A SOLEMN VOW AND PROMISE
It was not until the next Friday that Marilla heard the story of the
flower-wreathed hat. She came home from Mrs. Lynde’s and called Anne to
account.
“Anne, Mrs. Rachel says you went to church last Sunday with your hat
rigged out ridiculous with roses and buttercups. What on earth put you
up to such a caper? A pretty-looking object you must have been!”
“Oh, I know pink and yellow aren’t becoming to me,” began Anne.
“Becoming fiddlesticks! It was putting flowers on your hat at all, no
matter what colour they were, that was ridiculous. You are the most
aggravating child!”
“I don’t see why it’s any more ridiculous to wear flowers on your hat
than on your dress,” protested Anne. “Lots of little girls there had
bouquets pinned on their dresses. What was the difference?”
Marilla was not to be drawn from the safe concrete into dubious paths
of the abstract.
“Don’t answer me back like that, Anne. It was very silly of you to do
such a thing. Never let me catch you at such a trick again. Mrs. Rachel
says she thought she would sink through the floor when she saw you come
in all rigged out like that. She couldn’t get near enough to tell you
to take them off till it was too late. She says people talked about it
something dreadful. Of course they would think I had no better sense
than to let you go decked out like that.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Anne, tears welling into her eyes. “I never
thought you’d mind. The roses and buttercups were so sweet and pretty I
thought they’d look lovely on my hat. Lots of the little girls had
artificial flowers on their hats. I’m afraid I’m going to be a dreadful
trial to you. Maybe you’d better send me back to the asylum. That would
be terrible; I don’t think I could endure it; most likely I would go
into consumption; I’m so thin as it is, you see. But that would be
better than being a trial to you.”
“Nonsense,” said Marilla, vexed at herself for having made the child
cry. “I don’t want to send you back to the asylum, I’m sure. All I want
is that you should behave like other little girls and not make yourself
ridiculous. Don’t cry any more. I’ve got some news for you. Diana Barry
came home this afternoon. I’m going up to see if I can borrow a skirt
pattern from Mrs. Barry, and if you like you can come with me and get
acquainted with Diana.”
Anne rose to her feet, with clasped hands, the tears still glistening
on her cheeks; the dish-towel she had been hemming slipped unheeded to
the floor.
“Oh, Marilla, I’m frightened—now that it has come I’m actually
frightened. What if she shouldn’t like me! It would be the most
tragical disappointment of my life.”
“Now, don’t get into a fluster. And I do wish you wouldn’t use such
long words. It sounds so funny in a little girl. I guess Diana’ll like
you well enough. It’s her mother you’ve got to reckon with. If she
doesn’t like you it won’t matter how much Diana does. If she has heard
about your outburst to Mrs. Lynde and going to church with buttercups
round your hat I don’t know what she’ll think of you. You must be
polite and well-behaved, and don’t make any of your startling speeches.
For pity’s sake, if the child isn’t actually trembling!”
Anne _was_ trembling. Her face was pale and tense.
“Oh, Marilla, you’d be excited, too, if you were going to meet a little
girl you hoped to be your bosom friend and whose mother mightn’t like
you,” she said as she hastened to get her hat.
They went over to Orchard Slope by the short cut across the brook and
up the firry hill grove. Mrs. Barry came to the kitchen door in answer
to Marilla’s knock. She was a tall, black-eyed, black-haired woman,
with a very resolute mouth. She had the reputation of being very strict
with her children.
“How do you do, Marilla?” she said cordially. “Come in. And this is the
little girl you have adopted, I suppose?”
“Yes, this is Anne Shirley,” said Marilla.
“Spelled with an _e_,” gasped Anne, who, tremulous and excited as she
was, was determined there should be no misunderstanding on that
important point.
Mrs. Barry, not hearing or not comprehending, merely shook hands and
said kindly:
“How are you?”
“I am well in body although considerably rumpled up in spirit, thank
you, ma’am,” said Anne gravely. Then aside to Marilla in an audible
whisper, “There wasn’t anything startling in that, was there, Marilla?”
Diana was sitting on the sofa, reading a book which she dropped when
the callers entered. She was a very pretty little girl, with her
mother’s black eyes and hair, and rosy cheeks, and the merry expression
which was her inheritance from her father.
“This is my little girl, Diana,” said Mrs. Barry. “Diana, you might
take Anne out into the garden and show her your flowers. It will be
better for you than straining your eyes over that book. She reads
entirely too much—” this to Marilla as the little girls went out—“and I
can’t prevent her, for her father aids and abets her. She’s always
poring over a book. I’m glad she has the prospect of a playmate—perhaps
it will take her more out-of-doors.”
Outside in the garden, which was full of mellow sunset light streaming
through the dark old firs to the west of it, stood Anne and Diana,
gazing bashfully at one another over a clump of gorgeous tiger lilies.
The Barry garden was a bowery wilderness of flowers which would have
delighted Anne’s heart at any time less fraught with destiny. It was
encircled by huge old willows and tall firs, beneath which flourished
flowers that loved the shade. Prim, right-angled paths, neatly bordered
with clam-shells, intersected it like moist red ribbons and in the beds
between old-fashioned flowers ran riot. There were rosy bleeding-hearts
and great splendid crimson peonies; white, fragrant narcissi and
thorny, sweet Scotch roses; pink and blue and white columbines and
lilac-tinted Bouncing Bets; clumps of southernwood and ribbon grass and
mint; purple Adam-and-Eve, daffodils, and masses of sweet clover white
with its delicate, fragrant, feathery sprays; scarlet lightning that
shot its fiery lances over prim white musk-flowers; a garden it was
where sunshine lingered and bees hummed, and winds, beguiled into
loitering, purred and rustled.
“Oh, Diana,” said Anne at last, clasping her hands and speaking almost
in a whisper, “do you think—oh, do you think you can like me a
little—enough to be my bosom friend?”
Diana laughed. Diana always laughed before she spoke.
“Why, I guess so,” she said frankly. “I’m awfully glad you’ve come to
live at Green Gables. It will be jolly to have somebody to play with.
There isn’t any other girl who lives near enough to play with, and I’ve
no sisters big enough.”
“Will you swear to be my friend for ever and ever?” demanded Anne
eagerly.
Diana looked shocked.
“Why, it’s dreadfully wicked to swear,” she said rebukingly.
“Oh no, not my kind of swearing. There are two kinds, you know.”
“I never heard of but one kind,” said Diana doubtfully.
“There really is another. Oh, it isn’t wicked at all. It just means
vowing and promising solemnly.”
“Well, I don’t mind doing that,” agreed Diana, relieved. “How do you do
it?”
“We must join hands—so,” said Anne gravely. “It ought to be over
running water. We’ll just imagine this path is running water. I’ll
repeat the oath first. I solemnly swear to be faithful to my bosom
friend, Diana Barry, as long as the sun and moon shall endure. Now you
say it and put my name in.”
Diana repeated the “oath” with a laugh fore and aft. Then she said:
“You’re a queer girl, Anne. I heard before that you were queer. But I
believe I’m going to like you real well.”
When Marilla and Anne went home Diana went with them as far as the log
bridge. The two little girls walked with their arms about each other.
At the brook they parted with many promises to spend the next afternoon
together.
“Well, did you find Diana a kindred spirit?” asked Marilla as they went
up through the garden of Green Gables.
“Oh, yes,” sighed Anne, blissfully unconscious of any sarcasm on
Marilla’s part. “Oh, Marilla, I’m the happiest girl on Prince Edward
Island this very moment. I assure you I’ll say my prayers with a right
good-will to-night. Diana and I are going to build a playhouse in Mr.
William Bell’s birch grove to-morrow. Can I have those broken pieces of
china that are out in the wood-shed? Diana’s birthday is in February
and mine is in March. Don’t you think that is a very strange
coincidence? Diana is going to lend me a book to read. She says it’s
perfectly splendid and tremenjusly exciting. She’s going to show me a
place back in the woods where rice lilies grow. Don’t you think Diana
has got very soulful eyes? I wish I had soulful eyes. Diana is going to
teach me to sing a song called ‘Nelly in the Hazel Dell.’ She’s going
to give me a picture to put up in my room; it’s a perfectly beautiful
picture, she says—a lovely lady in a pale blue silk dress. A
sewing-machine agent gave it to her. I wish I had something to give
Diana. I’m an inch taller than Diana, but she is ever so much fatter;
she says she’d like to be thin because it’s so much more graceful, but
I’m afraid she only said it to soothe my feelings. We’re going to the
shore some day to gather shells. We have agreed to call the spring down
by the log bridge the Dryad’s Bubble. Isn’t that a perfectly elegant
name? I read a story once about a spring called that. A dryad is a sort
of grown-up fairy, I think.”
“Well, all I hope is you won’t talk Diana to death,” said Marilla. “But
remember this in all your planning, Anne. You’re not going to play all
the time nor most of it. You’ll have your work to do and it’ll have to
be done first.”
Anne’s cup of happiness was full, and Matthew caused it to overflow. He
had just got home from a trip to the store at Carmody, and he
sheepishly produced a small parcel from his pocket and handed it to
Anne, with a deprecatory look at Marilla.
“I heard you say you liked chocolate sweeties, so I got you some,” he
said.
“Humph,” sniffed Marilla. “It’ll ruin her teeth and stomach. There,
there, child, don’t look so dismal. You can eat those, since Matthew
has gone and got them. He’d better have brought you peppermints.
They’re wholesomer. Don’t sicken yourself eating them all at once now.”
“Oh, no, indeed, I won’t,” said Anne eagerly. “I’ll just eat one
to-night, Marilla. And I can give Diana half of them, can’t I? The
other half will taste twice as sweet to me if I give some to her. It’s
delightful to think I have something to give her.”
“I will say it for the child,” said Marilla when Anne had gone to her
gable, “she isn’t stingy. I’m glad, for of all faults I detest
stinginess in a child. Dear me, it’s only three weeks since she came,
and it seems as if she’d been here always. I can’t imagine the place
without her. Now, don’t be looking I-told-you-so, Matthew. That’s bad
enough in a woman, but it isn’t to be endured in a man. I’m perfectly
willing to own up that I’m glad I consented to keep the child and that
I’m getting fond of her, but don’t you rub it in, Matthew Cuthbert.”