Amiga ISO Collection/AmigaDemoCD2.iso/ASCII/TEXTE/BOOKS/Novels/L.M.Montgomery/AnneOfAvonlea.1-22

Text File | 1994-06-03 | 256.4 KB | 5,398 lines

                        ANNE OF AVONLEA

                              by

                      Lucy Maud Montgomery


                               to
                       my former teacher
                      HATTIE GORDON SMITH
                 in grateful remembrance of her
                    sympathy and encouragement



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



I         An Irate Neighbor
II        Selling in Haste and Repenting at Leisure
III       Mr. Harrison at Home
IV        Different Opinions47
V         A Full-fledged Schoolma'am
VI        All Sorts and Conditions of Men. . .and women
VII       The Pointing of Duty
VIII      Marilla Adopts Twins
IX        A Question of Color
X         Davy in Search of a Sensation
XI        Facts and Fancies
XII       A Jonah Day
XIII      A Golden Picnic
XIV       A Danger Averted
XV        The Beginning of Vacation
XVI       The Substance of Things Hoped For
XVII      A Chapter of Accidents
XVIII     An Adventure on the Tory Road
XIX       Just a Happy Day
XX        The Way It Often Happens
XXI       Sweet Miss Lavendar
XXII      Odds and Ends
XXIII     Miss Lavendar's Romance
XXIV      A Prophet in His Own Country
XXV       An Avonlea Scandal
XXVI      Around the Bend
XXVII     An Afternoon at the Stone House
XXVIII    The Prince Comes Back to the Enchanted Palace
XXIX      Poetry and Prose
XXX       A Wedding at the Stone House




                                I

                          An Irate Neighbor


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All at once Mr. Harrison found his voice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anne had always a weather eye open for kindred spirits.

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

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

"What are the children like?   How old are they?"

"Six past. . .they're twins."

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

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

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

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

"Don't tell her about Mr. Harrison and the cow," implored Anne.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I don't think he jilted her.  There was a quarrel. . .I suppose
there was blame on both sides."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mrs. Rachel had still another item of news.

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

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




                              II

                      Selling in Haste and
                      Repenting at Leisure


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Diana shook her head.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Head her off," screamed Anne.  "Run, Diana, run."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What will Marilla say?" asked Diana.

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

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

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

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

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

"Anne Shirley, what's the matter now?"

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

"Anne, you are the most exasperating girl!  WHAT is it you've done?"

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

"Anne Shirley, are you dreaming?"

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

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

"I'm sure he'll be awfully cross and disagreeable about it, though,"
moaned Anne.

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

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

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

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



                                  III

                          Mr. Harrison at Home


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

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

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

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

"Bless my soul, what's that redheaded snippet coming here for?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh, if it were only that," sighed Anne.  "But it's ten times
worse.  I don't..."

"Bless my soul, do you mean to say she's got into my wheat?"

"No. . .no. . .not the wheat.  But. . ."

"Then it's the cabbages!  She's broken into my cabbages that I was
raising for Exhibition, hey?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh, thank you, Mr. Harrison.  I'm so glad you are not vexed.
I was afraid you would be."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Harrison chuckled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That's right.  Go ahead.  There's lots of room for improvement in
this settlement. . .and in the people too."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Redheaded snippet," croaked Ginger mockingly.

Mr. Harrison shook his fist at the parrot.

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

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

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




                                 IV

                          Different Opinions


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

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

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

"How?"

"Give them a good whipping, of course."

"Oh, Jane, you wouldn't," cried Anne, shocked.  "Jane, you COULDN'T!"

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

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

"But suppose they don't?" said practical Jane.

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

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

"Don't you think it's a cruel, barbarous thing to whip a child. . .
ANY child?" exclaimed Anne, her face flushing with earnestness.

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

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

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

Anne gave Gilbert a disappointed glance.

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

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

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

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

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

"Wouldn't you punish children at all, when they misbehaved?" asked
Gilbert.

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

"I suppose you won't punish the girls by making them sit with the boys?"
said Jane slyly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I shall not use anything of the sort.  I'm not going to whip my pupils."

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

"I shall govern by affection, Mr. Harrison."

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

"Methods have changed since your schooldays, Mr. Harrison."

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

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

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

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

"Marilla, what if I fail!"

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




                                 V

                     A Full-fledged Schoolma'am


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Clarice Almira told me that you pronounced our name DONnell.  Now,
Miss Shirley, the correct pronunciation of our name is DonNELL. . .
accent on the last syllable.  I hope you'll remember this in future."

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

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

"He told me his name was Jacob," protested Anne.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




                                   VI

             All Sorts and Conditions of Men. . .and women


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

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

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

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

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

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

"Where does Mrs. Morgan live?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"If Catherine is alone we may get something," said Diana, "but if
Eliza is there we won't."

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

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

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

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

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

"I think it's getting better," said Catherine firmly.

"YOU think!" Miss Eliza's voice expressed the utmost contempt.
"It doesn't signify what you THINK, Catherine Andrews.  Facts
is facts."

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

"There isn't any bright side."

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

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

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

Eliza shook her head.

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

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

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

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

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

The next house was Daniel Blair's.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I'm going straight to Lorenzo White's."

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

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

"Certain, certain.  Just put me down for a dollar more than the
highest subscription you've got."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"So I do. . .so I do. . .but my approval doesn't go as deep as my
pocket, Anne."

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




                                   VII

                          The Pointing of Duty


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

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

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

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

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

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

"Probably it's merely the effect of what he hears at home."

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

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

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

"Have you succeeded in reconciling Mrs. DonNELL's hopeful son to
his saintly name?"

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

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

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

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

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

"I think you're fulfilling that ambition every day," said Gilbert
admiringly.

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

Finally Gilbert rose regretfully.

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

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

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

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

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

"Hasn't their uncle been heard from?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




                                VIII

                        Marilla Adopts Twins


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Do you call pulling her hair being kind to her?"

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

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

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

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

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

"If you'll give me ANOTHER piece I'll say thank you for IT."

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

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

"Oh, Davy, gentlemen don't do things like that."

"I know they don't," said Davy, as soon as he could speak,
"but I ain't a gemplum."

"But don't you want to be?" said shocked Anne.

"Course I do.  But you can't be a gemplum till you grow up."

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

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

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

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

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

"No; but I ain't going to bed for ever so long yet," said Davy comfortably.

"Oh, yes, you are."  That was all the muchtried Marilla said, but
something in her tone squelched even Davy.  He trotted obediently
upstairs with Anne."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Ow. . .mommer. . .mommer. . .ow. . .take it off. . .ow. . .get it
out. . .ow. . .that bad boy put it down my neck. . .ow. . .mommer.
. .it's going further down. . .ow. . .ow. . .ow...."

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

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

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

"Indeed he wouldn't," said Anne sadly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Anne, don't you like me a little bit, even if I ain't a good boy like Paul?"

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

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

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

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

"Davy, what is it you've done?"

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

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

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

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




                                IX

                       A Question of Color


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I know I have red hair too. . .although it's MUCH darker than it
used to be. . .so there's no need of telling me that either."

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

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

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

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

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

"What color are you going to have it?"

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

"Who's got the job?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It isn't true surely, Anne?" exclaimed Gilbert.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And it must be confessed that it was.




                                    X

                     Davy in Search of a Sensation


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Anne, Dora is lost!"

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

"No, I don't," said Davy stoutly.  "I haven't seen her since dinner
time, cross my heart."

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

"Neither I did," avowed Davy solemnly.

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

Marilla shook her head.

"I've hunted the whole house through.  But she may be in some of
the buildings."

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

"It's a most mysterious thing," groaned Marilla.

"Where can she be?" said Anne miserably

"Maybe she's tumbled into the well," suggested Davy cheerfully.

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

"She. . .she might have," whispered Marilla.

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

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

"Mr. Harrison and John Henry are both away. . .they went to town today.
I'll go for Mr. Barry."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Davy squirmed uncomfortably.

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

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

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

Davy looked puzzled.

"What's a falsehood?  Do you mean a whopper?"

"I mean a story that was not true."

"Course I did," said Davy frankly.  "If I hadn't you wouldn't have
been scared.  I HAD to tell it."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Don't say `whopper,' Davy. . .say `falsehood,'" said the schoolma'am.

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

"It's slang; and it's wrong for little boys to use slang."

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes, indeed."

"Is it wrong for a grown-up person?"

"Yes."

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

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

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

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

"Why, Davy Keith," she said solemnly, "something dreadful HAS happened
to you this very day"

Davy looked sceptical.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh, don't say that, Marilla.  Remember how bad I was when I came here."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




                                 XI

                          Facts and Fancies


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

"`What?' I asked.

"`St. Clair Donnell's face, miss.'

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

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

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

"Did you know that Thomas a Becket was canonized as a SNAKE?
Rose Bell says he was. . .also that William Tyndale WROTE the
New Testament.  Claude White says a `glacier' is a man who puts
in window frames!

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

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

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

"`Miss teacher ShiRley

       Green gabels.

             p.e.  Island can

                          birds


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

                                        edward blake ClaY.'"


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


"`Dear Miss Shirley

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

                                    Yours truly,
                                 Jacob Donnell.

P.S.  The hall is a very bright blue.'"


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


"`Dearest teacher,

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

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

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

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

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

                                Your afecksionate pupil
                                          Annetta Bell.'"


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

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

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

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

"It's very difficult to scold anybody properly under such circumstances.

"Here is Barbara Shaw's letter.  I can't reproduce the blots of the original.

"`Dear teacher,

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

                                          Yours respectfully,
                                            Barbara.  Shaw.'"

"Willie White's began,

Respected Miss,

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


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


"Paul's Letter.

My dear teacher,

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

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

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

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

                                     Your loving pupil
                                            Paul Irving.

P.  S.  of course, this letter isn't really true, teacher.
                                                    P.I.'"




                              XII

                          A Jonah Day


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Joseph," said Anne quietly, "bring that parcel here."

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

"Throw it into the fire," said Anne.

Joe looked very blank.

"P. . .p. . .p. . .lease, m. . .m. . .miss," he began.

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

"B. . .b. . .but m. . .m. . .miss. . .th. . .th. . .they're. . ."
gasped Joe in desperation.

"Joseph, are you going to obey me or are you NOT?" said Anne.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"N. . .n. . .not m. . .m. . .me t. . .t. . .teacher, n. . .n. .
.not m. . .m. . .me."

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

"Anthony, was it you?"

"Yes, it was," said Anthony insolently.

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

"Come here, Anthony."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


"Every morn is a fresh beginning,
Every morn is the world made new,"

sang Anne, as she dressed.

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

"Kind of bad walking, ain't it?  Can I take those books for you,
teacher?"

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

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

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

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

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

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




                               XIII

                          A Golden Picnic


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

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

"Your birthday?  But your birthday was in March!"

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

"It SOUNDS awfully nice," said Diana, with some inward distrust of
Anne's magic of words.  "But won't it be very damp in some places yet?"

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

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

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

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

"How do you know?" gasped Jane, amazed.

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

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

Anne glowed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"HOW sweet!" said Jane.

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

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

"You can't be a wood-nymph if you have to wear rubbers,"
was her decision.

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

"Birch Pool," suggested Diana promptly.

"Crystal Lake," said Jane.

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

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

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

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

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

"I'd wish to be tall and slender," said Diana.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And didn't you tell her we would?" asked Anne.

"Mercy, no!  I told her we wouldn't be thinking of dresses at all there."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No, but the name seems familiar to me."

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

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

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

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

"What became of Jordan?" asked Priscilla.

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

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

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

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

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

"No. . .only just that she was pretty."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I wonder what a soul. . .a person's soul. . .would look like,"
said Priscilla dreamily.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It has been a truly golden day," said Priscilla.

"I'm really awfully fond of the woods myself," said Jane.

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




                               XIV

                         A Danger Averted


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Anyhow, there'll be plenty of jam in heaven, that's one comfort,"
he said complacently.

Anne nipped a smile in the bud.

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

"Why, it's in the catechism," said Davy.

"Oh, no, there is nothing like THAT in the catechism, Davy."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At this especial meeting they intended to draw up a petition to the
school trustees, humbly praying that a fence be put around the
school grounds; and a plan was also to be discussed for planting a
few ornamental trees by the church, if the funds of the society
would permit of it. . .for, as Anne said, there was no use in
starting another subscription as long as the hall remained blue.
The members were assembled in the Andrews' parlor and Jane was
already on her feet to move the appointment of a committee which
should find out and report on the price of said trees, when Gertie
Pye swept in, pompadoured and frilled within an inch of her life.
Gertie had a habit of being late. . ."to make her entrance more
effective," spiteful people said.  Gertie's entrance in this
instance was certainly effective, for she paused dramatically on
the middle of the floor, threw up her hands, rolled her eyes,
and exclaimed, "I've just heard something perfectly awful.
What DO you think?  Mr. Judson Parker IS GOING TO RENT ALL
THE ROAD FENCE OF HIS FARM TO A PATENT MEDICINE COMPANY TO
PAINT ADVERTISEMENTS ON."

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

"It CAN'T be true," said Anne blankly.

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

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

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

"I don't know how you're going to prevent him," exclaimed Jane bitterly.
"Everybody knows what Judson Parker is.  He'd do ANYTHING for money.
He hasn't a SPARK of public spirit or ANY sense of the beautiful."

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

"If Judson Parker has a chance to `turn an honest penny,' as he
says himself, he'll never lose it," declared Fred Wright.

"Is there NOBODY who has any influence over him?" asked Anne
despairingly.

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

"Not she," said Gilbert emphatically.  "I know Louisa Spencer well.
She doesn't `believe' in Village Improvement Societies, but she
DOES believe in dollars and cents.  She'd be more likely to urge
Judson on than to dissuade him."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anne shook her head.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Have a lift, Anne?" he inquired genially.

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

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

Anne thawed out the merest trifle.

"Thank you," she said.

"And. . .and. . .you needn't mention that little conversation of
mine with Jerry."

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

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

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




                                XV

                    The Beginning of Vacation


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

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

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

"Yes, I am sure she will, Paul."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"He HAS to," said Paul emphatically.  "He knows I won't associate
with him if he doesn't.  He is really full of wickedness, I think."

"And has Nora found out about the Golden Lady yet?"

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

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

Paul shook his head gravely.

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

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

         "How fair the realm
       Imagination opens to the view,"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anne nodded.

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

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

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

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

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

"Even the theory on corporal punishment," teased Mrs. Allan.

But Anne flushed.

"I shall never forgive myself for whipping Anthony."

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

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

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

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

"Do you think you will ever get to college?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Friendship IS very beautiful," smiled Mrs.  Allan, "but some day. . ."

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




                             XVI

             The Substance of Things Hoped For


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

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

"But I ain't bread and butter hungry, " said Davy in a disgusted tone.
"I'm plum cake hungry."

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

"Well, gimme a piece then. . .please."

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

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

"Anne, I've made up my mind about heaven.  I don't want to go there."

"Why not?" asked Anne gravely.

"Cause heaven is in Simon Fletcher's garret, and I don't like
Simon Fletcher."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That's a good sign," agreed Marilla.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I thought you'd scattered more feathers over the floor than usual,"
remarked Marilla.

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

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

"I couldn't do that," said Anne discreetly, "but I'll take you and
Dora for a row in the flat right to the bottom of the pond, and
we'll go ashore on the sandhills and have a picnic."

"It's a bargain," said Davy.  "I'll be good, you bet.  I meant to
go over to Mr. Harrison's and fire peas from my new popgun at
Ginger but another day'll do as well.  I espect it will be just
like Sunday, but a picnic at the shore'll make up for THAT."




                              XVII

                    A Chapter of Accidents


Anne woke three times in the night and made pilgrimages to her
window to make sure that Uncle Abe's prediction was not coming true.
Finally the morning dawned pearly and lustrous in a sky full of
silver sheen and radiance, and the wonderful day had arrived.

Diana appeared soon after breakfast, with a basket of flowers over
one arm and HER muslin dress over the other. . .for it would not
do to don it until all the dinner preparations were completed.
Meanwhile she wore her afternoon pink print and a lawn apron
fearfully and wonderfully ruffled and frilled; and very neat and
pretty and rosy she was.

"You look simply sweet," said Anne admiringly.

Diana sighed.

"But I've had to let out every one of my dresses AGAIN.  I weigh
four pounds more than I did in July.  Anne, WHERE will this end?
Mrs. Morgan's heroines are all tall and slender."

"Well, let's forget our troubles and think of our mercies," said
Anne gaily.  "Mrs. Allan says that whenever we think of anything
that is a trial to us we should also think of something nice that
we can set over against it.  If you are slightly too plump you've
got the dearest dimples; and if I have a freckled nose the SHAPE of
it is all right.  Do you think the lemon juice did any good?"

"Yes, I really think it did," said Diana critically; and, much
elated, Anne led the way to the garden, which was full of airy
shadows and wavering golden lights.

"We'll decorate the parlor first.  We have plenty of time, for
Priscilla said they'd be here about twelve or half past at the
latest, so we'll have dinner at one."

There may have been two happier and more excited girls somewhere
in Canada or the United States at that moment, but I doubt it.
Every snip of the scissors, as rose and peony and bluebell fell,
seemed to chirp, "Mrs. Morgan is coming today."  Anne wondered
how Mr. Harrison COULD go on placidly mowing hay in the field
across the lane, just as if nothing were going to happen.

The parlor at Green Gables was a rather severe and gloomy apartment,
with rigid horsehair furniture, stiff lace curtains, and white
antimacassars that were always laid at a perfectly correct angle,
except at such times as they clung to unfortunate people's buttons.
Even Anne had never been able to infuse much grace into it, for
Marilla would not permit any alterations.  But it is wonderful
what flowers can accomplish if you give them a fair chance;
when Anne and Diana finished with the room you would not have
recognized it.

A great blue bowlful of snowballs overflowed on the polished table.
The shining black mantelpiece was heaped with roses and ferns.
Every shelf of the what-not held a sheaf of bluebells; the dark
corners on either side of the grate were lighted up with jars full
of glowing crimson peonies, and the grate itself was aflame with
yellow poppies.  All this splendor and color, mingled with the
sunshine falling through the honeysuckle vines at the windows in a
leafy riot of dancing shadows over walls and floor, made of the
usually dismal little room the veritable "bower" of Anne's
imagination, and even extorted a tribute of admiration from
Marilla, who came in to criticize and remained to praise.

"Now, we must set the table," said Anne, in the tone of a priestess
about to perform some sacred rite in honor of a divinity.  "We'll
have a big vaseful of wild roses in the center and one single rose
in front of everybody's plate -- and a special bouquet of rosebuds
only by Mrs. Morgan's -- an allusion to `The Rosebud Garden' you know."

The table was set in the sitting room, with Marilla's finest linen
and the best china, glass, and silver.  You may be perfectly
certain that every article placed on it was polished or scoured to
the highest possible perfection of gloss and glitter.

Then the girls tripped out to the kitchen, which was filled with
appetizing odors emanating from the oven, where the chickens were
already sizzling splendidly.  Anne prepared the potatoes and Diana
got the peas and beans ready.  Then, while Diana shut herself into
the pantry to compound the lettuce salad, Anne, whose cheeks were
already beginning to glow crimson, as much with excitement as from
the heat of the fire, prepared the bread sauce for the chickens,
minced her onions for the soup, and finally whipped the cream for
her lemon pies.

And what about Davy all this time?  Was he redeeming his promise to
be good?  He was, indeed.  To be sure, he insisted on remaining in
the kitchen, for his curiosity wanted to see all that went on.  But
as he sat quietly in a corner, busily engaged in untying the knots
in a piece of herring net he had brought home from his last trip to
the shore, nobody objected to this.

At half past eleven the lettuce salad was made, the golden circles
of the pies were heaped with whipped cream, and everything was
sizzling and bubbling that ought to sizzle and bubble.

"We'd better go and dress now," said Anne, "for they may be here by twelve.
We must have dinner at sharp one, for the soup must be served as soon as
it's done."

Serious indeed were the toilet rites presently performed in the
east gable.  Anne peered anxiously at her nose and rejoiced to see
that its freckles were not at all prominent, thanks either to the
lemon juice or to the unusual flush on her cheeks.  When they were
ready they looked quite as sweet and trim and girlish as ever did
any of "Mrs. Morgan's heroines."

"I do hope I'll be able to say something once in a while, and not
sit like a mute," said Diana anxiously.  "All Mrs. Morgan's
heroines converse so beautifully.  But I'm afraid I'll be
tongue-tied and stupid.  And I'll be sure to say `I seen.'
I haven't often said it since Miss Stacy taught here; but in
moments of excitement it's sure to pop out.  Anne, if I were
to say `I seen' before Mrs. Morgan I'd die of mortification.
And it would be almost as bad to have nothing to say."

"I'm nervous about a good many things," said Anne, "but I
don't think there is much fear that I won't be able to talk"

And, to do her justice, there wasn't.

Anne shrouded her muslin glories in a big apron and went down to
concoct her soup.  Marilla had dressed herself and the twins, and
looked more excited than she had ever been known to look before.
At half past twelve the Allans and Miss Stacy came.  Everything was
going well but Anne was beginning to feel nervous.  It was surely
time for Priscilla and Mrs. Morgan to arrive.  She made frequent
trips to the gate and looked as anxiously down the lane as ever her
namesake in the Bluebeard story peered from the tower casement.

"Suppose they don't come at all?" she said piteously.

"Don't suppose it.  It would be too mean," said Diana, who, however,
was beginning to have uncomfortable misgivings on the subject.

"Anne," said Marilla, coming out from the parlor, "Miss Stacy wants
to see Miss Barry's willowware platter."

Anne hastened to the sitting room closet to get the platter.  She
had, in accordance with her promise to Mrs. Lynde, written to Miss
Barry of Charlottetown, asking for the loan of it.  Miss Barry was
an old friend of Anne's, and she promply sent the platter out, with
a letter exhorting Anne to be very careful of it, for she had paid
twenty dollars for it.  The platter had served its purpose at the
Aid bazaar and had then been returned to the Green Gables closet,
for Anne would not trust anybody but herself to take it back to town.

She carried the platter carefully to the front door where her
guests were enjoying the cool breeze that blew up from the brook.
It was examined and admired; then, just as Anne had taken it back
into her own hands, a terrific crash and clatter sounded from the
kitchen pantry.  Marilla, Diana, and Anne fled out, the latter
pausing only long enough to set the precious platter hastily down
on the second step of the stairs.

When they reached the pantry a truly harrowing spectacle met their
eyes. . .a guilty looking small boy scrambling down from the
table, with his clean print blouse liberally plastered with yellow
filling, and on the table the shattered remnants of what had been
two brave, becreamed lemon pies.

Davy had finished ravelling out his herring net and had wound the
twine into a ball.  Then he had gone into the pantry to put it up
on the shelf above the table, where he already kept a score or so
of similar balls, which, so far as could be discovered, served no
useful purpose save to yield the joy of possession.  Davy had to
climb on the table and reach over to the shelf at a dangerous
angle. . .something he had been forbidden by Marilla to do, as he
had come to grief once before in the experiment.  The result in
this instance was disastrous.  Davy slipped and came sprawling
squarely down on the lemon pies.  His clean blouse was ruined for
that time and the pies for all time.  It is, however, an ill wind
that blows nobody good, and the pig was eventually the gainer by
Davy's mischance.

"Davy Keith," said Marilla, shaking him by the shoulder, "didn't I
forbid you to climb up on that table again?  Didn't I?"

"I forgot," whimpered Davy.  "You've told me not to do such an
awful lot of things that I can't remember them all."

"Well, you march upstairs and stay there till after dinner.
Perhaps you'll get them sorted out in your memory by that time.
No, Anne, never you mind interceding for him.  I'm not punishing
him because he spoiled your pies. . .that was an accident.
I'm punishing him for his disobedience.  Go, Davy, I say."

"Ain't I to have any dinner?" wailed Davy.

"You can come down after dinner is over and have yours in the kitchen."

"Oh, all right," said Davy, somewhat comforted.  "I know Anne'll
save some nice bones for me, won't you, Anne?  'Cause you know I
didn't mean to fall on the pies.  Say, Anne, since they ARE spoiled
can't I take some of the pieces upstairs with me?"

"No, no lemon pie for you, Master Davy," said Marilla, pushing him
toward the hall."

What shall we do for dessert?" asked Anne, looking regretfully at
the wreck and ruin.

"Get out a crock of strawberry preserves," said Marilla consolingly.
"There's plenty of whipped cream left in the bowl for it."

One o'clock came. . .but no Priscilla or Mrs. Morgan.  Anne was in
an agony.  Everything was done to a turn and the soup was just
what soup should be, but couldn't be depended on to remain so for
any length of time.

"I don't believe they're coming after all," said Marilla crossly.

Anne and Diana sought comfort in each other's eyes.

At half past one Marilla again emerged from the parlor.

"Girls, we MUST have dinner.  Everybody is hungry and it's no use
waiting any longer.  Priscilla and Mrs. Morgan are not coming,
that's plain, and nothing is being improved by waiting."

Anne and Diana set about lifting the dinner, with all the zest gone
out of the performance.

"I don't believe I'll be able to eat a mouthful," said Diana dolefully.

"Nor I.  But I hope everything will be nice for Miss Stacy's and
Mr. and Mrs. Allan's sakes," said Anne listlessly.

When Diana dished the peas she tasted them and a very peculiar
expression crossed her face.

"Anne, did YOU put sugar in these peas?"

"Yes," said Anne, mashing the potatoes with the air of one expected
to do her duty.  "I put a spoonful of sugar in.  We always do.
Don't you like it?"

"But _I_ put a spoonful in too, when I set them on the stove," said Diana.

Anne dropped her masher and tasted the peas also.  Then she made a grimace.

"How awful!  I never dreamed you had put sugar in, because I knew
your mother never does.  I happened to think of it, for a wonder. . .
I'm always forgetting it. . .so I popped a spoonful in."

"It's a case of too many cooks, I guess," said Marilla, who
had listened to this dialogue with a rather guilty expression.
"I didn't think you'd remember about the sugar, Anne, for I'm
perfectly certain you never did before. . .so _I_ put in a spoonful."

The guests in the parlor heard peal after peal of laughter from the
kitchen, but they never knew what the fun was about.  There were no
green peas on the dinner table that day, however.

"Well," said Anne, sobering down again with a sigh of recollection,
"we have the salad anyhow and I don't think anything has happened
to the beans.  Let's carry the things in and get it over."

It cannot be said that that dinner was a notable success socially.
The Allans and Miss Stacy exerted themselves to save the situation
and Marilla's customary placidity was not noticeably ruffled.
But Anne and Diana, between their disappointment and the reaction
from their excitement of the forenoon, could neither talk nor eat.
Anne tried heroically to bear her part in the conversation for the
sake of her guests; but all the sparkle had been quenched in her
for the time being, and, in spite of her love for the Allans and
Miss Stacy, she couldn't help thinking how nice it would be when
everybody had gone home and she could bury her weariness and
disappointment in the pillows of the east gable.

There is an old proverb that really seems at times to be inspired
. . ."it never rains but it pours."  The measure of that day's
tribulations was not yet full.  Just as Mr. Allan had finished
returning thanks there arose a strange, ominous sound on the
stairs, as of some hard, heavy object bounding from step to step,
finishing up with a grand smash at the bottom.  Everybody ran out
into the hall.  Anne gave a shriek of dismay.

At the bottom of the stairs lay a big pink conch shell amid the
fragments of what had been Miss Barry's platter; and at the top of
the stairs knelt a terrified Davy, gazing down with wide-open eyes
at the havoc.

"Davy," said Marilla ominously, "did you throw that conch down ON PURPOSE?"

"No, I never did," whimpered Davy.  "I was just kneeling here,
quiet as quiet, to watch you folks through the bannisters, and my
foot struck that old thing and pushed it off. . .and I'm awful
hungry. . .and I do wish you'd lick a fellow and have done with it,
instead of always sending him upstairs to miss all the fun."

"Don't blame Davy," said Anne, gathering up the fragments with
trembling fingers.  "It was my fault.  I set that platter there and
forgot all about it.  I am properly punished for my carelessness;
but oh, what will Miss Barry say?"

"Well, you know she only bought it, so it isn't the same as if it
was an heirloom," said Diana, trying to console.

The guests went away soon after, feeling that it was the most tactful
thing to do, and Anne and Diana washed the dishes, talking less than
they had ever been known to do before.  Then Diana went home with a
headache and Anne went with another to the east gable, where she
stayed until Marilla came home from the post office at sunset,
with a letter from Priscilla, written the day before.  Mrs. Morgan
had sprained her ankle so severely that she could not leave her room.

"And oh, Anne dear," wrote Priscilla, "I'm so sorry, but I'm afraid
we won't get up to Green Gables at all now, for by the time Aunty's
ankle is well she will have to go back to Toronto.  She has to be
there by a certain date."

"Well," sighed Anne, laying the letter down on the red sandstone
step of the back porch, where she was sitting, while the twilight
rained down out of a dappled sky, "I always thought it was too good
to be true that Mrs. Morgan should really come.  But there. . .that
speech sounds as pessimistic as Miss Eliza Andrews and I'm ashamed
of making it.  After all, it was NOT too good to be true. . .things
just as good and far better are coming true for me all the time.
And I suppose the events of today have a funny side too.
Perhaps when Diana and I are old and gray we shall be able
to laugh over them.  But I feel that I can't expect to do it
before then, for it has truly been a bitter disappointment."

"You'll probably have a good many more and worse disappointments
than that before you get through life," said Marilla, who honestly
thought she was making a comforting speech.  "It seems to me, Anne,
that you are never going to outgrow your fashion of setting your
heart so on things and then crashing down into despair because you
don't get them."

"I know I'm too much inclined that, way" agreed Anne ruefully.
"When I think something nice is going to happen I seem to fly right
up on the wings of anticipation; and then the first thing I realize
I drop down to earth with a thud.  But really, Marilla, the flying
part IS glorious as long as it lasts. . .it's like soaring through
a sunset.  I think it almost pays for the thud."

"Well, maybe it does," admitted Marilla.  "I'd rather walk calmly
along and do without both flying and thud.  But everybody has her
own way of living. . .I used to think there was only one right way
. . .but since I've had you and the twins to bring up I don't feel
so sure of it.  What are you going to do about Miss Barry's platter?"

"Pay her back the twenty dollars she paid for it, I suppose.
I'm so thankful it wasn't a cherished heirloom because then
no money could replace it."

"Maybe you could find one like it somewhere and buy it for her."

"I'm afraid not.  Platters as old as that are very scarce.  Mrs.
Lynde couldn't find one anywhere for the supper.  I only wish I
could, for of course Miss Barry would just as soon have one platter
as another, if both were equally old and genuine.  Marilla, look at
that big star over Mr. Harrison's maple grove, with all that holy
hush of silvery sky about it.  It gives me a feeling that is like
a prayer.  After all, when one can see stars and skies like that,
little disappointments and accidents can't matter so much, can they?"

"Where's Davy?" said Marilla, with an indifferent glance at the star.

"In bed.  I've promised to take him and Dora to the shore for a
picnic tomorrow.  Of course, the original agreement was that he
must be good.  But he TRIED to be good. . .and I hadn't the heart
to disappoint him."

"You'll drown yourself or the twins, rowing about the pond in that flat,"
grumbled Marilla.  "I've lived here for sixty years and I've never been
on the pond yet."

"Well, it's never too late to mend," said Anne roguishly.
"Suppose you come with us tomorrow.  We'll shut Green Gables up
and spend the whole day at the shore, daffing the world aside."

"No, thank you," said Marilla, with indignant emphasis.  "I'd be a
nice sight, wouldn't I, rowing down the pond in a flat?  I think I
hear Rachel pronouncing on it.  There's Mr. Harrison driving away
somewhere.  Do you suppose there is any truth in the gossip that
Mr. Harrison is going to see Isabella Andrews?"

"No, I'm sure there isn't.  He just called there one evening
on business with Mr. Harmon Andrews and Mrs. Lynde saw him and
said she knew he was courting because he had a white collar on.
I don't believe Mr. Harrison will ever marry.  He seems to have
a prejudice against marriage."

"Well, you can never tell about those old bachelors.  And if he had
a white collar on I'd agree with Rachel that it looks suspicious,
for I'm sure he never was seen with one before."

"I think he only put it on because he wanted to conclude a business
deal with Harmon Andrews," said Anne.  "I've heard him say that's
the only time a man needs to be particular about his appearance,
because if he looks prosperous the party of the second part won't
be so likely to try to cheat him.  I really feel sorry for Mr.
Harrison; I don't believe he feels satisfied with his life.  It
must be very lonely to have no one to care about except a parrot,
don't you think?  But I notice Mr. Harrison doesn't like to be
pitied.  Nobody does, I imagine."

"There's Gilbert coming up the lane," said Marilla.  "If he wants
you to go for a row on the pond mind you put on your coat and
rubbers.  There's a heavy dew tonight."