ANNE OF AVONLEA

Flowers spring to blossom where she walks
    The careful ways of duty,
Our hard, stiff lines of life with her
    Are flowing curves of beauty.
—WHITTIER

Contents

I
An Irate Neighbor

A tall, slim girl, “half-past sixteen,” with serious gray eyes and
hair which her friends called auburn, had sat down on the broad red sandstone
doorstep of a Prince Edward Island farmhouse one ripe afternoon in August,
firmly resolved to construe so many lines of Virgil.

But an August afternoon, with blue hazes scarfing the harvest slopes, little
winds whispering elfishly in the poplars, and a dancing slendor of red poppies
outflaming against the dark coppice of young firs in a corner of the cherry
orchard, was fitter for dreams than dead languages. The Virgil soon slipped
unheeded to the ground, and Anne, her chin propped on her clasped hands, and
her eyes on the splendid mass of fluffy clouds that were heaping up just over
Mr. J. A. Harrison’s house like a great white mountain, was far away in a
delicious world where a certain schoolteacher was doing a wonderful work,
shaping the destinies of future statesmen, and inspiring youthful minds and
hearts with high and lofty ambitions.

To be sure, if you came down to harsh facts . . . which, it must be confessed,
Anne seldom did until she had to . . . it did not seem likely that there was
much promising material for celebrities in Avonlea school; but you could never
tell what might happen if a teacher used her influence for good. Anne had
certain rose-tinted ideals of what a teacher might accomplish if she only went
the right way about it; and she was in the midst of a delightful scene, forty
years hence, with a famous personage . . . just exactly what he was to be
famous for was left in convenient haziness, but Anne thought it would be rather
nice to have him a college president or a Canadian premier . . . bowing low
over her wrinkled hand and assuring her that it was she who had first kindled
his ambition, and that all his success in life was due to the lessons she had
instilled so long ago in Avonlea school. This pleasant vision was shattered by
a most unpleasant interruption.

A demure little Jersey cow came scuttling down the lane and five seconds later
Mr. Harrison arrived . . . if “arrived” be not too mild a term to
describe the manner of his irruption into the yard.

He bounced over the fence without waiting to open the gate, and angrily
confronted astonished Anne, who had risen to her feet and stood looking at him
in some bewilderment. Mr. Harrison was their new righthand neighbor and she had
never met him before, although she had seen him once or twice.

In early April, before Anne had come home from Queen’s, Mr. Robert Bell,
whose farm adjoined the Cuthbert place on the west, had sold out and moved to
Charlottetown. His farm had been bought by a certain Mr. J. A. Harrison, whose
name, and the fact that he was a New Brunswick man, were all that was known
about him. But before he had been a month in Avonlea he had won the reputation
of being an odd person . . . “a crank,” Mrs. Rachel Lynde said.
Mrs. Rachel was an outspoken lady, as those of you who may have already made
her acquaintance will remember. Mr. Harrison was certainly different from other
people . . . and that is the essential characteristic of a crank, as everybody
knows.

In the first place he kept house for himself and had publicly stated that he
wanted no fools of women around his diggings. Feminine Avonlea took its revenge
by the gruesome tales it related about his house-keeping and cooking. He had
hired little John Henry Carter of White Sands and John Henry started the
stories. For one thing, there was never any stated time for meals in the
Harrison establishment. Mr. Harrison “got a bite” when he felt
hungry, and if John Henry were around at the time, he came in for a share, but
if he were not, he had to wait until Mr. Harrison’s next hungry spell.
John Henry mournfully averred that he would have starved to death if it
wasn’t that he got home on Sundays and got a good filling up, and that
his mother always gave him a basket of “grub” to take back with him
on Monday mornings.

As for washing dishes, Mr. Harrison never made any pretence of doing it unless
a rainy Sunday came. Then he went to work and washed them all at once in the
rainwater hogshead, and left them to drain dry.

Again, Mr. Harrison was “close.” When he was asked to subscribe to
the Rev. Mr. Allan’s salary he said he’d wait and see how many
dollars’ worth of good he got out of his preaching first . . . he
didn’t believe in buying a pig in a poke. And when Mrs. Lynde went to ask
for a contribution to missions . . . and incidentally to see the inside of the
house . . . he told her there were more heathens among the old woman gossips in
Avonlea than anywhere else he knew of, and he’d cheerfully contribute to
a mission for Christianizing them if she’d undertake it. Mrs. Rachel got
herself away and said it was a mercy poor Mrs. Robert Bell was safe in her
grave, for it would have broken her heart to see the state of her house in
which she used to take so much pride.

“Why, she scrubbed the kitchen floor every second day,” Mrs. Lynde
told Marilla Cuthbert indignantly, “and if you could see it now! I had to
hold up my skirts as I walked across it.”

Finally, Mr. Harrison kept a parrot called Ginger. Nobody in Avonlea had ever
kept a parrot before; consequently that proceeding was considered barely
respectable. And such a parrot! If you took John Henry Carter’s word for
it, never was such an unholy bird. It swore terribly. Mrs. Carter would have
taken John Henry away at once if she had been sure she could get another place
for him. Besides, Ginger had bitten a piece right out of the back of John
Henry’s neck one day when he had stooped down too near the cage. Mrs.
Carter showed everybody the mark when the luckless John Henry went home on
Sundays.

All these things flashed through Anne’s mind as Mr. Harrison stood, quite
speechless with wrath apparently, before her. In his most amiable mood Mr.
Harrison could not have been considered a handsome man; he was short and fat
and bald; and now, with his round face purple with rage and his prominent blue
eyes almost sticking out of his head, Anne thought he was really the ugliest
person she had ever seen.

All at once Mr. Harrison found his voice.

“I’m not going to put up with this,” he spluttered,
“not a day longer, do you hear, miss. Bless my soul, this is the third
time, miss . . . the third time! Patience has ceased to be a virtue, miss. I
warned your aunt the last time not to let it occur again . . . and she’s
let it . . . she’s done it . . . what does she mean by it, that is what I
want to know. That is what I’m here about, miss.”

“Will you explain what the trouble is?” asked Anne, in her most
dignified manner. She had been practicing it considerably of late to have it in
good working order when school began; but it had no apparent effect on the
irate J. A. Harrison.

“Trouble, is it? Bless my soul, trouble enough, I should think. The
trouble is, miss, that I found that Jersey cow of your aunt’s in my oats
again, not half an hour ago. The third time, mark you. I found her in last
Tuesday and I found her in yesterday. I came here and told your aunt not to let
it occur again. She has let it occur again. Where’s your aunt, miss? I
just want to see her for a minute and give her a piece of my mind . . . a piece
of J. A. Harrison’s mind, miss.”

“If you mean Miss Marilla Cuthbert, she is not my aunt, and she has gone
down to East Grafton to see a distant relative of hers who is very ill,”
said Anne, with due increase of dignity at every word. “I am very sorry
that my cow should have broken into your oats . . . she is my cow and not Miss
Cuthbert’s . . . Matthew gave her to me three years ago when she was a
little calf and he bought her from Mr. Bell.”

“Sorry, miss! Sorry isn’t going to help matters any. You’d
better go and look at the havoc that animal has made in my oats . . . trampled
them from center to circumference, miss.”

“I am very sorry,” repeated Anne firmly, “but perhaps if you
kept your fences in better repair Dolly might not have broken in. It is your
part of the line fence that separates your oatfield from our pasture and I
noticed the other day that it was not in very good condition.”

“My fence is all right,” snapped Mr. Harrison, angrier than ever at
this carrying of the war into the enemy’s country. “The jail fence
couldn’t keep a demon of a cow like that out. And I can tell you, you
redheaded snippet, that if the cow is yours, as you say, you’d be better
employed in watching her out of other people’s grain than in sitting
round reading yellow-covered novels,” . . . with a scathing glance at the
innocent tan-colored Virgil by Anne’s feet.

Something at that moment was red besides Anne’s hair . . . which had
always been a tender point with her.

“I’d rather have red hair than none at all, except a little fringe
round my ears,” she flashed.

The shot told, for Mr. Harrison was really very sensitive about his bald head.
His anger choked him up again and he could only glare speechlessly at Anne, who
recovered her temper and followed up her advantage.

“I can make allowance for you, Mr. Harrison, because I have an
imagination. I can easily imagine how very trying it must be to find a cow in
your oats and I shall not cherish any hard feelings against you for the things
you’ve said. I promise you that Dolly shall never break into your oats
again. I give you my word of honor on that point.”

“Well, mind you she doesn’t,” muttered Mr. Harrison in a
somewhat subdued tone; but he stamped off angrily enough and Anne heard him
growling to himself until he was out of earshot.

Grievously disturbed in mind, Anne marched across the yard and shut the naughty
Jersey up in the milking pen.

“She can’t possibly get out of that unless she tears the fence
down,” she reflected. “She looks pretty quiet now. I daresay she
has sickened herself on those oats. I wish I’d sold her to Mr. Shearer
when he wanted her last week, but I thought it was just as well to wait until
we had the auction of the stock and let them all go together. I believe it is
true about Mr. Harrison being a crank. Certainly there’s nothing of the
kindred spirit about him.”

Anne had always a weather eye open for kindred spirits.

Marilla Cuthbert was driving into the yard as Anne returned from the house, and
the latter flew to get tea ready. They discussed the matter at the tea table.

“I’ll be glad when the auction is over,” said Marilla.
“It is too much responsibility having so much stock about the place and
nobody but that unreliable Martin to look after them. He has never come back
yet and he promised that he would certainly be back last night if I’d
give him the day off to go to his aunt’s funeral. I don’t know how
many aunts he has got, I am sure. That’s the fourth that’s died
since he hired here a year ago. I’ll be more than thankful when the crop
is in and Mr. Barry takes over the farm. We’ll have to keep Dolly shut up
in the pen till Martin comes, for she must be put in the back pasture and the
fences there have to be fixed. I declare, it is a world of trouble, as Rachel
says. Here’s poor Mary Keith dying and what is to become of those two
children of hers is more than I know. She has a brother in British Columbia and
she has written to him about them, but she hasn’t heard from him
yet.”

“What are the children like? How old are they?”

“Six past . . . they’re twins.”

“Oh, I’ve always been especially interested in twins ever since
Mrs. Hammond had so many,” said Anne eagerly. “Are they
pretty?”

“Goodness, you couldn’t tell . . . they were too dirty. Davy had
been out making mud pies and Dora went out to call him in. Davy pushed her
headfirst into the biggest pie and then, because she cried, he got into it
himself and wallowed in it to show her it was nothing to cry about. Mary said
Dora was really a very good child but that Davy was full of mischief. He has
never had any bringing up you might say. His father died when he was a baby and
Mary has been sick almost ever since.”

“I’m always sorry for children that have no bringing up,”
said Anne soberly. “You know I hadn’t any till you took me
in hand. I hope their uncle will look after them. Just what relation is Mrs.
Keith to you?”

“Mary? None in the world. It was her husband . . . he was our third
cousin. There’s Mrs. Lynde coming through the yard. I thought she’d
be up to hear about Mary.”

“Don’t tell her about Mr. Harrison and the cow,” implored
Anne.

Marilla promised; but the promise was quite unnecessary, for Mrs. Lynde was no
sooner fairly seated than she said,

“I saw Mr. Harrison chasing your Jersey out of his oats today when I was
coming home from Carmody. I thought he looked pretty mad. Did he make much of a
rumpus?”

Anne and Marilla furtively exchanged amused smiles. Few things in Avonlea ever
escaped Mrs. Lynde. It was only that morning Anne had said,

“If you went to your own room at midnight, locked the door, pulled down
the blind, and sneezed, Mrs. Lynde would ask you the next day how your
cold was!”

“I believe he did,” admitted Marilla. “I was away. He gave
Anne a piece of his mind.”

“I think he is a very disagreeable man,” said Anne, with a
resentful toss of her ruddy head.

“You never said a truer word,” said Mrs. Rachel solemnly. “I
knew there’d be trouble when Robert Bell sold his place to a New
Brunswick man, that’s what. I don’t know what Avonlea is coming to,
with so many strange people rushing into it. It’ll soon not be safe to go
to sleep in our beds.”

“Why, what other strangers are coming in?” asked Marilla.

“Haven’t you heard? Well, there’s a family of Donnells, for
one thing. They’ve rented Peter Sloane’s old house. Peter has hired
the man to run his mill. They belong down east and nobody knows anything about
them. Then that shiftless Timothy Cotton family are going to move up from White
Sands and they’ll simply be a burden on the public. He is in consumption
. . . when he isn’t stealing . . . and his wife is a slack-twisted
creature that can’t turn her hand to a thing. She washes her dishes
sitting down. Mrs. George Pye has taken her husband’s orphan
nephew, Anthony Pye. He’ll be going to school to you, Anne, so you may
expect trouble, that’s what. And you’ll have another strange pupil,
too. Paul Irving is coming from the States to live with his grandmother. You
remember his father, Marilla . . . Stephen Irving, him that jilted Lavendar
Lewis over at Grafton?”

“I don’t think he jilted her. There was a quarrel . . . I suppose
there was blame on both sides.”

“Well, anyway, he didn’t marry her, and she’s been as queer
as possible ever since, they say . . . living all by herself in that little
stone house she calls Echo Lodge. Stephen went off to the States and went into
business with his uncle and married a Yankee. He’s never been home since,
though his mother has been up to see him once or twice. His wife died two years
ago and he’s sending the boy home to his mother for a spell. He’s
ten years old and I don’t know if he’ll be a very desirable pupil.
You can never tell about those Yankees.”

Mrs Lynde looked upon all people who had the misfortune to be born or brought
up elsewhere than in Prince Edward Island with a decided
can-any-good-thing-come-out-of-Nazareth air. They might be good people,
of course; but you were on the safe side in doubting it. She had a special
prejudice against “Yankees.” Her husband had been cheated out of
ten dollars by an employer for whom he had once worked in Boston and neither
angels nor principalities nor powers could have convinced Mrs. Rachel that the
whole United States was not responsible for it.

“Avonlea school won’t be the worse for a little new blood,”
said Marilla drily, “and if this boy is anything like his father
he’ll be all right. Steve Irving was the nicest boy that was ever raised
in these parts, though some people did call him proud. I should think Mrs.
Irving would be very glad to have the child. She has been very lonesome since
her husband died.”

“Oh, the boy may be well enough, but he’ll be different from
Avonlea children,” said Mrs. Rachel, as if that clinched the matter. Mrs.
Rachel’s opinions concerning any person, place, or thing, were always
warranted to wear. “What’s this I hear about your going to start up
a Village Improvement Society, Anne?”

“I was just talking it over with some of the girls and boys at the last
Debating Club,” said Anne, flushing. “They thought it would be
rather nice . . . and so do Mr. and Mrs. Allan. Lots of villages have them
now.”

“Well, you’ll get into no end of hot water if you do. Better leave
it alone, Anne, that’s what. People don’t like being
improved.”

“Oh, we are not going to try to improve the people. It is Avonlea
itself. There are lots of things which might be done to make it prettier. For
instance, if we could coax Mr. Levi Boulter to pull down that dreadful old
house on his upper farm wouldn’t that be an improvement?”

“It certainly would,” admitted Mrs. Rachel. “That old ruin
has been an eyesore to the settlement for years. But if you Improvers can coax
Levi Boulter to do anything for the public that he isn’t to be paid for
doing, may I be there to see and hear the process, that’s what. I
don’t want to discourage you, Anne, for there may be something in your
idea, though I suppose you did get it out of some rubbishy Yankee magazine; but
you’ll have your hands full with your school and I advise you as a friend
not to bother with your improvements, that’s what. But there, I know
you’ll go ahead with it if you’ve set your mind on it. You were
always one to carry a thing through somehow.”

Something about the firm outlines of Anne’s lips told that Mrs. Rachel
was not far astray in this estimate. Anne’s heart was bent on forming the
Improvement Society. Gilbert Blythe, who was to teach in White Sands but would
always be home from Friday night to Monday morning, was enthusiastic about it;
and most of the other folks were willing to go in for anything that meant
occasional meetings and consequently some “fun.” As for what the
“improvements” were to be, nobody had any very clear idea except
Anne and Gilbert. They had talked them over and planned them out until an ideal
Avonlea existed in their minds, if nowhere else.

Mrs. Rachel had still another item of news.

“They’ve given the Carmody school to a Priscilla Grant.
Didn’t you go to Queen’s with a girl of that name, Anne?”

“Yes, indeed. Priscilla to teach at Carmody! How perfectly lovely!”
exclaimed Anne, her gray eyes lighting up until they looked like evening stars,
causing Mrs. Lynde to wonder anew if she would ever get it settled to her
satisfaction whether Anne Shirley were really a pretty girl or not.

II
Selling in Haste and Repenting at Leisure

Anne drove over to Carmody on a shopping expedition the next afternoon and took
Diana Barry with her. Diana was, of course, a pledged member of the Improvement
Society, and the two girls talked about little else all the way to Carmody and
back.

“The very first thing we ought to do when we get started is to have that
hall painted,” said Diana, as they drove past the Avonlea hall, a rather
shabby building set down in a wooded hollow, with spruce trees hooding it about
on all sides. “It’s a disgraceful looking place and we must attend
to it even before we try to get Mr. Levi Boulder to pull his house down. Father
says we’ll never succeed in doing that . . . Levi Boulter is too
mean to spend the time it would take.”

“Perhaps he’ll let the boys take it down if they promise to haul
the boards and split them up for him for kindling wood,” said Anne
hopefully. “We must do our best and be content to go slowly at first. We
can’t expect to improve everything all at once. We’ll have to
educate public sentiment first, of course.”

Diana wasn’t exactly sure what educating public sentiment meant; but it
sounded fine and she felt rather proud that she was going to belong to a
society with such an aim in view.

“I thought of something last night that we could do, Anne. You know that
three-cornered piece of ground where the roads from Carmody and Newbridge and
White Sands meet? It’s all grown over with young spruce; but
wouldn’t it be nice to have them all cleared out, and just leave the two
or three birch trees that are on it?”

“Splendid,” agreed Anne gaily. “And have a rustic seat put
under the birches. And when spring comes we’ll have a flower-bed made in
the middle of it and plant geraniums.”

“Yes; only we’ll have to devise some way of getting old Mrs. Hiram
Sloane to keep her cow off the road, or she’ll eat our geraniums
up,” laughed Diana. “I begin to see what you mean by educating
public sentiment, Anne. There’s the old Boulter house now. Did you ever
see such a rookery? And perched right close to the road too. An old house with
its windows gone always makes me think of something dead with its eyes picked
out.”

“I think an old, deserted house is such a sad sight,” said Anne
dreamily. “It always seems to me to be thinking about its past and
mourning for its old-time joys. Marilla says that a large family was raised in
that old house long ago, and that it was a real pretty place, with a lovely
garden and roses climbing all over it. It was full of little children and
laughter and songs; and now it is empty, and nothing ever wanders through it
but the wind. How lonely and sorrowful it must feel! Perhaps they all come back
on moonlit nights . . . the ghosts of the little children of long ago and the
roses and the songs . . . and for a little while the old house can dream it is
young and joyous again.”

Diana shook her head.

“I never imagine things like that about places now, Anne. Don’t you
remember how cross mother and Marilla were when we imagined ghosts into the
Haunted Wood? To this day I can’t go through that bush comfortably after
dark; and if I began imagining such things about the old Boulter house
I’d be frightened to pass it too. Besides, those children aren’t
dead. They’re all grown up and doing well . . . and one of them is a
butcher. And flowers and songs couldn’t have ghosts anyhow.”

Anne smothered a little sigh. She loved Diana dearly and they had always been
good comrades. But she had long ago learned that when she wandered into the
realm of fancy she must go alone. The way to it was by an enchanted path where
not even her dearest might follow her.

A thunder-shower came up while the girls were at Carmody; it did not last long,
however, and the drive home, through lanes where the raindrops sparkled on the
boughs and little leafy valleys where the drenched ferns gave out spicy odors,
was delightful. But just as they turned into the Cuthbert lane Anne saw
something that spoiled the beauty of the landscape for her.

Before them on the right extended Mr. Harrison’s broad, gray-green field
of late oats, wet and luxuriant; and there, standing squarely in the middle of
it, up to her sleek sides in the lush growth, and blinking at them calmly over
the intervening tassels, was a Jersey cow!

Anne dropped the reins and stood up with a tightening of the lips that boded no
good to the predatory quadruped. Not a word said she, but she climbed nimbly
down over the wheels, and whisked across the fence before Diana understood what
had happened.

“Anne, come back,” shrieked the latter, as soon as she found her
voice. “You’ll ruin your dress in that wet grain . . . ruin it. She
doesn’t hear me! Well, she’ll never get that cow out by herself. I
must go and help her, of course.”

Anne was charging through the grain like a mad thing. Diana hopped briskly
down, tied the horse securely to a post, turned the skirt of her pretty gingham
dress over her shoulders, mounted the fence, and started in pursuit of her
frantic friend. She could run faster than Anne, who was hampered by her
clinging and drenched skirt, and soon overtook her. Behind them they left a
trail that would break Mr. Harrison’s heart when he should see it.

“Anne, for mercy’s sake, stop,” panted poor Diana.
“I’m right out of breath and you are wet to the skin.”

“I must . . . get . . . that cow . . . out . . . before . . . Mr.
Harrison . . . sees her,” gasped Anne. “I don’t . . . care .
. . if I’m . . . drowned . . . if we . . . can . . . only . . . do
that.”

But the Jersey cow appeared to see no good reason for being hustled out of her
luscious browsing ground. No sooner had the two breathless girls got near her
than she turned and bolted squarely for the opposite corner of the field.

“Head her off,” screamed Anne. “Run, Diana, run.”

Diana did run. Anne tried to, and the wicked Jersey went around the field as if
she were possessed. Privately, Diana thought she was. It was fully ten minutes
before they headed her off and drove her through the corner gap into the
Cuthbert lane.

There is no denying that Anne was in anything but an angelic temper at that
precise moment. Nor did it soothe her in the least to behold a buggy halted
just outside the lane, wherein sat Mr. Shearer of Carmody and his son, both of
whom wore a broad smile.

“I guess you’d better have sold me that cow when I wanted to buy
her last week, Anne,” chuckled Mr. Shearer.

“I’ll sell her to you now, if you want her,” said her flushed
and disheveled owner. “You may have her this very minute.”

“Done. I’ll give you twenty for her as I offered before, and Jim
here can drive her right over to Carmody. She’ll go to town with the rest
of the shipment this evening. Mr. Reed of Brighton wants a Jersey cow.”

Five minutes later Jim Shearer and the Jersey cow were marching up the road,
and impulsive Anne was driving along the Green Gables lane with her twenty
dollars.

“What will Marilla say?” asked Diana.

“Oh, she won’t care. Dolly was my own cow and it isn’t likely
she’d bring more than twenty dollars at the auction. But oh dear, if Mr.
Harrison sees that grain he will know she has been in again, and after my
giving him my word of honor that I’d never let it happen! Well, it has
taught me a lesson not to give my word of honor about cows. A cow that could
jump over or break through our milk-pen fence couldn’t be trusted
anywhere.”

Marilla had gone down to Mrs. Lynde’s, and when she returned knew all
about Dolly’s sale and transfer, for Mrs. Lynde had seen most of the
transaction from her window and guessed the rest.

“I suppose it’s just as well she’s gone, though you do
do things in a dreadful headlong fashion, Anne. I don’t see how she got
out of the pen, though. She must have broken some of the boards off.”

“I didn’t think of looking,” said Anne, “but I’ll
go and see now. Martin has never come back yet. Perhaps some more of his aunts
have died. I think it’s something like Mr. Peter Sloane and the
octogenarians. The other evening Mrs. Sloane was reading a newspaper and she
said to Mr. Sloane, ‘I see here that another octogenarian has just died.
What is an octogenarian, Peter?’ And Mr. Sloane said he didn’t
know, but they must be very sickly creatures, for you never heard tell of them
but they were dying. That’s the way with Martin’s aunts.”

“Martin’s just like all the rest of those French,” said
Marilla in disgust. “You can’t depend on them for a day.”
Marilla was looking over Anne’s Carmody purchases when she heard a shrill
shriek in the barnyard. A minute later Anne dashed into the kitchen, wringing
her hands.

“Anne Shirley, what’s the matter now?”

“Oh, Marilla, whatever shall I do? This is terrible. And it’s all
my fault. Oh, will I ever learn to stop and reflect a little before
doing reckless things? Mrs. Lynde always told me I would do something dreadful
some day, and now I’ve done it!”

“Anne, you are the most exasperating girl! What is it you’ve
done?”

“Sold Mr. Harrison’s Jersey cow . . . the one he bought from Mr.
Bell . . . to Mr. Shearer! Dolly is out in the milking pen this very
minute.”

“Anne Shirley, are you dreaming?”

“I only wish I were. There’s no dream about it, though it’s
very like a nightmare. And Mr. Harrison’s cow is in Charlottetown by this
time. Oh, Marilla, I thought I’d finished getting into scrapes, and here
I am in the very worst one I ever was in in my life. What can I do?”

“Do? There’s nothing to do, child, except go and see Mr. Harrison
about it. We can offer him our Jersey in exchange if he doesn’t want to
take the money. She is just as good as his.”

“I’m sure he’ll be awfully cross and disagreeable about it,
though,” moaned Anne.

“I daresay he will. He seems to be an irritable sort of a man. I’ll
go and explain to him if you like.”

“No, indeed, I’m not as mean as that,” exclaimed Anne.
“This is all my fault and I’m certainly not going to let you take
my punishment. I’ll go myself and I’ll go at once. The sooner
it’s over the better, for it will be terribly humiliating.”

Poor Anne got her hat and her twenty dollars and was passing out when she
happened to glance through the open pantry door. On the table reposed a nut
cake which she had baked that morning . . . a particularly toothsome concoction
iced with pink icing and adorned with walnuts. Anne had intended it for Friday
evening, when the youth of Avonlea were to meet at Green Gables to organize the
Improvement Society. But what were they compared to the justly offended Mr.
Harrison? Anne thought that cake ought to soften the heart of any man,
especially one who had to do his own cooking, and she promptly popped it into a
box. She would take it to Mr. Harrison as a peace offering.

“That is, if he gives me a chance to say anything at all,” she
thought ruefully, as she climbed the lane fence and started on a short cut
across the fields, golden in the light of the dreamy August evening. “I
know now just how people feel who are being led to execution.”

III
Mr. Harrison at Home

Mr. Harrison’s house was an old-fashioned, low-eaved, whitewashed
structure, set against a thick spruce grove.

Mr. Harrison himself was sitting on his vineshaded veranda, in his shirt
sleeves, enjoying his evening pipe. When he realized who was coming up the path
he sprang suddenly to his feet, bolted into the house, and shut the door. This
was merely the uncomfortable result of his surprise, mingled with a good deal
of shame over his outburst of temper the day before. But it nearly swept the
remnant of her courage from Anne’s heart.

“If he’s so cross now what will he be when he hears what I’ve
done,” she reflected miserably, as she rapped at the door.

But Mr. Harrison opened it, smiling sheepishly, and invited her to enter in a
tone quite mild and friendly, if somewhat nervous. He had laid aside his pipe
and donned his coat; he offered Anne a very dusty chair very politely, and her
reception would have passed off pleasantly enough if it had not been for the
telltale of a parrot who was peering through the bars of his cage with wicked
golden eyes. No sooner had Anne seated herself than Ginger exclaimed,

“Bless my soul, what’s that redheaded snippet coming here
for?”

It would be hard to say whose face was the redder, Mr. Harrison’s or
Anne’s.

“Don’t you mind that parrot,” said Mr. Harrison, casting a
furious glance at Ginger. “He’s . . . he’s always talking
nonsense. I got him from my brother who was a sailor. Sailors don’t
always use the choicest language, and parrots are very imitative birds.”

“So I should think,” said poor Anne, the remembrance of her errand
quelling her resentment. She couldn’t afford to snub Mr. Harrison under
the circumstances, that was certain. When you had just sold a man’s
Jersey cow offhand, without his knowledge or consent you must not mind if his
parrot repeated uncomplimentary things. Nevertheless, the “redheaded
snippet” was not quite so meek as she might otherwise have been.

“I’ve come to confess something to you, Mr. Harrison,” she
said resolutely. “It’s . . . it’s about . . . that Jersey
cow.”

“Bless my soul,” exclaimed Mr. Harrison nervously, “has she
gone and broken into my oats again? Well, never mind . . . never mind if she
has. It’s no difference . . . none at all, I . . . I was too hasty
yesterday, that’s a fact. Never mind if she has.”

“Oh, if it were only that,” sighed Anne. “But it’s ten
times worse. I don’t . . .”

“Bless my soul, do you mean to say she’s got into my wheat?”

“No . . . no . . . not the wheat. But . . .”

“Then it’s the cabbages! She’s broken into my cabbages that I
was raising for Exhibition, hey?”

“It’s not the cabbages, Mr. Harrison. I’ll tell you
everything . . . that is what I came for—but please don’t interrupt
me. It makes me so nervous. Just let me tell my story and don’t say
anything till I get through—and then no doubt you’ll say
plenty,” Anne concluded, but in thought only.

“I won’t say another word,” said Mr. Harrison, and he
didn’t. But Ginger was not bound by any contract of silence and kept
ejaculating, “Redheaded snippet” at intervals until Anne felt quite
wild.

“I shut my Jersey cow up in our pen yesterday. This morning I went to
Carmody and when I came back I saw a Jersey cow in your oats. Diana and I
chased her out and you can’t imagine what a hard time we had. I was so
dreadfully wet and tired and vexed—and Mr. Shearer came by that very
minute and offered to buy the cow. I sold her to him on the spot for twenty
dollars. It was wrong of me. I should have waited and consulted Marilla, of
course. But I’m dreadfully given to doing things without
thinking—everybody who knows me will tell you that. Mr. Shearer took the
cow right away to ship her on the afternoon train.”

“Redheaded snippet,” quoted Ginger in a tone of profound contempt.

At this point Mr. Harrison arose and, with an expression that would have struck
terror into any bird but a parrot, carried Ginger’s cage into an
adjoining room and shut the door. Ginger shrieked, swore, and otherwise
conducted himself in keeping with his reputation, but finding himself left
alone, relapsed into sulky silence.

“Excuse me and go on,” said Mr. Harrison, sitting down again.
“My brother the sailor never taught that bird any manners.”

“I went home and after tea I went out to the milking pen. Mr.
Harrison,” . . . Anne leaned forward, clasping her hands with her old
childish gesture, while her big gray eyes gazed imploringly into Mr.
Harrison’s embarrassed face . . . “I found my cow still shut up in
the pen. It was your cow I had sold to Mr. Shearer.”

“Bless my soul,” exclaimed Mr. Harrison, in blank amazement at this
unlooked-for conclusion. “What a very extraordinary thing!”

“Oh, it isn’t in the least extraordinary that I should be getting
myself and other people into scrapes,” said Anne mournfully.
“I’m noted for that. You might suppose I’d have grown out of
it by this time . . . I’ll be seventeen next March . . . but it seems
that I haven’t. Mr. Harrison, is it too much to hope that you’ll
forgive me? I’m afraid it’s too late to get your cow back, but here
is the money for her . . . or you can have mine in exchange if you’d
rather. She’s a very good cow. And I can’t express how sorry I am
for it all.”

“Tut, tut,” said Mr. Harrison briskly, “don’t say
another word about it, miss. It’s of no consequence . . . no consequence
whatever. Accidents will happen. I’m too hasty myself sometimes, miss . .
. far too hasty. But I can’t help speaking out just what I think and
folks must take me as they find me. If that cow had been in my cabbages now . .
. but never mind, she wasn’t, so it’s all right. I think I’d
rather have your cow in exchange, since you want to be rid of her.”

“Oh, thank you, Mr. Harrison. I’m so glad you are not vexed. I was
afraid you would be.”

“And I suppose you were scared to death to come here and tell me, after
the fuss I made yesterday, hey? But you mustn’t mind me, I’m a
terrible outspoken old fellow, that’s all . . . awful apt to tell the
truth, no matter if it is a bit plain.”

“So is Mrs. Lynde,” said Anne, before she could prevent herself.

“Who? Mrs. Lynde? Don’t you tell me I’m like that old
gossip,” said Mr. Harrison irritably. “I’m not . . . not a
bit. What have you got in that box?”

“A cake,” said Anne archly. In her relief at Mr. Harrison’s
unexpected amiability her spirits soared upward feather-light. “I brought
it over for you . . . I thought perhaps you didn’t have cake very
often.”

“I don’t, that’s a fact, and I’m mighty fond of it,
too. I’m much obliged to you. It looks good on top. I hope it’s
good all the way through.”

“It is,” said Anne, gaily confident. “I have made cakes in my
time that were not, as Mrs. Allan could tell you, but this one is all
right. I made it for the Improvement Society, but I can make another for
them.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what, miss, you must help me eat it.
I’ll put the kettle on and we’ll have a cup of tea. How will that
do?”

“Will you let me make the tea?” said Anne dubiously.

Mr. Harrison chuckled.

“I see you haven’t much confidence in my ability to make tea.
You’re wrong . . . I can brew up as good a jorum of tea as you ever
drank. But go ahead yourself. Fortunately it rained last Sunday, so
there’s plenty of clean dishes.”

Anne hopped briskly up and went to work. She washed the teapot in several
waters before she put the tea to steep. Then she swept the stove and set the
table, bringing the dishes out of the pantry. The state of that pantry
horrified Anne, but she wisely said nothing. Mr. Harrison told her where to
find the bread and butter and a can of peaches. Anne adorned the table with a
bouquet from the garden and shut her eyes to the stains on the tablecloth. Soon
the tea was ready and Anne found herself sitting opposite Mr. Harrison at his
own table, pouring his tea for him, and chatting freely to him about her school
and friends and plans. She could hardly believe the evidence of her senses.

Mr. Harrison had brought Ginger back, averring that the poor bird would be
lonesome; and Anne, feeling that she could forgive everybody and everything,
offered him a walnut. But Ginger’s feelings had been grievously hurt and
he rejected all overtures of friendship. He sat moodily on his perch and
ruffled his feathers up until he looked like a mere ball of green and gold.

“Why do you call him Ginger?” asked Anne, who liked appropriate
names and thought Ginger accorded not at all with such gorgeous plumage.

“My brother the sailor named him. Maybe it had some reference to his
temper. I think a lot of that bird though . . . you’d be surprised if you
knew how much. He has his faults of course. That bird has cost me a good deal
one way and another. Some people object to his swearing habits but he
can’t be broken of them. I’ve tried . . . other people have tried.
Some folks have prejudices against parrots. Silly, ain’t it? I like them
myself. Ginger’s a lot of company to me. Nothing would induce me to give
that bird up . . . nothing in the world, miss.”

Mr. Harrison flung the last sentence at Anne as explosively as if he suspected
her of some latent design of persuading him to give Ginger up. Anne, however,
was beginning to like the queer, fussy, fidgety little man, and before the meal
was over they were quite good friends. Mr. Harrison found out about the
Improvement Society and was disposed to approve of it.

“That’s right. Go ahead. There’s lots of room for improvement
in this settlement . . . and in the people too.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” flashed Anne. To herself, or to her
particular cronies, she might admit that there were some small imperfections,
easily removable, in Avonlea and its inhabitants. But to hear a practical
outsider like Mr. Harrison saying it was an entirely different thing. “I
think Avonlea is a lovely place; and the people in it are very nice,
too.”

“I guess you’ve got a spice of temper,” commented Mr.
Harrison, surveying the flushed cheeks and indignant eyes opposite him.
“It goes with hair like yours, I reckon. Avonlea is a pretty decent place
or I wouldn’t have located here; but I suppose even you will admit that
it has some faults?”

“I like it all the better for them,” said loyal Anne. “I
don’t like places or people either that haven’t any faults. I think
a truly perfect person would be very uninteresting. Mrs. Milton White says she
never met a perfect person, but she’s heard enough about one . . . her
husband’s first wife. Don’t you think it must be very uncomfortable
to be married to a man whose first wife was perfect?”

“It would be more uncomfortable to be married to the perfect wife,”
declared Mr. Harrison, with a sudden and inexplicable warmth.

When tea was over Anne insisted on washing the dishes, although Mr. Harrison
assured her that there were enough in the house to do for weeks yet. She would
dearly have loved to sweep the floor also, but no broom was visible and she did
not like to ask where it was for fear there wasn’t one at all.

“You might run across and talk to me once in a while,” suggested
Mr. Harrison when she was leaving. “’Tisn’t far and folks
ought to be neighborly. I’m kind of interested in that society of yours.
Seems to me there’ll be some fun in it. Who are you going to tackle
first?”

“We are not going to meddle with people . . . it is only
places we mean to improve,” said Anne, in a dignified tone. She
rather suspected that Mr. Harrison was making fun of the project.

When she had gone Mr. Harrison watched her from the window . . . a lithe,
girlish shape, tripping lightheartedly across the fields in the sunset
afterglow.

“I’m a crusty, lonesome, crabbed old chap,” he said aloud,
“but there’s something about that little girl makes me feel young
again . . . and it’s such a pleasant sensation I’d like to have it
repeated once in a while.”

“Redheaded snippet,” croaked Ginger mockingly.

Mr. Harrison shook his fist at the parrot.

“You ornery bird,” he muttered, “I almost wish I’d
wrung your neck when my brother the sailor brought you home. Will you never be
done getting me into trouble?”

Anne ran home blithely and recounted her adventures to Marilla, who had been
not a little alarmed by her long absence and was on the point of starting out
to look for her.

“It’s a pretty good world, after all, isn’t it,
Marilla?” concluded Anne happily. “Mrs. Lynde was complaining the
other day that it wasn’t much of a world. She said whenever you looked
forward to anything pleasant you were sure to be more or less disappointed . .
. perhaps that is true. But there is a good side to it too. The bad things
don’t always come up to your expectations either . . . they nearly always
turn out ever so much better than you think. I looked forward to a dreadfully
unpleasant experience when I went over to Mr. Harrison’s tonight; and
instead he was quite kind and I had almost a nice time. I think we’re
going to be real good friends if we make plenty of allowances for each other,
and everything has turned out for the best. But all the same, Marilla, I shall
certainly never again sell a cow before making sure to whom she belongs. And I
do not like parrots!”

IV
Different Opinions

One evening at sunset, Jane Andrews, Gilbert Blythe, and Anne Shirley were
lingering by a fence in the shadow of gently swaying spruce boughs, where a
wood cut known as the Birch Path joined the main road. Jane had been up to
spend the afternoon with Anne, who walked part of the way home with her; at the
fence they met Gilbert, and all three were now talking about the fateful
morrow; for that morrow was the first of September and the schools would open.
Jane would go to Newbridge and Gilbert to White Sands.

“You both have the advantage of me,” sighed Anne.
“You’re going to teach children who don’t know you, but I
have to teach my own old schoolmates, and Mrs. Lynde says she’s afraid
they won’t respect me as they would a stranger unless I’m very
cross from the first. But I don’t believe a teacher should be cross. Oh,
it seems to me such a responsibility!”

“I guess we’ll get on all right,” said Jane comfortably. Jane
was not troubled by any aspirations to be an influence for good. She meant to
earn her salary fairly, please the trustees, and get her name on the School
Inspector’s roll of honor. Further ambitions Jane had none. “The
main thing will be to keep order and a teacher has to be a little cross to do
that. If my pupils won’t do as I tell them I shall punish them.”

“How?”

“Give them a good whipping, of course.”

“Oh, Jane, you wouldn’t,” cried Anne, shocked. “Jane,
you couldn’t!”

“Indeed, I could and would, if they deserved it,” said Jane
decidedly.

“I could never whip a child,” said Anne with equal decision.
“I don’t believe in it at all. Miss Stacy never whipped any
of us and she had perfect order; and Mr. Phillips was always whipping and he
had no order at all. No, if I can’t get along without whipping I shall
not try to teach school. There are better ways of managing. I shall try to win
my pupils’ affections and then they will want to do what I tell
them.”

“But suppose they don’t?” said practical Jane.

“I wouldn’t whip them anyhow. I’m sure it wouldn’t do
any good. Oh, don’t whip your pupils, Jane dear, no matter what they
do.”

“What do you think about it, Gilbert?” demanded Jane.
“Don’t you think there are some children who really need a whipping
now and then?”

“Don’t you think it’s a cruel, barbarous thing to whip a
child . . . any child?” exclaimed Anne, her face flushing with
earnestness.

“Well,” said Gilbert slowly, torn between his real convictions and
his wish to measure up to Anne’s ideal, “there’s something to
be said on both sides. I don’t believe in whipping children much.
I think, as you say, Anne, that there are better ways of managing as a rule,
and that corporal punishment should be a last resort. But on the other hand, as
Jane says, I believe there is an occasional child who can’t be influenced
in any other way and who, in short, needs a whipping and would be improved by
it. Corporal punishment as a last resort is to be my rule.”

Gilbert, having tried to please both sides, succeeded, as is usual and
eminently right, in pleasing neither. Jane tossed her head.

“I’ll whip my pupils when they’re naughty. It’s the
shortest and easiest way of convincing them.”

Anne gave Gilbert a disappointed glance.

“I shall never whip a child,” she repeated firmly. “I feel
sure it isn’t either right or necessary.”

“Suppose a boy sauced you back when you told him to do something?”
said Jane.

“I’d keep him in after school and talk kindly and firmly to
him,” said Anne. “There is some good in every person if you can
find it. It is a teacher’s duty to find and develop it. That is what our
School Management professor at Queen’s told us, you know. Do you suppose
you could find any good in a child by whipping him? It’s far more
important to influence the children aright than it is even to teach them the
three R’s, Professor Rennie says.”

“But the Inspector examines them in the three R’s, mind you, and he
won’t give you a good report if they don’t come up to his
standard,” protested Jane.

“I’d rather have my pupils love me and look back to me in after
years as a real helper than be on the roll of honor,” asserted Anne
decidedly.

“Wouldn’t you punish children at all, when they misbehaved?”
asked Gilbert.

“Oh, yes, I suppose I shall have to, although I know I’ll hate to
do it. But you can keep them in at recess or stand them on the floor or give
them lines to write.”

“I suppose you won’t punish the girls by making them sit with the
boys?” said Jane slyly.

Gilbert and Anne looked at each other and smiled rather foolishly. Once upon a
time, Anne had been made to sit with Gilbert for punishment and sad and bitter
had been the consequences thereof.

“Well, time will tell which is the best way,” said Jane
philosophically as they parted.

Anne went back to Green Gables by way of Birch Path, shadowy, rustling,
fern-scented, through Violet Vale and past Willowmere, where dark and light
kissed each other under the firs, and down through Lover’s Lane . . .
spots she and Diana had so named long ago. She walked slowly, enjoying the
sweetness of wood and field and the starry summer twilight, and thinking
soberly about the new duties she was to take up on the morrow. When she reached
the yard at Green Gables Mrs. Lynde’s loud, decided tones floated out
through the open kitchen window.

“Mrs. Lynde has come up to give me good advice about tomorrow,”
thought Anne with a grimace, “but I don’t believe I’ll go in.
Her advice is much like pepper, I think . . . excellent in small quantities but
rather scorching in her doses. I’ll run over and have a chat with Mr.
Harrison instead.”

This was not the first time Anne had run over and chatted with Mr. Harrison
since the notable affair of the Jersey cow. She had been there several evenings
and Mr. Harrison and she were very good friends, although there were times and
seasons when Anne found the outspokenness on which he prided himself rather
trying. Ginger still continued to regard her with suspicion, and never failed
to greet her sarcastically as “redheaded snippet.” Mr. Harrison had
tried vainly to break him of the habit by jumping excitedly up whenever he saw
Anne coming and exclaiming,

“Bless my soul, here’s that pretty little girl again,” or
something equally flattering. But Ginger saw through the scheme and scorned it.
Anne was never to know how many compliments Mr. Harrison paid her behind her
back. He certainly never paid her any to her face.

“Well, I suppose you’ve been back in the woods laying in a supply
of switches for tomorrow?” was his greeting as Anne came up the veranda
steps.

“No, indeed,” said Anne indignantly. She was an excellent target
for teasing because she always took things so seriously. “I shall never
have a switch in my school, Mr. Harrison. Of course, I shall have to have a
pointer, but I shall use it for pointing only.”

“So you mean to strap them instead? Well, I don’t know but
you’re right. A switch stings more at the time but the strap smarts
longer, that’s a fact.”

“I shall not use anything of the sort. I’m not going to whip my
pupils.”

“Bless my soul,” exclaimed Mr. Harrison in genuine astonishment,
“how do you lay out to keep order then?”

“I shall govern by affection, Mr. Harrison.”

“It won’t do,” said Mr. Harrison, “won’t do at
all, Anne. ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child.’ When I went to
school the master whipped me regular every day because he said if I
wasn’t in mischief just then I was plotting it.”

“Methods have changed since your schooldays, Mr. Harrison.”

“But human nature hasn’t. Mark my words, you’ll never manage
the young fry unless you keep a rod in pickle for them. The thing is
impossible.”

“Well, I’m going to try my way first,” said Anne, who had a
fairly strong will of her own and was apt to cling very tenaciously to her
theories.

“You’re pretty stubborn, I reckon,” was Mr. Harrison’s
way of putting it. “Well, well, we’ll see. Someday when you get
riled up . . . and people with hair like yours are desperate apt to get riled .
. . you’ll forget all your pretty little notions and give some of them a
whaling. You’re too young to be teaching anyhow . . . far too young and
childish.”

Altogether, Anne went to bed that night in a rather pessimistic mood. She slept
poorly and was so pale and tragic at breakfast next morning that Marilla was
alarmed and insisted on making her take a cup of scorching ginger tea. Anne
sipped it patiently, although she could not imagine what good ginger tea would
do. Had it been some magic brew, potent to confer age and experience, Anne
would have swallowed a quart of it without flinching.

“Marilla, what if I fail!”

“You’ll hardly fail completely in one day and there’s plenty
more days coming,” said Marilla. “The trouble with you, Anne, is
that you’ll expect to teach those children everything and reform all
their faults right off, and if you can’t you’ll think you’ve
failed.”

V
A Full-fledged Schoolma’am

When Anne reached the school that morning . . . for the first time in her life
she had traversed the Birch Path deaf and blind to its beauties . . . all was
quiet and still. The preceding teacher had trained the children to be in their
places at her arrival, and when Anne entered the schoolroom she was confronted
by prim rows of “shining morning faces” and bright, inquisitive
eyes. She hung up her hat and faced her pupils, hoping that she did not look as
frightened and foolish as she felt and that they would not perceive how she was
trembling.

She had sat up until nearly twelve the preceding night composing a speech she
meant to make to her pupils upon opening the school. She had revised and
improved it painstakingly, and then she had learned it off by heart. It was a
very good speech and had some very fine ideas in it, especially about mutual
help and earnest striving after knowledge. The only trouble was that she could
not now remember a word of it.

After what seemed to her a year . . . about ten seconds in reality . . . she
said faintly, “Take your Testaments, please,” and sank breathlessly
into her chair under cover of the rustle and clatter of desk lids that
followed. While the children read their verses Anne marshalled her shaky wits
into order and looked over the array of little pilgrims to the Grownup Land.

Most of them were, of course, quite well known to her. Her own classmates had
passed out in the preceding year but the rest had all gone to school with her,
excepting the primer class and ten newcomers to Avonlea. Anne secretly felt
more interest in these ten than in those whose possibilities were already
fairly well mapped out to her. To be sure, they might be just as commonplace as
the rest; but on the other hand there might be a genius among them. It
was a thrilling idea.

Sitting by himself at a corner desk was Anthony Pye. He had a dark, sullen
little face, and was staring at Anne with a hostile expression in his black
eyes. Anne instantly made up her mind that she would win that boy’s
affection and discomfit the Pyes utterly.

In the other corner another strange boy was sitting with Arty Sloane. . . a
jolly looking little chap, with a snub nose, freckled face, and big, light blue
eyes, fringed with whitish lashes . . . probably the Donnell boy; and if
resemblance went for anything, his sister was sitting across the aisle with
Mary Bell. Anne wondered what sort of mother the child had, to send her to
school dressed as she was. She wore a faded pink silk dress, trimmed with a
great deal of cotton lace, soiled white kid slippers, and silk stockings. Her
sandy hair was tortured into innumerable kinky and unnatural curls, surmounted
by a flamboyant bow of pink ribbon bigger than her head. Judging from her
expression she was very well satisfied with herself.

A pale little thing, with smooth ripples of fine, silky, fawn-colored hair
flowing over her shoulders, must, Anne thought, be Annetta Bell, whose parents
had formerly lived in the Newbridge school district, but, by reason of hauling
their house fifty yards north of its old site were now in Avonlea. Three pallid
little girls crowded into one seat were certainly Cottons; and there was no
doubt that the small beauty with the long brown curls and hazel eyes, who was
casting coquettish looks at Jack Gills over the edge of her Testament, was
Prillie Rogerson, whose father had recently married a second wife and brought
Prillie home from her grandmother’s in Grafton. A tall, awkward girl in a
back seat, who seemed to have too many feet and hands, Anne could not place at
all, but later on discovered that her name was Barbara Shaw and that she had
come to live with an Avonlea aunt. She was also to find that if Barbara ever
managed to walk down the aisle without falling over her own or somebody
else’s feet the Avonlea scholars wrote the unusual fact up on the porch
wall to commemorate it.

But when Anne’s eyes met those of the boy at the front desk facing her
own, a queer little thrill went over her, as if she had found her genius. She
knew this must be Paul Irving and that Mrs. Rachel Lynde had been right for
once when she prophesied that he would be unlike the Avonlea children. More
than that, Anne realized that he was unlike other children anywhere, and that
there was a soul subtly akin to her own gazing at her out of the very dark blue
eyes that were watching her so intently.

She knew Paul was ten but he looked no more than eight. He had the most
beautiful little face she had ever seen in a child . . . features of exquisite
delicacy and refinement, framed in a halo of chestnut curls. His mouth was
delicious, being full without pouting, the crimson lips just softly touching
and curving into finely finished little corners that narrowly escaped being
dimpled. He had a sober, grave, meditative expression, as if his spirit was
much older than his body; but when Anne smiled softly at him it vanished in a
sudden answering smile, which seemed an illumination of his whole being, as if
some lamp had suddenly kindled into flame inside of him, irradiating him from
top to toe. Best of all, it was involuntary, born of no external effort or
motive, but simply the outflashing of a hidden personality, rare and fine and
sweet. With a quick interchange of smiles Anne and Paul were fast friends
forever before a word had passed between them.

The day went by like a dream. Anne could never clearly recall it afterwards. It
almost seemed as if it were not she who was teaching but somebody else. She
heard classes and worked sums and set copies mechanically. The children behaved
quite well; only two cases of discipline occurred. Morley Andrews was caught
driving a pair of trained crickets in the aisle. Anne stood Morley on the
platform for an hour and . . . which Morley felt much more keenly . . .
confiscated his crickets. She put them in a box and on the way from school set
them free in Violet Vale; but Morley believed, then and ever afterwards, that
she took them home and kept them for her own amusement.

The other culprit was Anthony Pye, who poured the last drops of water from his
slate bottle down the back of Aurelia Clay’s neck. Anne kept Anthony in
at recess and talked to him about what was expected of gentlemen, admonishing
him that they never poured water down ladies’ necks. She wanted all her
boys to be gentlemen, she said. Her little lecture was quite kind and touching;
but unfortunately Anthony remained absolutely untouched. He listened to her in
silence, with the same sullen expression, and whistled scornfully as he went
out. Anne sighed; and then cheered herself up by remembering that winning a
Pye’s affections, like the building of Rome, wasn’t the work of a
day. In fact, it was doubtful whether some of the Pyes had any affections to
win; but Anne hoped better things of Anthony, who looked as if he might be a
rather nice boy if one ever got behind his sullenness.

When school was dismissed and the children had gone Anne dropped wearily into
her chair. Her head ached and she felt woefully discouraged. There was no real
reason for discouragement, since nothing very dreadful had occurred; but Anne
was very tired and inclined to believe that she would never learn to like
teaching. And how terrible it would be to be doing something you didn’t
like every day for . . . well, say forty years. Anne was of two minds whether
to have her cry out then and there, or wait till she was safely in her own
white room at home. Before she could decide there was a click of heels and a
silken swish on the porch floor, and Anne found herself confronted by a lady
whose appearance made her recall a recent criticism of Mr. Harrison’s on
an overdressed female he had seen in a Charlottetown store. “She looked
like a head-on collision between a fashion plate and a nightmare.”

The newcomer was gorgeously arrayed in a pale blue summer silk, puffed,
frilled, and shirred wherever puff, frill, or shirring could possibly be
placed. Her head was surmounted by a huge white chiffon hat, bedecked with
three long but rather stringy ostrich feathers. A veil of pink chiffon,
lavishly sprinkled with huge black dots, hung like a flounce from the hat brim
to her shoulders and floated off in two airy streamers behind her. She wore all
the jewelry that could be crowded on one small woman, and a very strong odor of
perfume attended her.

“I am Mrs. Donnell . . . Mrs. H. B. Donnell,”
announced this vision, “and I have come in to see you about something
Clarice Almira told me when she came home to dinner today. It annoyed me
excessively.”

“I’m sorry,” faltered Anne, vainly trying to recollect any
incident of the morning connected with the Donnell children.

“Clarice Almira told me that you pronounced our name Donnell. Now,
Miss Shirley, the correct pronunciation of our name is Donnell . . .
accent on the last syllable. I hope you’ll remember this in
future.”

“I’ll try to,” gasped Anne, choking back a wild desire to
laugh. “I know by experience that it’s very unpleasant to have
one’s name spelled wrong and I suppose it must be even worse to
have it pronounced wrong.”

“Certainly it is. And Clarice Almira also informed me that you call my
son Jacob.”

“He told me his name was Jacob,” protested Anne.

“I might have expected that,” said Mrs. H. B. Donnell, in a
tone which implied that gratitude in children was not to be looked for in this
degenerate age. “That boy has such plebeian tastes, Miss Shirley. When he
was born I wanted to call him St. Clair . . . it sounds so aristocratic,
doesn’t it? But his father insisted he should be called Jacob after his
uncle. I yielded, because Uncle Jacob was a rich old bachelor. And what do you
think, Miss Shirley? When our innocent boy was five years old Uncle Jacob
actually went and got married and now he has three boys of his own. Did you
ever hear of such ingratitude? The moment the invitation to the wedding . . .
for he had the impertinence to send us an invitation, Miss Shirley . . . came
to the house I said, ‘No more Jacobs for me, thank you.’ From that
day I called my son St. Clair and St. Clair I am determined he shall be called.
His father obstinately continues to call him Jacob, and the boy himself has a
perfectly unaccountable preference for the vulgar name. But St. Clair he is and
St. Clair he shall remain. You will kindly remember this, Miss Shirley, will
you not? Thank you. I told Clarice Almira that I was sure it was only a
misunderstanding and that a word would set it right. Donnell. . . accent
on the last syllable . . . and St. Clair . . . on no account Jacob.
You’ll remember? Thank you.”

When Mrs. H. B. Donnell had skimmed away Anne locked the school door and
went home. At the foot of the hill she found Paul Irving by the Birch Path. He
held out to her a cluster of the dainty little wild orchids which Avonlea
children called “rice lillies.”

“Please, teacher, I found these in Mr. Wright’s field,” he
said shyly, “and I came back to give them to you because I thought you
were the kind of lady that would like them, and because . . .” he lifted
his big beautiful eyes . . . “I like you, teacher.”

“You darling,” said Anne, taking the fragrant spikes. As if
Paul’s words had been a spell of magic, discouragement and weariness
passed from her spirit, and hope upwelled in her heart like a dancing fountain.
She went through the Birch Path light-footedly, attended by the sweetness of
her orchids as by a benediction.

“Well, how did you get along?” Marilla wanted to know.

“Ask me that a month later and I may be able to tell you. I can’t
now . . . I don’t know myself . . . I’m too near it. My thoughts
feel as if they had been all stirred up until they were thick and muddy. The
only thing I feel really sure of having accomplished today is that I taught
Cliffie Wright that A is A. He never knew it before. Isn’t it something
to have started a soul along a path that may end in Shakespeare and Paradise
Lost?”

Mrs. Lynde came up later on with more encouragement. That good lady had waylaid
the schoolchildren at her gate and demanded of them how they liked their new
teacher.

“And every one of them said they liked you splendid, Anne, except Anthony
Pye. I must admit he didn’t. He said you ‘weren’t any good,
just like all girl teachers.’ There’s the Pye leaven for you. But
never mind.”

“I’m not going to mind,” said Anne quietly, “and
I’m going to make Anthony Pye like me yet. Patience and kindness will
surely win him.”

“Well, you can never tell about a Pye,” said Mrs. Rachel
cautiously. “They go by contraries, like dreams, often as not. As for
that Donnell woman, she’ll get no Donnelling from me, I can
assure you. The name is Donnell and always has been. The woman is crazy,
that’s what. She has a pug dog she calls Queenie and it has its meals at
the table along with the family, eating off a china plate. I’d be afraid
of a judgment if I was her. Thomas says Donnell himself is a sensible,
hard-working man, but he hadn’t much gumption when he picked out a wife,
that’s what.”

VI
All Sorts and Conditions of Men . . . and women

A September day on Prince Edward Island hills; a crisp wind blowing up over the
sand dunes from the sea; a long red road, winding through fields and woods, now
looping itself about a corner of thick set spruces, now threading a plantation
of young maples with great feathery sheets of ferns beneath them, now dipping
down into a hollow where a brook flashed out of the woods and into them again,
now basking in open sunshine between ribbons of golden-rod and smoke-blue
asters; air athrill with the pipings of myriads of crickets, those glad little
pensioners of the summer hills; a plump brown pony ambling along the road; two
girls behind him, full to the lips with the simple, priceless joy of youth and
life.

“Oh, this is a day left over from Eden, isn’t it, Diana?” . .
. and Anne sighed for sheer happiness. “The air has magic in it. Look at
the purple in the cup of the harvest valley, Diana. And oh, do smell the dying
fir! It’s coming up from that little sunny hollow where Mr. Eben Wright
has been cutting fence poles. Bliss is it on such a day to be alive; but to
smell dying fir is very heaven. That’s two thirds Wordsworth and one
third Anne Shirley. It doesn’t seem possible that there should be dying
fir in heaven, does it? And yet it doesn’t seem to me that heaven would
be quite perfect if you couldn’t get a whiff of dead fir as you went
through its woods. Perhaps we’ll have the odor there without the death.
Yes, I think that will be the way. That delicious aroma must be the souls of
the firs . . . and of course it will be just souls in heaven.”

“Trees haven’t souls,” said practical Diana, “but the
smell of dead fir is certainly lovely. I’m going to make a cushion and
fill it with fir needles. You’d better make one too, Anne.”

“I think I shall . . . and use it for my naps. I’d be certain to
dream I was a dryad or a woodnymph then. But just this minute I’m well
content to be Anne Shirley, Avonlea schoolma’am, driving over a road like
this on such a sweet, friendly day.”

“It’s a lovely day but we have anything but a lovely task before
us,” sighed Diana. “Why on earth did you offer to canvass this
road, Anne? Almost all the cranks in Avonlea live along it, and we’ll
probably be treated as if we were begging for ourselves. It’s the very
worst road of all.”

“That is why I chose it. Of course Gilbert and Fred would have taken this
road if we had asked them. But you see, Diana, I feel myself responsible for
the A.V.I.S., since I was the first to suggest it, and it seems to me that I
ought to do the most disagreeable things. I’m sorry on your account; but
you needn’t say a word at the cranky places. I’ll do all the
talking . . . Mrs. Lynde would say I was well able to. Mrs. Lynde doesn’t
know whether to approve of our enterprise or not. She inclines to, when she
remembers that Mr. and Mrs. Allan are in favor of it; but the fact that village
improvement societies first originated in the States is a count against it. So
she is halting between two opinions and only success will justify us in Mrs.
Lynde’s eyes. Priscilla is going to write a paper for our next
Improvement meeting, and I expect it will be good, for her aunt is such a
clever writer and no doubt it runs in the family. I shall never forget the
thrill it gave me when I found out that Mrs. Charlotte E. Morgan was
Priscilla’s aunt. It seemed so wonderful that I was a friend of the girl
whose aunt wrote ‘Edgewood Days’ and ‘The Rosebud
Garden.’”

“Where does Mrs. Morgan live?”

“In Toronto. And Priscilla says she is coming to the Island for a visit
next summer, and if it is possible Priscilla is going to arrange to have us
meet her. That seems almost too good to be true—but it’s something
pleasant to imagine after you go to bed.”

The Avonlea Village Improvement Society was an organized fact. Gilbert Blythe
was president, Fred Wright vice-president, Anne Shirley secretary, and Diana
Barry treasurer. The “Improvers,” as they were promptly christened,
were to meet once a fortnight at the homes of the members. It was admitted that
they could not expect to affect many improvements so late in the season; but
they meant to plan the next summer’s campaign, collect and discuss ideas,
write and read papers, and, as Anne said, educate the public sentiment
generally.

There was some disapproval, of course, and . . . which the Improvers felt much
more keenly . . . a good deal of ridicule. Mr. Elisha Wright was reported to
have said that a more appropriate name for the organization would be Courting
Club. Mrs. Hiram Sloane declared she had heard the Improvers meant to plough up
all the roadsides and set them out with geraniums. Mr. Levi Boulter warned his
neighbors that the Improvers would insist that everybody pull down his house
and rebuild it after plans approved by the society. Mr. James Spencer sent them
word that he wished they would kindly shovel down the church hill. Eben Wright
told Anne that he wished the Improvers could induce old Josiah Sloane to keep
his whiskers trimmed. Mr. Lawrence Bell said he would whitewash his barns if
nothing else would please them but he would not hang lace curtains in
the cowstable windows. Mr. Major Spencer asked Clifton Sloane, an Improver who
drove the milk to the Carmody cheese factory, if it was true that everybody
would have to have his milk-stand hand-painted next summer and keep an
embroidered centerpiece on it.

In spite of . . . or perhaps, human nature being what it is, because of . . .
this, the Society went gamely to work at the only improvement they could hope
to bring about that fall. At the second meeting, in the Barry parlor, Oliver
Sloane moved that they start a subscription to re-shingle and paint the hall;
Julia Bell seconded it, with an uneasy feeling that she was doing something not
exactly ladylike. Gilbert put the motion, it was carried unanimously, and Anne
gravely recorded it in her minutes. The next thing was to appoint a committee,
and Gertie Pye, determined not to let Julia Bell carry off all the laurels,
boldly moved that Miss Jane Andrews be chairman of said committee. This motion
being also duly seconded and carried, Jane returned the compliment by
appointing Gertie on the committee, along with Gilbert, Anne, Diana, and Fred
Wright. The committee chose their routes in private conclave. Anne and Diana
were told off for the Newbridge road, Gilbert and Fred for the White Sands
road, and Jane and Gertie for the Carmody road.

“Because,” explained Gilbert to Anne, as they walked home together
through the Haunted Wood, “the Pyes all live along that road and they
won’t give a cent unless one of themselves canvasses them.”

The next Saturday Anne and Diana started out. They drove to the end of the road
and canvassed homeward, calling first on the “Andrew girls.”

“If Catherine is alone we may get something,” said Diana,
“but if Eliza is there we won’t.”

Eliza was there . . . very much so . . . and looked even grimmer than usual.
Miss Eliza was one of those people who give you the impression that life is
indeed a vale of tears, and that a smile, never to speak of a laugh, is a waste
of nervous energy truly reprehensible. The Andrew girls had been
“girls” for fifty odd years and seemed likely to remain girls to
the end of their earthly pilgrimage. Catherine, it was said, had not entirely
given up hope, but Eliza, who was born a pessimist, had never had any. They
lived in a little brown house built in a sunny corner scooped out of Mark
Andrew’s beech woods. Eliza complained that it was terrible hot in
summer, but Catherine was wont to say it was lovely and warm in winter.

Eliza was sewing patchwork, not because it was needed but simply as a protest
against the frivolous lace Catherine was crocheting. Eliza listened with a
frown and Catherine with a smile, as the girls explained their errand. To be
sure, whenever Catherine caught Eliza’s eye she discarded the smile in
guilty confusion; but it crept back the next moment.

“If I had money to waste,” said Eliza grimly, “I’d burn
it up and have the fun of seeing a blaze maybe; but I wouldn’t give it to
that hall, not a cent. It’s no benefit to the settlement . . . just a
place for young folks to meet and carry on when they’s better be home in
their beds.”

“Oh, Eliza, young folks must have some amusement,” protested
Catherine.

“I don’t see the necessity. We didn’t gad about to
halls and places when we were young, Catherine Andrews. This world is getting
worse every day.”

“I think it’s getting better,” said Catherine firmly.

“You think!” Miss Eliza’s voice expressed the utmost
contempt. “It doesn’t signify what you think, Catherine
Andrews. Facts is facts.”

“Well, I always like to look on the bright side, Eliza.”

“There isn’t any bright side.”

“Oh, indeed there is,” cried Anne, who couldn’t endure such
heresy in silence. “Why, there are ever so many bright sides, Miss
Andrews. It’s really a beautiful world.”

“You won’t have such a high opinion of it when you’ve lived
as long in it as I have,” retorted Miss Eliza sourly, “and you
won’t be so enthusiastic about improving it either. How is your mother,
Diana? Dear me, but she has failed of late. She looks terrible run down. And
how long is it before Marilla expects to be stone blind, Anne?”

“The doctor thinks her eyes will not get any worse if she is very
careful,” faltered Anne.

Eliza shook her head.

“Doctors always talk like that just to keep people cheered up. I
wouldn’t have much hope if I was her. It’s best to be prepared for
the worst.”

“But oughtn’t we be prepared for the best too?” pleaded Anne.
“It’s just as likely to happen as the worst.”

“Not in my experience, and I’ve fifty-seven years to set against
your sixteen,” retorted Eliza. “Going, are you? Well, I hope this
new society of yours will be able to keep Avonlea from running any further down
hill but I haven’t much hope of it.”

Anne and Diana got themselves thankfully out, and drove away as fast as the fat
pony could go. As they rounded the curve below the beech wood a plump figure
came speeding over Mr. Andrews’ pasture, waving to them excitedly. It was
Catherine Andrews and she was so out of breath that she could hardly speak, but
she thrust a couple of quarters into Anne’s hand.

“That’s my contribution to painting the hall,” she gasped.
“I’d like to give you a dollar but I don’t dare take more
from my egg money for Eliza would find it out if I did. I’m real
interested in your society and I believe you’re going to do a lot of
good. I’m an optimist. I have to be, living with Eliza. I must
hurry back before she misses me . . . she thinks I’m feeding the hens. I
hope you’ll have good luck canvassing, and don’t be cast down over
what Eliza said. The world is getting better . . . it certainly
is.”

The next house was Daniel Blair’s.

“Now, it all depends on whether his wife is home or not,” said
Diana, as they jolted along a deep-rutted lane. “If she is we won’t
get a cent. Everybody says Dan Blair doesn’t dare have his hair cut
without asking her permission; and it’s certain she’s very close,
to state it moderately. She says she has to be just before she’s
generous. But Mrs. Lynde says she’s so much ‘before’ that
generosity never catches up with her at all.”

Anne related their experience at the Blair place to Marilla that evening.

“We tied the horse and then rapped at the kitchen door. Nobody came but
the door was open and we could hear somebody in the pantry, going on
dreadfully. We couldn’t make out the words but Diana says she knows they
were swearing by the sound of them. I can’t believe that of Mr. Blair,
for he is always so quiet and meek; but at least he had great provocation, for
Marilla, when that poor man came to the door, red as a beet, with perspiration
streaming down his face, he had on one of his wife’s big gingham aprons.
‘I can’t get this durned thing off,’ he said, ‘for the
strings are tied in a hard knot and I can’t bust ’em, so
you’ll have to excuse me, ladies.’ We begged him not to mention it
and went in and sat down. Mr. Blair sat down too; he twisted the apron around
to his back and rolled it up, but he did look so ashamed and worried that I
felt sorry for him, and Diana said she feared we had called at an inconvenient
time. ‘Oh, not at all,’ said Mr. Blair, trying to smile . . . you
know he is always very polite . . . ‘I’m a little busy . . .
getting ready to bake a cake as it were. My wife got a telegram today that her
sister from Montreal is coming tonight and she’s gone to the train to
meet her and left orders for me to make a cake for tea. She writ out the recipe
and told me what to do but I’ve clean forgot half the directions already.
And it says, ‘flavor according to taste.’ What does that mean? How
can you tell? And what if my taste doesn’t happen to be other
people’s taste? Would a tablespoon of vanilla be enough for a small layer
cake?”

“I felt sorrier than ever for the poor man. He didn’t seem to be in
his proper sphere at all. I had heard of henpecked husbands and now I felt that
I saw one. It was on my lips to say, ‘Mr. Blair, if you’ll give us
a subscription for the hall I’ll mix up your cake for you.’ But I
suddenly thought it wouldn’t be neighborly to drive too sharp a bargain
with a fellow creature in distress. So I offered to mix the cake for him
without any conditions at all. He just jumped at my offer. He said he’d
been used to making his own bread before he was married but he feared cake was
beyond him, and yet he hated to disappoint his wife. He got me another apron,
and Diana beat the eggs and I mixed the cake. Mr. Blair ran about and got us
the materials. He had forgotten all about his apron and when he ran it streamed
out behind him and Diana said she thought she would die to see it. He said he
could bake the cake all right . . . he was used to that . . . and then he asked
for our list and he put down four dollars. So you see we were rewarded. But
even if he hadn’t given a cent I’d always feel that we had done a
truly Christian act in helping him.”

Theodore White’s was the next stopping place. Neither Anne nor Diana had
ever been there before, and they had only a very slight acquaintance with Mrs.
Theodore, who was not given to hospitality. Should they go to the back or front
door? While they held a whispered consultation Mrs. Theodore appeared at the
front door with an armful of newspapers. Deliberately she laid them down one by
one on the porch floor and the porch steps, and then down the path to the very
feet of her mystified callers.

“Will you please wipe your feet carefully on the grass and then walk on
these papers?” she said anxiously. “I’ve just swept the house
all over and I can’t have any more dust tracked in. The path’s been
real muddy since the rain yesterday.”

“Don’t you dare laugh,” warned Anne in a whisper, as they
marched along the newspapers. “And I implore you, Diana, not to look at
me, no matter what she says, or I shall not be able to keep a sober
face.”

The papers extended across the hall and into a prim, fleckless parlor. Anne and
Diana sat down gingerly on the nearest chairs and explained their errand. Mrs.
White heard them politely, interrupting only twice, once to chase out an
adventurous fly, and once to pick up a tiny wisp of grass that had fallen on
the carpet from Anne’s dress. Anne felt wretchedly guilty; but Mrs. White
subscribed two dollars and paid the money down . . . “to prevent us from
having to go back for it,” Diana said when they got away. Mrs. White had
the newspapers gathered up before they had their horse untied and as they drove
out of the yard they saw her busily wielding a broom in the hall.

“I’ve always heard that Mrs. Theodore White was the neatest woman
alive and I’ll believe it after this,” said Diana, giving way to
her suppressed laughter as soon as it was safe.

“I am glad she has no children,” said Anne solemnly. “It
would be dreadful beyond words for them if she had.”

At the Spencers’ Mrs. Isabella Spencer made them miserable by saying
something ill-natured about everyone in Avonlea. Mr. Thomas Boulter refused to
give anything because the hall, when it had been built, twenty years before,
hadn’t been built on the site he recommended. Mrs. Esther Bell, who was
the picture of health, took half an hour to detail all her aches and pains, and
sadly put down fifty cents because she wouldn’t be there that time next
year to do it . . . no, she would be in her grave.

Their worst reception, however, was at Simon Fletcher’s. When they drove
into the yard they saw two faces peering at them through the porch window. But
although they rapped and waited patiently and persistently nobody came to the
door. Two decidedly ruffled and indignant girls drove away from Simon
Fletcher’s. Even Anne admitted that she was beginning to feel
discouraged. But the tide turned after that. Several Sloane homesteads came
next, where they got liberal subscriptions, and from that to the end they fared
well, with only an occasional snub. Their last place of call was at Robert
Dickson’s by the pond bridge. They stayed to tea here, although they were
nearly home, rather than risk offending Mrs. Dickson, who had the reputation of
being a very “touchy” woman.

While they were there old Mrs. James White called in.

“I’ve just been down to Lorenzo’s,” she announced.
“He’s the proudest man in Avonlea this minute. What do you think?
There’s a brand new boy there . . . and after seven girls that’s
quite an event, I can tell you.” Anne pricked up her ears, and when they
drove away she said.

“I’m going straight to Lorenzo White’s.”

“But he lives on the White Sands road and it’s quite a distance out
of our way,” protested Diana. “Gilbert and Fred will canvass
him.”

“They are not going around until next Saturday and it will be too late by
then,” said Anne firmly. “The novelty will be worn off. Lorenzo
White is dreadfully mean but he will subscribe to anything just now. We
mustn’t let such a golden opportunity slip, Diana.” The result
justified Anne’s foresight. Mr. White met them in the yard, beaming like
the sun upon an Easter day. When Anne asked for a subscription he agreed
enthusiastically.

“Certain, certain. Just put me down for a dollar more than the highest
subscription you’ve got.”

“That will be five dollars . . . Mr. Daniel Blair put down four,”
said Anne, half afraid. But Lorenzo did not flinch.

“Five it is . . . and here’s the money on the spot. Now, I want you
to come into the house. There’s something in there worth seeing . . .
something very few people have seen as yet. Just come in and pass your
opinion.”

“What will we say if the baby isn’t pretty?” whispered Diana
in trepidation as they followed the excited Lorenzo into the house.

“Oh, there will certainly be something else nice to say about it,”
said Anne easily. “There always is about a baby.”

The baby was pretty, however, and Mr. White felt that he got his five
dollars’ worth of the girls’ honest delight over the plump little
newcomer. But that was the first, last, and only time that Lorenzo White ever
subscribed to anything.

Anne, tired as she was, made one more effort for the public weal that night,
slipping over the fields to interview Mr. Harrison, who was as usual smoking
his pipe on the veranda with Ginger beside him. Strickly speaking he was on the
Carmody road; but Jane and Gertie, who were not acquainted with him save by
doubtful report, had nervously begged Anne to canvass him.

Mr. Harrison, however, flatly refused to subscribe a cent, and all Anne’s
wiles were in vain.

“But I thought you approved of our society, Mr. Harrison,” she
mourned.

“So I do . . . so I do . . . but my approval doesn’t go as deep as
my pocket, Anne.”

“A few more experiences such as I have had today would make me as much of
a pessimist as Miss Eliza Andrews,” Anne told her reflection in the east
gable mirror at bedtime.

VII
The Pointing of Duty

Anne leaned back in her chair one mild October evening and sighed. She was
sitting at a table covered with text books and exercises, but the closely
written sheets of paper before her had no apparent connection with studies or
school work.

“What is the matter?” asked Gilbert, who had arrived at the open
kitchen door just in time to hear the sigh.

Anne colored, and thrust her writing out of sight under some school
compositions.

“Nothing very dreadful. I was just trying to write out some of my
thoughts, as Professor Hamilton advised me, but I couldn’t get them to
please me. They seem so still and foolish directly they’re written down
on white paper with black ink. Fancies are like shadows . . . you can’t
cage them, they’re such wayward, dancing things. But perhaps I’ll
learn the secret some day if I keep on trying. I haven’t a great many
spare moments, you know. By the time I finish correcting school exercises and
compositions, I don’t always feel like writing any of my own.”

“You are getting on splendidly in school, Anne. All the children like
you,” said Gilbert, sitting down on the stone step.

“No, not all. Anthony Pye doesn’t and won’t like me.
What is worse, he doesn’t respect me . . . no, he doesn’t. He
simply holds me in contempt and I don’t mind confessing to you that it
worries me miserably. It isn’t that he is so very bad . . . he is only
rather mischievous, but no worse than some of the others. He seldom disobeys
me; but he obeys with a scornful air of toleration as if it wasn’t
worthwhile disputing the point or he would . . . and it has a bad effect on the
others. I’ve tried every way to win him but I’m beginning to fear I
never shall. I want to, for he’s rather a cute little lad, if he
is a Pye, and I could like him if he’d let me.”

“Probably it’s merely the effect of what he hears at home.”

“Not altogether. Anthony is an independent little chap and makes up his
own mind about things. He has always gone to men before and he says girl
teachers are no good. Well, we’ll see what patience and kindness will do.
I like overcoming difficulties and teaching is really very interesting work.
Paul Irving makes up for all that is lacking in the others. That child is a
perfect darling, Gilbert, and a genius into the bargain. I’m persuaded
the world will hear of him some day,” concluded Anne in a tone of
conviction.

“I like teaching, too,” said Gilbert. “It’s good
training, for one thing. Why, Anne, I’ve learned more in the weeks
I’ve been teaching the young ideas of White Sands than I learned in all
the years I went to school myself. We all seem to be getting on pretty well.
The Newbridge people like Jane, I hear; and I think White Sands is tolerably
satisfied with your humble servant . . . all except Mr. Andrew Spencer. I met
Mrs. Peter Blewett on my way home last night and she told me she thought it her
duty to inform me that Mr. Spencer didn’t approve of my methods.”

“Have you ever noticed,” asked Anne reflectively, “that when
people say it is their duty to tell you a certain thing you may prepare for
something disagreeable? Why is it that they never seem to think it a duty to
tell you the pleasant things they hear about you? Mrs. H. B. Donnell
called at the school again yesterday and told me she thought it her duty
to inform me that Mrs. Harmon Andrews didn’t approve of my reading fairy
tales to the children, and that Mr. Rogerson thought Prillie wasn’t
coming on fast enough in arithmetic. If Prillie would spend less time making
eyes at the boys over her slate she might do better. I feel quite sure that
Jack Gillis works her class sums for her, though I’ve never been able to
catch him red-handed.”

“Have you succeeded in reconciling Mrs. Donnell’s hopeful
son to his saintly name?”

“Yes,” laughed Anne, “but it was really a difficult task. At
first, when I called him ‘St. Clair’ he would not take the least
notice until I’d spoken two or three times; and then, when the other boys
nudged him, he would look up with such an aggrieved air, as if I’d called
him John or Charlie and he couldn’t be expected to know I meant him. So I
kept him in after school one night and talked kindly to him. I told him his
mother wished me to call him St. Clair and I couldn’t go against her
wishes. He saw it when it was all explained out . . . he’s really a very
reasonable little fellow . . . and he said I could call him St. Clair
but that he’d ‘lick the stuffing’ out of any of the boys that
tried it. Of course, I had to rebuke him again for using such shocking
language. Since then I call him St. Clair and the boys call him Jake and
all goes smoothly. He informs me that he means to be a carpenter, but Mrs.
Donnell says I am to make a college professor out of him.”

The mention of college gave a new direction to Gilbert’s thoughts, and
they talked for a time of their plans and wishes . . . gravely, earnestly,
hopefully, as youth loves to talk, while the future is yet an untrodden path
full of wonderful possibilities.

Gilbert had finally made up his mind that he was going to be a doctor.

“It’s a splendid profession,” he said enthusiastically.
“A fellow has to fight something all through life . . . didn’t
somebody once define man as a fighting animal? . . . and I want to fight
disease and pain and ignorance . . . which are all members one of another. I
want to do my share of honest, real work in the world, Anne . . . add a little
to the sum of human knowledge that all the good men have been accumulating
since it began. The folks who lived before me have done so much for me that I
want to show my gratitude by doing something for the folks who will live after
me. It seems to me that is the only way a fellow can get square with his
obligations to the race.”

“I’d like to add some beauty to life,” said Anne dreamily.
“I don’t exactly want to make people know more . . . though
I know that is the noblest ambition . . . but I’d love to make
them have a pleasanter time because of me . . . to have some little joy or
happy thought that would never have existed if I hadn’t been born.”

“I think you’re fulfilling that ambition every day,” said
Gilbert admiringly.

And he was right. Anne was one of the children of light by birthright. After
she had passed through a life with a smile or a word thrown across it like a
gleam of sunshine the owner of that life saw it, for the time being at least,
as hopeful and lovely and of good report.

Finally Gilbert rose regretfully.

“Well, I must run up to MacPhersons’. Moody Spurgeon came home from
Queen’s today for Sunday and he was to bring me out a book Professor Boyd
is lending me.”

“And I must get Marilla’s tea. She went to see Mrs. Keith this
evening and she will soon be back.”

Anne had tea ready when Marilla came home; the fire was crackling cheerily, a
vase of frost-bleached ferns and ruby-red maple leaves adorned the table, and
delectable odors of ham and toast pervaded the air. But Marilla sank into her
chair with a deep sigh.

“Are your eyes troubling you? Does your head ache?” queried Anne
anxiously.

“No. I’m only tired . . . and worried. It’s about Mary and
those children . . . Mary is worse . . . she can’t last much longer. And
as for the twins, I don’t know what is to become of them.”

“Hasn’t their uncle been heard from?”

“Yes, Mary had a letter from him. He’s working in a lumber camp and
‘shacking it,’ whatever that means. Anyway, he says he can’t
possibly take the children till the spring. He expects to be married then and
will have a home to take them to; but he says she must get some of the
neighbors to keep them for the winter. She says she can’t bear to ask any
of them. Mary never got on any too well with the East Grafton people and
that’s a fact. And the long and short of it is, Anne, that I’m sure
Mary wants me to take those children . . . she didn’t say so but she
looked it.”

“Oh!” Anne clasped her hands, all athrill with excitement.
“And of course you will, Marilla, won’t you?”

“I haven’t made up my mind,” said Marilla rather tartly.
“I don’t rush into things in your headlong way, Anne. Third
cousinship is a pretty slim claim. And it will be a fearful responsibility to
have two children of six years to look after . . . twins, at that.”

Marilla had an idea that twins were just twice as bad as single children.

“Twins are very interesting . . . at least one pair of them,” said
Anne. “It’s only when there are two or three pairs that it gets
monotonous. And I think it would be real nice for you to have something to
amuse you when I’m away in school.”

“I don’t reckon there’d be much amusement in it . . . more
worry and bother than anything else, I should say. It wouldn’t be so
risky if they were even as old as you were when I took you. I wouldn’t
mind Dora so much . . . she seems good and quiet. But that Davy is a
limb.”

Anne was fond of children and her heart yearned over the Keith twins. The
remembrance of her own neglected childhood was very vivid with her still. She
knew that Marilla’s only vulnerable point was her stern devotion to what
she believed to be her duty, and Anne skillfully marshalled her arguments along
this line.

“If Davy is naughty it’s all the more reason why he should have
good training, isn’t it, Marilla? If we don’t take them we
don’t know who will, nor what kind of influences may surround them.
Suppose Mrs. Keith’s next door neighbors, the Sprotts, were to take them.
Mrs. Lynde says Henry Sprott is the most profane man that ever lived and you
can’t believe a word his children say. Wouldn’t it be dreadful to
have the twins learn anything like that? Or suppose they went to the
Wiggins’. Mrs. Lynde says that Mr. Wiggins sells everything off the place
that can be sold and brings his family up on skim milk. You wouldn’t like
your relations to be starved, even if they were only third cousins, would you?
It seems to me, Marilla, that it is our duty to take them.”

“I suppose it is,” assented Marilla gloomily. “I daresay
I’ll tell Mary I’ll take them. You needn’t look so delighted,
Anne. It will mean a good deal of extra work for you. I can’t sew a
stitch on account of my eyes, so you’ll have to see to the making and
mending of their clothes. And you don’t like sewing.”

“I hate it,” said Anne calmly, “but if you are willing to
take those children from a sense of duty surely I can do their sewing from a
sense of duty. It does people good to have to do things they don’t like .
. . in moderation.”

VIII
Marilla Adopts Twins

Mrs. Rachel Lynde was sitting at her kitchen window, knitting a quilt, just as
she had been sitting one evening several years previously when Matthew Cuthbert
had driven down over the hill with what Mrs. Rachel called “his imported
orphan.” But that had been in springtime; and this was late autumn, and
all the woods were leafless and the fields sere and brown. The sun was just
setting with a great deal of purple and golden pomp behind the dark woods west
of Avonlea when a buggy drawn by a comfortable brown nag came down the hill.
Mrs. Rachel peered at it eagerly.

“There’s Marilla getting home from the funeral,” she said to
her husband, who was lying on the kitchen lounge. Thomas Lynde lay more on the
lounge nowadays than he had been used to do, but Mrs. Rachel, who was so sharp
at noticing anything beyond her own household, had not as yet noticed this.
“And she’s got the twins with her, . . . yes, there’s Davy
leaning over the dashboard grabbing at the pony’s tail and Marilla
jerking him back. Dora’s sitting up on the seat as prim as you please.
She always looks as if she’d just been starched and ironed. Well, poor
Marilla is going to have her hands full this winter and no mistake. Still, I
don’t see that she could do anything less than take them, under the
circumstances, and she’ll have Anne to help her. Anne’s tickled to
death over the whole business, and she has a real knacky way with children, I
must say. Dear me, it doesn’t seem a day since poor Matthew brought Anne
herself home and everybody laughed at the idea of Marilla bringing up a child.
And now she has adopted twins. You’re never safe from being surprised
till you’re dead.”

The fat pony jogged over the bridge in Lynde’s Hollow and along the Green
Gables lane. Marilla’s face was rather grim. It was ten miles from East
Grafton and Davy Keith seemed to be possessed with a passion for perpetual
motion. It was beyond Marilla’s power to make him sit still and she had
been in an agony the whole way lest he fall over the back of the wagon and
break his neck, or tumble over the dashboard under the pony’s heels. In
despair she finally threatened to whip him soundly when she got him home.
Whereupon Davy climbed into her lap, regardless of the reins, flung his chubby
arms about her neck and gave her a bear-like hug.

“I don’t believe you mean it,” he said, smacking her wrinkled
cheek affectionately. “You don’t look like a lady
who’d whip a little boy just ’cause he couldn’t keep still.
Didn’t you find it awful hard to keep still when you was only ‘s
old as me?”

“No, I always kept still when I was told,” said Marilla, trying to
speak sternly, albeit she felt her heart waxing soft within her under
Davy’s impulsive caresses.

“Well, I s’pose that was ’cause you was a girl,” said
Davy, squirming back to his place after another hug. “You was a
girl once, I s’pose, though it’s awful funny to think of it. Dora
can sit still . . . but there ain’t much fun in it I don’t
think. Seems to me it must be slow to be a girl. Here, Dora, let me liven you
up a bit.”

Davy’s method of “livening up” was to grasp Dora’s
curls in his fingers and give them a tug. Dora shrieked and then cried.

“How can you be such a naughty boy and your poor mother just laid in her
grave this very day?” demanded Marilla despairingly.

“But she was glad to die,” said Davy confidentially. “I know,
’cause she told me so. She was awful tired of being sick. We’d a
long talk the night before she died. She told me you was going to take me and
Dora for the winter and I was to be a good boy. I’m going to be good, but
can’t you be good running round just as well as sitting still? And she
said I was always to be kind to Dora and stand up for her, and I’m going
to.”

“Do you call pulling her hair being kind to her?”

“Well, I ain’t going to let anybody else pull it,” said Davy,
doubling up his fists and frowning. “They’d just better try it. I
didn’t hurt her much . . . she just cried ’cause she’s a
girl. I’m glad I’m a boy but I’m sorry I’m a twin. When
Jimmy Sprott’s sister conterdicks him he just says, ‘I’m
oldern you, so of course I know better,’ and that settles her. But
I can’t tell Dora that, and she just goes on thinking diffrunt from me.
You might let me drive the gee-gee for a spell, since I’m a man.”

Altogether, Marilla was a thankful woman when she drove into her own yard,
where the wind of the autumn night was dancing with the brown leaves. Anne was
at the gate to meet them and lift the twins out. Dora submitted calmly to be
kissed, but Davy responded to Anne’s welcome with one of his hearty hugs
and the cheerful announcement, “I’m Mr. Davy Keith.”

At the supper table Dora behaved like a little lady, but Davy’s manners
left much to be desired.

“I’m so hungry I ain’t got time to eat p’litely,”
he said when Marilla reproved him. “Dora ain’t half as hungry as I
am. Look at all the ex’cise I took on the road here. That cake’s
awful nice and plummy. We haven’t had any cake at home for ever’n
ever so long, ’cause mother was too sick to make it and Mrs. Sprott said
it was as much as she could do to bake our bread for us. And Mrs. Wiggins never
puts any plums in her cakes. Catch her! Can I have another piece?”

Marilla would have refused but Anne cut a generous second slice. However, she
reminded Davy that he ought to say “Thank you” for it. Davy merely
grinned at her and took a huge bite. When he had finished the slice he said,

“If you’ll give me another piece I’ll say thank you
for it.”

“No, you have had plenty of cake,” said Marilla in a tone which
Anne knew and Davy was to learn to be final.

Davy winked at Anne, and then, leaning over the table, snatched Dora’s
first piece of cake, from which she had just taken one dainty little bite, out
of her very fingers and, opening his mouth to the fullest extent, crammed the
whole slice in. Dora’s lip trembled and Marilla was speechless with
horror. Anne promptly exclaimed, with her best “schoolma’am”
air,

“Oh, Davy, gentlemen don’t do things like that.”

“I know they don’t,” said Davy, as soon as he could speak,
“but I ain’t a gemplum.”

“But don’t you want to be?” said shocked Anne.

“Course I do. But you can’t be a gemplum till you grow up.”

“Oh, indeed you can,” Anne hastened to say, thinking she saw a
chance to sow good seed betimes. “You can begin to be a gentleman when
you are a little boy. And gentlemen never snatch things from ladies . .
. or forget to say thank you . . . or pull anybody’s hair.”

“They don’t have much fun, that’s a fact,” said Davy
frankly. “I guess I’ll wait till I’m grown up to be
one.”

Marilla, with a resigned air, had cut another piece of cake for Dora. She did
not feel able to cope with Davy just then. It had been a hard day for her, what
with the funeral and the long drive. At that moment she looked forward to the
future with a pessimism that would have done credit to Eliza Andrews herself.

The twins were not noticeably alike, although both were fair. Dora had long
sleek curls that never got out of order. Davy had a crop of fuzzy little yellow
ringlets all over his round head. Dora’s hazel eyes were gentle and mild;
Davy’s were as roguish and dancing as an elf’s. Dora’s nose
was straight, Davy’s a positive snub; Dora had a “prunes and
prisms” mouth, Davy’s was all smiles; and besides, he had a dimple
in one cheek and none in the other, which gave him a dear, comical, lopsided
look when he laughed. Mirth and mischief lurked in every corner of his little
face.

“They’d better go to bed,” said Marilla, who thought it was
the easiest way to dispose of them. “Dora will sleep with me and you can
put Davy in the west gable. You’re not afraid to sleep alone, are you,
Davy?”

“No; but I ain’t going to bed for ever so long yet,” said
Davy comfortably.

“Oh, yes, you are.” That was all the much-tried Marilla said, but
something in her tone squelched even Davy. He trotted obediently upstairs with
Anne.

“When I’m grown up the very first thing I’m going to do is
stay up all night just to see what it would be like,” he told her
confidentially.

In after years Marilla never thought of that first week of the twins’
sojourn at Green Gables without a shiver. Not that it really was so much worse
than the weeks that followed it; but it seemed so by reason of its novelty.
There was seldom a waking minute of any day when Davy was not in mischief or
devising it; but his first notable exploit occurred two days after his arrival,
on Sunday morning . . . a fine, warm day, as hazy and mild as September. Anne
dressed him for church while Marilla attended to Dora. Davy at first objected
strongly to having his face washed.

“Marilla washed it yesterday . . . and Mrs. Wiggins scoured me with hard
soap the day of the funeral. That’s enough for one week. I don’t
see the good of being so awful clean. It’s lots more comfable being
dirty.”

“Paul Irving washes his face every day of his own accord,” said
Anne astutely.

Davy had been an inmate of Green Gables for little over forty-eight hours; but
he already worshipped Anne and hated Paul Irving, whom he had heard Anne
praising enthusiastically the day after his arrival. If Paul Irving washed his
face every day, that settled it. He, Davy Keith, would do it too, if it killed
him. The same consideration induced him to submit meekly to the other details
of his toilet, and he was really a handsome little lad when all was done. Anne
felt an almost maternal pride in him as she led him into the old Cuthbert pew.

Davy behaved quite well at first, being occupied in casting covert glances at
all the small boys within view and wondering which was Paul Irving. The first
two hymns and the Scripture reading passed off uneventfully. Mr. Allan was
praying when the sensation came.

Lauretta White was sitting in front of Davy, her head slightly bent and her
fair hair hanging in two long braids, between which a tempting expanse of white
neck showed, encased in a loose lace frill. Lauretta was a fat, placid-looking
child of eight, who had conducted herself irreproachably in church from the
very first day her mother carried her there, an infant of six months.

Davy thrust his hand into his pocket and produced . . . a caterpillar, a furry,
squirming caterpillar. Marilla saw and clutched at him but she was too late.
Davy dropped the caterpillar down Lauretta’s neck.

Right into the middle of Mr. Allan’s prayer burst a series of piercing
shrieks. The minister stopped appalled and opened his eyes. Every head in the
congregation flew up. Lauretta White was dancing up and down in her pew,
clutching frantically at the back of her dress.

“Ow . . . mommer . . . mommer . . . ow . . . take it off . . . ow . . .
get it out . . . ow . . . that bad boy put it down my neck . . . ow . . .
mommer . . . it’s going further down . . . ow . . . ow . . . ow. . .
.”

Mrs. White rose and with a set face carried the hysterical, writhing Lauretta
out of church. Her shrieks died away in the distance and Mr. Allan proceeded
with the service. But everybody felt that it was a failure that day. For the
first time in her life Marilla took no notice of the text and Anne sat with
scarlet cheeks of mortification.

When they got home Marilla put Davy to bed and made him stay there for the rest
of the day. She would not give him any dinner but allowed him a plain tea of
bread and milk. Anne carried it to him and sat sorrowfully by him while he ate
it with an unrepentant relish. But Anne’s mournful eyes troubled him.

“I s’pose,” he said reflectively, “that Paul Irving
wouldn’t have dropped a caterpillar down a girl’s neck in church,
would he?”

“Indeed he wouldn’t,” said Anne sadly.

“Well, I’m kind of sorry I did it, then,” conceded Davy.
“But it was such a jolly big caterpillar . . . I picked him up on the
church steps just as we went in. It seemed a pity to waste him. And say,
wasn’t it fun to hear that girl yell?”

Tuesday afternoon the Aid Society met at Green Gables. Anne hurried home from
school, for she knew that Marilla would need all the assistance she could give.
Dora, neat and proper, in her nicely starched white dress and black sash, was
sitting with the members of the Aid in the parlor, speaking demurely when
spoken to, keeping silence when not, and in every way comporting herself as a
model child. Davy, blissfully dirty, was making mud pies in the barnyard.

“I told him he might,” said Marilla wearily. “I thought it
would keep him out of worse mischief. He can only get dirty at that.
We’ll have our teas over before we call him to his. Dora can have hers
with us, but I would never dare to let Davy sit down at the table with all the
Aids here.”

When Anne went to call the Aids to tea she found that Dora was not in the
parlor. Mrs. Jasper Bell said Davy had come to the front door and called her
out. A hasty consultation with Marilla in the pantry resulted in a decision to
let both children have their teas together later on.

Tea was half over when the dining room was invaded by a forlorn figure. Marilla
and Anne stared in dismay, the Aids in amazement. Could that be Dora . . . that
sobbing nondescript in a drenched, dripping dress and hair from which the water
was streaming on Marilla’s new coin-spot rug?

“Dora, what has happened to you?” cried Anne, with a guilty glance
at Mrs. Jasper Bell, whose family was said to be the only one in the world in
which accidents never occurred.

“Davy made me walk the pigpen fence,” wailed Dora. “I
didn’t want to but he called me a fraid-cat. And I fell off into the
pigpen and my dress got all dirty and the pig runned right over me. My dress
was just awful but Davy said if I’d stand under the pump he’d wash
it clean, and I did and he pumped water all over me but my dress ain’t a
bit cleaner and my pretty sash and shoes is all spoiled.”

Anne did the honors of the table alone for the rest of the meal while Marilla
went upstairs and redressed Dora in her old clothes. Davy was caught and sent
to bed without any supper. Anne went to his room at twilight and talked to him
seriously . . . a method in which she had great faith, not altogether
unjustified by results. She told him she felt very badly over his conduct.

“I feel sorry now myself,” admitted Davy, “but the trouble is
I never feel sorry for doing things till after I’ve did them. Dora
wouldn’t help me make pies, cause she was afraid of messing her
clo’es and that made me hopping mad. I s’pose Paul Irving
wouldn’t have made his sister walk a pigpen fence if he knew
she’d fall in?”

“No, he would never dream of such a thing. Paul is a perfect little
gentleman.”

Davy screwed his eyes tight shut and seemed to meditate on this for a time.
Then he crawled up and put his arms about Anne’s neck, snuggling his
flushed little face down on her shoulder.

“Anne, don’t you like me a little bit, even if I ain’t a good
boy like Paul?”

“Indeed I do,” said Anne sincerely. Somehow, it was impossible to
help liking Davy. “But I’d like you better still if you
weren’t so naughty.”

“I . . . did something else today,” went on Davy in a muffled
voice. “I’m sorry now but I’m awful scared to tell you. You
won’t be very cross, will you? And you won’t tell Marilla, will
you?”

“I don’t know, Davy. Perhaps I ought to tell her. But I think I can
promise you I won’t if you promise me that you will never do it again,
whatever it is.”

“No, I never will. Anyhow, it’s not likely I’d find any more
of them this year. I found this one on the cellar steps.”

“Davy, what is it you’ve done?”

“I put a toad in Marilla’s bed. You can go and take it out if you
like. But say, Anne, wouldn’t it be fun to leave it there?”

“Davy Keith!” Anne sprang from Davy’s clinging arms and flew
across the hall to Marilla’s room. The bed was slightly rumpled. She
threw back the blankets in nervous haste and there in very truth was the toad,
blinking at her from under a pillow.

“How can I carry that awful thing out?” moaned Anne with a shudder.
The fire shovel suggested itself to her and she crept down to get it while
Marilla was busy in the pantry. Anne had her own troubles carrying that toad
downstairs, for it hopped off the shovel three times and once she thought she
had lost it in the hall. When she finally deposited it in the cherry orchard
she drew a long breath of relief.

“If Marilla knew she’d never feel safe getting into bed again in
her life. I’m so glad that little sinner repented in time. There’s
Diana signaling to me from her window. I’m glad . . . I really feel the
need of some diversion, for what with Anthony Pye in school and Davy Keith at
home my nerves have had about all they can endure for one day.”

IX
A Question of Color

“That old nuisance of a Rachel Lynde was here again today, pestering me
for a subscription towards buying a carpet for the vestry room,” said Mr.
Harrison wrathfully. “I detest that woman more than anybody I know. She
can put a whole sermon, text, comment, and application, into six words, and
throw it at you like a brick.”

Anne, who was perched on the edge of the veranda, enjoying the charm of a mild
west wind blowing across a newly ploughed field on a gray November twilight and
piping a quaint little melody among the twisted firs below the garden, turned
her dreamy face over her shoulder.

“The trouble is, you and Mrs. Lynde don’t understand one
another,” she explained. “That is always what is wrong when people
don’t like each other. I didn’t like Mrs. Lynde at first either;
but as soon as I came to understand her I learned to.”

“Mrs. Lynde may be an acquired taste with some folks; but I didn’t
keep on eating bananas because I was told I’d learn to like them if I
did,” growled Mr. Harrison. “And as for understanding her, I
understand that she is a confirmed busybody and I told her so.”

“Oh, that must have hurt her feelings very much,” said Anne
reproachfully. “How could you say such a thing? I said some
dreadful things to Mrs. Lynde long ago but it was when I had lost my temper. I
couldn’t say them deliberately.”

“It was the truth and I believe in telling the truth to everybody.”

“But you don’t tell the whole truth,” objected Anne.
“You only tell the disagreeable part of the truth. Now, you’ve told
me a dozen times that my hair was red, but you’ve never once told me that
I had a nice nose.”

“I daresay you know it without any telling,” chuckled Mr. Harrison.

“I know I have red hair too . . . although it’s much darker
than it used to be . . . so there’s no need of telling me that
either.”

“Well, well, I’ll try and not mention it again since you’re
so sensitive. You must excuse me, Anne. I’ve got a habit of being
outspoken and folks mustn’t mind it.”

“But they can’t help minding it. And I don’t think it’s
any help that it’s your habit. What would you think of a person who went
about sticking pins and needles into people and saying, ‘Excuse me, you
mustn’t mind it . . . it’s just a habit I’ve got.’
You’d think he was crazy, wouldn’t you? And as for Mrs. Lynde being
a busybody, perhaps she is. But did you tell her she had a very kind heart and
always helped the poor, and never said a word when Timothy Cotton stole a crock
of butter out of her dairy and told his wife he’d bought it from her?
Mrs. Cotton cast it up to her the next time they met that it tasted of turnips
and Mrs. Lynde just said she was sorry it had turned out so poorly.”

“I suppose she has some good qualities,” conceded Mr. Harrison
grudgingly. “Most folks have. I have some myself, though you might never
suspect it. But anyhow I ain’t going to give anything to that carpet.
Folks are everlasting begging for money here, it seems to me. How’s your
project of painting the hall coming on?”

“Splendidly. We had a meeting of the A.V.I.S. last Friday night and found
that we had plenty of money subscribed to paint the hall and shingle the roof
too. Most people gave very liberally, Mr. Harrison.”

Anne was a sweet-souled lass, but she could instill some venom into innocent
italics when occasion required.

“What color are you going to have it?”

“We have decided on a very pretty green. The roof will be dark red, of
course. Mr. Roger Pye is going to get the paint in town today.”

“Who’s got the job?”

“Mr. Joshua Pye of Carmody. He has nearly finished the shingling. We had
to give him the contract, for every one of the Pyes . . . and there are four
families, you know . . . said they wouldn’t give a cent unless Joshua got
it. They had subscribed twelve dollars between them and we thought that was too
much to lose, although some people think we shouldn’t have given in to
the Pyes. Mrs. Lynde says they try to run everything.”

“The main question is will this Joshua do his work well. If he does I
don’t see that it matters whether his name is Pye or Pudding.”

“He has the reputation of being a good workman, though they say
he’s a very peculiar man. He hardly ever talks.”

“He’s peculiar enough all right then,” said Mr. Harrison
drily. “Or at least, folks here will call him so. I never was much of a
talker till I came to Avonlea and then I had to begin in self-defense or Mrs.
Lynde would have said I was dumb and started a subscription to have me taught
sign language. You’re not going yet, Anne?”

“I must. I have some sewing to do for Dora this evening. Besides, Davy is
probably breaking Marilla’s heart with some new mischief by this time.
This morning the first thing he said was, ‘Where does the dark go, Anne?
I want to know.’ I told him it went around to the other side of the world
but after breakfast he declared it didn’t . . . that it went down the
well. Marilla says she caught him hanging over the well-box four times today,
trying to reach down to the dark.”

“He’s a limb,” declared Mr. Harrison. “He came over
here yesterday and pulled six feathers out of Ginger’s tail before I
could get in from the barn. The poor bird has been moping ever since. Those
children must be a sight of trouble to you folks.”

“Everything that’s worth having is some trouble,” said Anne,
secretly resolving to forgive Davy’s next offence, whatever it might be,
since he had avenged her on Ginger.

Mr. Roger Pye brought the hall paint home that night and Mr. Joshua Pye, a
surly, taciturn man, began painting the next day. He was not disturbed in his
task. The hall was situated on what was called “the lower road.” In
late autumn this road was always muddy and wet, and people going to Carmody
traveled by the longer “upper” road. The hall was so closely
surrounded by fir woods that it was invisible unless you were near it. Mr.
Joshua Pye painted away in the solitude and independence that were so dear to
his unsociable heart.

Friday afternoon he finished his job and went home to Carmody. Soon after his
departure Mrs. Rachel Lynde drove by, having braved the mud of the lower road
out of curiosity to see what the hall looked like in its new coat of paint.
When she rounded the spruce curve she saw.

The sight affected Mrs. Lynde oddly. She dropped the reins, held up her hands,
and said “Gracious Providence!” She stared as if she could not
believe her eyes. Then she laughed almost hysterically.

“There must be some mistake . . . there must. I knew those Pyes
would make a mess of things.”

Mrs. Lynde drove home, meeting several people on the road and stopping to tell
them about the hall. The news flew like wildfire. Gilbert Blythe, poring over a
text book at home, heard it from his father’s hired boy at sunset, and
rushed breathlessly to Green Gables, joined on the way by Fred Wright. They
found Diana Barry, Jane Andrews, and Anne Shirley, despair personified, at the
yard gate of Green Gables, under the big leafless willows.

“It isn’t true surely, Anne?” exclaimed Gilbert.

“It is true,” answered Anne, looking like the muse of tragedy.
“Mrs. Lynde called on her way from Carmody to tell me. Oh, it is simply
dreadful! What is the use of trying to improve anything?”

“What is dreadful?” asked Oliver Sloane, arriving at this moment
with a bandbox he had brought from town for Marilla.

“Haven’t you heard?” said Jane wrathfully. “Well, its
simply this. . . Joshua Pye has gone and painted the hall blue instead of
green . . . a deep, brilliant blue, the shade they use for painting carts
and wheelbarrows. And Mrs. Lynde says it is the most hideous color for a
building, especially when combined with a red roof, that she ever saw or
imagined. You could simply have knocked me down with a feather when I heard it.
It’s heartbreaking, after all the trouble we’ve had.”

“How on earth could such a mistake have happened?” wailed Diana.

The blame of this unmerciful disaster was eventually narrowed down to the Pyes.
The Improvers had decided to use Morton-Harris paints and the Morton-Harris
paint cans were numbered according to a color card. A purchaser chose his shade
on the card and ordered by the accompanying number. Number 147 was the shade of
green desired and when Mr. Roger Pye sent word to the Improvers by his son,
John Andrew, that he was going to town and would get their paint for them, the
Improvers told John Andrew to tell his father to get 147. John Andrew always
averred that he did so, but Mr. Roger Pye as stanchly declared that John Andrew
told him 157; and there the matter stands to this day.

That night there was blank dismay in every Avonlea house where an Improver
lived. The gloom at Green Gables was so intense that it quenched even Davy.
Anne wept and would not be comforted.

“I must cry, even if I am almost seventeen, Marilla,” she
sobbed. “It is so mortifying. And it sounds the death knell of our
society. We’ll simply be laughed out of existence.”

In life, as in dreams, however, things often go by contraries. The Avonlea
people did not laugh; they were too angry. Their money had gone to paint
the hall and consequently they felt themselves bitterly aggrieved by the
mistake. Public indignation centered on the Pyes. Roger Pye and John Andrew had
bungled the matter between them; and as for Joshua Pye, he must be a born fool
not to suspect there was something wrong when he opened the cans and saw the
color of the paint. Joshua Pye, when thus animadverted upon, retorted that the
Avonlea taste in colors was no business of his, whatever his private opinion
might be; he had been hired to paint the hall, not to talk about it; and he
meant to have his money for it.

The Improvers paid him his money in bitterness of spirit, after consulting Mr.
Peter Sloane, who was a magistrate.

“You’ll have to pay it,” Peter told him. “You
can’t hold him responsible for the mistake, since he claims he was never
told what the color was supposed to be but just given the cans and told to go
ahead. But it’s a burning shame and that hall certainly does look
awful.”

The luckless Improvers expected that Avonlea would be more prejudiced than ever
against them; but instead, public sympathy veered around in their favor. People
thought the eager, enthusiastic little band who had worked so hard for their
object had been badly used. Mrs. Lynde told them to keep on and show the Pyes
that there really were people in the world who could do things without making a
muddle of them. Mr. Major Spencer sent them word that he would clean out all
the stumps along the road front of his farm and seed it down with grass at his
own expense; and Mrs. Hiram Sloane called at the school one day and beckoned
Anne mysteriously out into the porch to tell her that if the
“Sassiety” wanted to make a geranium bed at the crossroads in the
spring they needn’t be afraid of her cow, for she would see that the
marauding animal was kept within safe bounds. Even Mr. Harrison chuckled, if he
chuckled at all, in private, and was all sympathy outwardly.

“Never mind, Anne. Most paints fade uglier every year but that blue is as
ugly as it can be to begin with, so it’s bound to fade prettier. And the
roof is shingled and painted all right. Folks will be able to sit in the hall
after this without being leaked on. You’ve accomplished so much
anyhow.”

“But Avonlea’s blue hall will be a byword in all the neighboring
settlements from this time out,” said Anne bitterly.

And it must be confessed that it was.

X
Davy in Search of a Sensation

Anne, walking home from school through the Birch Path one November afternoon,
felt convinced afresh that life was a very wonderful thing. The day had been a
good day; all had gone well in her little kingdom. St. Clair Donnell had
not fought any of the other boys over the question of his name; Prillie
Rogerson’s face had been so puffed up from the effects of toothache that
she did not once try to coquette with the boys in her vicinity. Barbara Shaw
had met with only one accident . . . spilling a dipper of water over the
floor . . . and Anthony Pye had not been in school at all.

“What a nice month this November has been!” said Anne, who had
never quite got over her childish habit of talking to herself. “November
is usually such a disagreeable month . . . as if the year had suddenly found
out that she was growing old and could do nothing but weep and fret over it.
This year is growing old gracefully . . . just like a stately old lady who
knows she can be charming even with gray hair and wrinkles. We’ve had
lovely days and delicious twilights. This last fortnight has been so peaceful,
and even Davy has been almost well-behaved. I really think he is improving a
great deal. How quiet the woods are today . . . not a murmur except that soft
wind purring in the treetops! It sounds like surf on a faraway shore. How dear
the woods are! You beautiful trees! I love every one of you as a friend.”

Anne paused to throw her arm about a slim young birch and kiss its cream-white
trunk. Diana, rounding a curve in the path, saw her and laughed.

“Anne Shirley, you’re only pretending to be grown up. I believe
when you’re alone you’re as much a little girl as you ever
were.”

“Well, one can’t get over the habit of being a little girl all at
once,” said Anne gaily. “You see, I was little for fourteen years
and I’ve only been grown-uppish for scarcely three. I’m sure I
shall always feel like a child in the woods. These walks home from school are
almost the only time I have for dreaming . . . except the half-hour or so
before I go to sleep. I’m so busy with teaching and studying and helping
Marilla with the twins that I haven’t another moment for imagining
things. You don’t know what splendid adventures I have for a little while
after I go to bed in the east gable every night. I always imagine I’m
something very brilliant and triumphant and splendid . . . a great prima donna
or a Red Cross nurse or a queen. Last night I was a queen. It’s really
splendid to imagine you are a queen. You have all the fun of it without any of
the inconveniences and you can stop being a queen whenever you want to, which
you couldn’t in real life. But here in the woods I like best to imagine
quite different things . . . I’m a dryad living in an old pine, or a
little brown wood-elf hiding under a crinkled leaf. That white birch you caught
me kissing is a sister of mine. The only difference is, she’s a tree and
I’m a girl, but that’s no real difference. Where are you going,
Diana?”

“Down to the Dicksons. I promised to help Alberta cut out her new dress.
Can’t you walk down in the evening, Anne, and come home with me?”

“I might . . . since Fred Wright is away in town,” said Anne with a
rather too innocent face.

Diana blushed, tossed her head, and walked on. She did not look offended,
however.

Anne fully intended to go down to the Dicksons’ that evening, but she did
not. When she arrived at Green Gables she found a state of affairs which
banished every other thought from her mind. Marilla met her in the yard . . . a
wild-eyed Marilla.

“Anne, Dora is lost!”

“Dora! Lost!” Anne looked at Davy, who was swinging on the yard
gate, and detected merriment in his eyes. “Davy, do you know where she
is?”

“No, I don’t,” said Davy stoutly. “I haven’t seen
her since dinner time, cross my heart.”

“I’ve been away ever since one o’clock,” said Marilla.
“Thomas Lynde took sick all of a sudden and Rachel sent up for me to go
at once. When I left here Dora was playing with her doll in the kitchen and
Davy was making mud pies behind the barn. I only got home half an hour ago . .
. and no Dora to be seen. Davy declares he never saw her since I left.”

“Neither I did,” avowed Davy solemnly.

“She must be somewhere around,” said Anne. “She would never
wander far away alone . . . you know how timid she is. Perhaps she has fallen
asleep in one of the rooms.”

Marilla shook her head.

“I’ve hunted the whole house through. But she may be in some of the
buildings.”

A thorough search followed. Every corner of house, yard, and outbuildings was
ransacked by those two distracted people. Anne roved the orchards and the
Haunted Wood, calling Dora’s name. Marilla took a candle and explored the
cellar. Davy accompanied each of them in turn, and was fertile in thinking of
places where Dora could possibly be. Finally they met again in the yard.

“It’s a most mysterious thing,” groaned Marilla.

“Where can she be?” said Anne miserably

“Maybe she’s tumbled into the well,” suggested Davy
cheerfully.

Anne and Marilla looked fearfully into each other’s eyes. The thought had
been with them both through their entire search but neither had dared to put it
into words.

“She . . . she might have,” whispered Marilla.

Anne, feeling faint and sick, went to the wellbox and peered over. The bucket
sat on the shelf inside. Far down below was a tiny glimmer of still water. The
Cuthbert well was the deepest in Avonlea. If Dora. . . but Anne could not face
the idea. She shuddered and turned away.

“Run across for Mr. Harrison,” said Marilla, wringing her hands.

“Mr. Harrison and John Henry are both away . . . they went to town today.
I’ll go for Mr. Barry.”

Mr. Barry came back with Anne, carrying a coil of rope to which was attached a
claw-like instrument that had been the business end of a grubbing fork. Marilla
and Anne stood by, cold and shaken with horror and dread, while Mr. Barry
dragged the well, and Davy, astride the gate, watched the group with a face
indicative of huge enjoyment.

Finally Mr. Barry shook his head, with a relieved air.

“She can’t be down there. It’s a mighty curious thing where
she could have got to, though. Look here, young man, are you sure you’ve
no idea where your sister is?”

“I’ve told you a dozen times that I haven’t,” said
Davy, with an injured air. “Maybe a tramp come and stole her.”

“Nonsense,” said Marilla sharply, relieved from her horrible fear
of the well. “Anne, do you suppose she could have strayed over to Mr.
Harrison’s? She has always been talking about his parrot ever since that
time you took her over.”

“I can’t believe Dora would venture so far alone but I’ll go
over and see,” said Anne.

Nobody was looking at Davy just then or it would have been seen that a very
decided change came over his face. He quietly slipped off the gate and ran, as
fast as his fat legs could carry him, to the barn.

Anne hastened across the fields to the Harrison establishment in no very
hopeful frame of mind. The house was locked, the window shades were down, and
there was no sign of anything living about the place. She stood on the veranda
and called Dora loudly.

Ginger, in the kitchen behind her, shrieked and swore with sudden fierceness;
but between his outbursts Anne heard a plaintive cry from the little building
in the yard which served Mr. Harrison as a toolhouse. Anne flew to the door,
unhasped it, and caught up a small mortal with a tearstained face who was
sitting forlornly on an upturned nail keg.

“Oh, Dora, Dora, what a fright you have given us! How came you to be
here?”

“Davy and I came over to see Ginger,” sobbed Dora, “but we
couldn’t see him after all, only Davy made him swear by kicking the door.
And then Davy brought me here and run out and shut the door; and I
couldn’t get out. I cried and cried, I was frightened, and oh, I’m
so hungry and cold; and I thought you’d never come, Anne.”

“Davy?” But Anne could say no more. She carried Dora home with a
heavy heart. Her joy at finding the child safe and sound was drowned out in the
pain caused by Davy’s behavior. The freak of shutting Dora up might
easily have been pardoned. But Davy had told falsehoods . . . downright
coldblooded falsehoods about it. That was the ugly fact and Anne could not shut
her eyes to it. She could have sat down and cried with sheer disappointment.
She had grown to love Davy dearly . . . how dearly she had not known until this
minute . . . and it hurt her unbearably to discover that he was guilty of
deliberate falsehood.

Marilla listened to Anne’s tale in a silence that boded no good
Davy-ward; Mr. Barry laughed and advised that Davy be summarily dealt with.
When he had gone home Anne soothed and warmed the sobbing, shivering Dora, got
her her supper and put her to bed. Then she returned to the kitchen, just as
Marilla came grimly in, leading, or rather pulling, the reluctant, cobwebby
Davy, whom she had just found hidden away in the darkest corner of the stable.

She jerked him to the mat on the middle of the floor and then went and sat down
by the east window. Anne was sitting limply by the west window. Between them
stood the culprit. His back was toward Marilla and it was a meek, subdued,
frightened back; but his face was toward Anne and although it was a little
shamefaced there was a gleam of comradeship in Davy’s eyes, as if he knew
he had done wrong and was going to be punished for it, but could count on a
laugh over it all with Anne later on.

But no half hidden smile answered him in Anne’s gray eyes, as there might
have done had it been only a question of mischief. There was something else . .
. something ugly and repulsive.

“How could you behave so, Davy?” she asked sorrowfully.

Davy squirmed uncomfortably.

“I just did it for fun. Things have been so awful quiet here for so long
that I thought it would be fun to give you folks a big scare. It was,
too.”

In spite of fear and a little remorse Davy grinned over the recollection.

“But you told a falsehood about it, Davy,” said Anne, more
sorrowfully than ever.

Davy looked puzzled.

“What’s a falsehood? Do you mean a whopper?”

“I mean a story that was not true.”

“Course I did,” said Davy frankly. “If I hadn’t you
wouldn’t have been scared. I had to tell it.”

Anne was feeling the reaction from her fright and exertions. Davy’s
impenitent attitude gave the finishing touch. Two big tears brimmed up in her
eyes.

“Oh, Davy, how could you?” she said, with a quiver in her voice.
“Don’t you know how wrong it was?”

Davy was aghast. Anne crying . . . he had made Anne cry! A flood of real
remorse rolled like a wave over his warm little heart and engulfed it. He
rushed to Anne, hurled himself into her lap, flung his arms around her neck,
and burst into tears.

“I didn’t know it was wrong to tell whoppers,” he sobbed.
“How did you expect me to know it was wrong? All Mr. Sprott’s
children told them regular every day, and cross their hearts too. I
s’pose Paul Irving never tells whoppers and here I’ve been trying
awful hard to be as good as him, but now I s’pose you’ll never love
me again. But I think you might have told me it was wrong. I’m awful
sorry I’ve made you cry, Anne, and I’ll never tell a whopper
again.”

Davy buried his face in Anne’s shoulder and cried stormily. Anne, in a
sudden glad flash of understanding, held him tight and looked over his curly
thatch at Marilla.

“He didn’t know it was wrong to tell falsehoods, Marilla. I think
we must forgive him for that part of it this time if he will promise never to
say what isn’t true again.”

“I never will, now that I know it’s bad,” asseverated Davy
between sobs. “If you ever catch me telling a whopper again you can . .
.” Davy groped mentally for a suitable penance . . . “you can skin
me alive, Anne.”

“Don’t say ‘whopper,’ Davy . . . say
‘falsehood,’” said the schoolma’am.

“Why?” queried Davy, settling comfortably down and looking up with
a tearstained, investigating face. “Why ain’t whopper as good as
falsehood? I want to know. It’s just as big a word.”

“It’s slang; and it’s wrong for little boys to use
slang.”

“There’s an awful lot of things it’s wrong to do,” said
Davy with a sigh. “I never s’posed there was so many. I’m
sorry it’s wrong to tell whop . . . falsehoods, ’cause it’s
awful handy, but since it is I’m never going to tell any more. What are
you going to do to me for telling them this time? I want to know.” Anne
looked beseechingly at Marilla.

“I don’t want to be too hard on the child,” said Marilla.
“I daresay nobody ever did tell him it was wrong to tell lies, and those
Sprott children were no fit companions for him. Poor Mary was too sick to train
him properly and I presume you couldn’t expect a six-year-old child to
know things like that by instinct. I suppose we’ll just have to assume he
doesn’t know anything right and begin at the beginning. But
he’ll have to be punished for shutting Dora up, and I can’t think
of any way except to send him to bed without his supper and we’ve done
that so often. Can’t you suggest something else, Anne? I should think you
ought to be able to, with that imagination you’re always talking
of.”

“But punishments are so horrid and I like to imagine only pleasant
things,” said Anne, cuddling Davy. “There are so many unpleasant
things in the world already that there is no use in imagining any more.”

In the end Davy was sent to bed, as usual, there to remain until noon next day.
He evidently did some thinking, for when Anne went up to her room a little
later she heard him calling her name softly. Going in, she found him sitting up
in bed, with his elbows on his knees and his chin propped on his hands.

“Anne,” he said solemnly, “is it wrong for everybody to tell
whop . . . falsehoods? I want to know?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“Is it wrong for a grown-up person?”

“Yes.”

“Then,” said Davy decidedly, “Marilla is bad, for she
tells them. And she’s worse’n me, for I didn’t know it was
wrong but she does.”

“Davy Keith, Marilla never told a story in her life,” said Anne
indignantly.

“She did so. She told me last Tuesday that something dreadful
would happen to me if I didn’t say my prayers every night. And I
haven’t said them for over a week, just to see what would happen . . .
and nothing has,” concluded Davy in an aggrieved tone.

Anne choked back a mad desire to laugh with the conviction that it would be
fatal, and then earnestly set about saving Marilla’s reputation.

“Why, Davy Keith,” she said solemnly, “something dreadful
has happened to you this very day.”

Davy looked sceptical.

“I s’pose you mean being sent to bed without any supper,” he
said scornfully, “but that isn’t dreadful. Course, I
don’t like it, but I’ve been sent to bed so much since I come here
that I’m getting used to it. And you don’t save anything by making
me go without supper either, for I always eat twice as much for
breakfast.”

“I don’t mean your being sent to bed. I mean the fact that you told
a falsehood today. And, Davy,” . . . Anne leaned over the footboard of
the bed and shook her finger impressively at the culprit . . . “for a boy
to tell what isn’t true is almost the worst thing that could
happen to him . . . almost the very worst. So you see Marilla told you the
truth.”

“But I thought the something bad would be exciting,” protested Davy
in an injured tone.

“Marilla isn’t to blame for what you thought. Bad things
aren’t always exciting. They’re very often just nasty and
stupid.”

“It was awful funny to see Marilla and you looking down the well,
though,” said Davy, hugging his knees.

Anne kept a sober face until she got downstairs and then she collapsed on the
sitting room lounge and laughed until her sides ached.

“I wish you’d tell me the joke,” said Marilla, a little
grimly. “I haven’t seen much to laugh at today.”

“You’ll laugh when you hear this,” assured Anne. And Marilla
did laugh, which showed how much her education had advanced since the adoption
of Anne. But she sighed immediately afterwards.

“I suppose I shouldn’t have told him that, although I heard a
minister say it to a child once. But he did aggravate me so. It was that night
you were at the Carmody concert and I was putting him to bed. He said he
didn’t see the good of praying until he got big enough to be of some
importance to God. Anne, I do not know what we are going to do with that child.
I never saw his beat. I’m feeling clean discouraged.”

“Oh, don’t say that, Marilla. Remember how bad I was when I came
here.”

“Anne, you never were bad . . . never. I see that now, when
I’ve learned what real badness is. You were always getting into terrible
scrapes, I’ll admit, but your motive was always good. Davy is just bad
from sheer love of it.”

“Oh, no, I don’t think it is real badness with him either,”
pleaded Anne. “It’s just mischief. And it is rather quiet for him
here, you know. He has no other boys to play with and his mind has to have
something to occupy it. Dora is so prim and proper she is no good for a
boy’s playmate. I really think it would be better to let them go to
school, Marilla.”

“No,” said Marilla resolutely, “my father always said that no
child should be cooped up in the four walls of a school until it was seven
years old, and Mr. Allan says the same thing. The twins can have a few lessons
at home but go to school they shan’t till they’re seven.”

“Well, we must try to reform Davy at home then,” said Anne
cheerfully. “With all his faults he’s really a dear little chap. I
can’t help loving him. Marilla, it may be a dreadful thing to say, but
honestly, I like Davy better than Dora, for all she’s so good.”

“I don’t know but that I do, myself,” confessed Marilla,
“and it isn’t fair, for Dora isn’t a bit of trouble. There
couldn’t be a better child and you’d hardly know she was in the
house.”

“Dora is too good,” said Anne. “She’d behave just as
well if there wasn’t a soul to tell her what to do. She was born already
brought up, so she doesn’t need us; and I think,” concluded Anne,
hitting on a very vital truth, “that we always love best the people who
need us. Davy needs us badly.”

“He certainly needs something,” agreed Marilla. “Rachel Lynde
would say it was a good spanking.”

XI
Facts and Fancies

“Teaching is really very interesting work,” wrote Anne to a
Queen’s Academy chum. “Jane says she thinks it is monotonous but I
don’t find it so. Something funny is almost sure to happen every day, and
the children say such amusing things. Jane says she punishes her pupils when
they make funny speeches, which is probably why she finds teaching monotonous.
This afternoon little Jimmy Andrews was trying to spell ‘speckled’
and couldn’t manage it. ‘Well,’ he said finally, ‘I
can’t spell it but I know what it means.’

“‘What?’ I asked.

“‘St. Clair Donnell’s face, miss.’

“St. Clair is certainly very much freckled, although I try to prevent the
others from commenting on it . . . for I was freckled once and well do I
remember it. But I don’t think St. Clair minds. It was because Jimmy
called him ‘St. Clair’ that St. Clair pounded him on the way home
from school. I heard of the pounding, but not officially, so I don’t
think I’ll take any notice of it.

“Yesterday I was trying to teach Lottie Wright to do addition. I said,
‘If you had three candies in one hand and two in the other, how many
would you have altogether?’ ‘A mouthful,’ said Lottie. And in
the nature study class, when I asked them to give me a good reason why toads
shouldn’t be killed, Benjie Sloane gravely answered, ‘Because it
would rain the next day.’

“It’s so hard not to laugh, Stella. I have to save up all my
amusement until I get home, and Marilla says it makes her nervous to hear wild
shrieks of mirth proceeding from the east gable without any apparent cause. She
says a man in Grafton went insane once and that was how it began.

“Did you know that Thomas a Becket was canonized as a snake? Rose
Bell says he was . . . also that William Tyndale wrote the New
Testament. Claude White says a ‘glacier’ is a man who puts in
window frames!

“I think the most difficult thing in teaching, as well as the most
interesting, is to get the children to tell you their real thoughts about
things. One stormy day last week I gathered them around me at dinner hour and
tried to get them to talk to me just as if I were one of themselves. I asked
them to tell me the things they most wanted. Some of the answers were
commonplace enough . . . dolls, ponies, and skates. Others were decidedly
original. Hester Boulter wanted ‘to wear her Sunday dress every day and
eat in the sitting room.’ Hannah Bell wanted ‘to be good without
having to take any trouble about it.’ Marjory White, aged ten, wanted to
be a widow. Questioned why, she gravely said that if you weren’t
married people called you an old maid, and if you were your husband bossed you;
but if you were a widow there’d be no danger of either. The most
remarkable wish was Sally Bell’s. She wanted a ‘honeymoon.’ I
asked her if she knew what it was and she said she thought it was an extra nice
kind of bicycle because her cousin in Montreal went on a honeymoon when he was
married and he had always had the very latest in bicycles!

“Another day I asked them all to tell me the naughtiest thing they had
ever done. I couldn’t get the older ones to do so, but the third class
answered quite freely. Eliza Bell had ‘set fire to her aunt’s
carded rolls.’ Asked if she meant to do it she said, ‘not
altogether.’ She just tried a little end to see how it would burn and the
whole bundle blazed up in a jiffy. Emerson Gillis had spent ten cents for candy
when he should have put it in his missionary box. Annetta Bell’s worst
crime was ‘eating some blueberries that grew in the graveyard.’
Willie White had ‘slid down the sheephouse roof a lot of times with his
Sunday trousers on.’ ‘But I was punished for it ’cause I had
to wear patched pants to Sunday School all summer, and when you’re
punished for a thing you don’t have to repent of it,’ declared
Willie.

“I wish you could see some of their compositions . . . so much do I wish
it that I’ll send you copies of some written recently. Last week I told
the fourth class I wanted them to write me letters about anything they pleased,
adding by way of suggestion that they might tell me of some place they had
visited or some interesting thing or person they had seen. They were to write
the letters on real note paper, seal them in an envelope, and address them to
me, all without any assistance from other people. Last Friday morning I found a
pile of letters on my desk and that evening I realized afresh that teaching has
its pleasures as well as its pains. Those compositions would atone for much.
Here is Ned Clay’s, address, spelling, and grammar as originally penned.

“‘Miss teacher ShiRley
Green gabels.
p.e. Island can
birds

“‘Dear teacher I think I will write you a composition about birds.
birds is very useful animals. my cat catches birds. His name is William but pa
calls him tom. he is oll striped and he got one of his ears froz of last
winter. only for that he would be a good-looking cat. My unkle has adopted a
cat. it come to his house one day and woudent go away and unkle says it has
forgot more than most people ever knowed. he lets it sleep on his rocking chare
and my aunt says he thinks more of it than he does of his children. that is not
right. we ought to be kind to cats and give them new milk but we ought not be
better to them than to our children. this is oll I can think of so no more at
present from

edward blake ClaY.’”

“St. Clair Donnell’s is, as usual, short and to the point. St.
Clair never wastes words. I do not think he chose his subject or added the
postscript out of malice aforethought. It is just that he has not a great deal
of tact or imagination.”

“‘Dear Miss Shirley

“‘You told us to describe something strange we have seen. I will
describe the Avonlea Hall. It has two doors, an inside one and an outside one.
It has six windows and a chimney. It has two ends and two sides. It is painted
blue. That is what makes it strange. It is built on the lower Carmody road. It
is the third most important building in Avonlea. The others are the church and
the blacksmith shop. They hold debating clubs and lectures in it and concerts.

“‘Yours truly,
“‘Jacob Donnell.

“‘P.S. The hall is a very bright blue.’”

“Annetta Bell’s letter was quite long, which surprised me, for
writing essays is not Annetta’s forte, and hers are generally as brief as
St. Clair’s. Annetta is a quiet little puss and a model of good behavior,
but there isn’t a shadow of originality in her. Here is her letter.—

“‘Dearest teacher,

“‘I think I will write you a letter to tell you how much I love
you. I love you with my whole heart and soul and mind . . . with all there is
of me to love . . . and I want to serve you for ever. It would be my highest
privilege. That is why I try so hard to be good in school and learn my lessuns.

“‘You are so beautiful, my teacher. Your voice is like music and
your eyes are like pansies when the dew is on them. You are like a tall stately
queen. Your hair is like rippling gold. Anthony Pye says it is red, but you
needn’t pay any attention to Anthony.

“‘I have only known you for a few months but I cannot realize that
there was ever a time when I did not know you . . . when you had not come into
my life to bless and hallow it. I will always look back to this year as the
most wonderful in my life because it brought you to me. Besides, it’s the
year we moved to Avonlea from Newbridge. My love for you has made my life very
rich and it has kept me from much of harm and evil. I owe this all to you, my
sweetest teacher.

“‘I shall never forget how sweet you looked the last time I saw you
in that black dress with flowers in your hair. I shall see you like that for
ever, even when we are both old and gray. You will always be young and fair to
me, dearest teacher. I am thinking of you all the time. . . in the morning and
at the noontide and at the twilight. I love you when you laugh and when you
sigh . . . even when you look disdainful. I never saw you look cross though
Anthony Pye says you always look so but I don’t wonder you look cross at
him for he deserves it. I love you in every dress . . . you seem more adorable
in each new dress than the last.

“‘Dearest teacher, good night. The sun has set and the stars are
shining . . . stars that are as bright and beautiful as your eyes. I kiss your
hands and face, my sweet. May God watch over you and protect you from all harm.

“‘Your afecksionate pupil,
“‘Annetta Bell.’”

“This extraordinary letter puzzled me not a little. I knew Annetta
couldn’t have composed it any more than she could fly. When I went to
school the next day I took her for a walk down to the brook at recess and asked
her to tell me the truth about the letter. Annetta cried and ‘fessed up
freely. She said she had never written a letter and she didn’t know how
to, or what to say, but there was a bundle of love letters in her mother’s
top bureau drawer which had been written to her by an old ‘beau.’

“‘It wasn’t father,’ sobbed Annetta, ‘it was
someone who was studying for a minister, and so he could write lovely letters,
but ma didn’t marry him after all. She said she couldn’t make out
what he was driving at half the time. But I thought the letters were sweet and
that I’d just copy things out of them here and there to write you. I put
“teacher” where he put “lady” and I put in something of
my own when I could think of it and I changed some words. I put
“dress” in place of “mood.” I didn’t know just
what a “mood” was but I s’posed it was something to wear. I
didn’t s’pose you’d know the difference. I don’t see
how you found out it wasn’t all mine. You must be awful clever,
teacher.’

“I told Annetta it was very wrong to copy another person’s letter
and pass it off as her own. But I’m afraid that all Annetta repented of
was being found out.

“‘And I do love you, teacher,’ she sobbed. ‘It was all
true, even if the minister wrote it first. I do love you with all my
heart.’

“It’s very difficult to scold anybody properly under such
circumstances.

“Here is Barbara Shaw’s letter. I can’t reproduce the blots
of the original.

“‘Dear teacher,

“‘You said we might write about a visit. I never visited but once.
It was at my Aunt Mary’s last winter. My Aunt Mary is a very particular
woman and a great housekeeper. The first night I was there we were at tea. I
knocked over a jug and broke it. Aunt Mary said she had had that jug ever since
she was married and nobody had ever broken it before. When we got up I stepped
on her dress and all the gathers tore out of the skirt. The next morning when I
got up I hit the pitcher against the basin and cracked them both and I upset a
cup of tea on the tablecloth at breakfast. When I was helping Aunt Mary with
the dinner dishes I dropped a china plate and it smashed. That evening I fell
downstairs and sprained my ankle and had to stay in bed for a week. I heard
Aunt Mary tell Uncle Joseph it was a mercy or I’d have broken everything
in the house. When I got better it was time to go home. I don’t like
visiting very much. I like going to school better, especially since I came to
Avonlea.

“‘Yours respectfully,
“‘Barbara Shaw.’”

“Willie White’s began,

“‘Respected Miss,

“‘I want to tell you about my Very Brave Aunt. She lives in Ontario
and one day she went out to the barn and saw a dog in the yard. The dog had no
business there so she got a stick and whacked him hard and drove him into the
barn and shut him up. Pretty soon a man came looking for an inaginary
lion’ (Query;—Did Willie mean a menagerie lion?) ‘that had
run away from a circus. And it turned out that the dog was a lion and my Very
Brave Aunt had druv him into the barn with a stick. It was a wonder she was not
et up but she was very brave. Emerson Gillis says if she thought it was a dog
she wasn’t any braver than if it really was a dog. But Emerson is jealous
because he hasn’t got a Brave Aunt himself, nothing but uncles.’

“‘I have kept the best for the last. You laugh at me because I
think Paul is a genius but I am sure his letter will convince you that he is a
very uncommon child. Paul lives away down near the shore with his grandmother
and he has no playmates . . . no real playmates. You remember our School
Management professor told us that we must not have ‘favorites’
among our pupils, but I can’t help loving Paul Irving the best of all
mine. I don’t think it does any harm, though, for everybody loves Paul,
even Mrs. Lynde, who says she could never have believed she’d get so fond
of a Yankee. The other boys in school like him too. There is nothing weak or
girlish about him in spite of his dreams and fancies. He is very manly and can
hold his own in all games. He fought St. Clair Donnell recently because St.
Clair said the Union Jack was away ahead of the Stars and Stripes as a flag.
The result was a drawn battle and a mutual agreement to respect each
other’s patriotism henceforth. St. Clair says he can hit the
hardest but Paul can hit the oftenest.’”

“Paul’s Letter.

“‘My dear teacher,

“‘You told us we might write you about some interesting people we
knew. I think the most interesting people I know are my rock people and I mean
to tell you about them. I have never told anybody about them except grandma and
father but I would like to have you know about them because you understand
things. There are a great many people who do not understand things so there is
no use in telling them.’

“‘My rock people live at the shore. I used to visit them almost
every evening before the winter came. Now I can’t go till spring, but
they will be there, for people like that never change . . . that is the
splendid thing about them. Nora was the first one of them I got acquainted with
and so I think I love her the best. She lives in Andrews’ Cove and she
has black hair and black eyes, and she knows all about the mermaids and the
water kelpies. You ought to hear the stories she can tell. Then there are the
Twin Sailors. They don’t live anywhere, they sail all the time, but they
often come ashore to talk to me. They are a pair of jolly tars and they have
seen everything in the world. . . and more than what is in the world. Do you
know what happened to the youngest Twin Sailor once? He was sailing and he
sailed right into a moonglade. A moonglade is the track the full moon makes on
the water when it is rising from the sea, you know, teacher. Well, the youngest
Twin Sailor sailed along the moonglade till he came right up to the moon, and
there was a little golden door in the moon and he opened it and sailed right
through. He had some wonderful adventures in the moon but it would make this
letter too long to tell them.’

“‘Then there is the Golden Lady of the cave. One day I found a big
cave down on the shore and I went away in and after a while I found the Golden
Lady. She has golden hair right down to her feet and her dress is all
glittering and glistening like gold that is alive. And she has a golden harp
and plays on it all day long . . . you can hear the music any time along shore
if you listen carefully but most people would think it was only the wind among
the rocks. I’ve never told Nora about the Golden Lady. I was afraid it
might hurt her feelings. It even hurt her feelings if I talked too long with
the Twin Sailors.’

“‘I always met the Twin Sailors at the Striped Rocks. The youngest
Twin Sailor is very good-tempered but the oldest Twin Sailor can look
dreadfully fierce at times. I have my suspicions about that oldest Twin. I
believe he’d be a pirate if he dared. There’s really something very
mysterious about him. He swore once and I told him if he ever did it again he
needn’t come ashore to talk to me because I’d promised grandmother
I’d never associate with anybody that swore. He was pretty well scared, I
can tell you, and he said if I would forgive him he would take me to the
sunset. So the next evening when I was sitting on the Striped Rocks the oldest
Twin came sailing over the sea in an enchanted boat and I got in her. The boat
was all pearly and rainbowy, like the inside of the mussel shells, and her sail
was like moonshine. Well, we sailed right across to the sunset. Think of that,
teacher, I’ve been in the sunset. And what do you suppose it is? The
sunset is a land all flowers. We sailed into a great garden, and the clouds are
beds of flowers. We sailed into a great harbor, all the color of gold, and I
stepped right out of the boat on a big meadow all covered with buttercups as
big as roses. I stayed there for ever so long. It seemed nearly a year but the
Oldest Twin says it was only a few minutes. You see, in the sunset land the
time is ever so much longer than it is here.’

“‘Your loving pupil,
“‘Paul Irving.’

“‘P. S. of course, this letter isn’t really true, teacher.

P.I.’”

XII
A Jonah Day

It really began the night before with a restless, wakeful vigil of grumbling
toothache. When Anne arose in the dull, bitter winter morning she felt that
life was flat, stale, and unprofitable.

She went to school in no angelic mood. Her cheek was swollen and her face
ached. The schoolroom was cold and smoky, for the fire refused to burn and the
children were huddled about it in shivering groups. Anne sent them to their
seats with a sharper tone than she had ever used before. Anthony Pye strutted
to his with his usual impertinent swagger and she saw him whisper something to
his seat-mate and then glance at her with a grin.

Never, so it seemed to Anne, had there been so many squeaky pencils as there
were that morning; and when Barbara Shaw came up to the desk with a sum she
tripped over the coal scuttle with disastrous results. The coal rolled to every
part of the room, her slate was broken into fragments, and when she picked
herself up, her face, stained with coal dust, sent the boys into roars of
laughter.

Anne turned from the second reader class which she was hearing.

“Really, Barbara,” she said icily, “if you cannot move
without falling over something you’d better remain in your seat. It is
positively disgraceful for a girl of your age to be so awkward.”

Poor Barbara stumbled back to her desk, her tears combining with the coal dust
to produce an effect truly grotesque. Never before had her beloved, sympathetic
teacher spoken to her in such a tone or fashion, and Barbara was heartbroken.
Anne herself felt a prick of conscience but it only served to increase her
mental irritation, and the second reader class remember that lesson yet, as
well as the unmerciful infliction of arithmetic that followed. Just as Anne was
snapping the sums out St. Clair Donnell arrived breathlessly.

“You are half an hour late, St. Clair,” Anne reminded him frigidly.
“Why is this?”

“Please, miss, I had to help ma make a pudding for dinner ’cause
we’re expecting company and Clarice Almira’s sick,” was St.
Clair’s answer, given in a perfectly respectful voice but nevertheless
provocative of great mirth among his mates.

“Take your seat and work out the six problems on page eighty-four of your
arithmetic for punishment,” said Anne. St. Clair looked rather amazed at
her tone but he went meekly to his desk and took out his slate. Then he
stealthily passed a small parcel to Joe Sloane across the aisle. Anne caught
him in the act and jumped to a fatal conclusion about that parcel.

Old Mrs. Hiram Sloane had lately taken to making and selling “nut
cakes” by way of adding to her scanty income. The cakes were specially
tempting to small boys and for several weeks Anne had had not a little trouble
in regard to them. On their way to school the boys would invest their spare
cash at Mrs. Hiram’s, bring the cakes along with them to school, and, if
possible, eat them and treat their mates during school hours. Anne had warned
them that if they brought any more cakes to school they would be confiscated;
and yet here was St. Clair Donnell coolly passing a parcel of them, wrapped up
in the blue and white striped paper Mrs. Hiram used, under her very eyes.

“Joseph,” said Anne quietly, “bring that parcel here.”

Joe, startled and abashed, obeyed. He was a fat urchin who always blushed and
stuttered when he was frightened. Never did anybody look more guilty than poor
Joe at that moment.

“Throw it into the fire,” said Anne.

Joe looked very blank.

“P . . . p . . . p . . . lease, m . . . m . . . miss,” he began.

“Do as I tell you, Joseph, without any words about it.”

“B . . . b . . . but m . . . m . . . miss . . . th . . . th . . .
they’re . . .” gasped Joe in desperation.

“Joseph, are you going to obey me or are you not?” said
Anne.

A bolder and more self-possessed lad than Joe Sloane would have been overawed
by her tone and the dangerous flash of her eyes. This was a new Anne whom none
of her pupils had ever seen before. Joe, with an agonized glance at St. Clair,
went to the stove, opened the big, square front door, and threw the blue and
white parcel in, before St. Clair, who had sprung to his feet, could utter a
word. Then he dodged back just in time.

For a few moments the terrified occupants of Avonlea school did not know
whether it was an earthquake or a volcanic explosion that had occurred. The
innocent looking parcel which Anne had rashly supposed to contain Mrs.
Hiram’s nut cakes really held an assortment of firecrackers and pinwheels
for which Warren Sloane had sent to town by St. Clair Donnell’s father
the day before, intending to have a birthday celebration that evening. The
crackers went off in a thunderclap of noise and the pinwheels bursting out of
the door spun madly around the room, hissing and spluttering. Anne dropped into
her chair white with dismay and all the girls climbed shrieking upon their
desks. Joe Sloane stood as one transfixed in the midst of the commotion and St.
Clair, helpless with laughter, rocked to and fro in the aisle. Prillie Rogerson
fainted and Annetta Bell went into hysterics.

It seemed a long time, although it was really only a few minutes, before the
last pinwheel subsided. Anne, recovering herself, sprang to open doors and
windows and let out the gas and smoke which filled the room. Then she helped
the girls carry the unconscious Prillie into the porch, where Barbara Shaw, in
an agony of desire to be useful, poured a pailful of half frozen water over
Prillie’s face and shoulders before anyone could stop her.

It was a full hour before quiet was restored . . . but it was a quiet that
might be felt. Everybody realized that even the explosion had not cleared the
teacher’s mental atmosphere. Nobody, except Anthony Pye, dared whisper a
word. Ned Clay accidentally squeaked his pencil while working a sum, caught
Anne’s eye and wished the floor would open and swallow him up. The
geography class were whisked through a continent with a speed that made them
dizzy. The grammar class were parsed and analyzed within an inch of their
lives. Chester Sloane, spelling “odoriferous” with two f’s,
was made to feel that he could never live down the disgrace of it, either in
this world or that which is to come.

Anne knew that she had made herself ridiculous and that the incident would be
laughed over that night at a score of tea-tables, but the knowledge only
angered her further. In a calmer mood she could have carried off the situation
with a laugh but now that was impossible; so she ignored it in icy disdain.

When Anne returned to the school after dinner all the children were as usual in
their seats and every face was bent studiously over a desk except Anthony
Pye’s. He peered across his book at Anne, his black eyes sparkling with
curiosity and mockery. Anne twitched open the drawer of her desk in search of
chalk and under her very hand a lively mouse sprang out of the drawer,
scampered over the desk, and leaped to the floor.

Anne screamed and sprang back, as if it had been a snake, and Anthony Pye
laughed aloud.

Then a silence fell . . . a very creepy, uncomfortable silence. Annetta Bell
was of two minds whether to go into hysterics again or not, especially as she
didn’t know just where the mouse had gone. But she decided not to. Who
could take any comfort out of hysterics with a teacher so white-faced and so
blazing-eyed standing before one?

“Who put that mouse in my desk?” said Anne. Her voice was quite low
but it made a shiver go up and down Paul Irving’s spine. Joe Sloane
caught her eye, felt responsible from the crown of his head to the sole of his
feet, but stuttered out wildly,

“N . . . n . . . not m . . . m . . . me t . . . t . . . teacher, n . . .
n . . . not m . . . m . . . me.”

Anne paid no attention to the wretched Joseph. She looked at Anthony Pye, and
Anthony Pye looked back unabashed and unashamed.

“Anthony, was it you?”

“Yes, it was,” said Anthony insolently.

Anne took her pointer from her desk. It was a long, heavy hardwood pointer.

“Come here, Anthony.”

It was far from being the most severe punishment Anthony Pye had ever
undergone. Anne, even the stormy-souled Anne she was at that moment, could not
have punished any child cruelly. But the pointer nipped keenly and finally
Anthony’s bravado failed him; he winced and the tears came to his eyes.

Anne, conscience-stricken, dropped the pointer and told Anthony to go to his
seat. She sat down at her desk feeling ashamed, repentant, and bitterly
mortified. Her quick anger was gone and she would have given much to have been
able to seek relief in tears. So all her boasts had come to this . . . she had
actually whipped one of her pupils. How Jane would triumph! And how Mr.
Harrison would chuckle! But worse than this, bitterest thought of all, she had
lost her last chance of winning Anthony Pye. Never would he like her now.

Anne, by what somebody has called “a Herculaneum effort,” kept back
her tears until she got home that night. Then she shut herself in the east
gable room and wept all her shame and remorse and disappointment into her
pillows . . . wept so long that Marilla grew alarmed, invaded the room, and
insisted on knowing what the trouble was.

“The trouble is, I’ve got things the matter with my
conscience,” sobbed Anne. “Oh, this has been such a Jonah day,
Marilla. I’m so ashamed of myself. I lost my temper and whipped Anthony
Pye.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” said Marilla with decision.
“It’s what you should have done long ago.”

“Oh, no, no, Marilla. And I don’t see how I can ever look those
children in the face again. I feel that I have humiliated myself to the very
dust. You don’t know how cross and hateful and horrid I was. I
can’t forget the expression in Paul Irving’s eyes . . . he looked
so surprised and disappointed. Oh, Marilla, I have tried so hard to be
patient and to win Anthony’s liking . . . and now it has all gone for
nothing.”

Marilla passed her hard work-worn hand over the girl’s glossy, tumbled
hair with a wonderful tenderness. When Anne’s sobs grew quieter she said,
very gently for her,

“You take things too much to heart, Anne. We all make mistakes . . . but
people forget them. And Jonah days come to everybody. As for Anthony Pye, why
need you care if he does dislike you? He is the only one.”

“I can’t help it. I want everybody to love me and it hurts me so
when anybody doesn’t. And Anthony never will now. Oh, I just made an
idiot of myself today, Marilla. I’ll tell you the whole story.”

Marilla listened to the whole story, and if she smiled at certain parts of it
Anne never knew. When the tale was ended she said briskly,

“Well, never mind. This day’s done and there’s a new one
coming tomorrow, with no mistakes in it yet, as you used to say yourself. Just
come downstairs and have your supper. You’ll see if a good cup of tea and
those plum puffs I made today won’t hearten you up.”

“Plum puffs won’t minister to a mind diseased,” said Anne
disconsolately; but Marilla thought it a good sign that she had recovered
sufficiently to adapt a quotation.

The cheerful supper table, with the twins’ bright faces, and
Marilla’s matchless plum puffs . . . of which Davy ate four . . . did
“hearten her up” considerably after all. She had a good sleep that
night and awakened in the morning to find herself and the world transformed. It
had snowed softly and thickly all through the hours of darkness and the
beautiful whiteness, glittering in the frosty sunshine, looked like a mantle of
charity cast over all the mistakes and humiliations of the past.

“Every morn is a fresh beginning,
Every morn is the world made new,”

sang Anne, as she dressed.

Owing to the snow she had to go around by the road to school and she thought it
was certainly an impish coincidence that Anthony Pye should come ploughing
along just as she left the Green Gables lane. She felt as guilty as if their
positions were reversed; but to her unspeakable astonishment Anthony not only
lifted his cap . . . which he had never done before . . . but said easily,

“Kind of bad walking, ain’t it? Can I take those books for you,
teacher?”

Anne surrendered her books and wondered if she could possibly be awake. Anthony
walked on in silence to the school, but when Anne took her books she smiled
down at him . . . not the stereotyped “kind” smile she had so
persistently assumed for his benefit but a sudden outflashing of good
comradeship. Anthony smiled . . . no, if the truth must be told, Anthony
grinned back. A grin is not generally supposed to be a respectful thing;
yet Anne suddenly felt that if she had not yet won Anthony’s liking she
had, somehow or other, won his respect.

Mrs. Rachel Lynde came up the next Saturday and confirmed this.

“Well, Anne, I guess you’ve won over Anthony Pye, that’s
what. He says he believes you are some good after all, even if you are a girl.
Says that whipping you gave him was ‘just as good as a
man’s.’”

“I never expected to win him by whipping him, though,” said Anne, a
little mournfully, feeling that her ideals had played her false somewhere.
“It doesn’t seem right. I’m sure my theory of kindness
can’t be wrong.”

“No, but the Pyes are an exception to every known rule, that’s
what,” declared Mrs. Rachel with conviction.

Mr. Harrison said, “Thought you’d come to it,” when he heard
it, and Jane rubbed it in rather unmercifully.

XIII
A Golden Picnic

Anne, on her way to Orchard Slope, met Diana, bound for Green Gables, just
where the mossy old log bridge spanned the brook below the Haunted Wood, and
they sat down by the margin of the Dryad’s Bubble, where tiny ferns were
unrolling like curly-headed green pixy folk wakening up from a nap.

“I was just on my way over to invite you to help me celebrate my birthday
on Saturday,” said Anne.

“Your birthday? But your birthday was in March!”

“That wasn’t my fault,” laughed Anne. “If my parents
had consulted me it would never have happened then. I should have chosen to be
born in spring, of course. It must be delightful to come into the world with
the mayflowers and violets. You would always feel that you were their foster
sister. But since I didn’t, the next best thing is to celebrate my
birthday in the spring. Priscilla is coming over Saturday and Jane will be
home. We’ll all four start off to the woods and spend a golden day making
the acquaintance of the spring. We none of us really know her yet, but
we’ll meet her back there as we never can anywhere else. I want to
explore all those fields and lonely places anyhow. I have a conviction that
there are scores of beautiful nooks there that have never really been
seen although they may have been looked at. We’ll make
friends with wind and sky and sun, and bring home the spring in our
hearts.”

“It sounds awfully nice,” said Diana, with some inward
distrust of Anne’s magic of words. “But won’t it be very damp
in some places yet?”

“Oh, we’ll wear rubbers,” was Anne’s concession to
practicalities. “And I want you to come over early Saturday morning and
help me prepare lunch. I’m going to have the daintiest things possible .
. . things that will match the spring, you understand . . . little jelly tarts
and lady fingers, and drop cookies frosted with pink and yellow icing, and
buttercup cake. And we must have sandwiches too, though they’re
not very poetical.”

Saturday proved an ideal day for a picnic . . . a day of breeze and blue, warm,
sunny, with a little rollicking wind blowing across meadow and orchard. Over
every sunlit upland and field was a delicate, flower-starred green.

Mr. Harrison, harrowing at the back of his farm and feeling some of the spring
witch-work even in his sober, middle-aged blood, saw four girls, basket laden,
tripping across the end of his field where it joined a fringing woodland of
birch and fir. Their blithe voices and laughter echoed down to him.

“It’s so easy to be happy on a day like this, isn’t
it?” Anne was saying, with true Anneish philosophy. “Let’s
try to make this a really golden day, girls, a day to which we can always look
back with delight. We’re to seek for beauty and refuse to see anything
else. ‘Begone, dull care!’ Jane, you are thinking of something that
went wrong in school yesterday.”

“How do you know?” gasped Jane, amazed.

“Oh, I know the expression . . . I’ve felt it often enough on my
own face. But put it out of your mind, there’s a dear. It will keep till
Monday . . . or if it doesn’t so much the better. Oh, girls, girls, see
that patch of violets! There’s something for memory’s picture
gallery. When I’m eighty years old . . . if I ever am . . . I shall shut
my eyes and see those violets just as I see them now. That’s the first
good gift our day has given us.”

“If a kiss could be seen I think it would look like a violet,” said
Priscilla.

Anne glowed.

“I’m so glad you spoke that thought, Priscilla, instead of
just thinking it and keeping it to yourself. This world would be a much more
interesting place . . . although it is very interesting anyhow . . . if
people spoke out their real thoughts.”

“It would be too hot to hold some folks,” quoted Jane sagely.

“I suppose it might be, but that would be their own faults for thinking
nasty things. Anyhow, we can tell all our thoughts today because we are going
to have nothing but beautiful thoughts. Everybody can say just what comes into
her head. That is conversation. Here’s a little path I never saw
before. Let’s explore it.”

The path was a winding one, so narrow that the girls walked in single file and
even then the fir boughs brushed their faces. Under the firs were velvety
cushions of moss, and further on, where the trees were smaller and fewer, the
ground was rich in a variety of green growing things.

“What a lot of elephant’s ears,” exclaimed Diana.
“I’m going to pick a big bunch, they’re so pretty.”

“How did such graceful feathery things ever come to have such a dreadful
name?” asked Priscilla.

“Because the person who first named them either had no imagination at all
or else far too much,” said Anne, “Oh, girls, look at that!”

“That” was a shallow woodland pool in the center of a little open
glade where the path ended. Later on in the season it would be dried up and its
place filled with a rank growth of ferns; but now it was a glimmering placid
sheet, round as a saucer and clear as crystal. A ring of slender young birches
encircled it and little ferns fringed its margin.

“How sweet!” said Jane.

“Let us dance around it like wood-nymphs,” cried Anne, dropping her
basket and extending her hands.

But the dance was not a success for the ground was boggy and Jane’s
rubbers came off.

“You can’t be a wood-nymph if you have to wear rubbers,” was
her decision.

“Well, we must name this place before we leave it,” said Anne,
yielding to the indisputable logic of facts. “Everybody suggest a name
and we’ll draw lots. Diana?”

“Birch Pool,” suggested Diana promptly.

“Crystal Lake,” said Jane.

Anne, standing behind them, implored Priscilla with her eyes not to perpetrate
another such name and Priscilla rose to the occasion with
“Glimmer-glass.” Anne’s selection was “The
Fairies’ Mirror.”

The names were written on strips of birch bark with a pencil Schoolma’am
Jane produced from her pocket, and placed in Anne’s hat. Then Priscilla
shut her eyes and drew one. “Crystal Lake,” read Jane triumphantly.
Crystal Lake it was, and if Anne thought that chance had played the pool a
shabby trick she did not say so.

Pushing through the undergrowth beyond, the girls came out to the young green
seclusion of Mr. Silas Sloane’s back pasture. Across it they found the
entrance to a lane striking up through the woods and voted to explore it also.
It rewarded their quest with a succession of pretty surprises. First, skirting
Mr. Sloane’s pasture, came an archway of wild cherry trees all in bloom.
The girls swung their hats on their arms and wreathed their hair with the
creamy, fluffy blossoms. Then the lane turned at right angles and plunged into
a spruce wood so thick and dark that they walked in a gloom as of twilight,
with not a glimpse of sky or sunlight to be seen.

“This is where the bad wood elves dwell,” whispered Anne.
“They are impish and malicious but they can’t harm us, because they
are not allowed to do evil in the spring. There was one peeping at us around
that old twisted fir; and didn’t you see a group of them on that big
freckly toadstool we just passed? The good fairies always dwell in the sunshiny
places.”

“I wish there really were fairies,” said Jane.
“Wouldn’t it be nice to have three wishes granted you . . . or even
only one? What would you wish for, girls, if you could have a wish granted?
I’d wish to be rich and beautiful and clever.”

“I’d wish to be tall and slender,” said Diana.

“I would wish to be famous,” said Priscilla. Anne thought of her
hair and then dismissed the thought as unworthy.

“I’d wish it might be spring all the time and in everybody’s
heart and all our lives,” she said.

“But that,” said Priscilla, “would be just wishing this world
were like heaven.”

“Only like a part of heaven. In the other parts there would be summer and
autumn . . . yes, and a bit of winter, too. I think I want glittering snowy
fields and white frosts in heaven sometimes. Don’t you, Jane?”

“I . . . I don’t know,” said Jane uncomfortably. Jane was a
good girl, a member of the church, who tried conscientiously to live up to her
profession and believed everything she had been taught. But she never thought
about heaven any more than she could help, for all that.

“Minnie May asked me the other day if we would wear our best dresses
every day in heaven,” laughed Diana.

“And didn’t you tell her we would?” asked Anne.

“Mercy, no! I told her we wouldn’t be thinking of dresses at all
there.”

“Oh, I think we will . . . a little,” said Anne earnestly.
“There’ll be plenty of time in all eternity for it without
neglecting more important things. I believe we’ll all wear beautiful
dresses . . . or I suppose raiment would be a more suitable way of
speaking. I shall want to wear pink for a few centuries at first . . . it would
take me that long to get tired of it, I feel sure. I do love pink so and I can
never wear it in this world.”

Past the spruces the lane dipped down into a sunny little open where a log
bridge spanned a brook; and then came the glory of a sunlit beechwood where the
air was like transparent golden wine, and the leaves fresh and green, and the
wood floor a mosaic of tremulous sunshine. Then more wild cherries, and a
little valley of lissome firs, and then a hill so steep that the girls lost
their breath climbing it; but when they reached the top and came out into the
open the prettiest surprise of all awaited them.

Beyond were the “back fields” of the farms that ran out to the
upper Carmody road. Just before them, hemmed in by beeches and firs but open to
the south, was a little corner and in it a garden . . . or what had once been a
garden. A tumbledown stone dyke, overgrown with mosses and grass, surrounded
it. Along the eastern side ran a row of garden cherry trees, white as a
snowdrift. There were traces of old paths still and a double line of rosebushes
through the middle; but all the rest of the space was a sheet of yellow and
white narcissi, in their airiest, most lavish, wind-swayed bloom above the lush
green grasses.

“Oh, how perfectly lovely!” three of the girls cried. Anne only
gazed in eloquent silence.

“How in the world does it happen that there ever was a garden back
here?” said Priscilla in amazement.

“It must be Hester Gray’s garden,” said Diana.
“I’ve heard mother speak of it but I never saw it before, and I
wouldn’t have supposed that it could be in existence still. You’ve
heard the story, Anne?”

“No, but the name seems familiar to me.”

“Oh, you’ve seen it in the graveyard. She is buried down there in
the poplar corner. You know the little brown stone with the opening gates
carved on it and ‘Sacred to the memory of Hester Gray, aged
twenty-two.’ Jordan Gray is buried right beside her but there’s no
stone to him. It’s a wonder Marilla never told you about it, Anne. To be
sure, it happened thirty years ago and everybody has forgotten.”

“Well, if there’s a story we must have it,” said Anne.
“Let’s sit right down here among the narcissi and Diana will tell
it. Why, girls, there are hundreds of them . . . they’ve spread over
everything. It looks as if the garden were carpeted with moonshine and sunshine
combined. This is a discovery worth making. To think that I’ve lived
within a mile of this place for six years and have never seen it before! Now,
Diana.”

“Long ago,” began Diana, “this farm belonged to old Mr. David
Gray. He didn’t live on it . . . he lived where Silas Sloane lives now.
He had one son, Jordan, and he went up to Boston one winter to work and while
he was there he fell in love with a girl named Hester Murray. She was working
in a store and she hated it. She’d been brought up in the country and she
always wanted to get back. When Jordan asked her to marry him she said she
would if he’d take her away to some quiet spot where she’d see
nothing but fields and trees. So he brought her to Avonlea. Mrs. Lynde said he
was taking a fearful risk in marrying a Yankee, and it’s certain that
Hester was very delicate and a very poor housekeeper; but mother says she was
very pretty and sweet and Jordan just worshipped the ground she walked on.
Well, Mr. Gray gave Jordan this farm and he built a little house back here and
Jordan and Hester lived in it for four years. She never went out much and
hardly anybody went to see her except mother and Mrs. Lynde. Jordan made her
this garden and she was crazy about it and spent most of her time in it. She
wasn’t much of a housekeeper but she had a knack with flowers. And then
she got sick. Mother says she thinks she was in consumption before she ever
came here. She never really laid up but just grew weaker and weaker all the
time. Jordan wouldn’t have anybody to wait on her. He did it all himself
and mother says he was as tender and gentle as a woman. Every day he’d
wrap her in a shawl and carry her out to the garden and she’d lie there
on a bench quite happy. They say she used to make Jordan kneel down by her
every night and morning and pray with her that she might die out in the garden
when the time came. And her prayer was answered. One day Jordan carried her out
to the bench and then he picked all the roses that were out and heaped them
over her; and she just smiled up at him . . . and closed her eyes . . . and
that,” concluded Diana softly, “was the end.”

“Oh, what a dear story,” sighed Anne, wiping away her tears.

“What became of Jordan?” asked Priscilla.

“He sold the farm after Hester died and went back to Boston. Mr. Jabez
Sloane bought the farm and hauled the little house out to the road. Jordan died
about ten years after and he was brought home and buried beside Hester.”

“I can’t understand how she could have wanted to live back here,
away from everything,” said Jane.

“Oh, I can easily understand that,” said Anne thoughtfully.
“I wouldn’t want it myself for a steady thing, because, although I
love the fields and woods, I love people too. But I can understand it in
Hester. She was tired to death of the noise of the big city and the crowds of
people always coming and going and caring nothing for her. She just wanted to
escape from it all to some still, green, friendly place where she could rest.
And she got just what she wanted, which is something very few people do, I
believe. She had four beautiful years before she died. . . four years of
perfect happiness, so I think she was to be envied more than pitied. And then
to shut your eyes and fall asleep among roses, with the one you loved best on
earth smiling down at you . . . oh, I think it was beautiful!”

“She set out those cherry trees over there,” said Diana. “She
told mother she’d never live to eat their fruit, but she wanted to think
that something she had planted would go on living and helping to make the world
beautiful after she was dead.”

“I’m so glad we came this way,” said Anne, the shining-eyed.
“This is my adopted birthday, you know, and this garden and its story is
the birthday gift it has given me. Did your mother ever tell you what Hester
Gray looked like, Diana?”

“No . . . only just that she was pretty.”

“I’m rather glad of that, because I can imagine what she looked
like, without being hampered by facts. I think she was very slight and small,
with softly curling dark hair and big, sweet, timid brown eyes, and a little
wistful, pale face.”

The girls left their baskets in Hester’s garden and spent the rest of the
afternoon rambling in the woods and fields surrounding it, discovering many
pretty nooks and lanes. When they got hungry they had lunch in the prettiest
spot of all . . . on the steep bank of a gurgling brook where white birches
shot up out of long feathery grasses. The girls sat down by the roots and did
full justice to Anne’s dainties, even the unpoetical sandwiches being
greatly appreciated by hearty, unspoiled appetites sharpened by all the fresh
air and exercise they had enjoyed. Anne had brought glasses and lemonade for
her guests, but for her own part drank cold brook water from a cup fashioned
out of birch bark. The cup leaked, and the water tasted of earth, as brook
water is apt to do in spring; but Anne thought it more appropriate to the
occasion than lemonade.

“Look do you see that poem?” she said suddenly, pointing.

“Where?” Jane and Diana stared, as if expecting to see Runic rhymes
on the birch trees.

“There . . . down in the brook . . . that old green, mossy log with the
water flowing over it in those smooth ripples that look as if they’d been
combed, and that single shaft of sunshine falling right athwart it, far down
into the pool. Oh, it’s the most beautiful poem I ever saw.”

“I should rather call it a picture,” said Jane. “A poem is
lines and verses.”

“Oh dear me, no.” Anne shook her head with its fluffy wild cherry
coronal positively. “The lines and verses are only the outward garments
of the poem and are no more really it than your ruffles and flounces are
you, Jane. The real poem is the soul within them . . . and that
beautiful bit is the soul of an unwritten poem. It is not every day one sees a
soul . . . even of a poem.”

“I wonder what a soul . . . a person’s soul . . . would look
like,” said Priscilla dreamily.

“Like that, I should think,” answered Anne, pointing to a radiance
of sifted sunlight streaming through a birch tree. “Only with shape and
features of course. I like to fancy souls as being made of light. And some are
all shot through with rosy stains and quivers . . . and some have a soft
glitter like moonlight on the sea . . . and some are pale and transparent like
mist at dawn.”

“I read somewhere once that souls were like flowers,” said
Priscilla.

“Then your soul is a golden narcissus,” said Anne, “and
Diana’s is like a red, red rose. Jane’s is an apple blossom, pink
and wholesome and sweet.”

“And your own is a white violet, with purple streaks in its heart,”
finished Priscilla.

Jane whispered to Diana that she really could not understand what they were
talking about. Could she?

The girls went home by the light of a calm golden sunset, their baskets filled
with narcissus blossoms from Hester’s garden, some of which Anne carried
to the cemetery next day and laid upon Hester’s grave. Minstrel robins
were whistling in the firs and the frogs were singing in the marshes. All the
basins among the hills were brimmed with topaz and emerald light.

“Well, we have had a lovely time after all,” said Diana, as if she
had hardly expected to have it when she set out.

“It has been a truly golden day,” said Priscilla.

“I’m really awfully fond of the woods myself,” said Jane.

Anne said nothing. She was looking afar into the western sky and thinking of
little Hester Gray.

XIV
A Danger Averted

Anne, walking home from the post office one Friday evening, was joined by Mrs.
Lynde, who was as usual cumbered with all the cares of church and state.

“I’ve just been down to Timothy Cotton’s to see if I could
get Alice Louise to help me for a few days,” she said. “I had her
last week, for, though she’s too slow to stop quick, she’s better
than nobody. But she’s sick and can’t come. Timothy’s sitting
there, too, coughing and complaining. He’s been dying for ten years and
he’ll go on dying for ten years more. That kind can’t even die and
have done with it . . . they can’t stick to anything, even to being sick,
long enough to finish it. They’re a terrible shiftless family and what is
to become of them I don’t know, but perhaps Providence does.”

Mrs. Lynde sighed as if she rather doubted the extent of Providential knowledge
on the subject.

“Marilla was in about her eyes again Tuesday, wasn’t she? What did
the specialist think of them?” she continued.

“He was much pleased,” said Anne brightly. “He says there is
a great improvement in them and he thinks the danger of her losing her sight
completely is past. But he says she’ll never be able to read much or do
any fine hand-work again. How are your preparations for your bazaar coming
on?”

The Ladies’ Aid Society was preparing for a fair and supper, and Mrs.
Lynde was the head and front of the enterprise.

“Pretty well . . . and that reminds me. Mrs. Allan thinks it would be
nice to fix up a booth like an old-time kitchen and serve a supper of baked
beans, doughnuts, pie, and so on. We’re collecting old-fashioned fixings
everywhere. Mrs. Simon Fletcher is going to lend us her mother’s braided
rugs and Mrs. Levi Boulter some old chairs and Aunt Mary Shaw will lend us her
cupboard with the glass doors. I suppose Marilla will let us have her brass
candlesticks? And we want all the old dishes we can get. Mrs. Allan is
specially set on having a real blue willow ware platter if we can find one. But
nobody seems to have one. Do you know where we could get one?”

“Miss Josephine Barry has one. I’ll write and ask her if
she’ll lend it for the occasion,” said Anne.

“Well, I wish you would. I guess we’ll have the supper in about a
fortnight’s time. Uncle Abe Andrews is prophesying rain and storms for
about that time; and that’s a pretty sure sign we’ll have fine
weather.”

The said “Uncle Abe,” it may be mentioned, was at least like other
prophets in that he had small honor in his own country. He was, in fact,
considered in the light of a standing joke, for few of his weather predictions
were ever fulfilled. Mr. Elisha Wright, who labored under the impression that
he was a local wit, used to say that nobody in Avonlea ever thought of looking
in the Charlottetown dailies for weather probabilities. No; they just asked
Uncle Abe what it was going to be tomorrow and expected the opposite. Nothing
daunted, Uncle Abe kept on prophesying.

“We want to have the fair over before the election comes off,”
continued Mrs. Lynde, “for the candidates will be sure to come and spend
lots of money. The Tories are bribing right and left, so they might as well be
given a chance to spend their money honestly for once.”

Anne was a red-hot Conservative, out of loyalty to Matthew’s memory, but
she said nothing. She knew better than to get Mrs. Lynde started on politics.
She had a letter for Marilla, postmarked from a town in British Columbia.

“It’s probably from the children’s uncle,” she said
excitedly, when she got home. “Oh, Marilla, I wonder what he says about
them.”

“The best plan might be to open it and see,” said Marilla curtly. A
close observer might have thought that she was excited also, but she would
rather have died than show it.

Anne tore open the letter and glanced over the somewhat untidy and poorly
written contents.

“He says he can’t take the children this spring . . . he’s
been sick most of the winter and his wedding is put off. He wants to know if we
can keep them till the fall and he’ll try and take them then. We will, of
course, won’t we Marilla?”

“I don’t see that there is anything else for us to do,” said
Marilla rather grimly, although she felt a secret relief. “Anyhow
they’re not so much trouble as they were . . . or else we’ve got
used to them. Davy has improved a great deal.”

“His manners are certainly much better,” said Anne
cautiously, as if she were not prepared to say as much for his morals.

Anne had come home from school the previous evening, to find Marilla away at an
Aid meeting, Dora asleep on the kitchen sofa, and Davy in the sitting room
closet, blissfully absorbing the contents of a jar of Marilla’s famous
yellow plum preserves . . . “company jam,” Davy called it . . .
which he had been forbidden to touch. He looked very guilty when Anne pounced
on him and whisked him out of the closet.

“Davy Keith, don’t you know that it is very wrong of you to be
eating that jam, when you were told never to meddle with anything in
that closet?”

“Yes, I knew it was wrong,” admitted Davy uncomfortably, “but
plum jam is awful nice, Anne. I just peeped in and it looked so good I thought
I’d take just a weeny taste. I stuck my finger in . . .” Anne
groaned . . . “and licked it clean. And it was so much gooder than
I’d ever thought that I got a spoon and just sailed in.”

Anne gave him such a serious lecture on the sin of stealing plum jam that Davy
became conscience stricken and promised with repentant kisses never to do it
again.

“Anyhow, there’ll be plenty of jam in heaven, that’s one
comfort,” he said complacently.

Anne nipped a smile in the bud.

“Perhaps there will . . . if we want it,” she said, “But what
makes you think so?”

“Why, it’s in the catechism,” said Davy.

“Oh, no, there is nothing like that in the catechism, Davy.”

“But I tell you there is,” persisted Davy. “It was in that
question Marilla taught me last Sunday. ‘Why should we love God?’
It says, ‘Because He makes preserves, and redeems us.’ Preserves is
just a holy way of saying jam.”

“I must get a drink of water,” said Anne hastily. When she came
back it cost her some time and trouble to explain to Davy that a certain comma
in the said catechism question made a great deal of difference in the meaning.

“Well, I thought it was too good to be true,” he said at last, with
a sigh of disappointed conviction. “And besides, I didn’t see when
He’d find time to make jam if it’s one endless Sabbath day, as the
hymn says. I don’t believe I want to go to heaven. Won’t there ever
be any Saturdays in heaven, Anne?”

“Yes, Saturdays, and every other kind of beautiful days. And every day in
heaven will be more beautiful than the one before it, Davy,” assured
Anne, who was rather glad that Marilla was not by to be shocked. Marilla, it is
needless to say, was bringing the twins up in the good old ways of theology and
discouraged all fanciful speculations thereupon. Davy and Dora were taught a
hymn, a catechism question, and two Bible verses every Sunday. Dora learned
meekly and recited like a little machine, with perhaps as much understanding or
interest as if she were one. Davy, on the contrary, had a lively curiosity, and
frequently asked questions which made Marilla tremble for his fate.

“Chester Sloane says we’ll do nothing all the time in heaven but
walk around in white dresses and play on harps; and he says he hopes he
won’t have to go till he’s an old man, ’cause maybe
he’ll like it better then. And he thinks it will be horrid to wear
dresses and I think so too. Why can’t men angels wear trousers, Anne?
Chester Sloane is interested in those things, ’cause they’re going
to make a minister of him. He’s got to be a minister ’cause his
grandmother left the money to send him to college and he can’t have it
unless he is a minister. She thought a minister was such a ‘spectable
thing to have in a family. Chester says he doesn’t mind much . . . though
he’d rather be a blacksmith . . . but he’s bound to have all the
fun he can before he begins to be a minister, ’cause he doesn’t
expect to have much afterwards. I ain’t going to be a minister.
I’m going to be a storekeeper, like Mr. Blair, and keep heaps of candy
and bananas. But I’d rather like going to your kind of a heaven if
they’d let me play a mouth organ instead of a harp. Do you s’pose
they would?”

“Yes, I think they would if you wanted it,” was all Anne could
trust herself to say.

The A.V.I.S. met at Mr. Harmon Andrews’ that evening and a full
attendance had been requested, since important business was to be discussed.
The A.V.I.S. was in a flourishing condition, and had already accomplished
wonders. Early in the spring Mr. Major Spencer had redeemed his promise and had
stumped, graded, and seeded down all the road front of his farm. A dozen other
men, some prompted by a determination not to let a Spencer get ahead of them,
others goaded into action by Improvers in their own households, had followed
his example. The result was that there were long strips of smooth velvet turf
where once had been unsightly undergrowth or brush. The farm fronts that had
not been done looked so badly by contrast that their owners were secretly
shamed into resolving to see what they could do another spring. The triangle of
ground at the cross roads had also been cleared and seeded down, and
Anne’s bed of geraniums, unharmed by any marauding cow, was already set
out in the center.

Altogether, the Improvers thought that they were getting on beautifully, even
if Mr. Levi Boulter, tactfully approached by a carefully selected committee in
regard to the old house on his upper farm, did bluntly tell them that he
wasn’t going to have it meddled with.

At this especial meeting they intended to draw up a petition to the school
trustees, humbly praying that a fence be put around the school grounds; and a
plan was also to be discussed for planting a few ornamental trees by the
church, if the funds of the society would permit of it . . . for, as Anne said,
there was no use in starting another subscription as long as the hall remained
blue. The members were assembled in the Andrews’ parlor and Jane was
already on her feet to move the appointment of a committee which should find
out and report on the price of said trees, when Gertie Pye swept in,
pompadoured and frilled within an inch of her life. Gertie had a habit of being
late . . . “to make her entrance more effective,” spiteful people
said. Gertie’s entrance in this instance was certainly effective, for she
paused dramatically on the middle of the floor, threw up her hands, rolled her
eyes, and exclaimed, “I’ve just heard something perfectly awful.
What do you think? Mr. Judson Parker is going to rent all the road
fence of his farm to a patent medicine company to paint advertisements
on.”

For once in her life Gertie Pye made all the sensation she desired. If she had
thrown a bomb among the complacent Improvers she could hardly have made more.

“It can’t be true,” said Anne blankly.

“That’s just what I said when I heard it first, don’t
you know,” said Gertie, who was enjoying herself hugely. “I
said it couldn’t be true . . . that Judson Parker wouldn’t have the
heart to do it, don’t you know. But father met him this afternoon
and asked him about it and he said it WAS true. Just fancy! His farm is side-on
to the Newbridge road and how perfectly awful it will look to see
advertisements of pills and plasters all along it, don’t you know?”

The Improvers did know, all too well. Even the least imaginative among
them could picture the grotesque effect of half a mile of board fence adorned
with such advertisements. All thought of church and school grounds vanished
before this new danger. Parliamentary rules and regulations were forgotten, and
Anne, in despair, gave up trying to keep minutes at all. Everybody talked at
once and fearful was the hubbub.

“Oh, let us keep calm,” implored Anne, who was the most excited of
them all, “and try to think of some way of preventing him.”

“I don’t know how you’re going to prevent him,”
exclaimed Jane bitterly. “Everybody knows what Judson Parker is.
He’d do anything for money. He hasn’t a spark of
public spirit or any sense of the beautiful.”

The prospect looked rather unpromising. Judson Parker and his sister were the
only Parkers in Avonlea, so that no leverage could be exerted by family
connections. Martha Parker was a lady of all too certain age who disapproved of
young people in general and the Improvers in particular. Judson was a jovial,
smooth-spoken man, so uniformly goodnatured and bland that it was surprising
how few friends he had. Perhaps he had got the better in too many business
transactions. . . which seldom makes for popularity. He was reputed to be very
“sharp” and it was the general opinion that he “hadn’t
much principle.”

“If Judson Parker has a chance to ‘turn an honest penny,’ as
he says himself, he’ll never lose it,” declared Fred Wright.

“Is there nobody who has any influence over him?” asked Anne
despairingly.

“He goes to see Louisa Spencer at White Sands,” suggested Carrie
Sloane. “Perhaps she could coax him not to rent his fences.”

“Not she,” said Gilbert emphatically. “I know Louisa Spencer
well. She doesn’t ‘believe’ in Village Improvement Societies,
but she does believe in dollars and cents. She’d be more likely to
urge Judson on than to dissuade him.”

“The only thing to do is to appoint a committee to wait on him and
protest,” said Julia Bell, “and you must send girls, for he’d
hardly be civil to boys . . . but I won’t go, so nobody need
nominate me.”

“Better send Anne alone,” said Oliver Sloane. “She can talk
Judson over if anybody can.”

Anne protested. She was willing to go and do the talking; but she must have
others with her “for moral support.” Diana and Jane were therefore
appointed to support her morally and the Improvers broke up, buzzing like angry
bees with indignation. Anne was so worried that she didn’t sleep until
nearly morning, and then she dreamed that the trustees had put a fence around
the school and painted “Try Purple Pills” all over it.

The committee waited on Judson Parker the next afternoon. Anne pleaded
eloquently against his nefarious design and Jane and Diana supported her
morally and valiantly. Judson was sleek, suave, flattering; paid them several
compliments of the delicacy of sunflowers; felt real bad to refuse such
charming young ladies . . . but business was business; couldn’t afford to
let sentiment stand in the way these hard times.

“But I’ll tell what I will do,” he said, with a
twinkle in his light, full eyes. “I’ll tell the agent he must use
only handsome, tasty colors . . . red and yellow and so on. I’ll tell him
he mustn’t paint the ads blue on any account.”

The vanquished committee retired, thinking things not lawful to be uttered.

“We have done all we can do and must simply trust the rest to
Providence,” said Jane, with an unconscious imitation of Mrs.
Lynde’s tone and manner.

“I wonder if Mr. Allan could do anything,” reflected Diana.

Anne shook her head.

“No, it’s no use to worry Mr. Allan, especially now when the
baby’s so sick. Judson would slip away from him as smoothly as from us,
although he has taken to going to church quite regularly just now. That
is simply because Louisa Spencer’s father is an elder and very particular
about such things.”

“Judson Parker is the only man in Avonlea who would dream of renting his
fences,” said Jane indignantly. “Even Levi Boulter or Lorenzo White
would never stoop to that, tightfisted as they are. They would have too much
respect for public opinion.”

Public opinion was certainly down on Judson Parker when the facts became known,
but that did not help matters much. Judson chuckled to himself and defied it,
and the Improvers were trying to reconcile themselves to the prospect of seeing
the prettiest part of the Newbridge road defaced by advertisements, when Anne
rose quietly at the president’s call for reports of committees on the
occasion of the next meeting of the Society, and announced that Mr. Judson
Parker had instructed her to inform the Society that he was not going to
rent his fences to the Patent Medicine Company.

Jane and Diana stared as if they found it hard to believe their ears.
Parliamentary etiquette, which was generally very strictly enforced in the
A.V.I.S., forbade them giving instant vent to their curiosity, but after the
Society adjourned Anne was besieged for explanations. Anne had no explanation
to give. Judson Parker had overtaken her on the road the preceding evening and
told her that he had decided to humor the A.V.I.S. in its peculiar prejudice
against patent medicine advertisements. That was all Anne would say, then or
ever afterwards, and it was the simple truth; but when Jane Andrews, on her way
home, confided to Oliver Sloane her firm belief that there was more behind
Judson Parker’s mysterious change of heart than Anne Shirley had
revealed, she spoke the truth also.

Anne had been down to old Mrs. Irving’s on the shore road the preceding
evening and had come home by a short cut which led her first over the low-lying
shore fields, and then through the beech wood below Robert Dickson’s, by
a little footpath that ran out to the main road just above the Lake of Shining
Waters . . . known to unimaginative people as Barry’s pond.

Two men were sitting in their buggies, reined off to the side of the road, just
at the entrance of the path. One was Judson Parker; the other was Jerry
Corcoran, a Newbridge man against whom, as Mrs. Lynde would have told you in
eloquent italics, nothing shady had ever been proved. He was an agent
for agricultural implements and a prominent personage in matters political. He
had a finger . . . some people said all his fingers . . . in every
political pie that was cooked; and as Canada was on the eve of a general
election Jerry Corcoran had been a busy man for many weeks, canvassing the
county in the interests of his party’s candidate. Just as Anne emerged
from under the overhanging beech boughs she heard Corcoran say, “If
you’ll vote for Amesbury, Parker . . . well, I’ve a note for that
pair of harrows you’ve got in the spring. I suppose you wouldn’t
object to having it back, eh?”

“We . . . ll, since you put it in that way,” drawled Judson with a
grin, “I reckon I might as well do it. A man must look out for his own
interests in these hard times.”

Both saw Anne at this moment and conversation abruptly ceased. Anne bowed
frostily and walked on, with her chin slightly more tilted than usual. Soon
Judson Parker overtook her.

“Have a lift, Anne?” he inquired genially.

“Thank you, no,” said Anne politely, but with a fine, needle-like
disdain in her voice that pierced even Judson Parker’s none too sensitive
consciousness. His face reddened and he twitched his reins angrily; but the
next second prudential considerations checked him. He looked uneasily at Anne,
as she walked steadily on, glancing neither to the right nor to the left. Had
she heard Corcoran’s unmistakable offer and his own too plain acceptance
of it? Confound Corcoran! If he couldn’t put his meaning into less
dangerous phrases he’d get into trouble some of these long-come-shorts.
And confound redheaded school-ma’ams with a habit of popping out of
beechwoods where they had no business to be. If Anne had heard, Judson Parker,
measuring her corn in his own half bushel, as the country saying went, and
cheating himself thereby, as such people generally do, believed that she would
tell it far and wide. Now, Judson Parker, as has been seen, was not overly
regardful of public opinion; but to be known as having accepted a bribe would
be a nasty thing; and if it ever reached Isaac Spencer’s ears farewell
forever to all hope of winning Louisa Jane with her comfortable prospects as
the heiress of a well-to-do farmer. Judson Parker knew that Mr. Spencer looked
somewhat askance at him as it was; he could not afford to take any risks.

“Ahem . . . Anne, I’ve been wanting to see you about that little
matter we were discussing the other day. I’ve decided not to let my
fences to that company after all. A society with an aim like yours ought to be
encouraged.”

Anne thawed out the merest trifle.

“Thank you,” she said.

“And . . . and . . . you needn’t mention that little conversation
of mine with Jerry.”

“I have no intention of mentioning it in any case,” said Anne
icily, for she would have seen every fence in Avonlea painted with
advertisements before she would have stooped to bargain with a man who would
sell his vote.

“Just so . . . just so,” agreed Judson, imagining that they
understood each other beautifully. “I didn’t suppose you would. Of
course, I was only stringing Jerry . . . he thinks he’s so all-fired cute
and smart. I’ve no intention of voting for Amesbury. I’m going to
vote for Grant as I’ve always done . . . you’ll see that when the
election comes off. I just led Jerry on to see if he would commit himself. And
it’s all right about the fence . . . you can tell the Improvers
that.”

“It takes all sorts of people to make a world, as I’ve often heard,
but I think there are some who could be spared,” Anne told her reflection
in the east gable mirror that night. “I wouldn’t have mentioned the
disgraceful thing to a soul anyhow, so my conscience is clear on that
score. I really don’t know who or what is to be thanked for this.
I did nothing to bring it about, and it’s hard to believe that
Providence ever works by means of the kind of politics men like Judson Parker
and Jerry Corcoran have.”

XV
The Beginning of Vacation

Anne locked the schoolhouse door on a still, yellow evening, when the winds
were purring in the spruces around the playground, and the shadows were long
and lazy by the edge of the woods. She dropped the key into her pocket with a
sigh of satisfaction. The school year was ended, she had been reengaged for the
next, with many expressions of satisfaction. . . . only Mr. Harmon Andrews told
her she ought to use the strap oftener . . . and two delightful months of a
well-earned vacation beckoned her invitingly. Anne felt at peace with the world
and herself as she walked down the hill with her basket of flowers in her hand.
Since the earliest mayflowers Anne had never missed her weekly pilgrimage to
Matthew’s grave. Everyone else in Avonlea, except Marilla, had already
forgotten quiet, shy, unimportant Matthew Cuthbert; but his memory was still
green in Anne’s heart and always would be. She could never forget the
kind old man who had been the first to give her the love and sympathy her
starved childhood had craved.

At the foot of the hill a boy was sitting on the fence in the shadow of the
spruces . . . a boy with big, dreamy eyes and a beautiful, sensitive face. He
swung down and joined Anne, smiling; but there were traces of tears on his
cheeks.

“I thought I’d wait for you, teacher, because I knew you were going
to the graveyard,” he said, slipping his hand into hers. “I’m
going there, too . . . I’m taking this bouquet of geraniums to put on
Grandpa Irving’s grave for grandma. And look, teacher, I’m going to
put this bunch of white roses beside Grandpa’s grave in memory of my
little mother. . . because I can’t go to her grave to put it there. But
don’t you think she’ll know all about it, just the same?”

“Yes, I am sure she will, Paul.”

“You see, teacher, it’s just three years today since my little
mother died. It’s such a long, long time but it hurts just as much as
ever . . . and I miss her just as much as ever. Sometimes it seems to me that I
just can’t bear it, it hurts so.”

Paul’s voice quivered and his lip trembled. He looked down at his roses,
hoping that his teacher would not notice the tears in his eyes.

“And yet,” said Anne, very softly, “you wouldn’t want
it to stop hurting . . . you wouldn’t want to forget your little mother
even if you could.”

“No, indeed, I wouldn’t . . . that’s just the way I feel.
You’re so good at understanding, teacher. Nobody else understands so well
. . . not even grandma, although she’s so good to me. Father understood
pretty well, but still I couldn’t talk much to him about mother, because
it made him feel so bad. When he put his hand over his face I always knew it
was time to stop. Poor father, he must be dreadfully lonesome without me; but
you see he has nobody but a housekeeper now and he thinks housekeepers are no
good to bring up little boys, especially when he has to be away from home so
much on business. Grandmothers are better, next to mothers. Someday, when
I’m brought up, I’ll go back to father and we’re never going
to be parted again.”

Paul had talked so much to Anne about his mother and father that she felt as if
she had known them. She thought his mother must have been very like what he was
himself, in temperament and disposition; and she had an idea that Stephen
Irving was a rather reserved man with a deep and tender nature which he kept
hidden scrupulously from the world.

“Father’s not very easy to get acquainted with,” Paul had
said once. “I never got really acquainted with him until after my little
mother died. But he’s splendid when you do get to know him. I love him
the best in all the world, and Grandma Irving next, and then you, teacher.
I’d love you next to father if it wasn’t my duty to love
Grandma Irving best, because she’s doing so much for me. You know,
teacher. I wish she would leave the lamp in my room till I go to sleep, though.
She takes it right out as soon as she tucks me up because she says I
mustn’t be a coward. I’m not scared, but I’d
rather have the light. My little mother used always to sit beside me and
hold my hand till I went to sleep. I expect she spoiled me. Mothers do
sometimes, you know.”

No, Anne did not know this, although she might imagine it. She thought sadly of
her “little mother,” the mother who had thought her so
“perfectly beautiful” and who had died so long ago and was buried
beside her boyish husband in that unvisited grave far away. Anne could not
remember her mother and for this reason she almost envied Paul.

“My birthday is next week,” said Paul, as they walked up the long
red hill, basking in the June sunshine, “and father wrote me that he is
sending me something that he thinks I’ll like better than anything else
he could send. I believe it has come already, for Grandma is keeping the
bookcase drawer locked and that is something new. And when I asked her why, she
just looked mysterious and said little boys mustn’t be too curious.
It’s very exciting to have a birthday, isn’t it? I’ll be
eleven. You’d never think it to look at me, would you? Grandma says
I’m very small for my age and that it’s all because I don’t
eat enough porridge. I do my very best, but Grandma gives such generous
platefuls . . . there’s nothing mean about Grandma, I can tell you. Ever
since you and I had that talk about praying going home from Sunday School that
day, teacher . . . when you said we ought to pray about all our difficulties .
. . I’ve prayed every night that God would give me enough grace to enable
me to eat every bit of my porridge in the mornings. But I’ve never been
able to do it yet, and whether it’s because I have too little grace or
too much porridge I really can’t decide. Grandma says father was brought
up on porridge, and it certainly did work well in his case, for you ought to
see the shoulders he has. But sometimes,” concluded Paul with a sigh and
a meditative air “I really think porridge will be the death of me.”

Anne permitted herself a smile, since Paul was not looking at her. All Avonlea
knew that old Mrs. Irving was bringing her grandson up in accordance with the
good, old-fashioned methods of diet and morals.

“Let us hope not, dear,” she said cheerfully. “How are your
rock people coming on? Does the oldest Twin still continue to behave
himself?”

“He has to,” said Paul emphatically. “He knows I
won’t associate with him if he doesn’t. He is really full of
wickedness, I think.”

“And has Nora found out about the Golden Lady yet?”

“No; but I think she suspects. I’m almost sure she watched me the
last time I went to the cave. I don’t mind if she finds out . . .
it is only for her sake I don’t want her to . . . so that her
feelings won’t be hurt. But if she is determined to have her
feelings hurt it can’t be helped.”

“If I were to go to the shore some night with you do you think I could
see your rock people too?”

Paul shook his head gravely.

“No, I don’t think you could see my rock people. I’m
the only person who can see them. But you could see rock people of your own.
You’re one of the kind that can. We’re both that kind. You
know, teacher,” he added, squeezing her hand chummily. “Isn’t
it splendid to be that kind, teacher?”

“Splendid,” Anne agreed, gray shining eyes looking down into blue
shining ones. Anne and Paul both knew

“How fair the realm
Imagination opens to the view,”

and both knew the way to that happy land. There the rose of joy bloomed
immortal by dale and stream; clouds never darkened the sunny sky; sweet bells
never jangled out of tune; and kindred spirits abounded. The knowledge of that
land’s geography . . . “east o’ the sun, west o’ the
moon” . . . is priceless lore, not to be bought in any market place. It
must be the gift of the good fairies at birth and the years can never deface it
or take it away. It is better to possess it, living in a garret, than to be the
inhabitant of palaces without it.

The Avonlea graveyard was as yet the grass-grown solitude it had always been.
To be sure, the Improvers had an eye on it, and Priscilla Grant had read a
paper on cemeteries before the last meeting of the Society. At some future time
the Improvers meant to have the lichened, wayward old board fence replaced by a
neat wire railing, the grass mown and the leaning monuments straightened up.

Anne put on Matthew’s grave the flowers she had brought for it, and then
went over to the little poplar shaded corner where Hester Gray slept. Ever
since the day of the spring picnic Anne had put flowers on Hester’s grave
when she visited Matthew’s. The evening before she had made a pilgrimage
back to the little deserted garden in the woods and brought therefrom some of
Hester’s own white roses.

“I thought you would like them better than any others, dear,” she
said softly.

Anne was still sitting there when a shadow fell over the grass and she looked
up to see Mrs. Allan. They walked home together.

Mrs. Allan’s face was not the face of the girlbride whom the minister had
brought to Avonlea five years before. It had lost some of its bloom and
youthful curves, and there were fine, patient lines about eyes and mouth. A
tiny grave in that very cemetery accounted for some of them; and some new ones
had come during the recent illness, now happily over, of her little son. But
Mrs. Allan’s dimples were as sweet and sudden as ever, her eyes as clear
and bright and true; and what her face lacked of girlish beauty was now more
than atoned for in added tenderness and strength.

“I suppose you are looking forward to your vacation, Anne?” she
said, as they left the graveyard.

Anne nodded.

“Yes. . . . I could roll the word as a sweet morsel under my tongue. I
think the summer is going to be lovely. For one thing, Mrs. Morgan is coming to
the Island in July and Priscilla is going to bring her up. I feel one of my old
‘thrills’ at the mere thought.”

“I hope you’ll have a good time, Anne. You’ve worked very
hard this past year and you have succeeded.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve come so far short in so many things.
I haven’t done what I meant to do when I began to teach last fall. I
haven’t lived up to my ideals.”

“None of us ever do,” said Mrs. Allan with a sigh. “But then,
Anne, you know what Lowell says, ‘Not failure but low aim is
crime.’ We must have ideals and try to live up to them, even if we never
quite succeed. Life would be a sorry business without them. With them
it’s grand and great. Hold fast to your ideals, Anne.”

“I shall try. But I have to let go most of my theories,” said Anne,
laughing a little. “I had the most beautiful set of theories you ever
knew when I started out as a schoolma’am, but every one of them has
failed me at some pinch or another.”

“Even the theory on corporal punishment,” teased Mrs. Allan.

But Anne flushed.

“I shall never forgive myself for whipping Anthony.”

“Nonsense, dear, he deserved it. And it agreed with him. You have had no
trouble with him since and he has come to think there’s nobody like you.
Your kindness won his love after the idea that a ‘girl was no good’
was rooted out of his stubborn mind.”

“He may have deserved it, but that is not the point. If I had calmly and
deliberately decided to whip him because I thought it a just punishment for him
I would not feel over it as I do. But the truth is, Mrs. Allan, that I just
flew into a temper and whipped him because of that. I wasn’t thinking
whether it was just or unjust . . . even if he hadn’t deserved it
I’d have done it just the same. That is what humiliates me.”

“Well, we all make mistakes, dear, so just put it behind you. We should
regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the
future with us. There goes Gilbert Blythe on his wheel . . . home for his
vacation too, I suppose. How are you and he getting on with your
studies?”

“Pretty well. We plan to finish the Virgil tonight . . . there are only
twenty lines to do. Then we are not going to study any more until
September.”

“Do you think you will ever get to college?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Anne looked dreamily afar to the
opal-tinted horizon. “Marilla’s eyes will never be much better than
they are now, although we are so thankful to think that they will not get
worse. And then there are the twins . . . somehow I don’t believe their
uncle will ever really send for them. Perhaps college may be around the bend in
the road, but I haven’t got to the bend yet and I don’t think much
about it lest I might grow discontented.”

“Well, I should like to see you go to college, Anne; but if you never do,
don’t be discontented about it. We make our own lives wherever we are,
after all . . . college can only help us to do it more easily. They are broad
or narrow according to what we put into them, not what we get out. Life is rich
and full here . . . everywhere . . . if we can only learn how to open our whole
hearts to its richness and fulness.”

“I think I understand what you mean,” said Anne thoughtfully,
“and I know I have so much to feel thankful for . . . oh, so much . . .
my work, and Paul Irving, and the dear twins, and all my friends. Do you know,
Mrs. Allan, I’m so thankful for friendship. It beautifies life so
much.”

“True friendship is a very helpful thing indeed,” said Mrs. Allan,
“and we should have a very high ideal of it, and never sully it by any
failure in truth and sincerity. I fear the name of friendship is often degraded
to a kind of intimacy that has nothing of real friendship in it.”

“Yes . . . like Gertie Pye’s and Julia Bell’s. They are very
intimate and go everywhere together; but Gertie is always saying nasty things
of Julia behind her back and everybody thinks she is jealous of her because she
is always so pleased when anybody criticizes Julia. I think it is desecration
to call that friendship. If we have friends we should look only for the
best in them and give them the best that is in us, don’t you think? Then
friendship would be the most beautiful thing in the world.”

“Friendship is very beautiful,” smiled Mrs. Allan,
“but some day . . .”

Then she paused abruptly. In the delicate, white-browed face beside her, with
its candid eyes and mobile features, there was still far more of the child than
of the woman. Anne’s heart so far harbored only dreams of friendship and
ambition, and Mrs. Allan did not wish to brush the bloom from her sweet
unconsciousness. So she left her sentence for the future years to finish.

XVI
The Substance of Things Hoped For

“Anne,” said Davy appealingly, scrambling up on the shiny,
leather-covered sofa in the Green Gables kitchen, where Anne sat, reading a
letter, “Anne, I’m awful hungry. You’ve no
idea.”

“I’ll get you a piece of bread and butter in a minute,” said
Anne absently. Her letter evidently contained some exciting news, for her
cheeks were as pink as the roses on the big bush outside, and her eyes were as
starry as only Anne’s eyes could be.

“But I ain’t bread and butter hungry,” said Davy in a
disgusted tone. “I’m plum cake hungry.”

“Oh,” laughed Anne, laying down her letter and putting her arm
about Davy to give him a squeeze, “that’s a kind of hunger that can
be endured very comfortably, Davy-boy. You know it’s one of
Marilla’s rules that you can’t have anything but bread and butter
between meals.”

“Well, gimme a piece then . . . please.”

Davy had been at last taught to say “please,” but he generally
tacked it on as an afterthought. He looked with approval at the generous slice
Anne presently brought to him. “You always put such a nice lot of butter
on it, Anne. Marilla spreads it pretty thin. It slips down a lot easier when
there’s plenty of butter.”

The slice “slipped down” with tolerable ease, judging from its
rapid disappearance. Davy slid head first off the sofa, turned a double
somersault on the rug, and then sat up and announced decidedly,

“Anne, I’ve made up my mind about heaven. I don’t want to go
there.”

“Why not?” asked Anne gravely.

“Cause heaven is in Simon Fletcher’s garret, and I don’t like
Simon Fletcher.”

“Heaven in . . . Simon Fletcher’s garret!” gasped Anne, too
amazed even to laugh. “Davy Keith, whatever put such an extraordinary
idea into your head?”

“Milty Boulter says that’s where it is. It was last Sunday in
Sunday School. The lesson was about Elijah and Elisha, and I up and asked Miss
Rogerson where heaven was. Miss Rogerson looked awful offended. She was cross
anyhow, because when she’d asked us what Elijah left Elisha when he went
to heaven Milty Boulter said, ‘His old clo’es,’ and us
fellows all laughed before we thought. I wish you could think first and do
things afterwards, ’cause then you wouldn’t do them. But Milty
didn’t mean to be disrespeckful. He just couldn’t think of the name
of the thing. Miss Rogerson said heaven was where God was and I wasn’t to
ask questions like that. Milty nudged me and said in a whisper,
‘Heaven’s in Uncle Simon’s garret and I’ll esplain
about it on the road home.’ So when we was coming home he esplained.
Milty’s a great hand at esplaining things. Even if he don’t know
anything about a thing he’ll make up a lot of stuff and so you get it
esplained all the same. His mother is Mrs. Simon’s sister and he went
with her to the funeral when his cousin, Jane Ellen, died. The minister said
she’d gone to heaven, though Milty says she was lying right before them
in the coffin. But he s’posed they carried the coffin to the garret
afterwards. Well, when Milty and his mother went upstairs after it was all over
to get her bonnet he asked her where heaven was that Jane Ellen had gone to,
and she pointed right to the ceiling and said, ‘Up there.’ Milty
knew there wasn’t anything but the garret over the ceiling, so
that’s how he found out. And he’s been awful scared to go to
his Uncle Simon’s ever since.”

Anne took Davy on her knee and did her best to straighten out this theological
tangle also. She was much better fitted for the task than Marilla, for she
remembered her own childhood and had an instinctive understanding of the
curious ideas that seven-year-olds sometimes get about matters that are, of
course, very plain and simple to grown up people. She had just succeeded in
convincing Davy that heaven was not in Simon Fletcher’s garret
when Marilla came in from the garden, where she and Dora had been picking peas.
Dora was an industrious little soul and never happier than when
“helping” in various small tasks suited to her chubby fingers. She
fed chickens, picked up chips, wiped dishes, and ran errands galore. She was
neat, faithful and observant; she never had to be told how to do a thing twice
and never forgot any of her little duties. Davy, on the other hand, was rather
heedless and forgetful; but he had the born knack of winning love, and even yet
Anne and Marilla liked him the better.

While Dora proudly shelled the peas and Davy made boats of the pods, with masts
of matches and sails of paper, Anne told Marilla about the wonderful contents
of her letter.

“Oh, Marilla, what do you think? I’ve had a letter from Priscilla
and she says that Mrs. Morgan is on the Island, and that if it is fine Thursday
they are going to drive up to Avonlea and will reach here about twelve. They
will spend the afternoon with us and go to the hotel at White Sands in the
evening, because some of Mrs. Morgan’s American friends are staying
there. Oh, Marilla, isn’t it wonderful? I can hardly believe I’m
not dreaming.”

“I daresay Mrs. Morgan is a lot like other people,” said Marilla
drily, although she did feel a trifle excited herself. Mrs. Morgan was a famous
woman and a visit from her was no commonplace occurrence. “They’ll
be here to dinner, then?”

“Yes; and oh, Marilla, may I cook every bit of the dinner myself? I want
to feel that I can do something for the author of ‘The Rosebud
Garden,’ if it is only to cook a dinner for her. You won’t mind,
will you?”

“Goodness, I’m not so fond of stewing over a hot fire in July that
it would vex me very much to have someone else do it. You’re quite
welcome to the job.”

“Oh, thank you,” said Anne, as if Marilla had just conferred a
tremendous favor, “I’ll make out the menu this very night.”

“You’d better not try to put on too much style,” warned
Marilla, a little alarmed by the high-flown sound of ‘menu.’
“You’ll likely come to grief if you do.”

“Oh, I’m not going to put on any ‘style,’ if you mean
trying to do or have things we don’t usually have on festal
occasions,” assured Anne. “That would be affectation, and, although
I know I haven’t as much sense and steadiness as a girl of seventeen and
a schoolteacher ought to have, I’m not so silly as that. But I
want to have everything as nice and dainty as possible. Davy-boy, don’t
leave those peapods on the back stairs . . . someone might slip on them.
I’ll have a light soup to begin with . . . you know I can make lovely
cream-of-onion soup . . . and then a couple of roast fowls. I’ll have the
two white roosters. I have real affection for those roosters and they’ve
been pets ever since the gray hen hatched out just the two of them . . . little
balls of yellow down. But I know they would have to be sacrificed sometime, and
surely there couldn’t be a worthier occasion than this. But oh, Marilla,
I cannot kill them . . . not even for Mrs. Morgan’s sake.
I’ll have to ask John Henry Carter to come over and do it for me.”

“I’ll do it,” volunteered Davy, “if Marilla’ll
hold them by the legs, ’cause I guess it’d take both my hands to
manage the axe. It’s awful jolly fun to see them hopping about after
their heads are cut off.”

“Then I’ll have peas and beans and creamed potatoes and a lettuce
salad, for vegetables,” resumed Anne, “and for dessert, lemon pie
with whipped cream, and coffee and cheese and lady fingers. I’ll make the
pies and lady fingers tomorrow and do up my white muslin dress. And I must tell
Diana tonight, for she’ll want to do up hers. Mrs. Morgan’s
heroines are nearly always dressed in white muslin, and Diana and I have always
resolved that that was what we would wear if we ever met her. It will be such a
delicate compliment, don’t you think? Davy, dear, you mustn’t poke
peapods into the cracks of the floor. I must ask Mr. and Mrs. Allan and Miss
Stacy to dinner, too, for they’re all very anxious to meet Mrs. Morgan.
It’s so fortunate she’s coming while Miss Stacy is here. Davy dear,
don’t sail the peapods in the water bucket . . . go out to the trough.
Oh, I do hope it will be fine Thursday, and I think it will, for Uncle Abe said
last night when he called at Mr. Harrison’s, that it was going to rain
most of this week.”

“That’s a good sign,” agreed Marilla.

Anne ran across to Orchard Slope that evening to tell the news to Diana, who
was also very much excited over it, and they discussed the matter in the
hammock swung under the big willow in the Barry garden.

“Oh, Anne, mayn’t I help you cook the dinner?” implored
Diana. “You know I can make splendid lettuce salad.”

“Indeed you, may” said Anne unselfishly. “And I shall want
you to help me decorate too. I mean to have the parlor simply a bower of
blossoms . . . and the dining table is to be adorned with wild roses. Oh, I do
hope everything will go smoothly. Mrs. Morgan’s heroines never get
into scrapes or are taken at a disadvantage, and they are always so
selfpossessed and such good housekeepers. They seem to be born good
housekeepers. You remember that Gertrude in ‘Edgewood Days’
kept house for her father when she was only eight years old. When I was eight
years old I hardly knew how to do a thing except bring up children. Mrs. Morgan
must be an authority on girls when she has written so much about them, and I do
want her to have a good opinion of us. I’ve imagined it all out a dozen
different ways . . . what she’ll look like, and what she’ll say,
and what I’ll say. And I’m so anxious about my nose. There are
seven freckles on it, as you can see. They came at the A.V.I S. picnic, when I
went around in the sun without my hat. I suppose it’s ungrateful of me to
worry over them, when I should be thankful they’re not spread all over my
face as they once were; but I do wish they hadn’t come . . . all Mrs.
Morgan’s heroines have such perfect complexions. I can’t recall a
freckled one among them.”

“Yours are not very noticeable,” comforted Diana. “Try a
little lemon juice on them tonight.”

The next day Anne made her pies and lady fingers, did up her muslin dress, and
swept and dusted every room in the house . . . a quite unnecessary proceeding,
for Green Gables was, as usual, in the apple pie order dear to Marilla’s
heart. But Anne felt that a fleck of dust would be a desecration in a house
that was to be honored by a visit from Charlotte E. Morgan. She even cleaned
out the “catch-all” closet under the stairs, although there was not
the remotest possibility of Mrs. Morgan’s seeing its interior.

“But I want to feel that it is in perfect order, even if she
isn’t to see it,” Anne told Marilla. “You know, in her book
‘Golden Keys,’ she makes her two heroines Alice and
Louisa take for their motto that verse of Longfellow’s,

‘In the elder days of art
    Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part,
    For the gods see everywhere,’

and so they always kept their cellar stairs scrubbed and never forgot to sweep
under the beds. I should have a guilty conscience if I thought this closet was
in disorder when Mrs. Morgan was in the house. Ever since we read ‘Golden
Keys,’ last April, Diana and I have taken that verse for our motto
too.”

That night John Henry Carter and Davy between them contrived to execute the two
white roosters, and Anne dressed them, the usually distasteful task glorified
in her eyes by the destination of the plump birds.

“I don’t like picking fowls,” she told Marilla, “but
isn’t it fortunate we don’t have to put our souls into what our
hands may be doing? I’ve been picking chickens with my hands but in
imagination I’ve been roaming the Milky Way.”

“I thought you’d scattered more feathers over the floor than
usual,” remarked Marilla.

Then Anne put Davy to bed and made him promise that he would behave perfectly
the next day.

“If I’m as good as good can be all day tomorrow will you let me be
just as bad as I like all the next day?” asked Davy.

“I couldn’t do that,” said Anne discreetly, “but
I’ll take you and Dora for a row in the flat right to the bottom of the
pond, and we’ll go ashore on the sandhills and have a picnic.”

“It’s a bargain,” said Davy. “I’ll be good, you
bet. I meant to go over to Mr. Harrison’s and fire peas from my new
popgun at Ginger but another day’ll do as well. I espect it will be just
like Sunday, but a picnic at the shore’ll make up for that.”

XVII
A Chapter of Accidents

Anne woke three times in the night and made pilgrimages to her window to make
sure that Uncle Abe’s prediction was not coming true. Finally the morning
dawned pearly and lustrous in a sky full of silver sheen and radiance, and the
wonderful day had arrived.

Diana appeared soon after breakfast, with a basket of flowers over one arm and
her muslin dress over the other . . . for it would not do to don it
until all the dinner preparations were completed. Meanwhile she wore her
afternoon pink print and a lawn apron fearfully and wonderfully ruffled and
frilled; and very neat and pretty and rosy she was.

“You look simply sweet,” said Anne admiringly.

Diana sighed.

“But I’ve had to let out every one of my dresses again. I
weigh four pounds more than I did in July. Anne, where will this end?
Mrs. Morgan’s heroines are all tall and slender.”

“Well, let’s forget our troubles and think of our mercies,”
said Anne gaily. “Mrs. Allan says that whenever we think of anything that
is a trial to us we should also think of something nice that we can set over
against it. If you are slightly too plump you’ve got the dearest dimples;
and if I have a freckled nose the shape of it is all right. Do you think
the lemon juice did any good?”

“Yes, I really think it did,” said Diana critically; and, much
elated, Anne led the way to the garden, which was full of airy shadows and
wavering golden lights.

“We’ll decorate the parlor first. We have plenty of time, for
Priscilla said they’d be here about twelve or half past at the latest, so
we’ll have dinner at one.”

There may have been two happier and more excited girls somewhere in Canada or
the United States at that moment, but I doubt it. Every snip of the scissors,
as rose and peony and bluebell fell, seemed to chirp, “Mrs. Morgan is
coming today.” Anne wondered how Mr. Harrison could go on placidly
mowing hay in the field across the lane, just as if nothing were going to
happen.

The parlor at Green Gables was a rather severe and gloomy apartment, with rigid
horsehair furniture, stiff lace curtains, and white antimacassars that were
always laid at a perfectly correct angle, except at such times as they clung to
unfortunate people’s buttons. Even Anne had never been able to infuse
much grace into it, for Marilla would not permit any alterations. But it is
wonderful what flowers can accomplish if you give them a fair chance; when Anne
and Diana finished with the room you would not have recognized it.

A great blue bowlful of snowballs overflowed on the polished table. The shining
black mantelpiece was heaped with roses and ferns. Every shelf of the what-not
held a sheaf of bluebells; the dark corners on either side of the grate were
lighted up with jars full of glowing crimson peonies, and the grate itself was
aflame with yellow poppies. All this splendor and color, mingled with the
sunshine falling through the honeysuckle vines at the windows in a leafy riot
of dancing shadows over walls and floor, made of the usually dismal little room
the veritable “bower” of Anne’s imagination, and even
extorted a tribute of admiration from Marilla, who came in to criticize and
remained to praise.

“Now, we must set the table,” said Anne, in the tone of a priestess
about to perform some sacred rite in honor of a divinity. “We’ll
have a big vaseful of wild roses in the center and one single rose in front of
everybody’s plate—and a special bouquet of rosebuds only by Mrs.
Morgan’s—an allusion to ‘The Rosebud Garden’ you
know.”

The table was set in the sitting room, with Marilla’s finest linen and
the best china, glass, and silver. You may be perfectly certain that every
article placed on it was polished or scoured to the highest possible perfection
of gloss and glitter.

Then the girls tripped out to the kitchen, which was filled with appetizing
odors emanating from the oven, where the chickens were already sizzling
splendidly. Anne prepared the potatoes and Diana got the peas and beans ready.
Then, while Diana shut herself into the pantry to compound the lettuce salad,
Anne, whose cheeks were already beginning to glow crimson, as much with
excitement as from the heat of the fire, prepared the bread sauce for the
chickens, minced her onions for the soup, and finally whipped the cream for her
lemon pies.

And what about Davy all this time? Was he redeeming his promise to be good? He
was, indeed. To be sure, he insisted on remaining in the kitchen, for his
curiosity wanted to see all that went on. But as he sat quietly in a corner,
busily engaged in untying the knots in a piece of herring net he had brought
home from his last trip to the shore, nobody objected to this.

At half past eleven the lettuce salad was made, the golden circles of the pies
were heaped with whipped cream, and everything was sizzling and bubbling that
ought to sizzle and bubble.

“We’d better go and dress now,” said Anne, “for they
may be here by twelve. We must have dinner at sharp one, for the soup must be
served as soon as it’s done.”

Serious indeed were the toilet rites presently performed in the east gable.
Anne peered anxiously at her nose and rejoiced to see that its freckles were
not at all prominent, thanks either to the lemon juice or to the unusual flush
on her cheeks. When they were ready they looked quite as sweet and trim and
girlish as ever did any of “Mrs. Morgan’s heroines.”

“I do hope I’ll be able to say something once in a while, and not
sit like a mute,” said Diana anxiously. “All Mrs. Morgan’s
heroines converse so beautifully. But I’m afraid I’ll be
tongue-tied and stupid. And I’ll be sure to say ‘I seen.’ I
haven’t often said it since Miss Stacy taught here; but in moments of
excitement it’s sure to pop out. Anne, if I were to say ‘I
seen’ before Mrs. Morgan I’d die of mortification. And it would be
almost as bad to have nothing to say.”

“I’m nervous about a good many things,” said Anne, “but
I don’t think there is much fear that I won’t be able to
talk.”

And, to do her justice, there wasn’t.

Anne shrouded her muslin glories in a big apron and went down to concoct her
soup. Marilla had dressed herself and the twins, and looked more excited than
she had ever been known to look before. At half past twelve the Allans and Miss
Stacy came. Everything was going well but Anne was beginning to feel nervous.
It was surely time for Priscilla and Mrs. Morgan to arrive. She made frequent
trips to the gate and looked as anxiously down the lane as ever her namesake in
the Bluebeard story peered from the tower casement.

“Suppose they don’t come at all?” she said piteously.

“Don’t suppose it. It would be too mean,” said Diana, who,
however, was beginning to have uncomfortable misgivings on the subject.

“Anne,” said Marilla, coming out from the parlor, “Miss Stacy
wants to see Miss Barry’s willowware platter.”

Anne hastened to the sitting room closet to get the platter. She had, in
accordance with her promise to Mrs. Lynde, written to Miss Barry of
Charlottetown, asking for the loan of it. Miss Barry was an old friend of
Anne’s, and she promptly sent the platter out, with a letter exhorting
Anne to be very careful of it, for she had paid twenty dollars for it. The
platter had served its purpose at the Aid bazaar and had then been returned to
the Green Gables closet, for Anne would not trust anybody but herself to take
it back to town.

She carried the platter carefully to the front door where her guests were
enjoying the cool breeze that blew up from the brook. It was examined and
admired; then, just as Anne had taken it back into her own hands, a terrific
crash and clatter sounded from the kitchen pantry. Marilla, Diana, and Anne
fled out, the latter pausing only long enough to set the precious platter
hastily down on the second step of the stairs.

When they reached the pantry a truly harrowing spectacle met their eyes . . . a
guilty looking small boy scrambling down from the table, with his clean print
blouse liberally plastered with yellow filling, and on the table the shattered
remnants of what had been two brave, becreamed lemon pies.

Davy had finished ravelling out his herring net and had wound the twine into a
ball. Then he had gone into the pantry to put it up on the shelf above the
table, where he already kept a score or so of similar balls, which, so far as
could be discovered, served no useful purpose save to yield the joy of
possession. Davy had to climb on the table and reach over to the shelf at a
dangerous angle . . . something he had been forbidden by Marilla to do, as he
had come to grief once before in the experiment. The result in this instance
was disastrous. Davy slipped and came sprawling squarely down on the lemon
pies. His clean blouse was ruined for that time and the pies for all time. It
is, however, an ill wind that blows nobody good, and the pig was eventually the
gainer by Davy’s mischance.

“Davy Keith,” said Marilla, shaking him by the shoulder,
“didn’t I forbid you to climb up on that table again? Didn’t
I?”

“I forgot,” whimpered Davy. “You’ve told me not to do
such an awful lot of things that I can’t remember them all.”

“Well, you march upstairs and stay there till after dinner. Perhaps
you’ll get them sorted out in your memory by that time. No, Anne, never
you mind interceding for him. I’m not punishing him because he spoiled
your pies . . . that was an accident. I’m punishing him for his
disobedience. Go, Davy, I say.”

“Ain’t I to have any dinner?” wailed Davy.

“You can come down after dinner is over and have yours in the
kitchen.”

“Oh, all right,” said Davy, somewhat comforted. “I know
Anne’ll save some nice bones for me, won’t you, Anne? ’Cause
you know I didn’t mean to fall on the pies. Say, Anne, since they
are spoiled can’t I take some of the pieces upstairs with
me?”

“No, no lemon pie for you, Master Davy,” said Marilla, pushing him
toward the hall.

“What shall we do for dessert?” asked Anne, looking regretfully at
the wreck and ruin.

“Get out a crock of strawberry preserves,” said Marilla
consolingly. “There’s plenty of whipped cream left in the bowl for
it.”

One o’clock came . . . but no Priscilla or Mrs. Morgan. Anne was in an
agony. Everything was done to a turn and the soup was just what soup should be,
but couldn’t be depended on to remain so for any length of time.

“I don’t believe they’re coming after all,” said
Marilla crossly.

Anne and Diana sought comfort in each other’s eyes.

At half past one Marilla again emerged from the parlor.

“Girls, we must have dinner. Everybody is hungry and it’s no
use waiting any longer. Priscilla and Mrs. Morgan are not coming, that’s
plain, and nothing is being improved by waiting.”

Anne and Diana set about lifting the dinner, with all the zest gone out of the
performance.

“I don’t believe I’ll be able to eat a mouthful,” said
Diana dolefully.

“Nor I. But I hope everything will be nice for Miss Stacy’s and Mr.
and Mrs. Allan’s sakes,” said Anne listlessly.

When Diana dished the peas she tasted them and a very peculiar expression
crossed her face.

“Anne, did you put sugar in these peas?”

“Yes,” said Anne, mashing the potatoes with the air of one expected
to do her duty. “I put a spoonful of sugar in. We always do. Don’t
you like it?”

“But I put a spoonful in too, when I set them on the stove,”
said Diana.

Anne dropped her masher and tasted the peas also. Then she made a grimace.

“How awful! I never dreamed you had put sugar in, because I knew your
mother never does. I happened to think of it, for a wonder . . . I’m
always forgetting it . . . so I popped a spoonful in.”

“It’s a case of too many cooks, I guess,” said Marilla, who
had listened to this dialogue with a rather guilty expression. “I
didn’t think you’d remember about the sugar, Anne, for I’m
perfectly certain you never did before . . . so I put in a
spoonful.”

The guests in the parlor heard peal after peal of laughter from the kitchen,
but they never knew what the fun was about. There were no green peas on the
dinner table that day, however.

“Well,” said Anne, sobering down again with a sigh of recollection,
“we have the salad anyhow and I don’t think anything has happened
to the beans. Let’s carry the things in and get it over.”

It cannot be said that that dinner was a notable success socially. The Allans
and Miss Stacy exerted themselves to save the situation and Marilla’s
customary placidity was not noticeably ruffled. But Anne and Diana, between
their disappointment and the reaction from their excitement of the forenoon,
could neither talk nor eat. Anne tried heroically to bear her part in the
conversation for the sake of her guests; but all the sparkle had been quenched
in her for the time being, and, in spite of her love for the Allans and Miss
Stacy, she couldn’t help thinking how nice it would be when everybody had
gone home and she could bury her weariness and disappointment in the pillows of
the east gable.

There is an old proverb that really seems at times to be inspired . . .
“it never rains but it pours.” The measure of that day’s
tribulations was not yet full. Just as Mr. Allan had finished returning thanks
there arose a strange, ominous sound on the stairs, as of some hard, heavy
object bounding from step to step, finishing up with a grand smash at the
bottom. Everybody ran out into the hall. Anne gave a shriek of dismay.

At the bottom of the stairs lay a big pink conch shell amid the fragments of
what had been Miss Barry’s platter; and at the top of the stairs knelt a
terrified Davy, gazing down with wide-open eyes at the havoc.

“Davy,” said Marilla ominously, “did you throw that conch
down on purpose?”

“No, I never did,” whimpered Davy. “I was just kneeling here,
quiet as quiet, to watch you folks through the bannisters, and my foot struck
that old thing and pushed it off . . . and I’m awful hungry . . . and I
do wish you’d lick a fellow and have done with it, instead of always
sending him upstairs to miss all the fun.”

“Don’t blame Davy,” said Anne, gathering up the fragments
with trembling fingers. “It was my fault. I set that platter there and
forgot all about it. I am properly punished for my carelessness; but oh, what
will Miss Barry say?”

“Well, you know she only bought it, so it isn’t the same as if it
was an heirloom,” said Diana, trying to console.

The guests went away soon after, feeling that it was the most tactful thing to
do, and Anne and Diana washed the dishes, talking less than they had ever been
known to do before. Then Diana went home with a headache and Anne went with
another to the east gable, where she stayed until Marilla came home from the
post office at sunset, with a letter from Priscilla, written the day before.
Mrs. Morgan had sprained her ankle so severely that she could not leave her
room.

“And oh, Anne dear,” wrote Priscilla, “I’m so sorry,
but I’m afraid we won’t get up to Green Gables at all now, for by
the time Aunty’s ankle is well she will have to go back to Toronto. She
has to be there by a certain date.”

“Well,” sighed Anne, laying the letter down on the red sandstone
step of the back porch, where she was sitting, while the twilight rained down
out of a dappled sky, “I always thought it was too good to be true that
Mrs. Morgan should really come. But there . . . that speech sounds as
pessimistic as Miss Eliza Andrews and I’m ashamed of making it. After
all, it was not too good to be true . . . things just as good and far
better are coming true for me all the time. And I suppose the events of today
have a funny side too. Perhaps when Diana and I are old and gray we shall be
able to laugh over them. But I feel that I can’t expect to do it before
then, for it has truly been a bitter disappointment.”

“You’ll probably have a good many more and worse disappointments
than that before you get through life,” said Marilla, who honestly
thought she was making a comforting speech. “It seems to me, Anne, that
you are never going to outgrow your fashion of setting your heart so on things
and then crashing down into despair because you don’t get them.”

“I know I’m too much inclined that, way” agreed Anne
ruefully. “When I think something nice is going to happen I seem to fly
right up on the wings of anticipation; and then the first thing I realize I
drop down to earth with a thud. But really, Marilla, the flying part is
glorious as long as it lasts . . . it’s like soaring through a sunset. I
think it almost pays for the thud.”

“Well, maybe it does,” admitted Marilla. “I’d rather
walk calmly along and do without both flying and thud. But everybody has her
own way of living . . . I used to think there was only one right way . . . but
since I’ve had you and the twins to bring up I don’t feel so sure
of it. What are you going to do about Miss Barry’s platter?”

“Pay her back the twenty dollars she paid for it, I suppose. I’m so
thankful it wasn’t a cherished heirloom because then no money could
replace it.”

“Maybe you could find one like it somewhere and buy it for her.”

“I’m afraid not. Platters as old as that are very scarce. Mrs.
Lynde couldn’t find one anywhere for the supper. I only wish I could, for
of course Miss Barry would just as soon have one platter as another, if both
were equally old and genuine. Marilla, look at that big star over Mr.
Harrison’s maple grove, with all that holy hush of silvery sky about it.
It gives me a feeling that is like a prayer. After all, when one can see stars
and skies like that, little disappointments and accidents can’t matter so
much, can they?”

“Where’s Davy?” said Marilla, with an indifferent glance at
the star.

“In bed. I’ve promised to take him and Dora to the shore for a
picnic tomorrow. Of course, the original agreement was that he must be good.
But he tried to be good . . . and I hadn’t the heart to disappoint
him.”

“You’ll drown yourself or the twins, rowing about the pond in that
flat,” grumbled Marilla. “I’ve lived here for sixty years and
I’ve never been on the pond yet.”

“Well, it’s never too late to mend,” said Anne roguishly.
“Suppose you come with us tomorrow. We’ll shut Green Gables up and
spend the whole day at the shore, daffing the world aside.”

“No, thank you,” said Marilla, with indignant emphasis.
“I’d be a nice sight, wouldn’t I, rowing down the pond in a
flat? I think I hear Rachel pronouncing on it. There’s Mr. Harrison
driving away somewhere. Do you suppose there is any truth in the gossip that
Mr. Harrison is going to see Isabella Andrews?”

“No, I’m sure there isn’t. He just called there one evening
on business with Mr. Harmon Andrews and Mrs. Lynde saw him and said she knew he
was courting because he had a white collar on. I don’t believe Mr.
Harrison will ever marry. He seems to have a prejudice against marriage.”

“Well, you can never tell about those old bachelors. And if he had a
white collar on I’d agree with Rachel that it looks suspicious, for
I’m sure he never was seen with one before.”

“I think he only put it on because he wanted to conclude a business deal
with Harmon Andrews,” said Anne. “I’ve heard him say
that’s the only time a man needs to be particular about his appearance,
because if he looks prosperous the party of the second part won’t be so
likely to try to cheat him. I really feel sorry for Mr. Harrison; I don’t
believe he feels satisfied with his life. It must be very lonely to have no one
to care about except a parrot, don’t you think? But I notice Mr. Harrison
doesn’t like to be pitied. Nobody does, I imagine.”

“There’s Gilbert coming up the lane,” said Marilla. “If
he wants you to go for a row on the pond mind you put on your coat and rubbers.
There’s a heavy dew tonight.”

XVIII
An Adventure on the Tory Road

“Anne,” said Davy, sitting up in bed and propping his chin on his
hands, “Anne, where is sleep? People go to sleep every night, and of
course I know it’s the place where I do the things I dream, but I want to
know where it is and how I get there and back without knowing anything
about it . . . and in my nighty too. Where is it?”

Anne was kneeling at the west gable window watching the sunset sky that was
like a great flower with petals of crocus and a heart of fiery yellow. She
turned her head at Davy’s question and answered dreamily,

“‘Over the mountains of the moon,
Down the valley of the shadow.’”

Paul Irving would have known the meaning of this, or made a meaning out of it
for himself, if he didn’t; but practical Davy, who, as Anne often
despairingly remarked, hadn’t a particle of imagination, was only puzzled
and disgusted.

“Anne, I believe you’re just talking nonsense.”

“Of course, I was, dear boy. Don’t you know that it is only very
foolish folk who talk sense all the time?”

“Well, I think you might give a sensible answer when I ask a sensible
question,” said Davy in an injured tone.

“Oh, you are too little to understand,” said Anne. But she felt
rather ashamed of saying it; for had she not, in keen remembrance of many
similar snubs administered in her own early years, solemnly vowed that she
would never tell any child it was too little to understand? Yet here she was
doing it . . . so wide sometimes is the gulf between theory and practice.

“Well, I’m doing my best to grow,” said Davy, “but
it’s a thing you can’t hurry much. If Marilla wasn’t so
stingy with her jam I believe I’d grow a lot faster.”

“Marilla is not stingy, Davy,” said Anne severely. “It is
very ungrateful of you to say such a thing.”

“There’s another word that means the same thing and sounds a lot
better, but I don’t just remember it,” said Davy, frowning
intently. “I heard Marilla say she was it, herself, the other day.”

“If you mean economical, it’s a very different thing
from being stingy. It is an excellent trait in a person if she is economical.
If Marilla had been stingy she wouldn’t have taken you and Dora when your
mother died. Would you have liked to live with Mrs. Wiggins?”

“You just bet I wouldn’t!” Davy was emphatic on that point.
“Nor I don’t want to go out to Uncle Richard neither. I’d far
rather live here, even if Marilla is that long-tailed word when it comes to
jam, ’cause you’re here, Anne. Say, Anne, won’t you
tell me a story ’fore I go to sleep? I don’t want a fairy story.
They’re all right for girls, I s’pose, but I want something
exciting . . . lots of killing and shooting in it, and a house on fire, and
in’trusting things like that.”

Fortunately for Anne, Marilla called out at this moment from her room.

“Anne, Diana’s signaling at a great rate. You’d better see
what she wants.”

Anne ran to the east gable and saw flashes of light coming through the twilight
from Diana’s window in groups of five, which meant, according to their
old childish code, “Come over at once for I have something important to
reveal.” Anne threw her white shawl over her head and hastened through
the Haunted Wood and across Mr. Bell’s pasture corner to Orchard Slope.

“I’ve good news for you, Anne,” said Diana. “Mother and
I have just got home from Carmody, and I saw Mary Sentner from Spencer vale in
Mr. Blair’s store. She says the old Copp girls on the Tory Road have a
willow-ware platter and she thinks it’s exactly like the one we had at
the supper. She says they’ll likely sell it, for Martha Copp has never
been known to keep anything she could sell; but if they won’t
there’s a platter at Wesley Keyson’s at Spencervale and she knows
they’d sell it, but she isn’t sure it’s just the same kind as
Aunt Josephine’s.”

“I’ll go right over to Spencervale after it tomorrow,” said
Anne resolutely, “and you must come with me. It will be such a weight off
my mind, for I have to go to town day after tomorrow and how can I face your
Aunt Josephine without a willow-ware platter? It would be even worse than the
time I had to confess about jumping on the spare room bed.”

Both girls laughed over the old memory . . . concerning which, if any of my
readers are ignorant and curious, I must refer them to Anne’s earlier
history.

The next afternoon the girls fared forth on their platter hunting expedition.
It was ten miles to Spencervale and the day was not especially pleasant for
traveling. It was very warm and windless, and the dust on the road was such as
might have been expected after six weeks of dry weather.

“Oh, I do wish it would rain soon,” sighed Anne. “Everything
is so parched up. The poor fields just seem pitiful to me and the trees seem to
be stretching out their hands pleading for rain. As for my garden, it hurts me
every time I go into it. I suppose I shouldn’t complain about a garden
when the farmers’ crops are suffering so. Mr. Harrison says his pastures
are so scorched up that his poor cows can hardly get a bite to eat and he feels
guilty of cruelty to animals every time he meets their eyes.”

After a wearisome drive the girls reached Spencervale and turned down the
“Tory” Road . . . a green, solitary highway where the strips of
grass between the wheel tracks bore evidence to lack of travel. Along most of
its extent it was lined with thick-set young spruces crowding down to the
roadway, with here and there a break where the back field of a Spencervale farm
came out to the fence or an expanse of stumps was aflame with fireweed and
goldenrod.

“Why is it called the Tory Road?” asked Anne.

“Mr. Allan says it is on the principle of calling a place a grove because
there are no trees in it,” said Diana, “for nobody lives along the
road except the Copp girls and old Martin Bovyer at the further end, who is a
Liberal. The Tory government ran the road through when they were in power just
to show they were doing something.”

Diana’s father was a Liberal, for which reason she and Anne never
discussed politics. Green Gables folk had always been Conservatives.

Finally the girls came to the old Copp homestead . . . a place of such
exceeding external neatness that even Green Gables would have suffered by
contrast. The house was a very old-fashioned one, situated on a slope, which
fact had necessitated the building of a stone basement under one end. The house
and out-buildings were all whitewashed to a condition of blinding perfection
and not a weed was visible in the prim kitchen garden surrounded by its white
paling.

“The shades are all down,” said Diana ruefully. “I believe
that nobody is home.”

This proved to be the case. The girls looked at each other in perplexity.

“I don’t know what to do,” said Anne. “If I were sure
the platter was the right kind I would not mind waiting until they came home.
But if it isn’t it may be too late to go to Wesley Keyson’s
afterward.”

Diana looked at a certain little square window over the basement.

“That is the pantry window, I feel sure,” she said, “because
this house is just like Uncle Charles’ at Newbridge, and that is their
pantry window. The shade isn’t down, so if we climbed up on the roof of
that little house we could look into the pantry and might be able to see the
platter. Do you think it would be any harm?”

“No, I don’t think so,” decided Anne, after due reflection,
“since our motive is not idle curiosity.”

This important point of ethics being settled, Anne prepared to mount the
aforesaid “little house,” a construction of laths, with a peaked
roof, which had in times past served as a habitation for ducks. The Copp girls
had given up keeping ducks . . . “because they were such untidy
birds”. . . and the house had not been in use for some years, save as an
abode of correction for setting hens. Although scrupulously whitewashed it had
become somewhat shaky, and Anne felt rather dubious as she scrambled up from
the vantage point of a keg placed on a box.

“I’m afraid it won’t bear my weight,” she said as she
gingerly stepped on the roof.

“Lean on the window sill,” advised Diana, and Anne accordingly
leaned. Much to her delight, she saw, as she peered through the pane, a
willow-ware platter, exactly such as she was in quest of, on the shelf in front
of the window. So much she saw before the catastrophe came. In her joy Anne
forgot the precarious nature of her footing, incautiously ceased to lean on the
window sill, gave an impulsive little hop of pleasure . . . and the next moment
she had crashed through the roof up to her armpits, and there she hung, quite
unable to extricate herself. Diana dashed into the duck house and, seizing her
unfortunate friend by the waist, tried to draw her down.

“Ow . . . don’t,” shrieked poor Anne. “There are some
long splinters sticking into me. See if you can put something under my feet . .
. then perhaps I can draw myself up.”

Diana hastily dragged in the previously mentioned keg and Anne found that it
was just sufficiently high to furnish a secure resting place for her feet. But
she could not release herself.

“Could I pull you out if I crawled up?” suggested Diana.

Anne shook her head hopelessly.

“No . . . the splinters hurt too badly. If you can find an axe you might
chop me out, though. Oh dear, I do really begin to believe that I was
born under an ill-omened star.”

Diana searched faithfully but no axe was to be found.

“I’ll have to go for help,” she said, returning to the
prisoner.

“No, indeed, you won’t,” said Anne vehemently. “If you
do the story of this will get out everywhere and I shall be ashamed to show my
face. No, we must just wait until the Copp girls come home and bind them to
secrecy. They’ll know where the axe is and get me out. I’m not
uncomfortable, as long as I keep perfectly still . . . not uncomfortable in
body I mean. I wonder what the Copp girls value this house at. I shall
have to pay for the damage I’ve done, but I wouldn’t mind that if I
were only sure they would understand my motive in peeping in at their pantry
window. My sole comfort is that the platter is just the kind I want and if Miss
Copp will only sell it to me I shall be resigned to what has happened.”

“What if the Copp girls don’t come home until after night . . . or
till tomorrow?” suggested Diana.

“If they’re not back by sunset you’ll have to go for other
assistance, I suppose,” said Anne reluctantly, “but you
mustn’t go until you really have to. Oh dear, this is a dreadful
predicament. I wouldn’t mind my misfortunes so much if they were
romantic, as Mrs. Morgan’s heroines’ always are, but they are
always just simply ridiculous. Fancy what the Copp girls will think when they
drive into their yard and see a girl’s head and shoulders sticking out of
the roof of one of their outhouses. Listen . . . is that a wagon? No, Diana, I
believe it is thunder.”

Thunder it was undoubtedly, and Diana, having made a hasty pilgrimage around
the house, returned to announce that a very black cloud was rising rapidly in
the northwest.

“I believe we’re going to have a heavy thunder-shower,” she
exclaimed in dismay, “Oh, Anne, what will we do?”

“We must prepare for it,” said Anne tranquilly. A thunderstorm
seemed a trifle in comparison with what had already happened.
“You’d better drive the horse and buggy into that open shed.
Fortunately my parasol is in the buggy. Here . . . take my hat with you.
Marilla told me I was a goose to put on my best hat to come to the Tory Road
and she was right, as she always is.”

Diana untied the pony and drove into the shed, just as the first heavy drops of
rain fell. There she sat and watched the resulting downpour, which was so thick
and heavy that she could hardly see Anne through it, holding the parasol
bravely over her bare head. There was not a great deal of thunder, but for the
best part of an hour the rain came merrily down. Occasionally Anne slanted back
her parasol and waved an encouraging hand to her friend; But conversation at
that distance was quite out of the question. Finally the rain ceased, the sun
came out, and Diana ventured across the puddles of the yard.

“Did you get very wet?” she asked anxiously.

“Oh, no,” returned Anne cheerfully. “My head and shoulders
are quite dry and my skirt is only a little damp where the rain beat through
the laths. Don’t pity me, Diana, for I haven’t minded it at all. I
kept thinking how much good the rain will do and how glad my garden must be for
it, and imagining what the flowers and buds would think when the drops began to
fall. I imagined out a most interesting dialogue between the asters and the
sweet peas and the wild canaries in the lilac bush and the guardian spirit of
the garden. When I go home I mean to write it down. I wish I had a pencil and
paper to do it now, because I daresay I’ll forget the best parts before I
reach home.”

Diana the faithful had a pencil and discovered a sheet of wrapping paper in the
box of the buggy. Anne folded up her dripping parasol, put on her hat, spread
the wrapping paper on a shingle Diana handed up, and wrote out her garden idyl
under conditions that could hardly be considered as favorable to literature.
Nevertheless, the result was quite pretty, and Diana was
“enraptured” when Anne read it to her.

“Oh, Anne, it’s sweet . . . just sweet. Do send it to the
Canadian Woman.”

Anne shook her head.

“Oh, no, it wouldn’t be suitable at all. There is no plot in
it, you see. It’s just a string of fancies. I like writing such things,
but of course nothing of the sort would ever do for publication, for editors
insist on plots, so Priscilla says. Oh, there’s Miss Sarah Copp now.
Please, Diana, go and explain.”

Miss Sarah Copp was a small person, garbed in shabby black, with a hat chosen
less for vain adornment than for qualities that would wear well. She looked as
amazed as might be expected on seeing the curious tableau in her yard, but when
she heard Diana’s explanation she was all sympathy. She hurriedly
unlocked the back door, produced the axe, and with a few skillfull blows set
Anne free. The latter, somewhat tired and stiff, ducked down into the interior
of her prison and thankfully emerged into liberty once more.

“Miss Copp,” she said earnestly. “I assure you I looked into
your pantry window only to discover if you had a willow-ware platter. I
didn’t see anything else—I didn’t look for anything
else.”

“Bless you, that’s all right,” said Miss Sarah amiably.
“You needn’t worry—there’s no harm done. Thank
goodness, we Copps keep our pantries presentable at all times and don’t
care who sees into them. As for that old duckhouse, I’m glad it’s
smashed, for maybe now Martha will agree to having it taken down. She never
would before for fear it might come in handy sometime and I’ve had to
whitewash it every spring. But you might as well argue with a post as with
Martha. She went to town today—I drove her to the station. And you want
to buy my platter. Well, what will you give for it?”

“Twenty dollars,” said Anne, who was never meant to match business
wits with a Copp, or she would not have offered her price at the start.

“Well, I’ll see,” said Miss Sarah cautiously. “That
platter is mine fortunately, or I’d never dare to sell it when Martha
wasn’t here. As it is, I daresay she’ll raise a fuss.
Martha’s the boss of this establishment I can tell you. I’m getting
awful tired of living under another woman’s thumb. But come in, come in.
You must be real tired and hungry. I’ll do the best I can for you in the
way of tea but I warn you not to expect anything but bread and butter and some
cowcumbers. Martha locked up all the cake and cheese and preserves afore she
went. She always does, because she says I’m too extravagant with them if
company comes.”

The girls were hungry enough to do justice to any fare, and they enjoyed Miss
Sarah’s excellent bread and butter and “cowcumbers”
thoroughly. When the meal was over Miss Sarah said,

“I don’t know as I mind selling the platter. But it’s worth
twenty-five dollars. It’s a very old platter.”

Diana gave Anne’s foot a gentle kick under the table, meaning,
“Don’t agree—she’ll let it go for twenty if you hold
out.” But Anne was not minded to take any chances in regard to that
precious platter. She promptly agreed to give twenty-five and Miss Sarah looked
as if she felt sorry she hadn’t asked for thirty.

“Well, I guess you may have it. I want all the money I can scare up just
now. The fact is—” Miss Sarah threw up her head importantly, with a
proud flush on her thin cheeks—“I’m going to be
married—to Luther Wallace. He wanted me twenty years ago. I liked him
real well but he was poor then and father packed him off. I s’pose I
shouldn’t have let him go so meek but I was timid and frightened of
father. Besides, I didn’t know men were so skurse.”

When the girls were safely away, Diana driving and Anne holding the coveted
platter carefully on her lap, the green, rain-freshened solitudes of the Tory
Road were enlivened by ripples of girlish laughter.

“I’ll amuse your Aunt Josephine with the ‘strange eventful
history’ of this afternoon when I go to town tomorrow. We’ve had a
rather trying time but it’s over now. I’ve got the platter, and
that rain has laid the dust beautifully. So ‘all’s well that ends
well.’”

“We’re not home yet,” said Diana rather pessimistically,
“and there’s no telling what may happen before we are. You’re
such a girl to have adventures, Anne.”

“Having adventures comes natural to some people,” said Anne
serenely. “You just have a gift for them or you haven’t.”

XIX
Just a Happy Day

“After all,” Anne had said to Marilla once, “I believe the
nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or
wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little
pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a
string.”

Life at Green Gables was full of just such days, for Anne’s adventures
and misadventures, like those of other people, did not all happen at once, but
were sprinkled over the year, with long stretches of harmless, happy days
between, filled with work and dreams and laughter and lessons. Such a day came
late in August. In the forenoon Anne and Diana rowed the delighted twins down
the pond to the sandshore to pick “sweet grass” and paddle in the
surf, over which the wind was harping an old lyric learned when the world was
young.

In the afternoon Anne walked down to the old Irving place to see Paul. She
found him stretched out on the grassy bank beside the thick fir grove that
sheltered the house on the north, absorbed in a book of fairy tales. He sprang
up radiantly at sight of her.

“Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come, teacher,” he said
eagerly, “because Grandma’s away. You’ll stay and have tea
with me, won’t you? It’s so lonesome to have tea all by oneself.
You know, teacher. I’ve had serious thoughts of asking Young Mary
Joe to sit down and eat her tea with me, but I expect Grandma wouldn’t
approve. She says the French have to be kept in their place. And anyhow,
it’s difficult to talk with Young Mary Joe. She just laughs and says,
‘Well, yous do beat all de kids I ever knowed.’ That isn’t my
idea of conversation.”

“Of course I’ll stay to tea,” said Anne gaily. “I was
dying to be asked. My mouth has been watering for some more of your
grandma’s delicious shortbread ever since I had tea here before.”

Paul looked very sober.

“If it depended on me, teacher,” he said, standing before Anne with
his hands in his pockets and his beautiful little face shadowed with sudden
care, “You should have shortbread with a right good will. But it depends
on Mary Joe. I heard Grandma tell her before she left that she wasn’t to
give me any shortcake because it was too rich for little boys’ stomachs.
But maybe Mary Joe will cut some for you if I promise I won’t eat any.
Let us hope for the best.”

“Yes, let us,” agreed Anne, whom this cheerful philosophy suited
exactly, “and if Mary Joe proves hard-hearted and won’t give me any
shortbread it doesn’t matter in the least, so you are not to worry over
that.”

“You’re sure you won’t mind if she doesn’t?” said
Paul anxiously.

“Perfectly sure, dear heart.”

“Then I won’t worry,” said Paul, with a long breath of
relief, “especially as I really think Mary Joe will listen to reason.
She’s not a naturally unreasonable person, but she has learned by
experience that it doesn’t do to disobey Grandma’s orders. Grandma
is an excellent woman but people must do as she tells them. She was very much
pleased with me this morning because I managed at last to eat all my plateful
of porridge. It was a great effort but I succeeded. Grandma says she thinks
she’ll make a man of me yet. But, teacher, I want to ask you a very
important question. You will answer it truthfully, won’t you?”

“I’ll try,” promised Anne.

“Do you think I’m wrong in my upper story?” asked Paul, as if
his very existence depended on her reply.

“Goodness, no, Paul,” exclaimed Anne in amazement. “Certainly
you’re not. What put such an idea into your head?”

“Mary Joe . . . but she didn’t know I heard her. Mrs. Peter
Sloane’s hired girl, Veronica, came to see Mary Joe last evening and I
heard them talking in the kitchen as I was going through the hall. I heard Mary
Joe say, ‘Dat Paul, he is de queeres’ leetle boy. He talks dat
queer. I tink dere’s someting wrong in his upper story.’ I
couldn’t sleep last night for ever so long, thinking of it, and wondering
if Mary Joe was right. I couldn’t bear to ask Grandma about it somehow,
but I made up my mind I’d ask you. I’m so glad you think I’m
all right in my upper story.”

“Of course you are. Mary Joe is a silly, ignorant girl, and you are never
to worry about anything she says,” said Anne indignantly, secretly
resolving to give Mrs. Irving a discreet hint as to the advisability of
restraining Mary Joe’s tongue.

“Well, that’s a weight off my mind,” said Paul.
“I’m perfectly happy now, teacher, thanks to you. It wouldn’t
be nice to have something wrong in your upper story, would it, teacher? I
suppose the reason Mary Joe imagines I have is because I tell her what I think
about things sometimes.”

“It is a rather dangerous practice,” admitted Anne, out of
the depths of her own experience.

“Well, by and by I’ll tell you the thoughts I told Mary Joe and you
can see for yourself if there’s anything queer in them,” said Paul,
“but I’ll wait till it begins to get dark. That is the time I ache
to tell people things, and when nobody else is handy I just have to tell
Mary Joe. But after this I won’t, if it makes her imagine I’m wrong
in my upper story. I’ll just ache and bear it.”

“And if the ache gets too bad you can come up to Green Gables and tell me
your thoughts,” suggested Anne, with all the gravity that endeared her to
children, who so dearly love to be taken seriously.

“Yes, I will. But I hope Davy won’t be there when I go because he
makes faces at me. I don’t mind very much because he is such a
little boy and I am quite a big one, but still it is not pleasant to have faces
made at you. And Davy makes such terrible ones. Sometimes I am frightened he
will never get his face straightened out again. He makes them at me in church
when I ought to be thinking of sacred things. Dora likes me though, and I like
her, but not so well as I did before she told Minnie May Barry that she meant
to marry me when I grew up. I may marry somebody when I grow up but I’m
far too young to be thinking of it yet, don’t you think, teacher?”

“Rather young,” agreed teacher.

“Speaking of marrying, reminds me of another thing that has been
troubling me of late,” continued Paul. “Mrs. Lynde was down here
one day last week having tea with Grandma, and Grandma made me show her my
little mother’s picture . . . the one father sent me for my birthday
present. I didn’t exactly want to show it to Mrs. Lynde. Mrs. Lynde is a
good, kind woman, but she isn’t the sort of person you want to show your
mother’s picture to. You know, teacher. But of course I obeyed
Grandma. Mrs. Lynde said she was very pretty but kind of actressy looking, and
must have been an awful lot younger than father. Then she said, ‘Some of
these days your pa will be marrying again likely. How will you like to have a
new ma, Master Paul?’ Well, the idea almost took my breath away, teacher,
but I wasn’t going to let Mrs. Lynde see that. I just looked her
straight in the face . . . like this . . . and I said, ‘Mrs. Lynde,
father made a pretty good job of picking out my first mother and I could trust
him to pick out just as good a one the second time.’ And I can
trust him, teacher. But still, I hope, if he ever does give me a new mother,
he’ll ask my opinion about her before it’s too late. There’s
Mary Joe coming to call us to tea. I’ll go and consult with her about the
shortbread.”

As a result of the “consultation,” Mary Joe cut the shortbread and
added a dish of preserves to the bill of fare. Anne poured the tea and she and
Paul had a very merry meal in the dim old sitting room whose windows were open
to the gulf breezes, and they talked so much “nonsense” that Mary
Joe was quite scandalized and told Veronica the next evening that “de
school mees” was as queer as Paul. After tea Paul took Anne up to his
room to show her his mother’s picture, which had been the mysterious
birthday present kept by Mrs. Irving in the bookcase. Paul’s little
low-ceilinged room was a soft whirl of ruddy light from the sun that was
setting over the sea and swinging shadows from the fir trees that grew close to
the square, deep-set window. From out this soft glow and glamor shone a sweet,
girlish face, with tender mother eyes, that was hanging on the wall at the foot
of the bed.

“That’s my little mother,” said Paul with loving pride.
“I got Grandma to hang it there where I’d see it as soon as I
opened my eyes in the morning. I never mind not having the light when I go to
bed now, because it just seems as if my little mother was right here with me.
Father knew just what I would like for a birthday present, although he never
asked me. Isn’t it wonderful how much fathers do know?”

“Your mother was very lovely, Paul, and you look a little like her. But
her eyes and hair are darker than yours.”

“My eyes are the same color as father’s,” said Paul, flying
about the room to heap all available cushions on the window seat, “but
father’s hair is gray. He has lots of it, but it is gray. You see, father
is nearly fifty. That’s ripe old age, isn’t it? But it’s only
outside he’s old. Inside he’s just as young as
anybody. Now, teacher, please sit here; and I’ll sit at your feet. May I
lay my head against your knee? That’s the way my little mother and I used
to sit. Oh, this is real splendid, I think.”

“Now, I want to hear those thoughts which Mary Joe pronounces so
queer,” said Anne, patting the mop of curls at her side. Paul never
needed any coaxing to tell his thoughts . . . at least, to congenial souls.

“I thought them out in the fir grove one night,” he said dreamily.
“Of course I didn’t believe them but I thought them.
You know, teacher. And then I wanted to tell them to somebody and there
was nobody but Mary Joe. Mary Joe was in the pantry setting bread and I sat
down on the bench beside her and I said, ‘Mary Joe, do you know what I
think? I think the evening star is a lighthouse on the land where the fairies
dwell.’ And Mary Joe said, ‘Well, yous are de queer one. Dare
ain’t no such ting as fairies.’ I was very much provoked. Of
course, I knew there are no fairies; but that needn’t prevent my thinking
there is. You know, teacher. But I tried again quite patiently. I said,
‘Well then, Mary Joe, do you know what I think? I think an angel walks
over the world after the sun sets . . . a great, tall, white angel, with
silvery folded wings . . . and sings the flowers and birds to sleep. Children
can hear him if they know how to listen.’ Then Mary Joe held up her hands
all over flour and said, ‘Well, yous are de queer leetle boy. Yous make
me feel scare.’ And she really did looked scared. I went out then and
whispered the rest of my thoughts to the garden. There was a little birch tree
in the garden and it died. Grandma says the salt spray killed it; but I think
the dryad belonging to it was a foolish dryad who wandered away to see the
world and got lost. And the little tree was so lonely it died of a broken
heart.”

“And when the poor, foolish little dryad gets tired of the world and
comes back to her tree her heart will break,” said Anne.

“Yes; but if dryads are foolish they must take the consequences, just as
if they were real people,” said Paul gravely. “Do you know what I
think about the new moon, teacher? I think it is a little golden boat full of
dreams.”

“And when it tips on a cloud some of them spill out and fall into your
sleep.”

“Exactly, teacher. Oh, you do know. And I think the violets are
little snips of the sky that fell down when the angels cut out holes for the
stars to shine through. And the buttercups are made out of old sunshine; and I
think the sweet peas will be butterflies when they go to heaven. Now, teacher,
do you see anything so very queer about those thoughts?”

“No, laddie dear, they are not queer at all; they are strange and
beautiful thoughts for a little boy to think, and so people who couldn’t
think anything of the sort themselves, if they tried for a hundred years, think
them queer. But keep on thinking them, Paul . . . some day you are going to be
a poet, I believe.”

When Anne reached home she found a very different type of boyhood waiting to be
put to bed. Davy was sulky; and when Anne had undressed him he bounced into bed
and buried his face in the pillow.

“Davy, you have forgotten to say your prayers,” said Anne
rebukingly.

“No, I didn’t forget,” said Davy defiantly, “but I
ain’t going to say my prayers any more. I’m going to give up trying
to be good, ’cause no matter how good I am you’d like Paul Irving
better. So I might as well be bad and have the fun of it.”

“I don’t like Paul Irving better,” said Anne
seriously. “I like you just as well, only in a different way.”

“But I want you to like me the same way,” pouted Davy.

“You can’t like different people the same way. You don’t like
Dora and me the same way, do you?”

Davy sat up and reflected.

“No . . . o . . . o,” he admitted at last, “I like Dora
because she’s my sister but I like you because you’re
you.”

“And I like Paul because he is Paul and Davy because he is Davy,”
said Anne gaily.

“Well, I kind of wish I’d said my prayers then,” said Davy,
convinced by this logic. “But it’s too much bother getting out now
to say them. I’ll say them twice over in the morning, Anne. Won’t
that do as well?”

No, Anne was positive it would not do as well. So Davy scrambled out and knelt
down at her knee. When he had finished his devotions he leaned back on his
little, bare, brown heels and looked up at her.

“Anne, I’m gooder than I used to be.”

“Yes, indeed you are, Davy,” said Anne, who never hesitated to give
credit where credit was due.

“I know I’m gooder,” said Davy confidently, “and
I’ll tell you how I know it. Today Marilla give me two pieces of bread
and jam, one for me and one for Dora. One was a good deal bigger than the other
and Marilla didn’t say which was mine. But I give the biggest piece to
Dora. That was good of me, wasn’t it?”

“Very good, and very manly, Davy.”

“Of course,” admitted Davy, “Dora wasn’t very hungry
and she only et half her slice and then she give the rest to me. But I
didn’t know she was going to do that when I give it to her, so I
was good, Anne.”

In the twilight Anne sauntered down to the Dryad’s Bubble and saw Gilbert
Blythe coming down through the dusky Haunted Wood. She had a sudden realization
that Gilbert was a schoolboy no longer. And how manly he looked—the tall,
frank-faced fellow, with the clear, straightforward eyes and the broad
shoulders. Anne thought Gilbert was a very handsome lad, even though he
didn’t look at all like her ideal man. She and Diana had long ago decided
what kind of a man they admired and their tastes seemed exactly similar. He
must be very tall and distinguished looking, with melancholy, inscrutable eyes,
and a melting, sympathetic voice. There was nothing either melancholy or
inscrutable in Gilbert’s physiognomy, but of course that didn’t
matter in friendship!

Gilbert stretched himself out on the ferns beside the Bubble and looked
approvingly at Anne. If Gilbert had been asked to describe his ideal woman the
description would have answered point for point to Anne, even to those seven
tiny freckles whose obnoxious presence still continued to vex her soul. Gilbert
was as yet little more than a boy; but a boy has his dreams as have others, and
in Gilbert’s future there was always a girl with big, limpid gray eyes,
and a face as fine and delicate as a flower. He had made up his mind, also,
that his future must be worthy of its goddess. Even in quiet Avonlea there were
temptations to be met and faced. White Sands youth were a rather
“fast” set, and Gilbert was popular wherever he went. But he meant
to keep himself worthy of Anne’s friendship and perhaps some distant day
her love; and he watched over word and thought and deed as jealously as if her
clear eyes were to pass in judgment on it. She held over him the unconscious
influence that every girl, whose ideals are high and pure, wields over her
friends; an influence which would endure as long as she was faithful to those
ideals and which she would as certainly lose if she were ever false to them. In
Gilbert’s eyes Anne’s greatest charm was the fact that she never
stooped to the petty practices of so many of the Avonlea girls—the small
jealousies, the little deceits and rivalries, the palpable bids for favor. Anne
held herself apart from all this, not consciously or of design, but simply
because anything of the sort was utterly foreign to her transparent, impulsive
nature, crystal clear in its motives and aspirations.

But Gilbert did not attempt to put his thoughts into words, for he had already
too good reason to know that Anne would mercilessly and frostily nip all
attempts at sentiment in the bud—or laugh at him, which was ten times
worse.

“You look like a real dryad under that birch tree,” he said
teasingly.

“I love birch trees,” said Anne, laying her cheek against the
creamy satin of the slim bole, with one of the pretty, caressing gestures that
came so natural to her.

“Then you’ll be glad to hear that Mr. Major Spencer has decided to
set out a row of white birches all along the road front of his farm, by way of
encouraging the A.V.I.S.,” said Gilbert. “He was talking to me
about it today. Major Spencer is the most progressive and public-spirited man
in Avonlea. And Mr. William Bell is going to set out a spruce hedge along his
road front and up his lane. Our Society is getting on splendidly, Anne. It is
past the experimental stage and is an accepted fact. The older folks are
beginning to take an interest in it and the White Sands people are talking of
starting one too. Even Elisha Wright has come around since that day the
Americans from the hotel had the picnic at the shore. They praised our
roadsides so highly and said they were so much prettier than in any other part
of the Island. And when, in due time, the other farmers follow Mr.
Spencer’s good example and plant ornamental trees and hedges along their
road fronts Avonlea will be the prettiest settlement in the province.”

“The Aids are talking of taking up the graveyard,” said Anne,
“and I hope they will, because there will have to be a subscription for
that, and it would be no use for the Society to try it after the hall affair.
But the Aids would never have stirred in the matter if the Society hadn’t
put it into their thoughts unofficially. Those trees we planted on the church
grounds are flourishing, and the trustees have promised me that they will fence
in the school grounds next year. If they do I’ll have an arbor day and
every scholar shall plant a tree; and we’ll have a garden in the corner
by the road.”

“We’ve succeeded in almost all our plans so far, except in getting
the old Boulter house removed,” said Gilbert, “and I’ve given
that up in despair. Levi won’t have it taken down just to vex us.
There’s a contrary streak in all the Boulters and it’s strongly
developed in him.”

“Julia Bell wants to send another committee to him, but I think the
better way will just be to leave him severely alone,” said Anne sagely.

“And trust to Providence, as Mrs. Lynde says,” smiled Gilbert.
“Certainly, no more committees. They only aggravate him. Julia Bell
thinks you can do anything, if you only have a committee to attempt it. Next
spring, Anne, we must start an agitation for nice lawns and grounds.
We’ll sow good seed betimes this winter. I’ve a treatise here on
lawns and lawnmaking and I’m going to prepare a paper on the subject
soon. Well, I suppose our vacation is almost over. School opens Monday. Has
Ruby Gillis got the Carmody school?”

“Yes; Priscilla wrote that she had taken her own home school, so the
Carmody trustees gave it to Ruby. I’m sorry Priscilla is not coming back,
but since she can’t I’m glad Ruby has got the school. She will be
home for Saturdays and it will seem like old times, to have her and Jane and
Diana and myself all together again.”

Marilla, just home from Mrs. Lynde’s, was sitting on the back porch step
when Anne returned to the house.

“Rachel and I have decided to have our cruise to town tomorrow,”
she said. “Mr. Lynde is feeling better this week and Rachel wants to go
before he has another sick spell.”

“I intend to get up extra early tomorrow morning, for I’ve ever so
much to do,” said Anne virtuously. “For one thing, I’m going
to shift the feathers from my old bedtick to the new one. I ought to have done
it long ago but I’ve just kept putting it off . . . it’s such a
detestable task. It’s a very bad habit to put off disagreeable things,
and I never mean to again, or else I can’t comfortably tell my pupils not
to do it. That would be inconsistent. Then I want to make a cake for Mr.
Harrison and finish my paper on gardens for the A.V.I.S., and write Stella, and
wash and starch my muslin dress, and make Dora’s new apron.”

“You won’t get half done,” said Marilla pessimistically.
“I never yet planned to do a lot of things but something happened to
prevent me.”

XX
The Way It Often Happens

Anne rose betimes the next morning and blithely greeted the fresh day, when the
banners of the sunrise were shaken triumphantly across the pearly skies. Green
Gables lay in a pool of sunshine, flecked with the dancing shadows of poplar
and willow. Beyond the land was Mr. Harrison’s wheatfield, a great,
windrippled expanse of pale gold. The world was so beautiful that Anne spent
ten blissful minutes hanging idly over the garden gate drinking the loveliness
in.

After breakfast Marilla made ready for her journey. Dora was to go with her,
having been long promised this treat.

“Now, Davy, you try to be a good boy and don’t bother Anne,”
she straitly charged him. “If you are good I’ll bring you a striped
candy cane from town.”

For alas, Marilla had stooped to the evil habit of bribing people to be good!

“I won’t be bad on purpose, but s’posen I’m bad
zacksidentally?” Davy wanted to know.

“You’ll have to guard against accidents,” admonished Marilla.
“Anne, if Mr. Shearer comes today get a nice roast and some steak. If he
doesn’t you’ll have to kill a fowl for dinner tomorrow.”

Anne nodded.

“I’m not going to bother cooking any dinner for just Davy and
myself today,” she said. “That cold ham bone will do for noon lunch
and I’ll have some steak fried for you when you come home at
night.”

“I’m going to help Mr. Harrison haul dulse this morning,”
announced Davy. “He asked me to, and I guess he’ll ask me to dinner
too. Mr. Harrison is an awful kind man. He’s a real sociable man. I hope
I’ll be like him when I grow up. I mean behave like him . . . I
don’t want to look like him. But I guess there’s no danger,
for Mrs. Lynde says I’m a very handsome child. Do you s’pose
it’ll last, Anne? I want to know?”

“I daresay it will,” said Anne gravely. “You are a
handsome boy, Davy,” . . . Marilla looked volumes of disapproval . . .
“but you must live up to it and be just as nice and gentlemanly as you
look to be.”

“And you told Minnie May Barry the other day, when you found her crying
’cause some one said she was ugly, that if she was nice and kind and
loving people wouldn’t mind her looks,” said Davy discontentedly.
“Seems to me you can’t get out of being good in this world for some
reason or ‘nother. You just have to behave.”

“Don’t you want to be good?” asked Marilla, who had learned a
great deal but had not yet learned the futility of asking such questions.

“Yes, I want to be good but not too good,” said Davy
cautiously. “You don’t have to be very good to be a Sunday School
superintendent. Mr. Bell’s that, and he’s a real bad man.”

“Indeed he’s not,” said Marila indignantly.

“He is . . . he says he is himself,” asseverated Davy. “He
said it when he prayed in Sunday School last Sunday. He said he was a vile worm
and a miserable sinner and guilty of the blackest ‘niquity. What did he
do that was so bad, Marilla? Did he kill anybody? Or steal the collection
cents? I want to know.”

Fortunately Mrs. Lynde came driving up the lane at this moment and Marilla made
off, feeling that she had escaped from the snare of the fowler, and wishing
devoutly that Mr. Bell were not quite so highly figurative in his public
petitions, especially in the hearing of small boys who were always
“wanting to know.”

Anne, left alone in her glory, worked with a will. The floor was swept, the
beds made, the hens fed, the muslin dress washed and hung out on the line. Then
Anne prepared for the transfer of feathers. She mounted to the garret and
donned the first old dress that came to hand . . . a navy blue cashmere she had
worn at fourteen. It was decidedly on the short side and as
“skimpy” as the notable wincey Anne had worn upon the occasion of
her debut at Green Gables; but at least it would not be materially injured by
down and feathers. Anne completed her toilet by tying a big red and white
spotted handkerchief that had belonged to Matthew over her head, and, thus
accoutred, betook herself to the kitchen chamber, whither Marilla, before her
departure, had helped her carry the feather bed.

A cracked mirror hung by the chamber window and in an unlucky moment Anne
looked into it. There were those seven freckles on her nose, more rampant than
ever, or so it seemed in the glare of light from the unshaded window.

“Oh, I forgot to rub that lotion on last night,” she thought.
“I’d better run down to the pantry and do it now.”

Anne had already suffered many things trying to remove those freckles. On one
occasion the entire skin had peeled off her nose but the freckles remained. A
few days previously she had found a recipe for a freckle lotion in a magazine
and, as the ingredients were within her reach, she straightway compounded it,
much to the disgust of Marilla, who thought that if Providence had placed
freckles on your nose it was your bounden duty to leave them there.

Anne scurried down to the pantry, which, always dim from the big willow growing
close to the window, was now almost dark by reason of the shade drawn to
exclude flies. Anne caught the bottle containing the lotion from the shelf and
copiously anointed her nose therewith by means of a little sponge sacred to the
purpose. This important duty done, she returned to her work. Any one who has
ever shifted feathers from one tick to another will not need to be told that
when Anne finished she was a sight to behold. Her dress was white with down and
fluff, and her front hair, escaping from under the handkerchief, was adorned
with a veritable halo of feathers. At this auspicious moment a knock sounded at
the kitchen door.

“That must be Mr. Shearer,” thought Anne. “I’m in a
dreadful mess but I’ll have to run down as I am, for he’s always in
a hurry.”

Down flew Anne to the kitchen door. If ever a charitable floor did open to
swallow up a miserable, befeathered damsel the Green Gables porch floor should
promptly have engulfed Anne at that moment. On the doorstep were standing
Priscilla Grant, golden and fair in silk attire, a short, stout gray-haired
lady in a tweed suit, and another lady, tall stately, wonderfully gowned, with
a beautiful, highbred face and large, black-lashed violet eyes, whom Anne
“instinctively felt,” as she would have said in her earlier days,
to be Mrs. Charlotte E. Morgan.

In the dismay of the moment one thought stood out from the confusion of
Anne’s mind and she grasped at it as at the proverbial straw. All Mrs.
Morgan’s heroines were noted for “rising to the occasion.” No
matter what their troubles were, they invariably rose to the occasion and
showed their superiority over all ills of time, space, and quantity. Anne
therefore felt it was her duty to rise to the occasion and she did it,
so perfectly that Priscilla afterward declared she never admired Anne Shirley
more than at that moment. No matter what her outraged feelings were she did not
show them. She greeted Priscilla and was introduced to her companions as calmly
and composedly as if she had been arrayed in purple and fine linen. To be sure,
it was somewhat of a shock to find that the lady she had instinctively felt to
be Mrs. Morgan was not Mrs. Morgan at all, but an unknown Mrs. Pendexter, while
the stout little gray-haired woman was Mrs. Morgan; but in the greater shock
the lesser lost its power. Anne ushered her guests to the spare room and thence
into the parlor, where she left them while she hastened out to help Priscilla
unharness her horse.

“It’s dreadful to come upon you so unexpectedly as this,”
apologized Priscilla, “but I did not know till last night that we were
coming. Aunt Charlotte is going away Monday and she had promised to spend today
with a friend in town. But last night her friend telephoned to her not to come
because they were quarantined for scarlet fever. So I suggested we come here
instead, for I knew you were longing to see her. We called at the White Sands
Hotel and brought Mrs. Pendexter with us. She is a friend of aunt’s and
lives in New York and her husband is a millionaire. We can’t stay very
long, for Mrs. Pendexter has to be back at the hotel by five
o’clock.”

Several times while they were putting away the horse Anne caught Priscilla
looking at her in a furtive, puzzled way.

“She needn’t stare at me so,” Anne thought a little
resentfully. “If she doesn’t know what it is to change a
feather bed she might imagine it.”

When Priscilla had gone to the parlor, and before Anne could escape upstairs,
Diana walked into the kitchen. Anne caught her astonished friend by the arm.

“Diana Barry, who do you suppose is in that parlor at this very moment?
Mrs. Charlotte E. Morgan . . . and a New York millionaire’s wife . . .
and here I am like this . . . and not a thing in the house for dinner
but a cold ham bone, Diana!”

By this time Anne had become aware that Diana was staring at her in precisely
the same bewildered fashion as Priscilla had done. It was really too much.

“Oh, Diana, don’t look at me so,” she implored.
“You, at least, must know that the neatest person in the world
couldn’t empty feathers from one tick into another and remain neat in the
process.”

“It . . . it . . . isn’t the feathers,” hesitated Diana.
“It’s . . . it’s . . . your nose, Anne.”

“My nose? Oh, Diana, surely nothing has gone wrong with it!”

Anne rushed to the little looking glass over the sink. One glance revealed the
fatal truth. Her nose was a brilliant scarlet!

Anne sat down on the sofa, her dauntless spirit subdued at last.

“What is the matter with it?” asked Diana, curiosity overcoming
delicacy.

“I thought I was rubbing my freckle lotion on it, but I must have used
that red dye Marilla has for marking the pattern on her rugs,” was the
despairing response. “What shall I do?”

“Wash it off,” said Diana practically.

“Perhaps it won’t wash off. First I dye my hair; then I dye my
nose. Marilla cut my hair off when I dyed it but that remedy would hardly be
practicable in this case. Well, this is another punishment for vanity and I
suppose I deserve it . . . though there’s not much comfort in
that. It is really almost enough to make one believe in ill-luck, though
Mrs. Lynde says there is no such thing, because everything is
foreordained.”

Fortunately the dye washed off easily and Anne, somewhat consoled, betook
herself to the east gable while Diana ran home. Presently Anne came down again,
clothed and in her right mind. The muslin dress she had fondly hoped to wear
was bobbing merrily about on the line outside, so she was forced to content
herself with her black lawn. She had the fire on and the tea steeping when
Diana returned; the latter wore her muslin, at least, and carried a
covered platter in her hand.

“Mother sent you this,” she said, lifting the cover and displaying
a nicely carved and jointed chicken to Anne’s greatful eyes.

The chicken was supplemented by light new bread, excellent butter and cheese,
Marilla’s fruit cake and a dish of preserved plums, floating in their
golden syrup as in congealed summer sunshine. There was a big bowlful of
pink-and-white asters also, by way of decoration; yet the spread seemed very
meager beside the elaborate one formerly prepared for Mrs. Morgan.

Anne’s hungry guests, however, did not seem to think anything was lacking
and they ate the simple viands with apparent enjoyment. But after the first few
moments Anne thought no more of what was or was not on her bill of fare. Mrs.
Morgan’s appearance might be somewhat disappointing, as even her loyal
worshippers had been forced to admit to each other; but she proved to be a
delightful conversationalist. She had traveled extensively and was an excellent
storyteller. She had seen much of men and women, and crystalized her
experiences into witty little sentences and epigrams which made her hearers
feel as if they were listening to one of the people in clever books. But under
all her sparkle there was a strongly felt undercurrent of true, womanly
sympathy and kindheartedness which won affection as easily as her brilliancy
won admiration. Nor did she monopolize the conversation. She could draw others
out as skillfully and fully as she could talk herself, and Anne and Diana found
themselves chattering freely to her. Mrs. Pendexter said little; she merely
smiled with her lovely eyes and lips, and ate chicken and fruit cake and
preserves with such exquisite grace that she conveyed the impression of dining
on ambrosia and honeydew. But then, as Anne said to Diana later on, anybody so
divinely beautiful as Mrs. Pendexter didn’t need to talk; it was enough
for her just to look.

After dinner they all had a walk through Lover’s Lane and Violet Vale and
the Birch Path, then back through the Haunted Wood to the Dryad’s Bubble,
where they sat down and talked for a delightful last half hour. Mrs. Morgan
wanted to know how the Haunted Wood came by its name, and laughed until she
cried when she heard the story and Anne’s dramatic account of a certain
memorable walk through it at the witching hour of twilight.

“It has indeed been a feast of reason and flow of soul, hasn’t
it?” said Anne, when her guests had gone and she and Diana were alone
again. “I don’t know which I enjoyed more . . . listening to Mrs.
Morgan or gazing at Mrs. Pendexter. I believe we had a nicer time than if
we’d known they were coming and been cumbered with much serving. You must
stay to tea with me, Diana, and we’ll talk it all over.”

“Priscilla says Mrs. Pendexter’s husband’s sister is married
to an English earl; and yet she took a second helping of the plum
preserves,” said Diana, as if the two facts were somehow incompatible.

“I daresay even the English earl himself wouldn’t have turned up
his aristocratic nose at Marilla’s plum preserves,” said Anne
proudly.

Anne did not mention the misfortune which had befallen her nose when she
related the day’s history to Marilla that evening. But she took the
bottle of freckle lotion and emptied it out of the window.

“I shall never try any beautifying messes again,” she said, darkly
resolute. “They may do for careful, deliberate people; but for anyone so
hopelessly given over to making mistakes as I seem to be it’s tempting
fate to meddle with them.”

XXI
Sweet Miss Lavendar

School opened and Anne returned to her work, with fewer theories but
considerably more experience. She had several new pupils, six- and
seven-year-olds just venturing, round-eyed, into a world of wonder. Among them
were Davy and Dora. Davy sat with Milty Boulter, who had been going to school
for a year and was therefore quite a man of the world. Dora had made a compact
at Sunday School the previous Sunday to sit with Lily Sloane; but Lily Sloane
not coming the first day, she was temporarily assigned to Mirabel Cotton, who
was ten years old and therefore, in Dora’s eyes, one of the “big
girls.”

“I think school is great fun,” Davy told Marilla when he got home
that night. “You said I’d find it hard to sit still and I did . . .
you mostly do tell the truth, I notice . . . but you can wriggle your legs
about under the desk and that helps a lot. It’s splendid to have so many
boys to play with. I sit with Milty Boulter and he’s fine. He’s
longer than me but I’m wider. It’s nicer to sit in the back seats
but you can’t sit there till your legs grow long enough to touch the
floor. Milty drawed a picture of Anne on his slate and it was awful ugly and I
told him if he made pictures of Anne like that I’d lick him at recess. I
thought first I’d draw one of him and put horns and a tail on it, but I
was afraid it would hurt his feelings, and Anne says you should never hurt
anyone’s feelings. It seems it’s dreadful to have your feelings
hurt. It’s better to knock a boy down than hurt his feelings if you
must do something. Milty said he wasn’t scared of me but
he’d just as soon call it somebody else to ‘blige me, so he rubbed
out Anne’s name and printed Barbara Shaw’s under it. Milty
doesn’t like Barbara ’cause she calls him a sweet little boy and
once she patted him on his head.”

Dora said primly that she liked school; but she was very quiet, even for her;
and when at twilight Marilla bade her go upstairs to bed she hesitated and
began to cry.

“I’m . . . I’m frightened,” she sobbed. “I . . .
I don’t want to go upstairs alone in the dark.”

“What notion have you got into your head now?” demanded Marilla.
“I’m sure you’ve gone to bed alone all summer and never been
frightened before.”

Dora still continued to cry, so Anne picked her up, cuddled her
sympathetically, and whispered,

“Tell Anne all about it, sweetheart. What are you frightened of?”

“Of . . . of Mirabel Cotton’s uncle,” sobbed Dora.
“Mirabel Cotton told me all about her family today in school. Nearly
everybody in her family has died . . . all her grandfathers and grandmothers
and ever so many uncles and aunts. They have a habit of dying, Mirabel says.
Mirabel’s awful proud of having so many dead relations, and she told me
what they all died of, and what they said, and how they looked in their
coffins. And Mirabel says one of her uncles was seen walking around the house
after he was buried. Her mother saw him. I don’t mind the rest so much
but I can’t help thinking about that uncle.”

Anne went upstairs with Dora and sat by her until she fell asleep. The next day
Mirabel Cotton was kept in at recess and “gently but firmly” given
to understand that when you were so unfortunate as to possess an uncle who
persisted in walking about houses after he had been decently interred it was
not in good taste to talk about that eccentric gentleman to your deskmate of
tender years. Mirabel thought this very harsh. The Cottons had not much to
boast of. How was she to keep up her prestige among her schoolmates if she were
forbidden to make capital out of the family ghost?

September slipped by into a gold and crimson graciousness of October. One
Friday evening Diana came over.

“I’d a letter from Ella Kimball today, Anne, and she wants us to go
over to tea tomorrow afternoon to meet her cousin, Irene Trent, from town. But
we can’t get one of our horses to go, for they’ll all be in use
tomorrow, and your pony is lame . . . so I suppose we can’t go.”

“Why can’t we walk?” suggested Anne. “If we go straight
back through the woods we’ll strike the West Grafton road not far from
the Kimball place. I was through that way last winter and I know the road.
It’s no more than four miles and we won’t have to walk home, for
Oliver Kimball will be sure to drive us. He’ll be only too glad of the
excuse, for he goes to see Carrie Sloane and they say his father will hardly
ever let him have a horse.”

It was accordingly arranged that they should walk, and the following afternoon
they set out, going by way of Lover’s Lane to the back of the Cuthbert
farm, where they found a road leading into the heart of acres of glimmering
beech and maple woods, which were all in a wondrous glow of flame and gold,
lying in a great purple stillness and peace.

“It’s as if the year were kneeling to pray in a vast cathedral full
of mellow stained light, isn’t it?” said Anne dreamily. “It
doesn’t seem right to hurry through it, does it? It seems irreverent,
like running in a church.”

“We must hurry though,” said Diana, glancing at her watch.
“We’ve left ourselves little enough time as it is.”

“Well, I’ll walk fast but don’t ask me to talk,” said
Anne, quickening her pace. “I just want to drink the day’s
loveliness in . . . I feel as if she were holding it out to my lips like a cup
of airy wine and I’ll take a sip at every step.”

Perhaps it was because she was so absorbed in “drinking it in” that
Anne took the left turning when they came to a fork in the road. She should
have taken the right, but ever afterward she counted it the most fortunate
mistake of her life. They came out finally to a lonely, grassy road, with
nothing in sight along it but ranks of spruce saplings.

“Why, where are we?” exclaimed Diana in bewilderment. “This
isn’t the West Grafton road.”

“No, it’s the base line road in Middle Grafton,” said Anne,
rather shamefacedly. “I must have taken the wrong turning at the fork. I
don’t know where we are exactly, but we must be all of three miles from
Kimballs’ still.”

“Then we can’t get there by five, for it’s half past four
now,” said Diana, with a despairing look at her watch. “We’ll
arrive after they have had their tea, and they’ll have all the bother of
getting ours over again.”

“We’d better turn back and go home,” suggested Anne humbly.
But Diana, after consideration, vetoed this.

“No, we may as well go and spend the evening, since we have come this
far.”

A few yards further on the girls came to a place where the road forked again.

“Which of these do we take?” asked Diana dubiously.

Anne shook her head.

“I don’t know and we can’t afford to make any more mistakes.
Here is a gate and a lane leading right into the wood. There must be a house at
the other side. Let us go down and inquire.”

“What a romantic old lane this it,” said Diana, as they walked
along its twists and turns. It ran under patriarchal old firs whose branches
met above, creating a perpetual gloom in which nothing except moss could grow.
On either hand were brown wood floors, crossed here and there by fallen lances
of sunlight. All was very still and remote, as if the world and the cares of
the world were far away.

“I feel as if we were walking through an enchanted forest,” said
Anne in a hushed tone. “Do you suppose we’ll ever find our way back
to the real world again, Diana? We shall presently come to a palace with a
spellbound princess in it, I think.”

Around the next turn they came in sight, not indeed of a palace, but of a
little house almost as surprising as a palace would have been in this province
of conventional wooden farmhouses, all as much alike in general characteristics
as if they had grown from the same seed. Anne stopped short in rapture and
Diana exclaimed, “Oh, I know where we are now. That is the little stone
house where Miss Lavendar Lewis lives . . . Echo Lodge, she calls it, I think.
I’ve often heard of it but I’ve never seen it before. Isn’t
it a romantic spot?”

“It’s the sweetest, prettiest place I ever saw or imagined,”
said Anne delightedly. “It looks like a bit out of a story book or a
dream.”

The house was a low-eaved structure built of undressed blocks of red Island
sandstone, with a little peaked roof out of which peered two dormer windows,
with quaint wooden hoods over them, and two great chimneys. The whole house was
covered with a luxuriant growth of ivy, finding easy foothold on the rough
stonework and turned by autumn frosts to most beautiful bronze and wine-red
tints.

Before the house was an oblong garden into which the lane gate where the girls
were standing opened. The house bounded it on one side; on the three others it
was enclosed by an old stone dyke, so overgrown with moss and grass and ferns
that it looked like a high, green bank. On the right and left the tall, dark
spruces spread their palm-like branches over it; but below it was a little
meadow, green with clover aftermath, sloping down to the blue loop of the
Grafton River. No other house or clearing was in sight . . . nothing but hills
and valleys covered with feathery young firs.

“I wonder what sort of a person Miss Lewis is,” speculated Diana as
they opened the gate into the garden. “They say she is very
peculiar.”

“She’ll be interesting then,” said Anne decidedly.
“Peculiar people are always that at least, whatever else they are or are
not. Didn’t I tell you we would come to an enchanted palace? I knew the
elves hadn’t woven magic over that lane for nothing.”

“But Miss Lavendar Lewis is hardly a spellbound princess,” laughed
Diana. “She’s an old maid . . . she’s forty-five and quite
gray, I’ve heard.”

“Oh, that’s only part of the spell,” asserted Anne
confidently. “At heart she’s young and beautiful still . . . and if
we only knew how to unloose the spell she would step forth radiant and fair
again. But we don’t know how . . . it’s always and only the prince
who knows that . . . and Miss Lavendar’s prince hasn’t come yet.
Perhaps some fatal mischance has befallen him . . . though that’s
against the law of all fairy tales.”

“I’m afraid he came long ago and went away again,” said
Diana. “They say she used to be engaged to Stephen Irving . . .
Paul’s father . . . when they were young. But they quarreled and
parted.”

“Hush,” warned Anne. “The door is open.”

The girls paused in the porch under the tendrils of ivy and knocked at the open
door. There was a patter of steps inside and a rather odd little personage
presented herself . . . a girl of about fourteen, with a freckled face, a snub
nose, a mouth so wide that it did really seem as if it stretched “from
ear to ear,” and two long braids of fair hair tied with two enormous bows
of blue ribbon.

“Is Miss Lewis at home?” asked Diana.

“Yes, ma’am. Come in, ma’am. I’ll tell Miss Lavendar
you’re here, ma’am. She’s upstairs, ma’am.”

With this the small handmaiden whisked out of sight and the girls, left alone,
looked about them with delighted eyes. The interior of this wonderful little
house was quite as interesting as its exterior.

The room had a low ceiling and two square, small-paned windows, curtained with
muslin frills. All the furnishings were old-fashioned, but so well and daintily
kept that the effect was delicious. But it must be candidly admitted that the
most attractive feature, to two healthy girls who had just tramped four miles
through autumn air, was a table, set out with pale blue china and laden with
delicacies, while little golden-hued ferns scattered over the cloth gave it
what Anne would have termed “a festal air.”

“Miss Lavendar must be expecting company to tea,” she whispered.
“There are six places set. But what a funny little girl she has. She
looked like a messenger from pixy land. I suppose she could have told us the
road, but I was curious to see Miss Lavendar. S . . . s . . . sh, she’s
coming.”

And with that Miss Lavendar Lewis was standing in the doorway. The girls were
so surprised that they forgot good manners and simply stared. They had
unconsciously been expecting to see the usual type of elderly spinster as known
to their experience . . . a rather angular personage, with prim gray hair and
spectacles. Nothing more unlike Miss Lavendar could possibly be imagined.

She was a little lady with snow-white hair beautifully wavy and thick, and
carefully arranged in becoming puffs and coils. Beneath it was an almost
girlish face, pink cheeked and sweet lipped, with big soft brown eyes and
dimples . . . actually dimples. She wore a very dainty gown of cream muslin
with pale-hued roses on it . . . a gown which would have seemed ridiculously
juvenile on most women of her age, but which suited Miss Lavendar so perfectly
that you never thought about it at all.

“Charlotta the Fourth says that you wished to see me,” she said, in
a voice that matched her appearance.

“We wanted to ask the right road to West Grafton,” said Diana.
“We are invited to tea at Mr. Kimball’s, but we took the wrong path
coming through the woods and came out to the base line instead of the West
Grafton road. Do we take the right or left turning at your gate?”

“The left,” said Miss Lavendar, with a hesitating glance at her tea
table. Then she exclaimed, as if in a sudden little burst of resolution,

“But oh, won’t you stay and have tea with me? Please, do. Mr.
Kimball’s will have tea over before you get there. And Charlotta the
Fourth and I will be so glad to have you.”

Diana looked mute inquiry at Anne.

“We’d like to stay,” said Anne promptly, for she had made up
her mind that she wanted to know more of this surprising Miss Lavendar,
“if it won’t inconvenience you. But you are expecting other guests,
aren’t you?”

Miss Lavendar looked at her tea table again, and blushed.

“I know you’ll think me dreadfully foolish,” she said.
“I am foolish . . . and I’m ashamed of it when I’m
found out, but never unless I am found out. I’m not expecting
anybody . . . I was just pretending I was. You see, I was so lonely. I love
company . . . that is, the right kind of company . . . but so few people ever
come here because it is so far out of the way. Charlotta the Fourth was lonely
too. So I just pretended I was going to have a tea party. I cooked for it . . .
and decorated the table for it . . . and set it with my mother’s wedding
china . . . and I dressed up for it.”

Diana secretly thought Miss Lavendar quite as peculiar as report had pictured
her. The idea of a woman of forty-five playing at having a tea party, just as
if she were a little girl! But Anne of the shining eyes exclaimed joyfuly,

“Oh, do you imagine things too?”

That “too” revealed a kindred spirit to Miss Lavendar.

“Yes, I do,” she confessed, boldly. “Of course it’s
silly in anybody as old as I am. But what is the use of being an independent
old maid if you can’t be silly when you want to, and when it
doesn’t hurt anybody? A person must have some compensations. I
don’t believe I could live at times if I didn’t pretend things.
I’m not often caught at it though, and Charlotta the Fourth never tells.
But I’m glad to be caught today, for you have really come and I have tea
all ready for you. Will you go up to the spare room and take off your hats?
It’s the white door at the head of the stairs. I must run out to the
kitchen and see that Charlotta the Fourth isn’t letting the tea boil.
Charlotta the Fourth is a very good girl but she will let the tea
boil.”

Miss Lavendar tripped off to the kitchen on hospitable thoughts intent and the
girls found their way up to the spare room, an apartment as white as its door,
lighted by the ivy-hung dormer window and looking, as Anne said, like the place
where happy dreams grew.

“This is quite an adventure, isn’t it?” said Diana.
“And isn’t Miss Lavendar sweet, if she is a little odd? She
doesn’t look a bit like an old maid.”

“She looks just as music sounds, I think,” answered Anne.

When they went down Miss Lavendar was carrying in the teapot, and behind her,
looking vastly pleased, was Charlotta the Fourth, with a plate of hot biscuits.

“Now, you must tell me your names,” said Miss Lavendar.
“I’m so glad you are young girls. I love young girls. It’s so
easy to pretend I’m a girl myself when I’m with them. I do
hate” . . . with a little grimace . . . “to believe I’m old.
Now, who are you . . . just for convenience’ sake? Diana Barry? And Anne
Shirley? May I pretend that I’ve known you for a hundred years and call
you Anne and Diana right away?”

“You, may” the girls said both together.

“Then just let’s sit comfily down and eat everything,” said
Miss Lavendar happily. “Charlotta, you sit at the foot and help with the
chicken. It is so fortunate that I made the sponge cake and doughnuts. Of
course, it was foolish to do it for imaginary guests . . . I know Charlotta the
Fourth thought so, didn’t you, Charlotta? But you see how well it has
turned out. Of course they wouldn’t have been wasted, for Charlotta the
Fourth and I could have eaten them through time. But sponge cake is not a thing
that improves with time.”

That was a merry and memorable meal; and when it was over they all went out to
the garden, lying in the glamor of sunset.

“I do think you have the loveliest place here,” said Diana, looking
round her admiringly.

“Why do you call it Echo Lodge?” asked Anne.

“Charlotta,” said Miss Lavendar, “go into the house and bring
out the little tin horn that is hanging over the clock shelf.”

Charlotta the Fourth skipped off and returned with the horn.

“Blow it, Charlotta,” commanded Miss Lavendar.

Charlotta accordingly blew, a rather raucous, strident blast. There was
moment’s stillness . . . and then from the woods over the river came a
multitude of fairy echoes, sweet, elusive, silvery, as if all the “horns
of elfland” were blowing against the sunset. Anne and Diana exclaimed in
delight.

“Now laugh, Charlotta . . . laugh loudly.”

Charlotta, who would probably have obeyed if Miss Lavendar had told her to
stand on her head, climbed upon the stone bench and laughed loud and heartily.
Back came the echoes, as if a host of pixy people were mimicking her laughter
in the purple woodlands and along the fir-fringed points.

“People always admire my echoes very much,” said Miss Lavendar, as
if the echoes were her personal property. “I love them myself. They are
very good company . . . with a little pretending. On calm evenings Charlotta
the Fourth and I often sit out here and amuse ourselves with them. Charlotta,
take back the horn and hang it carefully in its place.”

“Why do you call her Charlotta the Fourth?” asked Diana, who was
bursting with curiosity on this point.

“Just to keep her from getting mixed up with other Charlottas in my
thoughts,” said Miss Lavendar seriously. “They all look so much
alike there’s no telling them apart. Her name isn’t really
Charlotta at all. It is . . . let me see . . . what is it? I think
it’s Leonora . . . yes, it is Leonora. You see, it is this way.
When mother died ten years ago I couldn’t stay here alone . . . and I
couldn’t afford to pay the wages of a grown-up girl. So I got little
Charlotta Bowman to come and stay with me for board and clothes. Her name
really was Charlotta . . . she was Charlotta the First. She was just thirteen.
She stayed with me till she was sixteen and then she went away to Boston,
because she could do better there. Her sister came to stay with me then. Her
name was Julietta . . . Mrs. Bowman had a weakness for fancy names I think . .
. but she looked so like Charlotta that I kept calling her that all the time .
. .and she didn’t mind. So I just gave up trying to remember her right
name. She was Charlotta the Second, and when she went away Evelina came and she
was Charlotta the Third. Now I have Charlotta the Fourth; but when she is
sixteen . . . she’s fourteen now . . . she will want to go to Boston too,
and what I shall do then I really do not know. Charlotta the Fourth is the last
of the Bowman girls, and the best. The other Charlottas always let me see that
they thought it silly of me to pretend things but Charlotta the Fourth never
does, no matter what she may really think. I don’t care what people think
about me if they don’t let me see it.”

“Well,” said Diana looking regretfully at the setting sun. “I
suppose we must go if we want to get to Mr. Kimball’s before dark.
We’ve had a lovely time, Miss Lewis.”

“Won’t you come again to see me?” pleaded Miss Lavendar.

Tall Anne put her arm about the little lady.

“Indeed we shall,” she promised. “Now that we have discovered
you we’ll wear out our welcome coming to see you. Yes, we must go . . .
‘we must tear ourselves away,’ as Paul Irving says every time he
comes to Green Gables.”

“Paul Irving?” There was a subtle change in Miss Lavendar’s
voice. “Who is he? I didn’t think there was anybody of that name in
Avonlea.”

Anne felt vexed at her own heedlessness. She had forgotten about Miss
Lavendar’s old romance when Paul’s name slipped out.

“He is a little pupil of mine,” she explained slowly. “He
came from Boston last year to live with his grandmother, Mrs. Irving of the
shore road.”

“Is he Stephen Irving’s son?” Miss Lavendar asked, bending
over her namesake border so that her face was hidden.

“Yes.”

“I’m going to give you girls a bunch of lavendar apiece,”
said Miss Lavendar brightly, as if she had not heard the answer to her
question. “It’s very sweet, don’t you think? Mother always
loved it. She planted these borders long ago. Father named me Lavendar because
he was so fond of it. The very first time he saw mother was when he visited her
home in East Grafton with her brother. He fell in love with her at first sight;
and they put him in the spare room bed to sleep and the sheets were scented
with lavendar and he lay awake all night and thought of her. He always loved
the scent of lavendar after that . . . and that was why he gave me the name.
Don’t forget to come back soon, girls dear. We’ll be looking for
you, Charlotta the Fourth and I.”

She opened the gate under the firs for them to pass through. She looked
suddenly old and tired; the glow and radiance had faded from her face; her
parting smile was as sweet with ineradicable youth as ever, but when the girls
looked back from the first curve in the lane they saw her sitting on the old
stone bench under the silver poplar in the middle of the garden with her head
leaning wearily on her hand.

“She does look lonely,” said Diana softly. “We must come
often to see her.”

“I think her parents gave her the only right and fitting name that could
possibly be given her,” said Anne. “If they had been so blind as to
name her Elizabeth or Nellie or Muriel she must have been called Lavendar just
the same, I think. It’s so suggestive of sweetness and old-fashioned
graces and ‘silk attire.’ Now, my name just smacks of bread and
butter, patchwork and chores.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Diana. “Anne seems to me
real stately and like a queen. But I’d like Kerrenhappuch if it happened
to be your name. I think people make their names nice or ugly just by what they
are themselves. I can’t bear Josie or Gertie for names now but before I
knew the Pye girls I thought them real pretty.”

“That’s a lovely idea, Diana,” said Anne enthusiastically.
“Living so that you beautify your name, even if it wasn’t beautiful
to begin with . . . making it stand in people’s thoughts for something so
lovely and pleasant that they never think of it by itself. Thank you,
Diana.”

XXII
Odds and Ends

“So you had tea at the stone house with Lavendar Lewis?” said
Marilla at the breakfast table next morning. “What is she like now?
It’s over fifteen years since I saw her last . . . it was one Sunday in
Grafton church. I suppose she has changed a great deal. Davy Keith, when you
want something you can’t reach, ask to have it passed and don’t
spread yourself over the table in that fashion. Did you ever see Paul Irving
doing that when he was here to meals?”

“But Paul’s arms are longer’n mine,” brumbled Davy.
“They’ve had eleven years to grow and mine’ve only had seven.
‘Sides, I did ask, but you and Anne was so busy talking you
didn’t pay any ‘tention. ‘Sides, Paul’s never been here
to any meal escept tea, and it’s easier to be p’lite at tea than at
breakfast. You ain’t half as hungry. It’s an awful long while
between supper and breakfast. Now, Anne, that spoonful ain’t any bigger
than it was last year and I’m ever so much bigger.”

“Of course, I don’t know what Miss Lavendar used to look like but I
don’t fancy somehow that she has changed a great deal,” said Anne,
after she had helped Davy to maple syrup, giving him two spoonfuls to pacify
him. “Her hair is snow-white but her face is fresh and almost girlish,
and she has the sweetest brown eyes . . . such a pretty shade of wood-brown
with little golden glints in them . . . and her voice makes you think of white
satin and tinkling water and fairy bells all mixed up together.”

“She was reckoned a great beauty when she was a girl,” said
Marilla. “I never knew her very well but I liked her as far as I did know
her. Some folks thought her peculiar even then. Davy, if ever I catch
you at such a trick again you’ll be made to wait for your meals till
everyone else is done, like the French.”

Most conversations between Anne and Marilla in the presence of the twins, were
punctuated by these rebukes Davy-ward. In this instance, Davy, sad to relate,
not being able to scoop up the last drops of his syrup with his spoon, had
solved the difficulty by lifting his plate in both hands and applying his small
pink tongue to it. Anne looked at him with such horrified eyes that the little
sinner turned red and said, half shamefacedly, half defiantly,

“There ain’t any wasted that way.”

“People who are different from other people are always called
peculiar,” said Anne. “And Miss Lavendar is certainly different,
though it’s hard to say just where the difference comes in. Perhaps it is
because she is one of those people who never grow old.”

“One might as well grow old when all your generation do,” said
Marilla, rather reckless of her pronouns. “If you don’t, you
don’t fit in anywhere. Far as I can learn Lavendar Lewis has just dropped
out of everything. She’s lived in that out of the way place until
everybody has forgotten her. That stone house is one of the oldest on the
Island. Old Mr. Lewis built it eighty years ago when he came out from England.
Davy, stop joggling Dora’s elbow. Oh, I saw you! You needn’t try to
look innocent. What does make you behave so this morning?”

“Maybe I got out of the wrong side of the bed,” suggested Davy.
“Milty Boulter says if you do that things are bound to go wrong with you
all day. His grandmother told him. But which is the right side? And what
are you to do when your bed’s against the wall? I want to know.”

“I’ve always wondered what went wrong between Stephen Irving and
Lavendar Lewis,” continued Marilla, ignoring Davy. “They were
certainly engaged twenty-five years ago and then all at once it was broken off.
I don’t know what the trouble was but it must have been something
terrible, for he went away to the States and never come home since.”

“Perhaps it was nothing very dreadful after all. I think the little
things in life often make more trouble than the big things,” said Anne,
with one of those flashes of insight which experience could not have bettered.
“Marilla, please don’t say anything about my being at Miss
Lavendar’s to Mrs. Lynde. She’d be sure to ask a hundred questions
and somehow I wouldn’t like it . . . nor Miss Lavendar either if she
knew, I feel sure.”

“I daresay Rachel would be curious,” admitted Marilla,
“though she hasn’t as much time as she used to have for looking
after other people’s affairs. She’s tied home now on account of
Thomas; and she’s feeling pretty downhearted, for I think she’s
beginning to lose hope of his ever getting better. Rachel will be left pretty
lonely if anything happens to him, with all her children settled out west,
except Eliza in town; and she doesn’t like her husband.”

Marilla’s pronouns slandered Eliza, who was very fond of her husband.

“Rachel says if he’d only brace up and exert his will power
he’d get better. But what is the use of asking a jellyfish to sit up
straight?” continued Marilla. “Thomas Lynde never had any will
power to exert. His mother ruled him till he married and then Rachel carried it
on. It’s a wonder he dared to get sick without asking her permission. But
there, I shouldn’t talk so. Rachel has been a good wife to him.
He’d never have amounted to anything without her, that’s certain.
He was born to be ruled; and it’s well he fell into the hands of a
clever, capable manager like Rachel. He didn’t mind her way. It saved him
the bother of ever making up his own mind about anything. Davy, do stop
squirming like an eel.”

“I’ve nothing else to do,” protested Davy. “I
can’t eat any more, and it’s no fun watching you and Anne
eat.”

“Well, you and Dora go out and give the hens their wheat,” said
Marilla. “And don’t you try to pull any more feathers out of the
white rooster’s tail either.”

“I wanted some feathers for an Injun headdress,” said Davy sulkily.
“Milty Boulter has a dandy one, made out of the feathers his mother give
him when she killed their old white gobbler. You might let me have some. That
rooster’s got ever so many more’n he wants.”

“You may have the old feather duster in the garret,” said Anne,
“and I’ll dye them green and red and yellow for you.”

“You do spoil that boy dreadfully,” said Marilla, when Davy, with a
radiant face, had followed prim Dora out. Marilla’s education had made
great strides in the past six years; but she had not yet been able to rid
herself of the idea that it was very bad for a child to have too many of its
wishes indulged.

“All the boys of his class have Indian headdresses, and Davy wants one
too,” said Anne. “I know how it feels . . . I’ll never
forget how I used to long for puffed sleeves when all the other girls had them.
And Davy isn’t being spoiled. He is improving every day. Think what a
difference there is in him since he came here a year ago.”

“He certainly doesn’t get into as much mischief since he began to
go to school,” acknowledged Marilla. “I suppose he works off the
tendency with the other boys. But it’s a wonder to me we haven’t
heard from Richard Keith before this. Never a word since last May.”

“I’ll be afraid to hear from him,” sighed Anne, beginning to
clear away the dishes. “If a letter should come I’d dread opening
it, for fear it would tell us to send the twins to him.”

A month later a letter did come. But it was not from Richard Keith. A friend of
his wrote to say that Richard Keith had died of consumption a fortnight
previously. The writer of the letter was the executor of his will and by that
will the sum of two thousand dollars was left to Miss Marilla Cuthbert in trust
for David and Dora Keith until they came of age or married. In the meantime the
interest was to be used for their maintenance.

“It seems dreadful to be glad of anything in connection with a
death,” said Anne soberly. “I’m sorry for poor Mr. Keith; but
I am glad that we can keep the twins.”

“It’s a very good thing about the money,” said Marilla
practically. “I wanted to keep them but I really didn’t see how I
could afford to do it, especially when they grew older. The rent of the farm
doesn’t do any more than keep the house and I was bound that not a cent
of your money should be spent on them. You do far too much for them as it is.
Dora didn’t need that new hat you bought her any more than a cat needs
two tails. But now the way is made clear and they are provided for.”

Davy and Dora were delighted when they heard that they were to live at Green
Gables, “for good.” The death of an uncle whom they had never seen
could not weigh a moment in the balance against that. But Dora had one
misgiving.

“Was Uncle Richard buried?” she whispered to Anne.

“Yes, dear, of course.”

“He . . . he . . . isn’t like Mirabel Cotton’s uncle, is
he?” in a still more agitated whisper. “He won’t walk about
houses after being buried, will he, Anne?”

XXIII
Miss Lavendar’s Romance

“I think I’ll take a walk through to Echo Lodge this
evening,” said Anne, one Friday afternoon in December.

“It looks like snow,” said Marilla dubiously.

“I’ll be there before the snow comes and I mean to stay all night.
Diana can’t go because she has company, and I’m sure Miss Lavendar
will be looking for me tonight. It’s a whole fortnight since I was
there.”

Anne had paid many a visit to Echo Lodge since that October day. Sometimes she
and Diana drove around by the road; sometimes they walked through the woods.
When Diana could not go Anne went alone. Between her and Miss Lavendar had
sprung up one of those fervent, helpful friendships possible only between a
woman who has kept the freshness of youth in her heart and soul, and a girl
whose imagination and intuition supplied the place of experience. Anne had at
last discovered a real “kindred spirit,” while into the little
lady’s lonely, sequestered life of dreams Anne and Diana came with the
wholesome joy and exhilaration of the outer existence, which Miss Lavendar,
“the world forgetting, by the world forgot,” had long ceased to
share; they brought an atmosphere of youth and reality to the little stone
house. Charlotta the Fourth always greeted them with her very widest smile . .
. and Charlotta’s smiles were fearfully wide . . . loving them for
the sake of her adored mistress as well as for their own. Never had there been
such “high jinks” held in the little stone house as were held there
that beautiful, late-lingering autumn, when November seemed October over again,
and even December aped the sunshine and hazes of summer.

But on this particular day it seemed as if December had remembered that it was
time for winter and had turned suddenly dull and brooding, with a windless hush
predictive of coming snow. Nevertheless, Anne keenly enjoyed her walk through
the great gray maze of the beechlands; though alone she never found it lonely;
her imagination peopled her path with merry companions, and with these she
carried on a gay, pretended conversation that was wittier and more fascinating
than conversations are apt to be in real life, where people sometimes fail most
lamentably to talk up to the requirements. In a “make believe”
assembly of choice spirits everybody says just the thing you want her to say
and so gives you the chance to say just what you want to say. Attended
by this invisible company, Anne traversed the woods and arrived at the fir lane
just as broad, feathery flakes began to flutter down softly.

At the first bend she came upon Miss Lavendar, standing under a big,
broad-branching fir. She wore a gown of warm, rich red, and her head and
shoulders were wrapped in a silvery gray silk shawl.

“You look like the queen of the fir wood fairies,” called Anne
merrily.

“I thought you would come tonight, Anne,” said Miss Lavendar,
running forward. “And I’m doubly glad, for Charlotta the Fourth is
away. Her mother is sick and she had to go home for the night. I should have
been very lonely if you hadn’t come . . . even the dreams and the echoes
wouldn’t have been enough company. Oh, Anne, how pretty you are,”
she added suddenly, looking up at the tall, slim girl with the soft rose-flush
of walking on her face. “How pretty and how young! It’s so
delightful to be seventeen, isn’t it? I do envy you,” concluded
Miss Lavendar candidly.

“But you are only seventeen at heart,” smiled Anne.

“No, I’m old . . . or rather middle-aged, which is far
worse,” sighed Miss Lavendar. “Sometimes I can pretend I’m
not, but at other times I realize it. And I can’t reconcile myself to it
as most women seem to. I’m just as rebellious as I was when I discovered
my first gray hair. Now, Anne, don’t look as if you were trying to
understand. Seventeen can’t understand. I’m going to pretend
right away that I am seventeen too, and I can do it, now that you’re
here. You always bring youth in your hand like a gift. We’re going to
have a jolly evening. Tea first . . . what do you want for tea? We’ll
have whatever you like. Do think of something nice and indigestible.”

There were sounds of riot and mirth in the little stone house that night. What
with cooking and feasting and making candy and laughing and
“pretending,” it is quite true that Miss Lavendar and Anne
comported themselves in a fashion entirely unsuited to the dignity of a
spinster of forty-five and a sedate schoolma’am. Then, when they were
tired, they sat down on the rug before the grate in the parlor, lighted only by
the soft fireshine and perfumed deliciously by Miss Lavendar’s open
rose-jar on the mantel. The wind had risen and was sighing and wailing around
the eaves and the snow was thudding softly against the windows, as if a hundred
storm sprites were tapping for entrance.

“I’m so glad you’re here, Anne,” said Miss Lavendar,
nibbling at her candy. “If you weren’t I should be blue . . . very
blue . . . almost navy blue. Dreams and make-believes are all very well in the
daytime and the sunshine, but when dark and storm come they fail to satisfy.
One wants real things then. But you don’t know this . . . seventeen never
knows it. At seventeen dreams DO satisfy because you think the realities are
waiting for you further on. When I was seventeen, Anne, I didn’t think
forty-five would find me a white-haired little old maid with nothing but dreams
to fill my life.”

“But you aren’t an old maid,” said Anne, smiling into Miss
Lavendar’s wistful woodbrown eyes. “Old maids are born . . .
they don’t become.”

“Some are born old maids, some achieve old maidenhood, and some have old
maidenhood thrust upon them,” parodied Miss Lavendar whimsically.

“You are one of those who have achieved it then,” laughed Anne,
“and you’ve done it so beautifully that if every old maid were like
you they would come into the fashion, I think.”

“I always like to do things as well as possible,” said Miss
Lavendar meditatively, “and since an old maid I had to be I was
determined to be a very nice one. People say I’m odd; but it’s just
because I follow my own way of being an old maid and refuse to copy the
traditional pattern. Anne, did anyone ever tell you anything about Stephen
Irving and me?”

“Yes,” said Anne candidly, “I’ve heard that you and he
were engaged once.”

“So we were . . . twenty-five years ago . . . a lifetime ago. And we were
to have been married the next spring. I had my wedding dress made, although
nobody but mother and Stephen ever knew that. We’d been engaged in
a way almost all our lives, you might say. When Stephen was a little boy his
mother would bring him here when she came to see my mother; and the second time
he ever came . . . he was nine and I was six . . . he told me out in the garden
that he had pretty well made up his mind to marry me when he grew up. I
remember that I said ‘Thank you’; and when he was gone I told
mother very gravely that there was a great weight off my mind, because I
wasn’t frightened any more about having to be an old maid. How poor
mother laughed!”

“And what went wrong?” asked Anne breathlessly.

“We had just a stupid, silly, commonplace quarrel. So commonplace that,
if you’ll believe me, I don’t even remember just how it began. I
hardly know who was the more to blame for it. Stephen did really begin it, but
I suppose I provoked him by some foolishness of mine. He had a rival or two,
you see. I was vain and coquettish and liked to tease him a little. He was a
very high-strung, sensitive fellow. Well, we parted in a temper on both sides.
But I thought it would all come right; and it would have if Stephen
hadn’t come back too soon. Anne, my dear, I’m sorry to say” .
. . Miss Lavendar dropped her voice as if she were about to confess a
predilection for murdering people, “that I am a dreadfully sulky person.
Oh, you needn’t smile, . . . it’s only too true. I do sulk;
and Stephen came back before I had finished sulking. I wouldn’t listen to
him and I wouldn’t forgive him; and so he went away for good. He was too
proud to come again. And then I sulked because he didn’t come. I might
have sent for him perhaps, but I couldn’t humble myself to do that. I was
just as proud as he was . . . pride and sulkiness make a very bad combination,
Anne. But I could never care for anybody else and I didn’t want to. I
knew I would rather be an old maid for a thousand years than marry anybody who
wasn’t Stephen Irving. Well, it all seems like a dream now, of course.
How sympathetic you look, Anne . . . as sympathetic as only seventeen can look.
But don’t overdo it. I’m really a very happy, contented little
person in spite of my broken heart. My heart did break, if ever a heart did,
when I realized that Stephen Irving was not coming back. But, Anne, a broken
heart in real life isn’t half as dreadful as it is in books. It’s a
good deal like a bad tooth . . . though you won’t think that a
very romantic simile. It takes spells of aching and gives you a sleepless night
now and then, but between times it lets you enjoy life and dreams and echoes
and peanut candy as if there were nothing the matter with it. And now
you’re looking disappointed. You don’t think I’m half as
interesting a person as you did five minutes ago when you believed I was always
the prey of a tragic memory bravely hidden beneath external smiles.
That’s the worst . . . or the best . . . of real life, Anne. It
won’t let you be miserable. It keeps on trying to make you
comfortable . . . and succeeding…even when you’re determined to be
unhappy and romantic. Isn’t this candy scrumptious? I’ve eaten far
more than is good for me already but I’m going to keep recklessly
on.”

After a little silence Miss Lavendar said abruptly,

“It gave me a shock to hear about Stephen’s son that first day you
were here, Anne. I’ve never been able to mention him to you since, but
I’ve wanted to know all about him. What sort of a boy is he?”

“He is the dearest, sweetest child I ever knew, Miss Lavendar . . . and
he pretends things too, just as you and I do.”

“I’d like to see him,” said Miss Lavendar softly, as if
talking to herself. “I wonder if he looks anything like the little
dream-boy who lives here with me . . . my little dream-boy.”

“If you would like to see Paul I’ll bring him through with me
sometime,” said Anne.

“I would like it . . . but not too soon. I want to get used to the
thought. There might be more pain than pleasure in it . . . if he looked too
much like Stephen . . . or if he didn’t look enough like him. In a
month’s time you may bring him.”

Accordingly, a month later Anne and Paul walked through the woods to the stone
house, and met Miss Lavendar in the lane. She had not been expecting them just
then and she turned very pale.

“So this is Stephen’s boy,” she said in a low tone, taking
Paul’s hand and looking at him as he stood, beautiful and boyish, in his
smart little fur coat and cap. “He . . . he is very like his
father.”

“Everybody says I’m a chip off the old block,” remarked Paul,
quite at his ease.

Anne, who had been watching the little scene, drew a relieved breath. She saw
that Miss Lavendar and Paul had “taken” to each other, and that
there would be no constraint or stiffness. Miss Lavendar was a very sensible
person, in spite of her dreams and romance, and after that first little
betrayal she tucked her feelings out of sight and entertained Paul as brightly
and naturally as if he were anybody’s son who had come to see her. They
all had a jolly afternoon together and such a feast of fat things by way of
supper as would have made old Mrs. Irving hold up her hands in horror,
believing that Paul’s digestion would be ruined for ever.

“Come again, laddie,” said Miss Lavendar, shaking hands with him at
parting.

“You may kiss me if you like,” said Paul gravely.

Miss Lavendar stooped and kissed him.

“How did you know I wanted to?” she whispered.

“Because you looked at me just as my little mother used to do when she
wanted to kiss me. As a rule, I don’t like to be kissed. Boys
don’t. You know, Miss Lewis. But I think I rather like to have you
kiss me. And of course I’ll come to see you again. I think I’d like
to have you for a particular friend of mine, if you don’t object.”

“I . . . I don’t think I shall object,” said Miss Lavendar.
She turned and went in very quickly; but a moment later she was waving a gay
and smiling good-bye to them from the window.

“I like Miss Lavendar,” announced Paul, as they walked through the
beech woods. “I like the way she looked at me, and I like her stone
house, and I like Charlotta the Fourth. I wish Grandma Irving had a Charlotta
the Fourth instead of a Mary Joe. I feel sure Charlotta the Fourth
wouldn’t think I was wrong in my upper story when I told her what I think
about things. Wasn’t that a splendid tea we had, teacher? Grandma says a
boy shouldn’t be thinking about what he gets to eat, but he can’t
help it sometimes when he is real hungry. You know, teacher. I
don’t think Miss Lavendar would make a boy eat porridge for breakfast if
he didn’t like it. She’d get things for him he did like. But of
course” . . . Paul was nothing if not fair-minded . . . “that
mightn’t be very good for him. It’s very nice for a change though,
teacher. You know.”

XXIV
A Prophet in His Own Country

One May day Avonlea folks were mildly excited over some “Avonlea
Notes,” signed “Observer,” which appeared in the
Charlottetown Daily Enterprise. Gossip ascribed the authorship thereof
to Charlie Sloane, partly because the said Charlie had indulged in similar
literary flights in times past, and partly because one of the notes seemed to
embody a sneer at Gilbert Blythe. Avonlea juvenile society persisted in
regarding Gilbert Blythe and Charlie Sloane as rivals in the good graces of a
certain damsel with gray eyes and an imagination.

Gossip, as usual, was wrong. Gilbert Blythe, aided and abetted by Anne, had
written the notes, putting in the one about himself as a blind. Only two of the
notes have any bearing on this history:

“Rumor has it that there will be a wedding in our village ere the daisies
are in bloom. A new and highly respected citizen will lead to the hymeneal
altar one of our most popular ladies.

“Uncle Abe, our well-known weather prophet, predicts a violent storm of
thunder and lightning for the evening of the twenty-third of May, beginning at
seven o’clock sharp. The area of the storm will extend over the greater
part of the Province. People traveling that evening will do well to take
umbrellas and mackintoshes with them.”

“Uncle Abe really has predicted a storm for sometime this spring,”
said Gilbert, “but do you suppose Mr. Harrison really does go to see
Isabella Andrews?”

“No,” said Anne, laughing, “I’m sure he only goes to
play checkers with Mr. Harrison Andrews, but Mrs. Lynde says she knows Isabella
Andrews must be going to get married, she’s in such good spirits this
spring.”

Poor old Uncle Abe felt rather indignant over the notes. He suspected that
“Observer” was making fun of him. He angrily denied having assigned
any particular date for his storm but nobody believed him.

Life in Avonlea continued on the smooth and even tenor of its way. The
“planting” was put in; the Improvers celebrated an Arbor Day. Each
Improver set out, or caused to be set out, five ornamental trees. As the
society now numbered forty members, this meant a total of two hundred young
trees. Early oats greened over the red fields; apple orchards flung great
blossoming arms about the farmhouses and the Snow Queen adorned itself as a
bride for her husband. Anne liked to sleep with her window open and let the
cherry fragrance blow over her face all night. She thought it very poetical.
Marilla thought she was risking her life.

“Thanksgiving should be celebrated in the spring,” said Anne one
evening to Marilla, as they sat on the front door steps and listened to the
silver-sweet chorus of the frogs. “I think it would be ever so much
better than having it in November when everything is dead or asleep. Then you
have to remember to be thankful; but in May one simply can’t help being
thankful . . . that they are alive, if for nothing else. I feel exactly as Eve
must have felt in the garden of Eden before the trouble began. Is that
grass in the hollow green or golden? It seems to me, Marilla, that a pearl of a
day like this, when the blossoms are out and the winds don’t know where
to blow from next for sheer crazy delight must be pretty near as good as
heaven.”

Marilla looked scandalized and glanced apprehensively around to make sure the
twins were not within earshot. They came around the corner of the house just
then.

“Ain’t it an awful nice-smelling evening?” asked Davy,
sniffing delightedly as he swung a hoe in his grimy hands. He had been working
in his garden. That spring Marilla, by way of turning Davy’s passion for
reveling in mud and clay into useful channels, had given him and Dora a small
plot of ground for a garden. Both had eagerly gone to work in a characteristic
fashion. Dora planted, weeded, and watered carefully, systematically, and
dispassionately. As a result, her plot was already green with prim, orderly
little rows of vegetables and annuals. Davy, however, worked with more zeal
than discretion; he dug and hoed and raked and watered and transplanted so
energetically that his seeds had no chance for their lives.

“How is your garden coming on, Davy-boy?” asked Anne.

“Kind of slow,” said Davy with a sigh. “I don’t know
why the things don’t grow better. Milty Boulter says I must have planted
them in the dark of the moon and that’s the whole trouble. He says you
must never sow seeds or kill pork or cut your hair or do any ‘portant
thing in the wrong time of the moon. Is that true, Anne? I want to know.”

“Maybe if you didn’t pull your plants up by the roots every other
day to see how they’re getting on ‘at the other end,’
they’d do better,” said Marilla sarcastically.

“I only pulled six of them up,” protested Davy. “I wanted to
see if there was grubs at the roots. Milty Boulter said if it wasn’t the
moon’s fault it must be grubs. But I only found one grub. He was a great
big juicy curly grub. I put him on a stone and got another stone and smashed
him flat. He made a jolly sqush I tell you. I was sorry there wasn’t more
of them. Dora’s garden was planted same time’s mine and her things
are growing all right. It can’t be the moon,” Davy concluded
in a reflective tone.

“Marilla, look at that apple tree,” said Anne. “Why, the
thing is human. It is reaching out long arms to pick its own pink skirts
daintily up and provoke us to admiration.”

“Those Yellow Duchess trees always bear well,” said Marilla
complacently. “That tree’ll be loaded this year. I’m real
glad. . . they’re great for pies.”

But neither Marilla nor Anne nor anybody else was fated to make pies out of
Yellow Duchess apples that year.

The twenty-third of May came . . . an unseasonably warm day, as none realized
more keenly than Anne and her little beehive of pupils, sweltering over
fractions and syntax in the Avonlea schoolroom. A hot breeze blew all the
forenoon; but after noon hour it died away into a heavy stillness. At half past
three Anne heard a low rumble of thunder. She promptly dismissed school at
once, so that the children might get home before the storm came.

As they went out to the playground Anne perceived a certain shadow and gloom
over the world in spite of the fact that the sun was still shining brightly.
Annetta Bell caught her hand nervously.

“Oh, teacher, look at that awful cloud!”

Anne looked and gave an exclamation of dismay. In the northwest a mass of
cloud, such as she had never in all her life beheld before, was rapidly rolling
up. It was dead black, save where its curled and fringed edges showed a
ghastly, livid white. There was something about it indescribably menacing as it
gloomed up in the clear blue sky; now and again a bolt of lightning shot across
it, followed by a savage growl. It hung so low that it almost seemed to be
touching the tops of the wooded hills.

Mr. Harmon Andrews came clattering up the hill in his truck wagon, urging his
team of grays to their utmost speed. He pulled them to a halt opposite the
school.

“Guess Uncle Abe’s hit it for once in his life, Anne,” he
shouted. “His storm’s coming a leetle ahead of time. Did ye ever
see the like of that cloud? Here, all you young ones, that are going my way,
pile in, and those that ain’t scoot for the post office if ye’ve
more’n a quarter of a mile to go, and stay there till the shower’s
over.”

Anne caught Davy and Dora by the hands and flew down the hill, along the Birch
Path, and past Violet Vale and Willowmere, as fast as the twins’ fat legs
could go. They reached Green Gables not a moment too soon and were joined at
the door by Marilla, who had been hustling her ducks and chickens under
shelter. As they dashed into the kitchen the light seemed to vanish, as if
blown out by some mighty breath; the awful cloud rolled over the sun and a
darkness as of late twilight fell across the world. At the same moment, with a
crash of thunder and a blinding glare of lightning, the hail swooped down and
blotted the landscape out in one white fury.

Through all the clamor of the storm came the thud of torn branches striking the
house and the sharp crack of breaking glass. In three minutes every pane in the
west and north windows was broken and the hail poured in through the apertures
covering the floor with stones, the smallest of which was as big as a
hen’s egg. For three quarters of an hour the storm raged unabated and no
one who underwent it ever forgot it. Marilla, for once in her life shaken out
of her composure by sheer terror, knelt by her rocking chair in a corner of the
kitchen, gasping and sobbing between the deafening thunder peals. Anne, white
as paper, had dragged the sofa away from the window and sat on it with a twin
on either side. Davy at the first crash had howled, “Anne, Anne, is it
the Judgment Day? Anne, Anne, I never meant to be naughty,” and
then had buried his face in Anne’s lap and kept it there, his little body
quivering. Dora, somewhat pale but quite composed, sat with her hand clasped in
Anne’s, quiet and motionless. It is doubtful if an earthquake would have
disturbed Dora.

Then, almost as suddenly as it began, the storm ceased. The hail stopped, the
thunder rolled and muttered away to the eastward, and the sun burst out merry
and radiant over a world so changed that it seemed an absurd thing to think
that a scant three quarters of an hour could have effected such a
transformation.

Marilla rose from her knees, weak and trembling, and dropped on her rocker. Her
face was haggard and she looked ten years older.

“Have we all come out of that alive?” she asked solemnly.

“You bet we have,” piped Davy cheerfully, quite his own man again.
“I wasn’t a bit scared either . . . only just at the first. It come
on a fellow so sudden. I made up my mind quick as a wink that I wouldn’t
fight Teddy Sloane Monday as I’d promised; but now maybe I will. Say,
Dora, was you scared?”

“Yes, I was a little scared,” said Dora primly, “but I held
tight to Anne’s hand and said my prayers over and over again.”

“Well, I’d have said my prayers too if I’d have thought of
it,” said Davy; “but,” he added triumphantly, “you see
I came through just as safe as you for all I didn’t say them.”

Anne got Marilla a glassful of her potent currant wine . . . how potent
it was Anne, in her earlier days, had had all too good reason to know . . . and
then they went to the door to look out on the strange scene.

Far and wide was a white carpet, knee deep, of hailstones; drifts of them were
heaped up under the eaves and on the steps. When, three or four days later,
those hailstones melted, the havoc they had wrought was plainly seen, for every
green growing thing in the field or garden was cut off. Not only was every
blossom stripped from the apple trees but great boughs and branches were
wrenched away. And out of the two hundred trees set out by the Improvers by far
the greater number were snapped off or torn to shreds.

“Can it possibly be the same world it was an hour ago?” asked Anne,
dazedly. “It must have taken longer than that to play such
havoc.”

“The like of this has never been known in Prince Edward Island,”
said Marilla, “never. I remember when I was a girl there was a bad storm,
but it was nothing to this. We’ll hear of terrible destruction, you may
be sure.”

“I do hope none of the children were caught out in it,” murmured
Anne anxiously. As it was discovered later, none of the children had been,
since all those who had any distance to go had taken Mr. Andrews’
excellent advice and sought refuge at the post office.

“There comes John Henry Carter,” said Marilla.

John Henry came wading through the hailstones with a rather scared grin.

“Oh, ain’t this awful, Miss Cuthbert? Mr. Harrison sent me over to
see if yous had come out all right.”

“We’re none of us killed,” said Marilla grimly, “and
none of the buildings was struck. I hope you got off equally well.”

“Yas’m. Not quite so well, ma’am. We was struck. The
lightning knocked over the kitchen chimbly and come down the flue and knocked
over Ginger’s cage and tore a hole in the floor and went into the sullar.
Yas’m.”

“Was Ginger hurt?” queried Anne.

“Yas’m. He was hurt pretty bad. He was killed.” Later on Anne
went over to comfort Mr. Harrison. She found him sitting by the table, stroking
Ginger’s gay dead body with a trembling hand.

“Poor Ginger won’t call you any more names, Anne,” he said
mournfully.

Anne could never have imagined herself crying on Ginger’s account, but
the tears came into her eyes.

“He was all the company I had, Anne . . . and now he’s dead. Well,
well, I’m an old fool to care so much. I’ll let on I don’t
care. I know you’re going to say something sympathetic as soon as I stop
talking . . . but don’t. If you did I’d cry like a baby.
Hasn’t this been a terrible storm? I guess folks won’t laugh at
Uncle Abe’s predictions again. Seems as if all the storms that he’s
been prophesying all his life that never happened came all at once. Beats all
how he struck the very day though, don’t it? Look at the mess we have
here. I must hustle round and get some boards to patch up that hole in the
floor.”

Avonlea folks did nothing the next day but visit each other and compare
damages. The roads were impassable for wheels by reason of the hailstones, so
they walked or rode on horseback. The mail came late with ill tidings from all
over the province. Houses had been struck, people killed and injured; the whole
telephone and telegraph system had been disorganized, and any number of young
stock exposed in the fields had perished.

Uncle Abe waded out to the blacksmith’s forge early in the morning and
spent the whole day there. It was Uncle Abe’s hour of triumph and he
enjoyed it to the full. It would be doing Uncle Abe an injustice to say that he
was glad the storm had happened; but since it had to be he was very glad he had
predicted it . . . to the very day, too. Uncle Abe forgot that he had ever
denied setting the day. As for the trifling discrepancy in the hour, that was
nothing.

Gilbert arrived at Green Gables in the evening and found Marilla and Anne
busily engaged in nailing strips of oilcloth over the broken windows.

“Goodness only knows when we’ll get glass for them,” said
Marilla. “Mr. Barry went over to Carmody this afternoon but not a pane
could he get for love or money. Lawson and Blair were cleaned out by the
Carmody people by ten o’clock. Was the storm bad at White Sands,
Gilbert?”

“I should say so. I was caught in the school with all the children and I
thought some of them would go mad with fright. Three of them fainted, and two
girls took hysterics, and Tommy Blewett did nothing but shriek at the top of
his voice the whole time.”

“I only squealed once,” said Davy proudly. “My garden was all
smashed flat,” he continued mournfully, “but so was
Dora’s,” he added in a tone which indicated that there was yet balm
in Gilead.

Anne came running down from the west gable.

“Oh, Gilbert, have you heard the news? Mr. Levi Boulter’s old house
was struck and burned to the ground. It seems to me that I’m dreadfully
wicked to feel glad over that, when so much damage has been done. Mr.
Boulter says he believes the A.V.I.S. magicked up that storm on purpose.”

“Well, one thing is certain,” said Gilbert, laughing,
“‘Observer’ has made Uncle Abe’s reputation as a
weather prophet. ‘Uncle Abe’s storm’ will go down in local
history. It is a most extraordinary coincidence that it should have come on the
very day we selected. I actually have a half guilty feeling, as if I really had
‘magicked’ it up. We may as well rejoice over the old house being
removed, for there’s not much to rejoice over where our young trees are
concerned. Not ten of them have escaped.”

“Ah, well, we’ll just have to plant them over again next
spring,” said Anne philosophically. “That is one good thing about
this world . . . there are always sure to be more springs.”

XXV
An Avonlea Scandal

One blithe June morning, a fortnight after Uncle Abe’s storm, Anne came
slowly through the Green Gables yard from the garden, carrying in her hands two
blighted stalks of white narcissus.

“Look, Marilla,” she said sorrowfully, holding up the flowers
before the eyes of a grim lady, with her hair coifed in a green gingham apron,
who was going into the house with a plucked chicken, “these are the only
buds the storm spared . . . and even they are imperfect. I’m so sorry . .
. I wanted some for Matthew’s grave. He was always so fond of June
lilies.”

“I kind of miss them myself,” admitted Marilla, “though it
doesn’t seem right to lament over them when so many worse things have
happened. . . all the crops destroyed as well as the fruit.”

“But people have sown their oats over again,” said Anne
comfortingly, “and Mr. Harrison says he thinks if we have a good summer
they will come out all right though late. And my annuals are all coming up
again . . . but oh, nothing can replace the June lilies. Poor little Hester
Gray will have none either. I went all the way back to her garden last night
but there wasn’t one. I’m sure she’ll miss them.”

“I don’t think it’s right for you to say such things, Anne, I
really don’t,” said Marilla severely. “Hester Gray has been
dead for thirty years and her spirit is in heaven . . . I hope.”

“Yes, but I believe she loves and remembers her garden here still,”
said Anne. “I’m sure no matter how long I’d lived in heaven
I’d like to look down and see somebody putting flowers on my grave. If I
had had a garden here like Hester Gray’s it would take me more than
thirty years, even in heaven, to forget being homesick for it by spells.”

“Well, don’t let the twins hear you talking like that,” was
Marilla’s feeble protest, as she carried her chicken into the house.

Anne pinned her narcissi on her hair and went to the lane gate, where she stood
for awhile sunning herself in the June brightness before going in to attend to
her Saturday morning duties. The world was growing lovely again; old Mother
Nature was doing her best to remove the traces of the storm, and, though she
was not to succeed fully for many a moon, she was really accomplishing wonders.

“I wish I could just be idle all day today,” Anne told a bluebird,
who was singing and swinging on a willow bough, “but a schoolma’am,
who is also helping to bring up twins, can’t indulge in laziness, birdie.
How sweet you are singing, little bird. You are just putting the feelings of my
heart into song ever so much better than I could myself. Why, who is
coming?”

An express wagon was jolting up the lane, with two people on the front seat and
a big trunk behind. When it drew near Anne recognized the driver as the son of
the station agent at Bright River; but his companion was a stranger . . . a
scrap of a woman who sprang nimbly down at the gate almost before the horse
came to a standstill. She was a very pretty little person, evidently nearer
fifty than forty, but with rosy cheeks, sparkling black eyes, and shining black
hair, surmounted by a wonderful beflowered and beplumed bonnet. In spite of
having driven eight miles over a dusty road she was as neat as if she had just
stepped out of the proverbial bandbox.

“Is this where Mr. James A. Harrison lives?” she inquired briskly.

“No, Mr. Harrison lives over there,” said Anne, quite lost in
astonishment.

“Well, I did think this place seemed too tidy . . . much
too tidy for James A. to be living here, unless he has greatly changed since I
knew him,” chirped the little lady. “Is it true that James A. is
going to be married to some woman living in this settlement?”

“No, oh no,” cried Anne, flushing so guiltily that the stranger
looked curiously at her, as if she half suspected her of matrimonial designs on
Mr. Harrison.

“But I saw it in an Island paper,” persisted the Fair Unknown.
“A friend sent a marked copy to me . . . friends are always so ready to
do such things. James A.‘s name was written in over ‘new
citizen.’”

“Oh, that note was only meant as a joke,” gasped Anne. “Mr.
Harrison has no intention of marrying anybody. I assure you he
hasn’t.”

“I’m very glad to hear it,” said the rosy lady, climbing
nimbly back to her seat in the wagon, “because he happens to be married
already. I am his wife. Oh, you may well look surprised. I suppose he
has been masquerading as a bachelor and breaking hearts right and left. Well,
well, James A.,” nodding vigorously over the fields at the long white
house, “your fun is over. I am here . . . though I wouldn’t have
bothered coming if I hadn’t thought you were up to some mischief. I
suppose,” turning to Anne, “that parrot of his is as profane as
ever?”

“His parrot . . . is dead . . . I think,” gasped poor Anne,
who couldn’t have felt sure of her own name at that precise moment.

“Dead! Everything will be all right then,” cried the rosy lady
jubilantly. “I can manage James A. if that bird is out of the way.”

With which cryptic utterance she went joyfully on her way and Anne flew to the
kitchen door to meet Marilla.

“Anne, who was that woman?”

“Marilla,” said Anne solemnly, but with dancing eyes, “do I
look as if I were crazy?”

“Not more so than usual,” said Marilla, with no thought of being
sarcastic.

“Well then, do you think I am awake?”

“Anne, what nonsense has got into you? Who was that woman, I say?”

“Marilla, if I’m not crazy and not asleep she can’t be such
stuff as dreams are made of . . . she must be real. Anyway, I’m sure I
couldn’t have imagined such a bonnet. She says she is Mr.
Harrison’s wife, Marilla.”

Marilla stared in her turn.

“His wife! Anne Shirley! Then what has he been passing himself off as an
unmarried man for?”

“I don’t suppose he did, really,” said Anne, trying to be
just. “He never said he wasn’t married. People simply took it for
granted. Oh Marilla, what will Mrs. Lynde say to this?”

They found out what Mrs. Lynde had to say when she came up that evening. Mrs.
Lynde wasn’t surprised! Mrs. Lynde had always expected something of the
sort! Mrs. Lynde had always known there was something about Mr.
Harrison!

“To think of his deserting his wife!” she said indignantly.
“It’s like something you’d read of in the States, but who
would expect such a thing to happen right here in Avonlea?”

“But we don’t know that he deserted her,” protested Anne,
determined to believe her friend innocent till he was proved guilty. “We
don’t know the rights of it at all.”

“Well, we soon will. I’m going straight over there,” said
Mrs. Lynde, who had never learned that there was such a word as delicacy in the
dictionary. “I’m not supposed to know anything about her arrival,
and Mr. Harrison was to bring some medicine for Thomas from Carmody today, so
that will be a good excuse. I’ll find out the whole story and come in and
tell you on the way back.”

Mrs. Lynde rushed in where Anne had feared to tread. Nothing would have induced
the latter to go over to the Harrison place; but she had her natural and proper
share of curiosity and she felt secretly glad that Mrs. Lynde was going to
solve the mystery. She and Marilla waited expectantly for that good
lady’s return, but waited in vain. Mrs. Lynde did not revisit Green
Gables that night. Davy, arriving home at nine o’clock from the Boulter
place, explained why.

“I met Mrs. Lynde and some strange woman in the Hollow,” he said,
“and gracious, how they were talking both at once! Mrs. Lynde said to
tell you she was sorry it was too late to call tonight. Anne, I’m awful
hungry. We had tea at Milty’s at four and I think Mrs. Boulter is real
mean. She didn’t give us any preserves or cake . . . and even the bread
was skurce.”

“Davy, when you go visiting you must never criticize anything you are
given to eat,” said Anne solemnly. “It is very bad manners.”

“All right . . . I’ll only think it,” said Davy cheerfully.
“Do give a fellow some supper, Anne.”

Anne looked at Marilla, who followed her into the pantry and shut the door
cautiously.

“You can give him some jam on his bread, I know what tea at Levi
Boulter’s is apt to be.”

Davy took his slice of bread and jam with a sigh.

“It’s a kind of disappointing world after all,” he remarked.
“Milty has a cat that takes fits . . . she’s took a fit regular
every day for three weeks. Milty says it’s awful fun to watch her. I went
down today on purpose to see her have one but the mean old thing wouldn’t
take a fit and just kept healthy as healthy, though Milty and me hung round all
the afternoon and waited. But never mind” . . . Davy brightened up as the
insidious comfort of the plum jam stole into his soul . . . “maybe
I’ll see her in one sometime yet. It doesn’t seem likely
she’d stop having them all at once when she’s been so in the habit
of it, does it? This jam is awful nice.”

Davy had no sorrows that plum jam could not cure.

Sunday proved so rainy that there was no stirring abroad; but by Monday
everybody had heard some version of the Harrison story. The school buzzed with
it and Davy came home, full of information.

“Marilla, Mr. Harrison has a new wife . . . well, not ezackly new, but
they’ve stopped being married for quite a spell, Milty says. I always
s’posed people had to keep on being married once they’d begun, but
Milty says no, there’s ways of stopping if you can’t agree. Milty
says one way is just to start off and leave your wife, and that’s what
Mr. Harrison did. Milty says Mr. Harrison left his wife because she throwed
things at him . . . hard things . . . and Arty Sloane says it was
because she wouldn’t let him smoke, and Ned Clay says it was ’cause
she never let up scolding him. I wouldn’t leave MY wife for anything like
that. I’d just put my foot down and say, ‘Mrs. Davy, you’ve
just got to do what’ll please me ’cause I’m a
man.’ That’d settle her pretty quick I guess. But
Annetta Clay says she left him because he wouldn’t scrape
his boots at the door and she doesn’t blame her. I’m going right
over to Mr. Harrison’s this minute to see what she’s like.”

Davy soon returned, somewhat cast down.

“Mrs. Harrison was away . . . she’s gone to Carmody with Mrs.
Rachel Lynde to get new paper for the parlor. And Mr. Harrison said to tell
Anne to go over and see him ’cause he wants to have a talk with her. And
say, the floor is scrubbed, and Mr. Harrison is shaved, though there
wasn’t any preaching yesterday.”

The Harrison kitchen wore a very unfamiliar look to Anne. The floor was indeed
scrubbed to a wonderful pitch of purity and so was every article of furniture
in the room; the stove was polished until she could see her face in it; the
walls were whitewashed and the window panes sparkled in the sunlight. By the
table sat Mr. Harrison in his working clothes, which on Friday had been noted
for sundry rents and tatters but which were now neatly patched and brushed. He
was sprucely shaved and what little hair he had was carefully trimmed.

“Sit down, Anne, sit down,” said Mr. Harrison in a tone but two
degrees removed from that which Avonlea people used at funerals.
“Emily’s gone over to Carmody with Rachel Lynde . . . she’s
struck up a lifelong friendship already with Rachel Lynde. Beats all how
contrary women are. Well, Anne, my easy times are over . . . all over.
It’s neatness and tidiness for me for the rest of my natural life, I
suppose.”

Mr. Harrison did his best to speak dolefully, but an irrepressible twinkle in
his eye betrayed him.

“Mr. Harrison, you are glad your wife is come back,” cried Anne,
shaking her finger at him. “You needn’t pretend you’re not,
because I can see it plainly.”

Mr. Harrison relaxed into a sheepish smile.

“Well . . . well . . . I’m getting used to it,” he conceded.
“I can’t say I was sorry to see Emily. A man really needs some
protection in a community like this, where he can’t play a game of
checkers with a neighbor without being accused of wanting to marry that
neighbor’s sister and having it put in the paper.”

“Nobody would have supposed you went to see Isabella Andrews if you
hadn’t pretended to be unmarried,” said Anne severely.

“I didn’t pretend I was. If anybody’d have asked me if I was
married I’d have said I was. But they just took it for granted. I
wasn’t anxious to talk about the matter . . . I was feeling too sore over
it. It would have been nuts for Mrs. Rachel Lynde if she had known my wife had
left me, wouldn’t it now?”

“But some people say that you left her.”

“She started it, Anne, she started it. I’m going to tell you the
whole story, for I don’t want you to think worse of me than I deserve . .
. nor of Emily neither. But let’s go out on the veranda. Everything is so
fearful neat in here that it kind of makes me homesick. I suppose I’ll
get used to it after awhile but it eases me up to look at the yard. Emily
hasn’t had time to tidy it up yet.”

As soon as they were comfortably seated on the veranda Mr. Harrison began his
tale of woe.

“I lived in Scottsford, New Brunswick, before I came here, Anne. My
sister kept house for me and she suited me fine; she was just reasonably tidy
and she let me alone and spoiled me . . . so Emily says. But three years ago
she died. Before she died she worried a lot about what was to become of me and
finally she got me to promise I’d get married. She advised me to take
Emily Scott because Emily had money of her own and was a pattern housekeeper. I
said, says I, ‘Emily Scott wouldn’t look at me.’ ‘You
ask her and see,’ says my sister; and just to ease her mind I promised
her I would . . . and I did. And Emily said she’d have me. Never was so
surprised in my life, Anne . . . a smart pretty little woman like her and an
old fellow like me. I tell you I thought at first I was in luck. Well, we were
married and took a little wedding trip to St. John for a fortnight and then we
went home. We got home at ten o’clock at night, and I give you my word,
Anne, that in half an hour that woman was at work housecleaning. Oh, I know
you’re thinking my house needed it . . . you’ve got a very
expressive face, Anne; your thoughts just come out on it like print . . . but
it didn’t, not that bad. It had got pretty mixed up while I was keeping
bachelor’s hall, I admit, but I’d got a woman to come in and clean
it up before I was married and there’d been considerable painting and
fixing done. I tell you if you took Emily into a brand new white marble palace
she’d be into the scrubbing as soon as she could get an old dress on.
Well, she cleaned house till one o’clock that night and at four she was
up and at it again. And she kept on that way . . . far’s I could see she
never stopped. It was scour and sweep and dust everlasting, except on Sundays,
and then she was just longing for Monday to begin again. But it was her way of
amusing herself and I could have reconciled myself to it if she’d left me
alone. But that she wouldn’t do. She’d set out to make me over but
she hadn’t caught me young enough. I wasn’t allowed to come into
the house unless I changed my boots for slippers at the door. I darsn’t
smoke a pipe for my life unless I went to the barn. And I didn’t use good
enough grammar. Emily’d been a schoolteacher in her early life and
she’d never got over it. Then she hated to see me eating with my knife.
Well, there it was, pick and nag everlasting. But I s’pose, Anne, to be
fair, I was cantankerous too. I didn’t try to improve as I might
have done . . . I just got cranky and disagreeable when she found fault. I told
her one day she hadn’t complained of my grammar when I proposed to her.
It wasn’t an overly tactful thing to say. A woman would forgive a man for
beating her sooner than for hinting she was too much pleased to get him. Well,
we bickered along like that and it wasn’t exactly pleasant, but we might
have got used to each other after a spell if it hadn’t been for Ginger.
Ginger was the rock we split on at last. Emily didn’t like parrots and
she couldn’t stand Ginger’s profane habits of speech. I was
attached to the bird for my brother the sailor’s sake. My brother the
sailor was a pet of mine when we were little tads and he’d sent Ginger to
me when he was dying. I didn’t see any sense in getting worked up over
his swearing. There’s nothing I hate worse’n profanity in a human
being, but in a parrot, that’s just repeating what it’s heard with
no more understanding of it than I’d have of Chinese, allowances might be
made. But Emily couldn’t see it that way. Women ain’t logical. She
tried to break Ginger of swearing but she hadn’t any better success than
she had in trying to make me stop saying ‘I seen’ and ‘them
things.’ Seemed as if the more she tried the worse Ginger got, same as
me.

“Well, things went on like this, both of us getting raspier, till the
climax came. Emily invited our minister and his wife to tea, and another
minister and his wife that was visiting them. I’d promised to put
Ginger away in some safe place where nobody would hear him . . . Emily
wouldn’t touch his cage with a ten-foot pole . . . and I meant to do it,
for I didn’t want the ministers to hear anything unpleasant in my house.
But it slipped my mind . . . Emily was worrying me so much about clean collars
and grammar that it wasn’t any wonder . . . and I never thought of that
poor parrot till we sat down to tea. Just as minister number one was in the
very middle of saying grace, Ginger, who was on the veranda outside the dining
room window, lifted up his voice. The gobbler had come into view in the
yard and the sight of a gobbler always had an unwholesome effect on Ginger. He
surpassed himself that time. You can smile, Anne, and I don’t deny
I’ve chuckled some over it since myself, but at the time I felt almost as
much mortified as Emily. I went out and carried Ginger to the barn. I
can’t say I enjoyed the meal. I knew by the look of Emily that there was
trouble brewing for Ginger and James A. When the folks went away I started for
the cow pasture and on the way I did some thinking. I felt sorry for Emily and
kind of fancied I hadn’t been so thoughtful of her as I might; and
besides, I wondered if the ministers would think that Ginger had learned his
vocabulary from me. The long and short of it was, I decided that Ginger
would have to be mercifully disposed of and when I’d druv the cows home I
went in to tell Emily so. But there was no Emily and there was a letter
on the table . . . just according to the rule in story books. Emily writ that
I’d have to choose between her and Ginger; she’d gone back to her
own house and there she would stay till I went and told her I’d got rid
of that parrot.

“I was all riled up, Anne, and I said she might stay till doomsday if she
waited for that; and I stuck to it. I packed up her belongings and sent them
after her. It made an awful lot of talk . . . Scottsford was pretty near as bad
as Avonlea for gossip . . . and everybody sympathized with Emily. It kept me
all cross and cantankerous and I saw I’d have to get out or I’d
never have any peace. I concluded I’d come to the Island. I’d been
here when I was a boy and I liked it; but Emily had always said she
wouldn’t live in a place where folks were scared to walk out after dark
for fear they’d fall off the edge. So, just to be contrary, I moved over
here. And that’s all there is to it. I hadn’t ever heard a word
from or about Emily till I come home from the back field Saturday and found her
scrubbing the floor but with the first decent dinner I’d had since she
left me all ready on the table. She told me to eat it first and then we’d
talk . . . by which I concluded that Emily had learned some lessons about
getting along with a man. So she’s here and she’s going to stay . .
. seeing that Ginger’s dead and the Island’s some bigger than she
thought. There’s Mrs. Lynde and her now. No, don’t go, Anne. Stay
and get acquainted with Emily. She took quite a notion to you Saturday . . .
wanted to know who that handsome redhaired girl was at the next house.”

Mrs. Harrison welcomed Anne radiantly and insisted on her staying to tea.

“James A. has been telling me all about you and how kind you’ve
been, making cakes and things for him,” she said. “I want to get
acquainted with all my new neighbors just as soon as possible. Mrs. Lynde is a
lovely woman, isn’t she? So friendly.”

When Anne went home in the sweet June dusk, Mrs. Harrison went with her across
the fields where the fireflies were lighting their starry lamps.

“I suppose,” said Mrs. Harrison confidentially, “that James
A. has told you our story?”

“Yes.”

“Then I needn’t tell it, for James A. is a just man and he would
tell the truth. The blame was far from being all on his side. I can see that
now. I wasn’t back in my own house an hour before I wished I hadn’t
been so hasty but I wouldn’t give in. I see now that I expected too much
of a man. And I was real foolish to mind his bad grammar. It doesn’t
matter if a man does use bad grammar so long as he is a good provider and
doesn’t go poking round the pantry to see how much sugar you’ve
used in a week. I feel that James A. and I are going to be real happy now. I
wish I knew who ‘Observer’ is, so that I could thank him. I owe him
a real debt of gratitude.”

Anne kept her own counsel and Mrs. Harrison never knew that her gratitude found
its way to its object. Anne felt rather bewildered over the far-reaching
consequences of those foolish “notes.” They had reconciled a man to
his wife and made the reputation of a prophet.

Mrs. Lynde was in the Green Gables kitchen. She had been telling the whole
story to Marilla.

“Well, and how do you like Mrs. Harrison?” she asked Anne.

“Very much. I think she’s a real nice little woman.”

“That’s exactly what she is,” said Mrs. Rachel with emphasis,
“and as I’ve just been sayin’ to Marilla, I think we ought
all to overlook Mr. Harrison’s peculiarities for her sake and try to make
her feel at home here, that’s what. Well, I must get back.
Thomas’ll be wearying for me. I get out a little since Eliza came and
he’s seemed a lot better these past few days, but I never like to be long
away from him. I hear Gilbert Blythe has resigned from White Sands. He’ll
be off to college in the fall, I suppose.”

Mrs. Rachel looked sharply at Anne, but Anne was bending over a sleepy Davy
nodding on the sofa and nothing was to be read in her face. She carried Davy
away, her oval girlish cheek pressed against his curly yellow head. As they
went up the stairs Davy flung a tired arm about Anne’s neck and gave her
a warm hug and a sticky kiss.

“You’re awful nice, Anne. Milty Boulter wrote on his slate today
and showed it to Jennie Sloane,

“‘Roses red and vi’lets blue,
Sugar’s sweet, and so are you”

and that ’spresses my feelings for you ezackly, Anne.”

XXVI
Around the Bend

Thomas Lynde faded out of life as quietly and unobtrusively as he had lived it.
His wife was a tender, patient, unwearied nurse. Sometimes Rachel had been a
little hard on her Thomas in health, when his slowness or meekness had provoked
her; but when he became ill no voice could be lower, no hand more gently
skillful, no vigil more uncomplaining.

“You’ve been a good wife to me, Rachel,” he once said simply,
when she was sitting by him in the dusk, holding his thin, blanched old hand in
her work-hardened one. “A good wife. I’m sorry I ain’t
leaving you better off; but the children will look after you. They’re all
smart, capable children, just like their mother. A good mother . . . a good
woman . . . .”

He had fallen asleep then, and the next morning, just as the white dawn was
creeping up over the pointed firs in the hollow, Marilla went softly into the
east gable and wakened Anne.

“Anne, Thomas Lynde is gone . . . their hired boy just brought the word.
I’m going right down to Rachel.”

On the day after Thomas Lynde’s funeral Marilla went about Green Gables
with a strangely preoccupied air. Occasionally she looked at Anne, seemed on
the point of saying something, then shook her head and buttoned up her mouth.
After tea she went down to see Mrs. Rachel; and when she returned she went to
the east gable, where Anne was correcting school exercises.

“How is Mrs. Lynde tonight?” asked the latter.

“She’s feeling calmer and more composed,” answered Marilla,
sitting down on Anne’s bed . . . a proceeding which betokened some
unusual mental excitement, for in Marilla’s code of household ethics to
sit on a bed after it was made up was an unpardonable offense. “But
she’s very lonely. Eliza had to go home today . . . her son isn’t
well and she felt she couldn’t stay any longer.”

“When I’ve finished these exercises I’ll run down and chat
awhile with Mrs. Lynde,” said Anne. “I had intended to study some
Latin composition tonight but it can wait.”

“I suppose Gilbert Blythe is going to college in the fall,” said
Marilla jerkily. “How would you like to go too, Anne?”

Anne looked up in astonishment.

“I would like it, of course, Marilla. But it isn’t possible.”

“I guess it can be made possible. I’ve always felt that you should
go. I’ve never felt easy to think you were giving it all up on my
account.”

“But Marilla, I’ve never been sorry for a moment that I stayed
home. I’ve been so happy . . . Oh, these past two years have just been
delightful.”

“Oh, yes, I know you’ve been contented enough. But that isn’t
the question exactly. You ought to go on with your education. You’ve
saved enough to put you through one year at Redmond and the money the stock
brought in will do for another year . . . and there’s scholarships and
things you might win.”

“Yes, but I can’t go, Marilla. Your eyes are better, of course; but
I can’t leave you alone with the twins. They need so much looking
after.”

“I won’t be alone with them. That’s what I meant to discuss
with you. I had a long talk with Rachel tonight. Anne, she’s feeling
dreadful bad over a good many things. She’s not left very well off. It
seems they mortgaged the farm eight years ago to give the youngest boy a start
when he went west; and they’ve never been able to pay much more than the
interest since. And then of course Thomas’ illness has cost a good deal,
one way or another. The farm will have to be sold and Rachel thinks
there’ll be hardly anything left after the bills are settled. She says
she’ll have to go and live with Eliza and it’s breaking her heart
to think of leaving Avonlea. A woman of her age doesn’t make new friends
and interests easy. And, Anne, as she talked about it the thought came to me
that I would ask her to come and live with me, but I thought I ought to talk it
over with you first before I said anything to her. If I had Rachel living with
me you could go to college. How do you feel about it?”

“I feel . . . as if . . . somebody . . . had handed me . . . the moon . .
. and I didn’t know . . . exactly . . . what to do . . . with it,”
said Anne dazedly. “But as for asking Mrs. Lynde to come here, that is
for you to decide, Marilla. Do you think . . . are you sure . . . you would
like it? Mrs. Lynde is a good woman and a kind neighbor, but . . . but . .
.”

“But she’s got her faults, you mean to say? Well, she has, of
course; but I think I’d rather put up with far worse faults than see
Rachel go away from Avonlea. I’d miss her terrible. She’s the only
close friend I’ve got here and I’d be lost without her. We’ve
been neighbors for forty-five years and we’ve never had a quarrel . . .
though we came rather near it that time you flew at Mrs. Rachel for calling you
homely and redhaired. Do you remember, Anne?”

“I should think I do,” said Anne ruefully. “People
don’t forget things like that. How I hated poor Mrs. Rachel at that
moment!”

“And then that ‘apology’ you made her. Well, you were a
handful, in all conscience, Anne. I did feel so puzzled and bewildered how to
manage you. Matthew understood you better.”

“Matthew understood everything,” said Anne softly, as she always
spoke of him.

“Well, I think it could be managed so that Rachel and I wouldn’t
clash at all. It always seemed to me that the reason two women can’t get
along in one house is that they try to share the same kitchen and get in each
other’s way. Now, if Rachel came here, she could have the north gable for
her bedroom and the spare room for a kitchen as well as not, for we don’t
really need a spare room at all. She could put her stove there and what
furniture she wanted to keep, and be real comfortable and independent.
She’ll have enough to live on of course…her children’ll see to
that…so all I’d be giving her would be house room. Yes, Anne, far as
I’m concerned I’d like it.”

“Then ask her,” said Anne promptly. “I’d be very sorry
myself to see Mrs. Rachel go away.”

“And if she comes,” continued Marilla, “You can go to college
as well as not. She’ll be company for me and she’ll do for the
twins what I can’t do, so there’s no reason in the world why you
shouldn’t go.”

Anne had a long meditation at her window that night. Joy and regret struggled
together in her heart. She had come at last . . . suddenly and unexpectedly . .
. to the bend in the road; and college was around it, with a hundred
rainbow hopes and visions; but Anne realized as well that when she rounded that
curve she must leave many sweet things behind. . . all the little simple duties
and interests which had grown so dear to her in the last two years and which
she had glorified into beauty and delight by the enthusiasm she had put into
them. She must give up her school . . . and she loved every one of her pupils,
even the stupid and naughty ones. The mere thought of Paul Irving made her
wonder if Redmond were such a name to conjure with after all.

“I’ve put out a lot of little roots these two years,” Anne
told the moon, “and when I’m pulled up they’re going to hurt
a great deal. But it’s best to go, I think, and, as Marilla says,
there’s no good reason why I shouldn’t. I must get out all my
ambitions and dust them.”

Anne sent in her resignation the next day; and Mrs. Rachel, after a heart to
heart talk with Marilla, gratefully accepted the offer of a home at Green
Gables. She elected to remain in her own house for the summer, however; the
farm was not to be sold until the fall and there were many arrangements to be
made.

“I certainly never thought of living as far off the road as Green
Gables,” sighed Mrs. Rachel to herself. “But really, Green Gables
doesn’t seem as out of the world as it used to do . . . Anne has lots of
company and the twins make it real lively. And anyhow, I’d rather live at
the bottom of a well than leave Avonlea.”

These two decisions being noised abroad speedily ousted the arrival of Mrs.
Harrison in popular gossip. Sage heads were shaken over Marilla
Cuthbert’s rash step in asking Mrs. Rachel to live with her. People
opined that they wouldn’t get on together. They were both “too fond
of their own way,” and many doleful predictions were made, none of which
disturbed the parties in question at all. They had come to a clear and distinct
understanding of the respective duties and rights of their new arrangements and
meant to abide by them.

“I won’t meddle with you nor you with me,” Mrs. Rachel had
said decidedly, “and as for the twins, I’ll be glad to do all I can
for them; but I won’t undertake to answer Davy’s questions,
that’s what. I’m not an encyclopedia, neither am I a Philadelphia
lawyer. You’ll miss Anne for that.”

“Sometimes Anne’s answers were about as queer as Davy’s
questions,” said Marilla drily. “The twins will miss her and no
mistake; but her future can’t be sacrificed to Davy’s thirst for
information. When he asks questions I can’t answer I’ll just tell
him children should be seen and not heard. That was how I was brought
up, and I don’t know but what it was just as good a way as all these
new-fangled notions for training children.”

“Well, Anne’s methods seem to have worked fairly well with
Davy,” said Mrs. Lynde smilingly. “He is a reformed character,
that’s what.”

“He isn’t a bad little soul,” conceded Marilla. “I
never expected to get as fond of those children as I have. Davy gets round you
somehow . . . and Dora is a lovely child, although she is . . . kind of . . .
well, kind of . . .”

“Monotonous? Exactly,” supplied Mrs. Rachel. “Like a book
where every page is the same, that’s what. Dora will make a good,
reliable woman but she’ll never set the pond on fire. Well, that sort of
folks are comfortable to have round, even if they’re not as interesting
as the other kind.”

Gilbert Blythe was probably the only person to whom the news of Anne’s
resignation brought unmixed pleasure. Her pupils looked upon it as a sheer
catastrophe. Annetta Bell had hysterics when she went home. Anthony Pye fought
two pitched and unprovoked battles with other boys by way of relieving his
feelings. Barbara Shaw cried all night. Paul Irving defiantly told his
grandmother that she needn’t expect him to eat any porridge for a week.

“I can’t do it, Grandma,” he said. “I don’t
really know if I can eat anything. I feel as if there was a dreadful
lump in my throat. I’d have cried coming home from school if Jake Donnell
hadn’t been watching me. I believe I will cry after I go to bed. It
wouldn’t show on my eyes tomorrow, would it? And it would be such a
relief. But anyway, I can’t eat porridge. I’m going to need all my
strength of mind to bear up against this, Grandma, and I won’t have any
left to grapple with porridge. Oh Grandma, I don’t know what I’ll
do when my beautiful teacher goes away. Milty Boulter says he bets Jane Andrews
will get the school. I suppose Miss Andrews is very nice. But I know she
won’t understand things like Miss Shirley.”

Diana also took a very pessimistic view of affairs.

“It will be horribly lonesome here next winter,” she mourned, one
twilight when the moonlight was raining “airy silver” through the
cherry boughs and filling the east gable with a soft, dream-like radiance in
which the two girls sat and talked, Anne on her low rocker by the window, Diana
sitting Turkfashion on the bed. “You and Gilbert will be gone . . . and
the Allans too. They are going to call Mr. Allan to Charlottetown and of course
he’ll accept. It’s too mean. We’ll be vacant all winter, I
suppose, and have to listen to a long string of candidates . . . and half of
them won’t be any good.”

“I hope they won’t call Mr. Baxter from East Grafton here,
anyhow,” said Anne decidedly. “He wants the call but he does preach
such gloomy sermons. Mr. Bell says he’s a minister of the old school, but
Mrs. Lynde says there’s nothing whatever the matter with him but
indigestion. His wife isn’t a very good cook, it seems, and Mrs. Lynde
says that when a man has to eat sour bread two weeks out of three his theology
is bound to get a kink in it somewhere. Mrs. Allan feels very badly about going
away. She says everybody has been so kind to her since she came here as a bride
that she feels as if she were leaving lifelong friends. And then, there’s
the baby’s grave, you know. She says she doesn’t see how she can go
away and leave that . . . it was such a little mite of a thing and only three
months old, and she says she is afraid it will miss its mother, although she
knows better and wouldn’t say so to Mr. Allan for anything. She says she
has slipped through the birch grove back of the manse nearly every night to the
graveyard and sung a little lullaby to it. She told me all about it last
evening when I was up putting some of those early wild roses on Matthew’s
grave. I promised her that as long as I was in Avonlea I would put flowers on
the baby’s grave and when I was away I felt sure that . . .”

“That I would do it,” supplied Diana heartily. “Of course I
will. And I’ll put them on Matthew’s grave too, for your sake,
Anne.”

“Oh, thank you. I meant to ask you to if you would. And on little Hester
Gray’s too? Please don’t forget hers. Do you know, I’ve
thought and dreamed so much about little Hester Gray that she has become
strangely real to me. I think of her, back there in her little garden in that
cool, still, green corner; and I have a fancy that if I could steal back there
some spring evening, just at the magic time ’twixt light and dark, and
tiptoe so softly up the beech hill that my footsteps could not frighten her, I
would find the garden just as it used to be, all sweet with June lilies and
early roses, with the tiny house beyond it all hung with vines; and little
Hester Gray would be there, with her soft eyes, and the wind ruffling her dark
hair, wandering about, putting her fingertips under the chins of the lilies and
whispering secrets with the roses; and I would go forward, oh, so softly, and
hold out my hands and say to her, ‘Little Hester Gray, won’t you
let me be your playmate, for I love the roses too?’ And we would sit down
on the old bench and talk a little and dream a little, or just be beautifully
silent together. And then the moon would rise and I would look around me . . .
and there would be no Hester Gray and no little vine-hung house, and no roses .
. . only an old waste garden starred with June lilies amid the grasses, and the
wind sighing, oh, so sorrowfully in the cherry trees. And I would not know
whether it had been real or if I had just imagined it all.” Diana crawled
up and got her back against the headboard of the bed. When your companion of
twilight hour said such spooky things it was just as well not to be able to
fancy there was anything behind you.

“I’m afraid the Improvement Society will go down when you and
Gilbert are both gone,” she remarked dolefully.

“Not a bit of fear of it,” said Anne briskly, coming back from
dreamland to the affairs of practical life. “It is too firmly established
for that, especially since the older people are becoming so enthusiastic about
it. Look what they are doing this summer for their lawns and lanes. Besides,
I’ll be watching for hints at Redmond and I’ll write a paper for it
next winter and send it over. Don’t take such a gloomy view of things,
Diana. And don’t grudge me my little hour of gladness and jubilation now.
Later on, when I have to go away, I’ll feel anything but glad.”

“It’s all right for you to be glad . . . you’re going to
college and you’ll have a jolly time and make heaps of lovely new
friends.”

“I hope I shall make new friends,” said Anne thoughtfully.
“The possibilities of making new friends help to make life very
fascinating. But no matter how many friends I make they’ll never be as
dear to me as the old ones . . . especially a certain girl with black eyes and
dimples. Can you guess who she is, Diana?”

“But there’ll be so many clever girls at Redmond,” sighed
Diana, “and I’m only a stupid little country girl who says ‘I
seen’ sometimes. . . though I really know better when I stop to think.
Well, of course these past two years have really been too pleasant to last. I
know somebody who is glad you are going to Redmond anyhow. Anne,
I’m going to ask you a question . . . a serious question. Don’t be
vexed and do answer seriously. Do you care anything for Gilbert?”

“Ever so much as a friend and not a bit in the way you mean,” said
Anne calmly and decidedly; she also thought she was speaking sincerely.

Diana sighed. She wished, somehow, that Anne had answered differently.

“Don’t you mean ever to be married, Anne?”

“Perhaps . . . some day . . . when I meet the right one,” said
Anne, smiling dreamily up at the moonlight.

“But how can you be sure when you do meet the right one?” persisted
Diana.

“Oh, I should know him . . . something would tell me. You know
what my ideal is, Diana.”

“But people’s ideals change sometimes.”

“Mine won’t. And I couldn’t care for any man who
didn’t fulfill it.”

“What if you never meet him?”

“Then I shall die an old maid,” was the cheerful response. “I
daresay it isn’t the hardest death by any means.”

“Oh, I suppose the dying would be easy enough; it’s the living an
old maid I shouldn’t like,” said Diana, with no intention of being
humorous. “Although I wouldn’t mind being an old maid very
much if I could be one like Miss Lavendar. But I never could be. When I’m
forty-five I’ll be horribly fat. And while there might be some romance
about a thin old maid there couldn’t possibly be any about a fat one. Oh,
mind you, Nelson Atkins proposed to Ruby Gillis three weeks ago. Ruby told me
all about it. She says she never had any intention of taking him, because any
one who married him will have to go in with the old folks; but Ruby says that
he made such a perfectly beautiful and romantic proposal that it simply swept
her off her feet. But she didn’t want to do anything rash so she asked
for a week to consider; and two days later she was at a meeting of the Sewing
Circle at his mother’s and there was a book called ‘The Complete
Guide to Etiquette,’ lying on the parlor table. Ruby said she simply
couldn’t describe her feelings when in a section of it headed, ‘The
Deportment of Courtship and Marriage,’ she found the very proposal Nelson
had made, word for word. She went home and wrote him a perfectly scathing
refusal; and she says his father and mother have taken turns watching him ever
since for fear he’ll drown himself in the river; but Ruby says they
needn’t be afraid; for in the Deportment of Courtship and Marriage it
told how a rejected lover should behave and there’s nothing about
drowning in that. And she says Wilbur Blair is literally pining away for
her but she’s perfectly helpless in the matter.”

Anne made an impatient movement.

“I hate to say it . . . it seems so disloyal . . . but, well, I
don’t like Ruby Gillis now. I liked her when we went to school and
Queen’s together . . . though not so well as you and Jane of course. But
this last year at Carmody she seems so different . . . so . . . so . . .”

“I know,” nodded Diana. “It’s the Gillis coming out in
her . . . she can’t help it. Mrs. Lynde says that if ever a Gillis girl
thought about anything but the boys she never showed it in her walk and
conversation. She talks about nothing but boys and what compliments they pay
her, and how crazy they all are about her at Carmody. And the strange thing is,
they are, too . . .” Diana admitted this somewhat resentfully.
“Last night when I saw her in Mr. Blair’s store she whispered to me
that she’d just made a new ‘mash.’ I wouldn’t ask her
who it was, because I knew she was dying to be asked. Well, it’s
what Ruby always wanted, I suppose. You remember even when she was little she
always said she meant to have dozens of beaus when she grew up and have the
very gayest time she could before she settled down. She’s so different
from Jane, isn’t she? Jane is such a nice, sensible, lady-like
girl.”

“Dear old Jane is a jewel,” agreed Anne, “but,” she
added, leaning forward to bestow a tender pat on the plump, dimpled little hand
hanging over her pillow, “there’s nobody like my own Diana after
all. Do you remember that evening we first met, Diana, and ‘swore’
eternal friendship in your garden? We’ve kept that ‘oath,’ I
think . . . we’ve never had a quarrel nor even a coolness. I shall never
forget the thrill that went over me the day you told me you loved me. I had had
such a lonely, starved heart all through my childhood. I’m just beginning
to realize how starved and lonely it really was. Nobody cared anything for me
or wanted to be bothered with me. I should have been miserable if it
hadn’t been for that strange little dream-life of mine, wherein I
imagined all the friends and love I craved. But when I came to Green Gables
everything was changed. And then I met you. You don’t know what your
friendship meant to me. I want to thank you here and now, dear, for the warm
and true affection you’ve always given me.”

“And always, always will,” sobbed Diana. “I shall
never love anybody . . . any girl . . . half as well as I love
you. And if I ever do marry and have a little girl of my own I’m going to
name her Anne.”

XXVII
An Afternoon at the Stone House

“Where are you going, all dressed up, Anne?” Davy wanted to know.
“You look bully in that dress.”

Anne had come down to dinner in a new dress of pale green muslin . . . the
first color she had worn since Matthew’s death. It became her perfectly,
bringing out all the delicate, flower-like tints of her face and the gloss and
burnish of her hair.

“Davy, how many times have I told you that you mustn’t use that
word,” she rebuked. “I’m going to Echo Lodge.”

“Take me with you,” entreated Davy.

“I would if I were driving. But I’m going to walk and it’s
too far for your eight-year-old legs. Besides, Paul is going with me and I fear
you don’t enjoy yourself in his company.”

“Oh, I like Paul lots better’n I did,” said Davy, beginning
to make fearful inroads into his pudding. “Since I’ve got pretty
good myself I don’t mind his being gooder so much. If I can keep on
I’ll catch up with him some day, both in legs and goodness. ‘Sides,
Paul’s real nice to us second primer boys in school. He won’t let
the other big boys meddle with us and he shows us lots of games.”

“How came Paul to fall into the brook at noon hour yesterday?”
asked Anne. “I met him on the playground, such a dripping figure that I
sent him promptly home for clothes without waiting to find out what had
happened.”

“Well, it was partly a zacksident,” explained Davy. “He stuck
his head in on purpose but the rest of him fell in zacksidentally. We was all
down at the brook and Prillie Rogerson got mad at Paul about something . . .
she’s awful mean and horrid anyway, if she IS pretty . . . and said that
his grandmother put his hair up in curl rags every night. Paul wouldn’t
have minded what she said, I guess, but Gracie Andrews laughed, and Paul got
awful red, ’cause Gracie’s his girl, you know. He’s clean
gone on her . . . brings her flowers and carries her books as far as the
shore road. He got as red as a beet and said his grandmother didn’t do
any such thing and his hair was born curly. And then he laid down on the bank
and stuck his head right into the spring to show them. Oh, it wasn’t the
spring we drink out of . . .” seeing a horrified look on Marilla’s
face . . . “it was the little one lower down. But the bank’s awful
slippy and Paul went right in. I tell you he made a bully splash. Oh, Anne,
Anne, I didn’t mean to say that . . . it just slipped out before I
thought. He made a splendid splash. But he looked so funny when he
crawled out, all wet and muddy. The girls laughed more’n ever, but Gracie
didn’t laugh. She looked sorry. Gracie’s a nice girl but
she’s got a snub nose. When I get big enough to have a girl I won’t
have one with a snub nose . . . I’ll pick one with a pretty nose like
yours, Anne.”

“A boy who makes such a mess of syrup all over his face when he is eating
his pudding will never get a girl to look at him,” said Marilla severely.

“But I’ll wash my face before I go courting,” protested Davy,
trying to improve matters by rubbing the back of his hand over the smears.
“And I’ll wash behind my ears too, without being told. I remembered
to this morning, Marilla. I don’t forget half as often as I did. But . .
.” and Davy sighed . . . “there’s so many corners about a
fellow that it’s awful hard to remember them all. Well, if I can’t
go to Miss Lavendar’s I’ll go over and see Mrs. Harrison. Mrs.
Harrison’s an awful nice woman, I tell you. She keeps a jar of cookies in
her pantry a-purpose for little boys, and she always gives me the scrapings out
of a pan she’s mixed up a plum cake in. A good many plums stick to the
sides, you see. Mr. Harrison was always a nice man, but he’s twice as
nice since he got married over again. I guess getting married makes folks
nicer. Why don’t you get married, Marilla? I want to know.”

Marilla’s state of single blessedness had never been a sore point with
her, so she answered amiably, with an exchange of significant looks with Anne,
that she supposed it was because nobody would have her.

“But maybe you never asked anybody to have you,” protested Davy.

“Oh, Davy,” said Dora primly, shocked into speaking without being
spoken to, “it’s the men that have to do the asking.”

“I don’t know why they have to do it always,” grumbled
Davy. “Seems to me everything’s put on the men in this world. Can I
have some more pudding, Marilla?”

“You’ve had as much as was good for you,” said Marilla; but
she gave him a moderate second helping.

“I wish people could live on pudding. Why can’t they, Marilla? I
want to know.”

“Because they’d soon get tired of it.”

“I’d like to try that for myself,” said skeptical Davy.
“But I guess it’s better to have pudding only on fish and company
days than none at all. They never have any at Milty Boulter’s. Milty says
when company comes his mother gives them cheese and cuts it herself . . . one
little bit apiece and one over for manners.”

“If Milty Boulter talks like that about his mother at least you
needn’t repeat it,” said Marilla severely.

“Bless my soul,” . . . Davy had picked this expression up from Mr.
Harrison and used it with great gusto . . . “Milty meant it as a
compelment. He’s awful proud of his mother, cause folks say she could
scratch a living on a rock.”

“I . . . I suppose them pesky hens are in my pansy bed again,” said
Marilla, rising and going out hurriedly.

The slandered hens were nowhere near the pansy bed and Marilla did not even
glance at it. Instead, she sat down on the cellar hatch and laughed until she
was ashamed of herself.

When Anne and Paul reached the stone house that afternoon they found Miss
Lavendar and Charlotta the Fourth in the garden, weeding, raking, clipping, and
trimming as if for dear life. Miss Lavendar herself, all gay and sweet in the
frills and laces she loved, dropped her shears and ran joyously to meet her
guests, while Charlotta the Fourth grinned cheerfully.

“Welcome, Anne. I thought you’d come today. You belong to the
afternoon so it brought you. Things that belong together are sure to come
together. What a lot of trouble that would save some people if they only knew
it. But they don’t . . . and so they waste beautiful energy moving heaven
and earth to bring things together that don’t belong. And you,
Paul . . . why, you’ve grown! You’re half a head taller than when
you were here before.”

“Yes, I’ve begun to grow like pigweed in the night, as Mrs. Lynde
says,” said Paul, in frank delight over the fact. “Grandma says
it’s the porridge taking effect at last. Perhaps it is. Goodness knows .
. .” Paul sighed deeply . . . “I’ve eaten enough to make
anyone grow. I do hope, now that I’ve begun, I’ll keep on till
I’m as tall as father. He is six feet, you know, Miss Lavendar.”

Yes, Miss Lavendar did know; the flush on her pretty cheeks deepened a little;
she took Paul’s hand on one side and Anne’s on the other and walked
to the house in silence.

“Is it a good day for the echoes, Miss Lavendar?” queried Paul
anxiously. The day of his first visit had been too windy for echoes and Paul
had been much disappointed.

“Yes, just the best kind of a day,” answered Miss Lavendar, rousing
herself from her reverie. “But first we are all going to have something
to eat. I know you two folks didn’t walk all the way back here through
those beechwoods without getting hungry, and Charlotta the Fourth and I can eat
any hour of the day . . . we have such obliging appetites. So we’ll just
make a raid on the pantry. Fortunately it’s lovely and full. I had a
presentiment that I was going to have company today and Charlotta the Fourth
and I prepared.”

“I think you are one of the people who always have nice things in their
pantry,” declared Paul. “Grandma’s like that too. But she
doesn’t approve of snacks between meals. I wonder,” he added
meditatively, “if I ought to eat them away from home when I know
she doesn’t approve.”

“Oh, I don’t think she would disapprove after you have had a long
walk. That makes a difference,” said Miss Lavendar, exchanging amused
glances with Anne over Paul’s brown curls. “I suppose that snacks
are extremely unwholesome. That is why we have them so often at Echo
Lodge. We. . . Charlotta the Fourth and I . . . live in defiance of every known
law of diet. We eat all sorts of indigestible things whenever we happen to
think of it, by day or night; and we flourish like green bay trees. We are
always intending to reform. When we read any article in a paper warning us
against something we like we cut it out and pin it up on the kitchen wall so
that we’ll remember it. But we never can somehow . . . until after
we’ve gone and eaten that very thing. Nothing has ever killed us yet; but
Charlotta the Fourth has been known to have bad dreams after we had eaten
doughnuts and mince pie and fruit cake before we went to bed.”

“Grandma lets me have a glass of milk and a slice of bread and butter
before I go to bed; and on Sunday nights she puts jam on the bread,” said
Paul. “So I’m always glad when it’s Sunday night . . . for
more reasons than one. Sunday is a very long day on the shore road. Grandma
says it’s all too short for her and that father never found Sundays
tiresome when he was a little boy. It wouldn’t seem so long if I could
talk to my rock people but I never do that because Grandma doesn’t
approve of it on Sundays. I think a good deal; but I’m afraid my thoughts
are worldly. Grandma says we should never think anything but religious thoughts
on Sundays. But teacher here said once that every really beautiful thought was
religious, no matter what it was about, or what day we thought it on. But I
feel sure Grandma thinks that sermons and Sunday School lessons are the only
things you can think truly religious thoughts about. And when it comes to a
difference of opinion between Grandma and teacher I don’t know what to
do. In my heart” . . . Paul laid his hand on his breast and raised very
serious blue eyes to Miss Lavendar’s immediately sympathetic face . . .
“I agree with teacher. But then, you see, Grandma has brought father up
her way and made a brilliant success of him; and teacher has never
brought anybody up yet, though she’s helping with Davy and Dora. But you
can’t tell how they’ll turn out till they are grown up. So
sometimes I feel as if it might be safer to go by Grandma’s
opinions.”

“I think it would,” agreed Anne solemnly. “Anyway, I daresay
that if your Grandma and I both got down to what we really do mean, under our
different ways of expressing it, we’d find out we both meant much the
same thing. You’d better go by her way of expressing it, since it’s
been the result of experience. We’ll have to wait until we see how the
twins do turn out before we can be sure that my way is equally good.”
After lunch they went back to the garden, where Paul made the acquaintance of
the echoes, to his wonder and delight, while Anne and Miss Lavendar sat on the
stone bench under the poplar and talked.

“So you are going away in the fall?” said Miss Lavendar wistfully.
“I ought to be glad for your sake, Anne . . . but I’m horribly,
selfishly sorry. I shall miss you so much. Oh, sometimes, I think it is of no
use to make friends. They only go out of your life after awhile and leave a
hurt that is worse than the emptiness before they came.”

“That sounds like something Miss Eliza Andrews might say but never Miss
Lavendar,” said Anne. “Nothing is worse than emptiness . . .
and I’m not going out of your life. There are such things as letters and
vacations. Dearest, I’m afraid you’re looking a little pale and
tired.”

“Oh . . . hoo . . . hoo . . . hoo,” went Paul on the dyke, where he
had been making noises diligently . . . not all of them melodious in the
making, but all coming back transmuted into the very gold and silver of sound
by the fairy alchemists over the river. Miss Lavendar made an impatient
movement with her pretty hands.

“I’m just tired of everything . . . even of the echoes. There is
nothing in my life but echoes . . . echoes of lost hopes and dreams and joys.
They’re beautiful and mocking. Oh Anne, it’s horrid of me to talk
like this when I have company. It’s just that I’m getting old and
it doesn’t agree with me. I know I’ll be fearfully cranky by the
time I’m sixty. But perhaps all I need is a course of blue pills.”
At this moment Charlotta the Fourth, who had disappeared after lunch, returned,
and announced that the northeast corner of Mr. John Kimball’s pasture was
red with early strawberries, and wouldn’t Miss Shirley like to go and
pick some.

“Early strawberries for tea!” exclaimed Miss Lavendar. “Oh,
I’m not so old as I thought . . . and I don’t need a single blue
pill! Girls, when you come back with your strawberries we’ll have tea out
here under the silver poplar. I’ll have it all ready for you with
home-grown cream.”

Anne and Charlotta the Fourth accordingly betook themselves back to Mr.
Kimball’s pasture, a green remote place where the air was as soft as
velvet and fragrant as a bed of violets and golden as amber.

“Oh, isn’t it sweet and fresh back here?” breathed Anne.
“I just feel as if I were drinking in the sunshine.”

“Yes, ma’am, so do I. That’s just exactly how I feel too,
ma’am,” agreed Charlotta the Fourth, who would have said precisely
the same thing if Anne had remarked that she felt like a pelican of the
wilderness. Always after Anne had visited Echo Lodge Charlotta the Fourth
mounted to her little room over the kitchen and tried before her looking glass
to speak and look and move like Anne. Charlotta could never flatter herself
that she quite succeeded; but practice makes perfect, as Charlotta had learned
at school, and she fondly hoped that in time she might catch the trick of that
dainty uplift of chin, that quick, starry outflashing of eyes, that fashion of
walking as if you were a bough swaying in the wind. It seemed so easy when you
watched Anne. Charlotta the Fourth admired Anne wholeheartedly. It was not that
she thought her so very handsome. Diana Barry’s beauty of crimson cheek
and black curls was much more to Charlotta the Fourth’s taste than
Anne’s moonshine charm of luminous gray eyes and the pale, everchanging
roses of her cheeks.

“But I’d rather look like you than be pretty,” she told Anne
sincerely.

Anne laughed, sipped the honey from the tribute, and cast away the sting. She
was used to taking her compliments mixed. Public opinion never agreed on
Anne’s looks. People who had heard her called handsome met her and were
disappointed. People who had heard her called plain saw her and wondered where
other people’s eyes were. Anne herself would never believe that she had
any claim to beauty. When she looked in the glass all she saw was a little pale
face with seven freckles on the nose thereof. Her mirror never revealed to her
the elusive, ever-varying play of feeling that came and went over her features
like a rosy illuminating flame, or the charm of dream and laughter alternating
in her big eyes.

While Anne was not beautiful in any strictly defined sense of the word she
possessed a certain evasive charm and distinction of appearance that left
beholders with a pleasurable sense of satisfaction in that softly rounded
girlhood of hers, with all its strongly felt potentialities. Those who knew
Anne best felt, without realizing that they felt it, that her greatest
attraction was the aura of possibility surrounding her. . . the power of future
development that was in her. She seemed to walk in an atmosphere of things
about to happen.

As they picked, Charlotta the Fourth confided to Anne her fears regarding Miss
Lavendar. The warm-hearted little handmaiden was honestly worried over her
adored mistress’ condition.

“Miss Lavendar isn’t well, Miss Shirley, ma’am. I’m
sure she isn’t, though she never complains. She hasn’t seemed like
herself this long while, ma’am . . . not since that day you and Paul were
here together before. I feel sure she caught cold that night, ma’am.
After you and him had gone she went out and walked in the garden for long after
dark with nothing but a little shawl on her. There was a lot of snow on the
walks and I feel sure she got a chill, ma’am. Ever since then I’ve
noticed her acting tired and lonesome like. She don’t seem to take an
interest in anything, ma’am. She never pretends company’s coming,
nor fixes up for it, nor nothing, ma’am. It’s only when you come
she seems to chirk up a bit. And the worst sign of all, Miss Shirley,
ma’am . . .” Charlotta the Fourth lowered her voice as if she were
about to tell some exceedingly weird and awful symptom indeed . . . “is
that she never gets cross now when I breaks things. Why, Miss Shirley,
ma’am, yesterday I bruk her green and yaller bowl that’s always
stood on the bookcase. Her grandmother brought it out from England and Miss
Lavendar was awful choice of it. I was dusting it just as careful, Miss
Shirley, ma’am, and it slipped out, so fashion, afore I could grab holt
of it, and bruk into about forty millyun pieces. I tell you I was sorry and
scared. I thought Miss Lavendar would scold me awful, ma’am; and
I’d ruther she had than take it the way she did. She just come in and
hardly looked at it and said, ‘It’s no matter, Charlotta. Take up
the pieces and throw them away.’ Just like that, Miss Shirley,
ma’am . . . ‘take up the pieces and throw them away,’ as if
it wasn’t her grandmother’s bowl from England. Oh, she isn’t
well and I feel awful bad about it. She’s got nobody to look after her
but me.”

Charlotta the Fourth’s eyes brimmed up with tears. Anne patted the little
brown paw holding the cracked pink cup sympathetically.

“I think Miss Lavendar needs a change, Charlotta. She stays here alone
too much. Can’t we induce her to go away for a little trip?”

Charlotta shook her head, with its rampant bows, disconsolately.

“I don’t think so, Miss Shirley, ma’am. Miss Lavendar hates
visiting. She’s only got three relations she ever visits and she says she
just goes to see them as a family duty. Last time when she come home she said
she wasn’t going to visit for family duty no more. ‘I’ve come
home in love with loneliness, Charlotta,’ she says to me, ‘and I
never want to stray from my own vine and fig tree again. My relations try so
hard to make an old lady of me and it has a bad effect on me.’ Just like
that, Miss Shirley, ma’am. ‘It has a very bad effect on me.’
So I don’t think it would do any good to coax her to go visiting.”

“We must see what can be done,” said Anne decidedly, as she put the
last possible berry in her pink cup. “Just as soon as I have my vacation
I’ll come through and spend a whole week with you. We’ll have a
picnic every day and pretend all sorts of interesting things, and see if we
can’t cheer Miss Lavendar up.”

“That will be the very thing, Miss Shirley, ma’am,” exclaimed
Charlotta the Fourth in rapture. She was glad for Miss Lavendar’s sake
and for her own too. With a whole week in which to study Anne constantly she
would surely be able to learn how to move and behave like her.

When the girls got back to Echo Lodge they found that Miss Lavendar and Paul
had carried the little square table out of the kitchen to the garden and had
everything ready for tea. Nothing ever tasted so delicious as those
strawberries and cream, eaten under a great blue sky all curdled over with
fluffy little white clouds, and in the long shadows of the wood with its
lispings and its murmurings. After tea Anne helped Charlotta wash the dishes in
the kitchen, while Miss Lavendar sat on the stone bench with Paul and heard all
about his rock people. She was a good listener, this sweet Miss Lavendar, but
just at the last it struck Paul that she had suddenly lost interest in the Twin
Sailors.

“Miss Lavendar, why do you look at me like that?” he asked gravely.

“How do I look, Paul?”

“Just as if you were looking through me at somebody I put you in mind
of,” said Paul, who had such occasional flashes of uncanny insight that
it wasn’t quite safe to have secrets when he was about.

“You do put me in mind of somebody I knew long ago,” said Miss
Lavendar dreamily.

“When you were young?”

“Yes, when I was young. Do I seem very old to you, Paul?”

“Do you know, I can’t make up my mind about that,” said Paul
confidentially. “Your hair looks old . . . I never knew a young person
with white hair. But your eyes are as young as my beautiful teacher’s
when you laugh. I tell you what, Miss Lavendar” . . . Paul’s voice
and face were as solemn as a judge’s . . . “I think you would make
a splendid mother. You have just the right look in your eyes . . . the look my
little mother always had. I think it’s a pity you haven’t any boys
of your own.”

“I have a little dream boy, Paul.”

“Oh, have you really? How old is he?”

“About your age I think. He ought to be older because I dreamed him long
before you were born. But I’ll never let him get any older than eleven or
twelve; because if I did some day he might grow up altogether and then
I’d lose him.”

“I know,” nodded Paul. “That’s the beauty of
dream-people . . . they stay any age you want them. You and my beautiful
teacher and me myself are the only folks in the world that I know of that have
dream-people. Isn’t it funny and nice we should all know each other? But
I guess that kind of people always find each other out. Grandma never has
dream-people and Mary Joe thinks I’m wrong in the upper story because I
have them. But I think it’s splendid to have them. You know, Miss
Lavendar. Tell me all about your little dream-boy.”

“He has blue eyes and curly hair. He steals in and wakens me with a kiss
every morning. Then all day he plays here in the garden . . . and I play with
him. Such games as we have. We run races and talk with the echoes; and I tell
him stories. And when twilight comes . . .”

“I know,” interrupted Paul eagerly. “He comes and sits
beside you . . . so . . . because of course at twelve he’d be too
big to climb into your lap . . . and lays his head on your shoulder . . .
so . . . and you put your arms about him and hold him tight, tight, and
rest your cheek on his head . . . yes, that’s the very way. Oh, you
do know, Miss Lavendar.”

Anne found the two of them there when she came out of the stone house, and
something in Miss Lavendar’s face made her hate to disturb them.

“I’m afraid we must go, Paul, if we want to get home before dark.
Miss Lavendar, I’m going to invite myself to Echo Lodge for a whole week
pretty soon.”

“If you come for a week I’ll keep you for two,” threatened
Miss Lavendar.

XXVIII
The Prince Comes Back to the Enchanted Palace

The last day of school came and went. A triumphant “semi-annual
examination” was held and Anne’s pupils acquitted themselves
splendidly. At the close they gave her an address and a writing desk. All the
girls and ladies present cried, and some of the boys had it cast up to them
later on that they cried too, although they always denied it.

Mrs. Harmon Andrews, Mrs. Peter Sloane, and Mrs. William Bell walked home
together and talked things over.

“I do think it is such a pity Anne is leaving when the children seem so
much attached to her,” sighed Mrs. Peter Sloane, who had a habit of
sighing over everything and even finished off her jokes that way. “To be
sure,” she added hastily, “we all know we’ll have a good
teacher next year too.”

“Jane will do her duty, I’ve no doubt,” said Mrs. Andrews
rather stiffly. “I don’t suppose she’ll tell the children
quite so many fairy tales or spend so much time roaming about the woods with
them. But she has her name on the Inspector’s Roll of Honor and the
Newbridge people are in a terrible state over her leaving.”

“I’m real glad Anne is going to college,” said Mrs. Bell.
“She has always wanted it and it will be a splendid thing for her.”

“Well, I don’t know.” Mrs. Andrews was determined not to
agree fully with anybody that day. “I don’t see that Anne needs any
more education. She’ll probably be marrying Gilbert Blythe, if his
infatuation for her lasts till he gets through college, and what good will
Latin and Greek do her then? If they taught you at college how to manage a man
there might be some sense in her going.”

Mrs. Harmon Andrews, so Avonlea gossip whispered, had never learned how to
manage her “man,” and as a result the Andrews household was not
exactly a model of domestic happiness.

“I see that the Charlottetown call to Mr. Allan is up before the
Presbytery,” said Mrs. Bell. “That means we’ll be losing him
soon, I suppose.”

“They’re not going before September,” said Mrs. Sloane.
“It will be a great loss to the community . . . though I always did think
that Mrs. Allan dressed rather too gay for a minister’s wife. But we are
none of us perfect. Did you notice how neat and snug Mr. Harrison looked today?
I never saw such a changed man. He goes to church every Sunday and has
subscribed to the salary.”

“Hasn’t that Paul Irving grown to be a big boy?” said Mrs.
Andrews. “He was such a mite for his age when he came here. I declare I
hardly knew him today. He’s getting to look a lot like his father.”

“He’s a smart boy,” said Mrs. Bell.

“He’s smart enough, but” . . . Mrs. Andrews lowered her voice
. . . “I believe he tells queer stories. Gracie came home from school one
day last week with the greatest rigmarole he had told her about people who
lived down at the shore . . . stories there couldn’t be a word of truth
in, you know. I told Gracie not to believe them, and she said Paul didn’t
intend her to. But if he didn’t what did he tell them to her for?”

“Anne says Paul is a genius,” said Mrs. Sloane.

“He may be. You never know what to expect of them Americans,” said
Mrs. Andrews. Mrs. Andrews’ only acquaintance with the word
“genius” was derived from the colloquial fashion of calling any
eccentric individual “a queer genius.” She probably thought, with
Mary Joe, that it meant a person with something wrong in his upper story.

Back in the schoolroom Anne was sitting alone at her desk, as she had sat on
the first day of school two years before, her face leaning on her hand, her
dewy eyes looking wistfully out of the window to the Lake of Shining Waters.
Her heart was so wrung over the parting with her pupils that for a moment
college had lost all its charm. She still felt the clasp of Annetta
Bell’s arms about her neck and heard the childish wail, “I’ll
never love any teacher as much as you, Miss Shirley, never,
never.”

For two years she had worked earnestly and faithfully, making many mistakes and
learning from them. She had had her reward. She had taught her scholars
something, but she felt that they had taught her much more . . . lessons of
tenderness, self-control, innocent wisdom, lore of childish hearts. Perhaps she
had not succeeded in “inspiring” any wonderful ambitions in her
pupils, but she had taught them, more by her own sweet personality than by all
her careful precepts, that it was good and necessary in the years that were
before them to live their lives finely and graciously, holding fast to truth
and courtesy and kindness, keeping aloof from all that savored of falsehood and
meanness and vulgarity. They were, perhaps, all unconscious of having learned
such lessons; but they would remember and practice them long after they had
forgotten the capital of Afghanistan and the dates of the Wars of the Roses.

“Another chapter in my life is closed,” said Anne aloud, as she
locked her desk. She really felt very sad over it; but the romance in the idea
of that “closed chapter” did comfort her a little.

Anne spent a fortnight at Echo Lodge early in her vacation and everybody
concerned had a good time.

She took Miss Lavendar on a shopping expedition to town and persuaded her to
buy a new organdy dress; then came the excitement of cutting and making it
together, while the happy Charlotta the Fourth basted and swept up clippings.
Miss Lavendar had complained that she could not feel much interest in anything,
but the sparkle came back to her eyes over her pretty dress.

“What a foolish, frivolous person I must be,” she sighed.
“I’m wholesomely ashamed to think that a new dress . . . even it is
a forget-me-not organdy . . . should exhilarate me so, when a good conscience
and an extra contribution to Foreign Missions couldn’t do it.”

Midway in her visit Anne went home to Green Gables for a day to mend the
twins’ stockings and settle up Davy’s accumulated store of
questions. In the evening she went down to the shore road to see Paul Irving.
As she passed by the low, square window of the Irving sitting room she caught a
glimpse of Paul on somebody’s lap; but the next moment he came flying
through the hall.

“Oh, Miss Shirley,” he cried excitedly, “you can’t
think what has happened! Something so splendid. Father is here . . . just think
of that! Father is here! Come right in. Father, this is my beautiful teacher.
You know, father.”

Stephen Irving came forward to meet Anne with a smile. He was a tall, handsome
man of middle age, with iron-gray hair, deep-set, dark blue eyes, and a strong,
sad face, splendidly modeled about chin and brow. Just the face for a hero of
romance, Anne thought with a thrill of intense satisfaction. It was so
disappointing to meet someone who ought to be a hero and find him bald or
stooped, or otherwise lacking in manly beauty. Anne would have thought it
dreadful if the object of Miss Lavendar’s romance had not looked the
part.

“So this is my little son’s ‘beautiful teacher,’ of
whom I have heard so much,” said Mr. Irving with a hearty handshake.
“Paul’s letters have been so full of you, Miss Shirley, that I feel
as if I were pretty well acquainted with you already. I want to thank you for
what you have done for Paul. I think that your influence has been just what he
needed. Mother is one of the best and dearest of women; but her robust,
matter-of-fact Scotch common sense could not always understand a temperament
like my laddie’s. What was lacking in her you have supplied. Between you,
I think Paul’s training in these two past years has been as nearly ideal
as a motherless boy’s could be.”

Everybody likes to be appreciated. Under Mr. Irving’s praise Anne’s
face “burst flower like into rosy bloom,” and the busy, weary man
of the world, looking at her, thought he had never seen a fairer, sweeter slip
of girlhood than this little “down east” schoolteacher with her red
hair and wonderful eyes.

Paul sat between them blissfully happy.

“I never dreamed father was coming,” he said radiantly. “Even
Grandma didn’t know it. It was a great surprise. As a general thing . .
.” Paul shook his brown curls gravely . . . “I don’t like to
be surprised. You lose all the fun of expecting things when you’re
surprised. But in a case like this it is all right. Father came last night
after I had gone to bed. And after Grandma and Mary Joe had stopped being
surprised he and Grandma came upstairs to look at me, not meaning to wake me up
till morning. But I woke right up and saw father. I tell you I just sprang at
him.”

“With a hug like a bear’s,” said Mr. Irving, putting his arms
around Paul’s shoulder smilingly. “I hardly knew my boy, he had
grown so big and brown and sturdy.”

“I don’t know which was the most pleased to see father, Grandma or
I,” continued Paul. “Grandma’s been in kitchen all day making
the things father likes to eat. She wouldn’t trust them to Mary Joe, she
says. That’s her way of showing gladness. I like best just
to sit and talk to father. But I’m going to leave you for a little while
now if you’ll excuse me. I must get the cows for Mary Joe. That is one of
my daily duties.”

When Paul had scampered away to do his “daily duty” Mr. Irving
talked to Anne of various matters. But Anne felt that he was thinking of
something else underneath all the time. Presently it came to the surface.

“In Paul’s last letter he spoke of going with you to visit an old .
. . friend of mine . . . Miss Lewis at the stone house in Grafton. Do you know
her well?”

“Yes, indeed, she is a very dear friend of mine,” was
Anne’s demure reply, which gave no hint of the sudden thrill that tingled
over her from head to foot at Mr. Irving’s question. Anne “felt
instinctively” that romance was peeping at her around a corner.

Mr. Irving rose and went to the window, looking out on a great, golden,
billowing sea where a wild wind was harping. For a few moments there was
silence in the little dark-walled room. Then he turned and looked down into
Anne’s sympathetic face with a smile, half-whimsical, half-tender.

“I wonder how much you know,” he said.

“I know all about it,” replied Anne promptly. “You
see,” she explained hastily, “Miss Lavendar and I are very
intimate. She wouldn’t tell things of such a sacred nature to everybody.
We are kindred spirits.”

“Yes, I believe you are. Well, I am going to ask a favor of you. I would
like to go and see Miss Lavendar if she will let me. Will you ask her if I may
come?”

Would she not? Oh, indeed she would! Yes, this was romance, the very, the real
thing, with all the charm of rhyme and story and dream. It was a little
belated, perhaps, like a rose blooming in October which should have bloomed in
June; but none the less a rose, all sweetness and fragrance, with the gleam of
gold in its heart. Never did Anne’s feet bear her on a more willing
errand than on that walk through the beechwoods to Grafton the next morning.
She found Miss Lavendar in the garden. Anne was fearfully excited. Her hands
grew cold and her voice trembled.

“Miss Lavendar, I have something to tell you . . . something very
important. Can you guess what it is?”

Anne never supposed that Miss Lavendar could guess; but Miss
Lavendar’s face grew very pale and Miss Lavendar said in a quiet, still
voice, from which all the color and sparkle that Miss Lavendar’s voice
usually suggested had faded.

“Stephen Irving is home?”

“How did you know? Who told you?” cried Anne disappointedly, vexed
that her great revelation had been anticipated.

“Nobody. I knew that must be it, just from the way you spoke.”

“He wants to come and see you,” said Anne. “May I send him
word that he may?”

“Yes, of course,” fluttered Miss Lavendar. “There is no
reason why he shouldn’t. He is only coming as any old friend
might.”

Anne had her own opinion about that as she hastened into the house to write a
note at Miss Lavendar’s desk.

“Oh, it’s delightful to be living in a storybook,” she
thought gaily. “It will come out all right of course . . . it must . . .
and Paul will have a mother after his own heart and everybody will be happy.
But Mr. Irving will take Miss Lavendar away . . . and dear knows what will
happen to the little stone house . . . and so there are two sides to it, as
there seems to be to everything in this world.” The important note was
written and Anne herself carried it to the Grafton post office, where she
waylaid the mail carrier and asked him to leave it at the Avonlea office.

“It’s so very important,” Anne assured him anxiously. The
mail carrier was a rather grumpy old personage who did not at all look the part
of a messenger of Cupid; and Anne was none too certain that his memory was to
be trusted. But he said he would do his best to remember and she had to be
contented with that.

Charlotta the Fourth felt that some mystery pervaded the stone house that
afternoon . . . a mystery from which she was excluded. Miss Lavendar roamed
about the garden in a distracted fashion. Anne, too, seemed possessed by a
demon of unrest, and walked to and fro and went up and down. Charlotta the
Fourth endured it till patience ceased to be a virtue; then she confronted Anne
on the occasion of that romantic young person’s third aimless
peregrination through the kitchen.

“Please, Miss Shirley, ma’am,” said Charlotta the Fourth,
with an indignant toss of her very blue bows, “it’s plain to be
seen you and Miss Lavendar have got a secret and I think, begging your pardon
if I’m too forward, Miss Shirley, ma’am, that it’s real mean
not to tell me when we’ve all been such chums.”

“Oh, Charlotta dear, I’d have told you all about it if it were my
secret . . . but it’s Miss Lavendar’s, you see. However, I’ll
tell you this much . . . and if nothing comes of it you must never breathe a
word about it to a living soul. You see, Prince Charming is coming tonight. He
came long ago, but in a foolish moment went away and wandered afar and forgot
the secret of the magic pathway to the enchanted castle, where the princess was
weeping her faithful heart out for him. But at last he remembered it again and
the princess is waiting still. . . because nobody but her own dear prince could
carry her off.”

“Oh, Miss Shirley, ma’am, what is that in prose?” gasped the
mystified Charlotta.

Anne laughed.

“In prose, an old friend of Miss Lavendar’s is coming to see her
tonight.”

“Do you mean an old beau of hers?” demanded the literal Charlotta.

“That is probably what I do mean . . . in prose,” answered Anne
gravely. “It is Paul’s father . . . Stephen Irving. And goodness
knows what will come of it, but let us hope for the best, Charlotta.”

“I hope that he’ll marry Miss Lavendar,” was
Charlotta’s unequivocal response. “Some women’s intended from
the start to be old maids, and I’m afraid I’m one of them, Miss
Shirley, ma’am, because I’ve awful little patience with the men.
But Miss Lavendar never was. And I’ve been awful worried, thinking what
on earth she’d do when I got so big I’d have to go to
Boston. There ain’t any more girls in our family and dear knows what
she’d do if she got some stranger that might laugh at her pretendings and
leave things lying round out of their place and not be willing to be called
Charlotta the Fifth. She might get someone who wouldn’t be as unlucky as
me in breaking dishes but she’d never get anyone who’d love her
better.”

And the faithful little handmaiden dashed to the oven door with a sniff.

They went through the form of having tea as usual that night at Echo Lodge; but
nobody really ate anything. After tea Miss Lavendar went to her room and put on
her new forget-me-not organdy, while Anne did her hair for her. Both were
dreadfully excited; but Miss Lavendar pretended to be very calm and
indifferent.

“I must really mend that rent in the curtain tomorrow,” she said
anxiously, inspecting it as if it were the only thing of any importance just
then. “Those curtains have not worn as well as they should, considering
the price I paid. Dear me, Charlotta has forgotten to dust the stair railing
again. I really must speak to her about it.”

Anne was sitting on the porch steps when Stephen Irving came down the lane and
across the garden.

“This is the one place where time stands still,” he said, looking
around him with delighted eyes. “There is nothing changed about this
house or garden since I was here twenty-five years ago. It makes me feel young
again.”

“You know time always does stand still in an enchanted palace,”
said Anne seriously. “It is only when the prince comes that things begin
to happen.”

Mr. Irving smiled a little sadly into her uplifted face, all astar with its
youth and promise.

“Sometimes the prince comes too late,” he said. He did not ask Anne
to translate her remark into prose. Like all kindred spirits he
“understood.”

“Oh, no, not if he is the real prince coming to the true princess,”
said Anne, shaking her red head decidedly, as she opened the parlor door. When
he had gone in she shut it tightly behind him and turned to confront Charlotta
the Fourth, who was in the hall, all “nods and becks and wreathed
smiles.”

“Oh, Miss Shirley, ma’am,” she breathed, “I peeked from
the kitchen window . . . and he’s awful handsome . . . and just the right
age for Miss Lavendar. And oh, Miss Shirley, ma’am, do you think it would
be much harm to listen at the door?”

“It would be dreadful, Charlotta,” said Anne firmly, “so just
you come away with me out of the reach of temptation.”

“I can’t do anything, and it’s awful to hang round just
waiting,” sighed Charlotta. “What if he don’t propose after
all, Miss Shirley, ma’am? You can never be sure of them men. My older
sister, Charlotta the First, thought she was engaged to one once. But it turned
out he had a different opinion and she says she’ll never trust one
of them again. And I heard of another case where a man thought he wanted one
girl awful bad when it was really her sister he wanted all the time. When a man
don’t know his own mind, Miss Shirley, ma’am, how’s a poor
woman going to be sure of it?”

“We’ll go to the kitchen and clean the silver spoons,” said
Anne. “That’s a task which won’t require much thinking
fortunately . . . for I couldn’t think tonight. And it will pass
the time.”

It passed an hour. Then, just as Anne laid down the last shining spoon, they
heard the front door shut. Both sought comfort fearfully in each other’s
eyes.

“Oh, Miss Shirley, ma’am,” gasped Charlotta, “if
he’s going away this early there’s nothing into it and never will
be.” They flew to the window. Mr. Irving had no intention of going away.
He and Miss Lavendar were strolling slowly down the middle path to the stone
bench.

“Oh, Miss Shirley, ma’am, he’s got his arm around her
waist,” whispered Charlotta the Fourth delightedly. “He must
have proposed to her or she’d never allow it.”

Anne caught Charlotta the Fourth by her own plump waist and danced her around
the kitchen until they were both out of breath.

“Oh, Charlotta,” she cried gaily, “I’m neither a
prophetess nor the daughter of a prophetess but I’m going to make a
prediction. There’ll be a wedding in this old stone house before the
maple leaves are red. Do you want that translated into prose, Charlotta?”

“No, I can understand that,” said Charlotta. “A wedding
ain’t poetry. Why, Miss Shirley, ma’am, you’re crying! What
for?”

“Oh, because it’s all so beautiful . . . and story bookish . . .
and romantic . . . and sad,” said Anne, winking the tears out of her
eyes. “It’s all perfectly lovely . . . but there’s a little
sadness mixed up in it too, somehow.”

“Oh, of course there’s a resk in marrying anybody,” conceded
Charlotta the Fourth, “but, when all’s said and done, Miss Shirley,
ma’am, there’s many a worse thing than a husband.”

XXIX
Poetry and Prose

For the next month Anne lived in what, for Avonlea, might be called a whirl of
excitement. The preparation of her own modest outfit for Redmond was of
secondary importance. Miss Lavendar was getting ready to be married and the
stone house was the scene of endless consultations and plannings and
discussions, with Charlotta the Fourth hovering on the outskirts of things in
agitated delight and wonder. Then the dressmaker came, and there was the
rapture and wretchedness of choosing fashions and being fitted. Anne and Diana
spent half their time at Echo Lodge and there were nights when Anne could not
sleep for wondering whether she had done right in advising Miss Lavendar to
select brown rather than navy blue for her traveling dress, and to have her
gray silk made princess.

Everybody concerned in Miss Lavendar’s story was very happy. Paul Irving
rushed to Green Gables to talk the news over with Anne as soon as his father
had told him.

“I knew I could trust father to pick me out a nice little second
mother,” he said proudly. “It’s a fine thing to have a father
you can depend on, teacher. I just love Miss Lavendar. Grandma is pleased, too.
She says she’s real glad father didn’t pick out an American for his
second wife, because, although it turned out all right the first time, such a
thing wouldn’t be likely to happen twice. Mrs. Lynde says she thoroughly
approves of the match and thinks its likely Miss Lavendar will give up her
queer notions and be like other people, now that she’s going to be
married. But I hope she won’t give her queer notions up, teacher, because
I like them. And I don’t want her to be like other people. There are too
many other people around as it is. You know, teacher.”

Charlotta the Fourth was another radiant person.

“Oh, Miss Shirley, ma’am, it has all turned out so beautiful. When
Mr. Irving and Miss Lavendar come back from their tower I’m to go up to
Boston and live with them . . . and me only fifteen, and the other girls never
went till they were sixteen. Ain’t Mr. Irving splendid? He just worships
the ground she treads on and it makes me feel so queer sometimes to see the
look in his eyes when he’s watching her. It beggars description, Miss
Shirley, ma’am. I’m awful thankful they’re so fond of each
other. It’s the best way, when all’s said and done, though some
folks can get along without it. I’ve got an aunt who has been married
three times and says she married the first time for love and the last two times
for strictly business, and was happy with all three except at the times of the
funerals. But I think she took a resk, Miss Shirley, ma’am.”

“Oh, it’s all so romantic,” breathed Anne to Marilla that
night. “If I hadn’t taken the wrong path that day we went to Mr.
Kimball’s I’d never have known Miss Lavendar; and if I hadn’t
met her I’d never have taken Paul there . . . and he’d never have
written to his father about visiting Miss Lavendar just as Mr. Irving was
starting for San Francisco. Mr. Irving says whenever he got that letter he made
up his mind to send his partner to San Francisco and come here instead. He
hadn’t heard anything of Miss Lavendar for fifteen years. Somebody had
told him then that she was to be married and he thought she was and never asked
anybody anything about her. And now everything has come right. And I had a hand
in bringing it about. Perhaps, as Mrs. Lynde says, everything is foreordained
and it was bound to happen anyway. But even so, it’s nice to think one
was an instrument used by predestination. Yes indeed, it’s very
romantic.”

“I can’t see that it’s so terribly romantic at all,”
said Marilla rather crisply. Marilla thought Anne was too worked up about it
and had plenty to do with getting ready for college without
“traipsing” to Echo Lodge two days out of three helping Miss
Lavendar. “In the first place two young fools quarrel and turn sulky;
then Steve Irving goes to the States and after a spell gets married up there
and is perfectly happy from all accounts. Then his wife dies and after a decent
interval he thinks he’ll come home and see if his first fancy’ll
have him. Meanwhile, she’s been living single, probably because nobody
nice enough came along to want her, and they meet and agree to be married after
all. Now, where is the romance in all that?”

“Oh, there isn’t any, when you put it that way,” gasped Anne,
rather as if somebody had thrown cold water over her. “I suppose
that’s how it looks in prose. But it’s very different if you look
at it through poetry . . . and I think it’s nicer . . .”
Anne recovered herself and her eyes shone and her cheeks flushed . . .
“to look at it through poetry.”

Marilla glanced at the radiant young face and refrained from further sarcastic
comments. Perhaps some realization came to her that after all it was better to
have, like Anne, “the vision and the faculty divine” . . . that
gift which the world cannot bestow or take away, of looking at life through
some transfiguring . . . or revealing? . . . medium, whereby everything seemed
apparelled in celestial light, wearing a glory and a freshness not visible to
those who, like herself and Charlotta the Fourth, looked at things only through
prose.

“When’s the wedding to be?” she asked after a pause.

“The last Wednesday in August. They are to be married in the garden under
the honeysuckle trellis . . . the very spot where Mr. Irving proposed to her
twenty-five years ago. Marilla, that is romantic, even in prose.
There’s to be nobody there except Mrs. Irving and Paul and Gilbert and
Diana and I, and Miss Lavendar’s cousins. And they will leave on the six
o’clock train for a trip to the Pacific coast. When they come back in the
fall Paul and Charlotta the Fourth are to go up to Boston to live with them.
But Echo Lodge is to be left just as it is. . . only of course they’ll
sell the hens and cow, and board up the windows . . . and every summer
they’re coming down to live in it. I’m so glad. It would have hurt
me dreadfully next winter at Redmond to think of that dear stone house all
stripped and deserted, with empty rooms . . . or far worse still, with other
people living in it. But I can think of it now, just as I’ve always seen
it, waiting happily for the summer to bring life and laughter back to it
again.”

There was more romance in the world than that which had fallen to the share of
the middle-aged lovers of the stone house. Anne stumbled suddenly on it one
evening when she went over to Orchard Slope by the wood cut and came out into
the Barry garden. Diana Barry and Fred Wright were standing together under the
big willow. Diana was leaning against the gray trunk, her lashes cast down on
very crimson cheeks. One hand was held by Fred, who stood with his face bent
toward her, stammering something in low earnest tones. There were no other
people in the world except their two selves at that magic moment; so neither of
them saw Anne, who, after one dazed glance of comprehension, turned and sped
noiselessly back through the spruce wood, never stopping till she gained her
own gable room, where she sat breathlessly down by her window and tried to
collect her scattered wits.

“Diana and Fred are in love with each other,” she gasped.
“Oh, it does seem so . . . so . . . so hopelessly grown up.”

Anne, of late, had not been without her suspicions that Diana was proving false
to the melancholy Byronic hero of her early dreams. But as “things seen
are mightier than things heard,” or suspected, the realization that it
was actually so came to her with almost the shock of perfect surprise. This was
succeeded by a queer, little lonely feeling . . . as if, somehow, Diana had
gone forward into a new world, shutting a gate behind her, leaving Anne on the
outside.

“Things are changing so fast it almost frightens me,” Anne thought,
a little sadly. “And I’m afraid that this can’t help making
some difference between Diana and me. I’m sure I can’t tell her all
my secrets after this . . . she might tell Fred. And what can she see in
Fred? He’s very nice and jolly . . . but he’s just Fred
Wright.”

It is always a very puzzling question . . . what can somebody see in somebody
else? But how fortunate after all that it is so, for if everybody saw alike . .
. well, in that case, as the old Indian said, “Everybody would want my
squaw.” It was plain that Diana did see something in Fred Wright,
however Anne’s eyes might be holden. Diana came to Green Gables the next
evening, a pensive, shy young lady, and told Anne the whole story in the dusky
seclusion of the east gable. Both girls cried and kissed and laughed.

“I’m so happy,” said Diana, “but it does seem
ridiculous to think of me being engaged.”

“What is it really like to be engaged?” asked Anne curiously.

“Well, that all depends on who you’re engaged to,” answered
Diana, with that maddening air of superior wisdom always assumed by those who
are engaged over those who are not. “It’s perfectly lovely to be
engaged to Fred . . . but I think it would be simply horrid to be engaged to
anyone else.”

“There’s not much comfort for the rest of us in that, seeing that
there is only one Fred,” laughed Anne.

“Oh, Anne, you don’t understand,” said Diana in vexation.
“I didn’t mean that . . . it’s so hard to explain.
Never mind, you’ll understand sometime, when your own turn comes.”

“Bless you, dearest of Dianas, I understand now. What is an imagination
for if not to enable you to peep at life through other people’s
eyes?”

“You must be my bridesmaid, you know, Anne. Promise me that . . .
wherever you may be when I’m married.”

“I’ll come from the ends of the earth if necessary,” promised
Anne solemnly.

“Of course, it won’t be for ever so long yet,” said Diana,
blushing. “Three years at the very least . . . for I’m only
eighteen and mother says no daughter of hers shall be married before
she’s twenty-one. Besides, Fred’s father is going to buy the
Abraham Fletcher farm for him and he says he’s got to have it two thirds
paid for before he’ll give it to him in his own name. But three years
isn’t any too much time to get ready for housekeeping, for I
haven’t a speck of fancy work made yet. But I’m going to begin
crocheting doilies tomorrow. Myra Gillis had thirty-seven doilies when she was
married and I’m determined I shall have as many as she had.”

“I suppose it would be perfectly impossible to keep house with only
thirty-six doilies,” conceded Anne, with a solemn face but dancing eyes.

Diana looked hurt.

“I didn’t think you’d make fun of me, Anne,” she said
reproachfully.

“Dearest, I wasn’t making fun of you,” cried Anne
repentantly. “I was only teasing you a bit. I think you’ll make the
sweetest little housekeeper in the world. And I think it’s perfectly
lovely of you to be planning already for your home o’dreams.”

Anne had no sooner uttered the phrase, “home o’dreams,” than
it captivated her fancy and she immediately began the erection of one of her
own. It was, of course, tenanted by an ideal master, dark, proud, and
melancholy; but oddly enough, Gilbert Blythe persisted in hanging about too,
helping her arrange pictures, lay out gardens, and accomplish sundry other
tasks which a proud and melancholy hero evidently considered beneath his
dignity. Anne tried to banish Gilbert’s image from her castle in Spain
but, somehow, he went on being there, so Anne, being in a hurry, gave up the
attempt and pursued her aerial architecture with such success that her
“home o’dreams” was built and furnished before Diana spoke
again.

“I suppose, Anne, you must think it’s funny I should like Fred so
well when he’s so different from the kind of man I’ve always said I
would marry . . . the tall, slender kind? But somehow I wouldn’t want
Fred to be tall and slender . . . because, don’t you see, he
wouldn’t be Fred then. Of course,” added Diana rather dolefully,
“we will be a dreadfully pudgy couple. But after all that’s better
than one of us being short and fat and the other tall and lean, like Morgan
Sloane and his wife. Mrs. Lynde says it always makes her think of the long and
short of it when she sees them together.”