 Chapter 20 of Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Read for LibriVox by Karen Savage. Visit LibriVox.org for more information or to volunteer. Anne of the Island, Chapter 20. Gilbert Speaks. This has been a dull, prosy day, yawned, filled, 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? 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 Paddy's place been really much brighter and pleasanter this past winter because I've been here to love in you? Yes, it has, own, Anne. And you all love me, even at Jamesena, 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 Anne Jamesena 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 and 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's suns. It kept the Harbour Road muddy and chill the evening air. But grass was growing green in sheltered spots, and Gilbert had found some pale, sweet arbiters 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 bear, birch, and bough, hanging against the pale, red sunset with the very perfection of grace. She was building a castle in air. A wondrous mansion whose sun-lit courts and stately halls were steeped in araby's perfume, and where she reigned queen and chattelain. 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 may-flowers. Don't these remind you of home and our old school-day picnics, 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 will be there in reality in a few days. No, not for a fortnight. I'm going to visit Phil in Bowlingbroke 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. Yes, I've been hoping I would get it. It will 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, equally. I'll call Phil, and never mind Phil on the violets just now, Anne, said Gilbert, quietly, taking her hand in the clasp from which she could not free it. There is something I want to say to you. Oh, don't say it, cried Anne pleadingly. Don't. 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 can't, said Anne, miserably. Oh, Gilbert, 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 a blast 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. Could these 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 like you better than anyone 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, and 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 have 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's life. You are an idiot, Anne, surely. 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 XXI of Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery. The Fortnight Anne spent in Bowlingbroke 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 Alonso were so constantly on hand that Anne wondered if they ever did anything but dance attendance on that will of 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, more in 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 costically. Oh, that's a very different thing, said Phil, truly. But the sweetest incident of Anne's sojourn in Bowlingbroke was the visit to her birth place. The little shabby yellow house in an 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's no honeysuckle over the windows, but there is a lilac tree by the gate. And yes, there are mudlin' 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 a fever at once. It was terrible sad. They left a baby. I guess instead, long ago, it was a sickly thing. Phil 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 see the resemblance. You're complexed like your paw. He had red hair. But you favour your mind, your eyes and mouth. She was a nice little thing. My daughter went to school to her and was nigh crazy about her. They was buried in the one grave when the school board put up a tombstone to them as a reward for a faithful service. Will you come in? Will you let me go all over the house? asked Anne eagerly. Laws, yes, you can, if you like. Don't take you long. There ain't much of it. I keep up my man 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 to 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 mind herein' that you was born just as the sun was rising, and it slide 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 that 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 care to have him. 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 here and 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 bowling-broke cemetery, where her father and mother were buried, and left on their grave the white flower 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 post-script. 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.' CHAPTER XXII Spring and Anne returned to Green Gables. 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 olden 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, save 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 to-morrow night. The kitchen door opened. Marilla looked up expecting to see Mrs. Lynde. 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 to-morrow night. How did you get from Carmody? Walked, dearest of Marilla's. And I done it a score of times in the Queen's days. The mailman is to bring my trunk to-morrow. 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 barrens and picked these mayflowers. I came through Violet Vale. It's just a big bowlful 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 moon-rise 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 Martian 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 bowling broke 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 hardly. The year is a book, isn't it, Marilla? Anne's pages are written in mayflowers and violets, summers and roses, autumns in red maple leaves, and winter in holly and evergreen. Did Gilbert do well in his examinations, persisted Marilla? Excellently well. He led his class. But where are the twins and Mrs. Lind? Rachel and Dora are over at Mr. Harrison's. Davey is down at the 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. Lind measured me with her tape today, and say Anne, see my front tooth? It's gone. Mrs. Lind 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 has promised, so there's no use in the rest of us starting to collect two. 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 is 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 sashes back from the Bolter bush? I want to know, insisted Davey. When you were 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 23 of Anne of the Island by Lucy Mod Montgomery, read for LibriVox by Karen Saffage. Visit LibriVox.org for more information or to volunteer. Anne of the Island, 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 avus 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, light-hearted 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 in 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 Carlotta IV came home for July and August. Echo Lodge was the scene of gaieties 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 just to my own little mother, and I can't give it to anyone else. You know, teacher. But I call her mother Lavender, and I love her next best to father. I—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. Carlotta IV had blossomed out into young ladyhood. She wore her hair now, with an enormous pompadour, and had discarded the blue ribbon bows of old Langzine. 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 don't notice it, Carlotta. I'm real glad of that. They said I did at home, but I thought likely they just wanted to aggravate me. I don't want no Yankee accent. Not that I have 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 and 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's not the same teacher. She's changed. No, 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 heart. Even Nora will not meet you much longer. You must pay the penalty of growing up, Paul. You must leave fairyland behind you. You two talk as much foolishness as you ever 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 Tally Rand 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 Harry Ludavik's speed in his leisurely courting of Theodore 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 in Redmond and Paddy's place. Paddy's place is the dearest spot, Miss Lavender. I feel as if I had two homes, one at Greengables and one at Paddy'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 it is a handbreath, it is 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 ever I 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. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. Chapter 24 of Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Read for LibriVox.org by Karen Savage. Visit LibriVox.org for more information or to volunteer. Anne of the Island. 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 have 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 at 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 am doing at Prospect Point. Well, I always like to spend a month of summer at the shore, and Father insists that I come to a 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's a nice old man, and gave me a handful of pink peppermints. Peppermints always seem 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 have ate all them candies to once, Miss Phil. You'll likely have this dark 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 into tailing 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 locomotorotaxia 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 travelling 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 estimable old ladies. My left-hand neighbor at the table is Mrs. Finney. She always speaks with a wailing, dolerous 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 Jane Zena, and she doesn't love me hard to atone for it as Auntie Jay does either. Mrs. Maria Grimsby sits caddy corner from me. The first day I came I remarked to Mrs. Maria that it looked a little like rain, and Mrs. Maria laughed. I said the road from the station was very pretty, and Mrs. Maria laughed. I said there seemed to be a few mosquitoes left yet, and Mrs. Maria laughed. I said the prospect point was as beautiful as ever, and Mrs. Maria laughed. If I were to say to Mrs. 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, Mrs. Maria would laugh. She can't help it. She was born so, but it 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, so she is a very uninteresting conversationalist. And now for Jonas, Anne. The 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 of the Point Prospect Mission Church for the summer. He is a very ugly young man, really the ugliest young man I've ever seen. He has a big, loose, jointed figure with absurdly long legs. His hair is toe-colour 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, known to prove 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 toe-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, endless, small soul the 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 was like you, Anne. 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, Anne, 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 in 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. Others never have much money. But she wouldn't mind having one hat or none at all because she would have Jonas. Anne Shirley, don't you dare say or hint or think that I've fallen in love with Mr. Blake. Could I care for a lank, poor, ugly theologue called 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, Anne? And would they expect me to lead in prayer? P.G. Anne of the Island, Chapter 25, Enter Prince Charming I'm contrasting the claims of indoors and out, to Anne looking from the window of Paddy's place to the distant pines of the park. I have an afternoon to spend in sweet doing nothing, Aunt Jimsy. Shall I spend it here, where there is a cozy fire, a plateful 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 harbour rocks? If I was as young as you, I'd decide in favour 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, she teased Anne. Yes, in my soul, but I'll admit my legs aren't as young as yours. You go and get some fresh air, Anne. You look pale lately. I think I'll go to the park, said Anne 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 to-day, 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, Anne. 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. Anne roamed through the pineland alleys in the park, and, as she said, let that great sweeping wind blow the fogs out of her soul. Anne 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 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 a Filth 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 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 of 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. Philip O'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're leading that man on deliberately, and you know you don't mean anything by it. I mean to make him asking to marry me, 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 repartee that flew about. He neither sought nor avoided Anne. When circumstances brought them in contact, we 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 and 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 bad nudge 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 gladly have 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 event Jamesena's prophecy came with a swish and a 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 and clutched 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 can wait there until the shower is over. It is not likely to rain so heavily very long. The words were 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 sorry. 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 pin 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 in reduction. My name is Royal Gardener, and you are the Miss Shirley who read the Tennyson paper at the Filimathic 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 locust 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 the burst of pale November sunshine fell a thwart the harbour and the pines, Anne and her companion walked home together. By the time they had reached the gate of Paddy'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 crappiered pussycat. That evening a parcel was left at Paddy'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 Gardener,' she exclaimed. Why, Anne, I didn't know you were acquainted with Roy Gardener. 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 divinest rosy red when we look at his card? And I face betrayeth thee.' "'Don't talk nonsense, Phil. Do you know Mr. Gardener? I've met his two sisters, and I know of him. So does everybody worthwhile 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. "'The five foe, thumb, Anne. I smell romance. Almost do I envy you, but not quite. After all, Roy Gardener 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. CHAPTER XXVI. ENTER CHRISTINE. 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 creamed 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 rose bud 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, fine others. Tisnt. The last evening you flamed out into beauty, you wore your old blue flannel shirt waist that Mrs. Lynde 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. Or orchids are only things you can visit with. Jonas sent me some deer-pink rose-butts 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 hemstaging 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 class 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 four ordained 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 subtle thing. All at once she felt rather dull. Phil's chatter seemed trivial and 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 Patty's place liked him very much. Aunt Jamesena, carried away by his unfailing and 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. Anne'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 glass of darkness on her smooth hair. She looks just as I've always wanted to look, thought Anne miserably. Rose-leaf complexions, 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. 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 elfland of moonshine. Over the girls at Patti'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 ladylike 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 round 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'm 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. I see 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 be 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 eighty 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 harkened as much with your soul as with 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 only I 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, 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 for Volity and 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 beau, 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 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 to 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 eighty. 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 or 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. Blakefield. 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 Ant 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. And 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 lack of making people like me. There's a man in Bowlingbroke who lisps 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, while 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 Phillipa, 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 in 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 humour 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. CHAPTER XXVIII. 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 doorsteps where Marilla and Mrs. Rachel were sitting, talking over Mrs. Samson Coates' funeral which they had attended that day. Dora sat between them, diligently studying her lessons, but Davy was sitting tailor-fashioned in the grass, looking as gloomy and depressed as a single dimple would let him. You'd get tired of it, said Marilla with a sigh. I daresay. 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. 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—d—d—d—d—couraged, bringing out the big word with a valiant effort. Why and wherefore, asked Anne, sitting down beside him? Cause the new teacher that come when Mr. Holmes got sick gave me ten sums to do for Monday. It'll take me all day to-morrow to do them. It isn't fair to have to work Saturdays. Miltie Bolter said he wouldn't do them, but Marilla says I've got to. I don't like Miss Carson a bit. talk like that about your teacher, Davy Keefe," 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 will bring another day, and I'll help you with the sums as far as in me lies. Don't waste this lovely hour. It took slight and dark, worrying over arithmetic." "'Well, I won't,' said Davy, brightening up. If you help me with the sums, I'll have them done in time to go fishing with Melty. I wish old Anne Tatasa's funeral was tomorrow instead of today. I wanted to go to it, because Melty said his mother said Anne Tatasa 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." Pora Tatasa laid 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 writes her thankful to be rid of her, and I can't say I blame them a mite. "'It seems to me a most dreadful thing to go out of the world and not leave one person behind you who is sorry you are gone,' said Anne, shuddering. Nobody except her parents ever loved Pora Tatasa, that's certain, not even her husband, avert Mrs. Lynn. She was his fourth wife. He'd sort of gotten to 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 a Tatasa'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 Wright 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. Would 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 indiscreet. 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. Lynde gave Anne many exasperated digs about it, until fresh gossip reached that worthy lady, through the medium of Moody's Virgin MacPherson's mother, that Anne had another beau 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 so although 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 Dryad's 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, quite painful bound at sight of his letters, which it had given one day when Mrs. Hiram Sloan had handed her out 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 home 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 beaken to her for many years, but soon it would shine through the summer twilight snow 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. CHAPTER XXIX of Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery, read for LibriVox by Karen Savage. Visit LibriVox.org for more information or to volunteer. ANNE OF THE ISLAND 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, arrayed 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 bridesmaid. But alas I haven't the puffed sleeves, though the short lace ones are even prettier. Neither is my heart wholly breaking, nor do I exactly hate Fred. We're not really partying, 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'm 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, lamented Diana. 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. Oh, Anne, gasped Diana, suddenly turning very pale and beginning to tremble. Oh, Anne, I'm so nervous. I can't go through with it. Anne, I know I'm going to faint. If you do, I'll drag you down to the rainwater hog-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 good-bye for the last time. Diana Barry will never kiss me again. Diana right-will, though. There. 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 and 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 are, whispered the impressable 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 merry making 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 comradeship 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 take a ramble up Lovers Lane before you go in? asked Gilbert as they crossed the bridge over the lake of shining waters, in which the moon lay 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, there 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 or our mates used to fill. Anne laughed inside. 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 in 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. 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's 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 inside was an elderly woman, sitting in a wagon with mail bags 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-mams, just as Millersville is noted for its hummly ones. Janet's suite asked me this morning if I could bring you out. I said, certain I can, if she don't mind being scrunched up some. This rig of mine's kinder small for the mail bags, 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 neighbors hired boys coming for your trunk to-night. My name is Skinner, Amelia Skinner. Anne was eventually tucked in, exchanging amused smiles with herself during the process. Jog along, Blackmare, commanded Miss Skinner, gathering up the reins in her pudgy hands. This is my first trip on the mail route. Thomas wanted to hoe his trinips today, so he asked me to come. So I just sat down and took a stand-in-up snack and started. I sort of like it. Of course it's rather tedious. Part of the time I sit some things, and the rest I just sits. Jog along, Blackmare. 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 month. Thomas courted me for quite a spell, though. It was real romantic. Anne tried to picture Miss Skinner on speaking terms with romance and failed. Oh! she said again. Yes, you see, there was another man after me. Jog along, Blackmare. I'd been a witter so long, folks had given up expecting me to marry again. But when my daughter—she's a schoolman, like you—went out west to teach, I felt real lonesome. I wasn't know why I sought against the idea. By and by Thomas began to come up and so did the other fellow, William Obadiah 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. It was by far the best match. Jog along, Blackmare. Why didn't you marry him? asked Anne. Well, you see, he didn't love me, answered Miss Skinner solemnly. Anne opened her eyes widely and looked at Miss Skinner, but there was not a glint of humor on that lady's face. Evidently, Miss Skinner saw nothing amusing in her own case. He'd been a witter man for three years, and his sister kept house for him. Then she got married, and he just wanted someone to look after his house. It was worth looking after, too, mind you that. It's a handsome house. Jog along, Blackmare. 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 love 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 a crow. You can marry your rich man if you like, but you won't be happy. Folks can't get along together in this world without a bit of love. You'd just better tie up to Thomas, for he loves you and you love him and nothing else ain't gonna do you. Jog along, Blackmare. So I told Thomas I'd take him. All the time I was getting ready I never dared drive past W. O.'s place for fear the sight of that fine house of his would put me back in the swithers again. But now I never think of it at all, and I'm just that comfortable and happy with Thomas. Jog along, Blackmare. How did William Obadiah take it? queried Anne. Oh, he rumpest 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. Jog along, Blackmare. She was a great housekeeper, but most awful mean. She wore the same bonnet for eighteen years. Then she got a new one, and W. O. met her on the road and didn't know her. Jog along, Blackmare. I feel that I'd a narrower 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, says she, Sarah Skinner, I envy you. I'd rather live in a little hut on the side of the road with a man I was fond of than in my big house with the one I've got. Jane Anne's man ain't such a bad sort, another, though he's so contrary that he wears his fur coat when the thermometer's at ninety. The only way to get him to do anything is to coax him to do the opposite. But there ain't any love to smooth things down, and it's a poor way of living. Jog along, Blackmare. There's Janet's place in the hollow. Wayside, she calls it. Quite picturesque, ain't it? I guess you'll be glad to get out of this with all them mailbags jamming round you. Yes, but I've enjoyed my drive with you very much, said Anne sincerely. Get away now, said Mrs. Skinner, highly flattered. Wait till I tell Thomas that. He always feels dreadful tickled when I get a compliment. Jog along, Blackmare. Well, here we are. I hope you'll get on well in the school, Miss. There's a shortcut to it through the mosh back at Janet's. If you take that way, be awful careful. If you once got stuck in that black mud, you'd be sucked right down and never seen or heard tell of again till the day of judgment, like Adam Palmer's cow. Jog along, Blackmare. Chapter 31 of Anne of the Island by Lucy Mod Montgomery Read for LibriVox by Karen Savage Visit LibriVox.org for more information or to volunteer Anne of the Island Chapter 31 Anne to Philippa Anne Shirley to Philippa Gordon Greeting Well, beloved, it's high time I was riding you. Here am I, installed once more as a country schoolman at Valley Road, boarding at Wayside, the home of Miss Janet Sweet. Janet is a dear soul and very nice-looking. Tall but not overtall, 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 pois. 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 glue 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 you are 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 Byrne standing at Highland Mary's grave, shadowed by an enormous weeping willow tree. Robert's face is so lugubrious that it is no wonder I've had bad dreams. Why the first night I was here I dreamed I couldn't laugh. The parlor is tiny and neat, its 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, 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, no all men by these presence 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 unhygienic and had objected to sleeping on a feather bed. Now I glory in feather beds, and the more unhygienic and feathery they are the more I glory. Janet says it is a comfort to see me eat. She had been so afraid I would be like Miss Hayford, who wouldn't eat anything but fruit and hot water for breakfast, and try 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, tow-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, find thing for Ketar, peppermints. And powerful-otted jump grasses round here to-night. 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's speed would never have got any further along than placid courtship if I had not helped him at Theodore 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 Tea 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 and 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, and told the girls at Paddy's place later on. Miss Shirley permitted 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-ridden a lot of the time and never goes out of the house, but she's powerful fond of company and always wants to see my boarders. 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? asked 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 unsuitable, 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 dunes. 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 a 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 am half-jealous, and I am 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 am 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 have been a great sufferer. For twenty long, weary years I have been dying by inches. How painful, said Anne, trying to be sympathetic and succeeding only and 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 weary 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, assented Mrs. Douglas, and a 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 wrack 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, as Janet as they went down the road? Hmm! 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 All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. Chapter 33 of Anne of the Island by Lucy Mod Montgomery Read for LibriVox by Karen Savage Visit LibriVox.org for more information or to volunteer Anne of the Island 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 won't 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've just got to talk it out with someone at last or go crazy. John Douglas begun 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 maybe he 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? Seems to me if I only knew his reason I wouldn't mind it so much. Perhaps his mother doesn't want him to marry anybody, suggested Anne. Oh, she does. She told me time and again that she'd love to see John settled before her time comes. She's always giving him hints. You heard her yourself the other day. I thought I'd had 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 he'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 are not going to endure his shilly-shallying any longer. I'll back you up. I don'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 a 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 travelling it for forty years, so you needn'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 dumbfounded 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 the 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. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. Chapter 34 of Anne of the Island by Lucy Mod Montgomery. Read for LibriVox by Karen Savage. Visit LibriVox.org for more information or to volunteer. Anne of the Island. 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, their 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, saved 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 very patched trousers, a blue-jean shirt out of 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 scythe and took up her doily. Conversation with Sam was really out of the question. After a long silence, Sam suddenly spoke. I am 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 had souped 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. Which 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 puts such an idea into your head, said Anne, her sense of humour getting the better of her wrath. It was such an absurd situation. You're a likely looking girl and you 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. Well, 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 immoderately 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, and that's what makes me think it's serious. Other time 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 you'll marry John now, she said. It 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 twenty 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. Nineteen 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? asked 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 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 haste enough 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 her memory. I don't mind what people say now that I know the truth myself. It don't matter or 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, said Anne, 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 we grow older. How to forgive. It comes easier at forty than it did at twenty. End of chapter thirty-four. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. Chapter thirty-five of Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Read for LibriVox.org by Karen Savage. Visit LibriVox.org for more information or to volunteer. Anne of the Island. 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 Anne Jamesina, 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're going to marry a minister, said Aunt Jamesina, picking up Joseph and her knitting and residing 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 shant. 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. Oh, my vacation pathway hasn't been exactly strewn with Rose's girls, dear. But I have 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 other sceny. 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 in 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, and tweeted 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-size at me for some time. You children needn't think you own all the romance in the world. Widowers and sheep-size 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 Ellwood. 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, than 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 a story, he dressed it up so that you couldn't see it for the 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 Jamesena, 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 honours 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 till 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 marked 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 this 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 round 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 have 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 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 Andrew's 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 disporting 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 writing it, and the other girls shed gallons while I read it. Jane Andrew's mother scolded her frightfully because she had so many handkerchiefs 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 the sleep of a just cat who has been out all night, curled up on a Jane Andrew's tale of a beautiful maiden of fifteen, who went to nurse in a leper colony, of course, dying of a loathsome disease finally, and glanced over the other manuscripts and recalled the old days at Avonlea 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 old and summer's returned as she read. Not all the glory that was greased or the grandeur that was roamed 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 grey 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 felt her reading it intently. It was a little dialogue between Asters and Sweetpeace, 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 crumbled manuscript. I believe I will, she said resolutely.