ANNE’S IMPRESSIONS OF SUNDAY-SCHOOL
“Well, how do you like them?” said Marilla.
Anne was standing in the gable-room, looking solemnly at three new
dresses spread out on the bed. One was of snuffy coloured gingham which
Marilla had been tempted to buy from a peddler the preceding summer
because it looked so serviceable; one was of black-and-white checked
sateen which she had picked up at a bargain counter in the winter; and
one was a stiff print of an ugly blue shade which she had purchased
that week at a Carmody store.
She had made them up herself, and they were all made alike—plain skirts
fulled tightly to plain waists, with sleeves as plain as waist and
skirt and tight as sleeves could be.
“I’ll imagine that I like them,” said Anne soberly.
“I don’t want you to imagine it,” said Marilla, offended. “Oh, I can
see you don’t like the dresses! What is the matter with them? Aren’t
they neat and clean and new?”
“Yes.”
“Then why don’t you like them?”
“They’re—they’re not—pretty,” said Anne reluctantly.
“Pretty!” Marilla sniffed. “I didn’t trouble my head about getting
pretty dresses for you. I don’t believe in pampering vanity, Anne, I’ll
tell you that right off. Those dresses are good, sensible, serviceable
dresses, without any frills or furbelows about them, and they’re all
you’ll get this summer. The brown gingham and the blue print will do
you for school when you begin to go. The sateen is for church and
Sunday-school. I’ll expect you to keep them neat and clean and not to
tear them. I should think you’d be grateful to get most anything after
those skimpy wincey things you’ve been wearing.”
“Oh, I _am_ grateful,” protested Anne. “But I’d be ever so much
gratefuller if—if you’d made just one of them with puffed sleeves.
Puffed sleeves are so fashionable now. It would give me such a thrill,
Marilla, just to wear a dress with puffed sleeves.”
“Well, you’ll have to do without your thrill. I hadn’t any material to
waste on puffed sleeves. I think they are ridiculous-looking things
anyhow. I prefer the plain, sensible ones.”
“But I’d rather look ridiculous when everybody else does than plain and
sensible all by myself,” persisted Anne mournfully.
“Trust you for that! Well, hang those dresses carefully up in your
closet, and then sit down and learn the Sunday-school lesson. I got a
quarterly from Mr. Bell for you and you’ll go to Sunday-school
to-morrow,” said Marilla, disappearing down-stairs in high dudgeon.
Anne clasped her hands and looked at the dresses.
“I did hope there would be a white one with puffed sleeves,” she
whispered disconsolately. “I prayed for one, but I didn’t much expect
it on that account. I didn’t suppose God would have time to bother
about a little orphan girl’s dress. I knew I’d just have to depend on
Marilla for it. Well, fortunately I can imagine that one of them is of
snow-white muslin with lovely lace frills and three-puffed sleeves.”
The next morning warnings of a sick headache prevented Marilla from
going to Sunday-school with Anne.
“You’ll have to go down and call for Mrs. Lynde, Anne,” she said.
“She’ll see that you get into the right class. Now, mind you behave
yourself properly. Stay to preaching afterwards and ask Mrs. Lynde to
show you our pew. Here’s a cent for collection. Don’t stare at people
and don’t fidget. I shall expect you to tell me the text when you come
home.”
Anne started off irreproachably, arrayed in the stiff black-and-white
sateen, which, while decent as regards length and certainly not open to
the charge of skimpiness, contrived to emphasize every corner and angle
of her thin figure. Her hat was a little, flat, glossy, new sailor, the
extreme plainness of which had likewise much disappointed Anne, who had
permitted herself secret visions of ribbon and flowers. The latter,
however, were supplied before Anne reached the main road, for, being
confronted half-way down the lane with a golden frenzy of wind-stirred
buttercups and a glory of wild roses, Anne promptly and liberally
garlanded her hat with a heavy wreath of them. Whatever other people
might have thought of the result it satisfied Anne, and she tripped
gaily down the road, holding her ruddy head with its decoration of pink
and yellow very proudly.
When she reached Mrs. Lynde’s house she found that lady gone. Nothing
daunted Anne proceeded onward to the church alone. In the porch she
found a crowd of little girls, all more or less gaily attired in whites
and blues and pinks, and all staring with curious eyes at this stranger
in their midst, with her extraordinary head adornment. Avonlea little
girls had already heard queer stories about Anne; Mrs. Lynde said she
had an awful temper; Jerry Buote, the hired boy at Green Gables, said
she talked all the time to herself or to the trees and flowers like a
crazy girl. They looked at her and whispered to each other behind their
quarterlies. Nobody made any friendly advances, then or later on when
the opening exercises were over and Anne found herself in Miss
Rogerson’s class.
[Illustration: “They looked at her and whispered to each other.”]
Miss Rogerson was a middle-aged lady who had taught a Sunday-school
class for twenty years. Her method of teaching was to ask the printed
questions from the quarterly and look sternly over its edge at the
particular little girl she thought ought to answer the question. She
looked very often at Anne, and Anne, thanks to Marilla’s drilling,
answered promptly; but it may be questioned if she understood very much
about either question or answer.
She did not think she liked Miss Rogerson, and she felt very miserable;
every other little girl in the class had puffed sleeves. Anne felt that
life was really not worth living without puffed sleeves.
“Well, how did you like Sunday-school?” Marilla wanted to know when
Anne came home. Her wreath having faded, Anne had discarded it in the
lane, so Marilla was spared the knowledge of that for a time.
“I didn’t like it a bit. It was horrid.”
“Anne Shirley!” said Marilla rebukingly.
Anne sat down on the rocker with a long sigh, kissed one of Bonny’s
leaves, and waved her hand to a blossoming fuchsia.
“They might have been lonesome while I was away,” she explained. “And
now about the Sunday-school. I behaved well, just as you told me. Mrs.
Lynde was gone, but I went right on myself. I went into the church,
with a lot of other little girls, and I sat in the corner of a pew by
the window while the opening exercises went on. Mr. Bell made an
awfully long prayer. I would have been dreadfully tired before he got
through if I hadn’t been sitting by that window. But it looked right
out on the Lake of Shining Waters, so I just gazed at that and imagined
all sorts of splendid things.”
“You shouldn’t have done anything of the sort. You should have listened
to Mr. Bell.”
“But he wasn’t talking to me,” protested Anne. “He was talking to God
and he didn’t seem to be very much interested in it, either. I think he
thought God was too far off to make it worth while. I said a little
prayer myself, though. There was a long row of white birches hanging
over the lake and the sunshine fell down through them, ’way, ’way down,
deep into the water. Oh, Marilla, it was like a beautiful dream! It
gave me a thrill and I just said, ‘Thank you for it, God,’ two or three
times.”
“Not out loud, I hope,” said Marilla anxiously.
“Oh, no, just under my breath. Well, Mr. Bell did get through at last
and they told me to go into the class-room with Miss Rogerson’s class.
There were nine other girls in it. They all had puffed sleeves. I tried
to imagine mine were puffed, too, but I couldn’t. Why couldn’t I? It
was as easy as could be to imagine they were puffed when I was alone in
the east gable, but it was awfully hard there among the others who had
really truly puffs.”
“You shouldn’t have been thinking about your sleeves in Sunday-school.
You should have been attending to the lesson. I hope you knew it.”
“Oh, yes; and I answered a lot of questions. Miss Rogerson asked ever
so many. I don’t think it was fair for her to do all the asking. There
were lots I wanted to ask her, but I didn’t like to because I didn’t
think she was a kindred spirit. Then all the other little girls recited
a paraphrase. She asked me if I knew any. I told her I didn’t, but I
could recite, ‘The Dog at His Master’s Grave’ if she liked. That’s in
the Third Royal Reader. It isn’t a really truly religious piece of
poetry, but it’s so sad and melancholy that it might as well be. She
said it wouldn’t do and she told me to learn the nineteenth paraphrase
for next Sunday. I read it over in church afterwards and it’s splendid.
There are two lines in particular that just thrill me.
“‘Quick as the slaughtered squadrons fell
In Midian’s evil day.’
“I don’t know what ‘squadrons’ means nor ‘Midian,’ either, but it
sounds _so_ tragical. I can hardly wait until next Sunday to recite it.
I’ll practise it all the week. After Sunday-school I asked Miss
Rogerson—because Mrs. Lynde was too far away—to show me your pew. I sat
just as still as I could and the text was Revelations, third chapter,
second and third verses. It was a very long text. If I was a minister
I’d pick the short, snappy ones. The sermon was awfully long, too. I
suppose the minister had to match it to the text. I didn’t think he was
a bit interesting. The trouble with him seems to be that he hasn’t
enough imagination. I didn’t listen to him very much. I just let my
thoughts run and I thought of the most surprising things.”
Marilla felt helplessly that all this should be sternly reproved, but
she was hampered by the undeniable fact that some of the things Anne
had said, especially about the minister’s sermons and Mr. Bell’s
prayers, were what she herself had really thought deep down in her
heart for years, but had never given expression to. It almost seemed to
her that those secret, unuttered, critical thoughts had suddenly taken
visible and accusing shape and form in the person of this outspoken
morsel of neglected humanity.