 CHAPTER XVI Diana is invited to tea with tragic results. October was a beautiful month at Green Gables. When the birches in the hollow turned as gold in the sunshine, and the maples behind the orchard were royal crimson, and the wild cherry trees along the lane put on the loveliest shade of dark red and bronzy green, while the fields sunned themselves in aftermaths. Anne reveled in the world of color about her. Oh, Marilla! she exclaimed one Saturday morning, coming dancing in with her arms full of gorgeous bows. I am so glad I live in a world where there are October's. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn't it? Look at these maple branches. Don't they give you a thrill? Several thrills? I'm going to decorate my room with them." Messy things, said Marilla, whose aesthetic sense was not noticeably developed. You clutter up your room entirely too much with out-of-door stuff, Anne. Bedrooms were made to sleep in. Oh, and dream in too, Marilla. And you know one can dream so much better in a room where there are pretty things. I'm going to put these bows in the old blue jug and set them on my table. Mind you don't drop leaves all over the stairs then. I'm going on a meeting of the Aid Society at Carmody this afternoon, Anne, and I won't likely be home before dark. You'll have to get Matthew and Jerry their supper, so mind you don't forget to put the tea to draw until you sit down at the table as you did last time. It was dreadful of me to forget, said Anne apologetically. But that was the afternoon I was trying to think of a name for Violet Vale, and it crowded out other things. Matthew was so good, he never scolded a bit. He put the tea down himself and said we could wait a while as well as not, and they told him a lovely fairy story while we were waiting, so he didn't find the time long at all. It was a beautiful fairy story, Marilla. I forgot the end of it, so I made up an end for it myself, and Matthew said he couldn't tell where the join came in. Matthew would think it all right, Anne, if you took a notion to get up and have dinner in the middle of the night. But you keep your wits about you this time, and I don't really know if I'm doing right. It may make you more adopated than ever, but you can ask Diana to come over and spend the afternoon with you and have tea here. Oh, Marilla! Anne clasped her hands. How perfectly lovely! You are able to imagine things after all, or else you'd never have understood how I've longed for that very thing. It will seem so nice and grown upish. No fear of my forgetting to put the tea to draw when I have company. Oh, Marilla, can I use the Rosebud Spray tea set? No, indeed, the Rosebud tea set. Well, what next? You know, I never used that except for the minister or the aides. You'll put down the old brown tea set, but you can open the little yellow crock of cherry preserves. It's time it was being used anyhow, I believe it's beginning to work. And you can cut some fruitcake and have some of the cookies and snaps. I can just imagine myself sitting down at the head of the table and pouring out the tea, said Anne, shutting her eyes ecstatically, and asking Diana if she takes sugar. I know she doesn't, but of course I'll ask her just as if I didn't know, and then pressing her to take another piece of fruitcake and another helping of preserves. Oh, Marilla, it's a wonderful sensation just to think of it. Can I take her into the spare room to lay off her hat when she comes, and then into the parlor to sit? No. The sitting room will do for you and your company, but there's a bottle half full of raspberry cordial that was left over from the church social the other night. It's on the second shelf of the sitting room closet, and you and Diana can have it if you like, and a cookie to eat along with it in the afternoon, for I dare say Matthew will be late coming into tea since he's hauling potatoes to the vessel. Anne flew down to the hollow past the dryad's bubble and up the spruce path to Orchard Slope to ask Diana to tea. As a result, just after Marilla had driven off to Carmody, Diana came over, dressed in her second best dress and looking exactly as it is proper to look when asked out to tea. At other times she was wont to run into the kitchen without knocking, but now she knocked primely at the front door. And when Anne, dressed in her second best, as primely opened it, both little girls shook hands as gravely as if they had never met before. This unnatural solemnity lasted until after Diana had been taken up to the East Gable to lay off her hat and then had sat for ten minutes in the sitting room, toes in position. How was your mother? inquired Anne politely, just as if she had not seen Mrs. Berry picking apples that morning in excellent health and spirit. She is very well, thank you. I suppose Mr. Cuthbert is hauling potatoes to the Lily Sands this afternoon, is he? said Diana, who had ridden down to Mr. Harmon Andrews that morning in Matthew's cart. Yes, our potato crop is very good this year. I hope your father's crop is good, too. It is fairly good, thank you. Have you picked many of your apples yet? Oh, ever so many, said Anne, forgetting to be dignified and jumping up quickly. Let's go out to the orchard and get some of the red sweetings, Diana. Marilla says we can have all that are left on the tree. Marilla is a very generous woman. She said we could have fruit cake and cherry preserves for tea, but it isn't good manners to tell your company what you're going to give them to eat, so I won't tell you what she said we could have to drink. Only it begins with an R and a C and it's bright red color. I love bright red drinks, don't you? They taste twice as good as any other color. The orchard with its great sweeping boughs that bent to the ground with fruit proved so delightful that the little girl spent most of the afternoon in it, sitting in grassy corner where the forest had spared the green and the mellow autumn sunshine lingered warmly, eating apples and talking as hard as they could. Diana had much to tell Anne of what went on in school. She had to sit with Gertie Pie and she hated it. Gertie squeaked her pencil all the time and it just made her, Diana's, blood run cold. Ruby Gillis had charmed all her warts away. Trues you live with a magic pebble that old Mary Jo from the creek gave her. You had to rub the warts with your pebble and then throw it away over your left shoulder at the time of the new moon and the warts would all go. Charlie Sloan's name was written up with M. White's on the porch wall and M. White was awful mad about it. Sam Butler had sassed Mr. Phillips in class and Mr. Phillips whipped him and Sam's father came down to the school and dared Mr. Phillips to lay a hand on one of his children again. And Maddie Andrews had a new red hood and a blue crossover with tassels on it and the air she put on about it were perfectly sickening. And Lizzie Wright didn't speak to Mamie Wilson because Mamie Wilson's grown-up sister had cut out Lizzie Wright's grown-up sister with her bow. And everybody missed Anne so and wished she'd come to school again. And Gilbert Blythe, but Anne didn't want to hear about Gilbert Blythe. She jumped up hurriedly and said suppose they go in and have Raspberry Cordial. Anne looked on the second shelf of the room pantry but there was no bottle of Raspberry Cordial there. Search revealed it away back on the top shelf and put it on a tray and set it on the table with a tumbler. Now please help yourself, Diana, she said politely. I don't believe I'll have any just now. I don't feel as if I wanted any after all those apples. Diana poured herself out a tumbler full, looked at its bright red hue admiringly, and then sipped it daintily. That's awfully nice Raspberry Cordial, Anne, she said. I didn't know Raspberry Cordial was so nice. I'm really glad you like it. Take as much as you want. I'm going to run out and stir the fire up. There are so many responsibilities on a person's mind when they're keeping house, isn't there? When Anne came back from the kitchen, Diana was drinking her second glass full of Cordial and being entreated there too by Anne, she offered no particular objection to drinking of a third. The tumbler fulls were generous ones, and the Raspberry Cordial was certainly very nice. The nicest I ever drank, said Diana. It's ever so much nicer than Mrs. Lins, although she brags of her so much, it doesn't taste a bit like hers. I should think Marilla's Raspberry Cordial would probably be much nicer than Mrs. Lins, said Anne loyally. Marilla is a famous cook. She's trying to teach me to cook, but I assure you Diana, it is uphill work. There's so little scope for the imagination in cookery. You just have to go by the rules. The last time I made a cake, I forgot to put the flour in. I was thinking the loveliest story about you and me, Diana. I thought you were desperately ill with smallpox, and everybody deserted you, but I went boldly to your bedside and nursed you back to life, and then I took the smallpox and died, and I was buried under those poplar trees in the graveyard, and you planted a rose bush by my grave and watered it with your tears, and you never, never forgot the friend of your youth which sacrificed her life for you. Oh, it was such a pathetic tale, Diana. The tears just rained down over my cheeks while I mixed the cake, but I forgot the flour, and the cake was a dismal failure. Flour is so essential to cakes, you know. Marilla was very cross, and I don't wonder, I'm a great trial to her. She was terribly mortified about the pudding sauce last week. We had a plum pudding for dinner on Tuesday, and there was half the pudding and a pitcher full of sauce left over. Marilla said there was enough for another dinner, and told me to set it on the pantry shelf and cover it. I meant to cover it just as much as could be, Diana, but when I carried it in, I was imagining I was a nun. Of course I'm a Protestant, but I imagined I was a Catholic, taking the veil to bury a broken heart in a cloistered seclusion. And I forgot all about covering the pudding sauce. I thought of it next morning and ran to the pantry. Diana, fancy if you can my extreme horror at finding a mouse drowned in that pudding sauce. I lifted the mouse out with a spoon and threw it out in the yard, and then I washed the spoon in three waters. Marilla was out milking, and I fully intended to ask her when she came in if I could give the sauce to the pigs. But when she did come in, I was imagining that I was a frost fairy going through the woods, turning the trees red and yellow, whichever they wanted to be. So I never thought about the pudding sauce again, and Marilla sent me out to pick apples. Well, Mr. and Mrs. Chester Ross from Spencerville came that morning. You know, they are very stylish people, especially Miss Chester Ross. When Marilla called me into dinner, all was ready and everybody was at table. I tried to be as polite and dignified as I could be, for I wanted Mrs. Chester Ross to think I was a ladylike little girl, even if I wasn't pretty. Everything went right until I saw Marilla coming with the plum pudding in one hand and the pitcher of pudding sauce warmed up in the other. Diana, that was a terrible moment. I remembered everything and I just stood up in my place and shrieked out. Marilla, you mustn't use that pudding sauce. There was a mouse drowned in it. I forgot to tell you before. Oh Diana, I shall never forget that awful moment if I lived to be a hundred. Mrs. Chester Ross just looked at me and I thought I would sink through the floor with mortification. She is such a perfect housekeeper and fancy what she must have thought of us. Marilla turned red as fire, but she never said a word. Then she just carried that sauce and putting out and brought in some strawberry preserves. She even offered me some, but I couldn't swallow a mouthful. It was like heaping coals of fire on my head. After Mrs. Chester Ross went away, Marilla gave me a dreadful scolding. Why Diana, what does the matter? Diana had stood up very unsteadily. Then she sat down again, putting her hands to her head. I'm, I'm awful sick, she said a little thickly. I, I must go right home. Oh, you mustn't dream of going home without your tea, cried Anne in distress. I'll get it right off. I'll go and put the tea down this very minute. I must go home, repeated Diana stupidly, but determinedly. Let me get you a lunch anyhow, implored Anne. Let me give you a bit of fruitcake and some of the cherry preserves. Lie down on the sofa for a little while and you'll be better. Where do you feel bad? I must go home, said Diana, and that was all she would say. In vain Anne pleaded. I never heard a company going home without tea, she mourned. Oh, Diana, do you suppose that it's possible you're really taking the smallpox? If you are, I'll go and nurse you. You can depend on that. I'll never forsake you, but I do wish you'd stay till after tea. Where do you feel bad? I'm awful dizzy, said Diana, and indeed she walked very dizzily. Anne, with her tears of disappointment in her eyes, got Diana's hat and went with her as far as the berry-yard fence. Then she wept all the way back to Green Gables, where she sorrowfully put the remainder of the raspberry cordial back into the pantry and got tea ready for Matthew and Jerry, with all the zest gone out of the performance. The next day was a Sunday, and as the rain poured down in torrents from dawn till dusk, Anne did not stir abroad from Green Gables. Monday afternoon, Marilla sent her down to Mrs. Linn's on an errand. In a very short space of time, Anne came flying back up the lane with tears rolling down her cheeks. Into the kitchen she dashed and flung herself face downward on the sofa in an agony. Whatever has gone wrong now, Anne, queried Marilla, in doubt and dismay. I do hope you haven't gone and been saucy to Mrs. Linn again. No answer from Anne save more tears and stormier sobs. Anne, Shirley, when I ask you a question, I want to be answered. Sit right up this very minute and tell me what you are crying about. Anne set up, tragedy personified. Mrs. Linn was up to see Mrs. Berry today, and Mrs. Berry was in an awful state, she wailed. She says that I set Diana drunk Saturday and sent her home in a disgraceful condition. And she says I must be a thoroughly bad wicked little girl, and she's never, never going to let Diana play with me again. Oh, Marilla, I'm just overcome with woe. Marilla stared in blank amazement. Set Diana drunk? She said when she found her voice. Anne, are you or Mrs. Berry crazy? What on earth did you give her? Not a thing, but raspberry cordial, sobbed Anne. I never thought raspberry cordial would set people drunk, Marilla. Not even if they drank three big tumbler bowls as Diana did. Oh, it sounds so, so like Mrs. Thomas's husband. But I didn't mean to set her drunk. Drunk fiddle sticks, said Marilla, marching to the sitting-room pantry. There, on the shelf, was a bottle which she had once recognized as containing some of her three-year-old homemade current wine for which she was celebrated in Avonlea. Although certain of the stricter sort, Mrs. Berry among them disapproved strongly of it. And at the same time Marilla recollected that she had put the bottle of raspberry cordial down in the cellar. Instead of in the pantry as she had told Anne, she went back to the kitchen with the wine bottle in her hand. Her face was twitching in spite of herself. Anne, you certainly have a genius for getting into trouble. You went and gave Diana current wine instead of raspberry cordial. Didn't you know the difference yourself? I never tasted it, said Anne. I thought it was the cordial. I meant to be so, so hospitable. Diana got awfully sick and had to go home. Mrs. Berry told Mrs. Lynn she was simply dead drunk. She just laughed silly like when her mother asked her what was the matter and went to sleep and slept for hours. Her mother smelled her breath and knew she was drunk. She had a fearful headache all day yesterday. Mrs. Berry is so indignant. She will never believe but what I did it on purpose. I should think she would better punish Diana for being so greedy as to drink three glassfuls of anything, said Marilla shortly, why three of those big glasses would have made her sick, even if it had only been cordial. Well, this story will be a nice handle for those folks who are so down on me for making current wine. Although I haven't made any for three years ever since I found out that the minister didn't approve. I just keep that bottle for sickness. There, there, child, don't cry. I can't see as you were to blame, although I'm sorry it happened so. I must cry, said Anne. My heart is broken. The stars in their courses fight against me, Marilla. Diana and I are parted forever. Oh, Marilla, I little dreamed of this when we first swore our vows of friendship. Don't be foolish, Anne. Mrs. Berry will think better of it when she finds you're not to blame. I suppose she thinks you've done it for a silly joke or something of that sort. You best go up this evening and tell her how it was. My courage fails me at the thought of phasing Diana's injured mother, side Anne. I wish you'd go, Marilla. You're so much more dignified than I am. Likely she'd listen to you quicker than to me. Well, I will, said Marilla, reflecting that it would probably be the wiser course. Don't cry any more, Anne. It will be all right. Marilla had changed her mind about it being all right by the time she got back from orchard slope. Anne was watching for her coming and flew to the porch door to meet her. Oh, Marilla, I know by your face that it's been no use, she said so roughly. Mrs. Berry won't forgive me. Mrs. Berry indeed, snapped Marilla, of all the unreasonable women I ever saw, she's the worst. I told her it was all a mistake and you weren't to blame but she just simply didn't believe me and she rubbed it well in my current wine and how I'd always said it couldn't have the least effect on anybody. I just told her plainly that current wine wasn't meant to be drunk three tumbler foals at a time and that if a child I had to do with was so greedy I'd sober her up with the right good spanking. Marilla whisked into the kitchen, grievously disturbed, leaving a very much distracted little soul in the porch behind her. Presently Anne stepped out bareheaded into the chill autumn dusk. Very determinedly and steadily she took her way down through the seer clover field over the log bridge and up through the spruce grove, lighted by a pale little moon hanging low over the western woods. Mrs. Berry, coming to the door and answered to a timid knock, found a white-lipped eager-eyed suppliant on the doorstep. Her face hardened. Mrs. Berry was a woman of strong prejudice and dislikes and her anger was of the cold sullen sort which is always hardest to overcome. To do her justice she really believed Anne had made Diana drunk out of sheer malice prepence and she was honestly anxious to preserve her little daughter from the contamination of further intimacy with such a child. What do you want? She said stiffly. Anne clasped her hands. Oh Mrs. Berry, please forgive me. I did not mean to to intoxicate Diana. How could I? Just imagine if you were a poor little orphan girl that kind people had adopted and you had just one bosom friend in all the world, do you think you would intoxicate her on purpose? I thought it was only raspberry cordial. I was firmly convinced it was raspberry cordial. Oh, please don't say that you won't let Diana play with me any more. If you do, you will cover my life with the dark cloud of woe. This speech, which would have softened good Mrs. Lynn's heart in a twinkling, had no effect on Mrs. Berry, except to irritate her still more. She was suspicious of Anne's big words and dramatic gestures and imagined that the child was making fun of her. So she said coldly and cruelly, I don't think you are a fit little girl for Diana to associate with. You better go home and behave yourself. Anne's lips quivered. Won't you let me see Diana just once to say farewell? She implored. Diana has gone over to Carmody with her father, said Mrs. Berry, going in and shutting the door. Anne went back to Green Gables, calm with despair. My last hope is gone, she told Marilla. I went up and saw Mrs. Berry myself and she treated me very insultingly. Marilla, I do not think she's a well-bred woman. There's nothing more to do except to pray, and I haven't much hope that'll do much good because Marilla, I do not believe that God himself can do much with such an obstinate person as Mrs. Berry. Anne, you shouldn't say such things, rebuked Marilla, striving to overcome that unholy tendency to laugh her, which she was dismayed to find growing upon her. And indeed, when she told the whole story to Matthew that night, she did laugh heartily over Anne's tribulations. But when she slipped into the East Gable before going to bed, and found that Anne had cried herself to sleep, an unaccustomed softness crept into her face. Poor little soul, she murmured, lifting a loose curl of hair from the child's tear-stained face. Then she bent down and kissed the flushed cheek on the pillow. End of Chapter 16, Recording by A. Janell-Risa Chapter 17 of Anne of Green Gables. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information on a volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Chapter 17 of Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Read by Robin on January 11th, 2009. The next afternoon, Anne, bending over her patchwork in the kitchen window, happened to glance out and behold Diana by the dry-head's bubble, beckoning mysteriously. In a trice, Anne was out of the house and flying down to the hollow. Stonishment and hope struggled in her expressive eyes, but the hope faded when she saw Diana's dejected countenance. Your mother hasn't relented, she gasped. Diana shook her head mournfully. No, and oh, Anne, she says I'm never to play with you again. I've cried and cried and told her it wasn't your fault, but it wasn't any use. I had ever such a time coaxing her to let me come down and say goodbye to you. She said it was only to stay ten minutes, and she's timing me by the clock. Ten minutes isn't very long to stay in eternal farewell, said Anne tearfully. Oh, Diana, will you promise faithfully never to forget me, the friend of your youth, no matter what dear friends may caress thee? Indeed, I will, said Diana, and he'll never have another bosom friend. I don't want to have. I couldn't love anybody as I loved you. Oh, Diana, cried Anne, clasping her hands. Do you love me? Why, of course I do. Didn't you know that? No, Anne drew a long breath. I thought you liked me, of course, but I never hoped you'd love me. Why, Diana, I didn't think anybody could love me. Nobody ever has loved me since I can remember. Oh, this is wonderful. It's a ray of light which will forever shine in the darkness of a past severed from thee, Diana. Oh, just say it once again. I love you devotedly, Anne, said Diana, staunchly, and I will always will, and you may be sure of that. And I will always love thee, Diana, said Anne, solemnly, extending her hand. In the years to come, thy memory will shine like a star over my lonely life. Is that last story written together, says Diana? Will thou give me a lock of thy jet-black tresses and parting to treasure forevermore? Have you got anything to cut it with? Query, Diana, wiping away the tears which Anne's affectionate accents had caused to flow afresh and returning to practicalities. Yes, I've got my paddwick scissors in my apron pocket, fortunately, said Anne, solemnly. She clipped one of Diana's curls. Fare thee well, my beloved friend. Henceforth we must be as strangers, though living side by side. But my heart will ever be faithful to thee. Anne stood and watched Diana, out of sight, mournfully waving her hand to the ladder whenever she turned to look back. Then she returned to the house, not a little consoled for the time being by this romantic parting. It's all over, and she informed Merle. I shall never have another friend, and really worse off than ever before, for I haven't kitty-more-ease or violetta now. And even if I had, it wouldn't be the same. Somehow little dream girls are not satisfying after a real friend. Diana and I had such an affecting farewell done by the spring, it will be sacred in my memory forever. I used the most pathetic language I could think of, and said, Thou and thee seem so much more romantic than you. Diana gave me a lock of her hair, and I'm going to sew it up in a little bag and wear it around my neck all my life. Please see that it's buried with me, for I do not believe I'll live very long. Perhaps when she sees me lying cold and dead before her, Mrs. Berry may feel remorse for what she's done, and will let Diana come to my funeral. I don't think there's much fear of you dying of grief as long as you can talk, Anne, said Merle unsympathetically. Following Monday, Anne surprised Merle by coming down from her room with her basket of books on her arm and hip, and her lits primming into a line of determination. She announced, that is all there is left in life for me, now that my friend has been ruthlessly torn from me, and school I can look at her news over days departed. You better muse over your lessons than some, said Merle, concealing her delight at this development of the situation. Through going back to school, I hope you will have no more talk of breaking slates over people's head and such caring's on. Behave yourself in due, just what your teacher tells you. I'll try to be a model pupil, agreed, andolfily. There won't be much fun in it. I expect Mr. Phillips, said many Andrews, was a model pupil. And there isn't a spark of imagination or life in her. She's just dull and pokey. It never seems to have a good time. But I feel so depressed that perhaps it'll come easy to me now. I'm going round by the road. I couldn't bear to go by the birch path all alone. I should weep bitter tears if I did. Anne was welcomed back to school with open arms. Her imagination had been sorely missed in games. Her voice and the singing and the dramatic ability in the pursuit of a lot of books at dinner. Ruby Gillis smuggled three blue plums over her during testament reading. Ella Mae McPherson gave her an enormous yellow pansy cut from the cover of a floral catalog, a species of desk decorations much prized in Avonlea School. Sophia Sloan offered to teach her a perfectly elegant new pattern of knit lace so nice for trimming aprons. Katie Bolger gave her a perfume bottle to keep slate water in. And Julia Bell copied carefully on a piece of pale pink paper scalloped on the edges the following effusion. When Tileight drops her curtain down and pins it with a star, remember that you have a friend though she may wander far. It's so nice to be appreciated sight Anne rapturously to Marilla that night. The girls were not the only scholars who appreciated her. When Anne went to her seat after dinner hour, she had been told by Mr. Phillips to sit with the model Millie Andrews. She found on her desk a big luscious strawberry apple. Anne caught it off already to take a bite when she remembered the only place in Avonlea where strawberry apples grew was in the old Blyth orchard on the other side of the lake of shining waters. Anne dropped the apple as if it were a red hot coal and an obstentatiously wiped her fingers on her handkerchief. The apple land touched on her desk until the next morning, when little Timothy Andrews who swept the school and kindled the fire annexed it as one of his perquisites. Charlie Sloan's slate pencil, gorgeously bedanized with stripped red and yellow paper costing two cents where ordinary pencils cost only one which he had set up to her after dinner hour, met with a favorable reception. Anne was graciously pleased to accept it and rewarded the donor with a smile which exalted and infatuated youth straightway into seventh heaven of delight and caused him to take such fearful errors in his dictation that Mr. Phillips kept him in after school to rewrite it. But as the Caesar's pageant, Shorn of Brutus bust, did but of Rome's best son remained her more. So the marked absence of a new tribute of a recognition from Diana Barrie who was sitting with Gertie Pie and bittered Anne's little triumph. But the next morning a note, fearfully and wonderfully twisted and folded into a small parcel, were passed across to Anne. Dear Anne, ran the former, mother says I'm not to play with you or talk to you even in school. It isn't my fault and don't be crossed at me because I love you as much as ever. I miss you awfully to tell all my secrets to and I don't like Gertie Pie one bit. I made you one of the new bookmarkers out of red tissue paper. They're awfully fashionable now and only three girls in school know how to make them. When you look at it, remember your true friend Diana Barrie. Anne read the note, kissed the bookmark, and dispatched a prompt reply back to the other side of the school. My own darling Diana, of course I'm not cross at you because you have to obey your mother. Our spirits can commune. I shall keep your lovely present forever. Many Andrews is a very nice girl although she has no imagination. But after having been Diana's bosom friend I cannot be many's. Please excuse mistakes because my spelling isn't very good, although I've much improved. Yours until death do us part. Anne or Cadillia surely. P.S. I shall sleep with your letter under my pillow tonight. A. Or C.S. Marilla pessimistically expected more trouble since Anne had begun to go to school, but none developed. Pratt's Anne caught something of the model spirit from many Andrews. At least she got on very well with Mr. Phillips then's fourth. She flung herself into her study's heart and soul, determined not to be outdone in any class by Gilbert Blythe. The rivalry between them was soon apparent. It was entirely good-natured on Gilbert's side, but it is much to be feared that the same thing cannot be said of Anne, who had certainly an unpraiseworthy tendency for holding grudges. She was intense in her hatred, thus in her loves. She would not stoop to admit that she meant to rival Gilbert in schoolwork because that would have been to acknowledge his existence, which Anne persistently ignored. But the rivalry was there, and honors fluctuated between them. Now Gilbert was the head of the spelling class. Now Anne, with a toss of her long red braids, spilled him down. One morning Gilbert had all his sons done quickly, and his name written on the blackboard on the roll of honor. The next morning Anne, having wrestled wildly with decimals the entire evening before would be first. One awful day they were ties, and their names were written up together. It was almost as bad as take notice, and Anne's mortification was as evident as Gilbert's satisfaction. When the written examinations at the end of each month were held, the suspense was terrible. The first month, Gilbert came out three marks ahead. The second, Anne beat him by five. But her triumph was marred by the fact that Gilbert congratulated her heartily before the whole school. It would have been ever so much sweeter to her if he had felt the sting of his defeat. Mr. Phillips might not have been a very good teacher, but a people so inflexibly determined on learning as Anne was could hardly escape marking progress under any kind of teacher. By the end of the term, Anne and Gilbert were both promoted into this class, and allowed to begin studying the elements of the branches, by which Latin, geometry, French, and algebra were meant. In geometry, Anne melt her water loo. It's perfectly awful stuff, Marilla, as she groaned. I'm sure I'll never be able to make head or tail of it. There's no scope for imagination in it at all. Mr. Phillips, as I'm the worst dunce he ever saw at it, and Gilbert—I mean, some of the others are so smart at it, it's just extremely mortifying, Marilla. Even Diana gets along better than I do, but I don't mind being beaten by Diana. Even although we meet as strangers, now I still love her with an inextinguishable love. Makes me very sad at times to think about her, but really, Marilla, one can't stay sad very long in such an interesting world, can one? CHAPTER XVIII Anne to the Rescue All things great are wound up with all things little. At first glance it might not seem that the decision of a certain Canadian premier to include Prince Edward Island in a political tour could have much or anything to do with the fortunes of little Anne surely at Green Gables, but it had. It was a January the premier came to address his loyal supporters, and such of his non-supporters as chose to be present at the monster mass meeting held in Charlottetown. Most of the Avonlea people were on Premier's side of politics. Hence, on the night of the meeting, nearly all the men and a goodly proportion of the women had gone to the town 30 miles away. Mrs. Rachel Lind had gone too. Mrs. Rachel Lind was a red-hot politician, and couldn't have believed that the political rally could be carried through without her, although she was on the opposite side of politics. So she went to town and took her husband. Thomas would be useful in looking after the horse, and Marilla Cuthbert with her. Marilla had a sneaking interest in politics herself, and as she thought it might be her only chance to see a real live premier, she promptly took it, leaving Anne and Matthew to keep house until her return the following day. Hence, while Marilla and Mrs. Rachel were enjoying themselves hugely at the mass meeting, Anne and Matthew had the cheerful kitchen at Green Gables all to themselves. A bright fire was glowing in the old-fashioned Waterloo stove, and blue-white frost crystals were shining on the window panes. Matthew nodded over a farmer's advocate on the sofa, and Anne at the table studied her lessons with grim determination, despite sundry, wistful glances at the clock shelf, where lay a new book that Jane Andrews had lent her that day. Jane had assured her that it was warranted to produce any number of thrills, or words to that effect, and Anne's fingers tingled to reach out for it. But that would mean Gilbert Blythe's triumph on the morrow. Anne turned her back on the clock shelf, and tried to imagine it wasn't there. Matthew, did you ever study geometry when you went to school? Oh, well now. No, I didn't, said Matthew, coming out of his doze with a start. I wish you had, sighed Anne, because then you'd be able to sympathize with me. You can't sympathize properly if you've never studied it. It is casting a cloud over my whole life. I'm such a done-sad at Matthew. Oh, well now, I don't know, said Matthew soothingly. I guess you're all right at anything. Mr. Phillips told me last week in Blair's candy store at Carmody that you was the smartest scholar in school and was making rapid progress. Rapid progress was his very words. There's them as runs down Teddy Phillips and says he ain't much of a teacher, but I guess he's all right. Matthew would have thought anyone who praised Anne was all right. I'm sure I'd get on better with geometry if only he wouldn't change the letters, complained Anne. I learned the proposition off by heart, and then he draws it on the blackboard and puts different letters from what are in the book, and I get all mixed up. I don't think a teacher should take such a mean advantage, do you? We're studying agriculture now, and I've found out at last what makes the roads red. It's a great comfort. I wonder how Marilla and Mrs. Lind are enjoying themselves. Mrs. Lind says Canada is going to the dogs the way things are being run at Ottawa, and that it's an awful warning to the electors. She says if women were allowed to vote we would soon see a blessed change. What way do you vote, Matthew? Conservative, said Matthew promptly. To vote Conservative was part of Matthew's religion. Then I'm Conservative too, said Anne decidedly. I'm glad because Gil—because some of the boys in school are grits. I guess Mr. Phillips is a grit too because Prissy Andrew's father is one, and Ruby Gillis says that when a man is courting he always has to agree with the girl's mother in religion and her father in politics. Is that true, Matthew? Well now, I don't know, said Matthew. Did you ever go courting, Matthew? Well now, no, I don't know as I ever did, said Matthew, who had certainly never thought of such a thing in his whole existence. Anne reflected with her chin in her hands. It must be rather interesting, don't you think, Matthew? Ruby Gillis says when she grows up she's going to have ever so many bows on the string and have them all crazy about her. But I think that would be too exciting. I'd rather have just one in his right mind. But Ruby Gillis knows a great deal about such matters because she has so many big sisters, and Mrs. Lynde says the Gillis girls have gone off like hotcakes. Mr. Phillips goes up to see Prissy Andrews nearly every evening. He says it is to help her with her lessons, but Miranda Sloan is studying for Queen's too, and I should think she needed help a lot more than Prissy because she's ever so much stupider, but he never goes to help her in the evenings at all. There are great many things in this world that I can't understand very well, Matthew. Well now, I don't know as I comprehend them all myself, acknowledged Matthew. Well, I suppose I must finish up my lessons. I won't allow myself to open that new book Jane lent me until I'm through. But it's a terrible temptation, Matthew. Even when I turn my back on it, I can see it there just as plain. Jane said she cried herself sick over it. I love a book that makes me cry. But I think I'll carry that book into the sitting room and lock it in the jam closet and give you the key. And you must not give it to me, Matthew, until my lessons are done, not even if I implore you on my bended knees. It's all very well to say resist temptation, but it's ever so much easier to resist if you can't get the key. And then shall I run down the cellar and get some russets, Matthew? Wouldn't you like some russets? Well, now, I don't know but what I would, said Matthew, who never ate russets but knew Anne's weakness for them. Just as Anne emerged triumphantly from the cellar with her plateful of russets, came the sound of flying footsteps on the icy-board walk outside, and the next moment the kitchen door was flung open, and in rushed Diana Barry, white-faced and breathless, with a shawl wrapped hastily around her head. Anne promptly let go of her candle and played in her surprise, and plate, candle, and apples crashed together down the cellar ladder and were found at the bottom embedded in melted grease the next day by Marilla, who gathered them up and thanked Mercy the house hadn't been set on fire. Whatever is the matter, Diana? cried Anne. Has your mother relented at last? Oh, Anne, do come quick! implored Diana nervously. Minnie May is awful sick. She's got croup. Young Mary Jo says, and Father and Mother are away to town, there's nobody to go for the doctor. Minnie May is awful bad, and Young Mary Jo doesn't know what to do. Oh, Anne, I'm so scared! Matthew, without a word, reached out for cap and coat, slipped past Diana and away into the darkness of the yard. He's gone to harness the sorrel mare to go to Carmody for the doctor, said Anne, who was hurrying on hood and jacket. I know it as well as if he'd said so. Matthew and I are such kindred spirits, I can read his thoughts without words at all. I don't believe he'll find the doctor at Carmody! sobbed Diana. I know that Dr. Blair went to town, and I guess Dr. Spencer would go too. Young Mary Jo never saw anybody with croup and Mrs. Lind is away. Oh, Anne! Don't cry, die! said Anne cheerfully. I know exactly what to do for croup. You forget that Mrs. Hammond had twins three times. When you look after three pairs of twins, you naturally get a lot of experience. They all had croup regularly. Just wait till I get the Ipacac bottle. You may ain't have any at your house. Come on now. The two little girls hastened out, hand in hand, and hurried through Lovers Lane and across the crusted field beyond. For the snow was too deep to go by the shorter wood-way. Anne, although sincerely sorry for many may, was far from being insensible to the romance of the situation, and to the sweetness of once more sharing that romance with the kindred spirit. The night was clear and frosty, all ebony of shadow and silver of snowy slope. Big stars were shining over the silent fields. Here and there the dark pointed furs stood up with snow powdering their branches, and the wind whistling through them. Anne thought it was truly delightful to go skimming through all this mystery and loveliness with your bosom friend, who had been so long estranged. Many may, aged three, was really very sick. She lay on the kitchen sofa feverish and restless, while her horse-breathing could be heard all over the house. Young Mary Jo, a buxom, broad-faced French girl from the creek, whom Mrs. Berry had engaged to stay with the children during her absence, was helpless and bewildered, quite incapable of thinking what to do, or doing it if she thought of it. Anne went to work with skill and promptness. Many may has coop all right. She's pretty bad, but I've seen them worse. First you must have lots of hot water. I declare, Diana, there isn't more than a cupful in the kettle. There I filled it up, and Mary Jo, you may put some wood into the stove. I don't want to hurt your feelings, but it seems to me you might have thought of this before if you'd had any imagination. Now I'll undress many may and put her to bed, and you try to find some soft flannel cloths, Diana. I'm going to give her a dose of epicac, first of all. Many may did not take kindly to the epicac, but Anne had not brought up three pairs of twins for nothing. Down that epicac went, not only once, but many times during the long anxious night when the two little girls worked patiently over the suffering many may, and young Mary Jo, honestly anxious to do all she could, kept up a roaring fire and heated more water than would have been needed for a hospital of creepy babies. It was three o'clock when Matthew came with the doctor, for he had been obliged to go all the way to Spencervale for one. But the pressing need for assistance was passed. Many may was much better and was sleeping soundly. I was awfully near giving up in despair, explained Anne. She got worse and worse until she was sicker than ever the Hammond twins were, even the last pair. I actually thought she was going to choke to death. I gave her every drop of epicac in that bottle, and when the last dose went down I said to myself—not to Diana or young Mary Jo, because I didn't want to worry them any more than they were worried— but I had to say it to myself just to relieve my feelings. This is the last lingering hope, and I fear it is a vain one. But in about three minutes she coughed up the phlegm and began to get better right away. You must just imagine my relief doctor, because I can't express it in words. You know there are some things that cannot be expressed in words. Yes, I know, nodded the doctor. He looked at Anne as if he were thinking some things about her that couldn't be expressed in words. Later on, however, he expressed them to Mr. and Mrs. Barry. That little red-headed girl they have over at Cuthberts is as smart as they make them. I tell you, she saved that baby's life, for it would have been too late by the time I got there. She seemed to have a skill and presence of mind perfectly wonderful in a child of her age. I never saw anything like the eyes of her when she was explaining the case to me. Anne had gone home in the wonderful white frosted winter morning, heavy-eyed from loss of sleep, but still talking unwiredly to Matthew as they crossed the long white field and walked under the glittering fairy arch of the lover's lane maples. Oh, Matthew, isn't it a wonderful morning? The world looks like something God had just imagined for his own pleasure, doesn't it? Those trees look as if I could blow them away with a breath—puff! I'm so glad I live in a world where there are white frosts, aren't you? And I'm so glad Mrs. Hammond had three pairs of twins after all. If she hadn't, I might have known what to do for many may. I'm real sorry I was ever crossed with Mrs. Hammond for having twins. But oh, Matthew, I'm so sleepy. I can't go to school. I just know I couldn't keep my eyes open and I'd be so stupid. But I'd hate to stay home, for Gil, some of the others will get head of the class, and it's so hard to get up again. Although, of course, the harder it is, the more satisfaction you have when you do get up, haven't you? Well, now. I guess you'll manage all right, said Matthew, looking at Anne's little white face and the dark shadows under her eyes. You just go right to bed and have a good sleep. I'll do all the chores. Anne, accordingly, went to bed and slept so long and soundly, that it was well on in the white and rosy winter afternoon when she awoke, and descended to the kitchen where Marilla, who had arrived home in the meantime, was sitting, knitting. Oh, did you see the Premier? exclaimed Anne at once. What did he look like, Marilla? Well, he never got to be Premier on account of his looks, said Marilla, such a nose as that man had. But he can speak. I was proud of being a conservative. Rachel Lind, of course, being a liberal, had no use for him. Your dinner is on the oven, Anne. You can get yourself some blue plum preserve out of the pantry. I guess you're hungry. Matthew has been telling me about last night. I must say it was fortunate you knew what to do. I wouldn't have had any idea myself, for I never saw a case of group. There now, never mind talking till you've had your dinner. I can tell by the look of you that you're just full up with speeches, but they'll keep. Marilla had something to tell Anne, but she did not tell it just then. For she knew if she did, Anne's consequent excitement would lift her clear out of the region of such material matters as appetite or dinner. Not until Anne had finished her saucer of blue plums, did Marilla say, Mrs. Barry was here this afternoon, Anne. She wanted to see you, but I wouldn't wake you up. She says you saved Minnie May's life, and she is very sorry she acted as she did in that affair of the current wine. She says she knows now you didn't mean to set Diana drunk, and she hopes you'll forgive her and be good friends with Diana again. You're to go over this evening, if you like, for Diana can't stir outside the door on account of a bad cold she caught last night. Now, Anne, surely, for pity's sake, don't fly up in the air. The warning seemed not unnecessary. So uplifted and aerial was Anne's expression and attitude as she sprang to her feet, her face irradiated with the flame of her spirit. Oh, Marilla, can I go right now without washing my dishes? I'll wash them when I come back, but I cannot tie myself down to anything so unromantic as dishwashing at this thrilling moment. Yes, yes, run along," said Marilla indulgently. Anne, surely, are you crazy? Come back this instant and put something on you. I might as well call to the wind. She's gone without a cap or a wrap. Look at her tearing through the orchard with her hair streaming. It'll be a mercy if she doesn't catch her death of cold." Anne came dancing home in the purple winter twilight across the snowy places. A far in the south-west was the great shimmering, pearl-like sparkle of an evening star, in a sky that was pale golden and ethereal rose over a gleaming white spaces and dark glens of spruce. The tinkles of sleigh bells among the snowy hills came like elfin chimes through the frosty air, but their music was not sweeter than the song in Anne's heart and on her lips. You see before you a perfectly happy person, Marilla," she announced. I'm perfectly happy. Yes, in spite of my red hair, just at present I have a soul above red hair. Mrs. Barry kissed me and cried, and said she was so sorry and she could never repay me. I felt fearfully embarrassed, Marilla, but I just said as politely as I could. I have no hard feelings for you, Mrs. Barry. I assure you once and for all that I did not mean to intoxicate Diana, and henceforth I shall cover the past with a mantle of oblivion. That was a pretty dignified way of speaking, wasn't it, Marilla? I felt that I was heaping coals of fire on Mrs. Barry's head, and Diana and I had a lovely afternoon. Diana showed me a new fancy-crochet stitcher aunt over at Carmody taught her. Not a soul in Avonlea knows it but us, and we pledged a solemn vow never to reveal it to anyone else. Diana gave me a beautiful card with a wreath of roses on it and a verse of poetry. If you love me, as I love you, nothing but death can part us too. And that is true, Marilla. We're going to ask Mr. Phillips to let us sit together in school again and Gertie Pie can go with Minnie Andrews. We had an elegant tea. Mrs. Barry had the very best china set out, Marilla, just as if I was real company. I can't tell you what a thrill it gave me. Nobody ever used their very best china on my account before. And we had fruit cake and pound cake and donuts and two kinds of preserves, Marilla. Then Mrs. Barry asked me if I took tea and said, Pa, why don't you pass the biscuits to Anne? It must be lovely to be grown up, Marilla, when just being treated as if you were is so nice. I don't know about that, said Marilla, with a brief sigh. Well, anyway, when I am grown up, said Anne, decidedly, I'm always going to talk to little girls as if they were too, and I'll never laugh when they use big words. I know from sorrowful experience how that hurts one's feelings. After tea Diana and I made taffy. The taffy wasn't very good. I suppose because neither Diana nor I had ever made any before. Diana left me to stir it while she buttered the plates, and I forgot and let it burn. And then when we set it out on the platform to cool the cat walked over one plate, and that had to be thrown away. But the making of it was splendid fun. Then when I came home Mrs. Barry asked me to come over as often as I could, and Diana stood at the window and threw kisses to me all the way down to Lover's Lane. I assure you, Marilla, that I feel like praying to-night, and I'm going to think out a special brand-new prayer in honour of the occasion. CHAPTER XIX of Anne of Green Gables This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information on a volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. CHAPTER XIX of Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Mod Montgomery. A Concert, a Catastrophe, and a Confession. Read by Robin on January 11, 2009. Marilla, can I go over to see Diana just for a minute? Asked Anne, running breathlessly down from the East Gable one February evening. I don't see what you want to be traipsing after about dark for, said Marilla shortly. You and Diana walked home from school together, and then stood down there in the snow half an hour more, your tongues going the whole blessed time. Clickety-clack. So don't think you're very badly off to see her again. But she wants to see me, pleaded Anne. She has something very important to tell me. How do you know she has? Because she just signaled me from her window. We were arranged away to signal with our candles and cardboard. We set the candle on the window sill and make flashes by passing the cardboard back and forth. So many flashes mean a certain thing. It was my idea, Marilla. A warrant to it was, said Marilla emphatically. And the next thing you'll be setting fire to the curtains with your signaling nonsense. Oh, we're very careful, Marilla, and it's so interesting. Two flashes mean are you there? Three mean yes, and four mean no. Five mean come over as soon as possible because I have something important to reveal. Diana has just signaled five flashes and I'm really suffering to know what it is. Well, he didn't suffer any longer, said Marilla sarcastically. You can go, but you're to be back here in just ten minutes. Remember that. Anne Deadburn remember it and was back in the stipulated time, although probably no mortal will ever know just what it cost her to confine the discussion of Anne's important communication with her within the limits of ten minutes. But at least she had made good use of them. Oh, Marilla, what do you think? You know tomorrow's Diana's birthday. Her mother told her she could ask me to go home with her from school and stay all night with her. And her cousins are coming over from Newbridge in a big, punk sleigh to go to the Debating Club concert at the Haltmer all night. And they're going to take Diana and me to the concert. If you let me go, that is. You will let me go, won't you, Marilla? Oh, I feel so excited. You can calm down then because you're not going. You're better at home in your own bed, as for that club concert, it's all nonsense. And the little girl should not be allowed to go out to such places at all. I'm sure the Debating Club is a most respectable affair, pleaded Anne. I'm not saying it isn't. But you're not going to begin gaddling about to concerts and staying out all hours of the night. Pretty doings for children. I'm surprised that Mrs. Bray for letting Diana go. But it's such a very special occasion, warned Anne on the verge of tears. Diana has only one birthday in a year. It isn't as if birthdays were common things, Marilla. Prissy Andrews is going to recite Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight. That is such a good moral piece, Marilla. I'm sure we'll do me lots of good to hear it. And the choir are going to sing four lovely pathetic songs that are pretty near as good as hymns. And oh, Marilla, the minister is going to take part. Yes, indeed he is. He's going to give an address. That would be just about the same thing as a servant. Please, ma'am, dig, oh, Marilla. You heard what I said, Anne, didn't you? Take off your boots now and go to bed. It's past eight. There's just one more thing, Marilla, said Anne with an air producing the last shot in her locker. Mrs. Berry told Diana that we might sleep in the spare room bed. Think of the honor of your little Anne being put in the spare room bed. It's an honor you'll have to get along without. Go to bed, Anne. Don't let me hear another word out of you. When Anne, with tears rolling down her cheeks, had gone sorrowfully upstairs, Matthew had been apparently sound asleep on the lounge during the whole dialogue, opened his eyes and said death saddily, Well now, Marilla, I think you ought to let Anne go. I don't, then, retorted Marilla. Who's bringing this child up, Matthew? You or me? Well now, you admitted, Matthew. Don't interfere, then. Well now, I ain't interfering. It ain't interfering to have your own opinion. And my opinion is that you ought to let Anne go. You think I ought to let Anne go to the moon if she took the notion, I've no doubt, was Marilla's amiable rejoinder? I might have let her spend the night with Diane if that was all, but I don't approve of this concert plan. She'd go there and catch cold like I does not, and have her head filled up with nonsense and excitement. It would unsettle her for a week. I understand that child's disposition and what's good for her better than you, Matthew. I think you ought to let Anne go, repeated Matthew firmly. Argument was not a strong point, but holding fast to his opinion certainly was. Marilla gave a gasp of helplessness and took refuge in silence. The next morning, when Anne was washing the breakfast dishes in the pantry, Matthew paused on his way out to the barn to say to Marilla again, I think you ought to let Anne go, Marilla. For a moment, Marilla looked things not lawful to be uttered. Then she yielded to the inevitable and said tartly, Very well, chicken go, since nothing else will please you. Anne flew out of the pantry, dripping dishcloth in hand. Oh, Marilla, Marilla, say those blessed words again. I guess once is enough to say them. This is Matthew's doing, and I wash my hands of it. If you catch pneumonia sleeping in a strange bed or coming out of that hot hole in the middle of the night, don't blame me, blame Matthew. Anne, surely you're dripping greasy water all over the floor. I never saw such a careless child. Oh, I know I'm a great trial to you, Marilla, said Anne repentantly. I make so many mistakes, but then just think of all the mistakes I don't make, although I might. I'll get some sand and scrub up the spot before I go to school. Oh, Marilla, my heart was just set on going to that concert. I've never went to a concert in my life. When other girls talk about them in school, I feel so left out of it. You don't know how just how I felt about it, but you see Matthew did. Matthew understands me, and it's so nice to be understood, Marilla. Anne was too excited to do herself dash assess to lessons that morning in school. Gilbert Bly spelled her down in class and left her clear out of sight and mental arithmetic. Anne's consequent humiliation was less than it might have been, however, in view of the concert and the spare-room bed. She and Deanna talk so constantly about it all day that, with a stricter teacher than Mr. Phillips, dire disgrace must inevitably have been their portion. Anne felt that she could not have borne it if she had not been going to the concert, for nothing else was discussed that day in school. The Avonlea Debating Club, which met fortnightly all winter, had had several smaller free entertainments, but this was to be a big, great affair. A mission ten cents in aid of the library. The Avonlea Young People had been practicing for weeks, and all of the scholars were especially interested in it by the region of older brothers and sisters who were going to take part. Everybody in school over nine years of age expected to go except Carrie Sloan, whose father shared Marilla's opinion about small girls going out to night concerts. Carrie Sloan cried into her grandma all the afternoon and felt that life was not worth living. For Anne, the real excitement began when there was dismissal of school and increased therefrom in Crescendo until it reached a crash of positive ecstasy in the concert itself. They had a perfectly elegant tee and then came the delicious occupation of dressing in Diana's little room upstairs. Diana did Anne's front hair in the new pompadour style and anti-Diana's bows with the special knack she possessed, and then they experimented with at least half a dozen different ways of arranging their back hair. At last they were ready, cheeks scarlet, and eyes growing with excitement. True, Anne cannot help a little pang when she contrasted her plain black tan and shapeless tight-sleeved homemade gray cloth coat with Diana's jaunty fur cap and a smart little jacket, but she remembered that in time that she had an imagination and could use it. Then Diana's cousins, the Murrays from Newbridge, came. They all crowded into the big pung slay amongst straw and fur robes. Anne reveled in the drive to the hall, slipping over the satin smooth roads with snow crisping under the runners. There was a magnificent sunset and the snowy hill in deep blue water the St. Lawrence skull seemed to rim in the splendor like a huge bowl of pearl and sapphire brined with wine and fire. Tinkles of sleigh bells and distance laughter that seemed like the mirth of wood elves came from every quarter. Oh, Diana, breathed Anne, squeezing Diana's mitten hand under the fur robe. Isn't it all like a beautiful dream? Do I really look the same as usual? I feel so different that it seemed to me it must show in my looks. You look awfully nice, said Diana, who, having just received a compliment from one of her cousins, felt that she ought to pass it on. You've got the loveliest color. The program that night was a series of thrills for at least one listener in the audience and as Anne assured Diana, every succeeding thrill was thrillerer than the last. When Percy Andrew attired in a new pink silk waist with string of pearls about her smooth white throat and real carnations in her hair, room rewhispered that the master had sent all the way to town for them from her, climbed the slimy ladder dark without one ray of light, and shivered in luxurious sympathy when the choir sang far above the gentle daisies, and gazed at the ceiling as if it were friscode with angels. When Sam Sloan proceeded to explain and illustrate how Socrates said a hymn, Anne laughed until people sitting near her laughed too, more sympathy with her than with amusement at the selection that was rather set bare in Avonlea. When Mr. Phillips gave Mark Antony's oriation over the dead body of Caesar in the most heart-stringed tones, looked at Percy Andrews at the end of every sentence, and felt that she could rise in mutiny on the spot, if but one robin citizen led the way. Only one number on the program failed to interest her. When Gilbert Blythe recited Bingen on the Rhine, Anne picked up Rhoda Murray's library book and read it until he had finished. When she sat rigidly stiff in motion to this while Diana clapped her hands until they tingled. It was eleven when they got home, sadded with this dissipation, with the exceeding sweet pleasure of talking it all over still to come. Everybody seemed to sleep, and the house was dark and silent. Anne and Diana tiptoed into the parlour, a long, narrow room out of which the spare room opened. It was pleasantly warm and dimly lighted by the embers of a fire in the grate. Let us undress here, said Diana. It's so nice and warm. Hasn't it been a delightful time, sighed Anne rapturously? It must be splendid to get up and recite there. Do you suppose we'll ever be asked to do it, Diana? Yes, of course, some day there is Oye wanting a big scholar to recite. Gilbert Blythe does it often, and he is only two years old of the Ness. Oh, Anne, how could you pretend not to listen to him? When he came to the line, there's another, not a sister. He looked right down at you. Diana, said Anne with dignity, you are my bosom friend, but I cannot allow you to speak to me of that person. I read it for bed. Let's run a race and see who will get to the bed first. The suggestion appealed to Diana. The two little white clouded figures flew down the long room through the spare room, door, and bounded onto the bed at the same moment, and then something moved beneath them. There was a gasp and a cry, and someone said in muffled accents, merciful goodness! Anne and Diana were never able to tell just how they got off that bed and out of the room. They only knew that after one frantic rush they found themselves tiptoeing shiveringly upstairs. Who, oh, who was it? What was it? whispered Anne, her teeth chattering with cold and fright. It was Aunt Josephine, said Diana, gasping with laughter. Oh, Anne, it was Aunt Josephine. However, she came to be there. Oh, I know she'll be furious. It's dreadful, it's really dreadful. Did you ever know anything so funny, Anne? Who's your Aunt Josephine? She's fathered, and she lives in Charleston. She's awfully old, 70 anyhow, and I don't believe she was ever a little girl. We were expecting her out for a visit, but not so soon. She's awfully prim and proper, and she'll school dreadfully about this, I know. But we'll have to sleep with Minnie May, and you can't think how she kicks. Miss Josephine Berry did not appear at the early breakfast next morning. Mrs. Berry smelled kindly at the two little girls. Did you have a good time last night? I tried to stay awake until you came home, for I wanted to tell you Aunt Josephine had come, and that you'd have to go upstairs after all. But I was so tired I fell asleep. Hope you didn't disturb your Aunt Diana. Diana preserved a discreet silence, but she and Anne exchanged furtive smiles of guilty amusement across the table. Anne hurried home after breakfast, and so remained in blissful ignorance of the disturbance which presently resulted in the Berry Household until the late afternoon, when she went down to see Mrs. Land on an errand for Marilla. So you and Diana nearly frightened old Miss Berry to death last night, said Mrs. Land severely, but with a twinkle on her eye. Mrs. Berry was here a few minutes ago on her way to Carmine. She's feeling real worried over it. Old Mrs. Berry was in a terrible temper when she got up this morning, and Josephine Berry's temper is no joke, I can tell you that. She wouldn't speak to Diana at all. It wasn't Diana's fault, said Anne contritely. It was mine. I suggested racing to see who would get into bed first. I knew it, said Mrs. Lin, with the exaltation of a correct guesser. I knew that idea came out of your head. Well, it's made a nice lot of trouble, that's what. Old Mrs. Berry came out to stay for a month, but she declared she won't stay another day and is going back to town tomorrow. Sunday and all as it is. She'd have gone today if she could have taken her. She had promised to pay for a quarter's music lesson for Diana, but now she's determined to do nothing at all for such a tomboy, or I guess they had a lively time there this morning. The berries must feel cut up. Old Miss Berry is rich, and they'd like to keep on the good side of her. Of course Mrs. Berry didn't say that to me, but I'm pretty good judge of human nature, that's wet. Oh, I'm such an unlucky girl, mourn Anne. I'm always getting into scrapes myself and getting my best friends, people I'd shed my heart's blood for into them too. Can you tell me why it is so Mrs. Lin? It's because you're too heedless and impulsive child, that's wet. You never stop to think. Whatever comes into head, you say or do it without a moment's reflection. Oh, but that's the best part of it, protested Anne. Something just flashes into your mind, so exciting, and you must out with it. If you ever stop to think it over, you spoil it all. Haven't you ever felt that yourself, Mrs. Lin? No, Mrs. Lin had not. She shook her head saggly. You must learn to think a little. Anne, that's wet. The proverb you need to go by is look before you leap, especially in dispel room beds. Mrs. Lin laughed comfortably over her mild joke, but Anne remained pensive. She saw nothing to laugh at in the situation, which to her eyes appeared very serious. When she left Mrs. Lin, she took her way across the crusted fields to orchard's lope, dying to met her in the kitchen door. Your Aunt Josephine was very cross about it, wasn't she, whispered Anne? Yes, and so Diana stifled a giggle with an apprehensive glance over her shoulder at the clothes sitting room door. She was fairly dancing with rage, Anne. Oh, how she scolded! She said I was the worst behaved girl she'd ever saw and that my parents ought to be ashamed of the way they'd brought me up. She says she won't stay, and I'm sure I don't care, but father and mother do. Why didn't you tell them it was my fault, demanded Anne? It's likely I do such a thing, isn't it? said Diana, with just scorn. I'm no tell-tale, Anne Shirley, and anyhow it was just as much to blame as you. Well, I'm going to tell her myself, said Anne resolutely. Diana stared. Anne, Shirley, you never—why? She'll eat you alive! Don't frighten me any more than I'm frightened, implored Anne, and rather walk up to a cannon's mouth, but I've got to do it. Diana, it was my fault and I've got to confess. I've had practice in confessing, fortunately. Well, she's in the room, said Diana. You can go in if you want to. I wouldn't, dear, and I don't believe you'll do a bit of good. With this encouragement, Anne bearded the lion in its den. That is to say, she walked resolutely up to the sitting-room door, and knocked faintly, sharp. Come in, followed. Miss Josephine Berry then prim and rigid, was knitting fiercely by the fire, her wrath quite unappeased, and her eyes snapping through her gold-rimmed glasses. She wheeled around in her chair, expecting to see a Diana, and they held a white-faced girl, whose great eyes were brined up with a mixture of disparate courage and shrinking tarot. Who are you? demanded Miss Josephine Berry without ceremony. I am Anne Shirley of Green Gables, said the small wizard tremulously, clasping her hands with her characteristic gesture, and have come to confess, if you please. Confess what? That's all my fault about the jumping into bed on you last night. I suggested it. Diana would have never thought of such a thing, I'm sure. Diana is a very ladylike girl, Mrs. Berry, so you must see how unjust it is to blame her. Oh, I must, eh! I rather think Diana did her share of the jumping at least. Such carrying's on in a respectable house. But we were only having fun, persisted Anne. I think you ought to forgive us, Miss Berry, now that we've apologized, and anyhow, please forgive Diana and let her have her music lessons. Diana's heart is set on her music lessons, Mrs. Berry, and I know too well what it is to have your heart set on a thing and not get it. You must be crossed with anyone, be crossed with me. I've been so used to in my early days to having people cross at me that I can endure it much better than Diana can. Much of the snap had gone out of the old lady's eyes by this time and was replaced by a twinkle of amused interest, but she still said it very severely. I don't think it is any excuse for you that you are only in fun. Little girls never indulge in that kind of fun when I was young. You don't know what it is to be awakened at a sound sleep after a long and arduous journey by two great girls coming bounce down on you. I don't know, but I can imagine, said Anne eagerly. I'm sure it must have been very disturbing, but then there was our side of it too. Have you any imagination, Mrs. Berry? If you have, just put yourself in our place. We didn't know there was anybody in that bed, and you nearly scared us to death. It was simply awful the way we felt, and then we couldn't sleep in the spare room after being promised. I suppose you were used to sleeping in spare rooms, but just imagine what you'd feel like if you were a little orphan girl who'd never had such an honor. All the snap had gone by this time. Mrs. Berry actually laughed, a sound which caused Diana, waiting in speeches anxiety in the kitchen outside, to give a great gasp of relief. I'm afraid my imagination is a little rusty. It's so long since I used it, she said. I dare say your claim to sympathy is just as strong as mine. It all depends on the way we look at it. Sit down and tell me about yourself. I'm very sorry I can't, said Anne firmly. I'd like to because you seem like an interesting lady, and you might even be a kindred spirit, although you don't look very much like it. But it's my duty to go home to Miss Marilla Cuthbert. Miss Marilla Cuthbert is a very kind lady who is taking me to bring up properly. She's doing her best, but is very discouraging work. You must not blame her because I jumped on the bed. But before I go, I do wish that you would tell me if you'll forgive Diana and stay as long as you meant to when I have an leave. I think perhaps I will if you'll come over and talk to me occasionally, said Mrs. Berry. That evening Miss Berry gave Diana silver, bangled bracelet, and told the senior members of the household that she had unpacked her valise. I made up my mind to stay simply for the sake of getting better acquainted with that Anne girl, she said frankly. She amuses me, and at my time of life an amusing person is a rarity. Marilla's only comment when she heard the story was, I told you so. This was for Matthew's benefit. Miss Berry stayed her month out and over. She was more agreeable guests than usual, for Anne kept her in good humor, that became firm friends. When Miss Berry went away, she said, Remember you, Anne girl, when you come to town you're to visit me, and I'll put you in my very spare, spare room bed to sleep. Miss Berry was a kindred spirit after all, Anne confided to Marilla. You wouldn't think so to look at her, but she is. You don't find it right out at first, as in Matthew's case. But after a while you come to see it. Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It's splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world. CHAPTER XX. A Good Imagination Gone Wrong Spring had come once more to Green Gables, that beautiful, capricious, reluctant Canadian spring, lingering along through April and May in a succession of sweet, fresh, chilly days, with pink sunsets and miracles of resurrection and growth. The maples and lovers' lane were red-budded and little curly ferns pushed up around the dry-eds bubble. Away up in the barrens, behind Mr. Silas's Sloan's place, the Mayflower's blossomed out, pink and white stars of sweetness under their brown leaves. All the schoolgirls and boys had one golden afternoon gathering them, coming home in the clear, echoing twilight, with arms and baskets full of flowery spoil. I'm so sorry for people who live in lands where there are no Mayflowers, said Anne. Diana says perhaps they have something better, but there couldn't be anything better than Mayflowers, could there, Marilla? And Diana says if they don't know what they are like, they don't miss them. But I think that is the saddest thing of all. I think it would be tragic, Marilla, not to know what Mayflowers are like and not to miss them. Do you know what I think Mayflowers are, Marilla? I think they must be the souls of the flowers that died last summer, and this is their heaven. But we had a splendid time today, Marilla. We had our lunch down in a big, mossy hollow by an old well, such a romantic spot. Charlie Sloan dared Artie Gillis to jump over it, and Artie did because he wouldn't take a dare. Nobody would in school. It is very fashionable to dare. Mr. Phillips gave all the Mayflowers he found to Prissy Andrews, and I heard him say, sweets to the sweet. He got that out of a book, I know, but it shows he has some imagination. I was offered some Mayflowers, too, but I rejected them with scorn. I can't tell you the person's name, because I vowed never to let it cross my lips. We made wreaths of the Mayflowers and put them on our hats, and when the time came to go home, we marched in procession down the road, two by two, with our bouquets and wreaths, singing, my home on the hill. Oh, it was so thrilling, Marilla. All Mr. Silas Sloan's folks rushed out to see us, and everybody we met on the road stopped and stared after us. We made a real sensation. Not such wonder, such silly doings, was Marilla's response. After the Mayflowers came the violets, and Violet Vale was impurpled with them, Anne walked through it on her way to school with reverent steps and worshipping eyes, as if she trod on holy ground. Somehow, she told Diana, When I'm going through here I don't really care whether Gil, whether anybody gets ahead of me in class or not, but when I'm up in school it's all different, and I care as much as ever. There's such a lot of different Anne's in me. I sometimes think that is why I'm such a troublesome person. If it was just the one Anne, it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn't be half so interesting. One June evening when the orchards were pink blossom'd again, when the frogs were singing silverly sweet in the marshes about the head of the lake of shining waters, and the air was full of the savor of clover fields and balsamic fir-woods, Anne was sitting by her gable window. She'd been studying her lessons, but it had grown too dark to see the book, so she'd fallen into wide-eyed reverie, looking out past the boughs of the snow queen, once more be starred with its tufts of blossom. In all essential respect the little gable chamber was unchanged. The walls were as white, with the pincushion as hard, the chairs as stiffly and yellowly upright as ever. Yet the whole character of the room was altered. It was full of a new, vital, pulsing personality that seemed to pervade it and to be quite independent of schoolgirl books and dresses and ribbons, and even of the cracked blue jug full of apple blossoms on the table. It was as if all the dreams, sleeping and waking of its vivid occupant, had taken invisible although unmaterial form, and had tapestry'd the bare room with splendid filmy tissues of rainbow and moonshine. Presently Marilla came briskly in with some of Anne's freshly ironed school aprons. She hung them over a chair and sat down with a short sigh. She had had one of her headaches that afternoon, and although the pain had gone, she felt weak and tuckered out, as she expressed it, Anne looked at her with eyes limpid with sympathy. I do truly wish I could have had the headache in your place, Marilla. I would have endured it joyfully for your sake. I guess you did your part in attending to the work and letting me rest, said Marilla. You seemed to have got on fairly well and made fewer mistakes than usual. Of course, it wasn't exactly necessary to starch Matthew's handkerchiefs, and most people, when they put a pie in the oven to warm up for dinner, take it out and eat it when it gets hot, instead of leaving it to be burned to a crisp. But that doesn't seem to be your way, evidently. Headaches always left Marilla somewhat sarcastic. Oh, I'm so sorry, said Anne penitently. I never thought about that pie from the moment I put it in the oven till now, although I felt instinctively that there was something missing on the dinner table. I was firmly resolved when you left me in charge this morning not to imagine anything, but keep my thoughts on facts. I did pretty well until I put the pie in, and then an irresistible temptation came to me to imagine I was an enchanted princess shut up in a lonely tower with a handsome knight riding to my rescue in a cold black steed. So that is how I came to forget the pie. I didn't know I starched the handkerchiefs. All the time I was ironing, I was trying to think of a name for a new island Diana and I have discovered up the brook. It's the most ravishing spot, Marilla. There are two maple trees on it, and the brook flows right around it. At last it struck me that it would be splendid to call it Victoria Island because we found it on the Queen's birthday. Both Diana and I are very loyal. But I'm sorry about that pie and the handkerchiefs. I wanted to be extra good today because it's an anniversary. Do you remember what happened this day last year, Marilla? No. I can't think of anything special. Oh, Marilla, it was the day I came to Green Gables. I shall never forget it. It was the turning point in my life. Of course it wouldn't seem so important to you. I've been here for a year and I've been so happy. Of course I've had my troubles, but one can live down troubles. Are you sorry you kept me, Marilla? No, I can't say I'm sorry, said Marilla, who sometimes wondered how she could have lived before Anne came to Green Gables. No, not exactly sorry. If you've finished your lessons, Anne, I want you to run over and ask Mrs. Barry if she'll lend me Diana's apron pattern. Oh, it's— It's too dark, cried Anne. Too dark? Why, it's only twilight. It goodness knows you've gone over often enough after dark. I'll go over early in the morning, said Anne eagerly. I'll get up at sunrise and go over, Marilla. What has gone into your head now, Anne Shirley? I want that pattern to cut out your new apron this evening. Go at once and be smart, too. I'll have to go around by the road, then. Said Anne, taking up her hat reluctantly. Go by the road and waste half an hour I'd like to catch you. I can't go through the haunted wood, Marilla, cried Anne desperately. Marilla stared. The haunted wood? Are you crazy? What under the canopy is the haunted wood? The spruce wood over the brook, said Anne in a whisper. Fiddlesticks! There is no such thing as a haunted wood anywhere. Who has been telling you such stuff? Nobody, confessed Anne. Diana and I just imagined the wood was haunted. All the places around here are so—so commonplace. We just got this up for our own amusement. We began it in April. A haunted wood is so very romantic, Marilla. We chose the spruce grove because it's so gloomy. We have imagined the most harrowing things. There's a white lady walks along the brook just about this time of the night and rings her hands and others wailing cries. She appears when there is to be a death in the family. And the ghost of a little murdered child haunts the corner up by Idlewild. He creeps up behind you and lays its cold fingers on your hand. So—oh, Marilla, it gives me a shudder to think of it. And there's a headless man stalks up and down the path and skeletons clower at you between the boughs. Oh, Marilla, I wouldn't go through the haunted wood after dark now for anything. I'd be sure that white things would reach out from behind the trees and grab me. Did ever anyone hear the like? ejaculated Marilla, who had listened in dumb amazement. Anne Shirley, do you mean to tell me you believe all that wicked nonsense of your own imagination? Not believe exactly, faltered Anne. At least I don't believe it in daylight. But after dark, Marilla, it's different. That is when ghosts walk. There are no such things as ghosts, Anne. Oh, but there are, Marilla, cried Anne eagerly. I know people who have seen them, and they are respectable people. Charlie Sloan says his grandmother saw his grandfather driving home the cows one night after he'd been buried for a year. You know Charlie Sloan's grandmother wouldn't tell a story for anything. She's a very religious woman. And Mrs. Thomas's father was pursued home one night by a lamb of fire with its head cut off hanging by a strip of skin. He said he knew it was the spirit of his brother and that it was a warning he should die within nine days. He didn't. But he died two years after, so you see it was really true. And Ruby Gillis says, Anne surely interrupted Marilla firmly. I never want to hear you talking in this fashion again. I've had my doubts about that imagination of yours right along. And if this is going to be the outcome of it, I won't countenance any such doings. You'll go right over to Barry's, and you'll go through that spruce grove, just for a lesson and a warning to you. And never let me hear a word out of your head about haunted woods again. Anne might plead and cry as she liked, and did, for her terror was very real. Her imagination had run away with her, and she held the spruce grove in mortal dread after nightfall. But Marilla was inexorable. She marched the shrinking ghost seer down to the spring, and ordered her to proceed straight away over the bridge, and into the dusky retreats of wailing ladies and headless specters beyond. Oh, Marilla, how can you be so cruel? Solved Anne. What would you feel like if a white thing did snatch me up and carry me off? All risk it, said Marilla unfeelingly. You know I always mean, would I say. I'll cure you of imagining ghosts into places. March now. Anne marched. That is, she stumbled over the bridge and went shuddering up the horrible dim path beyond. Anne never forgot that walk. Bitterly did she repent the license she had given to her imagination. The goblins of her fancy lurked in every shadow about her, reaching out their cold, fleshless hands to crass the terrified small girl who had called them into being. A white strip of birch bark blowing up from the hollow over the brown floor of the grove made her heart stand still. The long-drawn wail of two old boughs rubbing against each other brought out the perspiration and beads on her forehead. The swoop of bats and the darkness over her was as the wings of unearthly creatures. When she reached Mr. William Bell's field, she fled across it as if pursued by an army of white things, and arrived at the barry kitchen door so out of breath that she could hardly gasp out her request for the apron pattern. Diana was away, so that she had no excuse to linger. The dreadful return journey had to be faced. Anne went back over it with shut eyes, preferring to take the risk of dashing her brains out among the boughs to that of seeing a white thing. When she finally stumbled over the log bridge, she drew one long shivering breath of relief. Well, so nothing caught you, said Marilla unsympathetically. Oh, Marilla! chattered Anne. I'll bebebebe contented with c-c-commonplace places after this. Chapter 21 of Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery A New Departure in Flavorings Dear me, there is nothing but meetings and partings in this world, as Mrs. Lynn says, remarked Anne plaintively, putting her slate and books down on the kitchen table on the last day of June, and wiping her red eyes with a very damp handkerchief. Wasn't it fortunate, Marilla, that I took an extra handkerchief to school today at a press sentiment that I would be needing it? I never thought you were so fond of Mr. Phillips that you required two handkerchiefs to dry your tears just because he was going away, said Marilla. I don't think I was crying because I was really so very fond of him, reflected Anne. I described it because all the others did. It was really Gil that started it, and Ruby Gillis has always declared that she hated Mr. Phillips. But just as soon as he got up to make his farewell speech, she burst into tears. Then all the girls began to cry one after the other. I tried to hold out, Marilla. I tried to remember the time Mr. Phillips made me sit with Gil, with a boy, and the time he spelled my name without an E on the blackboard. And I always said I was the worst dunce he ever saw in geometry, and laughed at my spelling, and all the times he had been so horde and sarcastic. But somehow I couldn't, Marilla. I just had to cry, too. Jane Andrews has been talking for a month about how glad she'd be when Mr. Phillips went away, and she declared she'd never shed a tear. Well, she was worse than any of us, and had to borrow a handkerchief from her brother. Of course the boys didn't cry, because she hadn't brought one of her own, not expecting to need it. Oh, Marilla, it was heart-rending. Mr. Phillips made such a beautiful farewell speech at the beginning. The time has come for us to part. It was very affecting. And he had tears in his eyes, too, Marilla. Oh, I felt dreadfully sorry and remorseful for all the times I talked in school, and drawn pictures of him on my slate, and made fun of him in prissy. I can tell you I wish I'd been a model pupil like Minnie Andrews. She had anything on her conscience. The girls cried all the way home from school. Carrie Sloan kept saying every few minutes, the time has come for us to part. And that would start us off again, whenever we were in any danger of cheering up. I do feel dreadfully sad, Marilla, but one can't feel quite in the depths of despair with two months' vacation before them, can they, Marilla? And besides, we went to the new minister and his wife coming from the station. For all I was pretty feeling so bad about Mr. Phillips going away, I couldn't help taking a little interest in the new minister, could I? His wife is very pretty. Not exactly a regally lovely, of course. It wouldn't do, I suppose, for a minister to have a regally lovely wife, because it might set a bad example. Mrs. Linn said the minister's wife over at Newbridge sets a very bad example, because she dresses so fashionably. Our new minister's wife was dressed in blue muslin, with lovely puffed sleeves and a hat trimmed with roses. Jane Andrews said she thought puffed sleeves were too worldly for a minister's wife. But I didn't make any such uncharitable remarks, Marilla, because I know what it is to long for puffed sleeves. Besides, she's only been a minister's wife for a little while, so one should make allowance, shouldn't they? They're going to board with Mrs. Linn until the man is ready. If Marilla, in going down to Mrs. Linn that evening, was actually by any motive, save her avoided one of returning the quilting frame she had borrowed the preceding winter, it was an amiable weakness shared by most of the Avonlea people. Many things Mrs. Linn had lent, sometimes never expecting to see again, came home that night in charge of the borrower's thereof. A new minister, and moreover a minister with a wife, was a lawful object of curiosity in a quiet little country's settlement, where sensations were far and few between. Old Mr. Bentley, the minister whom Anne had found lacking in imagination, had been past the Avonlea for eighteen years. He was a widower when he came, and a widower who remained, despite the fact that gossip regularly married him to this and that, that, or other one. Every year of his sojourn, in the preceding February, he had resigned his charge, and departed amid the regrets of his people, most of whom had the affection borne of long intercourse, for their good old minister, in spite of his shortcomings, as an orator. Since the Avonlea Church had enjoyed a variety of religious dissipation, in listening to the many and various candidates and supplies, who came Sunday after Sunday to preach on trial, these stood or fell by the judgment of the fathers and mothers in Israel. But a certain small red-haired girl who sat meekly in the corner of the old cup-bird pew also had her opinions about them, and discussed the same in full with Matthew, Marilla, always declining from principle to criticize ministers in any shape or form. I do not think Mr. Smith would have done, Matthew, with Anne's final summing up. Mrs. Lenn says his delivery was so poor, but I think his worst fault was just like Mr. Bentley's. He had no imagination, and Mr. Terry had too much. He let her run away with him, just as I did mine, in the matter of the haunted woods. Besides, Mrs. Lenn said his theology wasn't sound. Mr. Gresham was a very good man and a very religious man, but he told too many funny stories and made the people laugh in church. He was undignified, and he must have some dignity about a minister, mustn't she, Matthew? I thought Mr. Marsh was decidedly attractive, but Mrs. Lenn said he isn't married or even engaged, because she made special inquiries about him, and she says it would never do to have a young unmarried minister in Avonlea, because he might marry in the congregation, and that would make trouble. Mrs. Lenn is a very far-sing woman, isn't she, Matthew? I'm very glad they've called Mr. Allen. I liked him because his sermon was interesting, and he prayed as if he meant it, not just as if he did it because he was in the habit of it. Mrs. Lenn says he isn't perfect, but she says she's supposed as we couldn't expect to find a perfect minister for $750 a year. And anyhow, his theology is sound, because she questioned him thoroughly on all the points of doctrine, and she knows his wife's people, and they are most respectable, and the women are all good housekeepers. Mrs. Lenn says that sound doctrine in the man and good housekeeping in the woman makes an ideal combination for any minister's family. The new minister and his wife were a young, pleasant-faced couple, still on their honeymoon, and full of all good and beautiful enthusiasm for their chosen life work. Avonlea opened its hearts to them from the start, old and young like the frank, cheerful young man with his high ideals, and the bright gentle lady who assumed the mischorship of the man's. With Mrs. Allen, and felt promptly and wholeheartedly in love, she had discovered another kindred spirit. Mrs. Allen is perfectly lovely, she announced one Sunday afternoon. She's taken our class, and she's a splendid teacher. She said right away that she didn't think it was fair for the teacher to ask all the questions, and you know, Marilla, that is exactly what I've always thought. She said we could ask her any questions we liked, and I asked ever so many. I'm good at asking questions, Marilla. I believe you, was Marilla's emphatic comment. Nobody else asked Guine except Ruby Gillis, and she asked if there was to be Sunday school picnice this summer. I didn't think that was a very proper question to ask, because it had any connection with the lesson. The lesson was about Daniel and the lion's den, but Mrs. Allen just smiled, and said she thought there would be. Mrs. Allen has a very lovely smile. She has such exquisite dimples in her cheeks. I wish I had dimples in my cheeks, Marilla. I'm not half so skinny as I was when I came here, but I have no dimples yet. If I had perhaps, I could influence people for good. Mrs. Allen said we ought to always try to influence other people for good. She talked so nice about everything. I never knew before that religion was such a cheerful thing. I always thought it was kind of melancholy, but Mrs. Allen says it isn't, and I'd like to be a Christian if I could be one like her. I wouldn't want to be one like Mr. Superintendent Bell. It's very not of you to speak so about Mr. Bell, said Marilla severely. Mr. Bell is a real good man. Oh, of course he's good, a great and, but he doesn't seem to get any comfort out of it. If I could be good, I'd dance and sing all day because I was glad of it. I suppose Mrs. Allen is too old to dance and sing, and of course it wouldn't be dignified in a minister's wife. But I can just feel she's glad to be a Christian, and she'd be one, even if she could get into heaven without it. I suppose we must have Mr. and Mrs. Allen up to tea someday soon, said Marilla reflectively. They've been most everywhere, but here, let me see. Next Wednesdays would be a good time to have them, but don't say where to Matthew about it, for if they knew they were coming, he'd find some excuse to be away that day. He'd got so used to Mr. Bentley, he didn't mind him, but he's going to find it hard to get acquainted with a new minister, and a new minister's wife will frighten him to death. Obviously good is the dead, it should, Ann, but oh Marilla, will you let me make a cake for the occasion? I'd love to do something for Mrs. Allen, and you know I can make a pretty good cake by this time. You can make a layer cake, promised Marilla. Monday and Tuesday, great preparations went on at Green Gables, having the minister and his wife to tea was a serious and important undertaking, and Marilla's determined not to be eclipsed by any of the Avonleaus keepers. Ann was wild with excitement and delight. She talked it all over with Diana Tuesday night in the twilight, as they sat on the big red stones by the dried spevel and made rainbows in the water, with little twigs dipped in fur balls. Everything is ready, Diana, except my cake, which I'm to make in the morning, and the baking powder biscuits which Marilla will make just before tea time. I assure you, Diana, that Marilla and I have had a busy two days of it. It's such a responsibility having a minister's family to tea. I never went through such an experience before. You should see our pantry. It's a sight to behold. We're going to have jelly, chicken, and cold tongue. We'll have two kinds of jelly, red and yellow, and whipped cream and lemon pie, and a cherry pie, and three kinds of cookies, and fruit cake, and Marilla's famous yellow prompt preserves that she keeps especially for ministers, and a pound cake and layer cake, and biscuits, as foresaid, and new bread and old both, in case the minister is dispeptic and can't eat new. Mrs. Lin said ministers are dispeptic, but I don't think Mr. Allen has been a minister long enough for it to have had a bad effect on him. I just grow cold when I think of my layer cake. Oh, Diana, what if it shouldn't be good? I dream last night that I chased all around by a fearful goblin with a big layer cake for a head. It'll be good, I write, assure Diana, who is a very comfortable sort of friend. I'm sure that piece of the one you made that we had for lunch and idle while two weeks ago was perfectly elegant. Yes, but cakes have such a terrible out of turning out bad when you especially want them to be good, cite Anne, setting particularly well balsam twig float. However, I suppose I'll just have to trust Providence and be careful to put in the flour. Oh, look, Diana, what a lovely rainbow! Do you suppose the dried will come out after we go away and take it for a scarf? You know there's no such things as dry at, said Diana. Diana's mother had found out about the haunted wood, and it had been decidedly angry over it. As a result, Diana had abstained from any further imaginative flights of imagination and did not think it prudent to cultivate a spirit of belief, even in harmless dryads. But it's so easy to imagine there is, said Anne. Every night before I go to bed, I look out of my window and wonder if the dried is really sitting here, combing her locks with the spring for a mirror. Sometimes I look for her footprints in the dew in the morning. Oh, Diana, don't give up your faith in the dryad. Wednesday morning came. Anne got up at sunrise because she was too excited to sleep. She caught a severe cold in the head by a reason of her dabbing in the spring on the preceding evening. But nothing short of absolute pneumonia could have quenched her interest in culinary matters that morning. After breakfast, she proceeded to make her cake. When she finally shut the oven door upon it and she drew it a long breath. I'm sure I haven't forgotten anything this time, Marilla, but do you think it will rise? Just suppose perhaps the baking powder isn't good. I used it out of the new can, and Mrs. Lin says you can never be sure of getting good baking powder nowadays when everything is so adulterated. Mrs. Lin says that the government ought to take the matter up, but she says we'll never see the day when a Tory government will do it, Marilla. What if the cake doesn't rise? We'll have plenty without it, was Marilla's unimpassioned way of looking at the subject. The cake did rise, however, and came out of the oven as light and feathery as golden foam. Anne, flushed with the light, clapt it together with layers of ruby jelly, and in imagination some Mrs. Allen eating it and possibly asking for another piece. You'll be using the best tea set, of course, Marilla. She said, can I fix the table with ferns and wild roses? I think that's all nonsense, sniff Marilla. In my opinion, it's the eatables that matter and not flurry decorations. Mrs. Berry had her table decorated, said Anne, who was entirely guiltless of the wisdom of the serpent, and the minister paid her an elegant compliment he said it was the feast for the eyes as well as the palate. Well, do what you like, said Marilla, who was quite determined not to be surpassed by Mrs. Berry or anybody else. Only mind you leave enough room for the dishes and the food. Anne laid herself out to decorate in a manner, and after a fashion that should leave Mrs. Berry's nowhere, having an abundance of roses and ferns in a very artistic taste her own, she made that tea table such a thing of beauty that when the minister and his wife sat down to it, they exclaimed in chorus over its loveliness. It's Anne's doing, said Marilla grimly, just, and Anne felt that Mrs. Allen's approving smile was almost too much happiness for this world. Matthew was there, having been invigaled into the party, only goodness, and Anne knew how. He'd been in such a state of shy nervousness that Marilla had given up on him in despair, but Anne took him in hand, and so successfully, that he now sat at the table in his best clothes and white collar and talked to the minister not uninterestingly. He never said a word to Mrs. Allen, but that perhaps was not to be expected. All went merry as a marriage bell until Anne's layer cake was passed. Mrs. Allen, having already helped to a bewildering variety, declined it, but Marilla sang the disappointment on Anne's face that smiling, oh, you must take a piece of this, Mrs. Allen, and made it on purpose for you. In that case, I must sample it, last Miss Allen helping herself to a plump triangle, as did also the ministered Marilla. Mrs. Allen took a mouthful of hers, and a most peculiar expression crossed her face. Not a word did she say, however, steadily ate away at it. Marilla saw the expression and hastened to taste the cake, and surely what on earth did you put in that cake? Nothing but what the rest of he said, Marilla, cried Anne with a look of anguish. Oh, isn't it all right? All right, it's simply horrible. Mrs. Allen, don't try to eat it. Anne, taste it yourself. What flavoring did you use? Vanilla, said Anne, her face scarlet with mortification after tasting the cake. Only vanilla? Oh, Marilla, it must have been the baking powder. I had my suspicions of the back baking powder fiddle sticks. Go and bring me the bottle of vanilla you used. Anne flied to the pantry, and returned with a small bottle, partially filled with a brown liquid and labeled, yellowly, best vanilla. Marilla took it, uncorked it, and smelled it. Mercy on us, Anne. You flavored that cake with anodyne liniment. I broke the liniment bottle last week, and poured what was left into an old empty vanilla bottle. I suppose it's partly my fault. I should have warned you. But for pity's sake, why couldn't you have smelled it? Anne dissolved into tears under this double disgrace. I couldn't. I had such a cold. And with this she fairly fled into the gable chamber, where she cast herself onto the bed and wept as one who refused to be comforted. Presently a light step sounded on the stairs, and somebody entered the room. Oh, Marilla! subbed Anne without looking up. I'm disgraced forever. I shall never be able to live this down. It will get out. Things always do get out in Avonlea. Then it will ask me how my cake turned out, and I shall have to tell the truth. I shall always be pointed at as the girl who flavored cake with anodyne liniment. Gil, the boys in school will never get over laughing at it. Oh, Marilla, if you have a spark of Christian pity, don't tell me that I must go down and wash the dishes after this. I'll wash them when the minister and his wife are gone. But I cannot ever look Mrs. Allen in the face again. Perhaps you'll think I tried to poison her. Mrs. Lin says she knows an orphan girl who tried to poison her benefactor. But the liniment isn't poisonous. It's meant to be taken internally, although not in cakes. Won't you tell Mrs. Allen so, Marilla? Suppose you jump up and tell her yourself, said a merry voice. Anne flew up to find Mrs. Allen, standing by her bed, surveyed with her, with laughing eyes. My dear little girl, you mustn't cry like this, she said, genuinely disturbed by Anne's tragic face. Why, it's all just as funny a mistake that anybody might make. Oh no, it takes me to make such a mistake, said Anne forlornly, and I wanted to have that cake so nice for you, Mrs. Allen. Yes, I know, dear, and I assure you, I appreciate your kindness and thoughtfulness, just as much as if it turned out right. And I mustn't cry any more, but come down with me and show me your flower garden. Miss Cuthbert tells me you have little plot, all your own. I want to see it, for I'm very much interested in flowers. Anne permitted herself to be led down and comforted, reflecting that it was really providential that Mrs. Allen was a kindred spirit. Nothing more was said about the litimate cake, and when the guests went away, Anne found that she had enjoyed the evening more than she could ever have been expected, considering that terrible incident. Nevertheless, she sighed deeply, Marilla, isn't it nice to think that tomorrow's a new day with no mistakes in it yet? I warned you'll make plenty in it, said Marilla. I never saw your beat for making mistakes, Anne. Yes, and well I know it, admitted Anne morefully. But have you ever noticed one encouraging thing about me, Marilla? I never make the same mistake twice. I don't know if that's much benefit when you're always making new ones. Oh, don't you see, Marilla? There must be a limit to the mistakes one person can make, and when I get to the end of them, then I'll be through with them. That's a very comforting thought. Well, you better go and give that cake to the pigs, said Marilla. It isn't fit for any human to eat, not even Jerry Boot. END OF CHAPTER XXII Anne is invited out to tea. And what are your eyes popping out of your head about now? asked Marilla, when Anne had just come in from a run to the post office. Have you discovered another kindred spirit? Excitement hung around Anne like a garment, shown in her eyes, kindled in every feature. She had come dancing up the lane like a wind-blown sprite, through the mellow sunshine and lazy shadows of the August evening. No, Marilla, but oh, what do you think? I'm invited to tea at the man's tomorrow afternoon. Mrs. Anne left the letter for me at the post office. Just look at it, Marilla. Miss Anne Shirley, Green Gables. That is the first time I was ever called Miss. Such a thrill as it gave me. I shall cherish it forever among my choicest treasures. Mrs. Anne told me she meant to have all the members of her Sunday School class to tea in turn, said Marilla, regarding the wonderful event very coolly. You needn't get in such a fever over it. Do learn to take things calmly, child. For Anne to take things calmly would have been to change her nature. All spirit and fire endued as she was, the pleasures and pains of life came to her with troubled intensity. Marilla felt this and was vaguely troubled over it, realizing that the ups and downs of existence would probably bear hardly on this impulsive soul, and not sufficiently understanding that the equally great capacity for delight might more than compensate. Therefore Marilla conceived it to be her duty to drill Anne into a tranquil uniformity of disposition as impossible and alien to her as to a dancing sun-beam in one of the Brook Shallows. She did not make much headway, as she sorrowfully admitted to herself. The downfall of some dear hope or plan plunged Anne into deeps of affliction. The fulfillment thereof exalted her to dizzy realms of delight. Marilla had almost begun to despair of ever fashioning this wave of the world into her model little girl of demure manners and primed deportment. Neither would she have believed that she really liked Anne much better as she was. Anne went to bed that night speechless with misery, because Matthew had said the wind was round northeast, and he feared it would be a rainy day to-morrow. The rustle of the poplar leaves about the house worried her. It sounded so like pattering raindrops, and the full faraway roar of the gulf to which she listened delightedly at other times, loving its strange, sonorous, haunting rhythm, now seemed like a prophecy of storm and disaster to a small maiden who particularly wanted a fine day. Anne thought that the morning would never come. But all things have an end, even nights before the day on which you are invited to take tea at the manse. The morning, in spite of Matthew's predictions, was fine, and Anne's spirit soared to their highest. Oh, Marilla, there is something in me to-day which makes me just love everybody I see! She exclaimed as she washed the breakfast-dishes. You don't know how good I feel. Wouldn't it be nice if it could last? I believe I could be a model child if I were just invited out to tea every day. But oh, Marilla, it's a solemn occasion too. I feel so anxious. What if I shouldn't behave properly? You know I never had tea at a manse before, and I'm not sure that I know all the rules of etiquette, although I've been studying the rules given in the etiquette department of the family Harold ever since I came here. I'm so afraid I'll do something silly or forget to do something I should do. Would it be good manners to take a second helping of anything if you wanted it very much? The trouble with you, Anne, is that you're thinking too much about yourself. You should just think of Mrs. Allen and what would be nicest and most agreeable to her," said Marilla, hitting for once in her life on a very sound and pithy piece of advice. Anne instantly realized this. You are right, Marilla. I'll try not to think about myself at all. Anne evidently got through her visit without any serious breach of etiquette, for she came home through the twilight under a great high-sprung sky gloried over with trails of saffron and rosy cloud, in a beatified state of mind, and told Marilla all about it happily, sitting on the big red sandstone slab at the kitchen door with her tired curly head in Marilla's gingham lap. A cool wind was blowing down over the long harvest fields from the rim of furry western hills and whistling through the poplars. One clear star hung over the orchard, and the fireflies were flitting over in Lover's Lane, in and out among the ferns and rustling boughs. Anne watched them as she talked, and somehow felt that wind and stars and fireflies were all tangled up together into something unutterably sweet and enchanting. Oh, Marilla, I've had a most fascinating time. I feel that I have not lived in vain, and I shall always feel like that, even if I should never be invited to tea at a manse again. When I got there Mrs. Allen met me at the door. She was dressed in the sweetest dress of pale pink organdy, with dozens of frills and elbow sleeves, and she looked just like a serif. I really think I'd like to be a minister's wife when I grow up, Marilla. A minister mightn't mind my red hair, because he wouldn't be thinking of such worldly things. But then, of course, one would have to be naturally good, and I'll never be that, so I suppose there's no use thinking about it. Some people are naturally good, you know, and others are not. I'm one of the others. Mrs. Lynde says I'm full of original sin. No matter how hard I try to be good, I can never make such a success of it as those who are naturally good. It's a good deal like geometry, I expect. But don't you think the trying so hard ought to count for something? Mrs. Allen is one of those naturally good people. I love her passionately. You know there are some people, like Matthew and Mrs. Allen, that you can love right off without any trouble. And there are others, like Mrs. Lynde, that you have to try very hard to love. You know you ought to love them because they know so much and are such active workers in the church. But you have to keep reminding yourself of it all the time, or else you forget. There was another little girl at the manse to tea from the White Sand Sunday School. Her name was Lorette Bradley, and she was a very nice little girl. Not exactly a kindred spirit, you know, but still very nice. We had an elegant tea, and I think I kept all the rules of etiquette pretty well. After tea, Mrs. Allen played and sang, and she got Lorette and me to sing too. Mrs. Allen says I have a good voice, and she says I must sing in the Sunday School choir after this. You can't think how thrilled I was at the mere thought. I've longed so to sing in the Sunday School choir as Diana does, but I feared it was an honor I could never aspire to. Lorette had to go home early because there is a big concert in the White Sand's hotel tonight, and her sister is to recite at it. Lorette says that the Americans at the hotel give a concert every fortnight in eight of the Charlottetown Hospital, and they ask lots of the White Sand's people to recite. Lorette said she expected to be asked herself some day. I just gazed at her in awe. After she had gone, Mrs. Allen and I had a heart-to-heart talk. I told her everything about Mrs. Thomas, and the twins, and Katie Maurice, and Violetta, and coming to Green Gables, and my troubles over Geometry. And would you believe it, Marilla? Mrs. Allen told me she was a dunce at Geometry too. You don't know how that encouraged me. Mrs. Lind came to the man's just before I left. And what do you think, Marilla? The trustees have hired a new teacher, and it's a lady. Her name is Ms. Muriel Stacey. Isn't that a romantic name? Mrs. Lind says they've never had a female teacher in Avonlea before, and she thinks it is a dangerous innovation. But I think it will be splendid to have a lady teacher. And I really don't see how I'm going to live through the two weeks before school begins. I'm so impatient to see her. Read by Robin on January 18th of 2009. Chapter 23 of Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Mon Montgomery. Anne comes to grief in an affair of honor. Anne had to live through more than two weeks, as it happened. Almost a month having elapsed since the intimate cake episode, it was high time for her to get into fresh trouble of some sort. Little mistakes, such as absent-mindedly emptying a pan of skin milk, into a basket of yarn balls into the pantry, and set it into the pig's bucket, and walking clean over the edge of a log bridge into the brook while wrapped in imaginative revere, not really being worth counting. A week after the tea at the man's, Diana Berry gave the party. Small and select, Anne assured Marilla, just the girls in our class. They had a very good time, and nothing untoward happened until after tea, when they found themselves in the Berry Garden, a little tired of all their games, and ripe for any enticing form of mischief which might present itself. This presently took the form of daring. Daring was the fashionable amusement among the avonlea small fry just then. It had begun among the boys, but soon spread to the girls, and all the silly little things that were done in avonlea that summer, because the doers thereof were dared to do them, would fill a book by themselves. First of all, Carrie Sloan dared Ruby Gillis to climb to a certain point in the huge old willow tree before the front door, which Ruby Gillis, albeit in mortal dread of the fat green caterpillars, with which said tree was infested, and with fear of her mother before her eyes, if she should tear her new muslin dress, nimbly did, to the circumventure of the aforesaid Carrie Sloan. Then Josie Pye dared Jane Andrews to hop on her left leg around the garden, without stopping once, or putting her right foot to the ground, which Jane Andrews gamely tried to do, but gave out at the third corner, and had to confess herself defeated. Josie's triumph being rather more pronounced than good taste permitted, and Shirley dared her to walk along the top of the board fench, which bounded the garden to the east. Now to walk board fences requires more skill and steadiness of head and heel, than one might suppose who has never tried it. But Josie Pye, if deficient in some qualities that make for popularity, had at least a natural and inboard gift, duly cultivated for walking board fences. Josie walked to the very fence with an airy unconcern, which seemed to imply that little things like that wasn't worth a dare. Reluctant admiration greeted her exploit, for most of the other girls could appreciate it, having suffered many things themselves in the efforts to walk fences. Josie descended from her perch, flushed with victory, and darted a defiant glance at Anne. Anne tossed her red braids. I don't think it's such a very wonderful thing to walk a little low board fench, she said. I knew a girl in Marysville who could walk the ridgepole of a roof. I don't believe it, said Josie Fitely. I don't believe anybody could walk a ridgepole. You couldn't anyhow. Couldn't I? cried Anne Rashley. Then I dare you to do it, said Josie Defitely. I dare you to climb up there and walk the ridgepole of Mr. Berry's kitchen roof. Anne turned pale, but there was clearly only one thing to be done. She walked toward the house, where Ladder was leaning against the kitchen roof. All the fifth-class girls said, Oh, partly in excitement, partly in dismay. Don't you do it, Anne, entreated Diana. You'll fall off and be killed. Never mind, Josie Pie. It isn't fair to dare anybody to do anything so dangerous. I must do it. My honor is at stake, said Anne solemnly. I shall walk that ridgepole, Diana, or perish in the attempt. If I am killed, you are to have my pearl bead ring. Anne climbed the ladder amid breathless silence, gained the ridgepole, balanced herself uprightly on that precarious footing, and started to walk along it, dizzily conscious that she was uncomfortably high up in the world, and that walking ridgepoles was not a thing in which your imagination helped you out much. Nevertheless, she managed to take several steps before the catastrophe came. Then she swayed, lost her balance, stumbled, staggered, and fell, sliding down over the sun-baked roof, and crashing off it through the tangle of Virginia Creeper beneath, all before the dismayed circle below could give a simultaneous, terrified shriek. If Anne had tumbled off the roof on the side which she had ascended, Diana would probably have fallen air to the pearl bead ring then and there. Fortunately, she fell off on the other side, where the roof extended down over the porch so nearly to the ground that a fall therefrom was much less serious thing. Nevertheless, when Diana and the other girls had rushed frantically around the house, except really Gillis, who remained as if rooted to the ground and went to hysterics, I found Anne lying all white in limp among the wreck and ruin of Virginia Creeper. Anne, are you killed? shrieked Diana, throwing herself on her knees beside her friend. Oh, Anne, dear Anne, just speak one word to me and tell me if you're killed. To the immense relief of all the girls, and especially of Josie Pie, who, in spite of lack of imagination, had been seized with horrible visions of the future branded as the girl who was the cause of Anne Shirley's early and tragic death, Anne sat up dissonally and answered uncertainly, No, Diana, I am not killed, but I think I am rendered unconscious. Oh, where, sobbed Carrie Sloan, oh, where, Anne? Before Anne could answer, Mrs. Berry appeared in the scene. At sight of her, Anne tried to scramble to her feet, but sank back again with a sharp little cry of pain. What's the matter? Where have you hurt yourself? demanded Miss Berry. My ankle, gasped Anne. Oh, Diana, please find your father and ask him to take me home. I know I could never walk there, and I'm sure I couldn't hop so far on one foot when Jane couldn't even hop around the garden. Marilla was out on the orchard picking a handful of summer apples when she saw Mr. Berry coming over the log bridge and up the slope, with Mrs. Berry beside him, and a whole procession of little girls trailing after him. In his arms he carried Anne, whose head laid limply against his shoulder. At that moment Marilla had a revelation, and the sudden stab of fear that pierced her very heart, she realized what Anne had come to me to her. She would have admitted that she liked Anne, may that she was very fond of Anne, but now she knew, as she hurriedly and wildly down the slope, that Anne was dearer to her than anything else on earth. Mr. Berry, what has happened to her? she gasped, more white and shaken than self-contained. Sensible Marilla had been for many years. Anne herself answered, lifting her head. Don't be very frightened, Marilla. I was walking the ridge pole, and I fell off. I expect I've sprained my ankle, but Marilla, I might have broken my neck. Let's look on the bright side of things. I might have known you'd go and do something of the sort when I let you go to that party, said Marilla, sharp and shrewish in her very relief. Bring her hair, Mr. Berry, and lay her on the sofa. Mercy me, the child is gone and fainted. It was quite true. Overcome by the pain of her injury, Anne had one more of her wishes granted to her. She had fainted, dead away. Matthew hastily summoned from the harvest field, was straightway dispatched for the doctor, who in due time came to discover that the injury is more serious than they had supposed. Anne's ankle was broken. That night, when Marilla went up to the east gable, where a white-faced girl was lying, a plaintive voice greeted her from the bed. Aren't you sorry for me, Marilla? It was your own fault, said Marilla, twitching down the blind and lighting a lamp. And that is just why you should be sorry for me, said Anne, because the thought that it was all my own fault is what makes it so hard. If I could blame it on anybody, I'd feel so much better. But what would you have done, Marilla, if you'd been dared to walk a ridge full? I'd have stayed on good firm ground and let them dare away. Such absurdity, said Marilla. Anne sighed. But you have such strength of mind, Marilla. I haven't. I just felt that I couldn't bear Josie Pie's scorn. She would have crowded over me all my life. And I think I've been punished so much that you needn't be very cross with me, Marilla. It's not a bit nice to faint after all, and the doctor hurt me dreadfully when he was setting my ankle. I won't be able to go around for six or seven weeks, and I'll miss the new lady teacher. She won't be new any more by the time I'm good to go to school. And, Gil, everybody will get ahead of me in class. Oh, I'm an inflicted mortal, but I'll try to bear it bravely if only you won't be cross with me, Marilla. There, there, I'm not cross, said Marilla. You're an unlucky child, there's no doubt about that, but as you say, you'll have the suffering of it. Here now, try and eat some supper. Isn't it fortunate I have such an imagination, said Anne? It will help me through splendidly, I expect. What do people do who haven't any imagination when they break their bones, do you suppose, Marilla? Anne had good reason to bless her imagination, many a time, and off during the tedious seven weeks that followed. But she was not solely dependent on it. She had many visitors, and not a day pass without one or more the schoolgirls dropping in to bring her flowers and books and tell her all the happenings in the juvenile world of Avonlea. Everybody's been so good in kind, Marilla, said Anne happily, on the day when she could first limp across the floor. It isn't very pleasant to be laid up, but there's a bright side to it, Marilla. You find out how many friends you have, while even Superintendent Bell came to see me, and he is really a very fine man. Not a kindred spirit, of course, but still I like him, and I'm awfully sorry I ever criticized his prayers. I believe now he really does mean them, only he has gotten the habit of saying them as if he didn't. He could get over that if he'd take a little trouble. I gave him a good, broad hint. I told him how I tried to make my own little private prayers interesting. He told me about the time he broke his ankle when he was a boy. It does seem so strange to think of Superintendent Bell ever being a boy, even my imagination has its limits, for I can't imagine that. When I try to imagine him as a boy, I see him with gray whiskers and spectacles, just as he looks in Sunday school, only small. Now, it's so easy to imagine Mrs. Allen as a little girl. Mrs. Allen has been to see me 14 times. Isn't that something to be proud of, Marilla? One of the ministers' wife has so many claims on her time. She's such a cheerful person to have visit you, too. She never tells you it's your own fault, and she hopes you'll be a better girl on account of it. Mrs. Allen always told me that when she came to see me. And she said it in a kind of way that made me feel she might hope I'd be a better girl, but didn't really believe I would. Even Josie Pie came to see me. I received her as pitely as I could, but I think she was sorry she dared me to walk a rich pole. If I had been killed, she would have had to carry a dark burden of remorse all her life. Diana has been a faithful friend. She's been over every day to cheer my lonely pillow. But oh, I shall be so glad when I can go to school for I've heard such exciting things about the new teacher. The girls all think she's perfectly sweet. Diana said she has the loveliest fair curly hair and such fascinating eyes. She dresses beautifully, and her sleeves puss are bigger than anybody's and have a lease. Every other Friday afternoon, she has recitations, and everybody has to say a piece or take part in a dialogue, which just glorifies us to think of it. Josie Pie said she hates it, but that's just because Josie Pie has so little imagination. Diane and Ruby Gillis and Jane Andrews are preparing a dialogue called A Morning Visit for next Friday. In the Friday afternoons, they don't have recitations. Miss Stacy takes them all to the woods for field day, and they study ferns and flowers and birds, and they have physical culture exercises every morning and evening. Mrs. Lynn says she's never heard of such goings on, and it all comes from having a lady teacher. But I think it must be splendid, and I believe I shall find that Miss Stacy is a kindred spirit. There's one thing plain to be seen, Anne, said Marilla, and that's that your fall off the berry roof hasn't injured your tongue at all. End of Chapter 23