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Anne of the Island

by L. M. Montgomery · English · Gutenberg #51 · 444,297 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Anne of the Island

Author: L. M. Montgomery


        
Release date: March 8, 2006 [eBook #51]
                Most recently updated: August 27, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51

Credits: Charles Keller and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANNE OF THE ISLAND ***




Anne of the Island

by Lucy Maud Montgomery




All precious things discovered late
To those that seek them issue forth,
For Love in sequel works with Fate,
And draws the veil from hidden worth.
                    —TENNYSON




to
all the girls
all over the world
who have “wanted more”
about ANNE




CONTENTS

 Chapter I. The Shadow of Change
 Chapter II. Garlands of Autumn
 Chapter III. Greeting and Farewell
 Chapter IV. April’s Lady
 Chapter V. Letters from Home
 Chapter VI. In the Park
 Chapter VII. Home Again
 Chapter VIII. Anne’s First Proposal
 Chapter IX. An Unwelcome Lover and a Welcome Friend
 Chapter X. Patty’s Place
 Chapter XI. The Round of Life
 Chapter XII. “Averil’s Atonement”
 Chapter XIII. The Way of Transgressors
 Chapter XIV. The Summons
 Chapter XV. A Dream Turned Upside Down
 Chapter XVI. Adjusted Relationships
 Chapter XVII. A Letter from Davy
 Chapter XVIII. Miss Josephine Remembers the Anne-girl
 Chapter XIX. An Interlude
 Chapter XX. Gilbert Speaks
 Chapter XXI. Roses of Yesterday
 Chapter XXII. Spring and Anne Return to Green Gables
 Chapter XXIII. Paul Cannot Find the Rock People
 Chapter XXIV. Enter Jonas
 Chapter XXV. Enter Prince Charming
 Chapter XXVI. Enter Christine
 Chapter XXVII. Mutual Confidences
 Chapter XXVIII. A June Evening
 Chapter XXIX. Diana’s Wedding
 Chapter XXX. Mrs. Skinner’s Romance
 Chapter XXXI. Anne to Philippa
 Chapter XXXII. Tea with Mrs. Douglas
 Chapter XXXIII. “He Just Kept Coming and Coming”
 Chapter XXXIV. John Douglas Speaks at Last
 Chapter XXXV. The Last Redmond Year Opens
 Chapter XXXVI. The Gardners’Call
 Chapter XXXVII. Full-fledged B.A.’s
 Chapter XXXVIII. False Dawn
 Chapter XXXIX. Deals with Weddings
 Chapter XL. A Book of Revelation
 Chapter XLI. Love Takes Up the Glass of Time




Anne of the Island




Chapter I
The Shadow of Change


“Harvest is ended and summer is gone,” quoted Anne Shirley, gazing
across the shorn fields dreamily. She and Diana Barry had been picking
apples in the Green Gables orchard, but were now resting from their
labors in a sunny corner, where airy fleets of thistledown drifted by
on the wings of a wind that was still summer-sweet with the incense of
ferns in the Haunted Wood.

But everything in the landscape around them spoke of autumn. The sea
was roaring hollowly in the distance, the fields were bare and sere,
scarfed with golden rod, the brook valley below Green Gables overflowed
with asters of ethereal purple, and the Lake of Shining Waters was
blue—blue—blue; not the changeful blue of spring, nor the pale azure of
summer, but a clear, steadfast, serene blue, as if the water were past
all moods and tenses of emotion and had settled down to a tranquility
unbroken by fickle dreams.

“It has been a nice summer,” said Diana, twisting the new ring on her
left hand with a smile. “And Miss Lavendar’s wedding seemed to come as
a sort of crown to it. I suppose Mr. and Mrs. Irving are on the Pacific
coast now.”

“It seems to me they have been gone long enough to go around the
world,” sighed Anne.

“I can’t believe it is only a week since they were married. Everything
has changed. Miss Lavendar and Mr. and Mrs. Allan gone—how lonely the
manse looks with the shutters all closed! I went past it last night,
and it made me feel as if everybody in it had died.”

“We’ll never get another minister as nice as Mr. Allan,” said Diana,
with gloomy conviction. “I suppose we’ll have all kinds of supplies
this winter, and half the Sundays no preaching at all. And you and
Gilbert gone—it will be awfully dull.”

“Fred will be here,” insinuated Anne slyly.

“When is Mrs. Lynde going to move up?” asked Diana, as if she had not
heard Anne’s remark.

“Tomorrow. I’m glad she’s coming—but it will be another change. Marilla
and I cleared everything out of the spare room yesterday. Do you know,
I hated to do it? Of course, it was silly—but it did seem as if we were
committing sacrilege. That old spare room has always seemed like a
shrine to me. When I was a child I thought it the most wonderful
apartment in the world. You remember what a consuming desire I had to
sleep in a spare room bed—but not the Green Gables spare room. Oh, no,
never there! It would have been too terrible—I couldn’t have slept a
wink from awe. I never _walked_ through that room when Marilla sent me
in on an errand—no, indeed, I tiptoed through it and held my breath, as
if I were in church, and felt relieved when I got out of it. The
pictures of George Whitefield and the Duke of Wellington hung there,
one on each side of the mirror, and frowned so sternly at me all the
time I was in, especially if I dared peep in the mirror, which was the
only one in the house that didn’t twist my face a little. I always
wondered how Marilla dared houseclean that room. And now it’s not only
cleaned but stripped bare. George Whitefield and the Duke have been
relegated to the upstairs hall. ‘So passes the glory of this world,’”
concluded Anne, with a laugh in which there was a little note of
regret. It is never pleasant to have our old shrines desecrated, even
when we have outgrown them.

“I’ll be so lonesome when you go,” moaned Diana for the hundredth time.
“And to think you go next week!”

“But we’re together still,” said Anne cheerily. “We mustn’t let next
week rob us of this week’s joy. I hate the thought of going myself—home
and I are such good friends. Talk of being lonesome! It’s I who should
groan. _You’ll_ be here with any number of your old friends—_and_ Fred!
While I shall be alone among strangers, not knowing a soul!”

“_Except_ Gilbert—_and_ Charlie Sloane,” said Diana, imitating Anne’s
italics and slyness.

“Charlie Sloane will be a great comfort, of course,” agreed Anne
sarcastically; whereupon both those irresponsible damsels laughed.
Diana knew exactly what Anne thought of Charlie Sloane; but, despite
sundry confidential talks, she did not know just what Anne thought of
Gilbert Blythe. To be sure, Anne herself did not know that.

“The boys may be boarding at the other end of Kingsport, for all I
know,” Anne went on. “I am glad I’m going to Redmond, and I am sure I
shall like it after a while. But for the first few weeks I know I
won’t. I shan’t even have the comfort of looking forward to the weekend
visit home, as I had when I went to Queen’s. Christmas will seem like a
thousand years away.”

“Everything is changing—or going to change,” said Diana sadly. “I have
a feeling that things will never be the same again, Anne.”

“We have come to a parting of the ways, I suppose,” said Anne
thoughtfully. “We had to come to it. Do you think, Diana, that being
grown-up is really as nice as we used to imagine it would be when we
were children?”

“I don’t know—there are _some_ nice things about it,” answered Diana,
again caressing her ring with that little smile which always had the
effect of making Anne feel suddenly left out and inexperienced. “But
there are so many puzzling things, too. Sometimes I feel as if being
grown-up just frightened me—and then I would give anything to be a
little girl again.”

“I suppose we’ll get used to being grownup in time,” said Anne
cheerfully. “There won’t be so many unexpected things about it by and
by—though, after all, I fancy it’s the unexpected things that give
spice to life. We’re eighteen, Diana. In two more years we’ll be
twenty. When I was ten I thought twenty was a green old age. In no time
you’ll be a staid, middle-aged matron, and I shall be nice, old maid
Aunt Anne, coming to visit you on vacations. You’ll always keep a
corner for me, won’t you, Di darling? Not the spare room, of course—old
maids can’t aspire to spare rooms, and I shall be as ’umble as _Uriah
Heep_, and quite content with a little over-the-porch or off-the-parlor
cubby hole.”

“What nonsense you do talk, Anne,” laughed Diana. “You’ll marry
somebody splendid and handsome and rich—and no spare room in Avonlea
will be half gorgeous enough for you—and you’ll turn up your nose at
all the friends of your youth.”

“That would be a pity; my nose is quite nice, but I fear turning it up
would spoil it,” said Anne, patting that shapely organ. “I haven’t so
many good features that I could afford to spoil those I have; so, even
if I should marry the King of the Cannibal Islands, I promise you I
won’t turn up my nose at you, Diana.”

With another gay laugh the girls separated, Diana to return to Orchard
Slope, Anne to walk to the Post Office. She found a letter awaiting her
there, and when Gilbert Blythe overtook her on the bridge over the Lake
of Shining Waters she was sparkling with the excitement of it.

“Priscilla Grant is going to Redmond, too,” she exclaimed. “Isn’t that
splendid? I hoped she would, but she didn’t think her father would
consent. He has, however, and we’re to board together. I feel that I
can face an army with banners—or all the professors of Redmond in one
fell phalanx—with a chum like Priscilla by my side.”

“I think we’ll like Kingsport,” said Gilbert. “It’s a nice old burg,
they tell me, and has the finest natural park in the world. I’ve heard
that the scenery in it is magnificent.”

“I wonder if it will be—can be—any more beautiful than this,” murmured
Anne, looking around her with the loving, enraptured eyes of those to
whom “home” must always be the loveliest spot in the world, no matter
what fairer lands may lie under alien stars.

They were leaning on the bridge of the old pond, drinking deep of the
enchantment of the dusk, just at the spot where Anne had climbed from
her sinking Dory on the day Elaine floated down to Camelot. The fine,
empurpling dye of sunset still stained the western skies, but the moon
was rising and the water lay like a great, silver dream in her light.
Remembrance wove a sweet and subtle spell over the two young creatures.

“You are very quiet, Anne,” said Gilbert at last.

“I’m afraid to speak or move for fear all this wonderful beauty will
vanish just like a broken silence,” breathed Anne.

Gilbert suddenly laid his hand over the slender white one lying on the
rail of the bridge. His hazel eyes deepened into darkness, his still
boyish lips opened to say something of the dream and hope that thrilled
his soul. But Anne snatched her hand away and turned quickly. The spell
of the dusk was broken for her.

“I must go home,” she exclaimed, with a rather overdone carelessness.
“Marilla had a headache this afternoon, and I’m sure the twins will be
in some dreadful mischief by this time. I really shouldn’t have stayed
away so long.”

She chattered ceaselessly and inconsequently until they reached the
Green Gables lane. Poor Gilbert hardly had a chance to get a word in
edgewise. Anne felt rather relieved when they parted. There had been a
new, secret self-consciousness in her heart with regard to Gilbert,
ever since that fleeting moment of revelation in the garden of Echo
Lodge. Something alien had intruded into the old, perfect, school-day
comradeship—something that threatened to mar it.

“I never felt glad to see Gilbert go before,” she thought,
half-resentfully, half-sorrowfully, as she walked alone up the lane.
“Our friendship will be spoiled if he goes on with this nonsense. It
mustn’t be spoiled—I won’t let it. Oh, _why_ can’t boys be just
sensible!”

Anne had an uneasy doubt that it was not strictly “sensible” that she
should still feel on her hand the warm pressure of Gilbert’s, as
distinctly as she had felt it for the swift second his had rested
there; and still less sensible that the sensation was far from being an
unpleasant one—very different from that which had attended a similar
demonstration on Charlie Sloane’s part, when she had been sitting out a
dance with him at a White Sands party three nights before. Anne
shivered over the disagreeable recollection. But all problems connected
with infatuated swains vanished from her mind when she entered the
homely, unsentimental atmosphere of the Green Gables kitchen where an
eight-year-old boy was crying grievously on the sofa.

“What is the matter, Davy?” asked Anne, taking him up in her arms.
“Where are Marilla and Dora?”

“Marilla’s putting Dora to bed,” sobbed Davy, “and I’m crying ’cause
Dora fell down the outside cellar steps, heels over head, and scraped
all the skin off her nose, and—”

“Oh, well, don’t cry about it, dear. Of course, you are sorry for her,
but crying won’t help her any. She’ll be all right tomorrow. Crying
never helps any one, Davy-boy, and—”

“I ain’t crying ’cause Dora fell down cellar,” said Davy, cutting short
Anne’s wellmeant preachment with increasing bitterness. “I’m crying,
cause I wasn’t there to see her fall. I’m always missing some fun or
other, seems to me.”

“Oh, Davy!” Anne choked back an unholy shriek of laughter. “Would you
call it fun to see poor little Dora fall down the steps and get hurt?”

“She wasn’t _much_ hurt,” said Davy, defiantly. “’Course, if she’d been
killed I’d have been real sorry, Anne. But the Keiths ain’t so easy
killed. They’re like the Blewetts, I guess. Herb Blewett fell off the
hayloft last Wednesday, and rolled right down through the turnip chute
into the box stall, where they had a fearful wild, cross horse, and
rolled right under his heels. And still he got out alive, with only
three bones broke. Mrs. Lynde says there are some folks you can’t kill
with a meat-axe. Is Mrs. Lynde coming here tomorrow, Anne?”

“Yes, Davy, and I hope you’ll be always very nice and good to her.”

“I’ll be nice and good. But will she ever put me to bed at nights,
Anne?”

“Perhaps. Why?”

“’Cause,” said Davy very decidedly, “if she does I won’t say my prayers
before her like I do before you, Anne.”

“Why not?”

“’Cause I don’t think it would be nice to talk to God before strangers,
Anne. Dora can say hers to Mrs. Lynde if she likes, but _I_ won’t. I’ll
wait till she’s gone and then say ’em. Won’t that be all right, Anne?”

“Yes, if you are sure you won’t forget to say them, Davy-boy.”

“Oh, I won’t forget, you bet. I think saying my prayers is great fun.
But it won’t be as good fun saying them alone as saying them to you. I
wish you’d stay home, Anne. I don’t see what you want to go away and
leave us for.”

“I don’t exactly _want_ to, Davy, but I feel I ought to go.”

“If you don’t want to go you needn’t. You’re grown up. When _I_’m grown
up I’m not going to do one single thing I don’t want to do, Anne.”

“All your life, Davy, you’ll find yourself doing things you don’t want
to do.”

“I won’t,” said Davy flatly. “Catch me! I have to do things I don’t
want to now ’cause you and Marilla’ll send me to bed if I don’t. But
when I grow up you can’t do that, and there’ll be nobody to tell me not
to do things. Won’t I have the time! Say, Anne, Milty Boulter says his
mother says you’re going to college to see if you can catch a man. Are
you, Anne? I want to know.”

For a second Anne burned with resentment. Then she laughed, reminding
herself that Mrs. Boulter’s crude vulgarity of thought and speech could
not harm her.

“No, Davy, I’m not. I’m going to study and grow and learn about many
things.”

“What things?”

“‘Shoes and ships and sealing wax
And cabbages and kings,’”


quoted Anne.

“But if you _did_ want to catch a man how would you go about it? I want
to know,” persisted Davy, for whom the subject evidently possessed a
certain fascination.

“You’d better ask Mrs. Boulter,” said Anne thoughtlessly. “I think it’s
likely she knows more about the process than I do.”

“I will, the next time I see her,” said Davy gravely.

“Davy! If you do!” cried Anne, realizing her mistake.

“But you just told me to,” protested Davy aggrieved.

“It’s time you went to bed,” decreed Anne, by way of getting out of the
scrape.

After Davy had gone to bed Anne wandered down to Victoria Island and
sat there alone, curtained with fine-spun, moonlit gloom, while the
water laughed around her in a duet of brook and wind. Anne had always
loved that brook. Many a dream had she spun over its sparkling water in
days gone by. She forgot lovelorn youths, and the cayenne speeches of
malicious neighbors, and all the problems of her girlish existence. In
imagination she sailed over storied seas that wash the distant shining
shores of “faery lands forlorn,” where lost Atlantis and Elysium lie,
with the evening star for pilot, to the land of Heart’s Desire. And she
was richer in those dreams than in realities; for things seen pass
away, but the things that are unseen are eternal.




Chapter II
Garlands of Autumn


The following week sped swiftly, crowded with innumerable “last
things,” as Anne called them. Good-bye calls had to be made and
received, being pleasant or otherwise, according to whether callers and
called-upon were heartily in sympathy with Anne’s hopes, or thought she
was too much puffed-up over going to college and that it was their duty
to “take her down a peg or two.”

The A.V.I.S. gave a farewell party in honor of Anne and Gilbert one
evening at the home of Josie Pye, choosing that place, partly because
Mr. Pye’s house was large and convenient, partly because it was
strongly suspected that the Pye girls would have nothing to do with the
affair if their offer of the house for the party was not accepted. It
was a very pleasant little time, for the Pye girls were gracious, and
said and did nothing to mar the harmony of the occasion—which was not
according to their wont. Josie was unusually amiable—so much so that
she even remarked condescendingly to Anne,

“Your new dress is rather becoming to you, Anne. Really, you look
_almost pretty_ in it.”

“How kind of you to say so,” responded Anne, with dancing eyes. Her
sense of humor was developing, and the speeches that would have hurt
her at fourteen were becoming merely food for amusement now. Josie
suspected that Anne was laughing at her behind those wicked eyes; but
she contented herself with whispering to Gertie, as they went
downstairs, that Anne Shirley would put on more airs than ever now that
she was going to college—you’d see!

All the “old crowd” was there, full of mirth and zest and youthful
lightheartedness. Diana Barry, rosy and dimpled, shadowed by the
faithful Fred; Jane Andrews, neat and sensible and plain; Ruby Gillis,
looking her handsomest and brightest in a cream silk blouse, with red
geraniums in her golden hair; Gilbert Blythe and Charlie Sloane, both
trying to keep as near the elusive Anne as possible; Carrie Sloane,
looking pale and melancholy because, so it was reported, her father
would not allow Oliver Kimball to come near the place; Moody Spurgeon
MacPherson, whose round face and objectionable ears were as round and
objectionable as ever; and Billy Andrews, who sat in a corner all the
evening, chuckled when any one spoke to him, and watched Anne Shirley
with a grin of pleasure on his broad, freckled countenance.

Anne had known beforehand of the party, but she had not known that she
and Gilbert were, as the founders of the Society, to be presented with
a very complimentary “address” and “tokens of respect”—in her case a
volume of Shakespeare’s plays, in Gilbert’s a fountain pen. She was so
taken by surprise and pleased by the nice things said in the address,
read in Moody Spurgeon’s most solemn and ministerial tones, that the
tears quite drowned the sparkle of her big gray eyes. She had worked
hard and faithfully for the A.V.I.S., and it warmed the cockles of her
heart that the members appreciated her efforts so sincerely. And they
were all so nice and friendly and jolly—even the Pye girls had their
merits; at that moment Anne loved all the world.

She enjoyed the evening tremendously, but the end of it rather spoiled
all. Gilbert again made the mistake of saying something sentimental to
her as they ate their supper on the moonlit verandah; and Anne, to
punish him, was gracious to Charlie Sloane and allowed the latter to
walk home with her. She found, however, that revenge hurts nobody quite
so much as the one who tries to inflict it. Gilbert walked airily off
with Ruby Gillis, and Anne could hear them laughing and talking gaily
as they loitered along in the still, crisp autumn air. They were
evidently having the best of good times, while she was horribly bored
by Charlie Sloane, who talked unbrokenly on, and never, even by
accident, said one thing that was worth listening to. Anne gave an
occasional absent “yes” or “no,” and thought how beautiful Ruby had
looked that night, how very goggly Charlie’s eyes were in the
moonlight—worse even than by daylight—and that the world, somehow,
wasn’t quite such a nice place as she had believed it to be earlier in
the evening.

“I’m just tired out—that is what is the matter with me,” she said, when
she thankfully found herself alone in her own room. And she honestly
believed it was. But a certain little gush of joy, as from some secret,
unknown spring, bubbled up in her heart the next evening, when she saw
Gilbert striding down through the Haunted Wood and crossing the old log
bridge with that firm, quick step of his. So Gilbert was not going to
spend this last evening with Ruby Gillis after all!

“You look tired, Anne,” he said.

“I am tired, and, worse than that, I’m disgruntled. I’m tired because
I’ve been packing my trunk and sewing all day. But I’m disgruntled
because six women have been here to say good-bye to me, and every one
of the six managed to say something that seemed to take the color right
out of life and leave it as gray and dismal and cheerless as a November
morning.”

“Spiteful old cats!” was Gilbert’s elegant comment.

“Oh, no, they weren’t,” said Anne seriously. “That is just the trouble.
If they had been spiteful cats I wouldn’t have minded them. But they
are all nice, kind, motherly souls, who like me and whom I like, and
that is why what they said, or hinted, had such undue weight with me.
They let me see they thought I was crazy going to Redmond and trying to
take a B.A., and ever since I’ve been wondering if I am. Mrs. Peter
Sloane sighed and said she hoped my strength would hold out till I got
through; and at once I saw myself a hopeless victim of nervous
prostration at the end of my third year; Mrs. Eben Wright said it must
cost an awful lot to put in four years at Redmond; and I felt all over
me that it was unpardonable of me to squander Marilla’s money and my
own on such a folly. Mrs. Jasper Bell said she hoped I wouldn’t let
college spoil me, as it did some people; and I felt in my bones that
the end of my four Redmond years would see me a most insufferable
creature, thinking I knew it all, and looking down on everything and
everybody in Avonlea; Mrs. Elisha Wright said she understood that
Redmond girls, especially those who belonged to Kingsport, were
‘dreadful dressy and stuck-up,’ and she guessed I wouldn’t feel much at
home among them; and I saw myself, a snubbed, dowdy, humiliated country
girl, shuffling through Redmond’s classic halls in coppertoned boots.”

Anne ended with a laugh and a sigh commingled. With her sensitive
nature all disapproval had weight, even the disapproval of those for
whose opinions she had scant respect. For the time being life was
savorless, and ambition had gone out like a snuffed candle.

“You surely don’t care for what they said,” protested Gilbert. “You
know exactly how narrow their outlook on life is, excellent creatures
though they are. To do anything _they_ have never done is anathema
maranatha. You are the first Avonlea girl who has ever gone to college;
and you know that all pioneers are considered to be afflicted with
moonstruck madness.”

“Oh, I know. But _feeling_ is so different from _knowing_. My common
sense tells me all you can say, but there are times when common sense
has no power over me. Common nonsense takes possession of my soul.
Really, after Mrs. Elisha went away I hardly had the heart to finish
packing.”

“You’re just tired, Anne. Come, forget it all and take a walk with me—a
ramble back through the woods beyond the marsh. There should be
something there I want to show you.”

“Should be! Don’t you know if it is there?”

“No. I only know it should be, from something I saw there in spring.
Come on. We’ll pretend we are two children again and we’ll go the way
of the wind.”

They started gaily off. Anne, remembering the unpleasantness of the
preceding evening, was very nice to Gilbert; and Gilbert, who was
learning wisdom, took care to be nothing save the schoolboy comrade
again. Mrs. Lynde and Marilla watched them from the kitchen window.

“That’ll be a match some day,” Mrs. Lynde said approvingly.

Marilla winced slightly. In her heart she hoped it would, but it went
against her grain to hear the matter spoken of in Mrs. Lynde’s gossipy
matter-of-fact way.

“They’re only children yet,” she said shortly.

Mrs. Lynde laughed good-naturedly.

“Anne is eighteen; I was married when I was that age. We old folks,
Marilla, are too much given to thinking children never grow up, that’s
what. Anne is a young woman and Gilbert’s a man, and he worships the
ground she walks on, as any one can see. He’s a fine fellow, and Anne
can’t do better. I hope she won’t get any romantic nonsense into her
head at Redmond. I don’t approve of them coeducational places and never
did, that’s what. I don’t believe,” concluded Mrs. Lynde solemnly,
“that the students at such colleges ever do much else than flirt.”

“They must study a little,” said Marilla, with a smile.

“Precious little,” sniffed Mrs. Rachel. “However, I think Anne will.
She never was flirtatious. But she doesn’t appreciate Gilbert at his
full value, that’s what. Oh, I know girls! Charlie Sloane is wild about
her, too, but I’d never advise her to marry a Sloane. The Sloanes are
good, honest, respectable people, of course. But when all’s said and
done, they’re _Sloanes_.”

Marilla nodded. To an outsider, the statement that Sloanes were Sloanes
might not be very illuminating, but she understood. Every village has
such a family; good, honest, respectable people they may be, but
_Sloanes_ they are and must ever remain, though they speak with the
tongues of men and angels.

Gilbert and Anne, happily unconscious that their future was thus being
settled by Mrs. Rachel, were sauntering through the shadows of the
Haunted Wood. Beyond, the harvest hills were basking in an amber sunset
radiance, under a pale, aerial sky of rose and blue. The distant spruce
groves were burnished bronze, and their long shadows barred the upland
meadows. But around them a little wind sang among the fir tassels, and
in it there was the note of autumn.

“This wood really is haunted now—by old memories,” said Anne, stooping
to gather a spray of ferns, bleached to waxen whiteness by frost. “It
seems to me that the little girls Diana and I used to be play here
still, and sit by the Dryad’s Bubble in the twilights, trysting with
the ghosts. Do you know, I can never go up this path in the dusk
without feeling a bit of the old fright and shiver? There was one
especially horrifying phantom which we created—the ghost of the
murdered child that crept up behind you and laid cold fingers on yours.
I confess that, to this day, I cannot help fancying its little, furtive
footsteps behind me when I come here after nightfall. I’m not afraid of
the White Lady or the headless man or the skeletons, but I wish I had
never imagined that baby’s ghost into existence. How angry Marilla and
Mrs. Barry were over that affair,” concluded Anne, with reminiscent
laughter.

The woods around the head of the marsh were full of purple vistas,
threaded with gossamers. Past a dour plantation of gnarled spruces and
a maple-fringed, sun-warm valley they found the “something” Gilbert was
looking for.

“Ah, here it is,” he said with satisfaction.

“An apple tree—and away back here!” exclaimed Anne delightedly.

“Yes, a veritable apple-bearing apple tree, too, here in the very midst
of pines and beeches, a mile away from any orchard. I was here one day
last spring and found it, all white with blossom. So I resolved I’d
come again in the fall and see if it had been apples. See, it’s loaded.
They look good, too—tawny as russets but with a dusky red cheek. Most
wild seedlings are green and uninviting.”

“I suppose it sprang years ago from some chance-sown seed,” said Anne
dreamily. “And how it has grown and flourished and held its own here
all alone among aliens, the brave determined thing!”

“Here’s a fallen tree with a cushion of moss. Sit down, Anne—it will
serve for a woodland throne. I’ll climb for some apples. They all grow
high—the tree had to reach up to the sunlight.”

The apples proved to be delicious. Under the tawny skin was a white,
white flesh, faintly veined with red; and, besides their own proper
apple taste, they had a certain wild, delightful tang no orchard-grown
apple ever possessed.

“The fatal apple of Eden couldn’t have had a rarer flavor,” commented
Anne. “But it’s time we were going home. See, it was twilight three
minutes ago and now it’s moonlight. What a pity we couldn’t have caught
the moment of transformation. But such moments never are caught, I
suppose.”

“Let’s go back around the marsh and home by way of Lover’s Lane. Do you
feel as disgruntled now as when you started out, Anne?”

“Not I. Those apples have been as manna to a hungry soul. I feel that I
shall love Redmond and have a splendid four years there.”

“And after those four years—what?”

“Oh, there’s another bend in the road at their end,” answered Anne
lightly. “I’ve no idea what may be around it—I don’t want to have. It’s
nicer not to know.”

Lover’s Lane was a dear place that night, still and mysteriously dim in
the pale radiance of the moonlight. They loitered through it in a
pleasant chummy silence, neither caring to talk.

“If Gilbert were always as he has been this evening how nice and simple
everything would be,” reflected Anne.

Gilbert was looking at Anne, as she walked along. In her light dress,
with her slender delicacy, she made him think of a white iris.

“I wonder if I can ever make her care for me,” he thought, with a pang
of self-distrust.




Chapter III
Greeting and Farewell


Charlie Sloane, Gilbert Blythe and Anne Shirley left Avonlea the
following Monday morning. Anne had hoped for a fine day. Diana was to
drive her to the station and they wanted this, their last drive
together for some time, to be a pleasant one. But when Anne went to bed
Sunday night the east wind was moaning around Green Gables with an
ominous prophecy which was fulfilled in the morning. Anne awoke to find
raindrops pattering against her window and shadowing the pond’s gray
surface with widening rings; hills and sea were hidden in mist, and the
whole world seemed dim and dreary. Anne dressed in the cheerless gray
dawn, for an early start was necessary to catch the boat train; she
struggled against the tears that _would_ well up in her eyes in spite
of herself. She was leaving the home that was so dear to her, and
something told her that she was leaving it forever, save as a holiday
refuge. Things would never be the same again; coming back for vacations
would not be living there. And oh, how dear and beloved everything
was—that little white porch room, sacred to the dreams of girlhood, the
old Snow Queen at the window, the brook in the hollow, the Dryad’s
Bubble, the Haunted Woods, and Lover’s Lane—all the thousand and one
dear spots where memories of the old years bided. Could she ever be
really happy anywhere else?

Breakfast at Green Gables that morning was a rather doleful meal. Davy,
for the first time in his life probably, could not eat, but blubbered
shamelessly over his porridge. Nobody else seemed to have much
appetite, save Dora, who tucked away her rations comfortably. Dora,
like the immortal and most prudent Charlotte, who “went on cutting
bread and butter” when her frenzied lover’s body had been carried past
on a shutter, was one of those fortunate creatures who are seldom
disturbed by anything. Even at eight it took a great deal to ruffle
Dora’s placidity. She was sorry Anne was going away, of course, but was
that any reason why she should fail to appreciate a poached egg on
toast? Not at all. And, seeing that Davy could not eat his, Dora ate it
for him.

Promptly on time Diana appeared with horse and buggy, her rosy face
glowing above her raincoat. The good-byes had to be said then somehow.
Mrs. Lynde came in from her quarters to give Anne a hearty embrace and
warn her to be careful of her health, whatever she did. Marilla,
brusque and tearless, pecked Anne’s cheek and said she supposed they’d
hear from her when she got settled. A casual observer might have
concluded that Anne’s going mattered very little to her—unless said
observer had happened to get a good look in her eyes. Dora kissed Anne
primly and squeezed out two decorous little tears; but Davy, who had
been crying on the back porch step ever since they rose from the table,
refused to say good-bye at all. When he saw Anne coming towards him he
sprang to his feet, bolted up the back stairs, and hid in a clothes
closet, out of which he would not come. His muffled howls were the last
sounds Anne heard as she left Green Gables.

It rained heavily all the way to Bright River, to which station they
had to go, since the branch line train from Carmody did not connect
with the boat train. Charlie and Gilbert were on the station platform
when they reached it, and the train was whistling. Anne had just time
to get her ticket and trunk check, say a hurried farewell to Diana, and
hasten on board. She wished she were going back with Diana to Avonlea;
she knew she was going to die of homesickness. And oh, if only that
dismal rain would stop pouring down as if the whole world were weeping
over summer vanished and joys departed! Even Gilbert’s presence brought
her no comfort, for Charlie Sloane was there, too, and Sloanishness
could be tolerated only in fine weather. It was absolutely insufferable
in rain.

But when the boat steamed out of Charlottetown harbor things took a
turn for the better. The rain ceased and the sun began to burst out
goldenly now and again between the rents in the clouds, burnishing the
gray seas with copper-hued radiance, and lighting up the mists that
curtained the Island’s red shores with gleams of gold foretokening a
fine day after all. Besides, Charlie Sloane promptly became so seasick
that he had to go below, and Anne and Gilbert were left alone on deck.

“I am very glad that all the Sloanes get seasick as soon as they go on
water,” thought Anne mercilessly. “I am sure I couldn’t take my
farewell look at the ‘ould sod’ with Charlie standing there pretending
to look sentimentally at it, too.”

“Well, we’re off,” remarked Gilbert unsentimentally.

“Yes, I feel like Byron’s ‘Childe Harold’—only it isn’t really my
‘native shore’ that I’m watching,” said Anne, winking her gray eyes
vigorously. “Nova Scotia is that, I suppose. But one’s native shore is
the land one loves the best, and that’s good old P.E.I. for me. I can’t
believe I didn’t always live here. Those eleven years before I came
seem like a bad dream. It’s seven years since I crossed on this
boat—the evening Mrs. Spencer brought me over from Hopetown. I can see
myself, in that dreadful old wincey dress and faded sailor hat,
exploring decks and cabins with enraptured curiosity. It was a fine
evening; and how those red Island shores did gleam in the sunshine. Now
I’m crossing the strait again. Oh, Gilbert, I do hope I’ll like Redmond
and Kingsport, but I’m sure I won’t!”

“Where’s all your philosophy gone, Anne?”

“It’s all submerged under a great, swamping wave of loneliness and
homesickness. I’ve longed for three years to go to Redmond—and now I’m
going—and I wish I weren’t! Never mind! I shall be cheerful and
philosophical again after I have just one good cry. I _must_ have that,
‘as a went’—and I’ll have to wait until I get into my boardinghouse bed
tonight, wherever it may be, before I can have it. Then Anne will be
herself again. I wonder if Davy has come out of the closet yet.”

It was nine that night when their train reached Kingsport, and they
found themselves in the blue-white glare of the crowded station. Anne
felt horribly bewildered, but a moment later she was seized by
Priscilla Grant, who had come to Kingsport on Saturday.

“Here you are, beloved! And I suppose you’re as tired as I was when I
got here Saturday night.”

“Tired! Priscilla, don’t talk of it. I’m tired, and green, and
provincial, and only about ten years old. For pity’s sake take your
poor, broken-down chum to some place where she can hear herself think.”

“I’ll take you right up to our boardinghouse. I’ve a cab ready
outside.”

“It’s such a blessing you’re here, Prissy. If you weren’t I think I
should just sit down on my suitcase, here and now, and weep bitter
tears. What a comfort one familiar face is in a howling wilderness of
strangers!”

“Is that Gilbert Blythe over there, Anne? How he has grown up this past
year! He was only a schoolboy when I taught in Carmody. And of course
that’s Charlie Sloane. _He_ hasn’t changed—couldn’t! He looked just
like that when he was born, and he’ll look like that when he’s eighty.
This way, dear. We’ll be home in twenty minutes.”

“Home!” groaned Anne. “You mean we’ll be in some horrible
boardinghouse, in a still more horrible hall bedroom, looking out on a
dingy back yard.”

“It isn’t a horrible boardinghouse, Anne-girl. Here’s our cab. Hop
in—the driver will get your trunk. Oh, yes, the boardinghouse—it’s
really a very nice place of its kind, as you’ll admit tomorrow morning
when a good night’s sleep has turned your blues rosy pink. It’s a big,
old-fashioned, gray stone house on St. John Street, just a nice little
constitutional from Redmond. It used to be the ‘residence’ of great
folk, but fashion has deserted St. John Street and its houses only
dream now of better days. They’re so big that people living in them
have to take boarders just to fill up. At least, that is the reason our
landladies are very anxious to impress on us. They’re delicious,
Anne—our landladies, I mean.”

“How many are there?”

“Two. Miss Hannah Harvey and Miss Ada Harvey. They were born twins
about fifty years ago.”

“I can’t get away from twins, it seems,” smiled Anne. “Wherever I go
they confront me.”

“Oh, they’re not twins now, dear. After they reached the age of thirty
they never were twins again. Miss Hannah has grown old, not too
gracefully, and Miss Ada has stayed thirty, less gracefully still. I
don’t know whether Miss Hannah can smile or not; I’ve never caught her
at it so far, but Miss Ada smiles all the time and that’s worse.
However, they’re nice, kind souls, and they take two boarders every
year because Miss Hannah’s economical soul cannot bear to ‘waste room
space’—not because they need to or have to, as Miss Ada has told me
seven times since Saturday night. As for our rooms, I admit they are
hall bedrooms, and mine does look out on the back yard. Your room is a
front one and looks out on Old St. John’s graveyard, which is just
across the street.”

“That sounds gruesome,” shivered Anne. “I think I’d rather have the
back yard view.”

“Oh, no, you wouldn’t. Wait and see. Old St. John’s is a darling place.
It’s been a graveyard so long that it’s ceased to be one and has become
one of the sights of Kingsport. I was all through it yesterday for a
pleasure exertion. There’s a big stone wall and a row of enormous trees
all around it, and rows of trees all through it, and the queerest old
tombstones, with the queerest and quaintest inscriptions. You’ll go
there to study, Anne, see if you don’t. Of course, nobody is ever
buried there now. But a few years ago they put up a beautiful monument
to the memory of Nova Scotian soldiers who fell in the Crimean War. It
is just opposite the entrance gates and there’s ‘scope for imagination’
in it, as you used to say. Here’s your trunk at last—and the boys
coming to say good night. Must I really shake hands with Charlie
Sloane, Anne? His hands are always so cold and fishy-feeling. We must
ask them to call occasionally. Miss Hannah gravely told me we could
have ‘young gentlemen callers’ two evenings in the week, if they went
away at a reasonable hour; and Miss Ada asked me, smiling, please to be
sure they didn’t sit on her beautiful cushions. I promised to see to
it; but goodness knows where else they _can_ sit, unless they sit on
the floor, for there are cushions on _everything_. Miss Ada even has an
elaborate Battenburg one on top of the piano.”

Anne was laughing by this time. Priscilla’s gay chatter had the
intended effect of cheering her up; homesickness vanished for the time
being, and did not even return in full force when she finally found
herself alone in her little bedroom. She went to her window and looked
out. The street below was dim and quiet. Across it the moon was shining
above the trees in Old St. John’s, just behind the great dark head of
the lion on the monument. Anne wondered if it could have been only that
morning that she had left Green Gables. She had the sense of a long
passage of time which one day of change and travel gives.

“I suppose that very moon is looking down on Green Gables now,” she
mused. “But I won’t think about it—that way homesickness lies. I’m not
even going to have my good cry. I’ll put that off to a more convenient
season, and just now I’ll go calmly and sensibly to bed and to sleep.”




Chapter IV
April’s Lady


Kingsport is a quaint old town, hearking back to early Colonial days,
and wrapped in its ancient atmosphere, as some fine old dame in
garments fashioned like those of her youth. Here and there it sprouts
out into modernity, but at heart it is still unspoiled; it is full of
curious relics, and haloed by the romance of many legends of the past.
Once it was a mere frontier station on the fringe of the wilderness,
and those were the days when Indians kept life from being monotonous to
the settlers. Then it grew to be a bone of contention between the
British and the French, being occupied now by the one and now by the
other, emerging from each occupation with some fresh scar of battling
nations branded on it.

It has in its park a martello tower, autographed all over by tourists,
a dismantled old French fort on the hills beyond the town, and several
antiquated cannon in its public squares. It has other historic spots
also, which may be hunted out by the curious, and none is more quaint
and delightful than Old St. John’s Cemetery at the very core of the
town, with streets of quiet, old-time houses on two sides, and busy,
bustling, modern thoroughfares on the others. Every citizen of
Kingsport feels a thrill of possessive pride in Old St. John’s, for, if
he be of any pretensions at all, he has an ancestor buried there, with
a queer, crooked slab at his head, or else sprawling protectively over
the grave, on which all the main facts of his history are recorded. For
the most part no great art or skill was lavished on those old
tombstones. The larger number are of roughly chiselled brown or gray
native stone, and only in a few cases is there any attempt at
ornamentation. Some are adorned with skull and cross-bones, and this
grizzly decoration is frequently coupled with a cherub’s head. Many are
prostrate and in ruins. Into almost all Time’s tooth has been gnawing,
until some inscriptions have been completely effaced, and others can
only be deciphered with difficulty. The graveyard is very full and very
bowery, for it is surrounded and intersected by rows of elms and
willows, beneath whose shade the sleepers must lie very dreamlessly,
forever crooned to by the winds and leaves over them, and quite
undisturbed by the clamor of traffic just beyond.

Anne took the first of many rambles in Old St. John’s the next
afternoon. She and Priscilla had gone to Redmond in the forenoon and
registered as students, after which there was nothing more to do that
day. The girls gladly made their escape, for it was not exhilarating to
be surrounded by crowds of strangers, most of whom had a rather alien
appearance, as if not quite sure where they belonged.

The “freshettes” stood about in detached groups of two or three,
looking askance at each other; the “freshies,” wiser in their day and
generation, had banded themselves together on the big staircase of the
entrance hall, where they were shouting out glees with all the vigor of
youthful lungs, as a species of defiance to their traditional enemies,
the Sophomores, a few of whom were prowling loftily about, looking
properly disdainful of the “unlicked cubs” on the stairs. Gilbert and
Charlie were nowhere to be seen.

“Little did I think the day would ever come when I’d be glad of the
sight of a Sloane,” said Priscilla, as they crossed the campus, “but
I’d welcome Charlie’s goggle eyes almost ecstatically. At least, they’d
be familiar eyes.”

“Oh,” sighed Anne. “I can’t describe how I felt when I was standing
there, waiting my turn to be registered—as insignificant as the
teeniest drop in a most enormous bucket. It’s bad enough to feel
insignificant, but it’s unbearable to have it grained into your soul
that you will never, can never, be anything but insignificant, and that
is how I did feel—as if I were invisible to the naked eye and some of
those Sophs might step on me. I knew I would go down to my grave
unwept, unhonored and unsung.”

“Wait till next year,” comforted Priscilla. “Then we’ll be able to look
as bored and sophisticated as any Sophomore of them all. No doubt it is
rather dreadful to feel insignificant; but I think it’s better than to
feel as big and awkward as I did—as if I were sprawled all over
Redmond. That’s how I felt—I suppose because I was a good two inches
taller than any one else in the crowd. I wasn’t afraid a Soph might
walk over me; I was afraid they’d take me for an elephant, or an
overgrown sample of a potato-fed Islander.”

“I suppose the trouble is we can’t forgive big Redmond for not being
little Queen’s,” said Anne, gathering about her the shreds of her old
cheerful philosophy to cover her nakedness of spirit. “When we left
Queen’s we knew everybody and had a place of our own. I suppose we have
been unconsciously expecting to take life up at Redmond just where we
left off at Queen’s, and now we feel as if the ground had slipped from
under our feet. I’m thankful that neither Mrs. Lynde nor Mrs. Elisha
Wright know, or ever will know, my state of mind at present. They would
exult in saying ‘I told you so,’ and be convinced it was the beginning
of the end. Whereas it is just the end of the beginning.”

“Exactly. That sounds more Anneish. In a little while we’ll be
acclimated and acquainted, and all will be well. Anne, did you notice
the girl who stood alone just outside the door of the coeds’ dressing
room all the morning—the pretty one with the brown eyes and crooked
mouth?”

“Yes, I did. I noticed her particularly because she seemed the only
creature there who _looked_ as lonely and friendless as I _felt_. I had
_you_, but she had no one.”

“I think she felt pretty all-by-herselfish, too. Several times I saw
her make a motion as if to cross over to us, but she never did it—too
shy, I suppose. I wished she would come. If I hadn’t felt so much like
the aforesaid elephant I’d have gone to her. But I couldn’t lumber
across that big hall with all those boys howling on the stairs. She was
the prettiest freshette I saw today, but probably favor is deceitful
and even beauty is vain on your first day at Redmond,” concluded
Priscilla with a laugh.

“I’m going across to Old St. John’s after lunch,” said Anne. “I don’t
know that a graveyard is a very good place to go to get cheered up, but
it seems the only get-at-able place where there are trees, and trees I
must have. I’ll sit on one of those old slabs and shut my eyes and
imagine I’m in the Avonlea woods.”

Anne did not do that, however, for she found enough of interest in Old
St. John’s to keep her eyes wide open. They went in by the entrance
gates, past the simple, massive, stone arch surmounted by the great
lion of England.

“‘And on Inkerman yet the wild bramble is gory,
And those bleak heights henceforth shall be famous in story,’”


quoted Anne, looking at it with a thrill. They found themselves in a
dim, cool, green place where winds were fond of purring. Up and down
the long grassy aisles they wandered, reading the quaint, voluminous
epitaphs, carved in an age that had more leisure than our own.

“‘Here lieth the body of Albert Crawford, Esq.,’” read Anne from a
worn, gray slab, “‘for many years Keeper of His Majesty’s Ordnance at
Kingsport. He served in the army till the peace of 1763, when he
retired from bad health. He was a brave officer, the best of husbands,
the best of fathers, the best of friends. He died October 29th, 1792,
aged 84 years.’ There’s an epitaph for you, Prissy. There is certainly
some ‘scope for imagination’ in it. How full such a life must have been
of adventure! And as for his personal qualities, I’m sure human eulogy
couldn’t go further. I wonder if they told him he was all those best
things while he was alive.”

“Here’s another,” said Priscilla. “Listen—

‘To the memory of Alexander Ross, who died on the 22nd of September,
1840, aged 43 years. This is raised as a tribute of affection by one
whom he served so faithfully for 27 years that he was regarded as a
friend, deserving the fullest confidence and attachment.’”

“A very good epitaph,” commented Anne thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t wish a
better. We are all servants of some sort, and if the fact that we are
faithful can be truthfully inscribed on our tombstones nothing more
need be added. Here’s a sorrowful little gray stone, Prissy—‘to the
memory of a favorite child.’ And here is another ‘erected to the memory
of one who is buried elsewhere.’ I wonder where that unknown grave is.
Really, Pris, the graveyards of today will never be as interesting as
this. You were right—I shall come here often. I love it already. I see
we’re not alone here—there’s a girl down at the end of this avenue.”

“Yes, and I believe it’s the very girl we saw at Redmond this morning.
I’ve been watching her for five minutes. She has started to come up the
avenue exactly half a dozen times, and half a dozen times has she
turned and gone back. Either she’s dreadfully shy or she has got
something on her conscience. Let’s go and meet her. It’s easier to get
acquainted in a graveyard than at Redmond, I believe.”

They walked down the long grassy arcade towards the stranger, who was
sitting on a gray slab under an enormous willow. She was certainly very
pretty, with a vivid, irregular, bewitching type of prettiness. There
was a gloss as of brown nuts on her satin-smooth hair and a soft, ripe
glow on her round cheeks. Her eyes were big and brown and velvety,
under oddly-pointed black brows, and her crooked mouth was rose-red.
She wore a smart brown suit, with two very modish little shoes peeping
from beneath it; and her hat of dull pink straw, wreathed with
golden-brown poppies, had the indefinable, unmistakable air which
pertains to the “creation” of an artist in millinery. Priscilla had a
sudden stinging consciousness that her own hat had been trimmed by her
village store milliner, and Anne wondered uncomfortably if the blouse
she had made herself, and which Mrs. Lynde had fitted, looked _very_
countrified and home-made besides the stranger’s smart attire. For a
moment both girls felt like turning back.

But they had already stopped and turned towards the gray slab. It was
too late to retreat, for the brown-eyed girl had evidently concluded
that they were coming to speak to her. Instantly she sprang up and came
forward with outstretched hand and a gay, friendly smile in which there
seemed not a shadow of either shyness or burdened conscience.

“Oh, I want to know who you two girls are,” she exclaimed eagerly.
“I’ve been _dying_ to know. I saw you at Redmond this morning. Say,
wasn’t it _awful_ there? For the time I wished I had stayed home and
got married.”

Anne and Priscilla both broke into unconstrained laughter at this
unexpected conclusion. The brown-eyed girl laughed, too.

“I really did. I _could_ have, you know. Come, let’s all sit down on
this gravestone and get acquainted. It won’t be hard. I know we’re
going to adore each other—I knew it as soon as I saw you at Redmond
this morning. I wanted so much to go right over and hug you both.”

“Why didn’t you?” asked Priscilla.

“Because I simply couldn’t make up my mind to do it. I never can make
up my mind about anything myself—I’m always afflicted with indecision.
Just as soon as I decide to do something I feel in my bones that
another course would be the correct one. It’s a dreadful misfortune,
but I was born that way, and there is no use in blaming me for it, as
some people do. So I couldn’t make up my mind to go and speak to you,
much as I wanted to.”

“We thought you were too shy,” said Anne.

“No, no, dear. Shyness isn’t among the many failings—or virtues—of
Philippa Gordon—Phil for short. Do call me Phil right off. Now, what
are your handles?”

“She’s Priscilla Grant,” said Anne, pointing.

“And _she’s_ Anne Shirley,” said Priscilla, pointing in turn.

“And we’re from the Island,” said both together.

“I hail from Bolingbroke, Nova Scotia,” said Philippa.

“Bolingbroke!” exclaimed Anne. “Why, that is where I was born.”

“Do you really mean it? Why, that makes you a Bluenose after all.”

“No, it doesn’t,” retorted Anne. “Wasn’t it Dan O’Connell who said that
if a man was born in a stable it didn’t make him a horse? I’m Island to
the core.”

“Well, I’m glad you were born in Bolingbroke anyway. It makes us kind
of neighbors, doesn’t it? And I like that, because when I tell you
secrets it won’t be as if I were telling them to a stranger. I have to
tell them. I can’t keep secrets—it’s no use to try. That’s my worst
failing—that, and indecision, as aforesaid. Would you believe it?—it
took me half an hour to decide which hat to wear when I was coming
here—_here_, to a graveyard! At first I inclined to my brown one with
the feather; but as soon as I put it on I thought this pink one with
the floppy brim would be more becoming. When I got _it_ pinned in place
I liked the brown one better. At last I put them close together on the
bed, shut my eyes, and jabbed with a hat pin. The pin speared the pink
one, so I put it on. It is becoming, isn’t it? Tell me, what do you
think of my looks?”

At this naive demand, made in a perfectly serious tone, Priscilla
laughed again. But Anne said, impulsively squeezing Philippa’s hand,

“We thought this morning that you were the prettiest girl we saw at
Redmond.”

Philippa’s crooked mouth flashed into a bewitching, crooked smile over
very white little teeth.

“I thought that myself,” was her next astounding statement, “but I
wanted some one else’s opinion to bolster mine up. I can’t decide even
on my own appearance. Just as soon as I’ve decided that I’m pretty I
begin to feel miserably that I’m not. Besides, have a horrible old
great-aunt who is always saying to me, with a mournful sigh, ‘You were
such a pretty baby. It’s strange how children change when they grow
up.’ I adore aunts, but I detest great-aunts. Please tell me quite
often that I am pretty, if you don’t mind. I feel so much more
comfortable when I can believe I’m pretty. And I’ll be just as obliging
to you if you want me to—I _can_ be, with a clear conscience.”

“Thanks,” laughed Anne, “but Priscilla and I are so firmly convinced of
our own good looks that we don’t need any assurance about them, so you
needn’t trouble.”

“Oh, you’re laughing at me. I know you think I’m abominably vain, but
I’m not. There really isn’t one spark of vanity in me. And I’m never a
bit grudging about paying compliments to other girls when they deserve
them. I’m so glad I know you folks. I came up on Saturday and I’ve
nearly died of homesickness ever since. It’s a horrible feeling, isn’t
it? In Bolingbroke I’m an important personage, and in Kingsport I’m
just nobody! There were times when I could feel my soul turning a
delicate blue. Where do you hang out?”

“Thirty-eight St. John’s Street.”

“Better and better. Why, I’m just around the corner on Wallace Street.
I don’t like my boardinghouse, though. It’s bleak and lonesome, and my
room looks out on such an unholy back yard. It’s the ugliest place in
the world. As for cats—well, surely _all_ the Kingsport cats can’t
congregate there at night, but half of them must. I adore cats on
hearth rugs, snoozing before nice, friendly fires, but cats in back
yards at midnight are totally different animals. The first night I was
here I cried all night, and so did the cats. You should have seen my
nose in the morning. How I wished I had never left home!”

“I don’t know how you managed to make up your mind to come to Redmond
at all, if you are really such an undecided person,” said amused
Priscilla.

“Bless your heart, honey, I didn’t. It was father who wanted me to come
here. His heart was set on it—why, I don’t know. It seems perfectly
ridiculous to think of me studying for a B.A. degree, doesn’t it? Not
but what I can do it, all right. I have heaps of brains.”

“Oh!” said Priscilla vaguely.

“Yes. But it’s such hard work to use them. And B.A.’s are such learned,
dignified, wise, solemn creatures—they must be. No, _I_ didn’t want to
come to Redmond. I did it just to oblige father. He _is_ such a duck.
Besides, I knew if I stayed home I’d have to get married. Mother wanted
that—wanted it decidedly. Mother has plenty of decision. But I really
hated the thought of being married for a few years yet. I want to have
heaps of fun before I settle down. And, ridiculous as the idea of my
being a B.A. is, the idea of my being an old married woman is still
more absurd, isn’t it? I’m only eighteen. No, I concluded I would
rather come to Redmond than be married. Besides, how could I ever have
made up my mind which man to marry?”

“Were there so many?” laughed Anne.

“Heaps. The boys like me awfully—they really do. But there were only
two that mattered. The rest were all too young and too poor. I must
marry a rich man, you know.”

“Why must you?”

“Honey, you couldn’t imagine _me_ being a poor man’s wife, could you? I
can’t do a single useful thing, and I am _very_ extravagant. Oh, no, my
husband must have heaps of money. So that narrowed them down to two.
But I couldn’t decide between two any easier than between two hundred.
I knew perfectly well that whichever one I chose I’d regret all my life
that I hadn’t married the other.”

“Didn’t you—love—either of them?” asked Anne, a little hesitatingly. It
was not easy for her to speak to a stranger of the great mystery and
transformation of life.

“Goodness, no. _I_ couldn’t love anybody. It isn’t in me. Besides I
wouldn’t want to. Being in love makes you a perfect slave, _I_ think.
And it would give a man such power to hurt you. I’d be afraid. No, no,
Alec and Alonzo are two dear boys, and I like them both so much that I
really don’t know which I like the better. That is the trouble. Alec is
the best looking, of course, and I simply couldn’t marry a man who
wasn’t handsome. He is good-tempered too, and has lovely, curly, black
hair. He’s rather too perfect—I don’t believe I’d like a perfect
husband—somebody I could never find fault with.”

“Then why not marry Alonzo?” asked Priscilla gravely.

“Think of marrying a name like Alonzo!” said Phil dolefully. “I don’t
believe I could endure it. But he has a classic nose, and it _would_ be
a comfort to have a nose in the family that could be depended on. I
can’t depend on mine. So far, it takes after the Gordon pattern, but
I’m so afraid it will develop Byrne tendencies as I grow older. I
examine it every day anxiously to make sure it’s still Gordon. Mother
was a Byrne and has the Byrne nose in the Byrnest degree. Wait till you
see it. I adore nice noses. Your nose is awfully nice, Anne Shirley.
Alonzo’s nose nearly turned the balance in his favor. But _Alonzo!_ No,
I couldn’t decide. If I could have done as I did with the hats—stood
them both up together, shut my eyes, and jabbed with a hatpin—it would
have been quite easy.”

“What did Alec and Alonzo feel like when you came away?” queried
Priscilla.

“Oh, they still have hope. I told them they’d have to wait till I could
make up my mind. They’re quite willing to wait. They both worship me,
you know. Meanwhile, I intend to have a good time. I expect I shall
have heaps of beaux at Redmond. I can’t be happy unless I have, you
know. But don’t you think the freshmen are fearfully homely? I saw only
one really handsome fellow among them. He went away before you came. I
heard his chum call him Gilbert. His chum had eyes that stuck out _that
far_. But you’re not going yet, girls? Don’t go yet.”

“I think we must,” said Anne, rather coldly. “It’s getting late, and
I’ve some work to do.”

“But you’ll both come to see me, won’t you?” asked Philippa, getting up
and putting an arm around each. “And let me come to see you. I want to
be chummy with you. I’ve taken such a fancy to you both. And I haven’t
quite disgusted you with my frivolity, have I?”

“Not quite,” laughed Anne, responding to Phil’s squeeze, with a return
of cordiality.

“Because I’m not half so silly as I seem on the surface, you know. You
just accept Philippa Gordon, as the Lord made her, with all her faults,
and I believe you’ll come to like her. Isn’t this graveyard a sweet
place? I’d love to be buried here. Here’s a grave I didn’t see
before—this one in the iron railing—oh, girls, look, see—the stone says
it’s the grave of a middy who was killed in the fight between the
Shannon and the Chesapeake. Just fancy!”

Anne paused by the railing and looked at the worn stone, her pulses
thrilling with sudden excitement. The old graveyard, with its
over-arching trees and long aisles of shadows, faded from her sight.
Instead, she saw the Kingsport Harbor of nearly a century agone. Out of
the mist came slowly a great frigate, brilliant with “the meteor flag
of England.” Behind her was another, with a still, heroic form, wrapped
in his own starry flag, lying on the quarter deck—the gallant Lawrence.
Time’s finger had turned back his pages, and that was the Shannon
sailing triumphant up the bay with the Chesapeake as her prize.

“Come back, Anne Shirley—come back,” laughed Philippa, pulling her arm.
“You’re a hundred years away from us. Come back.”

Anne came back with a sigh; her eyes were shining softly.

“I’ve always loved that old story,” she said, “and although the English
won that victory, I think it was because of the brave, defeated
commander I love it. This grave seems to bring it so near and make it
so real. This poor little middy was only eighteen. He ‘died of
desperate wounds received in gallant action’—so reads his epitaph. It
is such as a soldier might wish for.”

Before she turned away, Anne unpinned the little cluster of purple
pansies she wore and dropped it softly on the grave of the boy who had
perished in the great sea-duel.

“Well, what do you think of our new friend?” asked Priscilla, when Phil
had left them.

“I like her. There is something very lovable about her, in spite of all
her nonsense. I believe, as she says herself, that she isn’t half as
silly as she sounds. She’s a dear, kissable baby—and I don’t know that
she’ll ever really grow up.”

“I like her, too,” said Priscilla, decidedly. “She talks as much about
boys as Ruby Gillis does. But it always enrages or sickens me to hear
Ruby, whereas I just wanted to laugh good-naturedly at Phil. Now, what
is the why of that?”

“There is a difference,” said Anne meditatively. “I think it’s because
Ruby is really so _conscious_ of boys. She plays at love and
love-making. Besides, you feel, when she is boasting of her beaux that
she is doing it to rub it well into you that you haven’t half so many.
Now, when Phil talks of her beaux it sounds as if she was just speaking
of chums. She really looks upon boys as good comrades, and she is
pleased when she has dozens of them tagging round, simply because she
likes to be popular and to be thought popular. Even Alex and
Alonzo—I’ll never be able to think of those two names separately after
this—are to her just two playfellows who want her to play with them all
their lives. I’m glad we met her, and I’m glad we went to Old St.
John’s. I believe I’ve put forth a tiny soul-root into Kingsport soil
this afternoon. I hope so. I hate to feel transplanted.”




Chapter V
Letters from Home


For the next three weeks Anne and Priscilla continued to feel as
strangers in a strange land. Then, suddenly, everything seemed to fall
into focus—Redmond, professors, classes, students, studies, social
doings. Life became homogeneous again, instead of being made up of
detached fragments. The Freshmen, instead of being a collection of
unrelated individuals, found themselves a class, with a class spirit, a
class yell, class interests, class antipathies and class ambitions.
They won the day in the annual “Arts Rush” against the Sophomores, and
thereby gained the respect of all the classes, and an enormous,
confidence-giving opinion of themselves. For three years the Sophomores
had won in the “rush”; that the victory of this year perched upon the
Freshmen’s banner was attributed to the strategic generalship of
Gilbert Blythe, who marshalled the campaign and originated certain new
tactics, which demoralized the Sophs and swept the Freshmen to triumph.
As a reward of merit he was elected president of the Freshman Class, a
position of honor and responsibility—from a Fresh point of view, at
least—coveted by many. He was also invited to join the
“Lambs”—Redmondese for Lamba Theta—a compliment rarely paid to a
Freshman. As a preparatory initiation ordeal he had to parade the
principal business streets of Kingsport for a whole day wearing a
sunbonnet and a voluminous kitchen apron of gaudily flowered calico.
This he did cheerfully, doffing his sunbonnet with courtly grace when
he met ladies of his acquaintance. Charlie Sloane, who had not been
asked to join the Lambs, told Anne he did not see how Blythe could do
it, and _he_, for his part, could never humiliate himself so.

“Fancy Charlie Sloane in a ‘caliker’ apron and a ‘sunbunnit,’” giggled
Priscilla. “He’d look exactly like his old Grandmother Sloane. Gilbert,
now, looked as much like a man in them as in his own proper
habiliments.”

Anne and Priscilla found themselves in the thick of the social life of
Redmond. That this came about so speedily was due in great measure to
Philippa Gordon. Philippa was the daughter of a rich and well-known
man, and belonged to an old and exclusive “Bluenose” family. This,
combined with her beauty and charm—a charm acknowledged by all who met
her—promptly opened the gates of all cliques, clubs and classes in
Redmond to her; and where she went Anne and Priscilla went, too. Phil
“adored” Anne and Priscilla, especially Anne. She was a loyal little
soul, crystal-free from any form of snobbishness. “Love me, love my
friends” seemed to be her unconscious motto. Without effort, she took
them with her into her ever widening circle of acquaintanceship, and
the two Avonlea girls found their social pathway at Redmond made very
easy and pleasant for them, to the envy and wonderment of the other
freshettes, who, lacking Philippa’s sponsorship, were doomed to remain
rather on the fringe of things during their first college year.

To Anne and Priscilla, with their more serious views of life, Phil
remained the amusing, lovable baby she had seemed on their first
meeting. Yet, as she said herself, she had “heaps” of brains. When or
where she found time to study was a mystery, for she seemed always in
demand for some kind of “fun,” and her home evenings were crowded with
callers. She had all the “beaux” that heart could desire, for
nine-tenths of the Freshmen and a big fraction of all the other classes
were rivals for her smiles. She was naively delighted over this, and
gleefully recounted each new conquest to Anne and Priscilla, with
comments that might have made the unlucky lover’s ears burn fiercely.

“Alec and Alonzo don’t seem to have any serious rival yet,” remarked
Anne, teasingly.

“Not one,” agreed Philippa. “I write them both every week and tell them
all about my young men here. I’m sure it must amuse them. But, of
course, the one I like best I can’t get. Gilbert Blythe won’t take any
notice of me, except to look at me as if I were a nice little kitten
he’d like to pat. Too well I know the reason. I owe you a grudge, Queen
Anne. I really ought to hate you and instead I love you madly, and I’m
miserable if I don’t see you every day. You’re different from any girl
I ever knew before. When you look at me in a certain way I feel what an
insignificant, frivolous little beast I am, and I long to be better and
wiser and stronger. And then I make good resolutions; but the first
nice-looking mannie who comes my way knocks them all out of my head.
Isn’t college life magnificent? It’s so funny to think I hated it that
first day. But if I hadn’t I might never got really acquainted with
you. Anne, please tell me over again that you like me a little bit. I
yearn to hear it.”

“I like you a big bit—and I think you’re a dear, sweet, adorable,
velvety, clawless, little—kitten,” laughed Anne, “but I don’t see when
you ever get time to learn your lessons.”

Phil must have found time for she held her own in every class of her
year. Even the grumpy old professor of Mathematics, who detested coeds,
and had bitterly opposed their admission to Redmond, couldn’t floor
her. She led the freshettes everywhere, except in English, where Anne
Shirley left her far behind. Anne herself found the studies of her
Freshman year very easy, thanks in great part to the steady work she
and Gilbert had put in during those two past years in Avonlea. This
left her more time for a social life which she thoroughly enjoyed. But
never for a moment did she forget Avonlea and the friends there. To
her, the happiest moments in each week were those in which letters came
from home. It was not until she had got her first letters that she
began to think she could ever like Kingsport or feel at home there.
Before they came, Avonlea had seemed thousands of miles away; those
letters brought it near and linked the old life to the new so closely
that they began to seem one and the same, instead of two hopelessly
segregated existences. The first batch contained six letters, from Jane
Andrews, Ruby Gillis, Diana Barry, Marilla, Mrs. Lynde and Davy. Jane’s
was a copperplate production, with every “t” nicely crossed and every
“i” precisely dotted, and not an interesting sentence in it. She never
mentioned the school, concerning which Anne was avid to hear; she never
answered one of the questions Anne had asked in her letter. But she
told Anne how many yards of lace she had recently crocheted, and the
kind of weather they were having in Avonlea, and how she intended to
have her new dress made, and the way she felt when her head ached. Ruby
Gillis wrote a gushing epistle deploring Anne’s absence, assuring her
she was horribly missed in everything, asking what the Redmond
“fellows” were like, and filling the rest with accounts of her own
harrowing experiences with her numerous admirers. It was a silly,
harmless letter, and Anne would have laughed over it had it not been
for the postscript. “Gilbert seems to be enjoying Redmond, judging from
his letters,” wrote Ruby. “I don’t think Charlie is so stuck on it.”

So Gilbert was writing to Ruby! Very well. He had a perfect right to,
of course. Only—!! Anne did not know that Ruby had written the first
letter and that Gilbert had answered it from mere courtesy. She tossed
Ruby’s letter aside contemptuously. But it took all Diana’s breezy,
newsy, delightful epistle to banish the sting of Ruby’s postscript.
Diana’s letter contained a little too much Fred, but was otherwise
crowded and crossed with items of interest, and Anne almost felt
herself back in Avonlea while reading it. Marilla’s was a rather prim
and colorless epistle, severely innocent of gossip or emotion. Yet
somehow it conveyed to Anne a whiff of the wholesome, simple life at
Green Gables, with its savor of ancient peace, and the steadfast
abiding love that was there for her. Mrs. Lynde’s letter was full of
church news. Having broken up housekeeping, Mrs. Lynde had more time
than ever to devote to church affairs and had flung herself into them
heart and soul. She was at present much worked up over the poor
“supplies” they were having in the vacant Avonlea pulpit.

“I don’t believe any but fools enter the ministry nowadays,” she wrote
bitterly. “Such candidates as they have sent us, and such stuff as they
preach! Half of it ain’t true, and, what’s worse, it ain’t sound
doctrine. The one we have now is the worst of the lot. He mostly takes
a text and preaches about something else. And he says he doesn’t
believe all the heathen will be eternally lost. The idea! If they won’t
all the money we’ve been giving to Foreign Missions will be clean
wasted, that’s what! Last Sunday night he announced that next Sunday
he’d preach on the axe-head that swam. I think he’d better confine
himself to the Bible and leave sensational subjects alone. Things have
come to a pretty pass if a minister can’t find enough in Holy Writ to
preach about, that’s what. What church do you attend, Anne? I hope you
go regularly. People are apt to get so careless about church-going away
from home, and I understand college students are great sinners in this
respect. I’m told many of them actually study their lessons on Sunday.
I hope you’ll never sink that low, Anne. Remember how you were brought
up. And be very careful what friends you make. You never know what sort
of creatures are in them colleges. Outwardly they may be as whited
sepulchers and inwardly as ravening wolves, that’s what. You’d better
not have anything to say to any young man who isn’t from the Island.

“I forgot to tell you what happened the day the minister called here.
It was the funniest thing I ever saw. I said to Marilla, ‘If Anne had
been here wouldn’t she have had a laugh?’ Even Marilla laughed. You
know he’s a very short, fat little man with bow legs. Well, that old
pig of Mr. Harrison’s—the big, tall one—had wandered over here that day
again and broke into the yard, and it got into the back porch,
unbeknowns to us, and it was there when the minister appeared in the
doorway. It made one wild bolt to get out, but there was nowhere to
bolt to except between them bow legs. So there it went, and, being as
it was so big and the minister so little, it took him clean off his
feet and carried him away. His hat went one way and his cane another,
just as Marilla and I got to the door. I’ll never forget the look of
him. And that poor pig was near scared to death. I’ll never be able to
read that account in the Bible of the swine that rushed madly down the
steep place into the sea without seeing Mr. Harrison’s pig careering
down the hill with that minister. I guess the pig thought he had the
Old Boy on his back instead of inside of him. I was thankful the twins
weren’t about. It wouldn’t have been the right thing for them to have
seen a minister in such an undignified predicament. Just before they
got to the brook the minister jumped off or fell off. The pig rushed
through the brook like mad and up through the woods. Marilla and I run
down and helped the minister get up and brush his coat. He wasn’t hurt,
but he was mad. He seemed to hold Marilla and me responsible for it
all, though we told him the pig didn’t belong to us, and had been
pestering us all summer. Besides, what did he come to the back door
for? You’d never have caught Mr. Allan doing that. It’ll be a long time
before we get a man like Mr. Allan. But it’s an ill wind that blows no
good. We’ve never seen hoof or hair of that pig since, and it’s my
belief we never will.

“Things is pretty quiet in Avonlea. I don’t find Green Gables as
lonesome as I expected. I think I’ll start another cotton warp quilt
this winter. Mrs. Silas Sloane has a handsome new apple-leaf pattern.

“When I feel that I must have some excitement I read the murder trials
in that Boston paper my niece sends me. I never used to do it, but
they’re real interesting. The States must be an awful place. I hope
you’ll never go there, Anne. But the way girls roam over the earth now
is something terrible. It always makes me think of Satan in the Book of
Job, going to and fro and walking up and down. I don’t believe the Lord
ever intended it, that’s what.

“Davy has been pretty good since you went away. One day he was bad and
Marilla punished him by making him wear Dora’s apron all day, and then
he went and cut all Dora’s aprons up. I spanked him for that and then
he went and chased my rooster to death.

“The MacPhersons have moved down to my place. She’s a great housekeeper
and very particular. She’s rooted all my June lilies up because she
says they make a garden look so untidy. Thomas set them lilies out when
we were married. Her husband seems a nice sort of a man, but she can’t
get over being an old maid, that’s what.

“Don’t study too hard, and be sure and put your winter underclothes on
as soon as the weather gets cool. Marilla worries a lot about you, but
I tell her you’ve got a lot more sense than I ever thought you would
have at one time, and that you’ll be all right.”

Davy’s letter plunged into a grievance at the start.

“Dear anne, please write and tell marilla not to tie me to the rale of
the bridge when I go fishing the boys make fun of me when she does. Its
awful lonesome here without you but grate fun in school. Jane andrews
is crosser than you. I scared mrs. lynde with a jacky lantern last
nite. She was offel mad and she was mad cause I chased her old rooster
round the yard till he fell down ded. I didn’t mean to make him fall
down ded. What made him die, anne, I want to know. mrs. lynde threw him
into the pig pen she mite of sold him to mr. blair. mr. blair is giving
50 sense apeace for good ded roosters now. I herd mrs. lynde asking the
minister to pray for her. What did she do that was so bad, anne, I want
to know. I’ve got a kite with a magnificent tail, anne. Milty bolter
told me a grate story in school yesterday. it is troo. old Joe Mosey
and Leon were playing cards one nite last week in the woods. The cards
were on a stump and a big black man bigger than the trees come along
and grabbed the cards and the stump and disapered with a noys like
thunder. Ill bet they were skared. Milty says the black man was the old
harry. was he, anne, I want to know. Mr. kimball over at spenservale is
very sick and will have to go to the hospitable. please excuse me while
I ask marilla if thats spelled rite. Marilla says its the silem he has
to go to not the other place. He thinks he has a snake inside of him.
whats it like to have a snake inside of you, anne. I want to know. mrs.
lawrence bell is sick to. mrs. lynde says that all that is the matter
with her is that she thinks too much about her insides.”

“I wonder,” said Anne, as she folded up her letters, “what Mrs. Lynde
would think of Philippa.”




Chapter VI
In the Park


“What are you going to do with yourselves today, girls?” asked
Philippa, popping into Anne’s room one Saturday afternoon.

“We are going for a walk in the park,” answered Anne. “I ought to stay
in and finish my blouse. But I couldn’t sew on a day like this. There’s
something in the air that gets into my blood and makes a sort of glory
in my soul. My fingers would twitch and I’d sew a crooked seam. So it’s
ho for the park and the pines.”

“Does ‘we’ include any one but yourself and Priscilla?”

“Yes, it includes Gilbert and Charlie, and we’ll be very glad if it
will include you, also.”

“But,” said Philippa dolefully, “if I go I’ll have to be gooseberry,
and that will be a new experience for Philippa Gordon.”

“Well, new experiences are broadening. Come along, and you’ll be able
to sympathize with all poor souls who have to play gooseberry often.
But where are all the victims?”

“Oh, I was tired of them all and simply couldn’t be bothered with any
of them today. Besides, I’ve been feeling a little blue—just a pale,
elusive azure. It isn’t serious enough for anything darker. I wrote
Alec and Alonzo last week. I put the letters into envelopes and
addressed them, but I didn’t seal them up. That evening something funny
happened. That is, Alec would think it funny, but Alonzo wouldn’t be
likely to. I was in a hurry, so I snatched Alec’s letter—as I
thought—out of the envelope and scribbled down a postscript. Then I
mailed both letters. I got Alonzo’s reply this morning. Girls, I had
put that postscript to his letter and he was furious. Of course he’ll
get over it—and I don’t care if he doesn’t—but it spoiled my day. So I
thought I’d come to you darlings to get cheered up. After the football
season opens I won’t have any spare Saturday afternoons. I adore
football. I’ve got the most gorgeous cap and sweater striped in Redmond
colors to wear to the games. To be sure, a little way off I’ll look
like a walking barber’s pole. Do you know that that Gilbert of yours
has been elected Captain of the Freshman football team?”

“Yes, he told us so last evening,” said Priscilla, seeing that outraged
Anne would not answer. “He and Charlie were down. We knew they were
coming, so we painstakingly put out of sight or out of reach all Miss
Ada’s cushions. That very elaborate one with the raised embroidery I
dropped on the floor in the corner behind the chair it was on. I
thought it would be safe there. But would you believe it? Charlie
Sloane made for that chair, noticed the cushion behind it, solemnly
fished it up, and sat on it the whole evening. Such a wreck of a
cushion as it was! Poor Miss Ada asked me today, still smiling, but oh,
so reproachfully, why I had allowed it to be sat upon. I told her I
hadn’t—that it was a matter of predestination coupled with inveterate
Sloanishness and I wasn’t a match for both combined.”

“Miss Ada’s cushions are really getting on my nerves,” said Anne. “She
finished two new ones last week, stuffed and embroidered within an inch
of their lives. There being absolutely no other cushionless place to
put them she stood them up against the wall on the stair landing. They
topple over half the time and if we come up or down the stairs in the
dark we fall over them. Last Sunday, when Dr. Davis prayed for all
those exposed to the perils of the sea, I added in thought ‘and for all
those who live in houses where cushions are loved not wisely but too
well!’ There! we’re ready, and I see the boys coming through Old St.
John’s. Do you cast in your lot with us, Phil?”

“I’ll go, if I can walk with Priscilla and Charlie. That will be a
bearable degree of gooseberry. That Gilbert of yours is a darling,
Anne, but why does he go around so much with Goggle-eyes?”

Anne stiffened. She had no great liking for Charlie Sloane; but he was
of Avonlea, so no outsider had any business to laugh at him.

“Charlie and Gilbert have always been friends,” she said coldly.
“Charlie is a nice boy. He’s not to blame for his eyes.”

“Don’t tell me that! He is! He must have done something dreadful in a
previous existence to be punished with such eyes. Pris and I are going
to have such sport with him this afternoon. We’ll make fun of him to
his face and he’ll never know it.”

Doubtless, “the abandoned P’s,” as Anne called them, did carry out
their amiable intentions. But Sloane was blissfully ignorant; he
thought he was quite a fine fellow to be walking with two such coeds,
especially Philippa Gordon, the class beauty and belle. It must surely
impress Anne. She would see that some people appreciated him at his
real value.

Gilbert and Anne loitered a little behind the others, enjoying the
calm, still beauty of the autumn afternoon under the pines of the park,
on the road that climbed and twisted round the harbor shore.

“The silence here is like a prayer, isn’t it?” said Anne, her face
upturned to the shining sky. “How I love the pines! They seem to strike
their roots deep into the romance of all the ages. It is so comforting
to creep away now and then for a good talk with them. I always feel so
happy out here.”

“‘And so in mountain solitudes o’ertaken
    As by some spell divine,
Their cares drop from them like the needles shaken
    From out the gusty pine,’”


quoted Gilbert.

“They make our little ambitions seem rather petty, don’t they, Anne?”

“I think, if ever any great sorrow came to me, I would come to the
pines for comfort,” said Anne dreamily.

“I hope no great sorrow ever will come to you, Anne,” said Gilbert, who
could not connect the idea of sorrow with the vivid, joyous creature
beside him, unwitting that those who can soar to the highest heights
can also plunge to the deepest depths, and that the natures which enjoy
most keenly are those which also suffer most sharply.

“But there must—sometime,” mused Anne. “Life seems like a cup of glory
held to my lips just now. But there must be some bitterness in it—there
is in every cup. I shall taste mine some day. Well, I hope I shall be
strong and brave to meet it. And I hope it won’t be through my own
fault that it will come. Do you remember what Dr. Davis said last
Sunday evening—that the sorrows God sent us brought comfort and
strength with them, while the sorrows we brought on ourselves, through
folly or wickedness, were by far the hardest to bear? But we mustn’t
talk of sorrow on an afternoon like this. It’s meant for the sheer joy
of living, isn’t it?”

“If I had my way I’d shut everything out of your life but happiness and
pleasure, Anne,” said Gilbert in the tone that meant “danger ahead.”

“Then you would be very unwise,” rejoined Anne hastily. “I’m sure no
life can be properly developed and rounded out without some trial and
sorrow—though I suppose it is only when we are pretty comfortable that
we admit it. Come—the others have got to the pavilion and are beckoning
to us.”

They all sat down in the little pavilion to watch an autumn sunset of
deep red fire and pallid gold. To their left lay Kingsport, its roofs
and spires dim in their shroud of violet smoke. To their right lay the
harbor, taking on tints of rose and copper as it stretched out into the
sunset. Before them the water shimmered, satin smooth and silver gray,
and beyond, clean shaven William’s Island loomed out of the mist,
guarding the town like a sturdy bulldog. Its lighthouse beacon flared
through the mist like a baleful star, and was answered by another in
the far horizon.

“Did you ever see such a strong-looking place?” asked Philippa. “I
don’t want William’s Island especially, but I’m sure I couldn’t get it
if I did. Look at that sentry on the summit of the fort, right beside
the flag. Doesn’t he look as if he had stepped out of a romance?”

“Speaking of romance,” said Priscilla, “we’ve been looking for
heather—but, of course, we couldn’t find any. It’s too late in the
season, I suppose.”

“Heather!” exclaimed Anne. “Heather doesn’t grow in America, does it?”

“There are just two patches of it in the whole continent,” said Phil,
“one right here in the park, and one somewhere else in Nova Scotia, I
forget where. The famous Highland Regiment, the Black Watch, camped
here one year, and, when the men shook out the straw of their beds in
the spring, some seeds of heather took root.”

“Oh, how delightful!” said enchanted Anne.

“Let’s go home around by Spofford Avenue,” suggested Gilbert. “We can
see all ‘the handsome houses where the wealthy nobles dwell.’ Spofford
Avenue is the finest residential street in Kingsport. Nobody can build
on it unless he’s a millionaire.”

“Oh, do,” said Phil. “There’s a perfectly killing little place I want
to show you, Anne. _it_ wasn’t built by a millionaire. It’s the first
place after you leave the park, and must have grown while Spofford
Avenue was still a country road. It _did_ grow—it wasn’t built! I don’t
care for the houses on the Avenue. They’re too brand new and
plateglassy. But this little spot is a dream—and its name—but wait till
you see it.”

They saw it as they walked up the pine-fringed hill from the park. Just
on the crest, where Spofford Avenue petered out into a plain road, was
a little white frame house with groups of pines on either side of it,
stretching their arms protectingly over its low roof. It was covered
with red and gold vines, through which its green-shuttered windows
peeped. Before it was a tiny garden, surrounded by a low stone wall.
October though it was, the garden was still very sweet with dear,
old-fashioned, unworldly flowers and shrubs—sweet may, southern-wood,
lemon verbena, alyssum, petunias, marigolds and chrysanthemums. A tiny
brick wall, in herring-bone pattern, led from the gate to the front
porch. The whole place might have been transplanted from some remote
country village; yet there was something about it that made its nearest
neighbor, the big lawn-encircled palace of a tobacco king, look
exceedingly crude and showy and ill-bred by contrast. As Phil said, it
was the difference between being born and being made.

“It’s the dearest place I ever saw,” said Anne delightedly. “It gives
me one of my old, delightful funny aches. It’s dearer and quainter than
even Miss Lavendar’s stone house.”

“It’s the name I want you to notice especially,” said Phil. “Look—in
white letters, around the archway over the gate. ‘Patty’s Place.’ Isn’t
that killing? Especially on this Avenue of Pinehursts and Elmwolds and
Cedarcrofts? ‘Patty’s Place,’ if you please! I adore it.”

“Have you any idea who Patty is?” asked Priscilla.

“Patty Spofford is the name of the old lady who owns it, I’ve
discovered. She lives there with her niece, and they’ve lived there for
hundreds of years, more or less—maybe a little less, Anne. Exaggeration
is merely a flight of poetic fancy. I understand that wealthy folk have
tried to buy the lot time and again—it’s really worth a small fortune
now, you know—but ‘Patty’ won’t sell upon any consideration. And
there’s an apple orchard behind the house in place of a back
yard—you’ll see it when we get a little past—a real apple orchard on
Spofford Avenue!”

“I’m going to dream about ‘Patty’s Place’ tonight,” said Anne. “Why, I
feel as if I belonged to it. I wonder if, by any chance, we’ll ever see
the inside of it.”

“It isn’t likely,” said Priscilla.

Anne smiled mysteriously.

“No, it isn’t likely. But I believe it will happen. I have a queer,
creepy, crawly feeling—you can call it a presentiment, if you like—that
‘Patty’s Place’ and I are going to be better acquainted yet.”




Chapter VII
Home Again


Those first three weeks at Redmond had seemed long; but the rest of the
term flew by on wings of wind. Before they realized it the Redmond
students found themselves in the grind of Christmas examinations,
emerging therefrom more or less triumphantly. The honor of leading in
the Freshman classes fluctuated between Anne, Gilbert and Philippa;
Priscilla did very well; Charlie Sloane scraped through respectably,
and comported himself as complacently as if he had led in everything.

“I can’t really believe that this time tomorrow I’ll be in Green
Gables,” said Anne on the night before departure. “But I shall be. And
you, Phil, will be in Bolingbroke with Alec and Alonzo.”

“I’m longing to see them,” admitted Phil, between the chocolate she was
nibbling. “They really are such dear boys, you know. There’s to be no
end of dances and drives and general jamborees. I shall never forgive
you, Queen Anne, for not coming home with me for the holidays.”

“‘Never’ means three days with you, Phil. It was dear of you to ask
me—and I’d love to go to Bolingbroke some day. But I can’t go this
year—I _must_ go home. You don’t know how my heart longs for it.”

“You won’t have much of a time,” said Phil scornfully. “There’ll be one
or two quilting parties, I suppose; and all the old gossips will talk
you over to your face and behind your back. You’ll die of lonesomeness,
child.”

“In Avonlea?” said Anne, highly amused.

“Now, if you’d come with me you’d have a perfectly gorgeous time.
Bolingbroke would go wild over you, Queen Anne—your hair and your style
and, oh, everything! You’re so _different_. You’d be such a success—and
I would bask in reflected glory—‘not the rose but near the rose.’ Do
come, after all, Anne.”

“Your picture of social triumphs is quite fascinating, Phil, but I’ll
paint one to offset it. I’m going home to an old country farmhouse,
once green, rather faded now, set among leafless apple orchards. There
is a brook below and a December fir wood beyond, where I’ve heard harps
swept by the fingers of rain and wind. There is a pond nearby that will
be gray and brooding now. There will be two oldish ladies in the house,
one tall and thin, one short and fat; and there will be two twins, one
a perfect model, the other what Mrs. Lynde calls a ‘holy terror.’ There
will be a little room upstairs over the porch, where old dreams hang
thick, and a big, fat, glorious feather bed which will almost seem the
height of luxury after a boardinghouse mattress. How do you like my
picture, Phil?”

“It seems a very dull one,” said Phil, with a grimace.

“Oh, but I’ve left out the transforming thing,” said Anne softly.
“There’ll be love there, Phil—faithful, tender love, such as I’ll never
find anywhere else in the world—love that’s waiting for me. That makes
my picture a masterpiece, doesn’t it, even if the colors are not very
brilliant?”

Phil silently got up, tossed her box of chocolates away, went up to
Anne, and put her arms about her.

“Anne, I wish I was like you,” she said soberly.

Diana met Anne at the Carmody station the next night, and they drove
home together under silent, star-sown depths of sky. Green Gables had a
very festal appearance as they drove up the lane. There was a light in
every window, the glow breaking out through the darkness like flame-red
blossoms swung against the dark background of the Haunted Wood. And in
the yard was a brave bonfire with two gay little figures dancing around
it, one of which gave an unearthly yell as the buggy turned in under
the poplars.

“Davy means that for an Indian war-whoop,” said Diana. “Mr. Harrison’s
hired boy taught it to him, and he’s been practicing it up to welcome
you with. Mrs. Lynde says it has worn her nerves to a frazzle. He
creeps up behind her, you know, and then lets go. He was determined to
have a bonfire for you, too. He’s been piling up branches for a
fortnight and pestering Marilla to be let pour some kerosene oil over
it before setting it on fire. I guess she did, by the smell, though
Mrs. Lynde said up to the last that Davy would blow himself and
everybody else up if he was let.”

Anne was out of the buggy by this time, and Davy was rapturously
hugging her knees, while even Dora was clinging to her hand.

“Isn’t that a bully bonfire, Anne? Just let me show you how to poke
it—see the sparks? I did it for you, Anne, ’cause I was so glad you
were coming home.”

The kitchen door opened and Marilla’s spare form darkened against the
inner light. She preferred to meet Anne in the shadows, for she was
horribly afraid that she was going to cry with joy—she, stern,
repressed Marilla, who thought all display of deep emotion unseemly.
Mrs. Lynde was behind her, sonsy, kindly, matronly, as of yore. The
love that Anne had told Phil was waiting for her surrounded her and
enfolded her with its blessing and its sweetness. Nothing, after all,
could compare with old ties, old friends, and old Green Gables! How
starry Anne’s eyes were as they sat down to the loaded supper table,
how pink her cheeks, how silver-clear her laughter! And Diana was going
to stay all night, too. How like the dear old times it was! And the
rose-bud tea-set graced the table! With Marilla the force of nature
could no further go.

“I suppose you and Diana will now proceed to talk all night,” said
Marilla sarcastically, as the girls went upstairs. Marilla was always
sarcastic after any self-betrayal.

“Yes,” agreed Anne gaily, “but I’m going to put Davy to bed first. He
insists on that.”

“You bet,” said Davy, as they went along the hall. “I want somebody to
say my prayers to again. It’s no fun saying them alone.”

“You don’t say them alone, Davy. God is always with you to hear you.”

“Well, I can’t see Him,” objected Davy. “I want to pray to somebody I
can see, but I _won’t_ say them to Mrs. Lynde or Marilla, there now!”

Nevertheless, when Davy was garbed in his gray flannel nighty, he did
not seem in a hurry to begin. He stood before Anne, shuffling one bare
foot over the other, and looked undecided.

“Come, dear, kneel down,” said Anne.

Davy came and buried his head in Anne’s lap, but he did not kneel down.

“Anne,” he said in a muffled voice. “I don’t feel like praying after
all. I haven’t felt like it for a week now. I—I _didnt’t_ pray last
night nor the night before.”

“Why not, Davy?” asked Anne gently.

“You—you won’t be mad if I tell you?” implored Davy.

Anne lifted the little gray-flannelled body on her knee and cuddled his
head on her arm.

“Do I ever get ‘mad’ when you tell me things, Davy?”

“No-o-o, you never do. But you get sorry, and that’s worse. You’ll be
awful sorry when I tell you this, Anne—and you’ll be ’shamed of me, I
s’pose.”

“Have you done something naughty, Davy, and is that why you can’t say
your prayers?”

“No, I haven’t done anything naughty—yet. But I want to do it.”

“What is it, Davy?”

“I—I want to say a bad word, Anne,” blurted out Davy, with a desperate
effort. “I heard Mr. Harrison’s hired boy say it one day last week, and
ever since I’ve been wanting to say it _all_ the time—even when I’m
saying my prayers.”

“Say it then, Davy.”

Davy lifted his flushed face in amazement.

“But, Anne, it’s an _awful_ bad word.”

“_Say it!_”

Davy gave her another incredulous look, then in a low voice he said the
dreadful word. The next minute his face was burrowing against her.

“Oh, Anne, I’ll never say it again—never. I’ll never _want_ to say it
again. I knew it was bad, but I didn’t s’pose it was so—so—I didn’t
s’pose it was like _that_.”

“No, I don’t think you’ll ever want to say it again, Davy—or think it,
either. And I wouldn’t go about much with Mr. Harrison’s hired boy if I
were you.”

“He can make bully war-whoops,” said Davy a little regretfully.

“But you don’t want your mind filled with bad words, do you, Davy—words
that will poison it and drive out all that is good and manly?”

“No,” said Davy, owl-eyed with introspection.

“Then don’t go with those people who use them. And now do you feel as
if you could say your prayers, Davy?”

“Oh, yes,” said Davy, eagerly wriggling down on his knees, “I can say
them now all right. I ain’t scared now to say ‘if I should die before I
wake,’ like I was when I was wanting to say that word.”

Probably Anne and Diana did empty out their souls to each other that
night, but no record of their confidences has been preserved. They both
looked as fresh and bright-eyed at breakfast as only youth can look
after unlawful hours of revelry and confession. There had been no snow
up to this time, but as Diana crossed the old log bridge on her
homeward way the white flakes were beginning to flutter down over the
fields and woods, russet and gray in their dreamless sleep. Soon the
far-away slopes and hills were dim and wraith-like through their gauzy
scarfing, as if pale autumn had flung a misty bridal veil over her hair
and was waiting for her wintry bridegroom. So they had a white
Christmas after all, and a very pleasant day it was. In the forenoon
letters and gifts came from Miss Lavendar and Paul; Anne opened them in
the cheerful Green Gables kitchen, which was filled with what Davy,
sniffing in ecstasy, called “pretty smells.”

“Miss Lavendar and Mr. Irving are settled in their new home now,”
reported Anne. “I am sure Miss Lavendar is perfectly happy—I know it by
the general tone of her letter—but there’s a note from Charlotta the
Fourth. She doesn’t like Boston at all, and she is fearfully homesick.
Miss Lavendar wants me to go through to Echo Lodge some day while I’m
home and light a fire to air it, and see that the cushions aren’t
getting moldy. I think I’ll get Diana to go over with me next week, and
we can spend the evening with Theodora Dix. I want to see Theodora. By
the way, is Ludovic Speed still going to see her?”

“They say so,” said Marilla, “and he’s likely to continue it. Folks
have given up expecting that that courtship will ever arrive anywhere.”

“I’d hurry him up a bit, if I was Theodora, that’s what,” said Mrs.
Lynde. And there is not the slightest doubt but that she would.

There was also a characteristic scrawl from Philippa, full of Alec and
Alonzo, what they said and what they did, and how they looked when they
saw her.

“But I can’t make up my mind yet which to marry,” wrote Phil. “I do
wish you had come with me to decide for me. Some one will have to. When
I saw Alec my heart gave a great thump and I thought, ‘He might be the
right one.’ And then, when Alonzo came, thump went my heart again. So
that’s no guide, though it should be, according to all the novels I’ve
ever read. Now, Anne, _your_ heart wouldn’t thump for anybody but the
genuine Prince Charming, would it? There must be something radically
wrong with mine. But I’m having a perfectly gorgeous time. How I wish
you were here! It’s snowing today, and I’m rapturous. I was so afraid
we’d have a green Christmas and I loathe them. You know, when Christmas
is a dirty grayey-browney affair, looking as if it had been left over a
hundred years ago and had been in soak ever since, it is called a
_green_ Christmas! Don’t ask me why. As Lord Dundreary says, ‘there are
thome thingth no fellow can underthtand.’

“Anne, did you ever get on a street car and then discover that you
hadn’t any money with you to pay your fare? I did, the other day. It’s
quite awful. I had a nickel with me when I got on the car. I thought it
was in the left pocket of my coat. When I got settled down comfortably
I felt for it. It wasn’t there. I had a cold chill. I felt in the other
pocket. Not there. I had another chill. Then I felt in a little inside
pocket. All in vain. I had two chills at once.

“I took off my gloves, laid them on the seat, and went over all my
pockets again. It was not there. I stood up and shook myself, and then
looked on the floor. The car was full of people, who were going home
from the opera, and they all stared at me, but I was past caring for a
little thing like that.

“But I could not find my fare. I concluded I must have put it in my
mouth and swallowed it inadvertently.

“I didn’t know what to do. Would the conductor, I wondered, stop the
car and put me off in ignominy and shame? Was it possible that I could
convince him that I was merely the victim of my own absentmindedness,
and not an unprincipled creature trying to obtain a ride upon false
pretenses? How I wished that Alec or Alonzo were there. But they
weren’t because I wanted them. If I _hadn’t_ wanted them they would
have been there by the dozen. And I couldn’t decide what to say to the
conductor when he came around. As soon as I got one sentence of
explanation mapped out in my mind I felt nobody could believe it and I
must compose another. It seemed there was nothing to do but trust in
Providence, and for all the comfort that gave me I might as well have
been the old lady who, when told by the captain during a storm that she
must put her trust in the Almighty exclaimed, ‘Oh, Captain, is it as
bad as that?’

“Just at the conventional moment, when all hope had fled, and the
conductor was holding out his box to the passenger next to me, I
suddenly remembered where I had put that wretched coin of the realm. I
hadn’t swallowed it after all. I meekly fished it out of the index
finger of my glove and poked it in the box. I smiled at everybody and
felt that it was a beautiful world.”

The visit to Echo Lodge was not the least pleasant of many pleasant
holiday outings. Anne and Diana went back to it by the old way of the
beech woods, carrying a lunch basket with them. Echo Lodge, which had
been closed ever since Miss Lavendar’s wedding, was briefly thrown open
to wind and sunshine once more, and firelight glimmered again in the
little rooms. The perfume of Miss Lavendar’s rose bowl still filled the
air. It was hardly possible to believe that Miss Lavendar would not
come tripping in presently, with her brown eyes a-star with welcome,
and that Charlotta the Fourth, blue of bow and wide of smile, would not
pop through the door. Paul, too, seemed hovering around, with his fairy
fancies.

“It really makes me feel a little bit like a ghost revisiting the old
time glimpses of the moon,” laughed Anne. “Let’s go out and see if the
echoes are at home. Bring the old horn. It is still behind the kitchen
door.”

The echoes were at home, over the white river, as silver-clear and
multitudinous as ever; and when they had ceased to answer the girls
locked up Echo Lodge again and went away in the perfect half hour that
follows the rose and saffron of a winter sunset.




Chapter VIII
Anne’s First Proposal


The old year did not slip away in a green twilight, with a pinky-yellow
sunset. Instead, it went out with a wild, white bluster and blow. It
was one of the nights when the storm-wind hurtles over the frozen
meadows and black hollows, and moans around the eaves like a lost
creature, and drives the snow sharply against the shaking panes.

“Just the sort of night people like to cuddle down between their
blankets and count their mercies,” said Anne to Jane Andrews, who had
come up to spend the afternoon and stay all night. But when they were
cuddled between their blankets, in Anne’s little porch room, it was not
her mercies of which Jane was thinking.

“Anne,” she said very solemnly, “I want to tell you something. May I”

Anne was feeling rather sleepy after the party Ruby Gillis had given
the night before. She would much rather have gone to sleep than listen
to Jane’s confidences, which she was sure would bore her. She had no
prophetic inkling of what was coming. Probably Jane was engaged, too;
rumor averred that Ruby Gillis was engaged to the Spencervale
schoolteacher, about whom all the girls were said to be quite wild.

“I’ll soon be the only fancy-free maiden of our old quartet,” thought
Anne, drowsily. Aloud she said, “Of course.”

“Anne,” said Jane, still more solemnly, “what do you think of my
brother Billy?”

Anne gasped over this unexpected question, and floundered helplessly in
her thoughts. Goodness, what _did_ she think of Billy Andrews? She had
never thought _anything_ about him—round-faced, stupid, perpetually
smiling, good-natured Billy Andrews. Did _anybody_ ever think about
Billy Andrews?

“I—I don’t understand, Jane,” she stammered. “What do you
mean—exactly?”

“Do you like Billy?” asked Jane bluntly.

“Why—why—yes, I like him, of course,” gasped Anne, wondering if she
were telling the literal truth. Certainly she did not _dis_like Billy.
But could the indifferent tolerance with which she regarded him, when
he happened to be in her range of vision, be considered positive enough
for liking? _What_ was Jane trying to elucidate?

“Would you like him for a husband?” asked Jane calmly.

“A husband!” Anne had been sitting up in bed, the better to wrestle
with the problem of her exact opinion of Billy Andrews. Now she fell
flatly back on her pillows, the very breath gone out of her. “Whose
husband?”

“Yours, of course,” answered Jane. “Billy wants to marry you. He’s
always been crazy about you—and now father has given him the upper farm
in his own name and there’s nothing to prevent him from getting
married. But he’s so shy he couldn’t ask you himself if you’d have him,
so he got me to do it. I’d rather not have, but he gave me no peace
till I said I would, if I got a good chance. What do you think about
it, Anne?”

Was it a dream? Was it one of those nightmare things in which you find
yourself engaged or married to some one you hate or don’t know, without
the slightest idea how it ever came about? No, she, Anne Shirley, was
lying there, wide awake, in her own bed, and Jane Andrews was beside
her, calmly proposing for her brother Billy. Anne did not know whether
she wanted to writhe or laugh; but she could do neither, for Jane’s
feelings must not be hurt.

“I—I couldn’t marry Bill, you know, Jane,” she managed to gasp. “Why,
such an idea never occurred to me—never!”

“I don’t suppose it did,” agreed Jane. “Billy has always been far too
shy to think of courting. But you might think it over, Anne. Billy is a
good fellow. I must say that, if he is my brother. He has no bad habits
and he’s a great worker, and you can depend on him. ‘A bird in the hand
is worth two in the bush.’ He told me to tell you he’d be quite willing
to wait till you got through college, if you insisted, though he’d
_rather_ get married this spring before the planting begins. He’d
always be very good to you, I’m sure, and you know, Anne, I’d love to
have you for a sister.”

“I can’t marry Billy,” said Anne decidedly. She had recovered her wits,
and was even feeling a little angry. It was all so ridiculous. “There
is no use thinking of it, Jane. I don’t care anything for him in that
way, and you must tell him so.”

“Well, I didn’t suppose you would,” said Jane with a resigned sigh,
feeling that she had done her best. “I told Billy I didn’t believe it
was a bit of use to ask you, but he insisted. Well, you’ve made your
decision, Anne, and I hope you won’t regret it.”

Jane spoke rather coldly. She had been perfectly sure that the enamored
Billy had no chance at all of inducing Anne to marry him. Nevertheless,
she felt a little resentment that Anne Shirley, who was, after all,
merely an adopted orphan, without kith or kin, should refuse her
brother—one of the Avonlea Andrews. Well, pride sometimes goes before a
fall, Jane reflected ominously.

Anne permitted herself to smile in the darkness over the idea that she
might ever regret not marrying Billy Andrews.

“I hope Billy won’t feel very badly over it,” she said nicely.

Jane made a movement as if she were tossing her head on her pillow.

“Oh, he won’t break his heart. Billy has too much good sense for that.
He likes Nettie Blewett pretty well, too, and mother would rather he
married her than any one. She’s such a good manager and saver. I think,
when Billy is once sure you won’t have him, he’ll take Nettie. Please
don’t mention this to any one, will you, Anne?”

“Certainly not,” said Anne, who had no desire whatever to publish
abroad the fact that Billy Andrews wanted to marry her, preferring her,
when all was said and done, to Nettie Blewett. Nettie Blewett!

“And now I suppose we’d better go to sleep,” suggested Jane.

To sleep went Jane easily and speedily; but, though very unlike MacBeth
in most respects, she had certainly contrived to murder sleep for Anne.
That proposed-to damsel lay on a wakeful pillow until the wee sma’s,
but her meditations were far from being romantic. It was not, however,
until the next morning that she had an opportunity to indulge in a good
laugh over the whole affair. When Jane had gone home—still with a hint
of frost in voice and manner because Anne had declined so ungratefully
and decidedly the honor of an alliance with the House of Andrews—Anne
retreated to the porch room, shut the door, and had her laugh out at
last.

“If I could only share the joke with some one!” she thought. “But I
can’t. Diana is the only one I’d want to tell, and, even if I hadn’t
sworn secrecy to Jane, I can’t tell Diana things now. She tells
everything to Fred—I know she does. Well, I’ve had my first proposal. I
supposed it would come some day—but I certainly never thought it would
be by proxy. It’s awfully funny—and yet there’s a sting in it, too,
somehow.”

Anne knew quite well wherein the sting consisted, though she did not
put it into words. She had had her secret dreams of the first time some
one should ask her the great question. And it had, in those dreams,
always been very romantic and beautiful: and the “some one” was to be
very handsome and dark-eyed and distinguished-looking and eloquent,
whether he were Prince Charming to be enraptured with “yes,” or one to
whom a regretful, beautifully worded, but hopeless refusal must be
given. If the latter, the refusal was to be expressed so delicately
that it would be next best thing to acceptance, and he would go away,
after kissing her hand, assuring her of his unalterable, life-long
devotion. And it would always be a beautiful memory, to be proud of and
a little sad about, also.

And now, this thrilling experience had turned out to be merely
grotesque. Billy Andrews had got his sister to propose for him because
his father had given him the upper farm; and if Anne wouldn’t “have
him” Nettie Blewett would. There was romance for you, with a vengeance!
Anne laughed—and then sighed. The bloom had been brushed from one
little maiden dream. Would the painful process go on until everything
became prosaic and hum-drum?




Chapter IX
An Unwelcome Lover and a Welcome Friend


The second term at Redmond sped as quickly as had the first—“actually
whizzed away,” Philippa said. Anne enjoyed it thoroughly in all its
phases—the stimulating class rivalry, the making and deepening of new
and helpful friendships, the gay little social stunts, the doings of
the various societies of which she was a member, the widening of
horizons and interests. She studied hard, for she had made up her mind
to win the Thorburn Scholarship in English. This being won, meant that
she could come back to Redmond the next year without trenching on
Marilla’s small savings—something Anne was determined she would not do.

Gilbert, too, was in full chase after a scholarship, but found plenty
of time for frequent calls at Thirty-eight, St. John’s. He was Anne’s
escort at nearly all the college affairs, and she knew that their names
were coupled in Redmond gossip. Anne raged over this but was helpless;
she could not cast an old friend like Gilbert aside, especially when he
had grown suddenly wise and wary, as behooved him in the dangerous
proximity of more than one Redmond youth who would gladly have taken
his place by the side of the slender, red-haired coed, whose gray eyes
were as alluring as stars of evening. Anne was never attended by the
crowd of willing victims who hovered around Philippa’s conquering march
through her Freshman year; but there was a lanky, brainy Freshie, a
jolly, little, round Sophomore, and a tall, learned Junior who all
liked to call at Thirty-eight, St. John’s, and talk over ’ologies and
’isms, as well as lighter subjects, with Anne, in the becushioned
parlor of that domicile. Gilbert did not love any of them, and he was
exceedingly careful to give none of them the advantage over him by any
untimely display of his real feelings Anne-ward. To her he had become
again the boy-comrade of Avonlea days, and as such could hold his own
against any smitten swain who had so far entered the lists against him.
As a companion, Anne honestly acknowledged nobody could be so
satisfactory as Gilbert; she was very glad, so she told herself, that
he had evidently dropped all nonsensical ideas—though she spent
considerable time secretly wondering why.

Only one disagreeable incident marred that winter. Charlie Sloane,
sitting bolt upright on Miss Ada’s most dearly beloved cushion, asked
Anne one night if she would promise “to become Mrs. Charlie Sloane some
day.” Coming after Billy Andrews’ proxy effort, this was not quite the
shock to Anne’s romantic sensibilities that it would otherwise have
been; but it was certainly another heart-rending disillusion. She was
angry, too, for she felt that she had never given Charlie the slightest
encouragement to suppose such a thing possible. But what could you
expect of a Sloane, as Mrs. Rachel Lynde would ask scornfully?
Charlie’s whole attitude, tone, air, words, fairly reeked with
Sloanishness. “He was conferring a great honor—no doubt whatever about
that. And when Anne, utterly insensible to the honor, refused him, as
delicately and considerately as she could—for even a Sloane had
feelings which ought not to be unduly lacerated—Sloanishness still
further betrayed itself. Charlie certainly did not take his dismissal
as Anne’s imaginary rejected suitors did. Instead, he became angry, and
showed it; he said two or three quite nasty things; Anne’s temper
flashed up mutinously and she retorted with a cutting little speech
whose keenness pierced even Charlie’s protective Sloanishness and
reached the quick; he caught up his hat and flung himself out of the
house with a very red face; Anne rushed upstairs, falling twice over
Miss Ada’s cushions on the way, and threw herself on her bed, in tears
of humiliation and rage. Had she actually stooped to quarrel with a
Sloane? Was it possible anything Charlie Sloane could say had power to
make her angry? Oh, this was degradation, indeed—worse even than being
the rival of Nettie Blewett!

“I wish I need never see the horrible creature again,” she sobbed
vindictively into her pillows.

She could not avoid seeing him again, but the outraged Charlie took
care that it should not be at very close quarters. Miss Ada’s cushions
were henceforth safe from his depredations, and when he met Anne on the
street, or in Redmond’s halls, his bow was icy in the extreme.
Relations between these two old schoolmates continued to be thus
strained for nearly a year! Then Charlie transferred his blighted
affections to a round, rosy, snub-nosed, blue-eyed, little Sophomore
who appreciated them as they deserved, whereupon he forgave Anne and
condescended to be civil to her again; in a patronizing manner intended
to show her just what she had lost.

One day Anne scurried excitedly into Priscilla’s room.

“Read that,” she cried, tossing Priscilla a letter. “It’s from
Stella—and she’s coming to Redmond next year—and what do you think of
her idea? I think it’s a perfectly splendid one, if we can only carry
it out. Do you suppose we can, Pris?”

“I’ll be better able to tell you when I find out what it is,” said
Priscilla, casting aside a Greek lexicon and taking up Stella’s letter.
Stella Maynard had been one of their chums at Queen’s Academy and had
been teaching school ever since.

“But I’m going to give it up, Anne dear,” she wrote, “and go to college
next year. As I took the third year at Queen’s I can enter the
Sophomore year. I’m tired of teaching in a back country school. Some
day I’m going to write a treatise on ‘The Trials of a Country
Schoolmarm.’ It will be a harrowing bit of realism. It seems to be the
prevailing impression that we live in clover, and have nothing to do
but draw our quarter’s salary. My treatise shall tell the truth about
us. Why, if a week should pass without some one telling me that I am
doing easy work for big pay I would conclude that I might as well order
my ascension robe ‘immediately and to onct.’ ‘Well, you get your money
easy,’ some rate-payer will tell me, condescendingly. ‘All you have to
do is to sit there and hear lessons.’ I used to argue the matter at
first, but I’m wiser now. Facts are stubborn things, but as some one
has wisely said, not half so stubborn as fallacies. So I only smile
loftily now in eloquent silence. Why, I have nine grades in my school
and I have to teach a little of everything, from investigating the
interiors of earthworms to the study of the solar system. My youngest
pupil is four—his mother sends him to school to ‘get him out of the
way’—and my oldest twenty—it ‘suddenly struck him’ that it would be
easier to go to school and get an education than follow the plough any
longer. In the wild effort to cram all sorts of research into six hours
a day I don’t wonder if the children feel like the little boy who was
taken to see the biograph. ‘I have to look for what’s coming next
before I know what went last,’ he complained. I feel like that myself.

“And the letters I get, Anne! Tommy’s mother writes me that Tommy is
not coming on in arithmetic as fast as she would like. He is only in
simple reduction yet, and Johnny Johnson is in fractions, and Johnny
isn’t half as smart as her Tommy, and she can’t understand it. And
Susy’s father wants to know why Susy can’t write a letter without
misspelling half the words, and Dick’s aunt wants me to change his
seat, because that bad Brown boy he is sitting with is teaching him to
say naughty words.

“As to the financial part—but I’ll not begin on that. Those whom the
gods wish to destroy they first make country schoolmarms!

“There, I feel better, after that growl. After all, I’ve enjoyed these
past two years. But I’m coming to Redmond.

“And now, Anne, I’ve a little plan. You know how I loathe boarding.
I’ve boarded for four years and I’m so tired of it. I don’t feel like
enduring three years more of it.

“Now, why can’t you and Priscilla and I club together, rent a little
house somewhere in Kingsport, and board ourselves? It would be cheaper
than any other way. Of course, we would have to have a housekeeper and
I have one ready on the spot. You’ve heard me speak of Aunt Jamesina?
She’s the sweetest aunt that ever lived, in spite of her name. She
can’t help that! She was called Jamesina because her father, whose name
was James, was drowned at sea a month before she was born. I always
call her Aunt Jimsie. Well, her only daughter has recently married and
gone to the foreign mission field. Aunt Jamesina is left alone in a
great big house, and she is horribly lonesome. She will come to
Kingsport and keep house for us if we want her, and I know you’ll both
love her. The more I think of the plan the more I like it. We could
have such good, independent times.

“Now, if you and Priscilla agree to it, wouldn’t it be a good idea for
you, who are on the spot, to look around and see if you can find a
suitable house this spring? That would be better than leaving it till
the fall. If you could get a furnished one so much the better, but if
not, we can scare up a few sticks of finiture between us and old family
friends with attics. Anyhow, decide as soon as you can and write me, so
that Aunt Jamesina will know what plans to make for next year.”

“I think it’s a good idea,” said Priscilla.

“So do I,” agreed Anne delightedly. “Of course, we have a nice
boardinghouse here, but, when all’s said and done, a boardinghouse
isn’t home. So let’s go house-hunting at once, before exams come on.”

“I’m afraid it will be hard enough to get a really suitable house,”
warned Priscilla. “Don’t expect too much, Anne. Nice houses in nice
localities will probably be away beyond our means. We’ll likely have to
content ourselves with a shabby little place on some street whereon
live people whom to know is to be unknown, and make life inside
compensate for the outside.”

Accordingly they went house-hunting, but to find just what they wanted
proved even harder than Priscilla had feared. Houses there were galore,
furnished and unfurnished; but one was too big, another too small; this
one too expensive, that one too far from Redmond. Exams were on and
over; the last week of the term came and still their “house o’dreams,”
as Anne called it, remained a castle in the air.

“We shall have to give up and wait till the fall, I suppose,” said
Priscilla wearily, as they rambled through the park on one of April’s
darling days of breeze and blue, when the harbor was creaming and
shimmering beneath the pearl-hued mists floating over it. “We may find
some shack to shelter us then; and if not, boardinghouses we shall have
always with us.”

“I’m not going to worry about it just now, anyway, and spoil this
lovely afternoon,” said Anne, gazing around her with delight. The fresh
chill air was faintly charged with the aroma of pine balsam, and the
sky above was crystal clear and blue—a great inverted cup of blessing.
“Spring is singing in my blood today, and the lure of April is abroad
on the air. I’m seeing visions and dreaming dreams, Pris. That’s
because the wind is from the west. I do love the west wind. It sings of
hope and gladness, doesn’t it? When the east wind blows I always think
of sorrowful rain on the eaves and sad waves on a gray shore. When I
get old I shall have rheumatism when the wind is east.”

“And isn’t it jolly when you discard furs and winter garments for the
first time and sally forth, like this, in spring attire?” laughed
Priscilla. “Don’t you feel as if you had been made over new?”

“Everything is new in the spring,” said Anne. “Springs themselves are
always so new, too. No spring is ever just like any other spring. It
always has something of its own to be its own peculiar sweetness. See
how green the grass is around that little pond, and how the willow buds
are bursting.”

“And exams are over and gone—the time of Convocation will come
soon—next Wednesday. This day next week we’ll be home.”

“I’m glad,” said Anne dreamily. “There are so many things I want to do.
I want to sit on the back porch steps and feel the breeze blowing down
over Mr. Harrison’s fields. I want to hunt ferns in the Haunted Wood
and gather violets in Violet Vale. Do you remember the day of our
golden picnic, Priscilla? I want to hear the frogs singing and the
poplars whispering. But I’ve learned to love Kingsport, too, and I’m
glad I’m coming back next fall. If I hadn’t won the Thorburn I don’t
believe I could have. I _couldn’t_ take any of Marilla’s little hoard.”

“If we could only find a house!” sighed Priscilla. “Look over there at
Kingsport, Anne—houses, houses everywhere, and not one for us.”

“Stop it, Pris. ‘The best is yet to be.’ Like the old Roman, we’ll find
a house or build one. On a day like this there’s no such word as fail
in my bright lexicon.”

They lingered in the park until sunset, living in the amazing miracle
and glory and wonder of the springtide; and they went home as usual, by
way of Spofford Avenue, that they might have the delight of looking at
Patty’s Place.

“I feel as if something mysterious were going to happen right away—‘by
the pricking of my thumbs,’” said Anne, as they went up the slope.
“It’s a nice story-bookish feeling. Why—why—why! Priscilla Grant, look
over there and tell me if it’s true, or am I seein’ things?”

Priscilla looked. Anne’s thumbs and eyes had not deceived her. Over the
arched gateway of Patty’s Place dangled a little, modest sign. It said
“To Let, Furnished. Inquire Within.”

“Priscilla,” said Anne, in a whisper, “do you suppose it’s possible
that we could rent Patty’s Place?”

“No, I don’t,” averred Priscilla. “It would be too good to be true.
Fairy tales don’t happen nowadays. I won’t hope, Anne. The
disappointment would be too awful to bear. They’re sure to want more
for it than we can afford. Remember, it’s on Spofford Avenue.”

“We must find out anyhow,” said Anne resolutely. “It’s too late to call
this evening, but we’ll come tomorrow. Oh, Pris, if we can get this
darling spot! I’ve always felt that my fortunes were linked with
Patty’s Place, ever since I saw it first.”




Chapter X
Patty’s Place


The next evening found them treading resolutely the herring-bone walk
through the tiny garden. The April wind was filling the pine trees with
its roundelay, and the grove was alive with robins—great, plump, saucy
fellows, strutting along the paths. The girls rang rather timidly, and
were admitted by a grim and ancient handmaiden. The door opened
directly into a large living-room, where by a cheery little fire sat
two other ladies, both of whom were also grim and ancient. Except that
one looked to be about seventy and the other fifty, there seemed little
difference between them. Each had amazingly big, light-blue eyes behind
steel-rimmed spectacles; each wore a cap and a gray shawl; each was
knitting without haste and without rest; each rocked placidly and
looked at the girls without speaking; and just behind each sat a large
white china dog, with round green spots all over it, a green nose and
green ears. Those dogs captured Anne’s fancy on the spot; they seemed
like the twin guardian deities of Patty’s Place.

For a few minutes nobody spoke. The girls were too nervous to find
words, and neither the ancient ladies nor the china dogs seemed
conversationally inclined. Anne glanced about the room. What a dear
place it was! Another door opened out of it directly into the pine
grove and the robins came boldly up on the very step. The floor was
spotted with round, braided mats, such as Marilla made at Green Gables,
but which were considered out of date everywhere else, even in Avonlea.
And yet here they were on Spofford Avenue! A big, polished
grandfather’s clock ticked loudly and solemnly in a corner. There were
delightful little cupboards over the mantelpiece, behind whose glass
doors gleamed quaint bits of china. The walls were hung with old prints
and silhouettes. In one corner the stairs went up, and at the first low
turn was a long window with an inviting seat. It was all just as Anne
had known it must be.

By this time the silence had grown too dreadful, and Priscilla nudged
Anne to intimate that she must speak.

“We—we—saw by your sign that this house is to let,” said Anne faintly,
addressing the older lady, who was evidently Miss Patty Spofford.

“Oh, yes,” said Miss Patty. “I intended to take that sign down today.”

“Then—then we are too late,” said Anne sorrowfully. “You’ve let it to
some one else?”

“No, but we have decided not to let it at all.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” exclaimed Anne impulsively. “I love this place so.
I did hope we could have got it.”

Then did Miss Patty lay down her knitting, take off her specs, rub
them, put them on again, and for the first time look at Anne as at a
human being. The other lady followed her example so perfectly that she
might as well have been a reflection in a mirror.

“You _love_ it,” said Miss Patty with emphasis. “Does that mean that
you really _love_ it? Or that you merely like the looks of it? The
girls nowadays indulge in such exaggerated statements that one never
can tell what they _do_ mean. It wasn’t so in my young days. _Then_ a
girl did not say she _loved_ turnips, in just the same tone as she
might have said she loved her mother or her Savior.”

Anne’s conscience bore her up.

“I really do love it,” she said gently. “I’ve loved it ever since I saw
it last fall. My two college chums and I want to keep house next year
instead of boarding, so we are looking for a little place to rent; and
when I saw that this house was to let I was so happy.”

“If you love it, you can have it,” said Miss Patty. “Maria and I
decided today that we would not let it after all, because we did not
like any of the people who have wanted it. We don’t _have_ to let it.
We can afford to go to Europe even if we don’t let it. It would help us
out, but not for gold will I let my home pass into the possession of
such people as have come here and looked at it. _You_ are different. I
believe you do love it and will be good to it. You can have it.”

“If—if we can afford to pay what you ask for it,” hesitated Anne.

Miss Patty named the amount required. Anne and Priscilla looked at each
other. Priscilla shook her head.

“I’m afraid we can’t afford quite so much,” said Anne, choking back her
disappointment. “You see, we are only college girls and we are poor.”

“What were you thinking you could afford?” demanded Miss Patty, ceasing
not to knit.

Anne named her amount. Miss Patty nodded gravely.

“That will do. As I told you, it is not strictly necessary that we
should let it at all. We are not rich, but we have enough to go to
Europe on. I have never been in Europe in my life, and never expected
or wanted to go. But my niece there, Maria Spofford, has taken a fancy
to go. Now, you know a young person like Maria can’t go globetrotting
alone.”

“No—I—I suppose not,” murmured Anne, seeing that Miss Patty was quite
solemnly in earnest.

“Of course not. So I have to go along to look after her. I expect to
enjoy it, too; I’m seventy years old, but I’m not tired of living yet.
I daresay I’d have gone to Europe before if the idea had occurred to
me. We shall be away for two years, perhaps three. We sail in June and
we shall send you the key, and leave all in order for you to take
possession when you choose. We shall pack away a few things we prize
especially, but all the rest will be left.”

“Will you leave the china dogs?” asked Anne timidly.

“Would you like me to?”

“Oh, indeed, yes. They are delightful.”

A pleased expression came into Miss Patty’s face.

“I think a great deal of those dogs,” she said proudly. “They are over
a hundred years old, and they have sat on either side of this fireplace
ever since my brother Aaron brought them from London fifty years ago.
Spofford Avenue was called after my brother Aaron.”

“A fine man he was,” said Miss Maria, speaking for the first time. “Ah,
you don’t see the like of him nowadays.”

“He was a good uncle to you, Maria,” said Miss Patty, with evident
emotion. “You do well to remember him.”

“I shall always remember him,” said Miss Maria solemnly. “I can see
him, this minute, standing there before that fire, with his hands under
his coat-tails, beaming on us.”

Miss Maria took out her handkerchief and wiped her eyes; but Miss Patty
came resolutely back from the regions of sentiment to those of
business.

“I shall leave the dogs where they are, if you will promise to be very
careful of them,” she said. “Their names are Gog and Magog. Gog looks
to the right and Magog to the left. And there’s just one thing more.
You don’t object, I hope, to this house being called Patty’s Place?”

“No, indeed. We think that is one of the nicest things about it.”

“You have sense, I see,” said Miss Patty in a tone of great
satisfaction. “Would you believe it? All the people who came here to
rent the house wanted to know if they couldn’t take the name off the
gate during their occupation of it. I told them roundly that the name
went with the house. This has been Patty’s Place ever since my brother
Aaron left it to me in his will, and Patty’s Place it shall remain
until I die and Maria dies. After that happens the next possessor can
call it any fool name he likes,” concluded Miss Patty, much as she
might have said, “After that—the deluge.” “And now, wouldn’t you like
to go over the house and see it all before we consider the bargain
made?”

Further exploration still further delighted the girls. Besides the big
living-room, there was a kitchen and a small bedroom downstairs.
Upstairs were three rooms, one large and two small. Anne took an
especial fancy to one of the small ones, looking out into the big
pines, and hoped it would be hers. It was papered in pale blue and had
a little, old-timey toilet table with sconces for candles. There was a
diamond-paned window with a seat under the blue muslin frills that
would be a satisfying spot for studying or dreaming.

“It’s all so delicious that I know we are going to wake up and find it
a fleeting vision of the night,” said Priscilla as they went away.

“Miss Patty and Miss Maria are hardly such stuff as dreams are made
of,” laughed Anne. “Can you fancy them ‘globe-trotting’—especially in
those shawls and caps?”

“I suppose they’ll take them off when they really begin to trot,” said
Priscilla, “but I know they’ll take their knitting with them
everywhere. They simply couldn’t be parted from it. They will walk
about Westminster Abbey and knit, I feel sure. Meanwhile, Anne, we
shall be living in Patty’s Place—and on Spofford Avenue. I feel like a
millionairess even now.”

“I feel like one of the morning stars that sang for joy,” said Anne.

Phil Gordon crept into Thirty-eight, St. John’s, that night and flung
herself on Anne’s bed.

“Girls, dear, I’m tired to death. I feel like the man without a
country—or was it without a shadow? I forget which. Anyway, I’ve been
packing up.”

“And I suppose you are worn out because you couldn’t decide which
things to pack first, or where to put them,” laughed Priscilla.

“E-zackly. And when I had got everything jammed in somehow, and my
landlady and her maid had both sat on it while I locked it, I
discovered I had packed a whole lot of things I wanted for Convocation
at the very bottom. I had to unlock the old thing and poke and dive
into it for an hour before I fished out what I wanted. I would get hold
of something that felt like what I was looking for, and I’d yank it up,
and it would be something else. No, Anne, I did _not_ swear.”

“I didn’t say you did.”

“Well, you looked it. But I admit my thoughts verged on the profane.
And I have such a cold in the head—I can do nothing but sniffle, sigh
and sneeze. Isn’t that alliterative agony for you? Queen Anne, do say
something to cheer me up.”

“Remember that next Thursday night, you’ll be back in the land of Alec
and Alonzo,” suggested Anne.

Phil shook her head dolefully.

“More alliteration. No, I don’t want Alec and Alonzo when I have a cold
in the head. But what has happened you two? Now that I look at you
closely you seem all lighted up with an internal iridescence. Why,
you’re actually _shining!_ What’s up?”

“We are going to live in Patty’s Place next winter,” said Anne
triumphantly. “Live, mark you, not board! We’ve rented it, and Stella
Maynard is coming, and her aunt is going to keep house for us.”

Phil bounced up, wiped her nose, and fell on her knees before Anne.

“Girls—girls—let me come, too. Oh, I’ll be so good. If there’s no room
for me I’ll sleep in the little doghouse in the orchard—I’ve seen it.
Only let me come.”

“Get up, you goose.”

“I won’t stir off my marrow bones till you tell me I can live with you
next winter.”

Anne and Priscilla looked at each other. Then Anne said slowly, “Phil
dear, we’d love to have you. But we may as well speak plainly. I’m
poor—Pris is poor—Stella Maynard is poor—our housekeeping will have to
be very simple and our table plain. You’d have to live as we would.
Now, you are rich and your boardinghouse fare attests the fact.”

“Oh, what do I care for that?” demanded Phil tragically. “Better a
dinner of herbs where your chums are than a stalled ox in a lonely
boardinghouse. Don’t think I’m _all_ stomach, girls. I’ll be willing to
live on bread and water—with just a _leetle_ jam—if you’ll let me
come.”

“And then,” continued Anne, “there will be a good deal of work to be
done. Stella’s aunt can’t do it all. We all expect to have our chores
to do. Now, you—”

“Toil not, neither do I spin,” finished Philippa. “But I’ll learn to do
things. You’ll only have to show me once. I _can_ make my own bed to
begin with. And remember that, though I can’t cook, I _can_ keep my
temper. That’s something. And I _never_ growl about the weather. That’s
more. Oh, please, please! I never wanted anything so much in my
life—and this floor is awfully hard.”

“There’s just one more thing,” said Priscilla resolutely. “You, Phil,
as all Redmond knows, entertain callers almost every evening. Now, at
Patty’s Place we can’t do that. We have decided that we shall be at
home to our friends on Friday evenings only. If you come with us you’ll
have to abide by that rule.”

“Well, you don’t think I’ll mind that, do you? Why, I’m glad of it. I
knew I should have had some such rule myself, but I hadn’t enough
decision to make it or stick to it. When I can shuffle off the
responsibility on you it will be a real relief. If you won’t let me
cast in my lot with you I’ll die of the disappointment and then I’ll
come back and haunt you. I’ll camp on the very doorstep of Patty’s
Place and you won’t be able to go out or come in without falling over
my spook.”

Again Anne and Priscilla exchanged eloquent looks.

“Well,” said Anne, “of course we can’t promise to take you until we’ve
consulted with Stella; but I don’t think she’ll object, and, as far as
we are concerned, you may come and glad welcome.”

“If you get tired of our simple life you can leave us, and no questions
asked,” added Priscilla.

Phil sprang up, hugged them both jubilantly, and went on her way
rejoicing.

“I hope things will go right,” said Priscilla soberly.

“We must _make_ them go right,” avowed Anne. “I think Phil will fit
into our ’appy little ’ome very well.”

“Oh, Phil’s a dear to rattle round with and be chums. And, of course,
the more there are of us the easier it will be on our slim purses. But
how will she be to live with? You have to summer and winter with any
one before you know if she’s _livable_ or not.”

“Oh, well, we’ll all be put to the test, as far as that goes. And we
must quit us like sensible folk, living and let live. Phil isn’t
selfish, though she’s a little thoughtless, and I believe we will all
get on beautifully in Patty’s Place.”




Chapter XI
The Round of Life


Anne was back in Avonlea with the luster of the Thorburn Scholarship on
her brow. People told her she hadn’t changed much, in a tone which
hinted they were surprised and a little disappointed she hadn’t.
Avonlea had not changed, either. At least, so it seemed at first. But
as Anne sat in the Green Gables pew, on the first Sunday after her
return, and looked over the congregation, she saw several little
changes which, all coming home to her at once, made her realize that
time did not quite stand still, even in Avonlea. A new minister was in
the pulpit. In the pews more than one familiar face was missing
forever. Old “Uncle Abe,” his prophesying over and done with, Mrs.
Peter Sloane, who had sighed, it was to be hoped, for the last time,
Timothy Cotton, who, as Mrs. Rachel Lynde said “had actually managed to
die at last after practicing at it for twenty years,” and old Josiah
Sloane, whom nobody knew in his coffin because he had his whiskers
neatly trimmed, were all sleeping in the little graveyard behind the
church. And Billy Andrews was married to Nettie Blewett! They “appeared
out” that Sunday. When Billy, beaming with pride and happiness, showed
his be-plumed and be-silked bride into the Harmon Andrews’ pew, Anne
dropped her lids to hide her dancing eyes. She recalled the stormy
winter night of the Christmas holidays when Jane had proposed for
Billy. He certainly had not broken his heart over his rejection. Anne
wondered if Jane had also proposed to Nettie for him, or if he had
mustered enough spunk to ask the fateful question himself. All the
Andrews family seemed to share in his pride and pleasure, from Mrs.
Harmon in the pew to Jane in the choir. Jane had resigned from the
Avonlea school and intended to go West in the fall.

“Can’t get a beau in Avonlea, that’s what,” said Mrs. Rachel Lynde
scornfully. “_Says_ she thinks she’ll have better health out West. I
never heard her health was poor before.”

“Jane is a nice girl,” Anne had said loyally. “She never tried to
attract attention, as some did.”

“Oh, she never chased the boys, if that’s what you mean,” said Mrs.
Rachel. “But she’d like to be married, just as much as anybody, that’s
what. What else would take her out West to some forsaken place whose
only recommendation is that men are plenty and women scarce? Don’t you
tell me!”

But it was not at Jane, Anne gazed that day in dismay and surprise. It
was at Ruby Gillis, who sat beside her in the choir. What had happened
to Ruby? She was even handsomer than ever; but her blue eyes were too
bright and lustrous, and the color of her cheeks was hectically
brilliant; besides, she was very thin; the hands that held her
hymn-book were almost transparent in their delicacy.

“Is Ruby Gillis ill?” Anne asked of Mrs. Lynde, as they went home from
church.

“Ruby Gillis is dying of galloping consumption,” said Mrs. Lynde
bluntly. “Everybody knows it except herself and her _family_. They
won’t give in. If you ask _them_, she’s perfectly well. She hasn’t been
able to teach since she had that attack of congestion in the winter,
but she says she’s going to teach again in the fall, and she’s after
the White Sands school. She’ll be in her grave, poor girl, when White
Sands school opens, that’s what.”

Anne listened in shocked silence. Ruby Gillis, her old school-chum,
dying? Could it be possible? Of late years they had grown apart; but
the old tie of school-girl intimacy was there, and made itself felt
sharply in the tug the news gave at Anne’s heartstrings. Ruby, the
brilliant, the merry, the coquettish! It was impossible to associate
the thought of her with anything like death. She had greeted Anne with
gay cordiality after church, and urged her to come up the next evening.

“I’ll be away Tuesday and Wednesday evenings,” she had whispered
triumphantly. “There’s a concert at Carmody and a party at White Sands.
Herb Spencer’s going to take me. He’s my _latest_. Be sure to come up
tomorrow. I’m dying for a good talk with you. I want to hear all about
your doings at Redmond.”

Anne knew that Ruby meant that she wanted to tell Anne all about her
own recent flirtations, but she promised to go, and Diana offered to go
with her.

“I’ve been wanting to go to see Ruby for a long while,” she told Anne,
when they left Green Gables the next evening, “but I really couldn’t go
alone. It’s so awful to hear Ruby rattling on as she does, and
pretending there is nothing the matter with her, even when she can
hardly speak for coughing. She’s fighting so hard for her life, and yet
she hasn’t any chance at all, they say.”

The girls walked silently down the red, twilit road. The robins were
singing vespers in the high treetops, filling the golden air with their
jubilant voices. The silver fluting of the frogs came from marshes and
ponds, over fields where seeds were beginning to stir with life and
thrill to the sunshine and rain that had drifted over them. The air was
fragrant with the wild, sweet, wholesome smell of young raspberry
copses. White mists were hovering in the silent hollows and violet
stars were shining bluely on the brooklands.

“What a beautiful sunset,” said Diana. “Look, Anne, it’s just like a
land in itself, isn’t it? That long, low back of purple cloud is the
shore, and the clear sky further on is like a golden sea.”

“If we could sail to it in the moonshine boat Paul wrote of in his old
composition—you remember?—how nice it would be,” said Anne, rousing
from her reverie. “Do you think we could find all our yesterdays there,
Diana—all our old springs and blossoms? The beds of flowers that Paul
saw there are the roses that have bloomed for us in the past?”

“Don’t!” said Diana. “You make me feel as if we were old women with
everything in life behind us.”

“I think I’ve almost felt as if we were since I heard about poor Ruby,”
said Anne. “If it is true that she is dying any other sad thing might
be true, too.”

“You don’t mind calling in at Elisha Wright’s for a moment, do you?”
asked Diana. “Mother asked me to leave this little dish of jelly for
Aunt Atossa.”

“Who is Aunt Atossa?”

“Oh, haven’t you heard? She’s Mrs. Samson Coates of Spencervale—Mrs.
Elisha Wright’s aunt. She’s father’s aunt, too. Her husband died last
winter and she was left very poor and lonely, so the Wrights took her
to live with them. Mother thought we ought to take her, but father put
his foot down. Live with Aunt Atossa he would not.”

“Is she so terrible?” asked Anne absently.

“You’ll probably see what she’s like before we can get away,” said
Diana significantly. “Father says she has a face like a hatchet—it cuts
the air. But her tongue is sharper still.”

Late as it was Aunt Atossa was cutting potato sets in the Wright
kitchen. She wore a faded old wrapper, and her gray hair was decidedly
untidy. Aunt Atossa did not like being “caught in a kilter,” so she
went out of her way to be disagreeable.

“Oh, so you’re Anne Shirley?” she said, when Diana introduced Anne.
“I’ve heard of you.” Her tone implied that she had heard nothing good.
“Mrs. Andrews was telling me you were home. She said you had improved a
good deal.”

There was no doubt Aunt Atossa thought there was plenty of room for
further improvement. She ceased not from cutting sets with much energy.

“Is it any use to ask you to sit down?” she inquired sarcastically. “Of
course, there’s nothing very entertaining here for you. The rest are
all away.”

“Mother sent you this little pot of rhubarb jelly,” said Diana
pleasantly. “She made it today and thought you might like some.”

“Oh, thanks,” said Aunt Atossa sourly. “I never fancy your mother’s
jelly—she always makes it too sweet. However, I’ll try to worry some
down. My appetite’s been dreadful poor this spring. I’m far from well,”
continued Aunt Atossa solemnly, “but still I keep a-doing. People who
can’t work aren’t wanted here. If it isn’t too much trouble will you be
condescending enough to set the jelly in the pantry? I’m in a hurry to
get these spuds done tonight. I suppose you two _ladies_ never do
anything like this. You’d be afraid of spoiling your hands.”

“I used to cut potato sets before we rented the farm,” smiled Anne.

“I do it yet,” laughed Diana. “I cut sets three days last week. Of
course,” she added teasingly, “I did my hands up in lemon juice and kid
gloves every night after it.”

Aunt Atossa sniffed.

“I suppose you got that notion out of some of those silly magazines you
read so many of. I wonder your mother allows you. But she always
spoiled you. We all thought when George married her she wouldn’t be a
suitable wife for him.”

Aunt Atossa sighed heavily, as if all forebodings upon the occasion of
George Barry’s marriage had been amply and darkly fulfilled.

“Going, are you?” she inquired, as the girls rose. “Well, I suppose you
can’t find much amusement talking to an old woman like me. It’s such a
pity the boys ain’t home.”

“We want to run in and see Ruby Gillis a little while,” explained
Diana.

“Oh, anything does for an excuse, of course,” said Aunt Atossa,
amiably. “Just whip in and whip out before you have time to say how-do
decently. It’s college airs, I s’pose. You’d be wiser to keep away from
Ruby Gillis. The doctors say consumption’s catching. I always knew
Ruby’d get something, gadding off to Boston last fall for a visit.
People who ain’t content to stay home always catch something.”

“People who don’t go visiting catch things, too. Sometimes they even
die,” said Diana solemnly.

“Then they don’t have themselves to blame for it,” retorted Aunt Atossa
triumphantly. “I hear you are to be married in June, Diana.”

“There is no truth in that report,” said Diana, blushing.

“Well, don’t put it off too long,” said Aunt Atossa significantly.
“You’ll fade soon—you’re all complexion and hair. And the Wrights are
terrible fickle. You ought to wear a hat, _Miss Shirley_. Your nose is
freckling scandalous. My, but you _are_ redheaded! Well, I s’pose we’re
all as the Lord made us! Give Marilla Cuthbert my respects. She’s never
been to see me since I come to Avonlea, but I s’pose I oughtn’t to
complain. The Cuthberts always did think themselves a cut higher than
any one else round here.”

“Oh, isn’t she dreadful?” gasped Diana, as they escaped down the lane.

“She’s worse than Miss Eliza Andrews,” said Anne. “But then think of
living all your life with a name like Atossa! Wouldn’t it sour almost
any one? She should have tried to imagine her name was Cordelia. It
might have helped her a great deal. It certainly helped me in the days
when I didn’t like _Anne_.”

“Josie Pye will be just like her when she grows up,” said Diana.
“Josie’s mother and Aunt Atossa are cousins, you know. Oh, dear, I’m
glad that’s over. She’s so malicious—she seems to put a bad flavor in
everything. Father tells such a funny story about her. One time they
had a minister in Spencervale who was a very good, spiritual man but
very deaf. He couldn’t hear any ordinary conversation at all. Well,
they used to have a prayer meeting on Sunday evenings, and all the
church members present would get up and pray in turn, or say a few
words on some Bible verse. But one evening Aunt Atossa bounced up. She
didn’t either pray or preach. Instead, she lit into everybody else in
the church and gave them a fearful raking down, calling them right out
by name and telling them how they all had behaved, and casting up all
the quarrels and scandals of the past ten years. Finally she wound up
by saying that she was disgusted with Spencervale church and she never
meant to darken its door again, and she hoped a fearful judgment would
come upon it. Then she sat down out of breath, and the minister, who
hadn’t heard a word she said, immediately remarked, in a very devout
voice, ‘amen! The Lord grant our dear sister’s prayer!’ You ought to
hear father tell the story.”

“Speaking of stories, Diana,” remarked Anne, in a significant,
confidential tone, “do you know that lately I have been wondering if I
could write a short story—a story that would be good enough to be
published?”

“Why, of course you could,” said Diana, after she had grasped the
amazing suggestion. “You used to write perfectly thrilling stories
years ago in our old Story Club.”

“Well, I hardly meant one of that kind of stories,” smiled Anne. “I’ve
been thinking about it a little of late, but I’m almost afraid to try,
for, if I should fail, it would be too humiliating.”

“I heard Priscilla say once that all Mrs. Morgan’s first stories were
rejected. But I’m sure yours wouldn’t be, Anne, for it’s likely editors
have more sense nowadays.”

“Margaret Burton, one of the Junior girls at Redmond, wrote a story
last winter and it was published in the _Canadian Woman_. I really do
think I could write one at least as good.”

“And will you have it published in the _Canadian Woman?_”

“I might try one of the bigger magazines first. It all depends on what
kind of a story I write.”

“What is it to be about?”

“I don’t know yet. I want to get hold of a good plot. I believe this is
very necessary from an editor’s point of view. The only thing I’ve
settled on is the heroine’s name. It is to be _Averil Lester_. Rather
pretty, don’t you think? Don’t mention this to any one, Diana. I
haven’t told anybody but you and Mr. Harrison. _He_ wasn’t very
encouraging—he said there was far too much trash written nowadays as it
was, and he’d expected something better of me, after a year at
college.”

“What does Mr. Harrison know about it?” demanded Diana scornfully.

They found the Gillis home gay with lights and callers. Leonard
Kimball, of Spencervale, and Morgan Bell, of Carmody, were glaring at
each other across the parlor. Several merry girls had dropped in. Ruby
was dressed in white and her eyes and cheeks were very brilliant. She
laughed and chattered incessantly, and after the other girls had gone
she took Anne upstairs to display her new summer dresses.

“I’ve a blue silk to make up yet, but it’s a little heavy for summer
wear. I think I’ll leave it until the fall. I’m going to teach in White
Sands, you know. How do you like my hat? That one you had on in church
yesterday was real dinky. But I like something brighter for myself. Did
you notice those two ridiculous boys downstairs? They’ve both come
determined to sit each other out. I don’t care a single bit about
either of them, you know. Herb Spencer is the one I like. Sometimes I
really do think he’s _Mr. Right_. At Christmas I thought the
Spencervale schoolmaster was that. But I found out something about him
that turned me against him. He nearly went insane when I turned him
down. I wish those two boys hadn’t come tonight. I wanted to have a
nice good talk with you, Anne, and tell you such heaps of things. You
and I were always good chums, weren’t we?”

Ruby slipped her arm about Anne’s waist with a shallow little laugh.
But just for a moment their eyes met, and, behind all the luster of
Ruby’s, Anne saw something that made her heart ache.

“Come up often, won’t you, Anne?” whispered Ruby. “Come alone—I want
you.”

“Are you feeling quite well, Ruby?”

“Me! Why, I’m perfectly well. I never felt better in my life. Of
course, that congestion last winter pulled me down a little. But just
see my color. I don’t look much like an invalid, I’m sure.”

Ruby’s voice was almost sharp. She pulled her arm away from Anne, as if
in resentment, and ran downstairs, where she was gayer than ever,
apparently so much absorbed in bantering her two swains that Diana and
Anne felt rather out of it and soon went away.




Chapter XII
“Averil’s Atonement”


“What are you dreaming of, Anne?”

The two girls were loitering one evening in a fairy hollow of the
brook. Ferns nodded in it, and little grasses were green, and wild
pears hung finely-scented, white curtains around it.

Anne roused herself from her reverie with a happy sigh.

“I was thinking out my story, Diana.”

“Oh, have you really begun it?” cried Diana, all alight with eager
interest in a moment.

“Yes, I have only a few pages written, but I have it all pretty well
thought out. I’ve had such a time to get a suitable plot. None of the
plots that suggested themselves suited a girl named _Averil_.”

“Couldn’t you have changed her name?”

“No, the thing was impossible. I tried to, but I couldn’t do it, any
more than I could change yours. _Averil_ was so real to me that no
matter what other name I tried to give her I just thought of her as
_Averil_ behind it all. But finally I got a plot that matched her. Then
came the excitement of choosing names for all my characters. You have
no idea how fascinating that is. I’ve lain awake for hours thinking
over those names. The hero’s name is _Perceval Dalrymple_.”

“Have you named _all_ the characters?” asked Diana wistfully. “If you
hadn’t I was going to ask you to let me name one—just some unimportant
person. I’d feel as if I had a share in the story then.”

“You may name the little hired boy who lived with the _Lesters_,”
conceded Anne. “He is not very important, but he is the only one left
unnamed.”

“Call him _Raymond Fitzosborne_,” suggested Diana, who had a store of
such names laid away in her memory, relics of the old “Story Club,”
which she and Anne and Jane Andrews and Ruby Gillis had had in their
schooldays.

Anne shook her head doubtfully.

“I’m afraid that is too aristocratic a name for a chore boy, Diana. I
couldn’t imagine a Fitzosborne feeding pigs and picking up chips, could
you?”

Diana didn’t see why, if you had an imagination at all, you couldn’t
stretch it to that extent; but probably Anne knew best, and the chore
boy was finally christened _Robert Ray_, to be called _Bobby_ should
occasion require.

“How much do you suppose you’ll get for it?” asked Diana.

But Anne had not thought about this at all. She was in pursuit of fame,
not filthy lucre, and her literary dreams were as yet untainted by
mercenary considerations.

“You’ll let me read it, won’t you?” pleaded Diana.

“When it is finished I’ll read it to you and Mr. Harrison, and I shall
want you to criticize it _severely_. No one else shall see it until it
is published.”

“How are you going to end it—happily or unhappily?”

“I’m not sure. I’d like it to end unhappily, because that would be so
much more romantic. But I understand editors have a prejudice against
sad endings. I heard Professor Hamilton say once that nobody but a
genius should try to write an unhappy ending. And,” concluded Anne
modestly, “I’m anything but a genius.”

“Oh I like happy endings best. You’d better let him marry her,” said
Diana, who, especially since her engagement to Fred, thought this was
how every story should end.

“But you like to cry over stories?”

“Oh, yes, in the middle of them. But I like everything to come right at
last.”

“I must have one pathetic scene in it,” said Anne thoughtfully. “I
might let _Robert Ray_ be injured in an accident and have a death
scene.”

“No, you mustn’t kill _Bobby_ off,” declared Diana, laughing. “He
belongs to me and I want him to live and flourish. Kill somebody else
if you have to.”

For the next fortnight Anne writhed or reveled, according to mood, in
her literary pursuits. Now she would be jubilant over a brilliant idea,
now despairing because some contrary character would _not_ behave
properly. Diana could not understand this.

“_Make_ them do as you want them to,” she said.

“I can’t,” mourned Anne. “Averil is such an unmanageable heroine. She
_will_ do and say things I never meant her to. Then that spoils
everything that went before and I have to write it all over again.”

Finally, however, the story was finished, and Anne read it to Diana in
the seclusion of the porch gable. She had achieved her “pathetic scene”
without sacrificing _Robert Ray_, and she kept a watchful eye on Diana
as she read it. Diana rose to the occasion and cried properly; but,
when the end came, she looked a little disappointed.

“Why did you kill _Maurice Lennox?_” she asked reproachfully.

“He was the villain,” protested Anne. “He had to be punished.”

“I like him best of them all,” said unreasonable Diana.

“Well, he’s dead, and he’ll have to stay dead,” said Anne, rather
resentfully. “If I had let him live he’d have gone on persecuting
_Averil_ and _Perceval_.”

“Yes—unless you had reformed him.”

“That wouldn’t have been romantic, and, besides, it would have made the
story too long.”

“Well, anyway, it’s a perfectly elegant story, Anne, and will make you
famous, of that I’m sure. Have you got a title for it?”

“Oh, I decided on the title long ago. I call it _Averil’s atonement_.
Doesn’t that sound nice and alliterative? Now, Diana, tell me candidly,
do you see any faults in my story?”

“Well,” hesitated Diana, “that part where _Averil_ makes the cake
doesn’t seem to me quite romantic enough to match the rest. It’s just
what anybody might do. Heroines shouldn’t do cooking, _I_ think.”

“Why, that is where the humor comes in, and it’s one of the best parts
of the whole story,” said Anne. And it may be stated that in this she
was quite right.

Diana prudently refrained from any further criticism, but Mr. Harrison
was much harder to please. First he told her there was entirely too
much description in the story.

“Cut out all those flowery passages,” he said unfeelingly.

Anne had an uncomfortable conviction that Mr. Harrison was right, and
she forced herself to expunge most of her beloved descriptions, though
it took three re-writings before the story could be pruned down to
please the fastidious Mr. Harrison.

“I’ve left out _all_ the descriptions but the sunset,” she said at
last. “I simply _couldn’t_ let it go. It was the best of them all.”

“It hasn’t anything to do with the story,” said Mr. Harrison, “and you
shouldn’t have laid the scene among rich city people. What do you know
of them? Why didn’t you lay it right here in Avonlea—changing the name,
of course, or else Mrs. Rachel Lynde would probably think she was the
heroine.”

“Oh, that would never have done,” protested Anne. “Avonlea is the
dearest place in the world, but it isn’t quite romantic enough for the
scene of a story.”

“I daresay there’s been many a romance in Avonlea—and many a tragedy,
too,” said Mr. Harrison drily. “But your folks ain’t like real folks
anywhere. They talk too much and use too high-flown language. There’s
one place where that _Dalrymple_ chap talks even on for two pages, and
never lets the girl get a word in edgewise. If he’d done that in real
life she’d have pitched him.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Anne flatly. In her secret soul she thought
that the beautiful, poetical things said to _Averil_ would win any
girl’s heart completely. Besides, it was gruesome to hear of _Averil_,
the stately, queen-like _Averil_, “pitching” any one. _Averil_
“declined her suitors.”

“Anyhow,” resumed the merciless Mr. Harrison, “I don’t see why _Maurice
Lennox_ didn’t get her. He was twice the man the other is. He did bad
things, but he did them. Perceval hadn’t time for anything but
mooning.”

“Mooning.” That was even worse than “pitching!”

“_Maurice Lennox_ was the villain,” said Anne indignantly. “I don’t see
why every one likes him better than _Perceval_.”

“Perceval is too good. He’s aggravating. Next time you write about a
hero put a little spice of human nature in him.”

“_Averil_ couldn’t have married _Maurice_. He was bad.”

“She’d have reformed him. You can reform a man; you can’t reform a
jelly-fish, of course. Your story isn’t bad—it’s kind of interesting,
I’ll admit. But you’re too young to write a story that would be worth
while. Wait ten years.”

Anne made up her mind that the next time she wrote a story she wouldn’t
ask anybody to criticize it. It was too discouraging. She would not
read the story to Gilbert, although she told him about it.

“If it is a success you’ll see it when it is published, Gilbert, but if
it is a failure nobody shall ever see it.”

Marilla knew nothing about the venture. In imagination Anne saw herself
reading a story out of a magazine to Marilla, entrapping her into
praise of it—for in imagination all things are possible—and then
triumphantly announcing herself the author.

One day Anne took to the Post Office a long, bulky envelope, addressed,
with the delightful confidence of youth and inexperience, to the very
biggest of the “big” magazines. Diana was as excited over it as Anne
herself.

“How long do you suppose it will be before you hear from it?” she
asked.

“It shouldn’t be longer than a fortnight. Oh, how happy and proud I
shall be if it is accepted!”

“Of course it will be accepted, and they will likely ask you to send
them more. You may be as famous as Mrs. Morgan some day, Anne, and then
how proud I’ll be of knowing you,” said Diana, who possessed, at least,
the striking merit of an unselfish admiration of the gifts and graces
of her friends.

A week of delightful dreaming followed, and then came a bitter
awakening. One evening Diana found Anne in the porch gable, with
suspicious-looking eyes. On the table lay a long envelope and a
crumpled manuscript.

“Anne, your story hasn’t come back?” cried Diana incredulously.

“Yes, it has,” said Anne shortly.

“Well, that editor must be crazy. What reason did he give?”

“No reason at all. There is just a printed slip saying that it wasn’t
found acceptable.”

“I never thought much of that magazine, anyway,” said Diana hotly. “The
stories in it are not half as interesting as those in the _Canadian
Woman_, although it costs so much more. I suppose the editor is
prejudiced against any one who isn’t a Yankee. Don’t be discouraged,
Anne. Remember how Mrs. Morgan’s stories came back. Send yours to the
_Canadian Woman_.”

“I believe I will,” said Anne, plucking up heart. “And if it is
published I’ll send that American editor a marked copy. But I’ll cut
the sunset out. I believe Mr. Harrison was right.”

Out came the sunset; but in spite of this heroic mutilation the editor
of the _Canadian Woman_ sent Averil’s Atonement back so promptly that
the indignant Diana declared that it couldn’t have been read at all,
and vowed she was going to stop her subscription immediately. Anne took
this second rejection with the calmness of despair. She locked the
story away in the garret trunk where the old Story Club tales reposed;
but first she yielded to Diana’s entreaties and gave her a copy.

“This is the end of my literary ambitions,” she said bitterly.

She never mentioned the matter to Mr. Harrison, but one evening he
asked her bluntly if her story had been accepted.

“No, the editor wouldn’t take it,” she answered briefly.

Mr. Harrison looked sidewise at the flushed, delicate profile.

“Well, I suppose you’ll keep on writing them,” he said encouragingly.

“No, I shall never try to write a story again,” declared Anne, with the
hopeless finality of nineteen when a door is shut in its face.

“I wouldn’t give up altogether,” said Mr. Harrison reflectively. “I’d
write a story once in a while, but I wouldn’t pester editors with it.
I’d write of people and places like I knew, and I’d make my characters
talk everyday English; and I’d let the sun rise and set in the usual
quiet way without much fuss over the fact. If I had to have villains at
all, I’d give them a chance, Anne—I’d give them a chance. There are
some terrible bad men in the world, I suppose, but you’d have to go a
long piece to find them—though Mrs. Lynde believes we’re all bad. But
most of us have got a little decency somewhere in us. Keep on writing,
Anne.”

“No. It was very foolish of me to attempt it. When I’m through Redmond
I’ll stick to teaching. I can teach. I can’t write stories.”

“It’ll be time for you to be getting a husband when you’re through
Redmond,” said Mr. Harrison. “I don’t believe in putting marrying off
too long—like I did.”

Anne got up and marched home. There were times when Mr. Harrison was
really intolerable. “Pitching,” “mooning,” and “getting a husband.”
Ow!!




Chapter XIII
The Way of Transgressors


Davy and Dora were ready for Sunday School. They were going alone,
which did not often happen, for Mrs. Lynde always attended Sunday
School. But Mrs. Lynde had twisted her ankle and was lame, so she was
staying home this morning. The twins were also to represent the family
at church, for Anne had gone away the evening before to spend Sunday
with friends in Carmody, and Marilla had one of her headaches.

Davy came downstairs slowly. Dora was waiting in the hall for him,
having been made ready by Mrs. Lynde. Davy had attended to his own
preparations. He had a cent in his pocket for the Sunday School
collection, and a five-cent piece for the church collection; he carried
his Bible in one hand and his Sunday School quarterly in the other; he
knew his lesson and his Golden Text and his catechism question
perfectly. Had he not studied them—perforce—in Mrs. Lynde’s kitchen,
all last Sunday afternoon? Davy, therefore, should have been in a
placid frame of mind. As a matter of fact, despite text and catechism,
he was inwardly as a ravening wolf.

Mrs. Lynde limped out of her kitchen as he joined Dora.

“Are you clean?” she demanded severely.

“Yes—all of me that shows,” Davy answered with a defiant scowl.

Mrs. Rachel sighed. She had her suspicions about Davy’s neck and ears.
But she knew that if she attempted to make a personal examination Davy
would likely take to his heels and she could not pursue him today.

“Well, be sure you behave yourselves,” she warned them. “Don’t walk in
the dust. Don’t stop in the porch to talk to the other children. Don’t
squirm or wriggle in your places. Don’t forget the Golden Text. Don’t
lose your collection or forget to put it in. Don’t whisper at prayer
time, and don’t forget to pay attention to the sermon.”

Davy deigned no response. He marched away down the lane, followed by
the meek Dora. But his soul seethed within. Davy had suffered, or
thought he had suffered, many things at the hands and tongue of Mrs.
Rachel Lynde since she had come to Green Gables, for Mrs. Lynde could
not live with anybody, whether they were nine or ninety, without trying
to bring them up properly. And it was only the preceding afternoon that
she had interfered to influence Marilla against allowing Davy to go
fishing with the Timothy Cottons. Davy was still boiling over this.

As soon as he was out of the lane Davy stopped and twisted his
countenance into such an unearthly and terrific contortion that Dora,
although she knew his gifts in that respect, was honestly alarmed lest
he should never in the world be able to get it straightened out again.

“Darn her,” exploded Davy.

“Oh, Davy, don’t swear,” gasped Dora in dismay.

“‘Darn’ isn’t swearing—not real swearing. And I don’t care if it is,”
retorted Davy recklessly.

“Well, if you _must_ say dreadful words don’t say them on Sunday,”
pleaded Dora.

Davy was as yet far from repentance, but in his secret soul he felt
that, perhaps, he had gone a little too far.

“I’m going to invent a swear word of my own,” he declared.

“God will punish you if you do,” said Dora solemnly.

“Then I think God is a mean old scamp,” retorted Davy. “Doesn’t He know
a fellow must have some way of ’spressing his feelings?”

“Davy!!!” said Dora. She expected that Davy would be struck down dead
on the spot. But nothing happened.

“Anyway, I ain’t going to stand any more of Mrs. Lynde’s bossing,”
spluttered Davy. “Anne and Marilla may have the right to boss me, but
_she_ hasn’t. I’m going to do every single thing she told me not to do.
You watch me.”

In grim, deliberate silence, while Dora watched him with the
fascination of horror, Davy stepped off the green grass of the
roadside, ankle deep into the fine dust which four weeks of rainless
weather had made on the road, and marched along in it, shuffling his
feet viciously until he was enveloped in a hazy cloud.

“That’s the beginning,” he announced triumphantly. “And I’m going to
stop in the porch and talk as long as there’s anybody there to talk to.
I’m going to squirm and wriggle and whisper, and I’m going to say I
don’t know the Golden Text. And I’m going to throw away both of my
collections _right now_.”

And Davy hurled cent and nickel over Mr. Barry’s fence with fierce
delight.

“Satan made you do that,” said Dora reproachfully.

“He didn’t,” cried Davy indignantly. “I just thought it out for myself.
And I’ve thought of something else. I’m not going to Sunday School or
church at all. I’m going up to play with the Cottons. They told me
yesterday they weren’t going to Sunday School today, ’cause their
mother was away and there was nobody to make them. Come along, Dora,
we’ll have a great time.”

“I don’t want to go,” protested Dora.

“You’ve got to,” said Davy. “If you don’t come I’ll tell Marilla that
Frank Bell kissed you in school last Monday.”

“I couldn’t help it. I didn’t know he was going to,” cried Dora,
blushing scarlet.

“Well, you didn’t slap him or seem a bit cross,” retorted Davy. “I’ll
tell her _that_, too, if you don’t come. We’ll take the short cut up
this field.”

“I’m afraid of those cows,” protested poor Dora, seeing a prospect of
escape.

“The very idea of your being scared of those cows,” scoffed Davy. “Why,
they’re both younger than you.”

“They’re bigger,” said Dora.

“They won’t hurt you. Come along, now. This is great. When I grow up I
ain’t going to bother going to church at all. I believe I can get to
heaven by myself.”

“You’ll go to the other place if you break the Sabbath day,” said
unhappy Dora, following him sorely against her will.

But Davy was not scared—yet. Hell was very far off, and the delights of
a fishing expedition with the Cottons were very near. He wished Dora
had more spunk. She kept looking back as if she were going to cry every
minute, and that spoiled a fellow’s fun. Hang girls, anyway. Davy did
not say “darn” this time, even in thought. He was not sorry—yet—that he
had said it once, but it might be as well not to tempt the Unknown
Powers too far on one day.

The small Cottons were playing in their back yard, and hailed Davy’s
appearance with whoops of delight. Pete, Tommy, Adolphus, and Mirabel
Cotton were all alone. Their mother and older sisters were away. Dora
was thankful Mirabel was there, at least. She had been afraid she would
be alone in a crowd of boys. Mirabel was almost as bad as a boy—she was
so noisy and sunburned and reckless. But at least she wore dresses.

“We’ve come to go fishing,” announced Davy.

“Whoop,” yelled the Cottons. They rushed away to dig worms at once,
Mirabel leading the van with a tin can. Dora could have sat down and
cried. Oh, if only that hateful Frank Bell had never kissed her! Then
she could have defied Davy, and gone to her beloved Sunday School.

They dared not, of course, go fishing on the pond, where they would be
seen by people going to church. They had to resort to the brook in the
woods behind the Cotton house. But it was full of trout, and they had a
glorious time that morning—at least the Cottons certainly had, and Davy
seemed to have it. Not being entirely bereft of prudence, he had
discarded boots and stockings and borrowed Tommy Cotton’s overalls.
Thus accoutered, bog and marsh and undergrowth had no terrors for him.
Dora was frankly and manifestly miserable. She followed the others in
their peregrinations from pool to pool, clasping her Bible and
quarterly tightly and thinking with bitterness of soul of her beloved
class where she should be sitting that very moment, before a teacher
she adored. Instead, here she was roaming the woods with those
half-wild Cottons, trying to keep her boots clean and her pretty white
dress free from rents and stains. Mirabel had offered the loan of an
apron but Dora had scornfully refused.

The trout bit as they always do on Sundays. In an hour the
transgressors had all the fish they wanted, so they returned to the
house, much to Dora’s relief. She sat primly on a hencoop in the yard
while the others played an uproarious game of tag; and then they all
climbed to the top of the pig-house roof and cut their initials on the
saddleboard. The flat-roofed henhouse and a pile of straw beneath gave
Davy another inspiration. They spent a splendid half hour climbing on
the roof and diving off into the straw with whoops and yells.

But even unlawful pleasures must come to an end. When the rumble of
wheels over the pond bridge told that people were going home from
church Davy knew they must go. He discarded Tommy’s overalls, resumed
his own rightful attire, and turned away from his string of trout with
a sigh. No use to think of taking them home.

“Well, hadn’t we a splendid time?” he demanded defiantly, as they went
down the hill field.

“I hadn’t,” said Dora flatly. “And I don’t believe you
had—really—either,” she added, with a flash of insight that was not to
be expected of her.

“I had so,” cried Davy, but in the voice of one who doth protest too
much. “No wonder you hadn’t—just sitting there like a—like a mule.”

“I ain’t going to, ’sociate with the Cottons,” said Dora loftily.

“The Cottons are all right,” retorted Davy. “And they have far better
times than we have. They do just as they please and say just what they
like before everybody. _I_’m going to do that, too, after this.”

“There are lots of things you wouldn’t dare say before everybody,”
averred Dora.

“No, there isn’t.”

“There is, too. Would you,” demanded Dora gravely, “would you say
‘tomcat’ before the minister?”

This was a staggerer. Davy was not prepared for such a concrete example
of the freedom of speech. But one did not have to be consistent with
Dora.

“Of course not,” he admitted sulkily.

“‘Tomcat’ isn’t a holy word. I wouldn’t mention such an animal before a
minister at all.”

“But if you had to?” persisted Dora.

“I’d call it a Thomas pussy,” said Davy.

“_I_ think ‘gentleman cat’ would be more polite,” reflected Dora.

“_You_ thinking!” retorted Davy with withering scorn.

Davy was not feeling comfortable, though he would have died before he
admitted it to Dora. Now that the exhilaration of truant delights had
died away, his conscience was beginning to give him salutary twinges.
After all, perhaps it would have been better to have gone to Sunday
School and church. Mrs. Lynde might be bossy; but there was always a
box of cookies in her kitchen cupboard and she was not stingy. At this
inconvenient moment Davy remembered that when he had torn his new
school pants the week before, Mrs. Lynde had mended them beautifully
and never said a word to Marilla about them.

But Davy’s cup of iniquity was not yet full. He was to discover that
one sin demands another to cover it. They had dinner with Mrs. Lynde
that day, and the first thing she asked Davy was,

“Were all your class in Sunday School today?”

“Yes’m,” said Davy with a gulp. “All were there—’cept one.”

“Did you say your Golden Text and catechism?”

“Yes’m.”

“Did you put your collection in?”

“Yes’m.”

“Was Mrs. Malcolm MacPherson in church?”

“I don’t know.” This, at least, was the truth, thought wretched Davy.

“Was the Ladies’ Aid announced for next week?”

“Yes’m”—quakingly.

“Was prayer-meeting?”

“I—I don’t know.”

“_You_ should know. You should listen more attentively to the
announcements. What was Mr. Harvey’s text?”

Davy took a frantic gulp of water and swallowed it and the last protest
of conscience together. He glibly recited an old Golden Text learned
several weeks ago. Fortunately Mrs. Lynde now stopped questioning him;
but Davy did not enjoy his dinner.

He could only eat one helping of pudding.

“What’s the matter with you?” demanded justly astonished Mrs. Lynde.
“Are you sick?”

“No,” muttered Davy.

“You look pale. You’d better keep out of the sun this afternoon,”
admonished Mrs. Lynde.

“Do you know how many lies you told Mrs. Lynde?” asked Dora
reproachfully, as soon as they were alone after dinner.

Davy, goaded to desperation, turned fiercely.

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” he said. “You just shut up, Dora
Keith.”

Then poor Davy betook himself to a secluded retreat behind the woodpile
to think over the way of transgressors.

Green Gables was wrapped in darkness and silence when Anne reached
home. She lost no time going to bed, for she was very tired and sleepy.
There had been several Avonlea jollifications the preceding week,
involving rather late hours. Anne’s head was hardly on her pillow
before she was half asleep; but just then her door was softly opened
and a pleading voice said, “Anne.”

Anne sat up drowsily.

“Davy, is that you? What is the matter?”

A white-clad figure flung itself across the floor and on to the bed.

“Anne,” sobbed Davy, getting his arms about her neck. “I’m awful glad
you’re home. I couldn’t go to sleep till I’d told somebody.”

“Told somebody what?”

“How mis’rubul I am.”

“Why are you miserable, dear?”

“’Cause I was so bad today, Anne. Oh, I was awful bad—badder’n I’ve
ever been yet.”

“What did you do?”

“Oh, I’m afraid to tell you. You’ll never like me again, Anne. I
couldn’t say my prayers tonight. I couldn’t tell God what I’d done. I
was ’shamed to have Him know.”

“But He knew anyway, Davy.”

“That’s what Dora said. But I thought p’raps He mightn’t have noticed
just at the time. Anyway, I’d rather tell you first.”

“_What_ is it you did?”

Out it all came in a rush.

“I run away from Sunday School—and went fishing with the Cottons—and I
told ever so many whoppers to Mrs. Lynde—oh! ’most half a
dozen—and—and—I—I said a swear word, Anne—a pretty near swear word,
anyhow—and I called God names.”

There was silence. Davy didn’t know what to make of it. Was Anne so
shocked that she never would speak to him again?

“Anne, what are you going to do to me?” he whispered.

“Nothing, dear. You’ve been punished already, I think.”

“No, I haven’t. Nothing’s been done to me.”

“You’ve been very unhappy ever since you did wrong, haven’t you?”

“You bet!” said Davy emphatically.

“That was your conscience punishing you, Davy.”

“What’s my conscience? I want to know.”

“It’s something in you, Davy, that always tells you when you are doing
wrong and makes you unhappy if you persist in doing it. Haven’t you
noticed that?”

“Yes, but I didn’t know what it was. I wish I didn’t have it. I’d have
lots more fun. Where is my conscience, Anne? I want to know. Is it in
my stomach?”

“No, it’s in your soul,” answered Anne, thankful for the darkness,
since gravity must be preserved in serious matters.

“I s’pose I can’t get clear of it then,” said Davy with a sigh. “Are
you going to tell Marilla and Mrs. Lynde on me, Anne?”

“No, dear, I’m not going to tell any one. You are sorry you were
naughty, aren’t you?”

“You bet!”

“And you’ll never be bad like that again.”

“No, but—” added Davy cautiously, “I might be bad some other way.”

“You won’t say naughty words, or run away on Sundays, or tell
falsehoods to cover up your sins?”

“No. It doesn’t pay,” said Davy.

“Well, Davy, just tell God you are sorry and ask Him to forgive you.”

“Have _you_ forgiven me, Anne?”

“Yes, dear.”

“Then,” said Davy joyously, “I don’t care much whether God does or
not.”

“Davy!”

“Oh—I’ll ask Him—I’ll ask Him,” said Davy quickly, scrambling off the
bed, convinced by Anne’s tone that he must have said something
dreadful. “I don’t mind asking Him, Anne.—Please, God, I’m awful sorry
I behaved bad today and I’ll try to be good on Sundays always and
please forgive me.—There now, Anne.”

“Well, now, run off to bed like a good boy.”

“All right. Say, I don’t feel mis’rubul any more. I feel fine. Good
night.”

“Good night.”

Anne slipped down on her pillows with a sigh of relief. Oh—how
sleepy—she was! In another second—

“Anne!” Davy was back again by her bed. Anne dragged her eyes open.

“What is it now, dear?” she asked, trying to keep a note of impatience
out of her voice.

“Anne, have you ever noticed how Mr. Harrison spits? Do you s’pose, if
I practice hard, I can learn to spit just like him?”

Anne sat up.

“Davy Keith,” she said, “go straight to your bed and don’t let me catch
you out of it again tonight! Go, now!”

Davy went, and stood not upon the order of his going.




Chapter XIV
The Summons


Anne was sitting with Ruby Gillis in the Gillis’ garden after the day
had crept lingeringly through it and was gone. It had been a warm,
smoky summer afternoon. The world was in a splendor of out-flowering.
The idle valleys were full of hazes. The woodways were pranked with
shadows and the fields with the purple of the asters.

Anne had given up a moonlight drive to the White Sands beach that she
might spend the evening with Ruby. She had so spent many evenings that
summer, although she often wondered what good it did any one, and
sometimes went home deciding that she could not go again.

Ruby grew paler as the summer waned; the White Sands school was given
up—“her father thought it better that she shouldn’t teach till New
Year’s”—and the fancy work she loved oftener and oftener fell from
hands grown too weary for it. But she was always gay, always hopeful,
always chattering and whispering of her beaux, and their rivalries and
despairs. It was this that made Anne’s visits hard for her. What had
once been silly or amusing was gruesome, now; it was death peering
through a wilful mask of life. Yet Ruby seemed to cling to her, and
never let her go until she had promised to come again soon. Mrs. Lynde
grumbled about Anne’s frequent visits, and declared she would catch
consumption; even Marilla was dubious.

“Every time you go to see Ruby you come home looking tired out,” she
said.

“It’s so very sad and dreadful,” said Anne in a low tone. “Ruby doesn’t
seem to realize her condition in the least. And yet I somehow feel she
needs help—craves it—and I want to give it to her and can’t. All the
time I’m with her I feel as if I were watching her struggle with an
invisible foe—trying to push it back with such feeble resistance as she
has. That is why I come home tired.”

But tonight Anne did not feel this so keenly. Ruby was strangely quiet.
She said not a word about parties and drives and dresses and “fellows.”
She lay in the hammock, with her untouched work beside her, and a white
shawl wrapped about her thin shoulders. Her long yellow braids of
hair—how Anne had envied those beautiful braids in old schooldays!—lay
on either side of her. She had taken the pins out—they made her head
ache, she said. The hectic flush was gone for the time, leaving her
pale and childlike.

The moon rose in the silvery sky, empearling the clouds around her.
Below, the pond shimmered in its hazy radiance. Just beyond the Gillis
homestead was the church, with the old graveyard beside it. The
moonlight shone on the white stones, bringing them out in clear-cut
relief against the dark trees behind.

“How strange the graveyard looks by moonlight!” said Ruby suddenly.
“How ghostly!” she shuddered. “Anne, it won’t be long now before I’ll
be lying over there. You and Diana and all the rest will be going
about, full of life—and I’ll be there—in the old graveyard—dead!”

The surprise of it bewildered Anne. For a few moments she could not
speak.

“You know it’s so, don’t you?” said Ruby insistently.

“Yes, I know,” answered Anne in a low tone. “Dear Ruby, I know.”

“Everybody knows it,” said Ruby bitterly. “I know it—I’ve known it all
summer, though I wouldn’t give in. And, oh, Anne”—she reached out and
caught Anne’s hand pleadingly, impulsively—“I don’t want to die. I’m
_afraid_ to die.”

“Why should you be afraid, Ruby?” asked Anne quietly.

“Because—because—oh, I’m not afraid but that I’ll go to heaven, Anne.
I’m a church member. But—it’ll be all so different. I think—and
think—and I get so frightened—and—and—homesick. Heaven must be very
beautiful, of course, the Bible says so—but, Anne, _it won’t be what
’ve been used to_.”

Through Anne’s mind drifted an intrusive recollection of a funny story
she had heard Philippa Gordon tell—the story of some old man who had
said very much the same thing about the world to come. It had sounded
funny then—she remembered how she and Priscilla had laughed over it.
But it did not seem in the least humorous now, coming from Ruby’s pale,
trembling lips. It was sad, tragic—and true! Heaven could not be what
Ruby had been used to. There had been nothing in her gay, frivolous
life, her shallow ideals and aspirations, to fit her for that great
change, or make the life to come seem to her anything but alien and
unreal and undesirable. Anne wondered helplessly what she could say
that would help her. Could she say anything? “I think, Ruby,” she began
hesitatingly—for it was difficult for Anne to speak to any one of the
deepest thoughts of her heart, or the new ideas that had vaguely begun
to shape themselves in her mind, concerning the great mysteries of life
here and hereafter, superseding her old childish conceptions, and it
was hardest of all to speak of them to such as Ruby Gillis—“I think,
perhaps, we have very mistaken ideas about heaven—what it is and what
it holds for us. I don’t think it can be so very different from life
here as most people seem to think. I believe we’ll just go on living, a
good deal as we live here—and be _ourselves_ just the same—only it will
be easier to be good and to—follow the highest. All the hindrances and
perplexities will be taken away, and we shall see clearly. Don’t be
afraid, Ruby.”

“I can’t help it,” said Ruby pitifully. “Even if what you say about
heaven is true—and you can’t be sure—it may be only that imagination of
yours—it won’t be _just_ the same. It _can’t_ be. I want to go on
living _here_. I’m so young, Anne. I haven’t had my life. I’ve fought
so hard to live—and it isn’t any use—I have to die—and leave
_everything_ I care for.” Anne sat in a pain that was almost
intolerable. She could not tell comforting falsehoods; and all that
Ruby said was so horribly true. She _was_ leaving everything she cared
for. She had laid up her treasures on earth only; she had lived solely
for the little things of life—the things that pass—forgetting the great
things that go onward into eternity, bridging the gulf between the two
lives and making of death a mere passing from one dwelling to the
other—from twilight to unclouded day. God would take care of her
there—Anne believed—she would learn—but now it was no wonder her soul
clung, in blind helplessness, to the only things she knew and loved.

Ruby raised herself on her arm and lifted up her bright, beautiful blue
eyes to the moonlit skies.

“I want to live,” she said, in a trembling voice. “I want to live like
other girls. I—I want to be married, Anne—and—and—have little children.
You know I always loved babies, Anne. I couldn’t say this to any one
but you. I know you understand. And then poor Herb—he—he loves me and I
love him, Anne. The others meant nothing to me, but _he_ does—and if I
could live I would be his wife and be so happy. Oh, Anne, it’s hard.”

Ruby sank back on her pillows and sobbed convulsively. Anne pressed her
hand in an agony of sympathy—silent sympathy, which perhaps helped Ruby
more than broken, imperfect words could have done; for presently she
grew calmer and her sobs ceased.

“I’m glad I’ve told you this, Anne,” she whispered. “It has helped me
just to say it all out. I’ve wanted to all summer—every time you came.
I wanted to talk it over with you—but I _couldn’t_. It seemed as if it
would make death so _sure_ if I _said_ I was going to die, or if any
one else said it or hinted it. I wouldn’t say it, or even think it. In
the daytime, when people were around me and everything was cheerful, it
wasn’t so hard to keep from thinking of it. But in the night, when I
couldn’t sleep—it was so dreadful, Anne. I couldn’t get away from it
then. Death just came and stared me in the face, until I got so
frightened I could have screamed.

“But you won’t be frightened any more, Ruby, will you? You’ll be brave,
and believe that all is going to be well with you.”

“I’ll try. I’ll think over what you have said, and try to believe it.
And you’ll come up as often as you can, won’t you, Anne?”

“Yes, dear.”

“It—it won’t be very long now, Anne. I feel sure of that. And I’d
rather have you than any one else. I always liked you best of all the
girls I went to school with. You were never jealous, or mean, like some
of them were. Poor Em White was up to see me yesterday. You remember Em
and I were such chums for three years when we went to school? And then
we quarrelled the time of the school concert. We’ve never spoken to
each other since. Wasn’t it silly? Anything like that seems silly
_now_. But Em and I made up the old quarrel yesterday. She said she’d
have spoken years ago, only she thought I wouldn’t. And I never spoke
to her because I was sure she wouldn’t speak to me. Isn’t it strange
how people misunderstand each other, Anne?”

“Most of the trouble in life comes from misunderstanding, I think,”
said Anne. “I must go now, Ruby. It’s getting late—and you shouldn’t be
out in the damp.”

“You’ll come up soon again.”

“Yes, very soon. And if there’s anything I can do to help you I’ll be
so glad.”

“I know. You _have_ helped me already. Nothing seems quite so dreadful
now. Good night, Anne.”

“Good night, dear.”

Anne walked home very slowly in the moonlight. The evening had changed
something for her. Life held a different meaning, a deeper purpose. On
the surface it would go on just the same; but the deeps had been
stirred. It must not be with her as with poor butterfly Ruby. When she
came to the end of one life it must not be to face the next with the
shrinking terror of something wholly different—something for which
accustomed thought and ideal and aspiration had unfitted her. The
little things of life, sweet and excellent in their place, must not be
the things lived for; the highest must be sought and followed; the life
of heaven must be begun here on earth.

That good night in the garden was for all time. Anne never saw Ruby in
life again. The next night the A.V.I.S. gave a farewell party to Jane
Andrews before her departure for the West. And, while light feet danced
and bright eyes laughed and merry tongues chattered, there came a
summons to a soul in Avonlea that might not be disregarded or evaded.
The next morning the word went from house to house that Ruby Gillis was
dead. She had died in her sleep, painlessly and calmly, and on her face
was a smile—as if, after all, death had come as a kindly friend to lead
her over the threshold, instead of the grisly phantom she had dreaded.

Mrs. Rachel Lynde said emphatically after the funeral that Ruby Gillis
was the handsomest corpse she ever laid eyes on. Her loveliness, as she
lay, white-clad, among the delicate flowers that Anne had placed about
her, was remembered and talked of for years in Avonlea. Ruby had always
been beautiful; but her beauty had been of the earth, earthy; it had
had a certain insolent quality in it, as if it flaunted itself in the
beholder’s eye; spirit had never shone through it, intellect had never
refined it. But death had touched it and consecrated it, bringing out
delicate modelings and purity of outline never seen before—doing what
life and love and great sorrow and deep womanhood joys might have done
for Ruby. Anne, looking down through a mist of tears, at her old
playfellow, thought she saw the face God had meant Ruby to have, and
remembered it so always.

Mrs. Gillis called Anne aside into a vacant room before the funeral
procession left the house, and gave her a small packet.

“I want you to have this,” she sobbed. “Ruby would have liked you to
have it. It’s the embroidered centerpiece she was working at. It isn’t
quite finished—the needle is sticking in it just where her poor little
fingers put it the last time she laid it down, the afternoon before she
died.”

“There’s always a piece of unfinished work left,” said Mrs. Lynde, with
tears in her eyes. “But I suppose there’s always some one to finish
it.”

“How difficult it is to realize that one we have always known can
really be dead,” said Anne, as she and Diana walked home. “Ruby is the
first of our schoolmates to go. One by one, sooner or later, all the
rest of us must follow.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” said Diana uncomfortably. She did not want to talk
of that. She would have preferred to have discussed the details of the
funeral—the splendid white velvet casket Mr. Gillis had insisted on
having for Ruby—“the Gillises must always make a splurge, even at
funerals,” quoth Mrs. Rachel Lynde—Herb Spencer’s sad face, the
uncontrolled, hysteric grief of one of Ruby’s sisters—but Anne would
not talk of these things. She seemed wrapped in a reverie in which
Diana felt lonesomely that she had neither lot nor part.

“Ruby Gillis was a great girl to laugh,” said Davy suddenly. “Will she
laugh as much in heaven as she did in Avonlea, Anne? I want to know.”

“Yes, I think she will,” said Anne.

“Oh, Anne,” protested Diana, with a rather shocked smile.

“Well, why not, Diana?” asked Anne seriously. “Do you think we’ll never
laugh in heaven?”

“Oh—I—I don’t know” floundered Diana. “It doesn’t seem just right,
somehow. You know it’s rather dreadful to laugh in church.”

“But heaven won’t be like church—all the time,” said Anne.

“I hope it ain’t,” said Davy emphatically. “If it is I don’t want to
go. Church is awful dull. Anyway, I don’t mean to go for ever so long.
I mean to live to be a hundred years old, like Mr. Thomas Blewett of
White Sands. He says he’s lived so long ’cause he always smoked tobacco
and it killed all the germs. Can I smoke tobacco pretty soon, Anne?”

“No, Davy, I hope you’ll never use tobacco,” said Anne absently.

“What’ll you feel like if the germs kill me then?” demanded Davy.




Chapter XV
A Dream Turned Upside Down


“Just one more week and we go back to Redmond,” said Anne. She was
happy at the thought of returning to work, classes and Redmond friends.
Pleasing visions were also being woven around Patty’s Place. There was
a warm pleasant sense of home in the thought of it, even though she had
never lived there.

But the summer had been a very happy one, too—a time of glad living
with summer suns and skies, a time of keen deli

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