 Chapter 1 of Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Anne Shirley, read by Arielle Lipshaw. Diana Barry, read by Eden Ray Hedrick. Gilbert Blythe, read by M.B. Davey Keith, read by Tricia G. Josie Pie, read by Sherry Vance. Marilla Cuthbert. Mrs. Irving. Mrs. Gardner. Read by Elizabeth Clutt. Mrs. Rachel Wind. Read by Capricia Page. Priscilla Grant, read by Beth Thomas. Philippa Gordon, read by Amanda Friday. Ruby Gillis, read by April Gonzalez. Jane Andrews. Woman, Mrs. Lavender. Read by Victoria Martin. Stella Maynard, read by Grace Garrett. Miss Patty Spofford, read by Colinda. Miss Maria Spofford, read by Kristen Young. Aunt Ottossa, read by Avayee. Sam, Pacific Bote. Mr. Harrison, read by Phil Chenevere. Dore Keith, read by Miss Averess. Mrs. Gillis, read by Christine G. Aunt James Cena, read by M.J. Frank. Paul Irving. Alec Ward, read by Justin Grant. Charlotte of the Fourth. Aline Gardner, read by Kristen Young. Royal Gardner, read by Todd. Mrs. Skinner, read by Rapunzelina. The Role of Janet, read by Sarah Holtz. Mr. Douglas, by J. Todd Martinson. Mrs. Douglas, read by Yule Nidamaya. Dorothy Gardner, read by Charlotte Duckett. Mrs. Harmon Andrews, read by Kate Castins. Mrs. Allen, read by Sarah Jennings. Chapter 1 The Shadow of Change. Harvest has 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 thistle-down 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 sear, scarfed with goldenrod. 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 Lavender'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 Lavender and Mr. and Mrs. Allen 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. Allen, said Diana, with gloomy conviction. I suppose we'll have all kinds of supplies this winter, and half the Sunday's 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 at 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 house clean 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. I'd think you go next week. But we are 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 Sloan, said Diana, imitating Anne's italics and slinus. Charlie Sloan will be a great comfort of course, agreed Anne sarcastically, whereupon both those irresponsible damsels laughed. Diana knew exactly what Anne thought of Charlie Sloan, 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 Queens. Christmas will seem like a thousand years away. Everything is changing, we're 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 grown up 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 18, Diana. In two more years we'll be 20. When I was 10, I thought 20 was a green old age. In no time, you'll be a stayed middle-aged matron, and I shall be nice old maid, Anne, coming to visit you on vacations. You'll always keep a corner for me, won't you, die, darling? Not the spare room, of course. Old maids can't aspire to spare rooms, and I shall be as humble as Uriah heap, and quite content with a little over the porch or off the parlor cubbyhole. What nonsense you do talk, Anne? Laughed Diana. You'll marry somebody splendid and handsomely 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's slope and 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're 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 and raptured eyes of those to whom home must always be the loveliest spot in the world, no matter what pharaoh 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 and purpling 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're 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 Gilberts, 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 Sloan's part when she had been sitting at 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 because Dora fell down the outside cellar steps, heels overhead, 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 anyone, Davy boy, and... I ain't crying because Dora fell down cellar. Said Davy, cutting short Anne's well-meant preachment with increasing bitterness. I'm crying because 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. Of course, if she'd been killed, I'd have been real sorry, Anne, but the keys ain't so easy killed. They're like the blue-its, I guess. Her blue-it fell off the hayloft last Wednesday and rolled right down through the turnip shoot 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. Lind says there are some folks you can't kill with a meat ax. Is Mrs. Lind 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 night, Anne? Perhaps. Why? Because, said Davy, very decidedly. If she does, I won't say my prayers before her like I do before you, Anne. Why not? Because I don't think it would be nice to talk to God before strangers, Anne. Dora can say hers to Mrs. Lind if she likes, but I won't. I'll wait till she's gone and then say them. 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 do now because you and Marilla will 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 Bolter 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. Bolter'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 ceiling 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. Bolter. 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 love-lorn 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 fairy 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 AUTOME The following week sped swiftly, crowded with innumerable, last things, as Anne called them. Goodbye 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 AVIS 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 want. 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 surely would put on more heirs 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 light-heartedness. Diana Berry, 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 drainiums 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 anyone spoke to him, and watched Anne surely 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, red 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 AVIS, 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 pie 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 veranda, 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 goodbye 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 cat? 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 BA, and ever since I've been wondering if I am. Mrs. Peter Sloan 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. Alicia 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 copper-toned boots. Anne ended with a laugh and a sigh commingled. With her sensitive nature all disapproval had wait, even the disapproval of those for whose opinion 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, actually creatures though they are. To do anything they have never done is anathema marinantha. You're the first Avonlea girl who has ever gone to college, and you know that all pioneers are considered to be afflicted with moon-struck 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. Alicia 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. I'll 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're two children again, and we'll go the way 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. Lind and Marilla watched them from the kitchen window. That'll be a match some day. Mrs. Lind 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. Lind's gossipy matter-of-fact way. They're only children yet. She said shortly. Mrs. Lind laughed good-naturedly. Anne is eighteen. I was married when I was that age. We old folks, Marilla, are too 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 anyone 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 co-educational places, and never did, that's what. I don't believe. Concluded, Mrs. Lind 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 Sloan is wild about her too. But I'd never advise her to marry a Sloan. The Sloans are good, honest, respectable people, of course. But when all's said and done, they're Sloans. Marilla nodded. To an outsider, the statement that Sloans were Sloans might not be very illuminating, but she understood. Every village has such a family. Good, honest, respectable people they may be, but Sloans 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 fur 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 wax and 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 twilight's, tristing 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, passed a dour plantation of gnarled spruces, and a maple-fringed, sun-warm valley they found that something Gilbert was looking for. Ah, here it is! he said with satisfaction. An apple tree, and a way back here, exclaimed Anne delightedly. Yes, a veritable apple-bearing apple tree, too. Here in the very midst of pines and beaches, 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. Seeds loaded! They look good, too. Tony is russets, but with a dusky red cheek. Most wild seedlings are green and uninviting. I suppose it sprang years ago from some chantsown 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'll 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 Lovers Lane. Do you feel as disgruntled now as when you started out, Anne? Not I. Those apples have been as mana to a hungry soul. I feel that I shall love Redmond and have a splendid four years there. And, uh, 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. Lovers 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. 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 and missed, 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 dryads bubble, the haunted woods and lovers' 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 goodbye 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 Charlotte Town 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 and the clouds, burnishing the grey 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 old 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 child Harold. Only it isn't really my native shore that I'm watching, said Anne, winking her grey 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 PEI for me. I can't believe I didn't always live here. Those eleven years before I came seemed 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 wincy dress and faded sailor hat, exploring decks and cabins within raptured 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 in 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 I went, and I'll have to wait until I get into my boarding house 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 boarding house. I have 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 Sloan 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? Growned, Anne. You mean we'll be in some horrible boarding house, in a still more horrible hall bedroom looking out on a dingy backyard? It isn't a horrible boarding house, Anne-girl. Here's our cab. Hop in. The driver will get your trunk. Oh yes, the boarding house. 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 grey 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 borders just to fill up. At least, that is the reason our land ladies are very anxious to impress on us. They're delicious, Anne. Our land ladies, 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, there 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 borders 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 whole bedrooms, and mine does look out on the backyard. Your room is the front one, and looks at an old St John's graveyard, which is just across the street. That sounds gruesome, shivered Anne. I think I'd rather have the backyard 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 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's 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 are coming to say goodnight. Must I really shake hands with Charlie's Sloan Anne? His hands are always so cold and fishy feeling. We must ask him 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, pleased to be sure they didn't sit on her beautiful cushions. I promise to say to it, but goodness knows where else they can sit unless they sit on the floor. There are cushions on everything. Miss Ada even has an elaborate Battenberg 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. Kingsport is a quaint old town, harking back to early colonial days and wrapped in its ancient atmosphere as some final 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. Four, 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 chiseled brown or grey native stone, and only in a few cases is there any attempted ornamentation. Some are adorned with skull and crossbones, and this grisly decoration is frequently coupled with a cherub's head. Many are prostrate and in ruins. In 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 clamour 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 ascant 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 glies 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 at the sight of a slone, 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 softs 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 soft more of them all. No doubt it is rather dreadful to feel insignificant, but I think it's better that than to feel as big and awkward as I did, as if I was sprawled all over Redmond. That's how I felt. I suppose because I was a good two inches taller than anyone else in the crowd. I wasn't afraid a soft might walk all 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 Redmonds for not being little queens, said Anne, gathering about her the shreds of her old cheerful philosophy to cover her nakedness of spirit. When we left Queens 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 Queens, and now we feel as if the ground had slipped from under our feet. I'm thankful that neither Mrs. Lind nor Mrs. Alicia 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 annish. 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 co-ed's dressing room all the morning, the pretty one with the brown eyes and the 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 wish 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 the big hall with all those boys howling on the stairs. She was the prettiest freshette I saw to-day, but probably favour 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-out-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 layeth the body of Albert Crawford Esquire, read Anne from a worn gray slab. For many years keeper of his majesty's ordinance 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 29, 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 Rass, 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 her 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 favourite child. And here is another, erected to the memory of one who is buried elsewhere. I wonder where that unknown grave is. Really, Prissy, 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 she has 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 contrived and homemade beside 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. What 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 Bowlingbrook, Nova Scotia, said Philippa. Bowlingbrook exclaimed Anne, why, that is where I was born. Do you really mean it? Why, that makes you a blue nose 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 Bowlingbrook 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 in decision, as afore said. 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 naïve 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 someone 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, I 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 Bowlingbroke, 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? 38 St. John's Street. Better and better. Why, I'm just around the corner on Wallace Street. I don't like my boarding house, though. It's bleak and lonesome. And my room looks out on such an unholy backyard. 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 and backyards 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're 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 BA 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 BA'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 BA 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 Alonso 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 Alonso? Asked Priscilla gravely. Think of marrying a name like Alonso. Said Phil doorfully. 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 burn tendencies as I grow older. I examine it every day anxiously to make sure it's still Gordon. Mother was a burn and has the burn nose in the burnous degree. Wait till you see it. I adore nice noses. Your nose is awfully nice and surely. Alonso's nose nearly turned the balance in his favor. But Alonso! 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 Alonso feel like when you came away? Quirried 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 bows 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 discussed to do 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 midi 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 overarching trees and long aisles of shadows, faded from her sight. Instead, she saw the Kingsport harbour of nearly a century ago. 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-dual. Well, what do you think about 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 bows, that she is doing it to rub it well into you that you haven't half so many. Now, when Phil talks of her bows, 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 play fellows 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. 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 homogenous again, instead of being made up of detached fragments. The freshman, 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 freshman's banner was attributed to the strategic generalship of Gilbert Blythe, who marshaled the campaign and originated certain new tactics, which demoralized the soffs, and swept the freshman 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 Lambo 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 sun bonnet, and a voluminous kitchen apron of godly flowered calico. This he did cheerfully, doffing his sun bonnet with courtly grace when he met ladies of his acquaintance. Charlie Sloan, 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 Sloan in a calico apron and a sun bonnet. Giggled Priscilla. He'd look exactly like his old grandmother Sloan. Gilbert now, looked as much like a man in them as in his own proper habilaments. 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 blue-nosed 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 avanly 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 bows 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 lovers' 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 manny 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 surely 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 let 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 news 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 Berry, Marilla, Mrs. Lind, and Davey. Jane's was a copper plate 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 post script. Gilbert seems to be enjoying Redmond, judging from his letters. 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 post script. 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. Marillas 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. Lynn's letter was full of church news. Having broken up housekeeping, Mrs. Lynn had more time than ever to devote to church affairs and had flung herself into them heart and soul. She was at present much to work 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 the foreign missions will be clean wasted, that's what. Last Sunday night he announced that the 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 in? 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, Ann. 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 wide as sepulchres, and inwardly as ravining 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 Ann had been here, wouldn't she have laughed, 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 on the back porch, unbeknownst us. And it was there when the minister appeared in the doorway. It made one wild bolt to get out. And there was nowhere to bolt 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 on 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 greening 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 a 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 ran 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. Allen doing that. It'll be a long time before we get a man like Mr. Allen, but it's an ill wind that blows no good. I've never seen hoof nor hair of that pig since, and it's my belief we never will. Things is pretty quiet and avanly. I don't find green gables as lonesome as I expected. I think I'll start another cotton warp quilt this winter. Mrs. Silas Sloan has a handsome new apple leaf pattern. When I feel that I must have some excitement, I'll read the murder trials and 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. Amarillo 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 McPherson to move down to my place. She's a great housekeeper in very particular. She's rooted on my June lilies up because she says that they make the garden look so untidy. Thomas set them lilies out when we were married. Her husband seems a nice sort of man. But she can't get over being an old maid. That's what. Don't study too hard and be sure to put your winter underclothes on as soon as the weather gets cold. Marilla worries about you a lot. 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. Davey's letter plunged into a grievance at the start. Dear Anne, please write and tell Marilla not to tie me to the rail of the bridge when I go fishing. The boys make fun of me when she does. It's awful lonesome here without you. But great fun in school. Jane Andrews is crosser than you. I scared Mrs. Lind with a Jackie Lantern last night. She was awful mad and she was mad because I chased her old rooster around the yard till he fell down dead. I didn't mean to make him fall down dead. What made him die, Anne? I want to know. Mrs. Lind threw him into the pig pen. She might have sold him to Mr. Blair. Mr. Blair is giving fifty cents a piece for good dead roosters now. I heard Mrs. Lind 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. Milti Bolter told me a great story in school yesterday. It is true. Old Joe Mosey and Leon were playing cards one night last week in the woods. The cards were on a stump and a big black man bigger than the trees came along and grabbed the cards in the stump and disappeared with a noise like thunder. I'll bet they were scared. Milti says the black man was the old Harry. Was he Anne? I want to know. Mr. Kimball over at Spencer Vale is very sick and will have to go to the hospitable. Please excuse me while I ask Marilla if that spelled right. Marilla says it's the silo he has to go to, not the other place. He thinks he has a snake inside of him. What's it like to have a snake inside of you, Anne? I want to know. Mrs. Lawrence Bell is sick, too. Mrs. Lint 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. Lint would think of Philippa? End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6 of Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Chapter 6 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 in the pines. Does we include anyone but yourself in 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 post-script. Then I mailed both letters. I got Alonzo's reply this morning. Girls, I had put that post-script 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 redman 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 Ann would not answer. He and Charlie would 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 Sloan 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 all 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 slownishness, and I wasn't a match for both combined. Miss Ada's cushions are really getting on my nerves, said Ann. 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, Ann. But why does he go around so much with goggle eyes? Ann stiffened. She had no great liking for Charlie Sloan, 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. Priscilla 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 peas, as Ann called them, did carry out their amiable intentions. But Sloan 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 Ann. She would see that some people appreciated him at his real value. Gilbert and Ann 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 to the harbor shore. The silence here is like a prayer, isn't it? said Ann, 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 or taken 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? I think, if ever any great sorrow came to me, I would come to the pines for comfort, said Ann dreamily. I hope no great sorrow ever will come to you, Ann, 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 Ann. 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, Ann, said Gilbert in the tone that meant danger ahead. Then you would be very unwise, rejoined Ann hastily. I'm sure no life can be properly developed and rounded out without some trial in 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, sat in smooth and silver-gray, and beyond, clean-shaven Williams 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 Williams 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, uh, 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 plate glassy. 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, Alissum, Petunias, Marigolds and Chrysanthemums. A tiny brick wall in herringbone 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 Lavender'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. Paddy's place. Isn't that killing? Especially on this avenue of pine hearse and elm-wolds and cedar crops? Paddy's place, if you please. I adore it. Have you any idea who Paddy is? Asked Priscilla. Paddy 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 Paddy won't sal upon any consideration. And there's an apple orchard behind the house, in place of a backyard. You'll see it when we get a little past. A real apple orchard on Spofford Avenue. I'm going to dream about Paddy'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 Paddy's place and I are going to be better acquainted yet. End of Chapter 6 Chapter 7 of Anne of the Island by Lucy Mod Montgomery. This Slipperovox recording is in the public domain. Anne of the Island by Lucy Mod Montgomery. Chapter 7 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 there from more or less triumphantly. The honor of leading in the freshman classes fluctuated between Anne, Gilbert, and Philippa. Priscilla did very well, Charlie Sloan scraped through respectively, 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 Bowlingbrook 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 Bowlingbrook someday. 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. Bowlingbrook 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. Lind 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 boarding house 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. Davey means that for an Indian war group, said Diana. Mr. Harrison's hired boy taught it to him, and he's been practicing it up to welcome you with. Mrs. Lynn says it's worn her nerves to a frazzlet. 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. Lynn said up to the last that Davey would blow himself and everybody else up if he was let. Anne was out of the buggy by this time, and Davey 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, because 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, saunzy, 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 rosebud 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 Gailey. 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. Linda 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 didn'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 flanneled body on her knee and cuddled his head on her arm. Do I ever get mad when you tell me things, Davy? No, 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 ashamed of me, I suppose. 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 suppose it was so—so— I didn't suppose 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-woops, 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 faraway 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 Lavender and Paul. Anne opened them in the cheerful Green Gables kitchen, which was filled with what Davey sniffing an ecstasy called Pretty Smells. Miss Lavender and Mr. Irving are settled in their new home now, reported Anne. I am sure Miss Lavender is perfectly happy. I know it by the general tone of her letter, but there's a note from Charlotte of the Fourth. She doesn't like Boston at all and she is fearfully homesick. Miss Lavender 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 Dicks. I want to see Theodora. By the way, is Ludovic's 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. Lind, and there is not the slightest doubt but that she would. There was also a characteristic scrawl from Philippa, full of Alec and Alonso, what they said and what they did and how they looked when they saw her. But I can't make up my mind yet, witch, to marry, wrote Phil. I do wish you would come with me to decide for me. Someone 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 Alonso 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, gray, brownie 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 thumb things no fellow can understand. Anne, did you ever get on a street car and then discover that you had in 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 absent-mindedness and not an unprincipled creature trying to obtain a ride upon false pretenses? How I wished that Alec or Alonso 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 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'd 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 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 lunchbasket with them. Echo Lodge, which had been closed ever since Miss Lavender's wedding, was briefly thrown open to wind and sunshine once more, and firelight glimmered again in the little rooms. The perfume of Miss Lavender's rose-bowl still filled the air. It was hardly possible to believe that Miss Lavender would not come tripping in presently, with her brown eyes a star with welcome, and that Charlotte of 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. 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 hurdles over the frozen meadows and black hollows, and moans around the eaves like a lost creature, and drives the snow sharply against the shaking pains. 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 her old quartet, thought Anne drowsily. Allowed, 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 dislike 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 someone 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 also 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 enamoured 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 Kither 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 blew it pretty well, too, and mother would rather he married her than anyone. 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 anyone. 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 blew it. Nettie blew it. 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 two damsel lay on a wakeful pillow until the wee smaz, 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 honour 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 someone, 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 suppose it would come someday, 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 someone should ask her the great question, and it had, in those dreams, always been very romantic and beautiful, and the someone 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 unall trouble lifelong 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, net he blew it wood. 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 humdrum? END OF 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 38 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, freshy, a jolly little round sophomore, and a tall learned junior who all liked to call at 38 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, Anneward. To her he had become again the boy-comrade of Avonlea Dayes, 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 Sloan, sitting bolt upright on Miss Ada's most dearly beloved cushion, asked Anne one night if she would promise to become Mrs. Charlie Sloan some day. Coming after Billy Andrew's 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 Sloan, as Mrs. Rachel Lind would ask scornfully? Charlie's whole attitude, tone, air, words, fairly reeked with slownishness. He was conferring a great honour, no doubt whatever about that. And when Anne, utterly insensible to the honour, refused him, as delicately and considerably as she could, for even a Sloan had feelings which ought not to be unduly lacerated, slownishness 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 slownishness 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 Sloan? Was it possible anything Charlie Sloan could say had power to make her angry? Oh, this was degradation indeed, worse even than being the rival of Netty Blewitt. 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. Someday I'm going to write a treatise on the trials of a country school mom. 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 salary. My treatise shall tell the truth about us. Why, if a week should pass without someone 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 aunt. Well, you get your money easy, some rate-payer will tell me condescendingly. All you have to do is sit there and hear lessons. I used to argue the matter at first, but I'm wiser now. Facts are stubborn things, but as someone as wisely said, not half so stubborn as fallacies. So why 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. My oldest is 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 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 an 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 Susie's father wants to know why Susie 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 school marms. 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 have 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. You 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 Jamesy. Well, her only daughter is recently married and gone to the foreign mission field. Aunt Jamesina is left alone in a big house, and she is horribly lonesome. She will come to Kingsport and keep house first 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 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 furniture between us and old family friends with addicts. 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 Aunt delightedly. Of course we have a nice boarding house here, but when all said and done, a boarding house 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, Aunt. Nice houses in nice localities will probably be a way 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 of dreams, as Aunt called it, remained a castle in the air. We shall have to give up and wait to 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 harbour was creaming and shimmering beneath the pearl hewed mists floating over it. We may find some shack to shelter us then, and if not, boarding houses 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 grey 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 and violet veil. 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 only we could find a house. Side, 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 spring tide, and they went home as usual by way of Spofford Avenue, that they might have the delight of looking at Patti'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 seeing things? Priscilla looked. Anne's thumbs and eyes had not deceived her. Over the arched gateway of Patti'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 Patti's place? No, I don't. Avert 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. There's 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 to-morrow. Oh, Priscilla, we can get this darling spot. I've always felt that my fortunes were linked with Patti's place ever since I saw it first. End of Chapter 9 Chapter 10 of Anne of the Island This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery Chapter 10 Patti's Place The next evening found them treading resolutely the herringbone walk through the tiny garden. The April wind was filling the pine trees with its round delay 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, whereby a cheery little fire sat two other ladies, both of whom were also grim and ancient. Except that one looked to be about seventy in 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 grey shawl. Each was knitting without haste and without rest. Each rocked placidly and looked at the girls without speaking. And just behind each set 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 Patti'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 Patti Spofford. Oh, yes, said Miss Patti. I intended to take that sign down today. Then—then we are too late, said Anne sorrowfully. You've led it to someone 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 Patti lay down her knitting, take off her specs, rub them, put them on again, and for the first time look at Anne as 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 Patti 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 that 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 Patti. 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 we'll be good to it. You can have it. If we can afford to pay what you ask for it, hesitated Anne. Miss Patti 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 Patti, ceasing not to knit. Anne named her amount. Miss Patti 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 Patti 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 stale 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 too? Oh indeed, yes, they are delightful. A pleased expression came into Miss Patti'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. He was a good uncle to you, Maria, said Miss Patti 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 was hands under his coattails beaming on us. Miss Maria took out her handkerchief and wiped her eyes, but Miss Patti 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 more thing. You don't object, I hope, to this house being called Patti's place. No indeed. We think that is one of the nicest things about it. You have sense, I see. Said Miss Patti 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 Patti's place ever since my brother Aaron left it to me in his will, and Patti's place it shall remain until I die, and Maria dies. After that happens, the next possessor can call it any full name he likes. Concluded Miss Patti, 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 this 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 in a special 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-pained window with a seat under the blue muslin frills that would be a satisfying spot for studying or dreaming. It's also 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 Patti 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 Patti's place and on Spofford Avenue. I feel like a millionaire-ess even now. I feel like one of the morning stars that sang for joy. Said Anne. Phil Gordon crept into 38 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. Exactly. 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 a literative 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 bored. 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 boarding house fair attests the fact. Oh, what do I care for that? Demanded Phil tragically. Better a dinner of herbs where you chums are than a stalled ox in a lonely boarding house. Don't think I'm all stomach girls. I'll be willing to live on bread and water with just a little jam, if you 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 collars 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 happy little omen very well. Oh Phil's a dear to rattle around with and be chums, and of course the more there are of us the easier it'll be on our slim purses, but how will she be to live with? You have to summer and winter with anyone 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. End of Chapter 10 Chapter 11 of Anne of the Island 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 Lind 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. Anne Billy Andrews was married to Netty Blewett. They appeared out that Sunday. When Billy, beaming with pride and happiness, showed his beplumed and besilked bride into the Harmon Andrews' pew, Anne dropped her lips 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 Netty 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 bow in Avonlea, that's what, said Mrs. Rachel Lind 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 hecticly 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. Lind as they went home from church. Ruby Gillis is dying of galloping consumption. Said Mrs. Lind 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 Sand School. She'll be in her grave, poor girl, when White Sand School opens. That's what. Anne listened and 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, Wednesday evenings. She had whispered triumphantly. There's a concert of comedy and a party at White Sands. Herbs, pincers, going to take me. He's my latest. Be sure to come tomorrow. And I'll have a good talk with you. I want to hear all about your duings at Redmond. Anne knew that Ruby meant she wanted to tell Anne 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's nothing to 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, twilight 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 farther 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 Antitasa. Who is Antitasa? Oh, haven't you heard? She's Mrs. Samson Coates of Spencer Vale. 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 rights took her to live with them. Mother thought we ought to take her, but Father put us foot down. Live with Antitasa, 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 said she has a face like a hatchet. He cuts the air, but her tongue is sharper still. Late as it was, Antitasa was cutting potato sets in the right kitchen. She wore a faded old wrapper, and her gray hair was decidedly untidy. Antitasa 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 Antitasa 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 is 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, I thought you might like some. Oh, thanks. Said Antitasa 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, Antitasa solemnly. But still I keep 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'd 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. Antitasa 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 would be a suitable wife for him. Antitasa sighed heavily, as if all forebodings upon the occasion of George Berry'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 Antitasa, amiably. Just whip in and whip out before you have time to say how do decently. It's college airs, I suppose. You'd be wiser to keep away from Ruby Gillis. The doctors say consumption's catching. I always knew Ruby'd get something, getting 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 Antitasa triumphantly. I hear you are to be married in June, Diana. There's no truth in that report. Said Diana, blushing. Well, don't put it off too long. Said Antitasa significantly. You'll fade soon. You're all complexion and hair. And the rites are terrible fickle. You ought to wear a hat, Miss Shirley. Your nose is freckling scandalous. My, but you are red-headed. Well, I suppose we're all as the Lord made us. Give Marilla Cuthbert my respects. She's never been to see me since I come to Evan Lee, but I suppose I oughtn't to complain. The Cuthberts always did think themselves a cut higher than anyone else around here. Oh, isn't she dreadful? Gasp'd, 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 Etasa. Wouldn't it sour almost anyone? 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 Pie will be just like her when she grows up, said Diana. Josie's mother and Antitasa are cousins, you know. Oh, dear, I'm glad that's over. She's so malicious. Seems to put a bad flavor in everything. Father tells such a funny story about her. One time they had a minister in Spencer Vale who was a very good spiritual man, but very deaf. He couldn't hear any ordinary conversation at all. While they used to have a prayer meeting on Sunday evening, 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 Antitasa 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 10 years. Finally, she wound up by saying that she was disgusted with Spencer Vale 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. He 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 in, 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. But 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 Avril Lester. Rather pretty, don't you think? Don't mention this to anyone, 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 collars. 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 had blue silhouettes in makeup yet, but it's a little heavy for some of that. I think I'll leave it until the fall. I'm going to teach you white signs, you know. How do you like my hat? That one you had on in church yesterday was real, didn't you? But I like something brighter for myself, which you notice the stereosacral stores just as. They've both come to demeaned just at each other at. I don't care a single bit about either of them, you know. Herb's fans say I still want to like. Sometimes I really think he's Mr. Wright, at Christmas I thought Spencervale. It's called Master Mustat, but I found out something about him that turned me against him. To nail him with insanity is turning him down. Her wishless war is hadn't come to night, but wanted to have a nice good talk with you, Anne, and tell us a heaps of things. You and I, we always get chums, don'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? Well, I'm perfectly well. I never felt better in my life. The cause, this congestion, just went at poor rhythm at all. Just in my collar. 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. End of Chapter 11 Chapter 12 of Anne of the Island This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery Chapter 12 Abrils 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 Abril. 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. Abril was so real to me that no matter what other name I tried to give her, I just thought of her as Abril 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 Percival 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 lasters, conceded Anne. He is not very important, but he is the only one left unnamed. Call him Raymonde Fitzasborn. 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 school days, Anne shook her head doubtfully. I'm afraid that is too aristocratic a name for a chore boy, Diana. I couldn't imagine a Fitzasborn 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'd 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. Avril 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 Avril and Percival. 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 it 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 Avril'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 Avril makes the cake doesn't seem to me quite romantic enough to match the rest. It's just what anybody might do. Here one 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 rewritings before the story could be pruned down to please the fastidious Mr. Harrison. I've left out all the descriptions about 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 Lynn 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 dryly. 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 derrymple 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 Avaril would win any girl's heart completely. Besides, it was gruesome to hear of Avaril, the stately queen-like Avaril, pitching anyone. Avaril 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. Percival 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 everyone likes him better than Percival. Percival is too good. He's aggravating. Next time you write about a hero, put a little spice of human nature in him. Avaril couldn't have married Maurice. He was bad. She'd have reformed him. You can reform a man. You can't reform a jellyfish, 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 worthwhile. 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 anyone 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 Avril'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 Garrett trunk where the old story club tales were posed, 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 sideways 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 19 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 pest her editors with it. I'd write of people in 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, and 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 Mr. Flynn 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, moaning, and getting a husband. Ow! End of Chapter 12 Davey and Dora were ready for Sunday School. They were going alone, which did not often happen, for Mrs. Lind always attended Sunday School. But Mrs. Lind 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. Davey came downstairs slowly. Dora was waiting in the hall for him, having been made ready by Mrs. Lind. Davey had attended to his own preparations. He had a scent 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 per force in Mrs. Lind's kitchen all last Sunday afternoon, Davey 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. Lind limped out of her kitchen as he joined Dora. Are you clean? She demanded severely. Yes, all of me that shows. Davey answered with a defiant scowl. Mrs. Rachel sighed. She had her suspicions about Davey's neck and ears. But she knew that if she attempted to make a personal examination, Davey 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 wiggle 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. Davey deigned no response. He marched away down the lane, followed by the meek Dora. But his soul seethed within. Davey had suffered, or thought he had suffered, many things at the hands and tongue of Mrs. Rachel Lind since she had come to Green Gables. For Mrs. Lind could not live with anybody, whether they were nine or ninety, without trying to bring them up properly. And it was only the proceeding afternoon that she had interfered to influence Marilla against allowing Davey to go fishing with the Timothy Cottons. Davey was still boiling over this. As soon as he was out of the lane, Davey 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 Davey. Oh Davey, don't swear! gasped Dora into smay. Darn ain't swearing, not real swearing, and I don't care if it is! retorted Davey recklessly. Well if you must say dreadful words, don't say them on Sunday! pleaded Dora. Davey was is 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 Davey. Doesn't he know a fellow must have some way of expressing his feelings? Davey! said Dora. She expected that Davey would be struck down dead on the spot, but nothing happened. Anyway, I ain't going to stand any more of Mrs. Lynn's bossing. spluttered Davey. Ann and Mirella 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, Davey 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 on 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 Davey hurled scent and nickel over Mr. Berry's fence with fierce delight. Satan made you do that, said Dora reproachfully. He didn't, cried Davey 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, because their mother was away and there was nobody to take them. Come along, Dora. We'll have a great time. I don't want to go, protested Dora. You've got to, said Davey. 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 Davey. I'll tell her that, too, if you don't come. We'll take the shortcut up this field. I'm afraid of those cows, protested poor Dora, seeing a prospect of escape. The very idea of you're being scared of those cows, scoffed Davey. 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 Davey 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. Davey 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 backyard, and hailed Davey'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 Davey. 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 Davey 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 Davey seemed to have it. Not being entirely bereft of prudence, he had discarded boots and stockings, and borrowed Tommy Cotton's overalls. Thus a-cootered, 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 in 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. Mirabelle 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 hen-coupe 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 saddle-board. The flat-roofed hen-house and a pile of straw beneath gave Davey 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, Davey 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 Davey, 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 associate with the cottons, said Dora loftily. The cottons are all right, retorted Davey. 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. Avert Dora. No, there isn't. There is, too. Would you? Demanded Dora gravely. Would you say Tomcat before the minister? This was a staggerer. Davey 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 Davey. I think Gentleman Cat would be more polite. Reflected Dora. You thinking. Retorted Davey with withering scorn. Davey 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. Lind might be bossy, but there was always a box of cookies in her kitchen cupboard, and she was not stingy. At this inconvenient moment, Davey remembered that when he had torn his new school pants the week before, Mrs. Lind had mended them beautifully and never said a word to Marilla about them. But Davey'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. Lind that day, and the first thing she asked Davey was, Were all your class in Sunday school today? Yes, sir. Said Davey with a gulp. All were there, except one. Did you say your golden text and catechism? Yes, sir. Did you put your collection in? Yes, sir. Was Mrs. Malcolm McPherson in church? I don't know. This, at least, was the truth, thought wretched Davey. Was the lady's aide announced for next week? Yes, sir. Quakingly. Was prayer meeting? I don't know. You should know. You should listen more attentively to the announcements. What was Mr. Harvey's text? Davey 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. Lind now stopped questioning him, but Davey did not enjoy his dinner. He could only eat one helping of pudding. What's the matter with you? Demanded justly astonished Mrs. Lind. Are you sick? No. Muddered Davey. You look pale. You better keep out of the sun this afternoon. Admonished Mrs. Lind. Do you know how many lies you told Mrs. Lind? Asked Dora reproachfully as soon as they were alone after dinner. Davey, goaded to desperation, turned fiercely. I don't know and I don't care, he said. You just shut up, Dora Keith. Then poor Davey betook himself to a secluded retreat behind the woodpile to think over the way of transgressors. Greengables 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 avanly gelifications 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. Davey, is that you? What is the matter? A white clad figure flung itself across the floor and onto the bed. Anne? Sobbed Davey, getting his arms about her neck. I'm awful glad you're home. I couldn't go to sleep till I told somebody. Told somebody what? How miserable I am. Why are you miserable, dear? Because I was so bad today, Anne. Oh, I was awful bad, better than 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 to-night. I couldn't tell God what I'd done. I was ashamed to have him know. But he knew anyway, Davey. That's what Dora said, but I thought perhaps 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, I went fishing with the cottons, and I told ever so many whoppers to Mrs. Lind. Almost half a dozen. And, and I, I, I said a swear word, Anne, a pretty near swear word anyhow, and I called God names. There was silence. Davey 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 Davey emphatically. That was your conscience punishing you, Davey. What's my conscience? I want to know. It's something in you, Davey, 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 suppose I can't get clear of it, then, said Davey with a sigh. Are you going to tell Marilla and Mrs. Lindon me, Anne? No, dear. I'm not going to tell anyone. You are sorry you were naughty, aren't you? You bet. And you'll never be bad like that again? No, but… Added Davey 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 Davey. Well, Davey, just tell God you are sorry and ask him to forgive you. Have you forgiven me, Anne? Yes, dear. Then, said Davey joyously, I don't care much whether God does or not. Davey! Oh, I'll ask him. I'll ask him. Said Davey 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 miserable anymore. 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. Davey 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 suppose if I practice hard I can learn to spit just like him? Anne sat up. Davey Keith, she said, go straight to your bed and don't let me catch you out of it again tonight. Go, now! Davey went and stood not upon the order of his going. End of Chapter 13 Chapter 14 of Anne of the Island This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Anne of the Island by Lucy Modmont-Gummary Chapter 14 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 outflowering. 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 anyone 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 years. 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 bows, 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 willful 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 school days, lay on either side of her. She had taken the pins out. They made her headache, she said. The hectic flush was gone for the time, leaving her pale and childlike. The moon rose in the silvery sky, imperiling 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. Her stranger graveyard looks like moonlight. Said Ruby suddenly. Her ghostly. She shuddered. Anne, it won't be long now before I'll be lying over there. Hensayana and all the rest that were going out, fault 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. They wouldn't give in. I know, 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 I'm not afraid, but I'm not afraid, but then I'll go to heaven, Anne. I'm a church member, but it'll be all so different. I think, I think. And I get so frightened. And, and homesick. Heaven ought a very beautiful cause. And Bible says so. But, um, it won't be what I'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 it can't be short. It may be a little imagination it fuels. 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 in my life. The thoughts are hard to live, and it isn't in a use. I have to die. I live 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 lived babies, Anne. I couldn't say this to anyone but you. I know you understand, and then poor her. He—he loves me and I love him, Anne. She others meant nothing to me, but he does, and if I could live it be his wife and be so happy. Oh, Anne, it's hot. 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'm told of this, Anne. She whispered, It has helped me just to say it all out. I wanted to all summer, every time we 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 it was going to die. Live anyone else said it, but hinted it. I wouldn't say it, but even think it. In the daytime, when people were around me and everything was cheerful, it wasn't so hard to keep thinking from it. But in the night, when I couldn't sleep, it was so dreadful, Anne. I couldn't get away from it then. This just came and stirred me in the face, until I got so frightened. I couldn't 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. I know I can't have as often as you can, won't you, Anne? Yes, dear. It won't be very long, Anne. I feel sure of that. I'd rather have you than anyone else. I always like you as if all the girls I went to school with were never jealous. I mean, like some of them were. Paul and Wart was up to see me yesterday. I remember Anne and I were such drums for three years when we went to school. I don't recall that time as a school concert. We've never spoken to each other since. Wasn't it silly? Anything like that seems silly now. But I don't mind having a little quarrel yesterday. She said she'd have spoken years ago, unless she thought I wouldn't. And I never spoke to her, because I'm sure she would speak to me. Isn't it strange how people must understand 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. No, 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 a customed 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 AVIS 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 Lind 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 shown 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 play fellow, 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 centipede 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 someone 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. Quote 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 Davey 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 at church. But heaven won't be like church all the time, said Anne. I hope it ain't. said Davey emphatically. If it is, I don't want to go. Church is awful dull. Anyway, I don't mean to go forever so long. I mean to live to be a hundred years old, like Mr. Thomas blew it of white sands. He says he's lived so long, because he always smoked tobacco, and it killed all the germs. Can I smoke tobacco pretty soon, Anne? No, Davey. I hope you'll never use tobacco, said Anne absently. What'll you feel like if the germs kill me then? Demanded Davey. End of Chapter 14 Chapter 15 of Anne of the Island This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Anne of the Islands by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Chapter 15 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 delight in wholesome things, a time of renewing and deepening of old friendships, a time in which she had learned to live more nobly, to work more patiently, to play more heartily. All life lessons are not learned at college, she thought. Life teaches them everywhere. But alas, the final week of that pleasant vacation was spoiled for Anne by one of those impish happenings which are like a dream turned upside down. Been writing any more stories lately? Inquired Mr. Harrison genially one evening, when Anne was taking tea with him and Mrs. Harrison. No, answered Anne rather crisply. Well, no offence meant. Mrs. Hiram Sloane told me the other day that a big envelope addressed to the Rowling's reliable baking powder company of Montreal had been dropped into the post office box a month ago, and she suspicioned that somebody was trying for the prize they'd offered for the best story that introduced the name of their baking powder. She said it wasn't addressed in your writing, but I thought maybe it was you. Indeed no, I saw the prize offer, but I'd never dream of competing for it. I think it would be perfectly disgraceful to write a story to advertise a baking powder. It would be almost as bad as Judson Parker's patent medicine fence. So spake Anne loftily, little dreaming of the valley of humiliation awaiting her. That very evening Diana popped into the porch gable, bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked, carrying a letter. Oh, Anne, here's a letter for you. I was at the office, so I thought I'd bring it along. Do open it quick. If it is what I believe it is, I shall be just wild with delight. Anne, puzzled, opened the letter and glanced over the typewritten contents. Miss Anne Shirley. Green Gables. Avonlea. P.E. Island. Dear Madam, we have much pleasure in informing you that your charming story, Avril's Atonement, has won the prize of $25 offered in our recent competition. We enclose the check herewith. We are arranging for the publication of the story in several prominent Canadian newspapers, and we also intend to have it printed in pamphlet form for distribution among our patrons. Thanking you for the interest you have shown in our enterprise, we remain, yours very truly, the Rolling's Reliable Baking Powder Company. I don't understand, said Anne, blankly. Diana clapped her hands. Oh, I knew it would win the prize. I was sure of it. I sent your story into the competition, Anne. Diana Barry. Yes, I did, said Diana gleefully, perching herself on the bed. When I saw the offer, I thought of your story in a minute, and at first I thought I'd ask you to send it in. But then I was afraid you wouldn't. You've got so little faith left in it. So I just decided I'd send the copy you gave me and say nothing about it. Then, if it didn't win the prize, you'd never know and you wouldn't feel badly over it, because the stories that failed were not to be returned, and if it did, you'd have such delightful surprise. Diana was not the most discerning of mortals, but just at this moment it struck her that Anne was not looking exactly overjoyed. The surprise was there beyond doubt. But where was the delight? Why, Anne, you don't seem a bit pleased. She exclaimed. Anne instantly manufactured a smile and put it on. Of course I couldn't be anything but pleased over your unselfish wish to give me pleasure, she said slowly. But you know, I'm so amazed. I can't realize it, and I don't understand. There wasn't a word in my story about—about— Anne choked a little over the word. Baking powder. Oh, I put that in. Said Diana, reassured. It was as easy as a wink, and of course my experience in our old story club helped me. You know the scene where Avril mixed the cake? Well, I just stated that she used the rolling's reliable in it, and that was why it turned out so well. And then, in the last paragraph, where Percival clasps Avril in his arms and says, sweetheart, the beautiful coming years will bring us the fulfillment of our home of dreams, I added, in which we will never use any baking powder except rolling's reliable. Oh, gasped poor Anne, as if someone had dashed cold water on her. And you won the twenty-five dollars! continued Diana jubilantly. Why, I heard Priscilla say once that the Canadian woman only pays five dollars for a story. Anne held out the hateful pink slip in shaking fingers. I can't take it. It's yours by right, Diana. You sent the story in and made the alterations. I—I would certainly never have sent it. So you must take the check. I'd like to see myself, said Diana scornfully. Why, what I did wasn't any trouble. The honor of being a friend of the prize winner is enough for me. Well, I must go. I should have gone straight home from the post office, for we have company. But I simply had to come and hear the news. I'm so glad for your sake, Anne. Anne suddenly bent forward, put her arms about Diana, and kissed her cheek. I think you are the sweetest and truest friend in the world, Diana, she said, with a little tremble in her voice. And I assure you I appreciate the motive of what you've done. Diana, pleased and embarrassed, got herself away, and poor Anne, after flinging the innocent check into her bureau drawers if it were blood money, cast herself on her bed and wept tears of shame and outraged sensibility. Oh, she could never live this down, never. Gilbert arrived at dusk, brimming over with congratulations, for he had called at Orchard's Slope and heard the news. But his congratulations died on his lips at sight of Anne's face. Why, Anne, what's the matter? I expected to find you radiant over winning Rowling's reliable prize. Good for you. Oh, Gilbert, not you, implored Anne, in an et-to-bruté tone. I thought you would understand. Can't you see how awful it is? I must confess I can't. What is wrong? Everything, moaned Anne. I feel as if I were disgraced forever. What do you think a mother would feel like if she found her child tattooed over with a baking-powder advertisement? I feel just the same. I loved my poor little story, and I wrote it out of the best that was in me. And it is sacrilege to have it degraded to the level of a baking-powder advertisement. Don't you remember what Professor Hamilton used to tell us in the literature class at Queen's? He said, we were never to write a word for a lower unworthy motive, but always to cling to the very highest ideals. What will he think when he hears I've written a story to advertise Rowling's reliable? And oh, when it gets out at Redmond, think how I'll be teased and laughed at. That you won't, said Gilbert, wondering uneasily if it were that confounded junior's opinion in particular over which Anne was worried. The Reds will think just as I thought, that you, being like nine out of ten of us, not overburdened with worldly wealth, had taken this way of earning an honest penny to help yourself through the year. I don't see that there's anything lower unworthy about that or anything ridiculous either. One would rather write masterpieces of literature, no doubt, but meanwhile board and tuition fees have to be paid. This common sense, matter-of-fact view of the case, cheered Anne a little. At least it removed her dread of being laughed at, though the deeper hurt of an outraged ideal remained. End of Chapter 15 It's the homeiest spot I ever saw. It's homeier than home. Avowed Philippa Gordon, looking about her with delighted eyes. They were all assembled at twilight in the big living room at Patty's place. Anne and Priscilla, Phil and Stella, Aunt Jamesina, Rusty, Joseph, the Sarah Cat, and Gog and Magog. The firelight shadows were dancing over the walls, the cats were purring, and a huge bowl of hot-house chrysanthemums sent to Phil by one of the victims, shown through the golden gloom like creamy moons. It was three weeks since they had considered themselves settled, and already all believed the experiment would be a success. The first fortnight after their return had been a pleasantly exciting one. They had been busy setting up their household goods, organizing their little establishment, and adjusting different opinions. Anne was not oversorry to leave Avonlea when the time came to return to college. The last few days of her vacation had not been pleasant. Her prize story had been published in the Island Papers, and Mr. William Blair had, upon the counter of his store, a huge pile of pink, green, and yellow pamphlets containing it, one of which he gave to every customer. He sent a complimentary bundle to Anne, who promptly dropped them all in the kitchen stove. Her humiliation was the consequence of her own ideals only, for Avonlea folks thought it quite splendid that she should have won the prize. Her many friends regarded her with honest admiration, her few foes with scornful envy. Josie Pie said she believed Anne Shirley had just copied the story. She was sure she remembered reading it in a paper years before. The Sloans, who had found out or guessed that Charlie had been turned down, said they didn't think it was much to be proud of. Almost anyone could have done it if she tried. Anne Tatasa told Anne she was very sorry to hear she had taken to writing novels. Nobody born in Brad and Avonlea would do it. That was what came of adopting orphans from goodness knows where, with goodness knew what kind of parents. Even Mrs. Rachel Lind was darkly dubious about the propriety of writing fiction, though she was almost reconciled to it by that twenty-five dollar check. It is perfectly amazing the price they pay for such lies, that's what. She said, half proudly, half severely. All things considered, it was a relief when going away time came. And it was very jolly to be back at Redmond, a wise, experienced, soft, with hosts of friends to greet on the merry opening day. Priss and Stella and Gilbert were there, Charlie Sloan, looking more important than ever a sophomore looked before, Phil, with the Alec and Alonzo questions still unsettled, and Moody Spurgeon McPherson. Moody Spurgeon had been teaching school ever since leaving Queens, but his mother had concluded it was high time he gave it up and turned his attention to learning how to be a minister. Poor Moody Spurgeon fell on hard luck at the very beginning of his college career. Half a dozen ruthless softs, who were among his fellow boarders, swooped down upon him one night and shaved half of his head. In this guy is the luckless Moody Spurgeon had to go about until his hair grew again. He told Anne bitterly that there were times when he had his doubts as to whether he was really called to be a minister. Aunt Jamesena did not come until the girls had Patty's place ready for her. Miss Patty had sent the key to Anne, with a letter in which she said Gog and Magog were packed in a box under the spare room bed, but might be taken out when wanted. In a post-script, she added that she hoped the girls would be careful about putting up pictures. The living room had been newly papered five years before, and she and Miss Maria did not want any more holes made in that new paper than was absolutely necessary. For the rest, she trusted everything to Anne. How those girls enjoyed putting their nest in order? As Phil said, it was almost as good as getting married. You had the fun of home-making without the bother of a husband. All brought something with them to adorn or make comfortable the little house. Priss and Phil and Stella had knick-knacks and pictures galore, which latter they proceeded to hang according to taste, in reckless disregard of Miss Patty's new paper. We'll putty the holes up when we leave, dear. She'll never know. They said to protesting Anne. Diana had given Anne a pine-needle cushion, and Miss Ada had given both her and Priscilla a fearfully and wonderfully embroidered one. Marilla had sent a big box of preserves and darkly hinted at a hamper for thanksgiving, and Mrs. Lynde gave Anne a patchwork quilt and loaned her five more. You take them. She said authoritatively. They might as well be in use as packed away in that trunk, in the garret for moths to gnaw. No moths would ever have ventured near those quilts, for they reeked of moth-balls to such an extent that they had to be hung in the orchard of Patty's place for a full fortnight before they could be endured indoors. Verily, aristocratic Spofford Avenue had rarely beheld such a display. The gruff old millionaire who lived next door came over, and wanted to buy the gorgeous red and yellow tulip pattern one which Mrs. Rachel had given Anne. He said his mother used to make quilts like that, and by Job he wanted one to remind him of her. Anne would not sell it, much to his disappointment, but she wrote all about it to Mrs. Lynde. That highly gratified lady sent word back that she had one just like it to spare, so the tobacco king got his quilt after all, and insisted on having it spread on his bed to the disgust of his fashionable wife. Mrs. Lynde's quilts served a very useful purpose that winter. Patty's place, for all its many virtues, had its faults also. It was really a rather cold house, and when the frosty nights came, the girls were very glad to snuggle down under Mrs. Lynde's quilts, and hoped that the loan of them might be accounted unto her for righteousness. Anne had the blue room she had coveted at sight. Priscilla and Stella had the large one. Phil was blissfully content with the little one over the kitchen, and Aunt Jamesena was to have the downstairs one off the living room. Rusty at first slept on the doorstep. Anne, walking home from Redmond a few days after her return, became aware that the people that she met surveyed her with a covert, indulgent smile. Anne wondered uneasily what was the matter with her. Was her hat crooked? Was her belt loose? Craining her head to investigate, Anne, for the first time, saw Rusty. Trotting along behind her, close to her heels, was quite the most forlorn specimen of the cat tribe she had ever beheld. The animal was well past kittenhood, lank, thin, disreputable-looking. Pieces of both ears were lacking, one eye was temporarily out of repair, and one jowl ludicrously swollen. As for color, if a once black cat had been well and thoroughly singed, the result would have resembled the hue of this wave's thin, draggled, unsightly fur. Anne shooed, but the cat would not shoe. As long as she stood, he sat back on his haunches and gazed at her reproachfully out of his one good eye. When she resumed her walk, he followed. Anne resigned herself to his company, until she reached the gate of Paddy's place, which she coldly shut in his face, fondly supposing she had seen the last of him. But when, fifteen minutes later, Phil opened the door, there sat the rusty brown cat on the step. More, he promptly darted in and sprang upon Anne's lap, with a half-pleading, half-triumphant meow. Anne, said Stella severely. Do you own that animal? No, I do not, protested disgusted Anne. The creature followed me home from somewhere, I couldn't get rid of him. Ah, get down! I like decent cats reasonably well, but I don't like beasties of your complexion. Pussy, however, refused to get down. He coolly curled up in Anne's lap and began to purr. He has evidently adopted you, laughed Priscilla. I won't be adopted, said Anne stubbornly. The poor creature is starving, said Phil pittingly. Why, his bones are almost coming through his skin. Well, I'll give him a square meal, and then he must return to whence he came, said Anne resolutely. The cat was fed and put out. In the morning he was still on the doorstep. On the doorstep he continued to sit, bolting in whenever the door was opened. No coolness of welcome had the least effect on him. Of nobody save Anne did he take the least notice. Out of compassion the girls fed him, but when a week had passed they decided that something must be done. The cat's appearance had improved. His eye and cheek had resumed their normal appearance. He was not quite so thin, and he had been seen washing his face. But for all that we can't keep him, said Stella. Anne Jimsey is coming next week, and she will bring the Seracat with her. We can't keep two cats, and if we did this rusty coat would fight all the time with the Seracat. He's a fighter by nature. He had a pitched battle last evening with the Tobacco King's cat, and routed him hoarse foot in artillery. We must get rid of him, agreed Anne, looking darkly at the subject of their discussion, who was purring on the hearth rug with an air of lamb-like meekness. But the question is how? How can four unprotected females get rid of a cat who won't be got rid of? We must chloroform him, said Phil briskly. That is the most humane way. Who of us knows anything about chloroforming a cat, demanded Anne gloomily. I do, honey. It's one of my few, sadly, few, useful accomplishments. I've disposed of several at home. You take the cat in the morning and give him a good breakfast. Then you take an old burlap bag, there's one in the back porch. Put the cat on it and turn over him a wooden box. Then take a two-ounce bottle of chloroform, uncork it, and slip it under the edge of the box. Put a heavy weight on top of the box, and leave it till evening. The cat will be dead, curled up peacefully as if he were asleep. No pain, no struggle. It sounds easy, said Anne dubiously. It is easy. Just leave it to me. I'll see to it, said Phil reassuringly. Accordingly the chloroform was procured, and the next morning Rusty was lured to his doom. He ate his breakfast, licked his chops, and climbed into Anne's lap. Anne's heart misgave her. This poor creature loved her, trusted her. How could she be a party to this destruction? Here, take him, she said hastily to Phil. I feel like a murderess. He won't suffer, you know. Comforted Phil, but Anne had fled. The fatal deed was done in the back porch. Nobody went near it that day. But at dusk Phil declared that Rusty must be buried. Prist and Stella must dig his grave in the orchard. Declared Phil. An Anne must come with me to lift the box off. That's the part I always hate. The two conspirators tiptoed reluctantly to the back porch. Phil gingerly lifted the stone she had put on the box. Suddenly, faint but distinct, sounded an unmistakable mew under the box. He, he isn't dead, gasped Anne, sitting blankly down on the kitchen doorstep. He must be, said Phil incredulously. Another tiny mew proved that he wasn't. The two girls stared at each other. What will we do? questioned Anne. Why in the world don't you come? Demanded Stella, appearing in the doorway. We've got the grave ready. What, silent still and silent all? She quoted teasingly. Oh no, the voices of the dead sound like the distant torrents fall. Promptly counter-quoted Anne, pointing solemnly to the box. A burst of laughter broke the tension. We must leave him here till morning. Said Phil, replacing the stone. He hasn't mewed for five minutes. Perhaps the mews we heard were his dying groan. Or perhaps we merely imagine them under the strain of our guilty consciences. But when the box was lifted in the morning, Rusty bounded at one gay leap to Anne's shoulder, where he began to lick her face affectionately. Never was there a cat more decidedly alive. Here's a knot hole in the box. Growned Phil. I never saw it. That's why he didn't die. Now we've got to do it all over again. No we haven't, declared Anne suddenly. Rusty isn't going to be killed again. He's my cat, and you've just got to make the best of it. Oh well, if you'll settle with Aunt Jimsy and the Sarah Cat. Said Stella, with the air of one washing her hands of the whole affair. From that time Rusty was one of the family. He slept in nights on the scrubbing cushion in the back porch, and lived on the fad of the land. By the time Aunt Jamesina came, he was plump and glossy and tolerably respectable. But, like Kipling's cat, he walked by himself. His paw was against every cat, and every cat's paw against him. One by one, he vanquished the aristocratic felines of Spofford Avenue. As for human beings, he loved Anne and Anne alone. Nobody else even dared stroke him. An angry spit and something that sounded much like very improper language greeted anyone who did. The airs that Cat puts on are perfectly intolerable. Declared Stella. Him was a nice old puss-ins, him was, vowed Anne, cuddling her pet defiantly. Well, I don't know how he and the Sarah Cat will ever make out to live together. Said Stella pessimistically. Catfights in the orchard of nights are bad enough, but catfights here in the living room are unthinkable. In due time Aunt Jamesina arrived. Anne and Priscilla and Phil had awaited her advent rather dubiously, but when Aunt Jamesina was enthroned in the rocking chair before the open fire, they figuratively bowed down and worshipped her. Aunt Jamesina was a tiny old woman with a little softly triangular face and large soft blue eyes that were a light with unquenchable youth and as full of hopes as a girl's. She had pink cheeks and snow-white hair, which she wore in quaint little puffs over her ears. It's a very old-fashioned way. She said, knitting industriously at something as dainty and pink as a sunset cloud. But I am old-fashioned. My clothes are, and it stands to reason my opinions are, too. I don't say they're any the better of that, mind you. In fact, I dare say they're a good deal the worse. But they've worn nice and easy. New shoes are smarter than old ones, but the old ones are more comfortable. I'm old enough to indulge myself in the matter of shoes and opinions. I mean to take it real easy here. I know you expect me to look after you and keep you proper, but I'm not going to do it. You're old enough to know how to behave, if you're ever going to be. So, as far as I am concerned... Concluded Aunt Jamesena with a twinkle in her young eyes. You can all go to destruction in your own way. Oh, will somebody separate those cats? pleaded Stella shudderingly. Aunt Jamesena had brought with her not only the Sarah cat, but Joseph. Joseph, she explained, had belonged to a dear friend of hers who had gone to live in Vancouver. She couldn't take Joseph with her, so she begged me to take him. I really couldn't refuse. He's a beautiful cat. That is, his disposition is beautiful. She called him Joseph because his coat is of many colors. It certainly was. Joseph, as the disgusted Stella said, looked like a walking ragbag. It was impossible to say what his ground color was. His legs were white with black spots on them. His back was gray with a huge patch of yellow on one side and a black patch on the other. His tail was yellow with a gray tip. One ear was black and one yellow. A black patch over one eye gave him a fearfully rakish look. In reality he was meek and inoffensive of a sociable disposition. In one respect, if in no other, Joseph was like a lily of the field. He toiled not, neither did he spin or catch mice. Yet Solomon in all his glory slept not on softer cushions, or feasted more fully on fat things. Joseph and the Sarah cat arrived by express in separate boxes. After they had been released and fed, Joseph selected the cushion and corner which appealed to him, and the Sarah cat gravely sat herself down before the fire and proceeded to wash her face. She was a large, sleek, gray and white cat, with an enormous dignity, which was not at all impaired by any consciousness of her plebeian origin. She had been given to Aunt Jamesina by her washerwoman. Her name was Sarah, so my husband always called Puss the Sarah cat. Explained Aunt Jamesina. She is eight years old and a remarkable mouser. Don't worry, Stella. The Sarah cat never fights, and Joseph rarely. They'll have to fight here in self-defense, said Stella. At this juncture Rusty arrived on the scene. He bounded joyously halfway across the room before he saw the intruders. Then he stopped short. His tail expanded until it was as big as three tails. The fur on his back rose up in a defiant arch. Rusty lowered his head, uttered a fearful shriek of hatred and defiance, and launched himself at the Sarah cat. The stately animal had stopped washing her face and was looking at him curiously. She met his onslaught with one contemptuous sweep of her capable paw. Rusty went rolling helplessly over on the rug. He picked himself up daisily. What sort of a cat was this who had boxed his ears? He looked dubiously at the Sarah cat. Would he or would he not? The Sarah cat deliberately turned her back on him and resumed her toilet operations. Rusty decided that he would not. He never did. From that time on the Sarah cat ruled the roost. Rusty never again interfered with her. But Joseph rashly sat up and yawned. Rusty, burning to avenge his disgrace, swooped down upon him. Joseph, pacific by nature, could fight upon occasion and fight well. The result was a series of drawn battles. Every day Rusty and Joseph fought at sight. Anne took Rusty's part and detested Joseph. Stella was in despair, but Aunt Jamesina only laughed. Ha ha, let them fight it out. She said tolerantly. They'll make friends after a bit. Joseph needs some exercise. He was getting too fat. And Rusty has to learn he isn't the only cat in the world. Eventually Joseph and Rusty accepted the situation and from sworn enemies became sworn friends. They slept on the same cushion with their paws about each other and gravely washed each other's faces. We've all got used to each other. Said Phil. And I've learned how to wash dishes and sweep a floor. But you needn't try to make us believe you can chloroform a cat, laughed Anne. It was all the fault of the not-hole. protested Phil. It was a good thing the not-hole was there. Said Aunt Jamesina rather severely. Kittens have to be drowned, I admit, or the world would be overrun. But no decent grown-up cat should be done to death, unless he sucks eggs. You wouldn't have thought Rusty very decent if you'd seen him when he came here. Said Stella. He positively looked like Old Nick. I don't believe Old Nick can be so very ugly. Said Aunt Jamesina reflectively. He wouldn't do so much harm if he was. I always think of him as a rather handsome gentleman. End of Chapter 16 Chapter 17 of Anne of the Island. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Chapter 17 A Letter from Davy. It's beginning to snow, girls. Said Phil, coming in one November evening. And there are the loveliest little stars and crosses all over the garden walk. I never noticed before what exquisite things snowflakes really are. One has time to notice things like that in the simple life. Bless you all for permitting me to live it. It's really delightful to feel worried because butter has gone up five cents a pound. Has it? Demanded Stella, who kept the household accounts. It has. And here's your butter. I'm getting quite expert at marketing. It's better fun than flirting. Concluded Phil gravely. Everything is going up scandalously. Said Stella. Never mind. Thank goodness, air and salvation are still free. Said Aunt Jamesina. And so is laughter, added Anne. There's no tax on it yet, and that is well, because you're all going to laugh presently. I'm going to read you Davy's letter. His spelling has improved immensely this past year, though he is not strong on apostrophes, and he certainly possesses the gift of writing an interesting letter. Listen and laugh before we settle down to the evening's study grind. Dear Anne. Ran Davy's letter. I take my pen to tell you that we are all pretty well, and hope this will find you the same. It's snowing some today, and Marilla says the old woman in the sky is shaking her feather beds. Is the old woman in the sky God's wife, Anne? I want to know. Mrs. Lind has been real sick, but she is better now. She fell down the cellar stairs last week. When she fell she grabbed hold of the shelf with all the milk-pales and stupans on it, and it gave way and went down with her and made a splendid crash. Marilla thought it was an earthquake at first. One of the stupans was all dinged up, and Mrs. Lind strained her ribs. The doctor came and gave her medicine to rub on her ribs, but she didn't understand him and took it all inside instead. The doctor said it was a wonder it didn't kill her, but it didn't, and it cured her ribs, and Mrs. Lind says doctors don't know much anyhow. But we couldn't fix up the stupan. Marilla had to throw it out. Thanksgiving was last week. There was no school, and we had a great dinner. I ate mince pie and roast turkey and fruit cake and donuts and cheese and jam and chocolate cake. Marilla said I'd die, but I didn't. Dora had earache after it. Only it wasn't in her ears. It was in her stomach. I didn't have earache anywhere. Our new teacher is a man. He does things for jokes. Last week he made all us third-class boys write a composition on what kind of a wife we'd like to have, and the girls on what kind of a husband. He laughed fit to kill when he read them. This was mine. I thought you'd like to see it. The kind of wife I'd like to have. She must have good manners and get my meals on time and do what I tell her and always be very polite to me. She must be fifteen years old. She must be good to the poor and keep her house tidy and be good-tempered and go to church regularly. She must be very handsome and have curly hair. If I get a wife that is just what I like, I'll be an awful good husband to her. I think a woman ought to be awful good to her husband. Some poor women haven't any husbands. The end. I was at Mrs. Isaac Wright's funeral at White Sands last week. The husband of the corpse felt real sorry. Mrs. Lint says Mrs. Wright's grandfather stole a sheep, but Marilla says we mustn't speak ill of the dead. Why mustn't we, Anne? I want to know. It's pretty safe, ain't it? Mrs. Lint was awful mad the other day because I asked her if she was alive in Noah's time. I didn't mean to hurt her feelings, I just wanted to know. Was she, Anne? Mr. Harrison wanted to get rid of his dog. So he hung him once, but he come to life and scooted for the barn while Mr. Harrison was digging the grave. So he hung him again, and he stayed dead that time. Mr. Harrison has a new man working for him. He's awful awkward. Mr. Harrison says he is left-handed in both his feet. Mr. Berry's hired man is lazy. Mrs. Berry says that, but Mr. Berry says he ain't lazy exactly, only he thinks it easier to pray for things than to work for them. Mrs. Harmon Andrews' prized pig that she talked of so much died in a fit. Mrs. Lint says it was a judgment on her for pride. But I think it was hard on the pig. Milty Bolter has been sick. The doctor gave him medicine, and it tasted horrid. I offered to take it for him for a quarter, but the Bolters are so mean. Milty says he'd rather take it himself and save his money. I asked Mrs. Bolter how a person would go about catching a man, and she got awful mad and said she didn't know. She'd never chased men. The AVIS is going to paint the hall again. They're tired of having it blue. The new minister was here to tea last night. He took three pieces of pie. If I did that, Mrs. Lint would call me piggy. And he ate fast and took big bites, and Marilla is always telling me not to do that. Why can ministers do what boys can't? I want to know. I haven't any more news. Here are six kisses. X, X, X, X, X. Dora sends one. Here's hers. X. Your loving friend, David Keith. P.S. Anne, who was the devil's father? I want to know. End of Chapter 17 Chapter 18 of Anne of the Island This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery Chapter 18 Miss Josephine remembers the Anne girl. When Christmas holidays came, the girls of Paddy's place scattered to their respective homes. But Aunt Jamesena elected to stay where she was. I couldn't go to any of the places I've been invited and take those three cats. She said. And I'm not going to leave the poor creatures here alone for nearly three weeks. If we had any decent neighbors who would feed them, I might. But there's nothing except millionaires on this street. So I'll stay here and keep Paddy's place warm for you. Anne went home with the usual joyous anticipations, which were not wholly fulfilled. She found Avonlea in the grip of such an early cold and stormy winter as even the oldest inhabitant could not recall. Green Gables was literally hemmed in by huge drifts. Almost every day of that ill-starred vacation it stormed fiercely, and even on fine days it drifted unceasingly. No sooner were the roads broken than they filled in again. It was almost impossible to stir out. The AVIS tried on three evenings to have a party in honor of the college students, and on each evening the storm was so wild that nobody could go, so they gave up the attempt in despair. Anne, despite her love of and loyalty to Green Gables, could not help thinking longingly of Paddy's place. It's cozy open fire, Aunt Jamesena's mirthful eyes, the three cats, the merry chatter of the girls, the pleasantness of Friday evenings when college friends dropped in to talk of grave and gay. Anne was lonely. Diana, during the whole of the holidays, was imprisoned at home with a bad attack of bronchitis. She could not come to Green Gables, and it was rarely Anne could get to orchard slope, for the old way through the haunted wood was impassable with drifts, and the long way over the frozen lake of shining waters was almost as bad. Ruby Gillis was sleeping in the white-heaped graveyard. Jane Andrews was teaching a school on western prairies. Gilbert, to be sure, was still faithful and waited up to Green Gables every possible evening. But Gilbert's visits were not what they once were. Anne almost dreaded them. It was very disconcerting to look up in the midst of a sudden silence and find Gilbert's hazel eyes fixed upon her with a quite unmistakable expression in their grave depths, and it was still more disconcerting to find herself blushing hotly and uncomfortably under his gaze. Just as if—just as if—well, it was very embarrassing. Anne wished herself back at Paddy's place, where there was always somebody else about to take the edge off a delicate situation. At Green Gables, Marilla went promptly to Mrs. Linde's domain when Gilbert came and insisted on taking the twins with her. The significance of this was unmistakable, and Anne was in a helpless fury over it. Davy, however, was perfectly happy. He reveled in getting out in the morning and shoveling out the paths to the well and henhouse. He gloried in the Christmas-tide delicacies which Marilla and Mrs. Linde vied with each other and preparing for Anne, and he was reading an enthralling tale in a school library book of a wonderful hero who seemed blessed with a miraculous faculty for getting into scrapes, from which he was usually delivered by an earthquake or a volcanic explosion, which blew him high and dry out of his troubles, landed him in a fortune, and closed the story with proper eclat. I tell you, it's a bully story, Anne! He said ecstatically, I'd ever so much rather read it than the Bible. Would you? smiled Anne. Davy peered curiously at her. You don't seem a bit shocked, Anne. Mrs. Linde was awful shocked when I said that to her. No, I'm not shocked, Davy. I think it's quite natural that a nine-year-old boy would sooner read an adventure story than the Bible. But when you are older, I hope and think that you will realize what a wonderful book the Bible is. Oh, I think some parts of it are fine. Conceded, Davy. That story about Joseph now, it's bully. But if I'd been Joseph, I wouldn't have forgiven the brothers. No, sir, Anne, I'd have cut all their heads off. Mrs. Linde was awful mad when I said that, and shut the Bible up, and said she'd never read me any more of it if I talked like that. So I don't talk now when she reads it Sunday afternoons. I just think things and say them to Milti Bolter next day in school. I told Milti the story about Elisha in the Bears, and it scared him so he's never made fun of Mr. Harrison's bald head since. Are there any bears on P.E. Island, Anne? I want to know. Not nowadays, said Anne absently, as the wind blew a scud of snow against the window. Oh, dear, will it ever stop storming? God knows. Said Davy airily, preparing to resume his reading. Anne was shocked this time. Davy, she exclaimed reproachfully. Mrs. Linde says that, protested Davy. One night last week, Marilla said, will Ludovic Speed and Theodora Dicks ever get married? And Mrs. Linde said, God knows, just like that. Well, it wasn't right for her to say it, said Anne, promptly deciding upon which horn of this dilemma to impale herself. It isn't right for anybody to take that name in vain or speak it lightly, Davy. Don't ever do it again. Not if I say it slow and solemn, like the minister? Query Davy gravely. No, not even then. Well, I won't. Ludovic Speed and Theodora Dicks live in Middle Grafton, and Mrs. Rachel says he has been courting her for a hundred years. Won't they soon be too old to get married, Anne? I hope Gilbert won't court you that long. When are you going to be married, Anne? Mrs. Linde says it's a sure thing. Mrs. Linde is a— began Anne hotly, then stopped. Awful old gossip. Completed Davy calmly. That's what everyone calls her. But is it a sure thing, Anne? I want to know. You're a very silly little boy, Davy, said Anne, stalking hotly out of the room. The kitchen was deserted, and she sat down by the window in the fast-falling wintry twilight. The sun had set, and the wind had died down. A pale, chilly moon looked out behind a bank of purple clouds in the west. The sky faded out, but the strip of yellow along the western horizon grew brighter and fiercer, as if all the stray gleams of light were concentrating in one spot. The distant hills, rimmed with priest-like furs, stood out in dark distinctness against it. Anne looked across the still white fields, cold and lifeless, in the harsh light of that grim sunset and side. She was very lonely, and she was sad at heart, for she was wondering if she would be able to return to Redmond next year. It did not seem likely. The only scholarship possible in the sophomore year was a very small affair. She would not take Marilla's money, and there seemed little prospect of being able to earn enough in the summer vacation. I suppose I'll just have to drop out next year, she thought, drearily, and teach a district school again until I earn enough to finish my course. And by that time all my old class will have graduated, and Patty's place will be out of the question. But there, I'm not going to be a coward. I'm thankful I can earn my way through if necessary. Here's Mr. Harrison waiting up the lane. Announced Davy, running out. I hope he's brought the mail. It's three days since we got it. I want to see what them pesky grits are doing. I'm a conservative, Anne, and I tell you, you have to keep your eye on them grits. Mr. Harrison had brought the mail, and Mary Letters from Stella and Priscilla and Phil soon dissipated Ann's blues. Aunt Jamesina, too, had written, saying that she was keeping the hearth fire alight, and that the cats were all well, and the houseplants doing fine. The weather has been real cold, she wrote. So I let the cats sleep in the house, Rusty and Joseph on the sofa in the living room, and the Sarah cat on the foot of my bed. It's real company to hear her purring when I wake up in the night and think of my poor daughter in the foreign field. If it was anywhere but in India, I wouldn't worry. But they say the snakes out there are terrible. It takes all the Sarah cat's purring to drive away the thought of those snakes. I have enough faith for everything but the snakes. I can't think why Providence ever made them. Sometimes I don't think he did. I'm inclined to believe the old Harry had a hand in making them. Anne had left a thin, typewritten communication till the last, thinking it unimportant. When she had read it, she sat very still, with tears in her eyes. What is the matter, Anne? asked Marilla. Miss Josephine Barry is dead, said Anne, in a low tone. So she has gone at last, said Marilla. Well, she has been sick for over a year, and the Barrys have been expecting to hear of her death any time. It is well she is at rest, for she has suffered dreadfully, Anne. She was always kind to you. She has been kind to the last, Marilla. This letter is from her lawyer. She has left me a thousand dollars in her will. Gracious ain't that an awful lot of money, exclaimed Davy. She's the woman you and Diana lit on when you jumped into the spare room bed, ain't she? Diana told me that story. Is that why she left you so much? Hush, Davy, said Anne gently. She slipped away to the porch gable with a full heart, leaving Marilla and Mrs. Lynde to talk over the news to their heart's content. Do you suppose Anne will ever get married now? Speculated Davy anxiously. When Dorcas long got married last summer, she said if she'd had enough money to live on, she'd never have been bothered with a man. But even a widower with eight children was better than living with a sister-in-law. Davy Keith, do hold your tongue. Said Mrs. Rachel severely. The way you talk is scandalous for a small boy, that's what. End of chapter 18. Chapter 19 of Anne of the Island. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Chapter 19. An Interlude To think that this is my 20th birthday and that I've left my teens behind me forever, said Anne, who was curled up on the hearth rug with Rusty in her lap, to Aunt Jamesena, who was reading in her pet chair. They were alone in the living room. Stella and Priscilla had gone to a committee meeting, and Phil was upstairs adorning herself for a party. I suppose you feel kind of sorry, said Aunt Jamesena. The teens are such a nice part of life. I'm glad I've never gone out of them myself. Anne laughed. You never will, Auntie. You'll be 18 when you should be 100. Yes, I'm sorry, and a little dissatisfied as well. Miss Stacy told me long ago that by the time I was 20 my character would be formed for good or evil. I don't feel that it's what it should be. It's full of flaws. So's everybody's, said Aunt Jamesena cheerfully. Mines cracked in a hundred places. Your Miss Stacy likely meant that when you were 20 your character would have got its permanent bent in one direction or another, and would go on developing in that line. Don't worry over it, Anne. Do your duty by God and your neighbor and yourself, and have a good time. That's my philosophy. And it's always worked pretty well. Where's Phil off to tonight? She's going to a dance, and she's got the sweetest dress for it. Creamy yellow silk and cobwebby lace. It just suits those brown tinsipers. There's magic in the words silk and lace, isn't there? Said Aunt Jamesena. The very sound of them makes me feel like skipping off to a dance. And yellow silk, it makes one think of a dress of sunshine. I always wanted a yellow silk dress, but first my mother and then my husband wouldn't hear of it. The very first thing I'm going to do when I get to heaven is to get a yellow silk dress. Amid Anne's peel of laughter, Phil came downstairs, trailing clouds of glory, and surveyed herself in the long oval mirror on the wall. A flattering looking glass is a promoter of amyability. She said, The one in my room does certainly make me green. Do I look pretty nice, Anne? Do you really know how pretty you are, Phil? Asked Anne, in honest admiration. Of course I do. What are looking glasses in men for? That wasn't what I meant. Are all my ends tucked in? Is my skirt straight? And would this rose look better lower down? I'm afraid it's too high. It will make me look lopsided, but I hate things tickling my ears. Everything is just right, and that southwest dimple of yours is lovely. Anne, there's one thing in particular I like about you. You're so ungrudging. There isn't a particle of envy in you. Why should she be envious? Demanded Aunt Jamesina. She's not quite as good looking as you, maybe, but she's got a far handsomer nose. I know it. Conceded Phil, my nose always has been a great comfort to me, confessed Anne. And I love the way your hair grows on your forehead, Anne. And that one wee curl, always looking as if it were going to drop, but never dropping, is delicious. But as for noses, mine is a dreadful worry to me. I know by the time I'm forty it will be bernie. What do you think I'll look like when I'm forty, Anne? Like an old matronly married woman, teased Anne. I won't. Said Phil, sitting down comfortably to wait for her escort. Joseph, you calico beastie, don't you dare jump on my lap. I won't go to a dance all over cat hairs. No, Anne, I won't look matronly. But no doubt I'll be married. To Alec or Alonzo, asked Anne. To one of them, I suppose. Side, Phil. If I can ever decide which. It shouldn't be hard to decide. Scolded Aunt Jamesina. I was born a seesaw, Auntie, and nothing can ever prevent me from teetering. You ought to be more level-headed, Philippa. It's best to be level-headed, of course. Agreed, Philippa. But you miss lots of fun. As for Alec and Alonzo, if you knew them, you'd understand why it's difficult to choose between them. They're equally nice. Then take somebody who is nicer. Suggested Aunt Jamesina. There's that senior who was so devoted to you. Will Leslie? He has such nice, large, mild eyes. They're a bit too large and too mild, like a cow's, said Phil cruelly. What do you say about George Parker? There's nothing to say about him, except that he always looks as if he'd just been starched and ironed. Marr, whole-worthy, then. You can't find a fault with him. No, he would do if he wasn't poor. I must marry a rich man, Aunt Jamesina. That, and good looks, is an indispensable qualification. I'd marry Gilbert Blythe if he were rich. Oh, would you, said Anne, rather viciously. We don't like that idea a little bit, although we don't want Gilbert ourselves. Oh, no. Mocked, Phil. But don't let's talk of disagreeable subjects. I'll have to marry sometime, I suppose. But I shall put off the evil day as long as I can. You mustn't marry anybody you don't love, Phil, when all's said and done. Said Aunt Jamesina. Oh, hearts that loved in the good old way have been out of the fashion this many a day. Trilled Phil mockingly. There's the carriage. I fly. Bye-bye, you two old-fashioned darlings. When Phil had gone, Aunt Jamesina looked solemnly at Anne. That girl is pretty and sweet and good-hearted. But do you think she is quite right in her mind, my spells, Anne? Oh, I don't think there's anything the matter with Phil's mind. Said Anne, hiding a smile. It's just her way of talking. Aunt Jamesina shook her head. Well, I hope so, Anne. I do hope so, because I love her. But I can't understand her. She beats me. She isn't like any of the girls I ever knew, or any of the girls I was myself. How many girls were you, Aunt Jamesina? About half a dozen, my dear. This has been a dull, prosy day. Yawned Phil, stretching herself idly on the sofa, having previously dispossessed two exceedingly indignant cats. Anne looked up from pickwick papers. Now that spring examinations were over, she was treating herself to dickens. It has been a prosy day for us, she said thoughtfully. But to some people it has been a wonderful day. Someone has been rapturously happy in it. Perhaps a great deed has been done somewhere today, or a great poem written, or a great man-born, and some heart has been broken, Phil. Why did you spoil your pretty thought by tagging that last sentence on, honey? Grumbled Phil. I don't like to think of broken hearts, or anything unpleasant. Do you think you'll be able to shirk unpleasant things all your life, Phil? Dear me, no. Am I not up against them now? You don't call Alec and Alonzo pleasant things, do you, when they simply plague my life out? You never take anything seriously, Phil. Why should I? There are enough folks who do. The world needs people like me, Anne, just to amuse it. It would be a terrible place if everybody were intellectual and serious, and in deep, deadly earnest. My mission is, as Josiah Allen says, to charm and allure. Confess now. Hasn't life at Patty's place been really much brighter and pleasanter this past winter, because I've been here to Levenue? Yes, it has, owned Anne. And you all love me, even Aunt Jamesina, who thinks I'm stark mad. So why should I try to be different? Oh, dear, I'm so sleepy. I was awake until one last night, reading a harrowing ghost story. I read it in bed, and after I had finished it, do you suppose I could get out of bed to put the light out? No. And if Stella had not fortunately come in late, that lamp would have burned good and bright till morning. When I heard Stella, I called her in, explained my predicament, and got her to put out the light. If I had got out myself to do it, I knew something would grab me by the feet when I was getting in again. By the way, Anne, has Aunt Jamesina decided what to do this summer? Yes, she's going to stay here. I know she's doing it for the sake of those blessed cats, although she says it's too much trouble to open her own house, and she hates visiting. What are you reading? Pickwick. That's a book that always makes me hungry, said Phil. There's so much good eating in it. The characters seem always to be reveling on ham and eggs and milk punch. I generally go on a cupboard rummage after reading Pickwick. The mere thought reminds me that I'm starving. Is there any tidbit in the pantry, Queen Anne? I made a lemon pie this morning. You may have a piece of it. Phil dashed out to the pantry, and Anne betook herself to the orchard in company with Rusty. It was a moist, pleasantly odorous night in early spring. The snow was not quite all gone from the park. A little dingy bank of it yet lay under the pines of the harbour road, screened from the influence of April suns. It kept the harbour road muddy and chilled the evening air. But grass was growing green in sheltered spots, and Gilbert had found some pale sweet arbutus in a hidden corner. He came up from the park, his hands full of it. Anne was sitting on the big grey boulder in the orchard, looking at the poem of a bare birch and bow hanging against the pale red sunset with the very perfection of grace. She was building a castle in air, a wondrous mansion, whose sunlit courts and stately halls were steeped in araby's perfume, and where she reigned queen Anne Chattelaine. She frowned as she saw Gilbert coming through the orchard. Of late, she had managed not to be left alone with Gilbert, but he had caught her fairly now, and even Rusty had deserted her. Gilbert sat down beside her on the boulder and held out his mayflowers. But these remind you of home in our old school-day picnic, Anne? Anne took them and buried her face in them. I'm in Mr. Silas Sloan's barrens this very minute, she said rapturously. I suppose you'll be there in reality in a few days. No, not for a fortnight. I'm going to visit with Phil in Bowlingbrook before I go home. You'll be in Avonlea before I will. No, I shall not be in Avonlea at all this summer, Anne. I've been offered a job in the daily news office, and I'm going to take it. Oh, said Anne vaguely. She wondered what a whole Avonlea summer would be like without Gilbert. Somehow she did not like the prospect. Well, she concluded flatly. It is a good thing for you, of course. Well, yes, I've been hoping I would get it. It'll help me out next year. You mustn't work too hard, said Anne, without any very clear idea of what she was saying. She wished desperately that Phil would come out. You've studied very constantly this winter. Isn't this a delightful evening? Do you know I found a cluster of white violets under that old twisted tree over there today? I felt as if I had discovered a gold mine. You're always discovering gold mines, said Gilbert, also absently. Let us go and see if we can find some more, suggested Anne eagerly. I'll call Phil and- Never mind Phil and the violets just now, Anne. Said Gilbert quietly, taking her hand in a clasp from which she could not free it. There's something I want to say to you. Oh, don't say it, cried Anne pleadingly. Don't. Please, Gilbert. I must. Things can't go on like this any longer, Anne. I love you. You know I do. I can't tell you how much. Will you promise me that someday you'll be my wife? I-I can't, said Anne miserably. Oh, Gilbert, you-you've spoiled everything. Don't you care for me at all? Gilbert asked after a very dreadful pause, during which Anne had not dared to look up. Not-not in that way. I do care a great deal for you as a friend, but I don't love you, Gilbert. But can't you give me some hope that you will, yet? No, I can't, exclaimed Anne desperately. I never-never can love you in that way, Gilbert. You must never speak of this to me again. There was another pause, so long and so dreadful that Anne was driven at last to look up. Gilbert's face was white to the lips, and his eyes. But Anne shuddered and looked away. There was nothing romantic about this. Must proposals be either grotesque or horrible? Could she ever forget Gilbert's face? Is there anybody else? He asked at last in a low voice. No, no, said Anne eagerly. I don't care for anyone like that. And I'd like you better than anybody else in the world, Gilbert. And we must-we must go on being friends, Gilbert. Gilbert gave a bitter little laugh. Friends? Your friendship can't satisfy me, Anne. I want your love. Anne, you tell me I can never have that. I'm sorry. Forgive me, Gilbert, was all Anne could say. Where, oh, where were all the gracious and graceful speeches wherewith in imagination she had been want to dismiss rejected suitors? Gilbert released her hand gently. There isn't anything to forgive. There've been times when I thought you did care. I've deceived myself, that's all. Goodbye, Anne. Anne got herself to her room, sat down on her window seat behind the pines, and cried bitterly. She felt as if something incalculably precious had gone out of her life. It was Gilbert's friendship, of course. Oh, why must she lose it after this fashion? What is the matter, honey? Asked Phil, coming in through the moonlit gloom. Anne did not answer. At that moment she wished Phil were a thousand miles away. I suppose you've gone and refused, Gilbert Blythe. You are an idiot, Anne Shirley. Do you call it idiotic to refuse to marry a man I don't love? Said Anne coldly, goaded to reply. You don't know love when you see it. You've tricked something out with your imagination that you think love, and you expect the real thing to look like that. There, that's the first sensible thing I've ever said in my life. I wonder how I managed it. Phil, pleaded Anne, please go away and leave me alone for a little while. My world has tumbled into pieces. I want to reconstruct it. Without any Gilbert in it? Said Phil, going. A world without any Gilbert in it? Anne repeated the words drearily. Would it not be a very lonely, forlorn place? Well, it was all Gilbert's fault. He had spoiled their beautiful comradeship. She must just learn to live without it. End of Chapter 20 Chapter 21 of Anne of the Island This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery Chapter 21 Roses of Yesterday The fortnight Anne spent in Bowlingbrook was a very pleasant one, with a little undercurrent of vague pain and dissatisfaction running through it whenever she thought about Gilbert. There was not, however, much time to think about him. Mount Holly, the beautiful old Gordon Homestead, was a very gay place, overrun by Phil's friends of both sexes. There was quite a bewildering succession of drives, dances, picnics, and boating parties, all expressively lumped together by Phil under the head of Jamborees. Alec and Alonzo were so constantly on hand that Anne wondered if they ever did anything but dance attendance on that willow the wisp of a Phil. They were both nice, manly fellows, but Anne would not be drawn into any opinion as to which was the nicer. And I depended so on you, to help me make up my mind which of them I should promise to marry. Mourned Phil. You must do that for yourself. You are quite expert at making up your mind as to whom other people should marry, retorted Anne, rather caustically. Oh, that's a very different thing, said Phil, truly. But the sweetest incident of Anne's sojourn in Bowlingbrook was the visit to her birthplace, the little shabby yellow house in and out of the way street she had so often dreamed about. She looked at it with delighted eyes as she and Phil turned in at the gate. It's almost exactly as I've pictured it, she said. There is no honeysuckle over the windows, but there is a lilac tree by the gate and, yes, there are the muslin curtains in the windows. How glad I am it is still painted yellow. A very tall, very thin woman opened the door. Yes, the Shirley's lived here twenty years ago. She said, in answer to Anne's question. They had it rented. I remember them. They both died of favour at once. It was terrible sad. They left a baby. I guess it stayed long ago. It was a sickly thing. Old Thomas and his wife took it, as if they hadn't enough of their own. It didn't die, said Anne, smiling. I was that baby. You don't say so. Why, you have grown. exclaimed the woman, as if she were much surprised that Anne was not still a baby. Come to look at you, I'll see the resemblance. You're complexed like your paw. He had red hair. But you favour your ma in your eyes and mouth. She was a nice little thing. My daughter went to school to her and was not crazy about her. They was buried in the one grave, and the school board put up a tombstone to them as a reward for faithful service. Will you come in? Will you let me go all over the house? asked Anne eagerly. The law's yes, you can if you like. Don't take you long. There ain't much of it. I'll keep in my mind to build a new kitchen, but he ain't one of your hustlers. The parlor's in there and there's two rooms upstairs. Just prowl about yourselves. I've got to see the baby. The east room was the one you were born in. I remember your ma saying she loved to see the sunrise, and I'm not hearing that you was born just as the sun was rising, and its light on your face was the first thing your ma saw. Anne went up the narrow stairs and into that little east room with a full heart. It was as a shrine to her. Here her mother had dreamed the exquisite happy dreams of anticipated motherhood. Here that red sunrise light had fallen over them both in the sacred hour of birth. Here her mother had died. Anne looked about her reverently, her eyes filled with tears. It was for her one of the jeweled hours of life that gleam out radiantly forever in memory. Just to think of it, mother was younger than I am now when I was born, she whispered. When Anne went downstairs, the lady of the house met her in the hall. She held out a dusty little packet tied with faded blue ribbon. Here's a bundle of old letters I found in that closet upstairs when I came here. She said, I don't know what they are. I never bothered to look in them. But the address on the top one is Miss Bertha Willis, and that was your ma's maiden name. You can take him if you'd care to have them. Oh, thank you. Thank you, cried Anne, clasping the packet rapturously. That was all that was in the house, said her hostess. The furniture was all sold to pay the doctor bills, and Mrs. Thomas got your ma's clothes and little things. I reckon they didn't last long among that drove of Thomas youngsters. They was destructive young animals, as I mind them. I haven't one thing that belonged to my mother, said Anne chocally. I—I can never thank you enough for these letters. You're quite welcome. Laws, but your eyes is like your ma's. She could just about talk with hers. Your father was sort of homely, but awful nice. I mind hearing folks say when they was married, that there never was two people more in love with each other. Poor creatures. They didn't live much longer. But they was awful happy while they was alive, and I suppose that counts for a good deal. Anne longed to get home to read her precious letters, but she made one little pilgrimage first. She went alone to the green corner of the old Bowlingbrook Cemetery where her father and mother were buried, and left on their grave the white flowers she carried. Then she hastened back to Mount Holly, shut herself up in her room, and read the letters. Some were written by her father, some by her mother. There were not many, only a dozen in all. For Walter and Bertha Shirley had not been often separated during their courtship. The letters were yellow and faded and dim, blurred with the touch of passing years. No profound words of wisdom were traced on the stained and wrinkled pages, but only lines of love and trust. The sweetness of forgotten things clung to them, the far-off, fond imaginings of those long-dead lovers. Bertha Shirley had possessed the gift of writing letters, which embodied the charming personality of the writer in words and thoughts that retained their beauty and fragrance after the lapse of time. The letters were tender, intimate, sacred. To Anne, the sweetest of all was the one written after her birth, to the father on a brief absence. It was full of a proud young mother's accounts of baby, her cleverness, her brightness, her thousand sweetnesses. I love her best when she is asleep and better still when she is awake, Bertha Shirley had written in the postscript. Probably it was the last sentence she had ever penned. The end was very near for her. This has been the most beautiful day of my life, Anne said to Phil that night. I've found my father and mother. Those letters have made them real to me. I'm not an orphan any longer. I feel as if I had opened a book and found roses of yesterday, sweet and beloved, between its leaves. The firelight shadows were dancing over the kitchen walls at Green Gables for the spring evening was chilly. Through the open east window drifted in the subtly sweet voices of the night. Marilla was sitting by the fire, at least in body. In spirit she was roaming old in ways with feet grown young. Of late Marilla had thus spent many an hour when she thought she should have been knitting for the twins. I suppose I'm growing old, she said. Yet Marilla had changed but little in the past nine years, saved to grow something thinner and even more angular. There was a little more gray in the hair that was still twisted up in the same hard knot, with two hairpins. Were they the same hairpins? Still stuck through it. But her expression was very different. The something about the mouth which had hinted at a sense of humor had developed wonderfully. Her eyes were gentler and milder, her smile more frequent and tender. Marilla was thinking of her whole past life, her cramped but not unhappy childhood, the jealously hidden dreams and the blighted hopes of her girlhood, the long gray narrow monotonous years of dull middle life that followed, and the coming of Anne, the vivid imaginative impetuous child with her heart of love and her world of fancy, bringing with her color and warmth and radiance until the wilderness of existence had blossomed like the rose. Marilla felt that out of her sixty years she had lived only the nine that had followed the advent of Anne, and Anne would be home tomorrow night. The kitchen door opened. Marilla looked up expecting to see Mrs. Lind. Anne stood before her, tall and starry-eyed, with her hands full of mayflowers and violets. Anne surely, exclaimed Marilla. For once in her life she was surprised out of her reserve. She caught her girl in her arms and crushed her and her flowers against her heart, kissing the bright hair and sweet face warmly. I never looked for you till tomorrow night. How did you get from Carmody? Walked, dearest of Marilla's. Haven't I done it a score of times in the Queen's days? The mailman is to bring my trunk tomorrow. I just got homesick all at once and came a day earlier. And oh, I've had such a lovely walk in the May twilight. I stopped by the barons and picked these mayflowers. I came through Violet Vale. It's just a big bowl full of violets now. The dear sky-tinted things. Smell them, Marilla. Drink them in. Marilla sniffed obligingly, but she was more interested in Anne than in drinking violets. Sit down, child. You must be real tired. I'm going to get you some supper. There's a darling moonrise behind the hills tonight, Marilla, and oh, how the frogs sang me home from Carmody. I do love the music of the frogs. It seems bound up with all my happiest recollections of old spring evenings, and it always reminds me of the night I came here first. Do you remember it, Marilla? Well, yes, said Marilla with emphasis. I'm not likely to forget it ever. They used to sing so madly in the Martianed Brook that year. I would listen to them at my window in the dusk and wonder how they could seem so glad and so sad at the same time. Oh, but it's good to be home again. Redmond was splendid and Bowlingbrook delightful, but Green Gables is home. Gilbert isn't coming home this summer, I hear. Said Marilla. No. Something in Anne's tone made Marilla glance at her sharply, but Anne was apparently absorbed in arranging her violets in a bowl. See, aren't they sweet? She went on hurriedly. The year is a book, isn't it, Marilla? Spring's pages are written in mayflowers and violets, summers in roses, autums in red maple leaves, and winter in Harley and Evergreen. Did Gilbert do well in his examinations? Persisted, Marilla. Excellently well, he led his class, but where are the twins and Mrs. Linde? Rachel and Dora are over at Mr. Harrison's. Davey is down at Bolters. I think I hear him coming now. Davey burst in, saw Anne, stopped, and then hurled himself upon her with a joyful yell. Oh, Anne, ain't I glad to see you. Say, Anne, I've grown two inches since last fall. Mrs. Linde measured me with her tape today. And say, Anne, see my front tooth. It's gone. Mrs. Linde tied one end of a string to it, and the other end to the door, and then shut the door. I sold it to Miltie for two cents. Miltie's collecting teeth. What in the world does he want teeth for? Asked Marilla. To make a necklace for playing Indian chief. Explained Davey, climbing upon Anne's lap. He's got fifteen already, and everybody else is promised, so there's no use in the rest of us starting to collect, too. I tell you, the Bolters are great business people. Were you a good boy at Mrs. Bolters? Asked Marilla severely. Yes, but say, Marilla, I'm tired of being good. You'd get tired of being bad much sooner, Davey boy, said Anne. Well, it'd be fun while it lasted, wouldn't it? Persisted Davey. I could be sorry for it afterwards, couldn't I? Being sorry wouldn't do away with the consequences of being bad, Davey. Don't you remember the Sunday last summer when you ran away from Sunday school? You told me then that being bad wasn't worthwhile. What were you and Miltie doing today? Oh, we fished and chased the cat and hunted for eggs and yelled at the echo. There's a great echo in the bush behind the Bolter Barn. Say, what is echo, Anne? I want to know. Echo is a beautiful nymph, Davey, living far away in the woods, and laughing at the world from among the hills. What does she look like? Her hair and eyes are dark, but her neck and arms are white as snow. No mortal can ever see how fair she is. She's fleeter than a deer, and that mocking voice of hers is all we can know of her. You can hear her calling at night. You can hear her laughing under the stars, but you can never see her. She flies afar if you follow her, and laughs at you always just over the next hill. Is that true, Anne, or is it a whopper? Demanded Davey, staring. Davey, said Anne despairingly. Haven't you sense enough to distinguish between a fairytale and a falsehood? Then what is it that sasses back from the Bolter Bush? I want to know. Insisted Davey. When you are a little older, Davey, I'll explain it all to you. The mention of age evidently gave a new turn to Davey's thoughts, for after a few moments of reflection he whispered solemnly. Anne, I'm going to be married. When? asked Anne with equal solemnity. Oh, not until I'm grown up, of course. Well, that's a relief, Davey. Who is the lady? Stella Fletcher. She's in my class at school. And say, Anne, she's the prettiest girl you ever saw. If I die before I grow up, you'll keep an eye on her, won't you? Davey Keith, do stop talking such nonsense. Said Marilla severely. Tisn't nonsense. Protested Davey in an injured tone. She's my promised wife, and if I was to die she'd be my promised widow, wouldn't she? And she hasn't got a soul to look after her except her old grandmother. Come and have your supper, Anne. Said Marilla. And don't encourage that child in his absurd talk. End of Chapter 22 Chapter 23 of Anne of the Island This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Anne of the Island by Lucy Mod Montgomery. Chapter 23 Paul Cannot Find the Rock People Life was very pleasant in Avonlea that summer, although Anne, amid all her vacation joys, was haunted by a sense of something gone which should be there. She would not admit, even in her inmost reflections, that this was caused by Gilbert's absence. But when she had to walk home alone from prayer meetings and AVIS powwows, while Diana and Fred and many other gay couples loitered along the dusky, starlit country roads, there was a queer, lonely ache in her heart which she could not explain away. Gilbert did not even write to her, as she thought he might have done. She knew he wrote to Diana occasionally, but she would not inquire about him. And Diana, supposing that Anne heard from him, volunteered no information. Gilbert's mother, who was a gay, frank, lighthearted lady, but not overburdened with tact, had a very embarrassing habit of asking Anne, always in a painfully distinct voice, and always in the presence of a crowd, if she had heard from Gilbert lately. Poor Anne could only blush horribly and murmur. Not very lately, which was taken by all, Mrs. Blythe included, to be merely a maidenly evasion. Apart from this, Anne enjoyed her summer. Priscilla came for a merry visit in June, and when she had gone, Mr. and Mrs. Irving, Paul and Charlotte IV came home for July and August. Echo Lodge was the scene of gayities once more, and the echoes over the river were kept busy mimicking the laughter that rang in the old garden behind the spruces. Miss Lavender had not changed, except to grow even sweeter and prettier. Paul adored her, and the companionship between them was beautiful to see. But I don't call her mother just by itself. He explained to Anne, You see, that name belongs to just my own little mother, and I can't give it to anyone else, you no teacher. But I call her Mother Lavender, and I love her next best of father. I even love her a little better than you, teacher. Which is just as it ought to be, answered Anne. Paul was thirteen now, and very tall for his years. His face and eyes were as beautiful as ever, and his fancy was still like a prism, separating everything that fell upon it into rainbows. He and Anne had delightful rambles to wood and field and shore. Never were there two more thoroughly kindred spirits. Charlotte IV had blossomed out into young ladyhood. She wore her hair now in an enormous pompadour, and had discarded the blue ribbon bows of Ald Lang's sign. But her face was as freckled, her nose as snubbed, and her mouth and smiles as wide as ever. You don't think I talk with a Yankee accent, do you, Miss Shirley Ma'am? She demanded anxiously. I didn't notice it, Charlotte. I'm real glad of that. They said I did at home, but I thought likely they just wanted to aggrate me. I don't want no Yankee accent. Not that I've a word to say against the Yankees, Miss Shirley Ma'am. They're real civilized. But give me old P.E. Island every time. Paul spent his first fortnight with his grandmother Irving in Avonlea. Anne was there to meet him when he came, and found him wild with eagerness to get to the shore. Nora and the golden lady and the twin sailors would be there. He could hardly wait to eat his supper. Could he not see Nora's elfin face peering around the point, watching for him wistfully? But it was a very sober Paul who came back from the shore in the twilight. Didn't you find your rock people? asked Anne. Paul shook his chestnut curls sorrowfully. The twin sailors and the golden lady never came at all. He said, Nora was there, but Nora is not the same teacher. She's changed. Oh, Paul, it is you who are changed, said Anne. You have grown too old for the rock people. They like only children for playfellows. I am afraid the twin sailors will never again come to you in the pearly enchanted boat with the sail of moonshine, and the golden lady will play no more for you on her golden harp. Even Nora will not meet you much longer. You must pay the penalty of growing up, Paul. You must leave fairy lands behind you. You too talk as much foolishness as ever you did, said old Mrs Irving, half indulgently, half reprovingly. Oh no, we don't, said Anne, shaking her head gravely. We are getting very, very wise, and it is such a pity. We are never half so interesting when we have learned that language has given us to enable us to conceal our thoughts. But it isn't. It has given us to exchange our thoughts, said Mrs Irving seriously. She had never heard of tallyrand and did not understand epigrams. Anne spent a fortnight of Halcyon days at Echo Lodge in the golden prime of August. While there she incidentally contrived to hurry Ludovic's speed in his leisurely courting of Theodora Dix as related duly in another chronicle of her history. Arnold Sherman, an elderly friend of the Irvings, was there at the same time, and added not a little to the general pleasantness of life. What a nice playtime this has been, said Anne. I feel like a giant refreshed, and it's only a fortnight more till I go back to Kingsport and Redmond and Patti's Place. Patti's Place is the dearest spot, Miss Lavender. I feel as if I had two homes, one at Greengables and one at Patti's Place. But where has the summer gone? It doesn't seem a day since I came home that spring evening with the Mayflowers. When I was little, I couldn't see from one end of the summer to the other. It stretched before me like an unending season. Now, tis a hand's breath, tis a tail. Anne, are you and Gilbert Blythe as good friends as you used to be? Asked Miss Lavender quietly. I am just as much Gilbert's friend as I ever was, Miss Lavender. Miss Lavender shook her head. I see something's gone wrong, Anne. I'm going to be impertinent and ask what? Have you quarreled? No, it's only that Gilbert wants more than friendship, and I can't give him more. Are you sure of that, Anne? Perfectly sure. I'm very, very sorry. I wonder why everybody seems to think I ought to marry Gilbert Blythe, said Anne, petulantly. Because you were made and meant for each other, Anne, that is why. You needn't toss that young head of yours. It's a fact. End of Chapter 23 Chapter 24 of Anne of the Island This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery Chapter 24 Enter Jonas Prospect Point, August 20th Dear Anne, spelled with an E Wrote Phil I must prop my eyelids open long enough to write you. I've neglected you shamefully this summer, honey, but all my other correspondents have been neglected too. I have a huge pile of letters to answer, so I must gird up the loins of my mind and hoe in. Excuse my mixed metaphors. I'm fearfully sleepy. Last night Cousin Emily and I were calling in a neighbor's. There were several other callers there, and as soon as those unfortunate creatures left, our hostess and her three daughters picked them all to pieces. I knew they would begin on Cousin Emily and me as soon as the door shut behind us. When we came home, Mrs. Lily informed us that the aforesaid neighbor's hired boy was supposed to be down with scarlet fever. You can always trust Mrs. Lily to tell you cheerful things like that. I have a horror of scarlet fever. I couldn't sleep when I went to bed for thinking of it. I tossed and tumbled about, dreaming fearful dreams when I did snooze for a minute, and at three I wakened up with a high fever, a sore throat, and a raging headache. I knew I had scarlet fever. I got up in a panic and hunted up Cousin Emily's doctor book to read up the symptoms. Anne, I had them all. So I went back to bed, and knowing the worst, slept like a top the rest of the night. Though why a top should sleep sounder than anything else, I never could understand. But this morning I was quite well, so it couldn't have been the fever. I suppose if I did catch it last night, it couldn't have developed so soon. I can remember that in daytime, but at three o'clock at night I never can be logical. I suppose you wonder what I'm doing at Prospect Point. Well, I always like to spend a month of summer at the shore, and Father insists that I come to his second Cousin Emily's select boarding-house at Prospect Point. So a fortnight ago I came as usual. And as usual, old Uncle Mark Miller brought me from the station with his ancient buggy, and what he calls his generous-purpose horse. He is a nice old man, and gave me a handful of pink peppermints. Peppermints always seemed to me such a religious sort of candy. I suppose because when I was a little girl, Grandmother Gordon always gave them to me in church. Once I asked, referring to the smell of peppermints, is that the odor of sanctity? I didn't like to eat Uncle Mark's peppermints because he just fished them loose out of his pocket, and had to pick some rusty nails, and other things from among them before he gave them to me. But I wouldn't hurt his dear old feelings for anything, so I carefully sewed them along the road at intervals. When the last one was gone, Uncle Mark said a little rebukingly, you shouldn't eat all them candies to unct, Miss Phil. You'll likely have the stomach ache. Cousin Emily has only five borders besides myself, four old ladies, and one young man. My right-hand neighbor is Mrs. Lily. She is one of those people who seem to take a gruesome pleasure in detailing all their many aches and pains and sicknesses. You cannot mention any ailment, but she says, shaking her head, ah, I know too well what that is. And then you get all the details. Jonas declares he once spoke of locomotor ataxia in hearing, and she said she knew too well what that was. She suffered from it for ten years and was finally cured by a traveling doctor. Who is Jonas? Just wait, Anne Shirley. You'll hear all about Jonas in the proper time and place. He is not to be mixed up with esteemable old ladies. My left-hand neighbor at the table is Mrs. Finney. She always speaks with a wailing, delorious voice. You are nervously expecting her to burst into tears every moment. She gives you the impression that life to her is indeed a veil of tears, and that a smile, never to speak of a laugh, is a frivolity truly reprehensible. She has a worse opinion of me than Aunt Jay Messina, and she doesn't love me hard to atone for it, as Auntie Jay does, either. Miss Maria Grimsby sits caddy-corner from me. The first day I came I remarked to Miss Maria that it looked a little like rain, and Miss Maria laughed. I said the road from the station was very pretty, and Miss Maria laughed. I said there seemed to be a few mosquitoes left yet, and Miss Maria laughed. I said that Prospect Point was as beautiful as ever, and Miss Maria laughed. If I were to say to Miss Maria, my father has hanged himself, my mother has taken poison, my brother is in the penitentiary, and I am in the last stages of consumption, Miss Maria would laugh. She can't help it. She was born so, but is very sad and awful. The fifth old lady is Mrs. Grant. She is a sweet old thing, but she never says anything but good of anybody, and so she is a very uninteresting conversationalist. And now for Jonas Anne. That first day I came I saw a young man sitting opposite me at the table, smiling at me, as if he had known me from my cradle. I knew, for Uncle Mark had told me, that his name was Jonas Blake, that he was a theological student from St. Columbia, and that he had taken charge at the Point Prospect Mission Church for the summer. He is a very ugly young man. Really the ugliest man I've ever seen. He has a big loose-jointed figure with absurdly long legs. His hair is toe-color and lank, his eyes are green, and his mouth is big, and his ears, but I never think about his ears if I can help it. He has a lovely voice. If you shut your eyes he is adorable, and he certainly has a beautiful soul and disposition. We were good chums right away. Of course he is a graduate of Redmond, and that is a link between us. We fished and boated together, and we walked on the sands by moonlight. He didn't look so homely by moonlight, and oh, he was nice. Niceness fairly exhaled from him. The old ladies, except Mrs. Grant, don't approve of Jonas because he laughs and jokes, and because he evidently likes the society of frivolous me better than theirs. Somehow, Anne, I don't want him to think me frivolous. This is ridiculous. Why should I care what a tow-haired person called Jonas, whom I never saw before, thinks of me? Last Sunday Jonas preached in the village church. I went, of course, but I couldn't realize that Jonas was going to preach. The fact that he was a minister, or going to be one, persisted in seeming a huge joke to me. Well, Jonas preached, and by the time he had preached ten minutes I felt so small and insignificant that I thought I must be invisible to the naked eye. Jonas never said a word about women, and he never looked at me. But I realized then and there what a pitiful, frivolous, small-soul little butterfly I was, and how horribly different I must be from Jonas's ideal woman. She would be grand and strong and noble. He was so earnest and tender and true. He was everything a minister ought to be. I wondered how I could ever have thought him ugly, but he really is, with those inspired eyes and that intellectual brow which the roughly falling hair hid on weekdays. It was a splendid sermon, and I could have listened to it forever, and it made me feel utterly wretched. Oh, I wish I were like you, Ann. He caught up with me on the road home, and grinned as cheerfully as usual. But his grin could never deceive me again. I had seen the real Jonas. I wondered if he could ever see the real Phil, whom nobody, not even you, Ann, has ever seen yet. Jonas, I said. I forgot to call him Mr. Blake. Wasn't it dreadful? But there are times when things like that don't matter. Jonas, you were born to be a minister. You couldn't be anything else. No, I couldn't, he said soberly. I tried to be something else for a long time. I didn't want to be a minister. But I came to see at last that it was the work given me to do, and God helping me, I shall try to do it. His voice was low and reverent. I thought that he would do his work, and do it well and nobly, and happy the woman fitted by nature and training to help him do it. She would be no feather, blown about by every fickle wind of fancy. She would always know what hat to put on. Probably she would have only one. Ministers never have much money. But she wouldn't mind having one hat, or none at all, because she would have Jonas. Ann Shirley, don't you dare to say, or hint, or think, that I've fallen in love with Mr. Blake. Could I care for a lank, poor, ugly theolog, named Jonas? As Uncle Mark says, it's impossible, and what's more, it's improbable. Good night, Phil. P.S., it is impossible, but I am horribly afraid it's true. I'm happy, and wretched, and scared. He can never care for me, I know. Do you think I could ever develop into a passable minister's wife, Ann? And would they expect me to lead in prayer? P.G. End of Chapter 24 Chapter 25 of Ann of the Island This liprivox recording is in the public domain. Ann of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Chapter 25 Enter Prince Charming I'm contrasting the claims of indoors and out, said Ann, looking from the window of Paddy's place to the distant pines of the park. I've an afternoon to spend in suite doing nothing, Aunt Jimsy. Shall I spend it here, where there is a cozy fire, a plate full of delicious russets, three purring and harmonious cats, and two impeccable china dogs with green noses? Or shall I go to the park, where there is the lure of gray woods and of gray water lapping on the harbor rocks? If I was as young as you, I'd decide in favor of the park, said Aunt Jamesena, tickling Joseph's yellow ear with a knitting needle. I thought that you claimed to be as young as any of us, Auntie, teased Ann. Yes, in my soul, but I'll admit my legs aren't as young as yours. You go and get some fresh air, Ann. You look pale lately. I think I'll go to the park, said Ann restlessly. I don't feel like tame domestic joys today. I want to feel alone and free and wild. The park will be empty, for everyone will be at the football match. Why didn't you go to it? Nobody asked me, sir, she said. At least nobody but that horrid little Dan Ranger. I wouldn't go anywhere with him. But rather than hurt his poor little tender feelings, I said I wasn't going to the game at all. I don't mind. I'm not in the mood for football today, somehow. You go and get some fresh air, repeated Aunt Jamesena. But take your umbrella, for I believe it's going to rain. I have rheumatism in my leg. Only old people should have rheumatism, Auntie. Anybody is liable to rheumatism in her legs, Ann. It's only old people who should have rheumatism in their souls, though. Thank goodness I never have. When you get rheumatism in your soul, you might as well go and pick out your coffin. It was November, the month of crimson sunsets, parting birds, deep sad hymns of the sea, passionate wind songs in the pines. Ann roamed through the pineland alleys in the park, and, as she said, let that great sweeping wind blow the fogs out of her soul. Ann was not want to be troubled with soul fog, but somehow, since her return to Redmond for this third year, life had not mirrored her spirit back to her with its old perfect sparkling clearness. Outwardly, existence at Paddy's Place was the same pleasant round of work and study and recreation that it had always been. On Friday evenings, the big, fire-lighted living room was crowded by callers and echoed to endless jest and laughter, while Aunt Jamesena smiled beamingly on them all. The Jonas of Phil's letter came often, running up from St. Columbia on the early train and departing on the late. He was a general favourite at Paddy's Place, though Aunt Jamesena shook her head and opined that divinity students were not what they used to be. He's very nice, my dear, she told Phil. But ministers ought to be graver and more dignified. Can't a man laugh and laugh and be a Christian still? demanded Phil. Oh, men, yes. But I was speaking of ministers, my dear, said Aunt Jamesena rebukingly. And you shouldn't flirt so with Mr. Blake. You really shouldn't. I'm not flirting with him, protested Phil. Nobody believed her, except Anne. The others thought she was amusing herself as usual and told her roundly that she was behaving very badly. Mr. Blake isn't the Alec and Alonzo type, Phil, said Stella severely. He takes things seriously. You may break his heart. Do you really think I could? Asked Phil. I'd love to think so. Philippa Gordon, I never thought you were utterly unfeeling. The idea of you saying you'd love to break a man's heart. I didn't say so, honey. Quote me correctly. I said I'd like to think I could break it. I would like to know I had the power to do it. I don't understand you, Phil. You are leading that man on deliberately and you know you don't mean anything by it. I mean to make him ask me to marry him if I can. Said Phil calmly. I give you up. Said Stella hopelessly. Gilbert came occasionally on Friday evenings. He seemed always in good spirits and held his own in the jests and repartets that flew about. He neither sought nor avoided Anne. When circumstances brought them in contact, he talked to her pleasantly and courteously as to any newly made acquaintance. The old camaraderie was gone entirely. Anne felt it keenly, but she told herself she was very glad and thankful that Gilbert had got so completely over his disappointment in regard to her. She had really been afraid, that April evening in the orchard, that she had hurt him terribly and that the wound would be long in healing. Now she saw that she need not have worried. Men have died and the worms have eaten them, but not for love. Gilbert evidently was in no danger of immediate dissolution. He was enjoying life and he was full of ambition and zest. For him there was to be no wasting in despair because a woman was fair and cold. Anne, as she listened to the ceaseless badanage that went on between him and Phil, wondered if she had only imagined that look in his eyes when she had told him she could never care for him. There were not lacking those who would have gladly stepped into Gilbert's vacant place. But Anne snubbed them without fear and without reproach. If the real Prince Charming was never to come, she would have none of a substitute. So she sternly told herself that gray day in the windy park. Suddenly the rain of Aunt Jamesena's prophecy came with a swish and rush. Anne put up her umbrella and hurried down the slope. As she turned out on the harbour road, a savage gust of wind tore along it. Instantly her umbrella turned wrongside out. Anne clutched at it in despair. And then there came a voice close to her. Pardon me? May I offer you the shelter of my umbrella? Anne looked up. Tall and handsome and distinguished looking. Dark, melancholy, inscrutable eyes. Melting, musical, sympathetic voice. Yes, the very hero of her dreams stood before her in the flesh. He could not have more closely resembled her ideal if he had been made to order. Thank you, she said confusedly. We'd better hurry over to that little pavilion on the point. Suggested the unknown. We could wait there until the shower is over. It is not likely to rain so heavily very long. The words were very commonplace, but oh the tone, and the smile which accompanied them. Anne felt her heart beating strangely. Together they scurried to the pavilion and sat breathlessly down under its friendly roof. Anne laughingly held up her false umbrella. It is when my umbrella turns inside out that I am convinced of the total depravity of inanimate things, she said gaily. The raindrops sparkled on her shining hair. Its loosened rings curled around her neck and forehead. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes big and starry. Her companion looked down at her admiringly. She felt herself blushing under his gaze. Who could he be? Why, there was a bit of the Redmond white and scarlet pinned to his coat lapel. Yet she had thought she knew, by sight at least, all the Redmond students except the freshman. And this courtly youth surely was no freshman. We are schoolmates, I see. He said, smiling at Anne's colors. That ought to be sufficient introduction. My name is Royal Gardner, and you are the Miss Shirley who read the Tennyson paper at the fellow-mathic the other evening, aren't you? Yes, but I cannot place you at all, said Anne, frankly. Please, where do you belong? I feel as if I didn't belong anywhere yet. I put in my freshman and sophomore years at Redmond two years ago. I've been in Europe ever since. Now I've come back to finish my arts course. This is my junior year, too, said Anne. So we are classmates as well as collegemates. I am reconciled to the loss of the years that the locus has eaten. Said her companion, with a world of meaning in those wonderful eyes of his. The rain came steadily down for the best part of an hour, but the time seemed really very short. When the clouds parted and a burst of pale November sunshine fell athwart the harbor and the pines, Anne and her companion walked home together. By the time they had reached the gate of Patty's place, he had asked permission to call and had received it. Anne went in with cheeks of flame and her heart beating to her fingertips. Rusty, who climbed into her lap and tried to kiss her, found a very absent welcome. Anne, with her soul full of romantic thrills, had no attention to spare just then for a croppiered pussycat. That evening a parcel was left at Patty's place for Miss Shirley. It was a box containing a dozen magnificent roses. Phil pounced impertently on the card that fell from it, read the name, and the poetical quotation written on the back. Royal Gardner! She exclaimed, Why, Anne, I didn't know you were acquainted with Royal Gardner. I met him in the park this afternoon in the rain, explained Anne hurriedly. My umbrella turned inside out and he came to my rescue with his. Oh! Phil peered curiously at Anne. And is that exceedingly commonplace incident any reason why he should send us long-stemmed roses by the dozen with a very sentimental rhyme, or why we should blush divinus rosy red when we look at his card? Anne, thy face betrayeth thee. Don't talk nonsense, Phil. Do you know Mr. Gardner? I've met his two sisters, and I know of him. So does everybody worth while in Kingsport. The gardeners are among the richest, bluest of blue noses. Roy is adorably handsome and clever. Two years ago his mother's health failed and he had to leave college and go abroad with her. His father is dead. He must have been greatly disappointed to have to give up his class. But they say he was perfectly sweet about it. Fee-fi-fo-fum-in! I smell romance. Almost do I envy you, but not quite. After all, Roy Gardner isn't Jonas. You goose! said Anne loftily. But she lay long awake that night, nor did she wish for sleep. Her waking fancies were more alluring than any vision of dreamland. Had the real Prince come at last? Recalling those glorious dark eyes which had gazed so deeply into her own, Anne was very strongly inclined to think he had. End of Chapter 25 Chapter 26 The girls at Paddy's place were dressing for the reception which the juniors were giving for the seniors in February. Anne surveyed herself in the mirror of the blue room with girlish satisfaction. She had a particularly pretty gown on. Originally it had been only a simple little slip of cream silk with a chiffon overdress. But Phil had insisted on taking it home with her in the Christmas holidays and embroidering tiny rose buds all over the chiffon. Phil's fingers were deft and the result was a dress which was the envy of every Redmond girl. Even Allie Boone, whose frocks came from Paris, was wont to look with longing eyes on that rosebud concoction as Anne trailed up the main staircase at Redmond in it. Anne was trying the effect of a white orchid in her hair. Roy Gardner had sent her white orchids for the reception and she knew no other Redmond girl would have them that night, when Phil came in with admiring gaze. Anne, this is certainly your night for looking handsome. Nine nights out of ten I can easily outshine you. The tenth, you blossom out suddenly into something that eclipses me altogether. How do you manage it? It's the dress, dear. Find feathers. Tisnt. The last evening you flamed out into beauty, you wore your old blue flannel shirt waist that Mrs. Lind made you. If Roy hadn't already lost head and heart about you, he certainly would tonight. But I don't like orchids on you, Anne. No, it isn't jealousy. Orchids don't seem to belong to you. They're too exotic, too tropical, too insolent. Don't put them in your hair anyway. Well, I won't. I admit I'm not fond of orchids myself. I don't think they're related to me. Roy doesn't often send them. He knows I like flowers I can live with. Orchids are only things you can visit with. Jonah sent me some dear pink rosebud for the evening. But he isn't coming himself. He said he had to lead a prayer meeting in the slums. I don't believe he wanted to come. Anne, I'm horribly afraid Jonas doesn't really care anything about me. And I'm trying to decide whether I'll pine away and die, or go on and get my BA and be sensible and useful. You couldn't possibly be sensible and useful, Phil, so you'd better pine away and die, said Anne cruelly. Heartless Anne. Silly Phil, you know quite well that Jonas loves you. But he won't tell me so. And I can't make him. He looks it, I'll admit. But speak to me only with thine eyes isn't a really reliable reason for embroidering doilies and hemstitching tablecloths. I don't want to begin such work until I'm really engaged. It would be tempting fate. Mr. Blake is afraid to ask you to marry him, Phil. He is poor and can't offer you a home such as you've always had. You know that is the only reason he hasn't spoken long ago. I suppose so. Agreed Phil, dolefully. Well? Brightening up. If he won't ask me to marry him, I'll ask him, that's all. So it's bound to come right. I won't worry. By the way, Gilbert Blythe is going about constantly with Christine Stewart. Did you know? Anne was trying to fasten a little gold chain about her throat. She suddenly found the clasp difficult to manage. What was the matter with it? Or with her fingers? No, she said carelessly. Who is Christine Stewart? Ronald Stewart's sister. She's in Kingsport this winter studying music. I haven't seen her, but they say she's very pretty, and that Gilbert is quite crazy over her. How angry I was when you refused Gilbert, Anne. But Roy Gardner was foreordained for you. I can see that now. You were right after all. Anne did not blush, as she usually did when the girls assumed that her eventual marriage to Roy Gardner was a settled thing. All at once she felt rather dull. Phil's chatter seemed trivial in the reception a bore. She boxed poor Rusty's ears. Get off that cushion instantly, you cat, you. Why don't you stay down where you belong? Anne picked up her orchids and went downstairs, where Aunt Jamesena was presiding over a row of coats hung before the fire to warm. Roy Gardner was waiting for Anne and teasing the Sarah Cat while he waited. The Sarah Cat did not approve of him. She always turned her back on him. But everybody else at Paddy's place liked him very much. Aunt Jamesena, carried away by his unfailing in deferential courtesy and the pleading tones of his delightful voice, declared he was the nicest young man she ever knew and that Anne was a very fortunate girl. Such remarks made Anne restive. Roy's wooing had certainly been as romantic as girlish heart could desire but she wished Aunt Jamesena and the girls would not take things so for granted. When Roy murmured a poetical compliment as he helped her on with her coat, she did not blush and thrill as usual and he found her rather silent in their brief walk to Redmond. He thought she looked a little pale when she came out of the coed's dressing room but as they entered the reception room her colour and sparkle suddenly returned to her. She turned to Roy with her gayest expression. He smiled back at her with what Phil called his deep black velvety smile. Yet she really did not see Roy at all. She was acutely conscious that Gilbert was standing under the palms just across the room talking to a girl who must be Christine Stewart. She was very handsome, in the stately style, destined to become rather massive in middle life, a tall girl with large dark blue eyes, ivory outlines and a gloss of darkness on her smooth hair. She looks just as I've always wanted to look, thought Anne miserably. Roseleaf complexion, starry violet eyes, raven hair, yes she has them all. It's a wonder her name isn't Cordelia Fitzgerald into the bargain. But I don't believe her figure is as good as mine and her nose certainly isn't. Anne felt a little comforted by this conclusion. End of Chapter 26 Chapter 27 of Anne of the Island This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery Chapter 27 Mutual Confidences March came in that winter like the meekest and mildest of lambs, bringing days that were crisp and golden and tingling, each followed by a frosty pink twilight, which gradually lost itself in an elf land of moonshine. Over the girls at Paddy's place was falling the shadow of April examinations. They were studying hard. Even Phil had settled down to text and notebooks with a doggedness not to be expected of her. I'm going to take the Johnson Scholarship in Mathematics. She announced calmly. I could take the one in Greek easily, but I'd rather take the mathematical one, because I want to prove to Jonas that I'm really enormously clever. Jonas likes you better for your big brown eyes and your crooked smile than for all the brains you carry under your curls, said Anne. When I was a girl, it wasn't considered lady-like to know anything about mathematics, said Aunt Jamesina. But times have changed. I don't know that it's all for the better. Can you cook, Phil? No, I never cooked anything in my life except a gingerbread, and it was a failure. Flat in the middle and hilly around the edges. You know the kind. But, Auntie, when I begin in good earnest to learn to cook, don't you think the brains that enable me to win a mathematical scholarship will also enable me to learn cooking just as well? Maybe, said Aunt Jamesina cautiously. I am not decrying the higher education of women. My daughter is an MA. She can cook, too. But I taught her to cook before I let a college professor teach her mathematics. In mid-March came a letter from Miss Patti Spofford, saying that she and Miss Maria had decided to remain abroad for another year. So, you may have Patti's place next winter, too. She wrote, Maria and I are going to run over Egypt. I want to see the Sphinx once before I die. Fancy those two dames running over Egypt. I wonder if they'll look up at the Sphinx and knit. Laughed Priscilla. I'm so glad we can keep Patti's place for another year, said Stella. I was afraid they'd come back, and then our jolly little nest here would have been broken up, and we poor callow nestlings thrown out on the cruel world of boarding houses again. I'm off for a tramp in the park. Announced Phil, tossing her book aside. I think when I'm 80 I'll be glad I went for a walk in the park tonight. What do you mean? asked Anne. Come with me, and I'll tell you, honey. They captured in their ramble all the mysteries and magics of a March evening. Very still and mild it was, wrapped in a great white, brooding silence. A silence which was yet threaded through with many little silvery sounds, which you could hear if you hearkened as much with your soul as your ears. The girls wandered down a long, pineland isle that seemed to lead right out into the heart of a deep red, overflowing winter sunset. I'd go home and write a poem this blessed minute if I only knew how. Declared Phil, pausing in an open space where a rosy light was staining the green tips of the pines. It's all so wonderful here. This great white stillness and those dark trees that always seem to be thinking. The woods were God's first temples, quoted Anne softly. One can't help feeling reverent and adoring in such a place. I always feel so near him when I walk among the pines. Anne, I'm the happiest girl in the world. Confessed Phil suddenly. So Mr. Blake has asked you to marry him at last, said Anne calmly. Yes, and I sneezed three times while he was asking me. Wasn't that horrid? But I said yes almost before he finished. I was so afraid he might change his mind and stop. I'm besottedly happy. I couldn't really believe before that Jonas would ever care for frivolous me. Phil, you're not really frivolous, said Anne gravely. Way down underneath that frivolous exterior of yours, you've got a dear, loyal, womanly little soul. Why do you hide it so? I can't help it, Queen Anne. You are right. I'm not frivolous at heart. But there's a sort of frivolous skin over my soul, and I can't take it off. As Mrs. Poiser says, I'd have to be hatched over again, and hatched different before I could change it. But Jonas knows the real me, and loves me, frivolity in all. And I love him. I never was so surprised in my life as I was when I found out I loved him. I'd never thought it possible to fall in love with an ugly man. Fancy me coming down to one solitary bow. And one named Jonas. But I mean to call him Joe. That's such a nice, crisp little name. I couldn't nickname Alonzo. What about Alec and Alonzo? Oh, I told them at Christmas that I never could marry either of them. It seems so funny now to remember that I ever thought it possible that I might. They felt so badly I'd just cried over both of them. Howled. But I knew there was only one man in the world I could ever marry. I had made up my own mind for once, and it was real easy, too. It's very delightful to feel so sure, and know it's your own sureness, and not somebody else's. Do you suppose you'll be able to keep it up? Making up my mind, you mean? I don't know. But Joe has given me a splendid rule. He says, when I'm perplexed, just to do what I would wish I had done when I shall be 80. Anyhow, Joe can make up his mind quickly enough, and it would be uncomfortable to have too much mind in the same house. What will your father and mother say? Father won't say much. He thinks everything I do right, but mother will talk. Oh, her tongue will be as burning as her nose. But in the end, it will be all right. You'll have to give up a good many things you've always had when you marry Mr. Blake, Phil. But I'll have him. I won't miss the other things. We're to be married a year from next June. Joe graduates from St. Columbia this spring, you know. Then he's going to take a little mission church down on Patterson Street in the slums. Fancy me in the slums. But I'd go there or to Greenland's icy mountains with him. And this is the girl who would never marry a man who wasn't rich, commented Anne to a young pine tree. Oh, don't cast up the follies of my youth to me. I shall be poor as gaily as I've been rich. You'll see. I'm going to learn how to cook and make over dresses. I've learned how to market since I've lived at Patty's place, and once I taught a Sunday school class for a whole summer. Aunt Jamesena says I'll ruin Joe's career if I marry him. But I won't. I know I haven't much sense or sobriety, but I've got what is ever so much better, the knack of making people like me. There is a man in Bowlingbroke who lisp and always testifies in prayer meeting. He says, If you can't sign like an electric star, sign like a candlestick. I'll be Joe's little candlestick. Phil, you're incorrigible. Well, I love you so much that I can't make nice, light, congratulatory little speeches. But I'm heart glad of your happiness. I know. Those big, gray eyes of yours are brimming over with real friendship, Anne. Someday I'll look the same way at you. You're going to marry Roy, aren't you, Anne? My dear Philippa, did you ever hear of the famous Betty Baxter, who refused a man before he'd axed her? I am not going to emulate that celebrated lady by either refusing or accepting anyone before he axes me. All Redmond knows that Roy is crazy about you, said Phil candidly. And you do love him, don't you, Anne? I… I suppose so, said Anne reluctantly. She felt that she ought to be blushing while making such a confession, but she was not. On the other hand, she always blushed hotly when anyone said anything about Gilbert Blythe or Christine Stewart in her hearing. Gilbert Blythe and Christine Stewart were nothing to her, absolutely nothing. But Anne had given up trying to analyze the reason of her blushes. As for Roy, of course she was in love with him. Madly so. How could she help it? Was he not her ideal? Who could resist those glorious dark eyes and that pleading voice? Were not half the Redmond girls wildly envious? And what a charming sonnet he had sent her with a box of violets on her birthday. Anne knew every word of it by heart. It was very good stuff of its kind, too. Not exactly up to the level of Keats or Shakespeare. Even Anne was not so deeply in love as to think that. But it was very tolerable magazine verse. And it was addressed to her, not to Laura or Beatrice or the maid of Athens, but to her, Anne Shirley. To be told in rhythmical cadences that her eyes were stars of the morning, that her cheek had the flesh it stole from the sunrise, that her lips were redder than the roses of paradise, was thrillingly romantic. Gilbert would never have dreamed of writing a sonnet to her eyebrows. But then Gilbert could see a joke. She had once told Roy a funny story and he had not seen the point of it. She recalled the chummy laugh she and Gilbert had had together over it and wondered uneasily if life with a man who had no sense of humor might not be somewhat uninteresting in the long run. But who could expect a melancholy inscrutable hero to see the humorous side of things? It would be flatly unreasonable. End of Chapter 27 Chapter 28 of Anne of the Island This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery Chapter 28 A June Evening I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June, said Anne, as she came through the spice and bloom of the twilight orchard to the front door steps, where Marilla and Mrs. Rachel were sitting, talking over Mrs. Samson Coat's funeral, which they had attended that day. Dora sat between them, diligently studying her lessons, but Davy was sitting tailor-fashioned on the grass, looking as gloomy and depressed as his single dimple would let him. You'd get tired of it, said Marilla with a sigh. I dare say, but just now I feel that it would take me a long time to get tired of it, if it were all as charming as today. Everything loves June. Davy boy, why this melancholy November face and blossom time? I'm just sick and tired of living, said the youthful pessimist. At ten years, dear me, how sad! I'm not making fun, said Davy with dignity. I'm dis, dis, discouraged, bringing out the big word with a valiant effort. Why and wherefore? asked Anne, sitting down beside him. Because the new teacher that come when Mr. Holmes got sick give me ten sums to do for Monday. It'll take me all day tomorrow to do them. It isn't fair to have to work Saturdays. Milti Bolter said he wouldn't do them, but Marilla says I've got to. I don't like Miss Carson a bit. Don't talk like that about your teacher, Davy Keith. said Mrs. Rachel severely. Miss Carson is a very fine girl. There is no nonsense about her. That doesn't sound very attractive, laughed Anne. I like people to have a little nonsense about them. But I'm inclined to have a better opinion of Miss Carson than you have. I saw her in prayer meeting last night, and she has a pair of eyes that can't always look sensible. Now, Davy boy, take heart of grace. Tomorrow we'll bring another day, and I'll help you with the sums as far as in me lies. Don't waste this lovely hour-twix light and dark worrying over arithmetic. Well, I won't, said Davy, brightening up. If you'll help me with the sums, I'll have them done in time to go fishing with Milti. I wish Old Antitosa's funeral was tomorrow instead of today. I wanted to go to it, because Milti said his mother said Antitosa would be sure to rise up in her coffin and say sarcastic things to the folks that come to see her buried. But Marilla said she didn't. Poor Atosla layed in her coffin peaceful enough, said Mrs. Lynn solemnly. I never saw her look so pleasant before that's what. Well, there weren't many tears shed over her poor old soul. The Elisha riots are thankful to be rid of her, and I can't say I blame them on my might. It seems to me a most dreadful thing to go out of the world and not leave one person behind you who was sorry you were gone, said Anne, shuddering. Nobody except her parents ever loved poor Atosla. That's certain, not even her husband. Avert, Mrs. Lynn. She was his fourth wife. He'd sort of got into the habit of marrying. He only lived a few years after he married her. The doctor said he died of dyspepsia, but I shall always maintain that he died of Atosla's tongue. That's what. Poor soul. She always knew everything about her neighbors, but she never was very well acquainted with herself. Well, she's gone anyhow, and I suppose the next excitement will be Diana's wedding. It seems funny and horrible to think of Diana's being married, sighed Anne, hugging her knees and looking through the gap in the haunted wood to the light that was shining in Diana's room. I don't see what's horrible about it, when she's doing so well, said Mrs. Lynn demphatically. Fred Ride has a fine farm and he is a model young man. He certainly isn't the wild, dashing, wicked young man Diana once wanted to marry. Smiled Anne. Fred is extremely good. That's just what he ought to be. Do you want Diana to marry a wicked man? Or marry one yourself? Oh, no. I wouldn't want to marry anybody who was wicked, but I think I'd like it if he could be wicked and wouldn't. Now Fred is hopelessly good. You'll have more sense some day, I hope, said Marilla. Marilla spoke rather bitterly. She was grievously disappointed. She knew Anne had refused Gilbert Blythe. Avonlea gossip buzzed over the fact, which had leaked out, nobody knew how. Perhaps Charlie Sloan had guessed and told his guesses for truth. Perhaps Diana had betrayed it to Fred and Fred had been in discreet. At all events it was known. Mrs. Blythe no longer asked Anne, in public or private, if she had heard lately from Gilbert, but passed her by with a frosty bow. Anne, who had always liked Gilbert's merry, young-hearted mother, was grieved in secret over this. Marilla said nothing, but Mrs. Lind gave Anne many exasperated digs about it, until fresh gossip reached that worthy lady, through the medium of Moody Spurgeon McPherson's mother, that Anne had another bow at college, who was rich and handsome and good all in one. After that Mrs. Rachel held her tongue, though she still wished in her inmost heart that Anne had accepted Gilbert. Riches were all very well, but even Mrs. Rachel, practical soul though she was, did not consider them the one essential. If Anne liked the handsome unknown better than Gilbert there was nothing more to be said. But Mrs. Rachel was dreadfully afraid that Anne was going to make the mistake of marrying for money. Marilla knew Anne too well to fear this, but she felt that something in the universal scheme of things had gone sadly awry. What is to be will be, said Mrs. Rachel gloomily. And what isn't to be happens sometimes. I can't help believing it's going to happen in Anne's case. If Providence doesn't interfere that's what. Mrs. Rachel sighed. She was afraid Providence wouldn't interfere and she didn't dare to. Anne had wandered down to the Dryads bubble, and was curled up among the ferns at the root of the big white birch, where she and Gilbert had so often sat in summers gone by. He had gone into the newspaper office again when college closed, and Avonlea seemed very dull without him. He never wrote to her, and Anne missed the letters that never came. To be sure, Roy wrote twice a week. His letters were exquisite compositions, which would have read beautifully in a memoir or biography. Anne felt herself more deeply in love with him than ever when she read them. But her heart never gave the queer, quick, painful bound at sight of his letters, which it had given one day when Mrs. Hiram Sloan had handed her at an envelope addressed in Gilbert's black, upright handwriting. Anne had hurried home to the East Gable and opened it eagerly to find a typewritten copy of some college society report, only that and nothing more. Anne flung the harmless screed across her room, and sat down to write an especially nice epistle to Roy. Diana was to be married in five more days. The Grey House at Orchard Slope was in a turmoil of baking and brewing and boiling and stewing, for there was to be a big old-timey wedding. Anne, of course, was to be bridesmaid, as had been arranged when they were twelve years old, and Gilbert was coming from Kingsport to be best man. Anne was enjoying the excitement of the various preparations, but under it all she carried a little heartache. She was, in a sense, losing her dear old chum. Diana's new home would be two miles from Green Gables, and the old constant companionship could never be theirs again. Anne looked up at Diana's light and thought how it had beacons to her for many years, but soon it would shine through the summer twilight no more. Two big, painful tears welled up in her grey eyes. Oh, she thought, how horrible it is that people have to grow up and marry and change. END OF CHAPTER XXVIII Chapter XXIX of Anne of the Island. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Chapter XXIX. Diana's Wedding. After all, the only real roses are the pink ones, said Anne, as she tied white ribbon around Diana's bouquet in the westward-looking gable at Orchard Slope. They are the flowers of love and faith. Diana was standing nervously in the middle of the room, a raid in her bridal white, her black curls frosted over with the film of her wedding veil. Anne had draped that veil, in accordance with the sentimental compact of years before. It's all pretty much as I used to imagine it long ago, when I wept over your inevitable marriage and our consequent parting, she laughed. You are the bride of my dreams, Diana, with the lovely misty veil, and I am your bride's maid. But alas, I haven't the puffed sleeves, though these short lace ones are even prettier. Neither is my heart wholly breaking, nor do I exactly hate Fred. We're not really parting, Anne, protested Diana. I'm not going far away. We'll love each other just as much as ever. We've always kept that oath of friendship we swore long ago, haven't we? Yes, we've kept it faithfully. We've had a beautiful friendship, Diana. We've never marred it by one quarrel or coolness or unkind word, and I hope it will always be so. But things can't be quite the same after this. You'll have other interests. I'll just be on the outside. But such is life, as Mrs. Rachel says. Mrs. Rachel has given you one of her beloved knitted quilts of the tobacco stripe pattern, and she says when I am married she'll give me one too. The mean thing about your getting married is that I won't be able to be your bridesmaid. I'm to be Phil's bridesmaid next June when she marries Mr. Blake, and then I must stop, for you know the proverb three times a bridesmaid never a bride, said Anne, peeping through the window over the pink and snow of the blossoming orchard beneath. Here comes the minister, Diana. Gasped, Diana, suddenly turning very pale and beginning to tremble. Oh Anne, I'm so nervous. I can go through with it, and I know I'm going to faint. If you do, I'll drag you down to the rainwater hog's head and drop you in, said Anne unsympathetically. Cheer up, dearest. Getting married can't be so very terrible when so many people survive the ceremony. See how cool and composed I am and take courage. Wait till your turn comes, Miss Anne. Oh Anne, I hear father coming upstairs. Give me my bouquet. Is my veil right? Am I very pale? You look just lovely. Die, darling, kiss me goodbye for the last time. Diana Barry will never kiss me again. Diana right will, though. Their mother's calling, come. Following the simple old-fashioned way in vogue then, Anne went down to the parlor on Gilbert's arm. They met at the top of the stairs for the first time since they had left Kingsport, for Gilbert had arrived only that day. Gilbert shook hands courteously. He was looking very well, though, as Anne instantly noted, rather thin. He was not pale. There was a flush on his cheek that had burned into it, as Anne came along the hall towards him in her soft white dress, with lilies of the valley in the shining masses of her hair. As they entered the crowded parlor together, a little murmur of admiration ran around the room. What a fine-looking pair they make. Whispered the impressible Mrs. Rachel to Marilla, Fred ambled in alone with a very red face, and then Diana swept in on her father's arm. She did not faint, and nothing untoward occurred to interrupt the ceremony. Feasting and merrymaking followed. Then, as the evening waned, Fred and Diana drove away through the moonlight to their new home, and Gilbert walked with Anne to Green Gables. Something of their old comrades ship had returned during the informal mirth of the evening. Oh, it was nice to be walking over that well-known road with Gilbert again. The night was so very still that one should have been able to hear the whisper of roses in blossom, the laughter of daisies, the piping of grasses, many sweet sounds all tangled up together. The beauty of moonlight on familiar fields irradiated the world. Can't we think of Ramble of Lovers Lane before you go in? Asked Gilbert as they crossed the bridge over the lake of shining waters, in which the moonlight like a great, drowned blossom of gold. Anne assented readily. Lovers Lane was a veritable path in a fairyland that night, a shimmering, mysterious place, full of wizardry in the white woven enchantment of moonlight. There had been a time when such a walk with Gilbert through Lovers Lane would have been far too dangerous. But Roy and Christine had made it very safe now. Anne found herself thinking a good deal about Christine as she chatted lightly to Gilbert. She had met her several times before leaving Kingsport and had been charmingly sweet to her. Christine had also been charmingly sweet. Indeed, they were a most cordial pair. But for all that their acquaintance had not ripened into friendship. Evidently, Christine was not a kindred spirit. Are you going to be in Avonlea all summer? Asked Gilbert. No, I'm going down east to Valley Road next week. Esther Haythorn wants me to teach for her through July and August. They have a summer term in that school and Esther isn't feeling well, so I'm going to substitute for her. In one way I don't mind. Do you know, I'm beginning to feel a little bit like a stranger in Avonlea now. It makes me sorry, but it's true. It's quite appalling to see the number of children who have shot up into big boys and girls, really young men and women, these past two years. Half of my pupils are grown up. It makes me feel awfully old to see them in the places you and I and our mates used to fill. Anne laughed and sighed. She felt very old and mature and wise, which showed how young she was. She told herself that she longed greatly to go back to those dear merry days when life was seen through a rosy mist of hope and illusion and possessed an indefinable something that had passed away forever. Where was it now? The glory and the dream. So wags the world away. Quoted Gilbert practically and a trifle absently. Anne wondered if he were thinking of Christine. Oh, Avonlea was going to be so lonely now, with Diana gone. End of Chapter 29 Chapter 30 of Anne of the Island. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Chapter 30. Mrs. Skinner's Romance. Anne stepped off the train at Valley Road Station and looked about to see if anyone had come to meet her. She was to board with a certain Miss Janet suite, but she saw no one who answered in the least to her preconception of that lady, as formed from Esther's letter. The only person in sight was an elderly woman, sitting in a wagon with mailbags piled around her. Two hundred would have been a charitable guess at her weight. Her face was as round and red as a harvest moon and almost as featureless. She wore a tight, black cashmere dress made in the fashion of ten years ago, a little dusty black straw hat trimmed with bows of yellow ribbon, and faded black lace mitts. Here, you. She called, waving her whip at Anne. Are you the new Valley Road school, ma'am? Yes. Well, I thought so. Valley Road is noted for its good-looking school, ma'ams, just as Millersville is noted for its homely ones. Janet suite asked me this morning if I could bring you out. I said, certain I came. If she don't mind being scrunched up, Sam, this rig of mine is kind of small for the mailbags, and I'm some heftier than Thomas. Just wait, miss, till I shift these bags a bit and I'll tuck you in somehow. It's only two miles to Janet's. Her next-door neighbor's heart boy is coming for your trunk tonight. My name is Skinner, Amelia Skinner. Anne was eventually tucked in, exchanging amused smiles with herself during the process. Jagalong, black mare. Commanded Mrs. Skinner, gathering up the reins in her pudgy hands. This is my first trip on the mail route. Thomas wanted to hoe his turnips today, so he asked me to come. So I just sat down and took a standing-up snack and started. I sort of like it. Of course, it's rather tedious. Part of the time I sit and think, and the rest I just sit. Jagalong, black mare. I want to get home early. Thomas is terrible lonesome when I'm away. You see, we haven't been married very long. Oh, said Anne politely. Just a mouth. Thomas courted me for quite a spell, though. It was real romantic. Anne tried to picture Mrs. Skinner on speaking terms with romance and failed. Oh, she said again. Yes, you see, there was another man after me. Jagalong, black mare. I'd been a widow so long, folks had given up expecting me to marry again. But when my daughter, she's a school mem like you, went out west to teach, I felt real lonesome, and wasn't no wise said against the idea. By me, by, Thomas began to come up, and so did the other fellow. William Aberdaya Seaman, his name was. For a long time I couldn't make up my mind which of them to take, and they kept coming and coming, and I kept worrying. You see, W.O. was rich, he had a fine place, and carried considerable style. He was by far the best match. Jagalong, black mare. Why didn't you marry him? asked Anne. Well, you see, he didn't love me. Anne said Mrs. Skinner solemnly. Anne opened her eyes widely and looked at Mrs. Skinner, but there was not a glint of humor on that lady's face. Evidently Mrs. Skinner saw nothing amusing in her own case. It'd been a winter man for three years, and his sister kept house for him. Then she got married, and he just wanted Seaman to look after his house. It was worth looking after too, mind you that. It's a handsome house. Jagalong, black mare. As for Thomas, he was poor, and if his house didn't leak in dry weather, it was about all that could be said for it. Though it looks kind of picturesque. But you see, I loved Thomas, and I didn't care one red cent for W.O., so I argued it out with myself. Sarah Crowe, say I. My first was Crowe. You can marry a rich man, if you like, but you won't be happy. Folks can't get along together in this world without a little bit of love. You just better tie up to Thomas, for he loves you and you love him, and nothing else ain't going to do you. Jagalong, black mare. So I told Thomas I'd take him. All the time I was getting ready, I never dared to drive past W.O.'s place, for fear the sight of that fine haze of his would put me in the swithers again. But now I never think of it at all, and I'm just that comfortable and happy with Thomas. Jagalong, black mare. How did William Obadiah take it? queried Anne. Oh, he ran first a bit, but he's going to see a skinny old maid in Millersville now, and I guess she'll take him fast enough. She'll make him a better wife than his first did. W.O. never wanted to marry her. He just asked her to marry him, because his father wanted him to. Never dreaming but that she'd say no. But mind you, she said yes. There was a predicament for you. Jagalong, black mare. She was a great housekeeper, but most awful mean. She wore the same bonnet for eight years. Then she got a new one, and W.O. met her on the road and didn't know her. Jagalong, black mare. I feel that I'd a nerve escape. I might have married him and been most awful miserable, like my poor cousin Jane Anne. Jane Anne married a rich man she didn't care anything about, and she hasn't the life of a dog. She come to see me last week and says, say she, Sarah Skinner, I envy you. I'd rather live in a little hat on the side of the road with a man I was fond of than in my big hat with the one I've got. Jane Anne's man ain't such a bad sword, neither, though he's so contrary that he wears his fur cut when the thermometer's at 90. The only way to get him to do anything is to coax him to do the opposite. But there ain't any law to smooth things down, and it's a poor way of living. Jagalong, black mare. There's Jane Anne's place in the hollow. Wayside, she calls it. Quite the picture rescue, ain't it? I guess you'll be glad to get out of this with all the mailbox jamming around you. Yes, but I have enjoyed my drive with you very much, said Anne sincerely. Get away now, said Mrs. Skinner, highly flattered. Wait till I tell Tom is that. He always feels dreadful tickled when I get a compliment. Jagalong, black mare. Well, here we are. I hope you'll get on well in the school, miss. There's a shortcut to it through the mash pack of janets. If you take that way, be awful careful. If you once got stuck in that black mat, you'd be sucked right down and never seen or heard tell of again till the day of judgment, like Adam Palmer's cow. Jagalong, black mare. End of Chapter 30. Chapter 31 of Anne of the Island. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Anne of the Island by Lucy Modmont-Gummary. Chapter 31. Anne to Philippa. Anne Shirley to Philippa Gordon, greeting. Well, beloved, it's high time I was writing you. Here I am, installed once more as a country school ma'am at Valley Road, boarding at Wayside, the home of Miss Janet Sweet. Janet is a dear soul and very nice-looking. Tall but not over-tall, stoutish, yet with a certain restraint of outline, suggestive of a thrifty soul who is not going to be over-lavish even in the matter of a voir du poit. She has a knot of soft, crimpy brown hair with a thread of gray in it, a sunny face with rosy cheeks, and big, kind eyes as blue as forget-me-nots. Moreover, she is one of those delightful, old-fashioned cooks who don't care a bit if they ruin your digestion, as long as they can give you feasts of fat things. I like her and she likes me. Principally, it seems, because she had a sister named Anne who died young. I'm real glad to see you, she said briskly, when I landed in her yard. My, you don't look a mite like I expected. I was sure you'd be dark, my sister Anne was dark, and here your red-headed. For a few minutes I thought I wasn't going to like Janet as much as I had expected at first sight. Then I reminded myself that I really must be more sensible than to be prejudiced against anyone simply because she called my hair red. Probably the word Auburn was not in Janet's vocabulary at all. Wayside is a dear sort of little spot. The house is small and white, set down in a delightful little hollow that drops away from the road. Between road and house is an orchard and flower garden all mixed up together. The front door walk is bordered with co-hog clam shells. Cow hawks, Janet calls them. There is Virginia creeper over the porch and moss on the roof. My room is a neat little spot off the parlor, just big enough for the bed and me. Over the head of my bed there is a picture of Robbie Burns standing at Highland Mary's grave, shadowed by an enormous weeping willow tree. Robbie's face is so legubrious that it is no wonder I have bad dreams. Why, the first night I was here I dreamed I couldn't laugh. The parlor is tiny and neat. It's one window is so shaded by a huge willow that the room has a grotto-like effect of emerald gloom. There are wonderful tidies on the chairs and gay mats on the floor and books and cards carefully arranged on a round table and vases of dried grass on the mantelpiece. Between the vases is a cheerful decoration of preserved coffin plates, five in all pertaining respectively to Janet's father and mother, a brother, her sister Anne, and a hired man who died here once. If I go suddenly insane some of these days, know all men by these presents that those coffin plates have caused it. But it's all delightful and I said so. Janet loved me for it, just as she detested poor Esther, because Esther had said so much shade was unhygenic and had objected to sleeping on a feather bed. Now, I glory in feather beds, and the more unhygenic and feathery they are, the more I glory. Janet says it is such a comfort to see me eat. She had been so afraid I would be like Miss Haythorn, who wouldn't eat anything but fruit and hot water for breakfast and tried to make Janet give up frying things. Esther is really a dear girl, but she is rather given to fads. The trouble is that she hasn't enough imagination and has a tendency to indigestion. Janet told me I could have the use of the parlor when any young men called. I don't think there are many to call. I haven't seen a young man in Valley Road yet, except the next-door hired boy, Sam Tolliver, a very tall, lank, toe-haired youth. He came over one evening recently and sat for an hour on the garden fence near the front porch, where Janet and I were doing fancy work. The only remarks he volunteered in all that time were, have a peppermint, miss. Do now. Fun thing for Qatar, peppermints. And powerful lot of jump grasses round here tonight. Yep. But there is a love affair going on here. It seems to be my fortune to be mixed up, more or less actively, with elderly love affairs. Mr. and Mrs. Irving always say that I brought about their marriage. Mrs. Stephen Clark of Carmody persists in being most grateful to me for a suggestion which somebody else would probably have made if I hadn't. I do really think, though, that Ludovic speed would never have got any further along than placid courtship if I had not helped him and Theodora Dix out. In the present affair I am only a passive spectator. I've tried once to help things along and made an awful mess of it. So I shall not meddle again. I'll tell you all about it when we meet. CHAPTER 32 OF ANNE OF THE ISLAND This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. ANNE OF THE ISLAND by Lucy Maud Montgomery. CHAPTER 32 Tee with Mrs. Douglas On the first Thursday night of Anne's sojourn in Valley Road, Janet asked her to go to prayer meeting. Janet blossomed out like a rose to attend that prayer meeting. She wore a pale blue, pansy sprinkled muslin dress with more ruffles than one would ever have supposed economical Janet could be guilty of, and a white leghorn hat with pink roses and three ostrich feathers on it. Anne felt quite amazed. Later on, she found out Janet's motive in so arraying herself, a motive as old as Eden. Valley Road prayer meetings seemed to be essentially feminine. There were thirty-two women present, two half grown boys, and one solitary man beside the minister. Anne found herself studying this man. He was not handsome or young or graceful. He had remarkably long legs, so long that he had to keep them coiled up under his chair to dispose of them, and he was stoop-shouldered. His hands were big, his hair wanted barbering, and his mustache was unkempt. But Anne thought she liked his face. It was kind and honest and tender. There was something else in it, too. Just what, Anne found it hard to define. She finally concluded that this man had suffered and been strong, and it had been made manifest in his face. There was a sort of patient, humorous endurance in his expression, which indicated that he would go to the stake if need be, but would keep on looking pleasant until he really had to begin squirming. When prayer meeting was over, this man came up to Janet and said, May I see you home, Janet? Janet took his arm, as primly and shyly as if she were no more than sixteen having her first escort home, Anne told the girls at Patty's place later on. Miss Shirley, permit me to introduce Mr. Douglas. She said stiffly. Mr. Douglas nodded and said, I was looking at you in prayer meeting, Miss, and thinking what a nice little girl you were. Such a speech from ninety-nine people out of a hundred would have annoyed Anne bitterly. But the way in which Mr. Douglas said it made her feel that she had received a very real and pleasing compliment. She smiled appreciatively at him and dropped obligingly behind on the moonlit road. So Janet had a bow. Anne was delighted. Janet would make a paragon of a wife, cheery, economical, tolerant, and a very queen of cooks. It would be a flagrant waste on nature's part to keep her a permanent old maid. John Douglas asked me to take you up to see his mother, said Janet the next day. She's bed rid a lot of the time. I never goes out of the house. But she's powerful fond of company and always wants to see my borders. Can you go up this evening? Anne assented. But later in the day, Mr. Douglas called on his mother's behalf to invite them up to tea on Saturday evening. Oh, why didn't you put on your pretty pansy dress, said Anne when they left home. It was a hot day, and poor Janet, between her excitement and her heavy black cashmere dress, looked as if she were being broiled alive. Old Mrs. Douglas would think it terrible, frivolous, and insutable, I'm afraid. John likes that dress, though, she added wistfully. The old Douglas homestead was half a mile from Wayside, cresting a windy hill. The house itself was large and comfortable, old enough to be dignified, and girdled with maple groves and orchards. There were big, trim barns behind it, and everything bespoke prosperity. Whatever the patient endurance in Mr. Douglas's face had meant, it hadn't, so Anne reflected, meant debts and duns. John Douglas met them at the door, and took them into the sitting room, where his mother was enthroned in an armchair. Anne had expected Old Mrs. Douglas to be tall and thin, because Mr. Douglas was. Instead, she was a tiny scrap of a woman, with soft pink cheeks, mild blue eyes, and a mouth like a baby's. Dressed in a beautiful, fashionably made black silk dress, with a fluffy white shawl over her shoulders, and her snowy hair surmounted by a dainty lace cap, she might have posed as a grandmother doll. How do you do, Janet, dear? She said sweetly, I am so glad to see you again, dear. She put up her pretty old face to be kissed. And this is our new teacher. I am delighted to meet you. My son has been singing your praises until I'm half jealous, and I'm sure Janet ought to be holy so. Poor Janet blushed. Anne said something polite and conventional, and then everybody sat down and made talk. It was hard work, even for Anne, for nobody seemed at ease except Old Mrs. Douglas, who certainly did not find any difficulty in talking. She made Janet sit by her and stroked her hand occasionally. Janet sat and smiled, looking horribly uncomfortable in her hideous dress, and John Douglas sat without smiling. At the tea table, Mrs. Douglas gracefully asked Janet to pour the tea. Janet turned redder than ever but did it. Anne wrote a description of that meal to Stella. We had cold tongue and chicken and strawberry preserves, lemon pie and tarts and chocolate cake, and raisin cookies and pound cake and fruit cake, and a few other things, including more pie. Caramel pie, I think it was. After I had eaten twice as much as was good for me, Mrs. Douglas sighed and said she feared she had nothing to tempt my appetite. I'm afraid, dear Janet's cooking has spoiled you for any other, she said sweetly. Of course, nobody in Valley Road aspires to rival her. Won't you have another piece of pie, Miss Shirley? You haven't eaten anything. Stella, I had eaten a helping of tongue and one of chicken, three biscuits, a generous allowance of preserves, a piece of pie, a tart, and a square of chocolate cake. After tea, Mrs. Douglas smiled benevolently and told John to take dear Janet out into the garden and get her some roses. Miss Shirley will keep me company while you are out, won't you? She said plaintively. She settled down in her armchair with a sigh. I am a very frail old woman, Miss Shirley. For over twenty years I've been a great sufferer. For twenty long, very years I've been dying by inches. How painful, said Anne, trying to be sympathetic and succeeding only in feeling idiotic. There have been scores of nights when they thought I could never live to see the dawn. Went on Mrs. Douglas solemnly. Nobody knows what I've gone through. Nobody can know but myself. Well, it can't last very much longer now. My very pilgrimage will soon be over, Miss Shirley. It is a great comfort to me that John will have such a good wife to look after him when his mother is gone. A great comfort, Miss Shirley. Janet is a lovely woman, said Anne warmly. Lovely, a beautiful character. Ascented, Mrs. Douglas. I'm the perfect housekeeper, something I never was. My health would not permit it, Miss Shirley. I am indeed thankful that John has made such a wise choice. I hope and believe that he will be happy. He is my only son, Miss Shirley, and his happiness lies very near my heart. Of course, said Anne stupidly. For the first time in her life she was stupid, yet she could not imagine why. She seemed to have absolutely nothing to say to this sweet, smiling, angelic old lady who was patting her hand so kindly. Come and see me soon again, dear Janet, said Mrs. Douglas lovingly when they left. You don't come half often enough, but then I suppose John will be bringing you here to stay all the time, one of these days. Anne, happening to glance at John Douglas as his mother spoke, gave a positive start of dismay. He looked as a tortured man might look when his tormentors gave the rack the last turn of possible endurance. She felt sure he must be ill and hurried poor blushing Janet away. Isn't old Mrs. Douglas a sweet woman? Asked Janet as they went down the road. Mm, answered Anne absently. She was wondering why John Douglas had looked so. She's been a terrible sufferer, said Janet feelingly. She takes terrible spells. It keeps John all worried up. He's scared to leave home for fear his mother will take a spell, and nobody there but the hired girl. End of Chapter 32 Chapter 33 of Anne of the Island This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Chapter 33. He just kept coming and coming. Three days later Anne came home from school and found Janet crying. Tears and Janet seemed so incongruous that Anne was honestly alarmed. Oh, what is the matter? She cried anxiously. I'm… I'm forty today. Sobbed Janet. Well, you were nearly that yesterday and it didn't hurt. Comforted Anne, trying not to smile. But… but… Went on Janet with a big gulp. John Douglas will ask me to marry him. Oh, but he will, said Anne lamely. You must give him time, Janet. Time, said Janet with indescribable scorn. He has had twenty years. How much time does he want? Do you mean that John Douglas has been coming to see you for twenty years? He has. And he has never so much as mentioned marriage to me. And I don't believe he ever will now. I've never said a word to a mortal about it, but it seems to me I just got to talk it out with someone at last or go crazy. John Douglas began to go with me twenty years ago before mother died. Well, he kept coming and coming. And after a spell I began making quilts and things. But he never said anything about getting married, only just kept coming and coming. There wasn't anything I could do. Mother died when we'd been going together for eight years. I thought he maybe would speak out then, seeing as I was left alone in the world. He was real kind and feeling and did everything he could for me, but he never said marry. And that's the way it has been going on ever since. People blame me for it. They say I won't marry him because his mother is so sickly and I don't want the bother of waiting on her. Why, I'd love to wait on John's mother. But I let them think so. I'd rather they blame me than pity me. It's so dreadful humiliating that John won't ask me. And why won't he? See, Steve, if I only knew his reason, I wouldn't mind so much. Perhaps his mother doesn't want him to marry anybody, suggested Anne. Oh, she does. She's told me time and again that she'd love to see John settle before her time comes. She's always giving him hints. You heard her yourself the other day. I thought I'd gone through the floor. It's beyond me, said Anne helplessly. She thought of Ludovic's speed, but the cases were not parallel. John Douglas was not a man of Ludovic's type. You should show more spirit, Janet. She went on resolutely. Why didn't you send him about his business long ago? I couldn't, said poor Janet, pathetically. You see, Anne, I've always been awful fond of John. He might just as well keep coming as not, for there was never anybody else I'd want. So it didn't matter. But it might have made him speak out like a man, urged Anne. Janet shook her head. No, I guess not. I was afraid to try anyway, for fear you'd think I meant it and just go. I suppose I'm a poor-spirited creature, but that is how I feel, and I can't help it. Oh, you could help it, Janet. It isn't too late yet. Take a firm stand. Let that man know you're not going to endure his shilly-shallying any longer. I'll back you up. I didn't know, said Janet hopelessly. I don't know if I could ever get up enough spunk. Things have drifted so long, but I'll think it over. Anne felt that she was disappointed in John Douglas. She had liked him so well, and she had not thought him the sort of man who would play fast and loose with the woman's feelings for twenty years. He certainly should be taught a lesson, and Anne felt vindictively that she would enjoy seeing the process. Therefore she was delighted when Janet told her, as they were going to prayer meeting the next night, that she meant to show some spirit. I'll let John Douglas see I'm not going to be trodden on any longer. You are perfectly right, said Anne emphatically. When prayer meeting was over, John Douglas came up with his usual request. Janet looked frightened, but resolute. No, thank you, she said icily. I know the road home pretty well alone. I ought to, seeing I've been traveling for forty years, so you didn't trouble yourself, Mr. Douglas. Anne was looking at John Douglas, and in that brilliant moonlight, she saw the last twist of the rack again. Without a word he turned and strode down the road. Stop, stop! Anne called wildly after him, not caring in the least for the other dumb-founded onlookers. Mr. Douglas, stop, come back! John Douglas stopped, but he did not come back. Anne flew down the road, caught his arm, and fairly dragged him back to Janet. You must come back, she said imploringly. It's all a mistake, Mr. Douglas, all my fault. I made Janet do it. She didn't want to. But it's all right now, isn't it, Janet? Without a word, Janet took his arm and walked away. Anne followed them meekly home and slipped in by the back door. Well, you are a nice person to back me up, said Janet sarcastically. I couldn't help it, Janet, said Anne repentently. I just felt as if I had stood by and seen murder done. I had to run after him. Oh, I'm just as glad you did. When I saw John Douglas making off down that road, I just felt as if every little bit of joy and happiness that was left in my life was going with him. It was an awful feeling. Did he ask you why you did it? asked Anne. No, he never said a word about it. Replied Janet, dully. End of chapter 33 Chapter 34 of Anne of the Island This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery Chapter 34 John Douglas Speaks at Last Anne was not without a feeble hope that something might come of it after all. But nothing did. John Douglas came and took Janet driving and walked home from prayer meeting with her as he had been doing for twenty years and as he seemed likely to do for twenty years more. The summer waned. Anne taught her school and wrote letters and studied a little. Her walks, too, and from school were pleasant. She always went by way of the swamp. It was a lovely place. A boggy soil, green, with the greenest of mossy hillocks. A silvery brook meandered through it and spruces stood directly. There boughs a trail with gray green mosses. Their roots overgrown with all sorts of woodland lovelinesses. Nevertheless, Anne found life in Valley Road a little monotonous. To be sure there was one diverting incident. She had not seen the lank-toe-headed Samuel of the Peppermints since the evening of his call, save for chance meetings on the road. But one warm August night he appeared and solemnly seated himself on the rustic bench by the porch. He wore his usual working habiliments, consisting of verapatched trousers, a blue-jean shirt, out at the elbows, and a ragged straw hat. He was chewing a straw and he kept on chewing it while he looked solemnly at Anne. Anne laid her book aside with a sigh and took up her doily. Conversation with Sam was really out of the question. After a long silence, Sam suddenly spoke. I'm leaving over there. He said abruptly, waving his straw in the direction of the neighbouring house. Oh, are you? said Anne politely. Yep. And where are you going now? Well, I've been thinking some are getting a place of my own. There's one that'd suit me over at Millersville, but if I rinse it, I'll want a woman. I suppose so, said Anne vaguely. Yep. There was another long silence. Finally Sam removed his straw again and said, Will you have me? What? gasped Anne. Will you have me? Do you mean marry you? queried poor Anne feebly. Yep. Why, I'm hardly acquainted with you, cried Anne indignantly. But you'd get acquainted with me after we was married. Said Sam, Anne gathered up her poor dignity. Certainly I won't marry you, she said haughtily. Well, you might do worse. Expostulated Sam. I'm a good worker and I've got some money in the bank. Don't speak of this to me again. Whatever put such an idea into your head, said Anne, her sense of humor getting the better of her wrath. It was such an absurd situation. You're a likely looking girl and have a right smart way of stepping. Said Sam. I don't want no lazy woman. Think it over. I won't change my mind yet a while. While I must be getting. Gotta milk the cows. Anne's illusions concerning proposals. Had suffered so much of late years that there were few of them left. So she could laugh wholeheartedly over this one, not feeling any secret sting. She mimicked poor Sam to Janet that night and both of them laughed moderately over his plunge into sentiment. One afternoon, when Anne's sojourn in Valley Road was drawing to a close, Alec Ward came driving down to Wayside in hot haste for Janet. They want you at the Douglas Place quick. He said. I really believe old Mrs. Douglas is going to die at last after pretending to do it for twenty years. Janet ran to get her hat. Anne asked if Mrs. Douglas was worse than usual. She's not half as bad. Said Alec solemnly. That's what makes me think it's serious. Other times she'd be screaming and throwing herself all over the place. This time she's lying still in mum. When Mrs. Douglas is mum, she is pretty sick, you bet. You don't like old Mrs. Douglas? Said Anne curiously. I like cats as is cats. I don't like cats as is women. Was Alec's cryptic reply? Janet came home in the twilight. Mrs. Douglas is dead. She said wearily. She died soon after I got there. She just spoke to me once. I suppose she'll marry John now, she said. They'd cut me to the heart, Anne. To think John's own mother thought I wouldn't marry him because of her. I couldn't say a word either. There were other women there. I was thankful John had gone out. Janet began to cry drearily. But Anne brewed her a hot drink of ginger tea to her comforting. To be sure, Anne discovered later on that she had used white pepper instead of ginger, but Janet never knew the difference. The evening after the funeral, Janet and Anne were sitting on the front porch steps at sunset. The wind had fallen asleep in the pine lands and lurid sheets of heat lightning flickered across the northern skies. Janet wore her ugly black dress and looked her very worst, her eyes and nose red from crying. They talked little, for Janet seemed faintly to resent Anne's efforts to cheer her up. She plainly preferred to be miserable. Suddenly the gate latch clicked and John Douglas strode into the garden. He walked towards them straight over the geranium bed. Janet stood up. So did Anne. Anne was a tall girl and wore a white dress, but John Douglas did not see her. Janet? He said. Will you marry me? The words burst out as if they had been wanting to be said for 20 years and must be uttered now before anything else. Janet's face was so red from crying that it couldn't turn any redder, so it turned a most unbecoming purple. Why didn't you ask me before? She said slowly. I couldn't. She made me promise not to. Mother made me promise not to. 19 years ago she took a terrible spell. We thought she couldn't live through it. She implored me to promise not to ask you to marry me while she was alive. I didn't want to promise such a thing, even though we all thought she couldn't live very long. The doctor only gave her six months. But she begged it on her knees, sick and suffering. I had to promise. What had your mother against me? Cried Janet. Nothing, nothing. She just didn't want another woman, any woman, there while she was living. She said if I didn't promise, she'd die right there and I'd have killed her. So I promised. And she's held me to that promise ever since, though I've gone on my knees to her in my turn to beg her to let me off. Why didn't you tell me this? Asks Janet chokingly. If I'd only known, why didn't you just tell me? She made me promise I wouldn't tell a soul. Said John Horsley. She swore me to it on the Bible, Janet. I'd never have done it if I'd dreamed it was to be for so long. Janet, you'll never know what I've suffered these 19 years. I know I've made you suffer, too. But you'll marry me for all, won't you, Janet? Oh, Janet, won't you? I've come as soon as I could to ask you. At this moment, the stupefied Anne came to her senses and realized that she had no business to be there. She slipped away and did not see Janet until the next morning, when the latter told her the rest of the story. That cruel, relentless, deceitful old woman, cried Anne. Hush, she's dead. Said Janet solemnly. If she wasn't, but she is, so we mustn't speak evil of her. But I'm happy at last, Anne. And I wouldn't have minded waiting so long a bit if I'd only known why. When are you to be married? Next month. Of course, it will be very quiet. I suppose people will talk terrible. They'll say I made enough haste to snap John up as soon as his poor mother was out of the way. John wanted to let them know the truth. But I said no, John. After all, she was your mother, and will keep the secret between us, and not cast any shadow on our memory. I don't mind what people say, now that I know the truth myself. It don't matter, it might. Let it all be buried with the dead, says I to him. So I coaxed him round to agree with me. You're much more forgiving than I could ever be, Anne said, rather crossly. You'll feel differently about a good many things when you get to be my age. Said Janet tolerantly. That's one of the things we learn as you grow older, how to forgive. It comes easier at forty than it did at twenty. End of chapter thirty-four. Chapter thirty-five of Anne of the Island. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Chapter thirty-five. The Last Redmond Year Opens. Here we are, all back again. Nicely sunburned and rejoicing as a strong man to run a race. Said Phil, sitting down on a suitcase with a sigh of pleasure. Isn't it jolly to see this dear old Patty's place again? And Auntie, and the cats? Rusty has lost another piece of ear, hasn't he? Rusty would be the nicest cat in the world if he had no ears at all, declared Anne loyally from her trunk, while Rusty writhed about her lap in a frenzy of welcome. Aren't you glad to see us back, Auntie? Demanded Phil. Yes, but I wish you tidy things up. Said Aunt Jaymasina plaintively, looking at the wilderness of trunks and suitcases by which the four laughing, chattering girls were surrounded. You can talk just as well later on. Work first and then play used to be my motto when I was a girl. Oh, we've just reversed that in this generation, Auntie. Our motto is play your play and then dig in. You can do your work so much better if you've had a good bout of play first. If you are going to marry a minister, Said Aunt Jaymasina, picking up Joseph and her knitting and resigning herself to the inevitable with the charming grace that made her the queen of house-mothers. You will have to give up such expressions as dig in. Why? Moaned Phil. Oh, why must a minister's wife be supposed to utter only prunes and prisms? I shan't. Everybody on Patterson Street uses slang, that is to say metaphorical language, and if I didn't, they would think me insufferably proud and stuck up. Have you broken the news to your family? Asked Priscilla, feeding the Sarah cat bits from her lunch basket. Phil nodded. How did they take it? Oh, mother rampaged, but I stood rock firm. Even I, Philippa Gordon, who never before could hold fast to anything. Father was calmer. Father's own daddy was a minister, so you see he has a soft spot in his heart for the cloth. I had Joe up to Mount Holly, after mother grew calm, and they both loved him. But mother gave him some frightful hints in every conversation regarding what she had hoped for me. All my vacation pathway hasn't been exactly strewn with Rose's girls, dear. But I've won out, and I've got Joe. Nothing else matters. To you, said Aunt Jamesena darkly. Nor to Joe either, retorted Phil. You keep on pitying him. Why, pray? I think he's to be envied. He's getting brains, beauty, and a heart of gold in me. It's well we know how to take your speeches. Said Aunt Jamesena patiently. I hope you don't talk like that before strangers. What would they think? Oh, I don't want to know what they think. I don't want to see myself as others see me. I'm sure it would be horribly uncomfortable most of the time. I don't believe Burns was really sincere in that prayer either. Oh, I daresay we all pray for some things that we really don't want, if we were only honest enough to look into our hearts. Owned Aunt Jamesena candidly. I have a notion that such prayers don't rise very far. I used to pray that I might be enabled to forgive a certain person, but I know now I really didn't want to forgive her. When I finally got that I did want to, I forgave her without having to pray about it. I can't picture you as being unforgiving for long, said Stella. Oh, I used to be, but holding spite doesn't seem worthwhile when you get along in years. That reminds me, said Anne, and told the tale of John and Janet. And now tell us about that romantic scene you hinted so darkly at in one of your letters. Demanded Phil. Anne acted out Samuel's proposal with great spirit. The girls shrieked with laughter, and Aunt Jamesena smiled. It isn't good taste to make fun of your bows, she said severely. But, she added calmly, I always did it myself. Tell us about your bows, Auntie. Intreated Phil. You must have had any number of them. They're not in the past tense. Retorted Aunt Jamesena. I've got them yet. There are three old widowers at home who have been casting sheep's eyes at me for some time. You children needn't think you own all the romance in the world. Widowers and sheep's eyes don't sound very romantic, Auntie. Well, no. But young folks aren't always romantic either. Some of my bows certainly weren't. I used to laugh at them scandalous poor boys. There was Jim Elwood. He was always in a sort of daydream. Never seemed to sense what was going on. He didn't wake up to the fact that I'd said no till a year after I'd said it. When he did get married, his wife fell out of the sleigh one night when they were driving home from church, and he never missed her. Then there was Dan Winston. He knew too much. He knew everything in this world. And most of what is in the next. He could give you an answer to any question, even if you asked him when the judgment day was to be. Milton Edwards was real nice, and I liked him, but I didn't marry him. For one thing, he took a week to get a joke through his head. And for another, he never asked me. Horatio Reeve was the most interesting bow I ever had. But when he told the story, he dressed it up so that you couldn't see it for frills. I never could decide whether he was lying or just letting his imagination run loose. And what about the others, Auntie? Go away and unpack. Said Aunt Jamesina, waving Joseph at them by mistake for a needle. The others were too nice to make fun of. I shall respect their memory. There's a box of flowers in your room, Anne. They came about an hour ago. After the first week, the girls of Paddy's place settled down to a steady grind of study. For this was their last year at Redmond, and graduation honors must be fought for persistently. Anne devoted herself to English, Priscilla poured over classics, and Philippa pounded away at mathematics. Sometimes they grew tired, sometimes they felt discouraged, sometimes nothing seemed worth the struggle for it. In one such mood, Stella wandered up to the blue room one rainy November evening. Anne sat on the floor in a little circle of light cast by the lamp beside her, amid a surrounding snow of crumpled manuscript. What in the world are you doing? Just looking over some old story club yarns, I wanted something to cheer and inebriate. I'd studied until the world seemed azure. So I came up here and dug these out of my trunk. They are so drenched in tears and tragedy that they are excruciatingly funny. I'm blue and discouraged myself, said Stella, throwing herself on the couch. Nothing seems worthwhile. My very thoughts are old. I've thought them all before. What is the use of living after all, Anne? Honey, it's just brain fag that makes us feel that way, and the weather. A pouring rainy night like this, coming after a hard day's grind, would squelch anyone but a mark taply. You know it is worthwhile to live. Oh, I suppose so, but I can't prove it to myself just now. Just think of all the great and noble souls who have lived and worked in the world, said Anne dreamily. Isn't it worthwhile to come after them and inherit what they won and taught? Isn't it worthwhile to think we can share their inspiration? And then all the great souls that will come in the future. Isn't it worthwhile to work a little and prepare the way for them? Make just one step in their path easier? Oh, my mind agrees with you, Anne. But my soul remains doleful and uninspired. I'm always grubby and dingy on rainy nights. Some nights I like the rain. I like to lie in bed and hear it pattering on the roof and drifting through the pines. I like it when it stays on the roof, said Stella. It doesn't always. I spent a gruesome night in an old country farmhouse last summer. The roof leaked and the rain came pattering down on my bed. There was no poetry in that. I had to get up in the merc midnight and shivvy around to pull the bedstead out of the drip. And it was one of those solid old fashioned beds that weigh a ton, more or less. And then that drip drop, drip drop kept up all night until my nerves just went to pieces. You've no idea what an eerie noise, a great drop of rain falling with a mushy thud on a bare floor makes in the night. It sounds like the ghostly footsteps and all that sort of thing. What are you laughing over, Anne? These stories, as Phil would say they are killing, in more senses than one for everybody died in them. What dazzlingly lovely heroines we had, and how we dressed them. Silks, satins, velvets, jewels, laces, they never wore anything else. Here is one of Jane Andrews stories depicting her heroine as sleeping in a beautiful white satin nightdress trimmed with seed pearls. Go on, said Stella. I begin to feel that life is worth living, as long as there's a laugh in it. Here's one I wrote. My heroine is desporting herself at a ball, glittering from head to foot with large diamonds of the first water. But what booted beauty or rich attire, the paths of glory lead but to the grave. They must either be murdered or die of a broken heart. There was no escape for them. Let me read some of your stories. Well, here's my masterpiece. Note its cheerful title, My Graves. I shed quartz of tears while riding it, and the other girl shed gallons while I read it. Jane Andrews' mother scolded her frightfully because she had so many handker chips in the wash that week. It's a harrowing tale of the wanderings of a Methodist minister's wife. I made her a Methodist because it was necessary that she should wander. She buried a child every place she lived in. There were nine of them, and their graves were severed far apart, ranging from Newfoundland to Vancouver. I described the children, pictured their several deathbeds, and detailed their tombstones and epitaphs. I had intended to bury the whole nine, but when I had disposed of eight, my invention of horrors gave out, and I permitted the ninth to live as a hopeless cripple. While Stella read My Graves, punctuating its tragic paragraphs with chuckles, and Rusty slept to the sleep of a just cat who has been out all night, curled up on a Jane Andrews tale of a beautiful maiden of fifteen who went to nurse in a leper colony, of course dying of the loathsome disease finally, Anne glanced over the other manuscripts and recalled the old days at Avonlea's school when the members of the story club, sitting under the spruce trees or down among the ferns by the brook, had written them. What fun they had had! How the sunshine and mirth of those olden summers returned as she read. Not all the glory that was Greece or the grandeur that was Rome could weave such wizardry as those funny, tearful tales of the story club. Among the manuscripts, Anne found one written on sheets of wrapping paper. A wave of laughter filled her gray eyes as she recalled the time and place of its genesis. It was the sketch she had written the day she fell through the roof of the Cobb Duck House on the Tory Road. Anne glanced over it, then fell to reading it intently. It was a little dialogue between Asters and Sweet Peas, wild canaries in the lilac bush, and the guardian spirit of the garden. After she had read it, she sat, staring into space, and when Stella had gone, she smoothed out the crumpled manuscript. I believe I will, she said resolutely. End of Chapter 35 Here is a letter with an Indian stamp for you, Aunt Jimsy. Here are three for Stella and two for Priss, and a glorious fat one for me from Joe. There's nothing for you, Anne, except a circular. Nobody noticed Anne's flush, as she took the thin letter Phil tossed her carelessly. But a few minutes later, Phil looked up to see a transfigured Anne. Honey, what good thing has happened? The youth's friend has accepted a little sketch I sent them a fortnight ago, said Anne, trying hard to speak as if she were accustomed to having sketches accepted every mail, but not quite succeeding. Anne, surely! How glorious! What was it? When is it to be published? Did they pay you for it? Yes, they've sent a check for ten dollars, and the editor writes that he would like to see more of my work. Dear man, he shall. It was an old sketch I found in my box. I rewrote it and sent it in, but I never really thought it could be accepted because it had no plot, said Anne, recalling the bitter experience of Avril's atonement. What are you going to do with that ten dollars, Anne? Let's all go uptown and get drunk. Suggested Phil. I am going to squander it in a wild, soulless revel of some sort, declared Anne gaily. At all events it isn't tainted money, like the check I got for that horrible, reliable baking powder story. I spent it usefully for clothes and hated them every time I put them on. Think of having a real-life author at Paddy's place, said Priscilla. It's a great responsibility, said Aunt Jamesena solemnly. Indeed it is, agreed Pris with equal solemnity. Authors are kiddo-cattle. You never know when or how they will break out, Anne may make copy of us. I meant that the ability to write for the press was a great responsibility, said Aunt Jamesena severely. And I hope Anne realizes it. My daughter used to write stories before she went to the foreign field, but now she has turned her attention to higher things. She used to say her motto was, Never write a line you would be ashamed to read at your own funeral. You'd better take that for yours, Anne, if you are going to embark in literature. Though, to be sure, added Aunt Jamesena perplexively. Elizabeth always used to laugh when she said it. She always laughed so much that I don't know how she ever came to decide on being a missionary. I'm thankful she did. I prayed that she might. But I wish she hadn't. Then Aunt Jamesena wondered why those giddy girls all laughed. Anne's eyes shone all that day. Literary ambitions sprouted and butted in her brain. Their exhilaration accompanied her to Jenny Cooper's walking party, and not even the sight of Gilbert and Christine walking just ahead of her and Roy could quite subdue the sparkle of her starry hopes. Nevertheless, she was not so wrapped from things of earth as to be unable to notice that Christine's walk was decidedly ungraceful. But I suppose Gilbert looks only at her face, so like a man, thought Anne scornfully. Shall you be at home Saturday afternoon? Asked Roy. Yes? My mother and sisters are coming to call on you. Said Roy quietly. Something went over Anne which might be described as a thrill, but it was hardly a pleasant one. She had never met any of Roy's family. She realized the significance of his statement, and it had, somehow, an irrevocableness about it that chilled her. I shall be glad to see them, she said flatly, and then wondered if she really would be glad. She ought to be, of course, but would it not be something of an ordeal? Gossip had filtered to Anne, regarding the light in which the gardeners viewed the infatuation of son and brother. Roy must have brought pressure to bear in the matter of this call. Anne knew she would be weighed in the balance. From the fact that they had consented to call, she understood that, willingly or unwillingly, they regarded her as a possible member of their clan. I shall just be myself. I shall not try to make a good impression, thought Anne loftily. But she was wondering what dress she would better wear Saturday afternoon, and if the new style of high-hair dressing would suit her better than the old, and the walking party was rather spoiled for her. By night she had decided that she would wear her brown chiffon on Saturday, but would do her hair low. Friday afternoon none of the girls had classes at Redmond. Stella took the opportunity to write a paper for the Philomathic Society, and was sitting at the table in the corner of the living-room, with an untidy litter of notes and manuscript on the floor around her. Stella always vowed she could never write anything, unless she threw each sheet down as she completed it. Anne, in her flannel blouse and surge skirt, with her hair rather blown from her windy walk home, was sitting squarely in the middle of the floor, teasing the Sarah cat with a wishbone. Joseph and Rusty were both curled up in her lap. A warm, plummy odor filled the whole house, for Priscilla was cooking in the kitchen. Presently she came in, enshrouded in a huge work apron, with a smudge of flour on her nose, to show Aunt Jamesina the chocolate cake she had just iced. At this auspicious moment the knocker sounded. Nobody paid any attention to it save Phil, who sprang up and opened it, expecting a boy with the hat she had bought that morning. On the doorstep stood Mrs. Gardner and her daughters. Anne scrambled to her feet somehow, emptying two indignant cats out of her lap as she did so, and mechanically shifting her wishbone from her right hand to her left. Priscilla, who would have had to cross the room to reach the kitchen door, lost her head, wildly plunged the chocolate cake under a cushion on the Ingle Nook sofa, and dashed upstairs. Stella began feverishly gathering up her manuscript. Only Aunt Jamesina and Phil remained normal. Thanks to them, everybody was soon sitting at ease, even Anne. Priscilla came down, apronless and smudgeless. Stella reduced her corner to decency, and Phil saved the situation by a stream of ready small talk. Mrs. Gardner was tall and thin and handsome, exquisitely gowned, cordial, with a cordiality that seemed a trifle forced. Aileen Gardner was a younger edition of her mother, lacking the cordiality. She endeavored to be nice, but succeeded only in being haughty and patronizing. Dorothy Gardner was slim and jolly and rather tomboyish. Anne knew she was Royal's favorite sister and warmed to her. She would have looked very much like Royal if she had had dreamy dark eyes instead of roguish hazel ones. Thanks to her and Phil, the call really went off very well, except for a slight sense of strain in the atmosphere, and two rather untoward incidents. Rusty and Joseph, left to themselves, began a game of chase, and sprang madly into Mrs. Gardner's silken lap and out of it in their wild career. Mrs. Gardner lifted her lawn yet and gazed after their flying forms, as if she had never seen cats before, and Anne, choking back slightly nervous laughter, apologized as best she could. You are fond of cats? said Mrs. Gardner, with a slight intonation of tolerant wonder. Anne, despite her affection for Rusty, was not especially fond of cats, but Mrs. Gardner's tone annoyed her. Inconsequently, she remembered that Mrs. John Blythe was so fond of cats that she kept as many as her husband would allow. They are adorable animals, aren't they? she said wickedly. I have never liked cats. said Mrs. Gardner remotely. I love them, said Dorothy. They're so nice and selfish. Dogs are too good and unselfish. They make me feel uncomfortable, but cats are gloriously human. You have two delightful old china dogs there. May I look at them closely? said Aileen, crossing the room towards the fireplace and thereby becoming the unconscious cause of the other accident. Picking up Magog, she sat down on the cushion under which was secreted Priscilla's chocolate cake. Priscilla and Anne exchanged agonized glances but could do nothing. The stately Aileen continued to sit on the cushion and discuss china dogs until the time of departure. Dorothy lingered behind a moment to squeeze Anne's hand and whisper impulsively. I know you and I are going to be chums. Oh, Roy told me all about you. I'm the only one in the family he talks to. Poor boy. Nobody could confine in mama or A-line, you know. What glorious times you girls must have. Won't you let me come often and have a share in them? Come as often as you like, Anne responded heartily, thankful that one of Roy's sisters was likable. She would never like Aileen so much was certain and Aileen would never like her, though Mrs. Gardner might be one. All together, Anne sighed with relief when the ordeal was over. Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are it might have been. Quoted Priscilla tragically, lifting the cushion. This cake is now what you might call a flat failure and the cushion is likewise ruined. Never tell me that Friday isn't unlucky. People who send word they are coming on Saturday shouldn't come on Friday, said Aunt Jamesina. I fancy it was Roy's mistake, said Phil. That boy isn't really responsible for what he says when he talks to Anne. Where is Anne? Anne had gone upstairs. She felt oddly like crying, but she made herself laugh instead. Rusty and Joseph had been too awful, and Dorothy was a dear. End of Chapter 36 Chapter 37 of Anne of the Island This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery Chapter 37 Full-Fledged B.A.'s I wish I were dead, or that I were tomorrow night. Growned Phil If you live long enough, both wishes will come true, said Anne calmly. It's easy for you to be serene. You're at home in philosophy. I'm not, and when I think of that horrible paper tomorrow, I quail. If I should fail in it, what would Joe say? You won't fail. How did you get on in Greek today? I don't know. Perhaps it was a good paper, and perhaps it was bad enough to make home or turn over in his grave. I've studied and mauled over notebooks until I'm incapable of forming an opinion of anything. How thankful little Phil will be when all this examinating is over. Examinating? I never heard such a word. Well, haven't I as good a right to make a word as anyone else? Demanded Phil. Words aren't made, they grow, said Anne. Never mind. I begin faintly to discern clear water ahead where no examination breakers loom. Girls, do you—can you realize that our Redmond life is almost over? I can't, said Anne sorrowfully. It seems just yesterday that Priss and I were alone in that crowd of freshmen at Redmond, and now we are seniors in our final examinations. Potent, wise, and reverend seniors. Quoted Phil. Do you suppose we really are any wiser than when we came to Redmond? You don't act as if you were by times, said Aunt Jamesina severely. Oh, Aunt Jimsy, haven't we been pretty good girls? Take us by and large. These three winters you've mothered us. Pleaded Phil. You've been four of the dearest, sweetest, goodest girls that ever went together through college. Avert Aunt Jamesina, who never spoiled a compliment by misplaced economy. But I mistrust you haven't any too much sense yet. It's not to be expected, of course. Experience teaches sense. You can't learn it in a college course. You've been to college four years, and I never was. But I know heaps more than you do, young ladies. There are lots of things that never go by rule. There's a powerful pile of knowledge that you never get at college. There are heaps of things you never learn at school. Have you learned anything at Redmond except dead languages and geometry and such trash? Queeried Aunt Jamesina. Oh yes, I think we have, Auntie, protested Anne. We've learned the truth of what Professor Woodley told us last philanthropic. Said Phil. He said, humor is the spiciest condiment in the feast of existence. Laugh at your mistakes, but learn from them. Joke over your troubles, but gather strength from them. Make a jest of your difficulties, but overcome them. Isn't that worth learning, Aunt Jimsy? Yes, it is, dearie. When you've learned to laugh at the things that should be laughed at, and not to laugh at those that shouldn't, you've got wisdom and understanding. What have you got out of your Redmond course, Anne? murmured Priscilla aside. I think, said Anne slowly, that I really have learned to look upon each little hindrance as a jest, and each great one is the foreshadowing of victory. Summing up, I think that is what Redmond has given me. I shall have to fall back on another Professor Woodley quotation to express what it has done for me. Said Priscilla. You remember that he said in his address, there is so much in the world for us all, if we only have the eyes to see it, and the heart to love it, and the hand to gather it to ourselves. So much in men and women, so much in art and literature, so much everywhere in which to delight, and for which to be thankful. I think Redmond has taught me that in some measure, Anne. Judging from what you all say, remarked Aunt Jamesina. The sum and substance is that you can learn, if you've got natural gumption enough, in four years at college, what it would take about 20 years of living to teach you. Well, that justifies higher education in my opinion. It's a matter I was always dubious about before. But what about people who haven't natural gumption, Aunt Genzie? People who haven't natural gumption? Never learn. Retorted Aunt Jamesina. Neither in college nor life. If they live to be a hundred, they really don't know anything more than when they were born. It's their misfortune, not their fault, poor souls. But those of us who have some gumption should duly thank the Lord for it. Will you please define what gumption is, Aunt Genzie? Asked Phil. No, I won't, young woman. Anyone who has gumption knows what it is. And anyone who hasn't can never know what it is. So there is no need of defining it. The busy days flew by and examinations were over. Anne took high honors in English, Priscilla took honors in classics and fill in mathematics. Stella obtained a good all-round showing. Then came convocation. This is what I would once have called an epic in my life, said Anne, as she took Roy's violets out of their box and gazed at them thoughtfully. She meant to carry them, of course, but her eyes wandered to another box on her table. It was filled with lilies of the valley, as fresh and fragrant as those which bloomed in the Green Gable's yard when June came to Avonlea. Gilbert blithes cardly beside it. Anne wondered why Gilbert should have sent her flowers for convocation. She had seen very little of him during the past winter. He had come to Paddy's place only one Friday evening since the Christmas holidays, and they rarely met elsewhere. She knew he was studying very hard, aiming at high honors and the Cooper Prize, and he took little part in the social doings of Redmond. Anne's own winter had been quite gay socially. She had seen a good deal of the gardeners. She and Dorothy were very intimate. College circles expected the announcement of her engagement to Roy any day. Anne expected it herself. Yet, just before she left Paddy's place for convocation, she flung Roy's violets aside and put Gilbert's lilies of the valley in their place. She could not have told why she did it. Somehow, old Avonlea days and dreams and friendships seemed very close to her in this attainment of her long cherished ambitions. She and Gilbert had once pictured out merrily the day on which they should be capped and gowned graduates in arts. The wonderful day had come, and Roy's violets had no place in it. Only her old friends' flowers seemed to belong to this fruition of old blossoming hopes which she had once shared. For years this day had beckoned and allured to her. But when it came, the one, single, keen, abiding memory it left with her was not that of the breathless moment when the stately president of Redmond gave her cap and diploma and hailed her BA. It was not of the flash in Gilbert's eyes when he saw her lilies, nor the puzzled, pained glance Roy gave her as he passed her on the platform. It was not of Aileen Gardner's condescending congratulations or Dorothy's ardent, impulsive good wishes. It was of one strange, unaccountable pang that spoiled this long expected day for her and left in it a certain faint but enduring flavor of bitterness. The arts graduates gave a graduation dance that night. When Anne dressed for it, she tossed aside the pearl beads she usually wore and took from her trunk the small box that had come to Green Gables on Christmas Day. In it was a thread-like gold chain with a tiny pink enamel heart as a pendant. On the accompanying card was written, With all good wishes from your old chum, Gilbert. Anne, laughing over the memory the enamel heart conjured up, the fatal day when Gilbert had called her carrots and vainly tried to make his piece with a pink candy heart, had written him a nice little note of thanks. But she had never worn the trinket. Tonight she fastened it about her white throat with a dreamy smile. She and Phil walked to Redmond together. Anne walked in silence. Phil chattered of many things. Suddenly she said, I heard today that Gilbert Blyce's engagement to Christine Stewart was to be announced as soon as Convocation was over. Did you hear anything of it? No, said Anne. I think it's true. Said Phil lightly. Anne did not speak. In the darkness she felt her face burning. She slipped her hand inside her collar and caught at the gold chain. One energetic twist and it gave way. Anne thrust the broken trinket into her pocket. Her hands were trembling and her eyes were smarting. But she was the gayest of all the gay revelers that night and told Gilbert unregretfully that her card was full when he came to ask her for a dance. Afterwards, when she sat with the girls before the dying embers at Patty's place, removing the spring chilliness from their satin skins, none chatted more blithely than she of the day's events. Moody Spurgeon MacPherson called here tonight after you left. Said Aunt Jamesina, who had sat up to keep the fire on. He didn't know about the graduation dance. That boy ought to sleep with a rubber band around his head to train his ears not to stick out. I had a bow once who did that and it improved him immensely. It was I who suggested it to him and he took my advice. But he never forgave me for it. Moody Spurgeon is a very serious young man. Yonge Priscilla. He is concerned with graver matters than his ears. He is going to be a minister, you know. Well, I suppose the Lord doesn't regard the ears of a man. Said Aunt Jamesina gravely, dropping all further criticism of Moody Spurgeon. Aunt Jamesina had a proper respect for the cloth, even in the case of an unfledged parson. End of Chapter 37 Chapter 38 of Anne of the Island This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery Chapter 38 False Dawn Just imagine, this night-week I'll be in Avonlea. Delightful thought, said Anne, bending over the box in which she was packing Mrs. Rachel Lynn's quilts. But just imagine, this night-week I'll be gone forever from Patty's place. Horrible thought. I wonder if the ghost of all our laughter will echo through the maiden dreams of Miss Patty and Miss Maria. Speculated fill. Miss Patty and Miss Maria were coming home, after having trotted over most of the habitable globe. We'll be back the second week in May, wrote Miss Patty. I expect Patty's place will seem rather small after the Hall of the Kings at Carnac. But I never did like big places to live in, and I'll be glad enough to be home again. When you start traveling late in life, you're apt to do too much of it because you know you haven't much time left, and it's a thing that grows on you. I'm afraid Maria will never be contented again. I shall leave here my fancies and dreams to bless the next-comer, said Anne, looking around the blue room wistfully, her pretty blue room, where she had spent three such happy years. She had knelt at its window to pray, and had bent from it to watch the sunset behind the pines. She had heard the autumn raindrops beaning against it, and had welcomed the spring robins at its sill. She wondered if old dreams could haunt rooms. If, when one left forever the room where she had enjoyed and suffered and laughed and wept, something of her, intangible and invisible, yet nonetheless real, did not remain behind like a voiceful memory. I think, said Phil, that a room where one dreams and grieves and rejoices and lives becomes inseparably connected with those processes and acquires a personality of its own. I am sure if I came into this room fifty years from now, it would say, Anne, Anne to me. What nice times we've had here, honey. What chats and jokes and good, chummy jamborees. Oh, dear me! I'm to marry Joe in June, and I know I will be rapturously happy. But just now I feel as if I wanted this lovely Redmond life to go on forever. I'm unreasonable enough just now to wish that too, admitted Anne. No matter what deeper joys may come to us later on, we'll never again have just the same delightful, irresponsible existence we've had here. It's over forever, Phil. What are you going to do with Rusty? Asked Phil, as that privileged pussy padded into the room. I'm going to take him home with me and Joseph and the Sarah cat. Announced Aunt Jamesena following Rusty. It would be a shame to separate those cats, now that they have learned to live together. It's a hard lesson for cats and humans to learn. I'm sorry to part with Rusty, said Anne regretfully. But it would be no use to take him to Green Gables. Marilla detests cats and Davy would tease his life out. Besides, I don't suppose I'll be home very long. I've been offered the Principalship of the Somerside High School. Are you going to accept it? Asked Phil. I—I haven't decided yet, answered Anne, with a confused flush. Phil nodded understandingly. Naturally, Anne's plans could not be settled until Roy had spoken. He would soon. There was no doubt of that. And there was no doubt that Anne would say yes when he said, Will you please? Anne herself regarded the State of Affairs with a seldom ruffled complacency. She was deeply in love with Roy. True, it was not just what she had imagined love to be, but was anything in life? Anne asked herself wearily, like one's imagination of it. It was the old diamond disillusion of childhood repeated, the same disappointment she had felt when she had first seen the chill sparkle instead of the purple splendour she had anticipated. That's not my idea of a diamond, she had said. But Roy was a dear fellow and they would be very happy together, even if some indefinable zest was missing out of life. When Roy came down that evening and asked Anne to walk in the park, everyone at Patty's place knew what he had come to say, and everyone knew, or thought they knew, what Anne's answer would be. Anne is a very fortunate girl, said Aunt Jamesina. I suppose so, said Stella, shrugging her shoulders. Roy is a nice fellow in all that, but there's really nothing in him. That sounds very like a jealous remark, Stella Maynard. Said Aunt Jamesina rebukingly. It does, but I'm not jealous. Said Stella calmly. I love Anne, and I like Roy. Everybody says she is making a brilliant match, and even Mrs. Gardner thinks her charming now. It all sounds as if it were made in heaven, but I have my doubts. Make the most of that, Aunt Jimzina. Roy asked Anne to marry him in the little pavilion on the Harbour Shore where they had talked on the rainy day of their first meeting. Anne thought it very romantic that he should have chosen that spot, and his proposal was as beautifully worded as if he had copied it, as one of Ruby Gillis' lovers had done, out of a deportment of courtship and marriage. The whole effect was quite flawless, and it was also sincere. There was no doubt that Roy meant what he said. There was no false note to jar the symphony. Anne felt that she ought to be thrilling from head to foot. But she wasn't. She was horribly cool. When Roy paused for his answer, she opened her lips to say her fateful yes. And then she found herself trembling as if she were reeling back from a precipice. To her came one of those moments when we realize, as by a blinding flash of illumination, more than all our previous years have taught us. She pulled her hand from Roy's. Oh, I can't marry you! I can't! I can't! she cried wildly. Roy turned pale, and also looked rather foolish. He had, small blame to him, felt very sure. What do you mean? He stammered. I mean that I can't marry you, repeated Anne desperately. I thought I could, but I can't. Why can't you? Roy asked more calmly. Because I don't care enough for you. A crimson streak came into Roy's face. So you've just been amusing yourself these two years? He said slowly. No! No, I haven't! gasped poor Anne. Oh, how could she explain? She couldn't explain. There are some things that cannot be explained. I did think I cared. Truly I did. But I know now I don't. You have ruined my life, said Roy bitterly. Forgive me, pleaded Anne miserably, with hot cheeks and stinging eyes. Roy turned away and stood for a few minutes looking out seaward. When he came back to Anne, he was very pale again. You can give me no hope, he said. Anne shook her head mutely. Then, goodbye, said Roy. I can't understand it. I can't believe you are not the woman I believe you to be. But reproaches are idle between us. You are the only woman I can ever love. I thank you for your friendship, at least. Goodbye, Anne. Goodbye, faltered Anne. When Roy had gone she sat for a long time in the pavilion, watching a white mist creeping subtly and remorselessly landward up the harbour. It was her hour of humiliation and self-contempt and shame. Their waves went over her. And yet, underneath it all, was a queer sense of recovered freedom. She slipped into Patty's place in the dusk and escaped to her room, but Phil was there on the window seat. Wait, said Anne, flushing to anticipate the scene. Wait till you hear what I have to say. Phil, Roy asked me to marry him, and I refused. You—you refused him? Said Phil blankly. Yes. Anne, surely. Are you in your senses? I think so, said Anne wearily. Oh, Phil, don't scold me. You don't understand. I certainly don't understand. You've encouraged Roy Gardner in every way for two years, and now you tell me you've refused him. Then you've just been flirting scandalously with him. Anne, I couldn't have believed it of you. I wasn't flirting with him. I honestly thought I cared up to the last minute. And then, well, I just knew I never could marry him. I suppose, said Phil cruelly, that you intended to marry him for his money, and then your better self rose up and prevented you. I didn't. I never thought about his money. Oh, I can't explain it to you any more than I could to him. Well, I certainly think you have treated Roy shamefully, said Phil in exasperation. He's handsome and clever and rich and good. What more do you want? I want someone who belongs in my life. He doesn't. I was swept off my feet at first by his good looks and knack of paying romantic compliments, and later on I thought I must be in love because he was my dark-eyed ideal. I am bad enough for not knowing my own mind, but you are worse, said Phil. I do know my own mind, protested Anne. The trouble is, my mind changes, and then I have to get acquainted with it all over again. Well, I suppose there's no use in saying anything to you. There is no need, Phil. I'm in the dust. This has spoiled everything backwards. I can never think of Redmond days without recalling the humiliation of this evening. Roy despises me, and you despise me, and I despise myself. You poor darling, said Phil, melting. Just come here and let me comfort you. I've no right to scold you. I'd have married Alec or Alonzo if I hadn't met Joe. Oh, Anne, things are so mixed up in real life. They aren't clear cut and trimmed off, as they are in novels. I hope that no one will ever again ask me to marry him as long as I live, sobbed poor Anne, devoutly believing that she meant it. End of Chapter 38 Chapter 39 of Anne of the Island This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery Chapter 39 Deals with Weddings Anne felt that life partook of the nature of an anticlimax during the first few weeks after her return to Green Gables. She missed the merry comradeship of Patti's place. She had dreamed some brilliant dreams during the past winter, and now they lay in the dust around her. In her present mood of self-disgust, she could not immediately begin dreaming again. And she discovered that, while solitude with dreams is glorious, solitude without them has few charms. She had not seen Roy again after their painful partying in the Park Pavilion, but Dorothy came to see her before she left Kingsport. I'm awfully sorry you won't marry Roy, she said. I did want you for a sister, but you're quite right. You would bore you to death. I love him, and he's a dear sweet boy, but he really isn't a bit interesting. He looks as if he ought to be, but he isn't. This won't spoil our friendship, will it, Dorothy? Anne had asked wistfully. No, indeed. You're too good to lose. If I can't have you for a sister, I mean to keep you as a chum anyway. But don't threat over Roy. He's feeling terrible just now. I have to listen to his outpourings every day. But he'll get over it. He always does. Oh, always? said Anne with a slight change of voice. So he has got over it before. Dear me, yes, said Dorothy frankly. Twice before, and he raved to me just the same both times. Not that the others actually refused him. They simply announced their engagements to someone else. Of course, when he met you, he vowed to me that he'd never really loved before, that the previous affairs had been merely boyish fancies. But I don't think you need to worry. Anne decided not to worry. Her feelings were a mixture of relief and resentment. Roy had certainly told her she was the only one he had ever loved. No doubt he believed it. But it was a comfort to feel that she had not, in all likelihood, ruined his life. There were other goddesses, and Roy, according to Dorothy, must needs be worshipping at some shrine. Nevertheless, life was stripped of several more illusions, and Anne began to think drearily that it seemed rather bare. She came down from the porch gable on the evening of her return with a sorrowful face. What has happened to the old Snow Queen, Marilla? Oh, I knew you'd feel bad over that. Said Marilla. I felt bad myself. That tree was there ever since I was a young girl. It blew down in the big gale we had in March. It was rotten at the core. I'll miss it so, grieved Anne. The porch gable doesn't seem the same room without it. I'll never look from its window again without a sense of loss. And oh, I never came home to Green Gables before that Diana wasn't here to welcome me. Diana has something else to think of just now. Said Mrs. Lynde significantly. Well, tell me all the Avonlea news, said Anne, sitting down on the porch steps, where the evening sunshine fell over her hair in a fine golden rain. There isn't much else except what we've wrote you. Said Mrs. Lynde. I suppose you haven't heard that Simon Fletcher broke his leg last week. It's been a great thing for his family. They're getting a hundred things done that they've always wanted to do, but couldn't as long as he was about, the old crank. He came of an aggravating family. Remarked Marilla. Aggravating? Well, rather. His mother used to get up at prayer meeting until all her children's shortcomings and ask prayer for them. Of course, it made them mad, and worse than ever. You haven't told Anne the news about Jane. Suggested Marilla. Oh, Jane. Sniffed Mrs. Lynde. Well, she conceded grudgingly. Jane Andrews is home from the West, come last week, and she's going to be married to a Winnipeg millionaire. You may be sure Mrs. Harmon lost no time telling it far and wide. Dear old Jane, I'm so glad, said Anne heartily. She deserves the good things of life. Oh, I ain't sayin' anything against Jane. She's a nice enough girl. But she isn't in the millionaire class. And you'll find there's not much to recommend the man but his money. That's what. Mrs. Harmon says he's an Englishman, who has made his money in minds, but I believe he'll turn out to be a Yankee. He certainly must have money for he has just showered Jane with jewelry. Her engagement ring is a diamond cluster so big that it looked like a plaster on Jane's fat paw. Mrs. Lynde could not keep some bitterness out of her tone. Here was Jane Andrews, that plain little plotter, engaged to a millionaire, while Anne, it seemed, was not yet bespoken by anyone, rich or poor. And Mrs. Harmon Andrews did brag insufferably. What has Gilbert Blythe been doing to at college? Asked Marilla. I saw him when he came home last week, and he is so pale and thin I hardly knew him. He studied very hard last winter, said Anne. You know he took high honors in classics and the Cooper Prize. It hasn't been taken for five years, so I think he's rather run down. We're all a little tired. Anyhow, you're a BA and Jane Andrews isn't and never will be. Said Mrs. Lynde with gloomy satisfaction. A few evenings later Anne went down to see Jane, but the latter was away in Charlottetown. Getting sewing done. Mrs. Harmon informed Anne proudly. Of course an Avonlea dressmaker wouldn't do for Jane under the circumstances. I've heard something very nice about Jane, said Anne. Yes, Jane has done pretty well, even if she isn't a BA. Said Mrs. Harmon with a slight toss of her head. Mr. Inglis is worth millions, and they're going to Europe on their wedding tour. When they come back they'll live in a perfect mansion of marble in Winnipeg. Jane has only one trouble. She can cook so well and her husband won't let her cook. He is so rich he highs his cooking done. They're going to keep a cook and two other maids and a coachman and a man of all work. But what about you, Anne? I don't hear anything of your being married. After all your college going. Oh, laughed Anne. I'm going to be an old maid. I really can't find anyone to suit me. It was rather wicked of her. She deliberately meant to remind Mrs. Andrews that if she became an old maid, it was not because she had not had at least one chance of marriage. But Mrs. Harmon took swift revenge. Well, the over-particular girls generally get left, I notice. And what's this I hear about Gilbert Blythe being engaged to a Miss Stuart? Charlie Sloane tells me she is perfectly beautiful. Is it true? I don't know if it is true that he is engaged to Miss Stuart, replied Anne, with Spartan composure. But it is certainly true that she is very lovely. I once thought you and Gilbert would have made a match of it, said Mrs. Harmon. If you don't take care, Anne, all of your bows will slip through your fingers. Anne decided not to continue her duel with Mrs. Harmon. You could not fence with an antagonist who met rape your thrust with a blow of battle-axe. Since Jane is away, she said, rising hotly, I don't think I can stay longer this morning. I'll come down when she comes home. Do, said Mrs. Harmon effusively. Jane isn't a bit proud. She just means to associate with her old friends the same as ever. She'll be real glad to see you. Jane's millionaire arrived the last of May and carried her off in a blaze of splendor. Mrs. Lind was spitefully gratified to find that Mr. English was every day of 40, and short, and thin, and grayish. Mrs. Lind did not spare him in her enumeration of his shortcomings, you may be sure. It will take all his gold to gild a pill like him, that's what. Said Mrs. Rachel solemnly. He looks kind and good-hearted, said Anne loyally, and I'm sure he thinks the world of Jane. Said Mrs. Rachel. Phil Gordon was married the next week, and Anne went over to Bolingbroke to be her bridesmaid. Phil made a dainty fairy of a bride, and the Reverend Joe was so radiant in his happiness that nobody thought him plain. We're going for a lover saunter through the land of Evangeline. Said Phil. And then we'll settle down on Patterson Street. Mother thinks it is terrible. She thinks Joe might at least take a church in a decent place. But the wilderness of the Patterson slums will blossom like the rose for me, if Joe is there. Oh, Anne, I'm so happy my heart aches with it. Anne was always glad in the happiness of her friends, but it is sometimes a little lonely to be surrounded everywhere by a happiness that is not your own. And it was just the same when she went back to Avonlea. This time it was Diana, who was bathed in the wonderful glory that comes to a woman when her firstborn is laid beside her. Anne looked at the white young mother with a certain awe that had never entered into her feelings for Diana before. Could this pale woman with the rapture in her eyes be the little black curled, rosy-cheeked Diana she had played with in vanished school days? It gave her a queer, desolate feeling that she herself somehow belonged only in those past years and had no business in the present at all. Isn't he perfect and beautiful? Said Diana proudly. The little fat fellow was absurdly like Fred, just as round, just as red. Anne really could not say conscientiously that she thought him beautiful, but she vowed sincerely that he was sweet and kissable and altogether delightful. Before he came I wanted a girl, so that I could call her Anne. Said Diana. But now that little Fred is here I wouldn't exchange him for a million girls. He just couldn't have been anything but his own precious self. Every little baby is the sweetest and the best. Quoted Mrs. Anne gaily. If little Anne had come, you'd have felt just the same about her. Mrs. Anne was visiting in Avonlea for the first time since leaving it. She was as gay and sweet and sympathetic as ever. Her old girlfriends had welcomed her back rapturously. The reigning minister's wife was an estimable lady, but she was not exactly a kindred spirit. I can hardly wait till he gets old enough to talk. Said Diana. I just longed here and say mother, and oh I'm determined that his first memory of me shall be a nice one. The first memory I have of my mother is if her slapping me for something I had done. I'm sure I deserved it, and mother was always a good mother and I loved her dearly, but I do wish my first memory of her was nicer. I have just one memory of my mother and it is the sweetest of all my memories. Said Mrs. Allen. I was five years old, and I had been allowed to go to school one day with my two older sisters. When school came out, my sisters went home in different groups, each supposing I was with the other. Instead I had run off with a little girl I had played with at recess. We went to her home, which was near the school, and began making mud pies. We were having a glorious time when my older sister arrived breathless and angry. You naughty girl, she cried, snatching my reluctant hand and dragging me along with her. Come home this minute. Oh, you're going to catch it. Mother is awful cross. She is going to give you a good whipping. I had never been whipped. Dread and terror filled my poor little heart. I have never been so miserable in my life as I was on that walk home. I had not meant to be naughty. Femme Cameron had asked me to go home with her, and I had not known it was wrong to go. And now I was to be whipped for it. When we got home, my sister dragged me into the kitchen, where mother was sitting by the fire in the twilight. My poor wee legs were trembling so that I could hardly stand. And mother, mother just took me up in her arms, without one word of rebuke or harshness, kissed me and held me close to her heart. I was so frightened you were lost, darling, she said tenderly. I could see the love shining in her eyes as she looked down on me. She never scolded or reproached me for what I had done, only told me I must never go away again without asking permission. She died very soon afterwards. That is the only memory I have of her. Isn't it a beautiful one? Anne felt lonelier than ever as she walked home, going by way of the birch path and willow mirror. She had not walked that way from any moons. It was a darkly purple, gloomy night. The air was heavy with blossom fragrance, almost too heavy. The cloyed senses recoiled from it as from an overfull cup. The birches of the path had grown from the fairy saplings of old to big trees. Everything had changed. Anne felt that she would be glad when the summer was over and she was away at work again. Perhaps life would not seem so empty then. I've tried the world. It wears no more the colouring of romance at war, side Anne, and was straight way much comforted by the romance in the idea of the world being denuded of romance. Irvings came back to Echo Lodge for the summer, and Anne spent a happy three weeks there in July. Miss Lavender had not changed. Charlotte IV was a very grown-up young lady now, but still adored Anne sincerely. When all said and done, Miss Shirley, ma'am, I haven't seen anyone in Boston's equal to you. She said frankly, Paul was almost grown up, too. He was sixteen. His chestnut curls had given place to close-cropped brown locks, and he was more interested in football than fairies. But the bond between him and his old teacher still held. Kindred spirits alone do not change with changing years. It was a wet, bleak, cruel evening in July when Anne came back to Green Gables. One of the fierce summer storms which sometimes sweep over the gulf was ravaging the sea. As Anne came in, the first raindrops dashed against the panes. Was that Paul who brought you home? Asked Marilla. Why didn't you make him stay all night? It's going to be a wild evening. He'll reach Echo Lodge before the rain gets very heavy, I think. Anyway, he wanted to go back to-night. Well, I've had a splendid visit, but I'm glad to see you, dear folks, again. East, West, Hames, Best. Davy, have you been growing again lately? I've grown a whole inch since you left. Said Davy proudly. I'm as tall as Milty Bolter now. Ain't I glad? He'll have to stop crowing about being bigger. Say, Anne, do you know that Gilbert Blythe is dying? Anne stood quite silent and motionless, looking at Davy. Her face had gone so white that Marilla thought she was going to faint. Davy, hold your tongue. Said Mrs. Rachel angrily. Anne, don't look like that. Don't look like that. We didn't mean to tell you so suddenly. Is it true? asked Anne in a voice that was not hers. Gilbert is very ill. Said Mrs. Lynde gravely. He took down with typhoid fever just after you left for Echo Lodge. Did you never hear of it? No, said that unknown voice. It was a very bad case from the start. The doctor said he'd been terrible rundown. They've a trained nurse and everything's been done. Don't look like that, Anne. While there's life, there's hope. Mr. Harrison was here this evening and he said they had no hope of him. Reiterated Davy. Marilla, looking old and worn and tired, got up and marched Davy grimly out of the kitchen. Oh, don't look so dear. Said Mrs. Rachel, putting her kind old arms about the pallid girl. I haven't given up hope. Indeed I haven't. He's got the Blythe Constitution in his favor, that's what. Anne gently put Mrs. Lynde's arms away from her, walked blindly across the kitchen, through the hall, up the stairs to her old room. At its window she knelt down, staring out unseeingly. It was very dark. The rain was beating down over the shivering fields. The haunted woods was full of the groans of mighty trees rung in the tempest and the air throbbed with the thunderous crash of billows on the distant shore. And Gilbert was dying. There is a book of Revelation in everyone's life, as there is in the Bible. Anne read hers that bitter night, as she kept her agonized vigil through the hours of storm and darkness. She loved Gilbert, had always loved him. She knew that now. She knew that she could no more cast him out of her life without agony than she could have cut off her right hand and cast it from her. And the knowledge had come too late. Too late even for the bitter solace of being with him at the last. If she had not been so blind, so foolish, she would have had the right to go to him now. But he would never know that she loved him. He would go away from this life thinking that she did not care. Oh, the black years of emptiness stretching before her. She could not live through them. She could not. She cowered down by her window and wished, for the first time in her gay young life, that she could die too. If Gilbert went away from her without one word or sign or message, she could not live. Nothing was of any value without him. She belonged to him and he to her. In her hour of supreme agony, she had no doubt of that. He did not love Christine Stewart, never had loved Christine Stewart. Oh, what a fool she had been not to realize what the bond was that had held her to Gilbert. To think that the flattered fancy she had felt for Roy Gardner had been love. And now she must pay for her folly as for a crime. Mrs. Lind and Marilla crept to her door before they went to bed, shook their heads doubtfully at each other over the silence and went away. The storm raged all night, but when the dawn came it was spent. Anne saw a fairy fringe of light on the skirts of darkness. Soon the eastern hilltops had a fire-shot ruby rim. The clouds rolled themselves away into great soft white masses on the horizon. The sky gleamed blue and silvery. A hush fell over the world. Anne rose from her knees and crept downstairs. The freshness of the rain wind blew against her white face as she went out into the yard and cooled her dry, burning eyes. A merry, rollicking whistle was lilting up the lane. A moment later, Pasifik Bouotte came in sight. Anne's physical strength suddenly failed her. If she had not clutched at a low willow bow she would have fallen. Pasifik was George Fletcher's hired man and George Fletcher lived next door to the blithes. Mrs. Fletcher was Gilbert's aunt. Pasifik would know if… if… Pasifik would know what there was to be known. Pasifik strode sturdily on along the red lane, whistling. He did not see Anne. She made three feudal attempts to call him. He was almost past before she succeeded in making her quivering lips call, Pasifik. Pasifik turned with a grin and a cheerful good morning. Pasifik said Anne faintly, did you come from George Fletcher's this morning? Sure, said Pasifik amiably. I got the word last night that my father he was sick. I was so stormy that I couldn't go then, so I start very early this morning. I go in through the woods for shortcut. Did you hear how Gilbert Blythe was this morning? Anne's desperation drove her to the question. Even the worst would be more durable than this hideous suspense. He's better. said Pasifik. He got the turn last night and the doctors say he'll be all right now, this soon while. At close shave though, that boy. He just killed himself at college. Well, I must hurry. The old man, he'll be in hurry to see me. Pasifik resumed his walk and his whistle. Anne gazed after him with eyes where joy was driving out the strained anguish of the night. He was a very lank, very ragged, very homely youth. But in her sight he was as beautiful as those who bring good tidings on the mountains. Never, as long as she lived, would Anne see Pasifik's brown, round, black eyed face without a warm remembrance of the moment when he had given to her the oil of joy for mourning. Long after Pasifik's gay whistle had faded into the phantom of music and then into silence, far up under the maples of lover's lane, Anne stood under the willows, tasting the poignant sweetness of life when some great dread has been removed from it. The morning was a cup filled with mist and glamour. In the corner near her was a rich surprise of new-blown, crystal-dewed roses. The trills and trickles of song from the birds in the big tree above her seemed in perfect accord with her mood. A sentence from a very old, very true, very wonderful book came to her lips. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. End of Chapter 40. Chapter 41 of Anne of the Island. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Chapter 41. Love takes up the glass of time. I've come up to ask you to go for one of our old-time rambles through September Woods and over hills where spices grow this afternoon, said Gilbert, coming suddenly around the porch corner. Suppose we visit Hester Gray's garden? Anne, sitting on the stone step, with her lap full of a pale, filmy green stuff, looked up rather blankly. Oh, I wish I could, she said slowly, but I really can't, Gilbert. I'm going to Alice Penhalo's wedding this evening, you know. I've got to do something to this dress, and by the time it's finished I'll have to get ready. I'm so sorry. I'd love to go. Well, can you go tomorrow afternoon, then? Asked Gilbert, apparently not much disappointed. Yes, I think so. In that case, I shall hide me home at once to do something I shall otherwise have to do tomorrow. So, Alice Penhalo's to be married tonight? Three weddings for you in one summer, Anne? Fills, Alice's and Jane's. I'll never forgive Jane for not inviting me to her wedding. You really can't blame her when you think of the tremendous Andrew's connection who had to be invited. The house could hardly hold them all. I was only bitten by grace of being Jane's old chum, at least on Jane's part. I think Mrs. Harmon's motive for inviting me was to let me see Jane's surpassing gorgeousness. Is it true that you wore so many diamonds that you couldn't tell where the diamonds left off when Jane began? Anne laughed. She certainly wore a good many. What with all the diamonds and white satin and tulle and lace and roses and orange blossoms, Primlittle Jane was almost lost to sight. But she was very happy and so was Mr. Inglis, and so was Mrs. Harmon. Is that the dress you're going to wear tonight? Asked Gilbert, looking down at the fluff and frills. Yes, isn't it pretty? And I shall wear star flowers in my hair. The haunted wood is full of them this summer. Gilbert had a sudden vision of Anne, arrayed in a frilly green gown with the virginal curves of arms and throat slipping out of it and white stars shining against the coils of her ruddy hair. The vision made him catch his breath, but he turned lightly away. Well, I'll be up tomorrow. Hope you'll have a nice time tonight. Anne looked after him as he strode away and sighed. Gilbert was friendly, very friendly, far too friendly. He had come quite often to Green Gables after his recovery, and something of their old comradeship had returned. But Anne no longer found it satisfying. The rose of love made the blossom of friendship pale and senseless by contrast. And Anne had again begun to doubt if Gilbert now felt anything for her but friendship. In the common light of common day, her radiant certainty of that wrapped morning had faded. She was haunted by a miserable fear that her mistake could never be rectified. It was quite likely that it was Christine whom Gilbert loved after all. Perhaps he was even engaged to her. Anne tried to put all unsettling hopes out of her heart and reconcile herself to a future where work and ambition must take the place of love. She could do good if not noble work as a teacher, and the success her little sketches were beginning to meet with in certain editorial sanctums augured well for her budding literary dreams. But, but Anne picked up her green dress and sighed again. When Gilbert came the next afternoon, he found Anne waiting for him, fresh as the dawn and fair as a star, after all the gaiety of the preceding night. She wore a green dress, not the one she had worn to the wedding, but an old one, which Gilbert had told her at a Redmond reception he liked especially. It was just the shade of green that brought out the rich tints of her hair and the starry gray of her eyes and the iris-like delicacy of her skin. Gilbert, glancing at her sideways as they walked along a shadowy wood path, thought she had never looked so lovely. Anne, glancing sideways at Gilbert now and then, thought how much older he looked since his illness. It was as if he had put boyhood behind him forever. The day was beautiful and the way was beautiful. Anne was almost sorry when they reached Hester Gray's garden and sat down on the old bench. But it was beautiful there, too, as beautiful as it had been on the faraway day of the Golden Picnic, when Diana and Jane and Priscilla and she had found it. Then it had been lovely with narcissists and violets. Now Goldenrod had kindled its fairy torches in the corners and Asters dotted it bluely. The call of the brook came up through the woods from the valley of birches with all its old allurement. The mellow air was full of the purve of the sea. Beyond were fields rimmed by fences, bleached silvery gray in the suns of many summers, and long hills scarfed with the shadows of autumnal clouds. With the blowing of the west wind, old dreams returned. I think, said Anne softly, that the land where dreams come true is in the blue haze yonder over that little valley. Funion fulfilled dreams, Anne, asked Gilbert. Something in his tone, something she had not heard since that miserable evening in the orchard at Patty's place, made Anne's heart beat wildly. But she made answer lightly. Of course, everybody has. It wouldn't do for us to have all our dreams fulfilled. We would be as good as dead if we had nothing left to dream about. What a delicious aroma that low descending sun is extracting from the Asters and ferns. I wish we could see perfumes as well as smell them. I'm sure they would be very beautiful. Gilbert was not to be thus sidetracked. I have a dream. He said slowly. I persist in dreaming it, although it is often seemed to me that it could never come true. I dream of a home with a hearth fire in it, a cat and dog, the footsteps of friends, and you. Anne wanted to speak, but she could find no words. Happiness was breaking over her like a wave. It almost frightened her. I asked you a question over two years ago, Anne. If I ask it again today, will you give me a different answer? Still Anne could not speak, but she lifted her eyes, shining with all the love rapture of countless generations, and looked into his for a moment. He wanted no other answer. They lingered in the old garden until twilight, sweet as dusk and Eden must have been, crept over it. There was so much to talk over and recall. Things said and done and heard and thought and felt and misunderstood. I thought you loved Christine Stewart, Anne told him, as reproachfully as if she had not given him every reason to suppose that she loved Roy Gardner. Gilbert laughed boyishly. Christine was engaged with somebody in her hometown. I knew it and she knew I knew it. When her brother graduated, he told me his sister was coming to Kingsport the next winter to take music, and asked me if I would look after her a bit as she knew no one and would be very lonely, so I did, and then I liked Christine for her own sake. She's one of the nicest girls I've ever known. I knew college gossip credited us with being in love with each other. I didn't care. Nothing mattered much to me for a time there after you told me you could never love me, Anne. There's nobody else. There ever could be anybody else for me but you. I've loved you ever since that day you broke your slate over my head in school. I don't see how you could keep on loving me when I was such a little fool, said Anne. Well, I tried to stop, said Gilbert frankly. Not because I thought you what you call yourself, but because I felt sure there was no chance for me after Gardner came on the scene. But I couldn't, and I can't tell you either what it meant to me these two years to believe you're going to marry him and be told every week by some busybody that your engagement was on the point of being announced. I believed it until one blessed day when I was sitting up after the fever. I got a letter from Phil Gordon, Phil Blake rather, in which she told me there was really nothing between you and Roy and advised me to try again. Well, the doctor was amazed at my rapid recovery after that. Anne laughed, then shivered. I can never forget the night I thought you were dying, Gilbert. Oh, I knew. I knew then, and I thought it was too late. But it wasn't, sweetheart. Oh, and this makes up for everything, doesn't it? Let's resolve to keep this day sacred to perfect beauty all our lives for the gift it has given us. It's the birthday of our happiness, said Anne softly. I've always loved this old garden of Hester Gray's, and now it will be dearer than ever. But I'll have to ask you to wait a long time, Anne, said Gilbert sadly. It will be three years before I'll finish my medical course, and even then there'll be no diamonds, sunbursts, and marble halls. Anne laughed. I don't want sunbursts and marble halls. I just want you. You see, I'm quite as shameless as Phil about it. Sunbursts and marble halls may be all very well, but there is more scope for imagination without them. And as for the waiting, that doesn't matter. We'll just be happy, waiting and working for each other. And dreaming. Oh, dreams will be very sweet now. Gilbert drew her close to him and kissed her. Then they walked home together in the dusk, crowned king and queen in the bridal realm of love, along winding paths fringed with the sweetest flowers that ever bloomed, and overhaunted meadows where winds of hope and memory blew.