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 originality 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 a 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

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 helpful 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