Part 4 out of 6




"Oh, Marilla, Marilla, say those blessed words again."

"I guess once is enough to say them. This is Matthew's doings
and I wash my hands of it. If you catch pneumonia sleeping in a
strange bed or coming out of that hot hall in the middle of the
night, don't blame me, blame Matthew. Anne Shirley, you're
dripping greasy water all over the floor. I never saw such a
careless child."

"Oh, I know I'm a great trial to you, Marilla," said Anne
repentantly. "I make so many mistakes. But then just think of
all the mistakes I don't make, although I might. I'll get some
sand and scrub up the spots before I go to school. Oh, Marilla,
my heart was just set on going to that concert. I never was to a
concert in my life, and when the other girls talk about them in
school I feel so out of it. You didn't know just how I felt
about it, but you see Matthew did. Matthew understands me, and
it's so nice to be understood, Marilla."

Anne was too excited to do herself justice as to lessons that
morning in school. Gilbert Blythe spelled her down in class and
left her clear out of sight in mental arithmetic. Anne's
consequent humiliation was less than it might have been, however,
in view of the concert and the spare-room bed. She and Diana
talked so constantly about it all day that with a stricter
teacher than Mr. Phillips dire disgrace must inevitably have
been their portion.

Anne felt that she could not have borne it if she had not been
going to the concert, for nothing else was discussed that day in
school. The Avonlea Debating Club, which met fortnightly all
winter, had had several smaller free entertainments; but this was
to be a big affair, admission ten cents, in aid of the library.
The Avonlea young people had been practicing for weeks, and all
the scholars were especially interested in it by reason of older
brothers and sisters who were going to take part. Everybody in
school over nine years of age expected to go, except Carrie
Sloane, whose father shared Marilla's opinions about small girls
going out to night concerts. Carrie Sloane cried into her
grammar all the afternoon and felt that life was not worth
living.

For Anne the real excitement began with the dismissal of school
and increased therefrom in crescendo until it reached to a crash
of positive ecstasy in the concert itself. They had a "perfectly
elegant tea;" and then came the delicious occupation of dressing
in Diana's little room upstairs. Diana did Anne's front hair in
the new pompadour style and Anne tied Diana's bows with the
especial knack she possessed; and they experimented with at least
half a dozen different ways of arranging their back hair. At
last they were ready, cheeks scarlet and eyes glowing with
excitement.

True, Anne could not help a little pang when she contrasted her
plain black tam and shapeless, tight-sleeved, homemade gray-cloth
coat with Diana's jaunty fur cap and smart little jacket. But
she remembered in time that she had an imagination and could use
it.

Then Diana's cousins, the Murrays from Newbridge, came; they all
crowded into the big pung sleigh, among straw and furry robes.
Anne reveled in the drive to the hall, slipping along over the
satin-smooth roads with the snow crisping under the runners.
There was a magnificent sunset, and the snowy hills and deep-blue
water of the St. Lawrence Gulf seemed to rim??? in the splendor
like a huge bowl of pearl and sapphire brimmed with wine and
fire. Tinkles of sleigh bells and distant laughter, that seemed
like the mirth of wood elves, came from every quarter.

"Oh, Diana," breathed Anne, squeezing Diana's mittened hand under
the fur robe, "isn't it all like a beautiful dream? Do I really
look the same as usual? I feel so different that it seems to me
it must show in my looks."

"You look awfully nice," said Diana, who having just received a
compliment from one of her cousins, felt that she ought to pass
it on. "You've got the loveliest color."

The program that night was a series of "thrills" for at least one
listener in the audience, and, as Anne assured Diana, every
succeeding thrill was thrillier than the last. When Prissy
Andrews, attired in a new pink-silk waist with a string of pearls
about her smooth white throat and real carnations in her
hair--rumor whispered that the master had sent all the way to
town for them for her--"climbed the slimy ladder, dark without
one ray of light," Anne shivered in luxurious sympathy; when the
choir sang "Far Above the Gentle Daisies" Anne gazed at the
ceiling as if it were frescoed with angels; when Sam Sloane
proceeded to explain and illustrate "How Sockery Set a Hen" Anne
laughed until people sitting near her laughed too, more out of
sympathy with her than with amusement at a selection that was
rather threadbare even in Avonlea; and when Mr. Phillips gave
Mark Antony's oration over the dead body of Caesar in the most
heartstirring tones--looking at Prissy Andrews at the end of
every sentence--Anne felt that she could rise and mutiny on the
spot if but one Roman citizen led the way.

Only one number on the program failed to interest her. When
Gilbert Blythe recited "Bingen on the Rhine" Anne picked up Rhoda
Murray's library book and read it until he had finished, when she
sat rigidly stiff and motionless while Diana clapped her hands
until they tingled.

It was eleven when they got home, sated with dissipation, but
with the exceeding sweet pleasure of talking it all over still to
come. Everybody seemed asleep and the house was dark and silent.
Anne and Diana tiptoed into the parlor, a long narrow room out of
which the spare room opened. It was pleasantly warm and dimly
lighted by the embers of a fire in the grate.

"Let's undress here," said Diana. "It's so nice and warm."

"Hasn't it been a delightful time?" sighed Anne rapturously. "It
must be splendid to get up and recite there. Do you suppose we
will ever be asked to do it, Diana?"

"Yes, of course, someday. They're always wanting the big
scholars to recite. Gilbert Blythe does often and he's only two
years older than us. Oh, Anne, how could you pretend not to
listen to him? When he came to the line,


"THERE'S ANOTHER, not A SISTER,


he looked right down at you."

"Diana," said Anne with dignity, "you are my bosom friend, but I
cannot allow even you to speak to me of that person. Are you ready
for bed? Let's run a race and see who'll get to the bed first."

The suggestion appealed to Diana. The two little white-clad figures
flew down the long room, through the spare-room door, and bounded on
the bed at the same moment. And then--something--moved beneath them,
there was a gasp and a cry--and somebody said in muffled accents:

"Merciful goodness!"

Anne and Diana were never able to tell just how they got off that
bed and out of the room. They only knew that after one frantic
rush they found themselves tiptoeing shiveringly upstairs.

"Oh, who was it--WHAT was it?" whispered Anne, her teeth
chattering with cold and fright.

"It was Aunt Josephine," said Diana, gasping with laughter. "Oh,
Anne, it was Aunt Josephine, however she came to be there. Oh,
and I know she will be furious. It's dreadful--it's really
dreadful--but did you ever know anything so funny, Anne?"

"Who is your Aunt Josephine?"

"She's father's aunt and she lives in Charlottetown. She's
awfully old--seventy anyhow--and I don't believe she was EVER a
little girl. We were expecting her out for a visit, but not so
soon. She's awfully prim and proper and she'll scold dreadfully
about this, I know. Well, we'll have to sleep with Minnie
May--and you can't think how she kicks."

Miss Josephine Barry did not appear at the early breakfast the
next morning. Mrs. Barry smiled kindly at the two little girls.

"Did you have a good time last night? I tried to stay awake
until you came home, for I wanted to tell you Aunt Josephine had
come and that you would have to go upstairs after all, but I was
so tired I fell asleep. I hope you didn't disturb your aunt,
Diana."

Diana preserved a discreet silence, but she and Anne exchanged
furtive smiles of guilty amusement across the table. Anne
hurried home after breakfast and so remained in blissful
ignorance of the disturbance which presently resulted in the
Barry household until the late afternoon, when she went down to
Mrs. Lynde's on an errand for Marilla.

"So you and Diana nearly frightened poor old Miss Barry to death
last night?" said Mrs. Lynde severely, but with a twinkle in her
eye. "Mrs. Barry was here a few minutes ago on her way to
Carmody. She's feeling real worried over it. Old Miss Barry was
in a terrible temper when she got up this morning--and Josephine
Barry's temper is no joke, I can tell you that. She wouldn't
speak to Diana at all."

"It wasn't Diana's fault," said Anne contritely. "It was mine.
I suggested racing to see who would get into bed first."

"I knew it!" said Mrs. Lynde, with the exultation of a correct
guesser. "I knew that idea came out of your head. Well, it's
made a nice lot of trouble, that's what. Old Miss Barry came out
to stay for a month, but she declares she won't stay another day
and is going right back to town tomorrow, Sunday and all as it
is. She'd have gone today if they could have taken her. She had
promised to pay for a quarter's music lessons for Diana, but now
she is determined to do nothing at all for such a tomboy. Oh, I
guess they had a lively time of it there this morning. The
Barrys must feel cut up. Old Miss Barry is rich and they'd like
to keep on the good side of her. Of course, Mrs. Barry didn't
say just that to me, but I'm a pretty good judge of human nature,
that's what."

"I'm such an unlucky girl," mourned Anne. "I'm always getting
into scrapes myself and getting my best friends--people I'd shed
my heart's blood for--into them too. Can you tell me why it is
so, Mrs. Lynde?"

"It's because you're too heedless and impulsive, child, that's
what. You never stop to think--whatever comes into your head to
say or do you say or do it without a moment's reflection."

"Oh, but that's the best of it," protested Anne. "Something just
flashes into your mind, so exciting, and you must out with it.
If you stop to think it over you spoil it all. Haven't you never
felt that yourself, Mrs. Lynde?"

No, Mrs. Lynde had not. She shook her head sagely.

"You must learn to think a little, Anne, that's what. The
proverb you need to go by is `Look before you leap'--especially
into spare-room beds."

Mrs. Lynde laughed comfortably over her mild joke, but Anne
remained pensive. She saw nothing to laugh at in the situation,
which to her eyes appeared very serious. When she left Mrs.
Lynde's she took her way across the crusted fields to Orchard
Slope. Diana met her at the kitchen door.

"Your Aunt Josephine was very cross about it, wasn't she?"
whispered Anne.

"Yes," answered Diana, stifling a giggle with an apprehensive
glance over her shoulder at the closed sitting-room door. "She
was fairly dancing with rage, Anne. Oh, how she scolded. She
said I was the worst-behaved girl she ever saw and that my
parents ought to be ashamed of the way they had brought me up.
She says she won't stay and I'm sure I don't care. But Father
and Mother do."

"Why didn't you tell them it was my fault?" demanded Anne.

"It's likely I'd do such a thing, isn't it?" said Diana with just
scorn. "I'm no telltale, Anne Shirley, and anyhow I was just as
much to blame as you."

"Well, I'm going in to tell her myself," said Anne resolutely.

Diana stared.

"Anne Shirley, you'd never! why--she'll eat you alive!"

"Don't frighten me any more than I am frightened," implored Anne.
"I'd rather walk up to a cannon's mouth. But I've got to do it,
Diana. It was my fault and I've got to confess. I've had
practice in confessing, fortunately."

"Well, she's in the room," said Diana. "You can go in if you
want to. I wouldn't dare. And I don't believe you'll do a bit
of good."

With this encouragement Anne bearded the lion in its den--that is
to say, walked resolutely up to the sitting-room door and knocked
faintly. A sharp "Come in" followed.

Miss Josephine Barry, thin, prim, and rigid, was knitting
fiercely by the fire, her wrath quite unappeased and her eyes
snapping through her gold-rimmed glasses. She wheeled around in
her chair, expecting to see Diana, and beheld a white-faced girl
whose great eyes were brimmed up with a mixture of desperate
courage and shrinking terror.

"Who are you?" demanded Miss Josephine Barry, without ceremony.

"I'm Anne of Green Gables," said the small visitor tremulously,
clasping her hands with her characteristic gesture, "and I've
come to confess, if you please."

"Confess what?"

"That it was all my fault about jumping into bed on you last
night. I suggested it. Diana would never have thought of such a
thing, I am sure. Diana is a very ladylike girl, Miss Barry. So
you must see how unjust it is to blame her."

"Oh, I must, hey? I rather think Diana did her share of the
jumping at least. Such carryings on in a respectable house!"

"But we were only in fun," persisted Anne. "I think you ought to
forgive us, Miss Barry, now that we've apologized. And anyhow,
please forgive Diana and let her have her music lessons. Diana's
heart is set on her music lessons, Miss Barry, and I know too
well what it is to set your heart on a thing and not get it. If
you must be cross with anyone, be cross with me. I've been so
used in my early days to having people cross at me that I can
endure it much better than Diana can."

Much of the snap had gone out of the old lady's eyes by this time
and was replaced by a twinkle of amused interest. But she still
said severely:

"I don't think it is any excuse for you that you were only in
fun. Little girls never indulged in that kind of fun when I was
young. You don't know what it is to be awakened out of a sound
sleep, after a long and arduous journey, by two great girls
coming bounce down on you."

"I don't KNOW, but I can IMAGINE," said Anne eagerly. "I'm sure
it must have been very disturbing. But then, there is our side
of it too. Have you any imagination, Miss Barry? If you have,
just put yourself in our place. We didn't know there was anybody
in that bed and you nearly scared us to death. It was simply
awful the way we felt. And then we couldn't sleep in the spare
room after being promised. I suppose you are used to sleeping in
spare rooms. But just imagine what you would feel like if you
were a little orphan girl who had never had such an honor."

All the snap had gone by this time. Miss Barry actually
laughed--a sound which caused Diana, waiting in speechless
anxiety in the kitchen outside, to give a great gasp of relief.

"I'm afraid my imagination is a little rusty--it's so long since
I used it," she said. "I dare say your claim to sympathy is just
as strong as mine. It all depends on the way we look at it. Sit
down here and tell me about yourself."

"I am very sorry I can't," said Anne firmly. "I would like to,
because you seem like an interesting lady, and you might even be
a kindred spirit although you don't look very much like it. But
it is my duty to go home to Miss Marilla Cuthbert. Miss Marilla
Cuthbert is a very kind lady who has taken me to bring up
properly. She is doing her best, but it is very discouraging
work. You must not blame her because I jumped on the bed. But
before I go I do wish you would tell me if you will forgive Diana
and stay just as long as you meant to in Avonlea."

"I think perhaps I will if you will come over and talk to me
occasionally," said Miss Barry.

That evening Miss Barry gave Diana a silver bangle bracelet and
told the senior members of the household that she had unpacked
her valise.

"I've made up my mind to stay simply for the sake of getting
better acquainted with that Anne-girl," she said frankly. "She
amuses me, and at my time of life an amusing person is a rarity."

Marilla's only comment when she heard the story was, "I told you
so." This was for Matthew's benefit.

Miss Barry stayed her month out and over. She was a more
agreeable guest than usual, for Anne kept her in good humor.
They became firm friends.

When Miss Barry went away she said:

"Remember, you Anne-girl, when you come to town you're to visit
me and I'll put you in my very sparest spare-room bed to sleep."

"Miss Barry was a kindred spirit, after all," Anne confided to
Marilla. "You wouldn't think so to look at her, but she is. You
don't find it right out at first, as in Matthew's case, but after
a while you come to see it. Kindred spirits are not so scarce as
I used to think. It's splendid to find out there are so many of
them in the world."




CHAPTER XX

A Good Imagination Gone Wrong


Spring had come once more to Green Gables--the beautiful
capricious, reluctant Canadian spring, lingering along through
April and May in a succession of sweet, fresh, chilly days, with
pink sunsets and miracles of resurrection and growth. The maples
in Lover's Lane were red budded and little curly ferns pushed up
around the Dryad's Bubble. Away up in the barrens, behind Mr.
Silas Sloane's place, the Mayflowers blossomed out, pink and
white stars of sweetness under their brown leaves. All the
school girls and boys had one golden afternoon gathering them,
coming home in the clear, echoing twilight with arms and baskets
full of flowery spoil.

"I'm so sorry for people who live in lands where there are no
Mayflowers," said Anne. "Diana says perhaps they have something
better, but there couldn't be anything better than Mayflowers,
could there, Marilla? And Diana says if they don't know what
they are like they don't miss them. But I think that is the
saddest thing of all. I think it would be TRAGIC, Marilla, not
to know what Mayflowers are like and NOT to miss them. Do you
know what I think Mayflowers are, Marilla? I think they must be
the souls of the flowers that died last summer and this is their
heaven. But we had a splendid time today, Marilla. We had our
lunch down in a big mossy hollow by an old well--such a ROMANTIC
spot. Charlie Sloane dared Arty Gillis to jump over it, and Arty
did because he wouldn't take a dare. Nobody would in school. It
is very FASHIONABLE to dare. Mr. Phillips gave all the
Mayflowers he found to Prissy Andrews and I heard him to say
`sweets to the sweet.' He got that out of a book, I know; but it
shows he has some imagination. I was offered some Mayflowers
too, but I rejected them with scorn. I can't tell you the
person's name because I have vowed never to let it cross my lips.
We made wreaths of the Mayflowers and put them on our hats; and
when the time came to go home we marched in procession down the
road, two by two, with our bouquets and wreaths, singing `My Home
on the Hill.' Oh, it was so thrilling, Marilla. All Mr. Silas
Sloane's folks rushed out to see us and everybody we met on the
road stopped and stared after us. We made a real sensation."

"Not much wonder! Such silly doings!" was Marilla's response.

After the Mayflowers came the violets, and Violet Vale was empurpled
with them. Anne walked through it on her way to school with reverent
steps and worshiping eyes, as if she trod on holy ground.

"Somehow," she told Diana, "when I'm going through here I don't
really care whether Gil--whether anybody gets ahead of me in
class or not. But when I'm up in school it's all different and I
care as much as ever. There's such a lot of different Annes in me.
I sometimes think that is why I'm such a troublesome person.
If I was just the one Anne it would be ever so much more
comfortable, but then it wouldn't be half so interesting."

One June evening, when the orchards were pink blossomed again,
when the frogs were singing silverly sweet in the marshes about
the head of the Lake of Shining Waters, and the air was full of
the savor of clover fields and balsamic fir woods, Anne was
sitting by her gable window. She had been studying her lessons,
but it had grown too dark to see the book, so she had fallen into
wide-eyed reverie, looking out past the boughs of the Snow Queen,
once more bestarred with its tufts of blossom.

In all essential respects the little gable chamber was unchanged.
The walls were as white, the pincushion as hard, the chairs as
stiffly and yellowly upright as ever. Yet the whole character of
the room was altered. It was full of a new vital, pulsing
personality that seemed to pervade it and to be quite independent
of schoolgirl books and dresses and ribbons, and even of the
cracked blue jug full of apple blossoms on the table. It was as
if all the dreams, sleeping and waking, of its vivid occupant had
taken a visible although unmaterial form and had tapestried the
bare room with splendid filmy tissues of rainbow and moonshine.
Presently Marilla came briskly in with some of Anne's freshly
ironed school aprons. She hung them over a chair and sat down
with a short sigh. She had had one of her headaches that
afternoon, and although the pain had gone she felt weak and
"tuckered out," as she expressed it. Anne looked at her with
eyes limpid with sympathy.

"I do truly wish I could have had the headache in your place,
Marilla. I would have endured it joyfully for your sake."

"I guess you did your part in attending to the work and letting
me rest," said Marilla. "You seem to have got on fairly well and
made fewer mistakes than usual. Of course it wasn't exactly
necessary to starch Matthew's handkerchiefs! And most people when
they put a pie in the oven to warm up for dinner take it out and
eat it when it gets hot instead of leaving it to be burned to a
crisp. But that doesn't seem to be your way evidently."

Headaches always left Marilla somewhat sarcastic.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," said Anne penitently. "I never thought about
that pie from the moment I put it in the oven till now, although
I felt INSTINCTIVELY that there was something missing on the
dinner table. I was firmly resolved, when you left me in charge
this morning, not to imagine anything, but keep my thoughts on
facts. I did pretty well until I put the pie in, and then an
irresistible temptation came to me to imagine I was an enchanted
princess shut up in a lonely tower with a handsome knight riding
to my rescue on a coal-black steed. So that is how I came to
forget the pie. I didn't know I starched the handkerchiefs. All
the time I was ironing I was trying to think of a name for a new
island Diana and I have discovered up the brook. It's the most
ravishing spot, Marilla. There are two maple trees on it and the
brook flows right around it. At last it struck me that it would
be splendid to call it Victoria Island because we found it on the
Queen's birthday. Both Diana and I are very loyal. But I'm
sorry about that pie and the handkerchiefs. I wanted to be extra
good today because it's an anniversary. Do you remember what
happened this day last year, Marilla?"

"No, I can't think of anything special."

"Oh, Marilla, it was the day I came to Green Gables. I shall
never forget it. It was the turning point in my life. Of course
it wouldn't seem so important to you. I've been here for a year
and I've been so happy. Of course, I've had my troubles, but one
can live down troubles. Are you sorry you kept me, Marilla?"

"No, I can't say I'm sorry," said Marilla, who sometimes wondered
how she could have lived before Anne came to Green Gables, "no,
not exactly sorry. If you've finished your lessons, Anne, I want you
to run over and ask Mrs. Barry if she'll lend me Diana's apron pattern."

"Oh--it's--it's too dark," cried Anne.

"Too dark? Why, it's only twilight. And goodness knows you've
gone over often enough after dark."

"I'll go over early in the morning," said Anne eagerly. "I'll
get up at sunrise and go over, Marilla."

"What has got into your head now, Anne Shirley? I want that pattern
to cut out your new apron this evening. Go at once and be smart too."

"I'll have to go around by the road, then," said Anne, taking up
her hat reluctantly.

"Go by the road and waste half an hour! I'd like to catch you!"

"I can't go through the Haunted Wood, Marilla," cried Anne desperately.

Marilla stared.

"The Haunted Wood! Are you crazy? What under the canopy is the
Haunted Wood?"

"The spruce wood over the brook," said Anne in a whisper.

"Fiddlesticks! There is no such thing as a haunted wood anywhere.
Who has been telling you such stuff?"

"Nobody," confessed Anne. "Diana and I just imagined the wood
was haunted. All the places around here are so--so--COMMONPLACE.
We just got this up for our own amusement. We began it in April.
A haunted wood is so very romantic, Marilla. We chose the spruce
grove because it's so gloomy. Oh, we have imagined the most
harrowing things. There's a white lady walks along the brook
just about this time of the night and wrings her hands and utters
wailing cries. She appears when there is to be a death in the
family. And the ghost of a little murdered child haunts the
corner up by Idlewild; it creeps up behind you and lays its cold
fingers on your hand--so. Oh, Marilla, it gives me a shudder to
think of it. And there's a headless man stalks up and down the
path and skeletons glower at you between the boughs. Oh,
Marilla, I wouldn't go through the Haunted Wood after dark now
for anything. I'd be sure that white things would reach out from
behind the trees and grab me."

"Did ever anyone hear the like!" ejaculated Marilla, who had
listened in dumb amazement. "Anne Shirley, do you mean to tell
me you believe all that wicked nonsense of your own imagination?"

"Not believe EXACTLY," faltered Anne. "At least, I don't
believe it in daylight. But after dark, Marilla, it's
different. That is when ghosts walk."

"There are no such things as ghosts, Anne."

"Oh, but there are, Marilla," cried Anne eagerly. "I know people
who have seen them. And they are respectable people. Charlie
Sloane says that his grandmother saw his grandfather driving home
the cows one night after he'd been buried for a year. You know
Charlie Sloane's grandmother wouldn't tell a story for anything.
She's a very religious woman. And Mrs. Thomas's father was
pursued home one night by a lamb of fire with its head cut off
hanging by a strip of skin. He said he knew it was the spirit of
his brother and that it was a warning he would die within nine
days. He didn't, but he died two years after, so you see it was
really true. And Ruby Gillis says--"

"Anne Shirley," interrupted Marilla firmly, "I never want to hear
you talking in this fashion again. I've had my doubts about that
imagination of yours right along, and if this is going to be the
outcome of it, I won't countenance any such doings. You'll go
right over to Barry's, and you'll go through that spruce grove,
just for a lesson and a warning to you. And never let me hear a
word out of your head about haunted woods again."

Anne might plead and cry as she liked--and did, for her terror was
very real. Her imagination had run away with her and she held the
spruce grove in mortal dread after nightfall. But Marilla was
inexorable. She marched the shrinking ghostseer down to the spring
and ordered her to proceed straightaway over the bridge and into
the dusky retreats of wailing ladies and headless specters beyond.

"Oh, Marilla, how can you be so cruel?" sobbed Anne. "What would
you feel like if a white thing did snatch me up and carry me off?"

"I'll risk it," said Marilla unfeelingly. "You know I always
mean what I say. I'll cure you of imagining ghosts into places.
March, now."

Anne marched. That is, she stumbled over the bridge and went
shuddering up the horrible dim path beyond. Anne never forgot
that walk. Bitterly did she repent the license she had given to
her imagination. The goblins of her fancy lurked in every shadow
about her, reaching out their cold, fleshless hands to grasp the
terrified small girl who had called them into being. A white
strip of birch bark blowing up from the hollow over the brown
floor of the grove made her heart stand still. The long-drawn
wail of two old boughs rubbing against each other brought out the
perspiration in beads on her forehead. The swoop of bats in the
darkness over her was as the wings of unearthly creatures. When
she reached Mr. William Bell's field she fled across it as if
pursued by an army of white things, and arrived at the Barry
kitchen door so out of breath that she could hardly gasp out her
request for the apron pattern. Diana was away so that she had no
excuse to linger. The dreadful return journey had to be faced.
Anne went back over it with shut eyes, preferring to take the
risk of dashing her brains out among the boughs to that of seeing
a white thing. When she finally stumbled over the log bridge she
drew one long shivering breath of relief.

"Well, so nothing caught you?" said Marilla unsympathetically.

"Oh, Mar--Marilla," chattered Anne, "I'll b-b-be contt-tented
with c-c-commonplace places after this."




CHAPTER XXI

A New Departure in Flavorings


"Dear me, there is nothing but meetings and partings in this
world, as Mrs. Lynde says," remarked Anne plaintively, putting
her slate and books down on the kitchen table on the last day of
June and wiping her red eyes with a very damp handkerchief.
"Wasn't it fortunate, Marilla, that I took an extra handkerchief
to school today? I had a presentiment that it would be needed."

"I never thought you were so fond of Mr. Phillips that you'd
require two handkerchiefs to dry your tears just because he was
going away," said Marilla.

"I don't think I was crying because I was really so very fond of
him," reflected Anne. "I just cried because all the others did.
It was Ruby Gillis started it. Ruby Gillis has always declared
she hated Mr. Phillips, but just as soon as he got up to make
his farewell speech she burst into tears. Then all the girls
began to cry, one after the other. I tried to hold out, Marilla.
I tried to remember the time Mr. Phillips made me sit with
Gil--with a, boy; and the time he spelled my name without an e
on the blackboard; and how he said I was the worst dunce he ever
saw at geometry and laughed at my spelling; and all the times he
had been so horrid and sarcastic; but somehow I couldn't,
Marilla, and I just had to cry too. Jane Andrews has been
talking for a month about how glad she'd be when Mr. Phillips
went away and she declared she'd never shed a tear. Well, she
was worse than any of us and had to borrow a handkerchief from
her brother--of course the boys didn't cry--because she hadn't
brought one of her own, not expecting to need it. Oh, Marilla,
it was heartrending. Mr. Phillips made such a beautiful
farewell speech beginning, `The time has come for us to part.'
It was very affecting. And he had tears in his eyes too, Marilla.
Oh, I felt dreadfully sorry and remorseful for all the times I'd
talked in school and drawn pictures of him on my slate and made
fun of him and Prissy. I can tell you I wished I'd been a model
pupil like Minnie Andrews. She hadn't anything on her conscience.
The girls cried all the way home from school. Carrie Sloane kept
saying every few minutes, `The time has come for us to part,'
and that would start us off again whenever we were in any danger
of cheering up. I do feel dreadfully sad, Marilla. But one can't
feel quite in the depths of despair with two months' vacation
before them, can they, Marilla? And besides, we met the new
minister and his wife coming from the station. For all I was
feeling so bad about Mr. Phillips going away I couldn't help
taking a little interest in a new minister, could I? His wife
is very pretty. Not exactly regally lovely, of course--it
wouldn't do, I suppose, for a minister to have a regally lovely
wife, because it might set a bad example. Mrs. Lynde says the
minister's wife over at Newbridge sets a very bad example because
she dresses so fashionably. Our new minister's wife was dressed in
blue muslin with lovely puffed sleeves and a hat trimmed with roses.
Jane Andrews said she thought puffed sleeves were too worldly for a
minister's wife, but I didn't make any such uncharitable remark,
Marilla, because I know what it is to long for puffed sleeves.
Besides, she's only been a minister's wife for a little while,
so one should make allowances, shouldn't they? They are going
to board with Mrs. Lynde until the manse is ready."

If Marilla, in going down to Mrs. Lynde's that evening, was
actuated by any motive save her avowed one of returning the
quilting frames she had borrowed the preceding winter, it was an
amiable weakness shared by most of the Avonlea people. Many a
thing Mrs. Lynde had lent, sometimes never expecting to see it
again, came home that night in charge of the borrowers thereof.
A new minister, and moreover a minister with a wife, was a lawful
object of curiosity in a quiet little country settlement where
sensations were few and far between.

Old Mr. Bentley, the minister whom Anne had found lacking in
imagination, had been pastor of Avonlea for eighteen years. He
was a widower when he came, and a widower he remained, despite
the fact that gossip regularly married him to this, that, or the
other one, every year of his sojourn. In the preceding February
he had resigned his charge and departed amid the regrets of his
people, most of whom had the affection born of long intercourse for
their good old minister in spite of his shortcomings as an orator.
Since then the Avonlea church had enjoyed a variety of religious
dissipation in listening to the many and various candidates and
"supplies" who came Sunday after Sunday to preach on trial.
These stood or fell by the judgment of the fathers and mothers
in Israel; but a certain small, red-haired girl who sat meekly
in the corner of the old Cuthbert pew also had her opinions about
them and discussed the same in full with Matthew, Marilla always
declining from principle to criticize ministers in any shape or form.

"I don't think Mr. Smith would have done, Matthew" was Anne's
final summing up. "Mrs. Lynde says his delivery was so poor,
but I think his worst fault was just like Mr. Bentley's--he had
no imagination. And Mr. Terry had too much; he let it run away
with him just as I did mine in the matter of the Haunted Wood.
Besides, Mrs. Lynde says his theology wasn't sound. Mr. Gresham
was a very good man and a very religious man, but he told too
many funny stories and made the people laugh in church; he was
undignified, and you must have some dignity about a minister,
mustn't you, Matthew? I thought Mr. Marshall was decidedly
attractive; but Mrs. Lynde says he isn't married, or even
engaged, because she made special inquiries about him, and she
says it would never do to have a young unmarried minister in
Avonlea, because he might marry in the congregation and that
would make trouble. Mrs. Lynde is a very farseeing woman, isn't
she, Matthew? I'm very glad they've called Mr. Allan. I liked
him because his sermon was interesting and he prayed as if he
meant it and not just as if he did it because he was in the habit
of it. Mrs. Lynde says he isn't perfect, but she says she
supposes we couldn't expect a perfect minister for seven hundred
and fifty dollars a year, and anyhow his theology is sound
because she questioned him thoroughly on all the points of
doctrine. And she knows his wife's people and they are most
respectable and the women are all good housekeepers. Mrs. Lynde
says that sound doctrine in the man and good housekeeping in the
woman make an ideal combination for a minister's family."

The new minister and his wife were a young, pleasant-faced
couple, still on their honeymoon, and full of all good and
beautiful enthusiasms for their chosen lifework. Avonlea
opened its heart to them from the start. Old and young liked
the frank, cheerful young man with his high ideals, and the bright,
gentle little lady who assumed the mistress-ship of the manse.
With Mrs. Allan Anne fell promptly and wholeheartedly in love.
She had discovered another kindred spirit.

"Mrs. Allan is perfectly lovely," she announced one Sunday afternoon.
"She's taken our class and she's a splendid teacher. She said right
away she didn't think it was fair for the teacher to ask all the
questions, and you know, Marilla, that is exactly what I've
always thought. She said we could ask her any question we liked
and I asked ever so many. I'm good at asking questions, Marilla."

"I believe you" was Marilla's emphatic comment.

"Nobody else asked any except Ruby Gillis, and she asked if there
was to be a Sunday-school picnic this summer. I didn't think
that was a very proper question to ask because it hadn't any
connection with the lesson--the lesson was about Daniel in the
lions' den--but Mrs. Allan just smiled and said she thought there
would be. Mrs. Allan has a lovely smile; she has such EXQUISITE
dimples in her cheeks. I wish I had dimples in my cheeks, Marilla.
I'm not half so skinny as I was when I came here, but I have no
dimples yet. If I had perhaps I could influence people for good.
Mrs. Allan said we ought always to try to influence other people
for good. She talked so nice about everything. I never knew before
that religion was such a cheerful thing. I always thought it was
kind of melancholy, but Mrs. Allan's isn't, and I'd like to be a
Christian if I could be one like her. I wouldn't want to be one
like Mr. Superintendent Bell."

"It's very naughty of you to speak so about Mr. Bell," said
Marilla severely. "Mr. Bell is a real good man."

"Oh, of course he's good," agreed Anne, "but he doesn't seem to
get any comfort out of it. If I could be good I'd dance and sing
all day because I was glad of it. I suppose Mrs. Allan is too
old to dance and sing and of course it wouldn't be dignified in a
minister's wife. But I can just feel she's glad she's a Christian
and that she'd be one even if she could get to heaven without it."

"I suppose we must have Mr. and Mrs. Allan up to tea someday
soon," said Marilla reflectively. "They've been most everywhere
but here. Let me see. Next Wednesday would be a good time to
have them. But don't say a word to Matthew about it, for if he
knew they were coming he'd find some excuse to be away that day.
He'd got so used to Mr. Bentley he didn't mind him, but he's
going to find it hard to get acquainted with a new minister, and
a new minister's wife will frighten him to death."

"I'll be as secret as the dead," assured Anne. "But oh, Marilla,
will you let me make a cake for the occasion? I'd love to do
something for Mrs. Allan, and you know I can make a pretty good
cake by this time."

"You can make a layer cake," promised Marilla.

Monday and Tuesday great preparations went on at Green Gables.
Having the minister and his wife to tea was a serious and
important undertaking, and Marilla was determined not to be
eclipsed by any of the Avonlea housekeepers. Anne was wild with
excitement and delight. She talked it all over with Diana
Tuesday night in the twilight, as they sat on the big red stones
by the Dryad's Bubble and made rainbows in the water with little
twigs dipped in fir balsam.

"Everything is ready, Diana, except my cake which I'm to make in
the morning, and the baking-powder biscuits which Marilla will
make just before teatime. I assure you, Diana, that Marilla and
I have had a busy two days of it. It's such a responsibility
having a minister's family to tea. I never went through such an
experience before. You should just see our pantry. It's a sight
to behold. We're going to have jellied chicken and cold tongue.
We're to have two kinds of jelly, red and yellow, and whipped
cream and lemon pie, and cherry pie, and three kinds of cookies,
and fruit cake, and Marilla's famous yellow plum preserves that
she keeps especially for ministers, and pound cake and layer
cake, and biscuits as aforesaid; and new bread and old both, in
case the minister is dyspeptic and can't eat new. Mrs. Lynde
says ministers are dyspeptic, but I don't think Mr. Allan has been
a minister long enough for it to have had a bad effect on him.
I just grow cold when I think of my layer cake. Oh, Diana, what
if it shouldn't be good! I dreamed last night that I was chased
all around by a fearful goblin with a big layer cake for a head."

"It'll be good, all right," assured Diana, who was a very comfortable
sort of friend. "I'm sure that piece of the one you made that we had
for lunch in Idlewild two weeks ago was perfectly elegant."

"Yes; but cakes have such a terrible habit of turning out bad just when
you especially want them to be good," sighed Anne, setting a particularly
well-balsamed twig afloat. "However, I suppose I shall just have to
trust to Providence and be careful to put in the flour. Oh, look, Diana,
what a lovely rainbow! Do you suppose the dryad will come out after we
go away and take it for a scarf?"

"You know there is no such thing as a dryad," said Diana.
Diana's mother had found out about the Haunted Wood and had been
decidedly angry over it. As a result Diana had abstained from
any further imitative flights of imagination and did not think it
prudent to cultivate a spirit of belief even in harmless dryads.

"But it's so easy to imagine there is," said Anne. "Every night
before I go to bed, I look out of my window and wonder if the
dryad is really sitting here, combing her locks with the spring
for a mirror. Sometimes I look for her footprints in the dew in
the morning. Oh, Diana, don't give up your faith in the dryad!"

Wednesday morning came. Anne got up at sunrise because she was
too excited to sleep. She had caught a severe cold in the head
by reason of her dabbling in the spring on the preceding evening;
but nothing short of absolute pneumonia could have quenched her
interest in culinary matters that morning. After breakfast she
proceeded to make her cake. When she finally shut the oven door
upon it she drew a long breath.

"I'm sure I haven't forgotten anything this time, Marilla. But
do you think it will rise? Just suppose perhaps the baking powder
isn't good? I used it out of the new can. And Mrs. Lynde says
you can never be sure of getting good baking powder nowadays when
everything is so adulterated. Mrs. Lynde says the Government ought
to take the matter up, but she says we'll never see the day when a
Tory Government will do it. Marilla, what if that cake doesn't rise?"

"We'll have plenty without it" was Marilla's unimpassioned way of
looking at the subject.

The cake did rise, however, and came out of the oven as light and
feathery as golden foam. Anne, flushed with delight, clapped it
together with layers of ruby jelly and, in imagination, saw Mrs.
Allan eating it and possibly asking for another piece!

"You'll be using the best tea set, of course, Marilla," she said.
"Can I fix the table with ferns and wild roses?"

"I think that's all nonsense," sniffed Marilla. "In my opinion
it's the eatables that matter and not flummery decorations."

"Mrs. Barry had HER table decorated," said Anne, who was not
entirely guiltless of the wisdom of the serpent, "and the
minister paid her an elegant compliment. He said it was a feast
for the eye as well as the palate."

"Well, do as you like," said Marilla, who was quite determined
not to be surpassed by Mrs. Barry or anybody else. "Only mind
you leave enough room for the dishes and the food."

Anne laid herself out to decorate in a manner and after a fashion
that should leave Mrs. Barry's nowhere. Having abundance of roses
and ferns and a very artistic taste of her own, she made that tea
table such a thing of beauty that when the minister and his wife
sat down to it they exclaimed in chorus over it loveliness.

"It's Anne's doings," said Marilla, grimly just; and Anne felt
that Mrs. Allan's approving smile was almost too much happiness
for this world.

Matthew was there, having been inveigled into the party only
goodness and Anne knew how. He had been in such a state of
shyness and nervousness that Marilla had given him up in despair,
but Anne took him in hand so successfully that he now sat at the
table in his best clothes and white collar and talked to the
minister not uninterestingly. He never said a word to Mrs. Allan,
but that perhaps was not to be expected.

All went merry as a marriage bell until Anne's layer cake was
passed. Mrs. Allan, having already been helped to a bewildering
variety, declined it. But Marilla, seeing the disappointment on
Anne's face, said smilingly:

"Oh, you must take a piece of this, Mrs. Allan. Anne made it on
purpose for you."

"In that case I must sample it," laughed Mrs. Allan, helping
herself to a plump triangle, as did also the minister and
Marilla.

Mrs. Allan took a mouthful of hers and a most peculiar expression
crossed her face; not a word did she say, however, but steadily
ate away at it. Marilla saw the expression and hastened to
taste the cake.

"Anne Shirley!" she exclaimed, "what on earth did you put into
that cake?"

"Nothing but what the recipe said, Marilla," cried Anne with a
look of anguish. "Oh, isn't it all right?"

"All right! It's simply horrible. Mr. Allan, don't try to eat
it. Anne, taste it yourself. What flavoring did you use?"

"Vanilla," said Anne, her face scarlet with mortification after
tasting the cake. "Only vanilla. Oh, Marilla, it must have been
the baking powder. I had my suspicions of that bak--"

"Baking powder fiddlesticks! Go and bring me the bottle of
vanilla you used."

Anne fled to the pantry and returned with a small bottle
partially filled with a brown liquid and labeled yellowly,
"Best Vanilla."

Marilla took it, uncorked it, smelled it.

"Mercy on us, Anne, you've flavored that cake with ANODYNE
LINIMENT. I broke the liniment bottle last week and poured what
was left into an old empty vanilla bottle. I suppose it's partly
my fault--I should have warned you--but for pity's sake why
couldn't you have smelled it?"

Anne dissolved into tears under this double disgrace.

"I couldn't--I had such a cold!" and with this she fairly fled to
the gable chamber, where she cast herself on the bed and wept as
one who refuses to be comforted.

Presently a light step sounded on the stairs and somebody entered the room.

"Oh, Marilla," sobbed Anne, without looking up, "I'm disgraced forever.
I shall never be able to live this down. It will get out--things
always do get out in Avonlea. Diana will ask me how my cake turned out
and I shall have to tell her the truth. I shall always be pointed at
as the girl who flavored a cake with anodyne liniment. Gil--the boys
in school will never get over laughing at it. Oh, Marilla, if you have
a spark of Christian pity don't tell me that I must go down and wash the
dishes after this. I'll wash them when the minister and his wife are gone,
but I cannot ever look Mrs. Allan in the face again. Perhaps she'll think
I tried to poison her. Mrs. Lynde says she knows an orphan girl who tried
to poison her benefactor. But the liniment isn't poisonous. It's meant
to be taken internally--although not in cakes. Won't you tell Mrs. Allan
so, Marilla?"

"Suppose you jump up and tell her so yourself," said a merry voice.

Anne flew up, to find Mrs. Allan standing by her bed, surveying her
with laughing eyes.

"My dear little girl, you musn't cry like this," she said,
genuinely disturbed by Anne's tragic face. "Why, it's all just a
funny mistake that anybody might make."

"Oh, no, it takes me to make such a mistake," said Anne forlornly.
"And I wanted to have that cake so nice for you, Mrs. Allan."

"Yes, I know, dear. And I assure you I appreciate your kindness
and thoughtfulness just as much as if it had turned out all right.
Now, you mustn't cry any more, but come down with me and show me your
flower garden. Miss Cuthbert tells me you have a little plot all
your own. I want to see it, for I'm very much interested in flowers."

Anne permitted herself to be led down and comforted, reflecting
that it was really providential that Mrs. Allan was a kindred
spirit. Nothing more was said about the liniment cake, and when
the guests went away Anne found that she had enjoyed the evening
more than could have been expected, considering that terrible
incident. Nevertheless, she sighed deeply.

"Marilla, isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with
no mistakes in it yet?"

"I'll warrant you'll make plenty in it," said Marilla. "I never
saw your beat for making mistakes, Anne."

"Yes, and well I know it," admitted Anne mournfully. "But
have you ever noticed one encouraging thing about me, Marilla?
I never make the same mistake twice."

"I don't know as that's much benefit when you're always making new ones."

"Oh, don't you see, Marilla? There must be a limit to the mistakes
one person can make, and when I get to the end of them, then I'll be
through with them. That's a very comforting thought."

"Well, you'd better go and give that cake to the pigs," said Marilla.
"It isn't fit for any human to eat, not even Jerry Boute."




CHAPTER XXII

Anne is Invited Out to Tea


"And what are your eyes popping out of your head about. Now?"
asked Marilla, when Anne had just come in from a run to the
post office. "Have you discovered another kindred spirit?"
Excitement hung around Anne like a garment, shone in her eyes,
kindled in every feature. She had come dancing up the lane, like
a wind-blown sprite, through the mellow sunshine and lazy shadows
of the August evening.

"No, Marilla, but oh, what do you think? I am invited to tea at
the manse tomorrow afternoon! Mrs. Allan left the letter for me
at the post office. Just look at it, Marilla. `Miss Anne Shirley,
Green Gables.' That is the first time I was ever called `Miss.'
Such a thrill as it gave me! I shall cherish it forever among
my choicest treasures."

"Mrs. Allan told me she meant to have all the members of her
Sunday-school class to tea in turn," said Marilla, regarding the
wonderful event very coolly. "You needn't get in such a fever
over it. Do learn to take things calmly, child."

For Anne to take things calmly would have been to change her
nature. All "spirit and fire and dew," as she was, the pleasures
and pains of life came to her with trebled intensity. Marilla
felt this and was vaguely troubled over it, realizing that the
ups and downs of existence would probably bear hardly on this
impulsive soul and not sufficiently understanding that the
equally great capacity for delight might more than compensate.
Therefore Marilla conceived it to be her duty to drill Anne into
a tranquil uniformity of disposition as impossible and alien to
her as to a dancing sunbeam in one of the brook shallows. She
did not make much headway, as she sorrowfully admitted to herself.
The downfall of some dear hope or plan plunged Anne into "deeps
of affliction." The fulfillment thereof exalted her to dizzy realms
of delight. Marilla had almost begun to despair of ever fashioning
this waif of the world into her model little girl of demure manners
and prim deportment. Neither would she have believed that she really
liked Anne much better as she was.

Anne went to bed that night speechless with misery because
Matthew had said the wind was round northeast and he feared it
would be a rainy day tomorrow. The rustle of the poplar leaves
about the house worried her, it sounded so like pattering
raindrops, and the full, faraway roar of the gulf, to which she
listened delightedly at other times, loving its strange,
sonorous, haunting rhythm, now seemed like a prophecy of storm
and disaster to a small maiden who particularly wanted a fine
day. Anne thought that the morning would never come.

But all things have an end, even nights before the day on which you are
invited to take tea at the manse. The morning, in spite of Matthew's
predictions, was fine and Anne's spirits soared to their highest.
"Oh, Marilla, there is something in me today that makes me just
love everybody I see," she exclaimed as she washed the breakfast
dishes. "You don't know how good I feel! Wouldn't it be nice if
it could last? I believe I could be a model child if I were just
invited out to tea every day. But oh, Marilla, it's a solemn
occasion too. I feel so anxious. What if I shouldn't behave
properly? You know I never had tea at a manse before, and I'm
not sure that I know all the rules of etiquette, although I've
been studying the rules given in the Etiquette Department of the
Family Herald ever since I came here. I'm so afraid I'll do
something silly or forget to do something I should do. Would it
be good manners to take a second helping of anything if you
wanted to VERY much?"

"The trouble with you, Anne, is that you're thinking too much
about yourself. You should just think of Mrs. Allan and what
would be nicest and most agreeable to her," said Marilla, hitting
for once in her life on a very sound and pithy piece of advice.
Anne instantly realized this.

"You are right, Marilla. I'll try not to think about myself at all."

Anne evidently got through her visit without any serious breach
of "etiquette," for she came home through the twilight, under a
great, high-sprung sky gloried over with trails of saffron and
rosy cloud, in a beatified state of mind and told Marilla all
about it happily, sitting on the big red-sandstone slab at the
kitchen door with her tired curly head in Marilla's gingham lap.

A cool wind was blowing down over the long harvest fields from
the rims of firry western hills and whistling through the
poplars. One clear star hung over the orchard and the fireflies
were flitting over in Lover's Lane, in and out among the ferns
and rustling boughs. Anne watched them as she talked and somehow
felt that wind and stars and fireflies were all tangled up
together into something unutterably sweet and enchanting.

"Oh, Marilla, I've had a most FASCINATING time. I feel that I
have not lived in vain and I shall always feel like that even if
I should never be invited to tea at a manse again. When I got
there Mrs. Allan met me at the door. She was dressed in the
sweetest dress of pale-pink organdy, with dozens of frills and
elbow sleeves, and she looked just like a seraph. I really think
I'd like to be a minister's wife when I grow up, Marilla. A
minister mightn't mind my red hair because he wouldn't be
thinking of such worldly things. But then of course one would
have to be naturally good and I'll never be that, so I suppose
there's no use in thinking about it. Some people are naturally
good, you know, and others are not. I'm one of the others. Mrs.
Lynde says I'm full of original sin. No matter how hard I try to
be good I can never make such a success of it as those who are
naturally good. It's a good deal like geometry, I expect. But
don't you think the trying so hard ought to count for something?
Mrs. Allan is one of the naturally good people. I love her
passionately. You know there are some people, like Matthew and
Mrs. Allan that you can love right off without any trouble. And
there are others, like Mrs. Lynde, that you have to try very
hard to love. You know you OUGHT to love them because they know
so much and are such active workers in the church, but you have
to keep reminding yourself of it all the time or else you forget.
There was another little girl at the manse to tea, from the White
Sands Sunday school. Her name was Laurette Bradley, and she was
a very nice little girl. Not exactly a kindred spirit, you know,
but still very nice. We had an elegant tea, and I think I kept
all the rules of etiquette pretty well. After tea Mrs. Allan
played and sang and she got Lauretta and me to sing too. Mrs.
Allan says I have a good voice and she says I must sing in the
Sunday-school choir after this. You can't think how I was
thrilled at the mere thought. I've longed so to sing in the
Sunday-school choir, as Diana does, but I feared it was an honor
I could never aspire to. Lauretta had to go home early because
there is a big concert in the White Sands Hotel tonight and her
sister is to recite at it. Lauretta says that the Americans at
the hotel give a concert every fortnight in aid of the
Charlottetown hospital, and they ask lots of the White Sands
people to recite. Lauretta said she expected to be asked
herself someday. I just gazed at her in awe. After she had
gone Mrs. Allan and I had a heart-to-heart talk. I told her
everything--about Mrs. Thomas and the twins and Katie Maurice
and Violetta and coming to Green Gables and my troubles over
geometry. And would you believe it, Marilla? Mrs. Allan told me
she was a dunce at geometry too. You don't know how that
encouraged me. Mrs. Lynde came to the manse just before I left,
and what do you think, Marilla? The trustees have hired a new
teacher and it's a lady. Her name is Miss Muriel Stacy. Isn't
that a romantic name? Mrs. Lynde says they've never had a female
teacher in Avonlea before and she thinks it is a dangerous
innovation. But I think it will be splendid to have a lady
teacher, and I really don't see how I'm going to live through the
two weeks before school begins. I'm so impatient to see her."




CHAPTER XXIII

Anne Comes to Grief in an Affair of Honor


Anne had to live through more than two weeks, as it happened.
Almost a month having elapsed since the liniment cake episode,
it was high time for her to get into fresh trouble of some sort,
little mistakes, such as absentmindedly emptying a pan of skim
milk into a basket of yarn balls in the pantry instead of into
the pigs' bucket, and walking clean over the edge of the log
bridge into the brook while wrapped in imaginative reverie, not
really being worth counting.

A week after the tea at the manse Diana Barry gave a party.

"Small and select," Anne assured Marilla. "Just the girls in our class."

They had a very good time and nothing untoward happened until after tea,
when they found themselves in the Barry garden, a little tired of all
their games and ripe for any enticing form of mischief which might
present itself. This presently took the form of "daring."

Daring was the fashionable amusement among the Avonlea small fry
just then. It had begun among the boys, but soon spread to the girls,
and all the silly things that were done in Avonlea that summer because
the doers thereof were "dared" to do them would fill a book by themselves.

First of all Carrie Sloane dared Ruby Gillis to climb to a
certain point in the huge old willow tree before the front door;
which Ruby Gillis, albeit in mortal dread of the fat green
caterpillars with which said tree was infested and with the fear
of her mother before her eyes if she should tear her new muslin
dress, nimbly did, to the discomfiture of the aforesaid Carrie Sloane.
Then Josie Pye dared Jane Andrews to hop on her left leg around
the garden without stopping once or putting her right foot to the
ground; which Jane Andrews gamely tried to do, but gave out at
the third corner and had to confess herself defeated.

Josie's triumph being rather more pronounced than good taste
permitted, Anne Shirley dared her to walk along the top of the
board fence which bounded the garden to the east. Now, to "walk"
board fences requires more skill and steadiness of head and heel
than one might suppose who has never tried it. But Josie Pye, if
deficient in some qualities that make for popularity, had at
least a natural and inborn gift, duly cultivated, for walking
board fences. Josie walked the Barry fence with an airy
unconcern which seemed to imply that a little thing like that
wasn't worth a "dare." Reluctant admiration greeted her exploit,
for most of the other girls could appreciate it, having suffered
many things themselves in their efforts to walk fences. Josie
descended from her perch, flushed with victory, and darted a
defiant glance at Anne.

Anne tossed her red braids.

"I don't think it's such a very wonderful thing to walk a little,
low, board fence," she said. "I knew a girl in Marysville who
could walk the ridgepole of a roof."

"I don't believe it," said Josie flatly. "I don't believe
anybody could walk a ridgepole. YOU couldn't, anyhow."

"Couldn't I?" cried Anne rashly.

"Then I dare you to do it," said Josie defiantly. "I dare you to
climb up there and walk the ridgepole of Mr. Barry's kitchen roof."

Anne turned pale, but there was clearly only one thing to be done.
She walked toward the house, where a ladder was leaning against the
kitchen roof. All the fifth-class girls said, "Oh!" partly in
excitement, partly in dismay.

"Don't you do it, Anne," entreated Diana. "You'll fall off
and be killed. Never mind Josie Pye. It isn't fair to dare
anybody to do anything so dangerous."

"I must do it. My honor is at stake," said Anne solemnly.
"I shall walk that ridgepole, Diana, or perish in the attempt.
If I am killed you are to have my pearl bead ring."

Anne climbed the ladder amid breathless silence, gained the
ridgepole, balanced herself uprightly on that precarious footing,
and started to walk along it, dizzily conscious that she was
uncomfortably high up in the world and that walking ridgepoles
was not a thing in which your imagination helped you out much.
Nevertheless, she managed to take several steps before the
catastrophe came. Then she swayed, lost her balance, stumbled,
staggered, and fell, sliding down over the sun-baked roof and
crashing off it through the tangle of Virginia creeper beneath--
all before the dismayed circle below could give a simultaneous,
terrified shriek.

If Anne had tumbled off the roof on the side up which she had
ascended Diana would probably have fallen heir to the pearl bead
ring then and there. Fortunately she fell on the other side,
where the roof extended down over the porch so nearly to the
ground that a fall therefrom was a much less serious thing.
Nevertheless, when Diana and the other girls had rushed frantically
around the house--except Ruby Gillis, who remained as if rooted to
the ground and went into hysterics--they found Anne lying all white
and limp among the wreck and ruin of the Virginia creeper.

"Anne, are you killed?" shrieked Diana, throwing herself on her
knees beside her friend. "Oh, Anne, dear Anne, speak just one
word to me and tell me if you're killed."

To the immense relief of all the girls, and especially of Josie Pye,
who, in spite of lack of imagination, had been seized with horrible
visions of a future branded as the girl who was the cause of Anne Shirley's
early and tragic death, Anne sat dizzily up and answered uncertainly:

"No, Diana, I am not killed, but I think I am rendered unconscious."

"Where?" sobbed Carrie Sloane. "Oh, where, Anne?" Before Anne
could answer Mrs. Barry appeared on the scene. At sight of her
Anne tried to scramble to her feet, but sank back again with a
sharp little cry of pain.

"What's the matter? Where have you hurt yourself?" demanded Mrs. Barry.

"My ankle," gasped Anne. "Oh, Diana, please find your father and
ask him to take me home. I know I can never walk there. And I'm
sure I couldn't hop so far on one foot when Jane couldn't even hop
around the garden."

Marilla was out in the orchard picking a panful of summer apples
when she saw Mr. Barry coming over the log bridge and up the
slope, with Mrs. Barry beside him and a whole procession of
little girls trailing after him. In his arms he carried Anne,
whose head lay limply against his shoulder.

At that moment Marilla had a revelation. In the sudden stab of
fear that pierced her very heart she realized what Anne had come
to mean to her. She would have admitted that she liked Anne--nay,
that she was very fond of Anne. But now she knew as she hurried
wildly down the slope that Anne was dearer to her than anything
else on earth.

"Mr. Barry, what has happened to her?" she gasped, more white and shaken
than the self-contained, sensible Marilla had been for many years.

Anne herself answered, lifting her head.

"Don't be very frightened, Marilla. I was walking the ridgepole and
I fell off. I expect I have sprained my ankle. But, Marilla, I might
have broken my neck. Let us look on the bright side of things."

"I might have known you'd go and do something of the sort when I
let you go to that party," said Marilla, sharp and shrewish in
her very relief. "Bring her in here, Mr. Barry, and lay her on
the sofa. Mercy me, the child has gone and fainted!"

It was quite true. Overcome by the pain of her injury, Anne had
one more of her wishes granted to her. She had fainted dead away.

Matthew, hastily summoned from the harvest field, was straightway
dispatched for the doctor, who in due time came, to discover that
the injury was more serious than they had supposed. Anne's ankle
was broken.

That night, when Marilla went up to the east gable, where a white-faced
girl was lying, a plaintive voice greeted her from the bed.

"Aren't you very sorry for me, Marilla?"

"It was your own fault," said Marilla, twitching down the blind
and lighting a lamp.

"And that is just why you should be sorry for me," said Anne,
"because the thought that it is all my own fault is what makes it
so hard. If I could blame it on anybody I would feel so much
better. But what would you have done, Marilla, if you had been
dared to walk a ridgepole?"

"I'd have stayed on good firm ground and let them dare away.
Such absurdity!" said Marilla.

Anne sighed.

"But you have such strength of mind, Marilla. I haven't. I just
felt that I couldn't bear Josie Pye's scorn. She would have
crowed over me all my life. And I think I have been punished so
much that you needn't be very cross with me, Marilla. It's not a
bit nice to faint, after all. And the doctor hurt me dreadfully
when he was setting my ankle. I won't be able to go around for
six or seven weeks and I'll miss the new lady teacher. She won't
be new any more by the time I'm able to go to school. And Gil--
everybody will get ahead of me in class. Oh, I am an afflicted
mortal. But I'll try to bear it all bravely if only you won't
be cross with me, Marilla."

"There, there, I'm not cross," said Marilla. "You're an unlucky
child, there's no doubt about that; but as you say, you'll have
the suffering of it. Here now, try and eat some supper."

"Isn't it fortunate I've got such an imagination?" said Anne.
"It will help me through splendidly, I expect. What do people
who haven't any imagination do when they break their bones, do
you suppose, Marilla?"

Anne had good reason to bless her imagination many a time and oft
during the tedious seven weeks that followed. But she was not
solely dependent on it. She had many visitors and not a day
passed without one or more of the schoolgirls dropping in to
bring her flowers and books and tell her all the happenings in
the juvenile world of Avonlea.

"Everybody has been so good and kind, Marilla," sighed Anne
happily, on the day when she could first limp across the floor.
"It isn't very pleasant to be laid up; but there is a bright side
to it, Marilla. You find out how many friends you have. Why,
even Superintendent Bell came to see me, and he's really a very
fine man. Not a kindred spirit, of course; but still I like him
and I'm awfully sorry I ever criticized his prayers. I believe
now he really does mean them, only he has got into the habit of
saying them as if he didn't. He could get over that if he'd take
a little trouble. I gave him a good broad hint. I told him how
hard I tried to make my own little private prayers interesting.
He told me all about the time he broke his ankle when he was a
boy. It does seem so strange to think of Superintendent Bell
ever being a boy. Even my imagination has its limits, for I
can't imagine THAT. When I try to imagine him as a boy I see him
with gray whiskers and spectacles, just as he looks in Sunday
school, only small. Now, it's so easy to imagine Mrs. Allan as
a little girl. Mrs. Allan has been to see me fourteen times.
Isn't that something to be proud of, Marilla? When a minister's
wife has so many claims on her time! She is such a cheerful
person to have visit you, too. She never tells you it's your own
fault and she hopes you'll be a better girl on account of it.
Mrs. Lynde always told me that when she came to see me; and she
said it in a kind of way that made me feel she might hope I'd be
a better girl but didn't really believe I would. Even Josie Pye
came to see me. I received her as politely as I could, because I
think she was sorry she dared me to walk a ridgepole. If I had
been killed she would had to carry a dark burden of remorse all
her life. Diana has been a faithful friend. She's been over
every day to cheer my lonely pillow. But oh, I shall be so glad
when I can go to school for I've heard such exciting things about
the new teacher. The girls all think she is perfectly sweet.
Diana says she has the loveliest fair curly hair and such
fascinating eyes. She dresses beautifully, and her sleeve puffs
are bigger than anybody else's in Avonlea. Every other Friday
afternoon she has recitations and everybody has to say a piece or
take part in a dialogue. Oh, it's just glorious to think of it.
Josie Pye says she hates it but that is just because Josie has so
little imagination. Diana and Ruby Gillis and Jane Andrews are
preparing a dialogue, called `A Morning Visit,' for next Friday.
And the Friday afternoons they don't have recitations Miss Stacy
takes them all to the woods for a `field' day and they study
ferns and flowers and birds. And they have physical culture
exercises every morning and evening. Mrs. Lynde says she never
heard of such goings on and it all comes of having a lady
teacher. But I think it must be splendid and I believe I shall
find that Miss Stacy is a kindred spirit."

"There's one thing plain to be seen, Anne," said Marilla, "and
that is that your fall off the Barry roof hasn't injured your
tongue at all."




CHAPTER XXIV

Miss Stacy and Her Pupils Get Up a Concert


It was October again when Anne was ready to go back to school--a
glorious October, all red and gold, with mellow mornings when the
valleys were filled with delicate mists as if the spirit of
autumn had poured them in for the sun to drain--amethyst, pearl,
silver, rose, and smoke-blue. The dews were so heavy that the
fields glistened like cloth of silver and there were such heaps
of rustling leaves in the hollows of many-stemmed woods to run
crisply through. The Birch Path was a canopy of yellow and the
ferns were sear and brown all along it. There was a tang in the
very air that inspired the hearts of small maidens tripping,
unlike snails, swiftly and willingly to school; and it WAS jolly
to be back again at the little brown desk beside Diana, with Ruby
Gillis nodding across the aisle and Carrie Sloane sending up
notes and Julia Bell passing a "chew" of gum down from the back
seat. Anne drew a long breath of happiness as she sharpened her
pencil and arranged her picture cards in her desk. Life was
certainly very interesting.

In the new teacher she found another true and helpful friend.
Miss Stacy was a bright, sympathetic young woman with the happy
gift of winning and holding the affections of her pupils and
bringing out the best that was in them mentally and morally.
Anne expanded like a flower under this wholesome influence and
carried home to the admiring Matthew and the critical Marilla
glowing accounts of schoolwork and aims.

"I love Miss Stacy with my whole heart, Marilla. She is so
ladylike and she has such a sweet voice. When she pronounces
my name I feel INSTINCTIVELY that she's spelling it with an E.
We had recitations this afternoon. I just wish you could have
been there to hear me recite `Mary, Queen of Scots.' I just put
my whole soul into it. Ruby Gillis told me coming home that the
way I said the line, `Now for my father's arm,' she said, `my
woman's heart farewell,' just made her blood run cold."

"Well now, you might recite it for me some of these days, out in
the barn," suggested Matthew.

"Of course I will," said Anne meditatively, "but I won't be able
to do it so well, I know. It won't be so exciting as it is when
you have a whole schoolful before you hanging breathlessly on
your words. I know I won't be able to make your blood run cold."

"Mrs. Lynde says it made HER blood run cold to see the boys
climbing to the very tops of those big trees on Bell's hill after
crows' nests last Friday," said Marilla. "I wonder at Miss Stacy
for encouraging it."

"But we wanted a crow's nest for nature study," explained Anne.
"That was on our field afternoon. Field afternoons are splendid,
Marilla. And Miss Stacy explains everything so beautifully. We
have to write compositions on our field afternoons and I write
the best ones."

"It's very vain of you to say so then. You'd better let your
teacher say it."

"But she DID say it, Marilla. And indeed I'm not vain about it.
How can I be, when I'm such a dunce at geometry? Although I'm
really beginning to see through it a little, too. Miss Stacy
makes it so clear. Still, I'll never be good at it and I
assure you it is a humbling reflection. But I love writing
compositions. Mostly Miss Stacy lets us choose our own subjects;
but next week we are to write a composition on some remarkable
person. It's hard to choose among so many remarkable people who
have lived. Mustn't it be splendid to be remarkable and have
compositions written about you after you're dead? Oh, I would
dearly love to be remarkable. I think when I grow up I'll be a
trained nurse and go with the Red Crosses to the field of battle
as a messenger of mercy. That is, if I don't go out as a foreign
missionary. That would be very romantic, but one would have to
be very good to be a missionary, and that would be a stumbling
block. We have physical culture exercises every day, too. They
make you graceful and promote digestion."

"Promote fiddlesticks!" said Marilla, who honestly thought it was
all nonsense.

But all the field afternoons and recitation Fridays and physical
culture contortions paled before a project which Miss Stacy
brought forward in November. This was that the scholars of
Avonlea school should get up a concert and hold it in the hall on
Christmas Night, for the laudable purpose of helping to pay for a
schoolhouse flag. The pupils one and all taking graciously to
this plan, the preparations for a program were begun at once.
And of all the excited performers-elect none was so excited as
Anne Shirley, who threw herself into the undertaking heart and
soul, hampered as she was by Marilla's disapproval. Marilla
thought it all rank foolishness.

"It's just filling your heads up with nonsense and taking time
that ought to be put on your lessons," she grumbled. "I don't
approve of children's getting up concerts and racing about to
practices. It makes them vain and forward and fond of gadding."

"But think of the worthy object," pleaded Anne. "A flag will
cultivate a spirit of patriotism, Marilla."

"Fudge! There's precious little patriotism in the thoughts of any
of you. All you want is a good time."

"Well, when you can combine patriotism and fun, isn't it all
right? Of course it's real nice to be getting up a concert.
We're going to have six choruses and Diana is to sing a solo.
I'm in two dialogues--`The Society for the Suppression of Gossip'
and `The Fairy Queen.' The boys are going to have a dialogue
too. And I'm to have two recitations, Marilla. I just tremble
when I think of it, but it's a nice thrilly kind of tremble. And
we're to have a tableau at the last--`Faith, Hope and Charity.'
Diana and Ruby and I are to be in it, all draped in white with
flowing hair. I'm to be Hope, with my hands clasped--so--and my
eyes uplifted. I'm going to practice my recitations in the
garret. Don't be alarmed if you hear me groaning. I have to
groan heartrendingly in one of them, and it's really hard to get
up a good artistic groan, Marilla. Josie Pye is sulky because
she didn't get the part she wanted in the dialogue. She wanted
to be the fairy queen. That would have been ridiculous, for who
ever heard of a fairy queen as fat as Josie? Fairy queens must
be slender. Jane Andrews is to be the queen and I am to be one
of her maids of honor. Josie says she thinks a red-haired fairy
is just as ridiculous as a fat one, but I do not let myself mind
what Josie says. I'm to have a wreath of white roses on my hair
and Ruby Gillis is going to lend me her slippers because I
haven't any of my own. It's necessary for fairies to have
slippers, you know. You couldn't imagine a fairy wearing boots,
could you? Especially with copper toes? We are going to
decorate the hall with creeping spruce and fir mottoes with pink
tissue-paper roses in them. And we are all to march in two by
two after the audience is seated, while Emma White plays a march
on the organ. Oh, Marilla, I know you are not so enthusiastic
about it as I am, but don't you hope your little Anne will
distinguish herself?"

"All I hope is that you'll behave yourself. I'll be heartily
glad when all this fuss is over and you'll be able to settle
down. You are simply good for nothing just now with your head
stuffed full of dialogues and groans and tableaus. As for your
tongue, it's a marvel it's not clean worn out."

Anne sighed and betook herself to the back yard, over which a
young new moon was shining through the leafless poplar boughs
from an apple-green western sky, and where Matthew was splitting
wood. Anne perched herself on a block and talked the concert
over with him, sure of an appreciative and sympathetic listener
in this instance at least.

"Well now, I reckon it's going to be a pretty good concert. And
I expect you'll do your part fine," he said, smiling down into
her eager, vivacious little face. Anne smiled back at him.
Those two were the best of friends and Matthew thanked his stars
many a time and oft that he had nothing to do with bringing her
up. That was Marilla's exclusive duty; if it had been his he
would have been worried over frequent conflicts between
inclination and said duty. As it was, he was free to, "spoil
Anne"--Marilla's phrasing--as much as he liked. But it was not
such a bad arrangement after all; a little "appreciation"
sometimes does quite as much good as all the conscientious
"bringing up" in the world.




CHAPTER XXV

Matthew Insists on Puffed Sleeves


Matthew was having a bad ten minutes of it. He had come into the
kitchen, in the twilight of a cold, gray December evening, and
had sat down in the woodbox corner to take off his heavy boots,
unconscious of the fact that Anne and a bevy of her schoolmates
were having a practice of "The Fairy Queen" in the sitting room.
Presently they came trooping through the hall and out into the
kitchen, laughing and chattering gaily. They did not see
Matthew, who shrank bashfully back into the shadows beyond the
woodbox with a boot in one hand and a bootjack in the other, and
he watched them shyly for the aforesaid ten minutes as they put on
caps and jackets and talked about the dialogue and the concert.
Anne stood among them, bright eyed and animated as they;
but Matthew suddenly became conscious that there was something
about her different from her mates. And what worried Matthew
was that the difference impressed him as being something that
should not exist. Anne had a brighter face, and bigger,
starrier eyes, and more delicate features than the other; even
shy, unobservant Matthew had learned to take note of these
things; but the difference that disturbed him did not consist in
any of these respects. Then in what did it consist?

Matthew was haunted by this question long after the girls had gone,
arm in arm, down the long, hard-frozen lane and Anne had betaken
herself to her books. He could not refer it to Marilla, who,
he felt, would be quite sure to sniff scornfully and remark that
the only difference she saw between Anne and the other girls was
that they sometimes kept their tongues quiet while Anne never did.
This, Matthew felt, would be no great help.

He had recourse to his pipe that evening to help him study it
out, much to Marilla's disgust. After two hours of smoking and
hard reflection Matthew arrived at a solution of his problem.
Anne was not dressed like the other girls!

The more Matthew thought about the matter the more he was
convinced that Anne never had been dressed like the other
girls--never since she had come to Green Gables. Marilla kept
her clothed in plain, dark dresses, all made after the same
unvarying pattern. If Matthew knew there was such a thing as
fashion in dress it was as much as he did; but he was quite sure
that Anne's sleeves did not look at all like the sleeves the
other girls wore. He recalled the cluster of little girls he had
seen around her that evening--all gay in waists of red and blue
and pink and white--and he wondered why Marilla always kept her
so plainly and soberly gowned.

Of course, it must be all right. Marilla knew best and Marilla was
bringing her up. Probably some wise, inscrutable motive was to be
served thereby. But surely it would do no harm to let the child
have one pretty dress--something like Diana Barry always wore.
Matthew decided that he would give her one; that surely could
not be objected to as an unwarranted putting in of his oar.
Christmas was only a fortnight off. A nice new dress would be
the very thing for a present. Matthew, with a sigh of
satisfaction, put away his pipe and went to bed, while Marilla
opened all the doors and aired the house.

The very next evening Matthew betook himself to Carmody to buy
the dress, determined to get the worst over and have done with it.
It would be, he felt assured, no trifling ordeal. There were some
things Matthew could buy and prove himself no mean bargainer;
but he knew he would be at the mercy of shopkeepers when it came
to buying a girl's dress.

After much cogitation Matthew resolved to go to Samuel Lawson's
store instead of William Blair's. To be sure, the Cuthberts
always had gone to William Blair's; it was almost as much a
matter of conscience with them as to attend the Presbyterian
church and vote Conservative. But William Blair's two daughters
frequently waited on customers there and Matthew held them in
absolute dread. He could contrive to deal with them when he knew
exactly what he wanted and could point it out; but in such a
matter as this, requiring explanation and consultation, Matthew
felt that he must be sure of a man behind the counter. So he
would go to Lawson's, where Samuel or his son would wait on him.

Alas! Matthew did not know that Samuel, in the recent expansion
of his business, had set up a lady clerk also; she was a niece of
his wife's and a very dashing young person indeed, with a huge,
drooping pompadour, big, rolling brown eyes, and a most extensive
and bewildering smile. She was dressed with exceeding smartness
and wore several bangle bracelets that glittered and rattled and
tinkled with every movement of her hands. Matthew was covered
with confusion at finding her there at all; and those bangles
completely wrecked his wits at one fell swoop.

"What can I do for you this evening, Mr. Cuthbert?" Miss Lucilla
Harris inquired, briskly and ingratiatingly, tapping the counter
with both hands.

"Have you any--any--any--well now, say any garden rakes?"
stammered Matthew.

Miss Harris looked somewhat surprised, as well she might, to hear
a man inquiring for garden rakes in the middle of December.

"I believe we have one or two left over," she said, "but they're
upstairs in the lumber room. I'll go and see." During her
absence Matthew collected his scattered senses for another effort.

When Miss Harris returned with the rake and cheerfully inquired:
"Anything else tonight, Mr. Cuthbert?" Matthew took his courage
in both hands and replied: "Well now, since you suggest it, I
might as well--take--that is--look at--buy some--some hayseed."

Miss Harris had heard Matthew Cuthbert called odd.
She now concluded that he was entirely crazy.

"We only keep hayseed in the spring," she explained loftily.
"We've none on hand just now."

"Oh, certainly--certainly--just as you say," stammered unhappy
Matthew, seizing the rake and making for the door. At the
threshold he recollected that he had not paid for it and he
turned miserably back. While Miss Harris was counting out his
change he rallied his powers for a final desperate attempt.

"Well now--if it isn't too much trouble--I might as well--that
is--I'd like to look at--at--some sugar."

"White or brown?" queried Miss Harris patiently.

"Oh--well now--brown," said Matthew feebly.

"There's a barrel of it over there," said Miss Harris, shaking
her bangles at it. "It's the only kind we have."

"I'll--I'll take twenty pounds of it," said Matthew, with beads
of perspiration standing on his forehead.

Matthew had driven halfway home before he was his own man again.
It had been a gruesome experience, but it served him right, he
thought, for committing the heresy of going to a strange store.
When he reached home he hid the rake in the tool house, but the
sugar he carried in to Marilla.

"Brown sugar!" exclaimed Marilla. "Whatever possessed you to get
so much? You know I never use it except for the hired man's
porridge or black fruit cake. Jerry's gone and I've made my cake
long ago. It's not good sugar, either--it's coarse and
dark--William Blair doesn't usually keep sugar like that."

"I--I thought it might come in handy sometime," said Matthew,
making good his escape.

When Matthew came to think the matter over he decided that a
woman was required to cope with the situation. Marilla was out
of the question. Matthew felt sure she would throw cold water on
his project at once. Remained only Mrs. Lynde; for of no other
woman in Avonlea would Matthew have dared to ask advice. To Mrs.
Lynde he went accordingly, and that good lady promptly took the
matter out of the harassed man's hands.

"Pick out a dress for you to give Anne? To be sure I will. I'm
going to Carmody tomorrow and I'll attend to it. Have you
something particular in mind? No? Well, I'll just go by my own
judgment then. I believe a nice rich brown would just suit Anne,
and William Blair has some new gloria in that's real pretty.
Perhaps you'd like me to make it up for her, too, seeing that if
Marilla was to make it Anne would probably get wind of it before
the time and spoil the surprise? Well, I'll do it. No, it isn't
a mite of trouble. I like sewing. I'll make it to fit my niece,
Jenny Gillis, for she and Anne are as like as two peas as far as
figure goes."

"Well now, I'm much obliged," said Matthew, "and--and--I
dunno--but I'd like--I think they make the sleeves different
nowadays to what they used to be. If it wouldn't be asking too
much I--I'd like them made in the new way."

"Puffs? Of course. You needn't worry a speck more about it,
Matthew. I'll make it up in the very latest fashion," said Mrs.
Lynde. To herself she added when Matthew had gone:

"It'll be a real satisfaction to see that poor child wearing
something decent for once. The way Marilla dresses her is
positively ridiculous, that's what, and I've ached to tell her
so plainly a dozen times. I've held my tongue though, for I can
see Marilla doesn't want advice and she thinks she knows more
about bringing children up than I do for all she's an old maid.
But that's always the way. Folks that has brought up children
know that there's no hard and fast method in the world that'll suit
every child. But them as never have think it's all as plain and
easy as Rule of Three--just set your three terms down so fashion,
and the sum'll work out correct. But flesh and blood don't come
under the head of arithmetic and that's where Marilla Cuthbert
makes her mistake. I suppose she's trying to cultivate a spirit
of humility in Anne by dressing her as she does; but it's more
likely to cultivate envy and discontent. I'm sure the child must
feel the difference between her clothes and the other girls'.
But to think of Matthew taking notice of it! That man is waking
up after being asleep for over sixty years."

Marilla knew all the following fortnight that Matthew had
something on his mind, but what it was she could not guess,
until Christmas Eve, when Mrs. Lynde brought up the new dress.
Marilla behaved pretty well on the whole, although it is very
likely she distrusted Mrs. Lynde's diplomatic explanation that
she had made the dress because Matthew was afraid Anne would find
out about it too soon if Marilla made it.

"So this is what Matthew has been looking so mysterious over and
grinning about to himself for two weeks, is it?" she said a little
stiffly but tolerantly. "I knew he was up to some foolishness.
Well, I must say I don't think Anne needed any more dresses.
I made her three good, warm, serviceable ones this fall, and
anything more is sheer extravagance. There's enough material
in those sleeves alone to make a waist, I declare there is.
You'll just pamper Anne's vanity, Matthew, and she's as vain
as a peacock now. Well, I hope she'll be satisfied at last, for
I know she's been hankering after those silly sleeves ever since
they came in, although she never said a word after the first.
The puffs have been getting bigger and more ridiculous right
along; they're as big as balloons now. Next year anybody who
wears them will have to go through a door sideways."

Christmas morning broke on a beautiful white world. It had been
a very mild December and people had looked forward to a green
Christmas; but just enough snow fell softly in the night to
transfigure Avonlea. Anne peeped out from her frosted gable
window with delighted eyes. The firs in the Haunted Wood were
all feathery and wonderful; the birches and wild cherry trees
were outlined in pearl; the plowed fields were stretches of snowy
dimples; and there was a crisp tang in the air that was glorious.
Anne ran downstairs singing until her voice reechoed through Green Gables.

"Merry Christmas, Marilla! Merry Christmas, Matthew!
Isn't it a lovely Christmas? I'm so glad it's white.
Any other kind of Christmas doesn't seem real, does it?
I don't like green Christmases. They're not green--
they're just nasty faded browns and grays. What makes
people call them green? Why--why--Matthew, is that for me?
Oh, Matthew!"

Matthew had sheepishly unfolded the dress from its paper
swathings and held it out with a deprecatory glance at Marilla,
who feigned to be contemptuously filling the teapot, but
nevertheless watched the scene out of the corner of her eye with
a rather interested air.

Anne took the dress and looked at it in reverent silence. Oh,
how pretty it was--a lovely soft brown gloria with all the gloss
of silk; a skirt with dainty frills and shirrings; a waist
elaborately pintucked in the most fashionable way, with a little
ruffle of filmy lace at the neck. But the sleeves--they were the
crowning glory! Long elbow cuffs, and above them two beautiful
puffs divided by rows of shirring and bows of brown-silk ribbon.

"That's a Christmas present for you, Anne," said Matthew shyly.
"Why--why--Anne, don't you like it? Well now--well now."

For Anne's eyes had suddenly filled with tears.

"Like it! Oh, Matthew!" Anne laid the dress over a chair and
clasped her hands. "Matthew, it's perfectly exquisite. Oh, I
can never thank you enough. Look at those sleeves! Oh, it seems
to me this must be a happy dream."

"Well, well, let us have breakfast," interrupted Marilla. "I
must say, Anne, I don't think you needed the dress; but since
Matthew has got it for you, see that you take good care of it.
There's a hair ribbon Mrs. Lynde left for you. It's brown, to
match the dress. Come now, sit in."

"I don't see how I'm going to eat breakfast," said Anne rapturously.
"Breakfast seems so commonplace at such an exciting moment. I'd
rather feast my eyes on that dress. I'm so glad that puffed sleeves
are still fashionable. It did seem to me that I'd never get over it
if they went out before I had a dress with them. I'd never have felt
quite satisfied, you see. It was lovely of Mrs. Lynde to give me
the ribbon too. I feel that I ought to be a very good girl indeed.
It's at times like this I'm sorry I'm not a model little girl;
and I always resolve that I will be in future. But somehow it's
hard to carry out your resolutions when irresistible temptations come.
Still, I really will make an extra effort after this."

When the commonplace breakfast was over Diana appeared, crossing
the white log bridge in the hollow, a gay little figure in her
crimson ulster. Anne flew down the slope to meet her.

"Merry Christmas, Diana! And oh, it's a wonderful Christmas. I've
something splendid to show you. Matthew has given me the loveliest
dress, with SUCH sleeves. I couldn't even imagine any nicer."

"I've got something more for you," said Diana breathlessly.
"Here-- this box. Aunt Josephine sent us out a big box with ever
so many things in it--and this is for you. I'd have brought it over
last night, but it didn't come until after dark, and I never feel
very comfortable coming through the Haunted Wood in the dark now."

Anne opened the box and peeped in. First a card with "For the
Anne-girl and Merry Christmas," written on it; and then, a pair
of the daintiest little kid slippers, with beaded toes and satin
bows and glistening buckles.

"Oh," said Anne, "Diana, this is too much. I must be dreaming."

"I call it providential," said Diana. "You won't have to borrow
Ruby's slippers now, and that's a blessing, for they're two sizes
too big for you, and it would be awful to hear a fairy shuffling.
Josie Pye would be delighted. Mind you, Rob Wright went home
with Gertie Pye from the practice night before last. Did you
ever hear anything equal to that?"

All the Avonlea scholars were in a fever of excitement that day,
for the hall had to be decorated and a last grand rehearsal held.

The concert came off in the evening and was a pronounced success.
The little hall was crowded; all the performers did excellently well,
but Anne was the bright particular star of the occasion, as even envy,
in the shape of Josie Pye, dared not deny.

"Oh, hasn't it been a brilliant evening?" sighed Anne, when it was all
over and she and Diana were walking home together under a dark, starry sky.

"Everything went off very well," said Diana practically. "I guess
we must have made as much as ten dollars. Mind you, Mr. Allan
is going to send an account of it to the Charlottetown papers."

"Oh, Diana, will we really see our names in print? It makes me
thrill to think of it. Your solo was perfectly elegant, Diana.
I felt prouder than you did when it was encored. I just said to
myself, `It is my dear bosom friend who is so honored.'"

"Well, your recitations just brought down the house, Anne.
That sad one was simply splendid."

"Oh, I was so nervous, Diana. When Mr. Allan called out my name
I really cannot tell how I ever got up on that platform. I felt
as if a million eyes were looking at me and through me, and for
one dreadful moment I was sure I couldn't begin at all. Then I
thought of my lovely puffed sleeves and took courage. I knew
that I must live up to those sleeves, Diana. So I started in,
and my voice seemed to be coming from ever so far away. I just
felt like a parrot. It's providential that I practiced those
recitations so often up in the garret, or I'd never have been
able to get through. Did I groan all right?"

"Yes, indeed, you groaned lovely," assured Diana.

"I saw old Mrs. Sloane wiping away tears when I sat down.
It was splendid to think I had touched somebody's heart.
It's so romantic to take part in a concert, isn't it?
Oh, it's been a very memorable occasion indeed."

"Wasn't the boys' dialogue fine?" said Diana. "Gilbert Blythe
was just splendid. Anne, I do think it's awful mean the way you
treat Gil. Wait till I tell you. When you ran off the platform
after the fairy dialogue one of your roses fell out of your hair.
I saw Gil pick it up and put it in his breast pocket. There now.
You're so romantic that I'm sure you ought to be pleased at that."

"It's nothing to me what that person does," said Anne loftily.
"I simply never waste a thought on him, Diana."

That night Marilla and Matthew, who had been out to a concert for
the first time in twenty years, sat for a while by the kitchen
fire after Anne had gone to bed.

"Well now, I guess our Anne did as well as any of them," said
Matthew proudly.

"Yes, she did," admitted Marilla. "She's a bright child,
Matthew. And she looked real nice too. I've been kind of
opposed to this concert scheme, but I suppose there's no real
harm in it after all. Anyhow, I was proud of Anne tonight,
although I'm not going to tell her so."

"Well now, I was proud of her and I did tell her so 'fore she
went upstairs," said Matthew. "We must see what we can do for
her some of these days, Marilla. I guess she'll need something
more than Avonlea school by and by."

"There's time enough to think of that," said Marilla. "She's
only thirteen in March. Though tonight it struck me she was
growing quite a big girl. Mrs. Lynde made that dress a mite too
long, and it makes Anne look so tall. She's quick to learn and I
guess the best thing we can do for her will be to send her to
Queen's after a spell. But nothing need be said about that for a
year or two yet."

"Well now, it'll do no harm to be thinking it over off and on,"
said Matthew. "Things like that are all the better for lots of
thinking over."




CHAPTER XXVI

The Story Club Is Formed


Junior Avonlea found it hard to settle down to humdrum existence
again. To Anne in particular things seemed fearfully flat,
stale, and unprofitable after the goblet of excitement she had
been sipping for weeks. Could she go back to the former quiet
pleasures of those faraway days before the concert? At first, as
she told Diana, she did not really think she could.

"I'm positively certain, Diana, that life can never be quite the
same again as it was in those olden days," she said mournfully,
as if referring to a period of at least fifty years back.


 


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