all their chatter, for Miss

Stacy had told them that they must soon write a composition on “A

Winter’s Walk in the Woods,” and it behooved them to be observant.

“Just think, Diana, I’m thirteen years old today,” remarked Anne in an

awed voice. “I can scarcely realize that I’m in my teens. When I woke

this morning it seemed to me that everything must be different. You’ve

been thirteen for a month, so I suppose it doesn’t seem such a novelty

to you as it does to me. It makes life seem so much more interesting.

In two more years I’ll be really grown up. It’s a great comfort to think

that I’ll be able to use big words then without being laughed at.”

“Ruby Gillis says she means to have a beau as soon as she’s fifteen,”

said Diana.

“Ruby Gillis thinks of nothing but beaus,” said Anne disdainfully.

“She’s actually delighted when anyone writes her name up in a

take-notice for all she pretends to be so mad. But I’m afraid that is an

uncharitable speech. Mrs. Allan says we should never make uncharitable

speeches; but they do slip out so often before you think, don’t they? I

simply can’t talk about Josie Pye without making an uncharitable speech,

so I never mention her at all. You may have noticed that. I’m trying to

be as much like Mrs. Allan as I possibly can, for I think she’s perfect.

Mr. Allan thinks so too. Mrs. Lynde says he just worships the ground she

treads on and she doesn’t really think it right for a minister to

set his affections so much on a mortal being. But then, Diana, even

ministers are human and have their besetting sins just like everybody

else. I had such an interesting talk with Mrs. Allan about besetting

sins last Sunday afternoon. There are just a few things it’s proper

to talk about on Sundays and that is one of them. My besetting sin is

imagining too much and forgetting my duties. I’m striving very hard

to overcome it and now that I’m really thirteen perhaps I’ll get on

better.”

“In four more years we’ll be able to put our hair up,” said Diana.

“Alice Bell is only sixteen and she is wearing hers up, but I think

that’s ridiculous. I shall wait until I’m seventeen.”

“If I had Alice Bell’s crooked nose,” said Anne decidedly, “I

wouldn’t--but there! I won’t say what I was going to because it was

extremely uncharitable. Besides, I was comparing it with my own nose and

that’s vanity. I’m afraid I think too much about my nose ever since I

heard that compliment about it long ago. It really is a great comfort to

me. Oh, Diana, look, there’s a rabbit. That’s something to remember for

our woods composition. I really think the woods are just as lovely in

winter as in summer. They’re so white and still, as if they were asleep

and dreaming pretty dreams.”

“I won’t mind writing that composition when its time comes,” sighed

Diana. “I can manage to write about the woods, but the one we’re to

hand in Monday is terrible. The idea of Miss Stacy telling us to write a

story out of our own heads!”

“Why, it’s as easy as wink,” said Anne.

“It’s easy for you because you have an imagination,” retorted Diana,

“but what would you do if you had been born without one? I suppose you

have your composition all done?”

Anne nodded, trying hard not to look virtuously complacent and failing

miserably.

“I wrote it last Monday evening. It’s called ‘The Jealous Rival; or In

Death Not Divided.’ I read it to Marilla and she said it was stuff and

nonsense. Then I read it to Matthew and he said it was fine. That is

the kind of critic I like. It’s a sad, sweet story. I just cried like

a child while I was writing it. It’s about two beautiful maidens called

Cordelia Montmorency and Geraldine Seymour who lived in the same village

and were devotedly attached to each other. Cordelia was a regal brunette

with a coronet of midnight hair and duskly flashing eyes. Geraldine was

a queenly blonde with hair like spun gold and velvety purple eyes.”

“I never saw anybody with purple eyes,” said Diana dubiously.

“Neither did I. I just imagined them. I wanted something out of the

common. Geraldine had an alabaster brow too. I’ve found out what an

alabaster brow is. That is one of the advantages of being thirteen. You

know so much more than you did when you were only twelve.”

“Well, what became of Cordelia and Geraldine?” asked Diana, who was

beginning to feel rather interested in their fate.

“They grew in beauty side by side until they were sixteen. Then Bertram

DeVere came to their native village and fell in love with the fair

Geraldine. He saved her life when her horse ran away with her in a

carriage, and she fainted in his arms and he carried her home three

miles; because, you understand, the carriage was all smashed up. I found

it rather hard to imagine the proposal because I had no experience to

go by. I asked Ruby Gillis if she knew anything about how men proposed

because I thought she’d likely be an authority on the subject, having so

many sisters married. Ruby told me she was hid in the hall pantry when

Malcolm Andres proposed to her sister Susan. She said Malcolm told Susan

that his dad had given him the farm in his own name and then said, ‘What

do you say, darling pet, if we get hitched this fall?’ And Susan said,

‘Yes--no--I don’t know--let me see’--and there they were, engaged as

quick as that. But I didn’t think that sort of a proposal was a very

romantic one, so in the end I had to imagine it out as well as I could.

I made it very flowery and poetical and Bertram went on his knees,

although Ruby Gillis says it isn’t done nowadays. Geraldine accepted

him in a speech a page long. I can tell you I took a lot of trouble

with that speech. I rewrote it five times and I look upon it as my

masterpiece. Bertram gave her a diamond ring and a ruby necklace

and told her they would go to Europe for a wedding tour, for he was

immensely wealthy. But then, alas, shadows began to darken over their

path. Cordelia was secretly in love with Bertram herself and when

Geraldine told her about the engagement she was simply furious,

especially when she saw the necklace and the diamond ring. All her

affection for Geraldine turned to bitter hate and she vowed that she

should never marry Bertram. But she pretended to be Geraldine’s friend

the same as ever. One evening they were standing on the bridge over a

rushing turbulent stream and Cordelia, thinking they were alone, pushed

Geraldine over the brink with a wild, mocking, ‘Ha, ha, ha.’ But Bertram

saw it all and he at once plunged into the current, exclaiming, ‘I

will save thee, my peerless Geraldine.’ But alas, he had forgotten he

couldn’t swim, and they were both drowned, clasped in each other’s arms.

Their bodies were washed ashore soon afterwards. They were buried in the

one grave and their funeral was most imposing, Diana. It’s so much

more romantic to end a story up with a funeral than a wedding. As for

Cordelia, she went insane with remorse and was shut up in a lunatic

asylum. I thought that was a poetical retribution for her crime.”

“How perfectly lovely!” sighed Diana, who belonged to Matthew’s school

of critics. “I don’t see how you can make up such thrilling things out

of your own head, Anne. I wish my imagination was as good as yours.”

“It would be if you’d only cultivate it,” said Anne cheeringly. “I’ve

just thought of a plan, Diana. Let you and me have a story club all our

own and write stories for practice. I’ll help you along until you can

do them by yourself. You ought to cultivate your imagination, you know.

Miss Stacy says so. Only we must take the right way. I told her about

the Haunted Wood, but she said we went the wrong way about it in that.”

This was how the story club came into existence. It was limited to Diana

and Anne at first, but soon it was extended to include Jane Andrews

and Ruby Gillis and one or two others who felt that their imaginations

needed cultivating. No boys were allowed in it--although Ruby Gillis

opined that their admission would make it more exciting--and each member

had to produce one story a week.

“It’s extremely interesting,” Anne told Marilla. “Each girl has to read

her story out loud and then we talk it over. We are going to keep them

all sacredly and have them to read to our descendants. We each write

under a nom-de-plume. Mine is Rosamond Montmorency. All the girls

do pretty well. Ruby Gillis is rather sentimental. She puts too much

lovemaking into her stories and you know too much is worse than too

little. Jane never puts any because she says it makes her feel so silly

when she had to read it out loud. Jane’s stories are extremely sensible.

Then Diana puts too many murders into hers. She says most of the time

she doesn’t know what to do with the people so she kills them off to get

rid of them. I mostly always have to tell them what to write about, but

that isn’t hard for I’ve millions of ideas.”

“I think this story-writing business is the foolishest yet,” scoffed

Marilla. “You’ll get a pack of nonsense into your heads and waste time

that should be put on your lessons. Reading stories is bad enough but

writing them is worse.”

“But we’re so careful to put a moral into them all, Marilla,” explained

Anne. “I insist upon that. All the good people are rewarded and all

the bad ones are suitably punished. I’m sure that must have a wholesome

effect. The moral is the great thing. Mr. Allan says so. I read one of

my stories to him and Mrs. Allan and they both agreed that the moral was

excellent. Only they laughed in the wrong places. I like it better when

people cry. Jane and Ruby almost always cry when I come to the pathetic

parts. Diana wrote her Aunt Josephine about our club and her Aunt

Josephine wrote back that we were to send her some of our stories. So

we copied out four of our very best and sent them. Miss Josephine Barry

wrote back that she had never read anything so amusing in her life. That

kind of puzzled us because the stories were all very pathetic and almost

everybody died. But I’m glad Miss Barry liked them. It shows our club

is doing some good in the world. Mrs. Allan says that ought to be our

object in everything. I do really try to make it my object but I forget

so often when I’m having fun. I hope I shall be a little like Mrs. Allan

when I grow up. Do you think there is any prospect of it, Marilla?”

“I shouldn’t say there was a great deal” was Marilla’s encouraging

answer. “I’m sure Mrs. Allan was never such a silly, forgetful little

girl as you are.”

“No; but she wasn’t always so good as she is now either,” said Anne

seriously. “She told me so herself--that is, she said she was a dreadful

mischief when she was a girl and was always getting into scrapes. I felt

so encouraged when I heard that. Is it very wicked of me, Marilla,

to feel encouraged when I hear that other people have been bad and

mischievous? Mrs. Lynde says it is. Mrs. Lynde says she always feels

shocked when she hears of anyone ever having been naughty, no matter how

small they were. Mrs. Lynde says she once heard a minister confess that

when he was a boy he stole a strawberry tart out of his aunt’s pantry

and she never had any respect for that minister again. Now, I wouldn’t

have felt that way. I’d have thought that it was real noble of him to

confess it, and I’d have thought what an encouraging thing it would be

for small boys nowadays who do naughty things and are sorry for them

to know that perhaps they may grow up to be ministers in spite of it.

That’s how I’d feel, Marilla.”

“The way I feel at present, Anne,” said Marilla, “is that it’s high time

you had those dishes washed. You’ve taken half an hour longer than

you should with all your chattering. Learn to work first and talk

afterwards.”

CHAPTER XXVII. Vanity and Vexation of Spirit

MARILLA, walking home one late April evening from an Aid meeting,

realized that the winter was over and gone with the thrill of delight

that spring never fails to bring to the oldest and saddest as well as to

the youngest and merriest. Marilla was not given to subjective analysis

of her thoughts and feelings. She probably imagined that she was

thinking about the Aids and their missionary box and the new carpet

for the vestry room, but under these reflections was a harmonious

consciousness of red fields smoking into pale-purply mists in the

declining sun, of long, sharp-pointed fir shadows falling over the

meadow beyond the brook, of still, crimson-budded maples around a

mirrorlike wood pool, of a wakening in the world and a stir of hidden

pulses under the gray sod. The spring was abroad in the land and

Marilla’s sober, middle-aged step was lighter and swifter because of its

deep, primal gladness.

Her eyes dwelt affectionately on Green Gables, peering through its

network of trees and reflecting the sunlight back from its windows in

several little coruscations of glory. Marilla, as she picked her steps

along the damp lane, thought that it was really a satisfaction to know

that she was going home to a briskly snapping wood fire and a table

nicely spread for tea, instead of to the cold comfort of old Aid meeting

evenings before Anne had come to Green Gables.

Consequently, when Marilla entered her kitchen and found the fire black

out, with no sign of Anne anywhere, she felt justly disappointed and

irritated. She had told Anne to be sure and have tea ready at five

o’clock, but now she must hurry to take off her second-best dress and

prepare the meal herself against Matthew’s return from plowing.

“I’ll settle Miss Anne when she comes home,” said Marilla grimly, as

she shaved up kindlings with a carving knife and with more vim than was

strictly necessary. Matthew had come in and was waiting patiently for

his tea in his corner. “She’s gadding off somewhere with Diana, writing

stories or practicing dialogues or some such tomfoolery, and never

thinking once about the time or her duties. She’s just got to be pulled

up short and sudden on this sort of thing. I don’t care if Mrs. Allan

does say she’s the brightest and sweetest child she ever knew. She may

be bright and sweet enough, but her head is full of nonsense and there’s

never any knowing what shape it’ll break out in next. Just as soon as

she grows out of one freak she takes up with another. But there! Here I

am saying the very thing I was so riled with Rachel Lynde for saying at

the Aid today. I was real glad when Mrs. Allan spoke up for Anne, for

if she hadn’t I know I’d have said something too sharp to Rachel before

everybody. Anne’s got plenty of faults, goodness knows, and far be it

from me to deny it. But I’m bringing her up and not Rachel Lynde, who’d

pick faults in the Angel Gabriel himself if he lived in Avonlea. Just

the same, Anne has no business to leave the house like this when I told

her she was to stay home this afternoon and look after things. I must

say, with all her faults, I never found her disobedient or untrustworthy

before and I’m real sorry to find her so now.”

“Well now, I dunno,” said Matthew, who, being patient and wise and,

above all, hungry, had deemed it best to let Marilla talk her wrath

out unhindered, having learned by experience that she got through

with whatever work was on hand much quicker if not delayed by untimely

argument. “Perhaps you’re judging her too hasty, Marilla. Don’t call her

untrustworthy until you’re sure she has disobeyed you. Mebbe it can all

be explained--Anne’s a great hand at explaining.”

“She’s not here when I told her to stay,” retorted Marilla. “I reckon

she’ll find it hard to explain _that_ to my satisfaction. Of course I knew

you’d take her part, Matthew. But I’m bringing her up, not you.”

It was dark when supper was ready, and still no sign of Anne, coming

hurriedly over the log bridge or up Lover’s Lane, breathless and

repentant with a sense of neglected duties. Marilla washed and put away

the dishes grimly. Then, wanting a candle to light her way down the

cellar, she went up to the east gable for the one that generally stood

on Anne’s table. Lighting it, she turned around to see Anne herself

lying on the bed, face downward among the pillows.

“Mercy on us,” said astonished Marilla, “have you been asleep, Anne?”

“No,” was the muffled reply.

“Are you sick then?” demanded Marilla anxiously, going over to the bed.

Anne cowered deeper into her pillows as if desirous of hiding herself

forever from mortal eyes.

“No. But please, Marilla, go away and don’t look at me. I’m in the

depths of despair and I don’t care who gets head in class or writes the

best composition or sings in the Sunday-school choir any more. Little

things like that are of no importance now because I don’t suppose I’ll

ever be able to go anywhere again. My career is closed. Please, Marilla,

go away and don’t look at me.”

“Did anyone ever hear the like?” the mystified Marilla wanted to know.

“Anne Shirley, whatever is the matter with you? What have you done? Get

right up this minute and tell me. This minute, I say. There now, what is

it?”

Anne had slid to the floor in despairing obedience.

“Look at my hair, Marilla,” she whispered.

Accordingly, Marilla lifted her candle and looked scrutinizingly at

Anne’s hair, flowing in heavy masses down her back. It certainly had a

very strange appearance.

“Anne Shirley, what have you done to your hair? Why, it’s _green!_”

Green it might be called, if it were any earthly color--a queer,

dull, bronzy green, with streaks here and there of the original red

to heighten the ghastly effect. Never in all her life had Marilla seen

anything so grotesque as Anne’s hair at that moment.

“Yes, it’s green,” moaned Anne. “I thought nothing could be as bad as

red hair. But now I know it’s ten times worse to have green hair. Oh,

Marilla, you little know how utterly wretched I am.”

“I little know how you got into this fix, but I mean to find out,” said

Marilla. “Come right down to the kitchen--it’s too cold up here--and

tell me just what you’ve done. I’ve been expecting something queer for

some time. You haven’t got into any scrape for over two months, and I

was sure another one was due. Now, then, what did you do to your hair?”

“I dyed it.”

“Dyed it! Dyed your hair! Anne Shirley, didn’t you know it was a wicked

thing to do?”

“Yes, I knew it was a little wicked,” admitted Anne. “But I thought it

was worth while to be a little wicked to get rid of red hair. I counted

the cost, Marilla. Besides, I meant to be extra good in other ways to

make up for it.”

“Well,” said Marilla sarcastically, “if I’d decided it was worth while

to dye my hair I’d have dyed it a decent color at least. I wouldn’t have

dyed it green.”

“But I didn’t mean to dye it green, Marilla,” protested Anne dejectedly.

“If I was wicked I meant to be wicked to some purpose. He said it would

turn my hair a beautiful raven black--he positively assured me that it

would. How could I doubt his word, Marilla? I know what it feels like

to have your word doubted. And Mrs. Allan says we should never suspect

anyone of not telling us the truth unless we have proof that they’re

not. I have proof now--green hair is proof enough for anybody. But I

hadn’t then and I believed every word he said _implicitly_.”

“Who said? Who are you talking about?”

“The peddler that was here this afternoon. I bought the dye from him.”

“Anne Shirley, how often have I told you never to let one of those

Italians in the house! I don’t believe in encouraging them to come

around at all.”

“Oh, I didn’t let him in the house. I remembered what you told me, and I

went out, carefully shut the door, and looked at his things on the step.

Besides, he wasn’t an Italian--he was a German Jew. He had a big box

full of very interesting things and he told me he was working hard to

make enough money to bring his wife and children out from Germany. He

spoke so feelingly about them that it touched my heart. I wanted to buy

something from him to help him in such a worthy object. Then all at once

I saw the bottle of hair dye. The peddler said it was warranted to dye

any hair a beautiful raven black and wouldn’t wash off. In a trice I

saw myself with beautiful raven-black hair and the temptation was

irresistible. But the price of the bottle was seventy-five cents and I

had only fifty cents left out of my chicken money. I think the peddler

had a very kind heart, for he said that, seeing it was me, he’d sell it

for fifty cents and that was just giving it away. So I bought it, and as

soon as he had gone I came up here and applied it with an old hairbrush

as the directions said. I used up the whole bottle, and oh, Marilla,

when I saw the dreadful color it turned my hair I repented of being

wicked, I can tell you. And I’ve been repenting ever since.”

“Well, I hope you’ll repent to good purpose,” said Marilla severely,

“and that you’ve got your eyes opened to where your vanity has led you,

Anne. Goodness knows what’s to be done. I suppose the first thing is to

give your hair a good washing and see if that will do any good.”

Accordingly, Anne washed her hair, scrubbing it vigorously with soap and

water, but for all the difference it made she might as well have been

scouring its original red. The peddler had certainly spoken the truth

when he declared that the dye wouldn’t wash off, however his veracity

might be impeached in other respects.

“Oh, Marilla, what shall I do?” questioned Anne in tears. “I can never

live this down. People have pretty well forgotten my other mistakes--the

liniment cake and setting Diana drunk and flying into a temper with

Mrs. Lynde. But they’ll never forget this. They will think I am not

respectable. Oh, Marilla, ‘what a tangled web we weave when first we

practice to deceive.’ That is poetry, but it is true. And oh, how Josie

Pye will laugh! Marilla, I _cannot_ face Josie Pye. I am the unhappiest

girl in Prince Edward Island.”

Anne’s unhappiness continued for a week. During that time she went

nowhere and shampooed her hair every day. Diana alone of outsiders knew

the fatal secret, but she promised solemnly never to tell, and it may

be stated here and now that she kept her word. At the end of the week

Marilla said decidedly:

“It’s no use, Anne. That is fast dye if ever there was any. Your hair

must be cut off; there is no other way. You can’t go out with it looking

like that.”

Anne’s lips quivered, but she realized the bitter truth of Marilla’s

remarks. With a dismal sigh she went for the scissors.

“Please cut it off at once, Marilla, and have it over. Oh, I feel that

my heart is broken. This is such an unromantic affliction. The girls in

books lose their hair in fevers or sell it to get money for some good

deed, and I’m sure I wouldn’t mind losing my hair in some such fashion

half so much. But there is nothing comforting in having your hair cut

off because you’ve dyed it a dreadful color, is there? I’m going to weep

all the time you’re cutting it off, if it won’t interfere. It seems such

a tragic thing.”

Anne wept then, but later on, when she went upstairs and looked in the

glass, she was calm with despair. Marilla had done her work thoroughly

and it had been necessary to shingle the hair as closely as possible.

The result was not becoming, to state the case as mildly as may be. Anne

promptly turned her glass to the wall.

“I’ll never, never look at myself again until my hair grows,” she

exclaimed passionately.

Then she suddenly righted the glass.

“Yes, I will, too. I’d do penance for being wicked that way. I’ll look

at myself every time I come to my room and see how ugly I am. And I

won’t try to imagine it away, either. I never thought I was vain about

my hair, of all things, but now I know I was, in spite of its being

red, because it was so long and thick and curly. I expect something will

happen to my nose next.”

Anne’s clipped head made a sensation in school on the following Monday,

but to her relief nobody guessed the real reason for it, not even Josie

Pye, who, however, did not fail to inform Anne that she looked like a

perfect scarecrow.

“I didn’t say anything when Josie said that to me,” Anne confided

that evening to Marilla, who was lying on the sofa after one of her

headaches, “because I thought it was part of my punishment and I ought

to bear it patiently. It’s hard to be told you look like a scarecrow

and I wanted to say something back. But I didn’t. I just swept her one

scornful look and then I forgave her. It makes you feel very virtuous

when you forgive people, doesn’t it? I mean to devote all my energies

to being good after this and I shall never try to be beautiful again. Of

course it’s better to be good. I know it is, but it’s sometimes so hard

to believe a thing even when you know it. I do really want to be good,

Marilla, like you and Mrs. Allan and Miss Stacy, and grow up to be a

credit to you. Diana says when my hair begins to grow to tie a black

velvet ribbon around my head with a bow at one side. She says she

thinks it will be very becoming. I will call it a snood--that sounds so

romantic. But am I talking too much, Marilla? Does it hurt your head?”

“My head is better now. It was terrible bad this afternoon, though.

These headaches of mine are getting worse and worse. I’ll have to see

a doctor about them. As for your chatter, I don’t know that I mind

it--I’ve got so used to it.”

Which was Marilla’s way of saying that she liked to hear it.

CHAPTER XXVIII. An Unfortunate Lily Maid

OF course you must be Elaine, Anne,” said Diana. “I could never have

the courage to float down there.”

“Nor I,” said Ruby Gillis, with a shiver. “I don’t mind floating down

when there’s two or three of us in the flat and we can sit up. It’s fun

then. But to lie down and pretend I was dead--I just couldn’t. I’d die

really of fright.”

“Of course it would be romantic,” conceded Jane Andrews, “but I know I

couldn’t keep still. I’d be popping up every minute or so to see where I

was and if I wasn’t drifting too far out. And you know, Anne, that would

spoil the effect.”

“But it’s so ridiculous to have a redheaded Elaine,” mourned Anne. “I’m

not afraid to float down and I’d love to be Elaine. But it’s ridiculous

just the same. Ruby ought to be Elaine because she is so fair and has

such lovely long golden hair--Elaine had ‘all her bright hair streaming

down,’ you know. And Elaine was the lily maid. Now, a red-haired person

cannot be a lily maid.”

“Your complexion is just as fair as Ruby’s,” said Diana earnestly, “and

your hair is ever so much darker than it used to be before you cut it.”

“Oh, do you really think so?” exclaimed Anne, flushing sensitively with

delight. “I’ve sometimes thought it was myself--but I never dared to ask

anyone for fear she would tell me it wasn’t. Do you think it could be

called auburn now, Diana?”

“Yes, and I think it is real pretty,” said Diana, looking admiringly at

the short, silky curls that clustered over Anne’s head and were held in

place by a very jaunty black velvet ribbon and bow.

They were standing on the bank of the pond, below Orchard Slope, where

a little headland fringed with birches ran out from the bank; at its tip

was a small wooden platform built out into the water for the convenience

of fishermen and duck hunters. Ruby and Jane were spending the midsummer

afternoon with Diana, and Anne had come over to play with them.

Anne and Diana had spent most of their playtime that summer on and about

the pond. Idlewild was a thing of the past, Mr. Bell having ruthlessly

cut down the little circle of trees in his back pasture in the spring.

Anne had sat among the stumps and wept, not without an eye to the

romance of it; but she was speedily consoled, for, after all, as she and

Diana said, big girls of thirteen, going on fourteen, were too old for

such childish amusements as playhouses, and there were more fascinating

sports to be found about the pond. It was splendid to fish for trout

over the bridge and the two girls learned to row themselves about in the

little flat-bottomed dory Mr. Barry kept for duck shooting.

It was Anne’s idea that they dramatize Elaine. They had studied

Tennyson’s poem in school the preceding winter, the Superintendent of

Education having prescribed it in the English course for the Prince

Edward Island schools. They had analyzed and parsed it and torn it to

pieces in general until it was a wonder there was any meaning at all

left in it for them, but at least the fair lily maid and Lancelot and

Guinevere and King Arthur had become very real people to them, and Anne

was devoured by secret regret that she had not been born in Camelot.

Those days, she said, were so much more romantic than the present.

Anne’s plan was hailed with enthusiasm. The girls had discovered that if

the flat were pushed off from the landing place it would drift down

with the current under the bridge and finally strand itself on another

headland lower down which ran out at a curve in the pond. They had often

gone down like this and nothing could be more convenient for playing

Elaine.

“Well, I’ll be Elaine,” said Anne, yielding reluctantly, for, although

she would have been delighted to play the principal character, yet

her artistic sense demanded fitness for it and this, she felt, her

limitations made impossible. “Ruby, you must be King Arthur and Jane

will be Guinevere and Diana must be Lancelot. But first you must be the

brothers and the father. We can’t have the old dumb servitor because

there isn’t room for two in the flat when one is lying down. We must

pall the barge all its length in blackest samite. That old black shawl

of your mother’s will be just the thing, Diana.”

The black shawl having been procured, Anne spread it over the flat and

then lay down on the bottom, with closed eyes and hands folded over her

breast.

“Oh, she does look really dead,” whispered Ruby Gillis nervously,

watching the still, white little face under the flickering shadows of

the birches. “It makes me feel frightened, girls. Do you suppose it’s

really right to act like this? Mrs. Lynde says that all play-acting is

abominably wicked.”

“Ruby, you shouldn’t talk about Mrs. Lynde,” said Anne severely. “It

spoils the effect because this is hundreds of years before Mrs. Lynde

was born. Jane, you arrange this. It’s silly for Elaine to be talking

when she’s dead.”

Jane rose to the occasion. Cloth of gold for coverlet there was none,

but an old piano scarf of yellow Japanese crepe was an excellent

substitute. A white lily was not obtainable just then, but the effect of

a tall blue iris placed in one of Anne’s folded hands was all that could

be desired.

“Now, she’s all ready,” said Jane. “We must kiss her quiet brows

and, Diana, you say, ‘Sister, farewell forever,’ and Ruby, you say,

‘Farewell, sweet sister,’ both of you as sorrowfully as you possibly

can. Anne, for goodness sake smile a little. You know Elaine ‘lay as

though she smiled.’ That’s better. Now push the flat off.”

The flat was accordingly pushed off, scraping roughly over an old

embedded stake in the process. Diana and Jane and Ruby only waited long

enough to see it caught in the current and headed for the bridge before

scampering up through the woods, across the road, and down to the lower

headland where, as Lancelot and Guinevere and the King, they were to be

in readiness to receive the lily maid.

For a few minutes Anne, drifting slowly down, enjoyed the romance of her

situation to the full. Then something happened not at all romantic. The

flat began to leak. In a very few moments it was necessary for Elaine

to scramble to her feet, pick up her cloth of gold coverlet and pall

of blackest samite and gaze blankly at a big crack in the bottom of her

barge through which the water was literally pouring. That sharp stake at

the landing had torn off the strip of batting nailed on the flat. Anne

did not know this, but it did not take her long to realize that she was

in a dangerous plight. At this rate the flat would fill and sink long

before it could drift to the lower headland. Where were the oars? Left

behind at the landing!

Anne gave one gasping little scream which nobody ever heard; she was

white to the lips, but she did not lose her self-possession. There was

one chance--just one.

“I was horribly frightened,” she told Mrs. Allan the next day, “and it

seemed like years while the flat was drifting down to the bridge and the

water rising in it every moment. I prayed, Mrs. Allan, most earnestly,

but I didn’t shut my eyes to pray, for I knew the only way God could

save me was to let the flat float close enough to one of the bridge

piles for me to climb up on it. You know the piles are just old tree

trunks and there are lots of knots and old branch stubs on them. It was

proper to pray, but I had to do my part by watching out and right well

I knew it. I just said, ‘Dear God, please take the flat close to a pile

and I’ll do the rest,’ over and over again. Under such circumstances you

don’t think much about making a flowery prayer. But mine was answered,

for the flat bumped right into a pile for a minute and I flung the scarf

and the shawl over my shoulder and scrambled up on a big providential

stub. And there I was, Mrs. Allan, clinging to that slippery old pile

with no way of getting up or down. It was a very unromantic position,

but I didn’t think about that at the time. You don’t think much about

romance when you have just escaped from a watery grave. I said a

grateful prayer at once and then I gave all my attention to holding on

tight, for I knew I should probably have to depend on human aid to get

back to dry land.”

The flat drifted under the bridge and then promptly sank in midstream.

Ruby, Jane, and Diana, already awaiting it on the lower headland, saw it

disappear before their very eyes and had not a doubt but that Anne

had gone down with it. For a moment they stood still, white as sheets,

frozen with horror at the tragedy; then, shrieking at the tops of

their voices, they started on a frantic run up through the woods, never

pausing as they crossed the main road to glance the way of the bridge.

Anne, clinging desperately to her precarious foothold, saw their flying

forms and heard their shrieks. Help would soon come, but meanwhile her

position was a very uncomfortable one.

The minutes passed by, each seeming an hour to the unfortunate lily

maid. Why didn’t somebody come? Where had the girls gone? Suppose they

had fainted, one and all! Suppose nobody ever came! Suppose she grew so

tired and cramped that she could hold on no longer! Anne looked at the

wicked green depths below her, wavering with long, oily shadows, and

shivered. Her imagination began to suggest all manner of gruesome

possibilities to her.

Then, just as she thought she really could not endure the ache in her

arms and wrists another moment, Gilbert Blythe came rowing under the

bridge in Harmon Andrews’s dory!

Gilbert glanced up and, much to his amazement, beheld a little white

scornful face looking down upon him with big, frightened but also

scornful gray eyes.

“Anne Shirley! How on earth did you get there?” he exclaimed.

Without waiting for an answer he pulled close to the pile and extended

his hand. There was no help for it; Anne, clinging to Gilbert Blythe’s

hand, scrambled down into the dory, where she sat, drabbled and furious,

in the stern with her arms full of dripping shawl and wet crepe. It was

certainly extremely difficult to be dignified under the circumstances!

“What has happened, Anne?” asked Gilbert, taking up his oars.

“We were playing Elaine,” explained Anne frigidly, without even looking

at her rescuer, “and I had to drift down to Camelot in the barge--I

mean the flat. The flat began to leak and I climbed out on the pile.

The girls went for help. Will you be kind enough to row me to the

landing?”

Gilbert obligingly rowed to the landing and Anne, disdaining assistance,

sprang nimbly on shore.

“I’m very much obliged to you,” she said haughtily as she turned away.

But Gilbert had also sprung from the boat and now laid a detaining hand

on her arm.

“Anne,” he said hurriedly, “look here. Can’t we be good friends? I’m

awfully sorry I made fun of your hair that time. I didn’t mean to vex

you and I only meant it for a joke. Besides, it’s so long ago. I think

your hair is awfully pretty now--honest I do. Let’s be friends.”

For a moment Anne hesitated. She had an odd, newly awakened

consciousness under all her outraged dignity that the half-shy,

half-eager expression in Gilbert’s hazel eyes was something that was

very good to see. Her heart gave a quick, queer little beat. But the

bitterness of her old grievance promptly stiffened up her wavering

determination. That scene of two years before flashed back into her

recollection as vividly as if it had taken place yesterday. Gilbert had

called her “carrots” and had brought about her disgrace before the whole

school. Her resentment, which to other and older people might be as