ANNE IS INVITED OUT TO TEA
“And what are your eyes popping out of your head about now?” asked
Marilla, when Anne had just come in from a run to the post-office.
“Have you discovered another kindred spirit?”
Excitement hung around Anne like a garment, shone in her eyes, kindled
in every feature. She had come dancing up the lane, like a wind-blown
sprite, through the mellow sunshine and lazy shadows of the August
evening.
“No, Marilla, but oh, what do you think? I am invited to tea at the
manse to-morrow afternoon! Mrs. Allan left the letter for me at the
post-office. Just look at it, Marilla. ‘Miss Anne Shirley, Green
Gables.’ That is the first time I was ever called ‘Miss.’ Such a thrill
as it gave me! I shall cherish it for ever among my choicest treasures.”
“Mrs. Allan told me she meant to have all the members of her
Sunday-school class to tea in turn,” said Marilla, regarding the
wonderful event very coolly. “You needn’t get in such a fever over it.
Do learn to take things calmly, child.”
For Anne to take things calmly would have been to change her nature.
All “spirit and fire and dew,” as she was, the pleasures and pains of
life came to her with trebled intensity. Marilla felt this and was
vaguely troubled over it, realizing that the ups and downs of existence
would probably bear hardly on this impulsive soul and not sufficiently
understanding that the equally great capacity for delight might more
than compensate. Therefore Marilla conceived it to be her duty to drill
Anne into a tranquil uniformity of disposition as impossible and alien
to her as to a dancing sunbeam in one of the brook shallows. She did
not make much headway, as she sorrowfully admitted to herself. The
downfall of some dear hope or plan plunged Anne into “deeps of
affliction.” The fulfilment thereof exalted her to dizzy realms of
delight. Marilla had almost begun to despair of ever fashioning this
waif of the world into her model little girl of demure manners and prim
deportment. Neither would she have believed that she really liked Anne
much better as she was.
Anne went to bed that night speechless with misery because Matthew had
said the wind was round northeast and he feared it would be a rainy day
to-morrow. The rustle of the poplar leaves about the house worried her,
it sounded so like pattering rain-drops, and the dull, faraway roar of
the gulf, to which she listened delightedly at other times, loving its
strange, sonorous, haunting rhythm, now seemed like a prophecy of storm
and disaster to a small maiden who particularly wanted a fine day. Anne
thought that the morning would never come.
But all things have an end, even nights before the day on which you are
invited to take tea at the manse. The morning, in spite of Matthew’s
predictions, was fine and Anne’s spirits soared to their highest.
“Oh, Marilla, there is something in me to-day that makes me just love
everybody I see,” she exclaimed as she washed the breakfast dishes.
“You don’t know how good I feel! Wouldn’t it be nice if it could last?
I believe I could be a model child if I were just invited out to tea
every day. But oh, Marilla, it’s a solemn occasion, too. I feel so
anxious. What if I shouldn’t behave properly? You know I never had tea
at a manse before, and I’m not sure that I know all the rules of
etiquette, although I’ve been studying the rules given in the Etiquette
Department of the _Family Herald_ ever since I came here. I’m so afraid
I’ll do something silly or forget to do something I should do. Would it
be good manners to take a second helping of anything if you wanted to
_very_ much?”
“The trouble with you, Anne, is that you’re thinking too much about
yourself. You should just think of Mrs. Allan and what would be nicest
and most agreeable for her,” said Marilla, hitting for once in her life
on a very sound and pithy piece of advice. Anne instantly realized this.
“You are right, Marilla. I’ll try not to think about myself at all.”
Anne evidently got through her visit without any serious breach of
“etiquette” for she came home through the twilight, under a great,
high-sprung sky gloried over with trails of saffron and rosy cloud, in
a beatified state of mind and told Marilla all about it happily,
sitting on the big red sandstone slab at the kitchen door with her
tired curly head in Marilla’s gingham lap.
A cool wind was blowing down over the long harvest fields from the rims
of firry western hills and whistling through the poplars. One clear
star hung above the orchard and the fireflies were flitting over in
Lovers’ Lane, in and out among the ferns and rustling boughs. Anne
watched them as she talked and somehow felt that wind and stars and
fireflies were all tangled up together into something unutterably sweet
and enchanting.
“Oh, Marilla, I’ve had a most _fascinating_ time. I feel that I have
not lived in vain and I shall always feel like that even if I should
never be invited to tea at a manse again. When I got there Mrs. Allan
met me at the door. She was dressed in the sweetest dress of pale pink
organdy, with dozens of frills and elbow sleeves, and she looked just
like a seraph. I really think I’d like to be a minister’s wife when I
grow up, Marilla. A minister mightn’t mind my red hair because he
wouldn’t be thinking of such worldly things. But then of course one
would have to be naturally good and I’ll never be that, so I suppose
there’s no use in thinking about it. Some people are naturally good,
you know, and others are not. I’m one of the others. Mrs. Lynde says
I’m full of original sin. No matter how hard I try to be good I can
never make such a success of it as those who are naturally good. It’s a
good deal like geometry, I expect. But don’t you think the trying so
hard ought to count for something? Mrs. Allan is one of the naturally
good people. I love her passionately. You know there are some people,
like Matthew and Mrs. Allan, that you can love right off without any
trouble. And there are others, like Mrs. Lynde, that you have to try
very hard to love. You know you _ought_ to love them because they know
so much and are such active workers in the church, but you have to keep
reminding yourself of it all the time or else you forget. There was
another little girl at the manse to tea, from the White Sands
Sunday-school. Her name was Lauretta Bradley, and she was a very nice
little girl. Not exactly a kindred spirit, you know, but still very
nice. We had an elegant tea, and I think I kept all the rules of
etiquette pretty well. After tea Mrs. Allan played and sang and she got
Lauretta and me to sing, too. Mrs. Allan says I have a good voice and
she says I must sing in the Sunday-school choir after this. You can’t
think how I was thrilled at the mere thought. I’ve longed so to sing in
the Sunday-school choir, as Diana does, but I feared it was an honour I
could never aspire to. Lauretta had to go home early because there is a
big concert in the White Sands hotel to-night and her sister is to
recite at it. Lauretta says that the Americans at the hotel give a
concert every fortnight in aid of the Charlottetown hospital, and they
ask lots of the White Sands people to recite. Lauretta said she
expected to be asked herself some day. I just gazed at her in awe.
After she had gone Mrs. Allan and I had a heart to heart talk. I told
her everything—about Mrs. Thomas and the twins and Katie Maurice and
Violetta and coming to Green Gables and my troubles over geometry. And
would you believe it, Marilla? Mrs. Allan told me she was a dunce at
geometry, too. You don’t know how that encouraged me. Mrs. Lynde came
to the manse just before I left, and what do you think, Marilla? The
trustees have hired a new teacher and it’s a lady. Her name is Miss
Muriel Stacy. Isn’t that a romantic name? Mrs. Lynde says they’ve never
had a female teacher in Avonlea before and she thinks it is a dangerous
innovation. But I think it will be splendid to have a lady teacher, and
I really don’t see how I’m going to live through the two weeks before
school begins, I’m so impatient to see her.”