 CHAPTER XVII. A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENCE. Anne woke three times in the night and made pilgrimages to her window to make sure that Uncle Abe's prediction was not coming true. Finally the morning dawned pearly and lustrous in a sky full of silver sheen and radiance, and the wonderful day had arrived. Diana appeared soon after breakfast with a basket of flowers over one arm and her muslin dress over the other, for it would not do to dawn it until all the dinner preparations were completed. Meanwhile she wore her afternoon pink print and a lawn apron fearfully and wonderfully ruffled and frilled, and very neat and pretty and rosy she was. "'You look simply sweet,' said Anne, admiringly. Diana sighed. "'But I've had to let out every one of my dresses again. I weigh four pounds more than I did in July. And where will this end? Mrs. Morgan's heroines are all tall and slender. Well, let's forget our troubles and think of our mercies,' said Anne gaily. "'Mrs. Allen says that whenever we think of anything that is a trial to us, we should also think of something nice that we can set over against it. If you are slightly too plump, you've got the dearest impulse, and if I have a freckled nose, the shape of it is all right. Do you think the lemon juice did any good? Yes, I really think it did,' said Diana critically, and much elated. Anne led the way to the garden, which was full of airy shadows and wavering golden nights. "'We'll decorate the parlor first. We have plenty of time. For Priscilla said they'd be here about twelve or half past the latest, so we'll have dinner at one.' There may have been two happier and more excited girls somewhere in Canada or the United States at that moment, but I doubt it. Every snip of the scissors as rose and peony and bluebell fell seemed to chirp, Mrs. Morgan is coming to-day. Anne wondered how Mr. Harrison could go on placidly mowing hay in the field across the lane, just as if nothing were going to happen. The parlor at Green Gables was a rather severe and gloomy apartment, with rigid horsehair furniture, stiff lace curtains, and white anti-maccasors that were always laid at a perfectly correct angle, except at such times as they clung to unfortunate people's buttons. Even Anne had never been able to infuse much grace into it, for Marilla would not permit any alterations. But it is wonderful what flowers can accomplish if you give them a fair chance. When Anne and Diana finished with the room, you would not have recognized it. A great blue bowl full of snowballs overflowed on the polished table. The shining black mantelpiece was heaped with roses and ferns. Every shelf of the what-not held a sheaf of bluebells. The dark corners on either side of the grate were lighted up with jars full of glowing crimson peonies, and the grate itself was a flame with yellow poppies. All this splendor and color mingled with the sunshine falling through the honeysuckle vines at the windows in a leafy riot of dancing shadows over walls and floor, made of the usually dismal little room, the veritable bower of Anne's imagination, and even extorted a tribute of admiration from Marilla, who came in to criticize and remain to praise. Now we must set the table, said Anne, in the tone of a priestess about to perform some sacred rite in honour of a divinity. We'll have a big vase full of wild roses in the centre, and one single rose in front of everybody's plate, and a special bouquet of rose-butts only by Mrs. Morgan's, an allusion to the rose-butt garden, you know. The table was set in the sitting-room, with Marilla's finest linen and the best china, glass and silver. You may be perfectly certain that every article placed on it was polished or scoured to the highest possible perfection of gloss and glitter. Then the girls tripped out to the kitchen, which was filled with appetizing odours emanating from the oven, where the chickens were already sizzling splendidly. Anne prepared the potatoes, and Diana got the peas and beans ready. Then, while Diana shut herself into the pantry to compound the lettuce salad, Anne, whose cheeks were already beginning to glow crimson as much with excitement as from the heat of the fire, prepared the bread-sauce for the chickens, minced her onions for the soup, and finally whipped the cream for her lemon pies. And what about Davy all this time? Was he redeeming his promise to be good? He was indeed. To be sure, he insisted on remaining in the kitchen, for his curiosity wanted to see all that went on. But as he sat quietly in a corner, busily engaged in untying the knots in a piece of herring net he had brought home from his last trip to the shore, nobody objected to this. At half-past eleven the lettuce salad was made, the golden circles of the pies were heaped with the whipped cream, and everything was sizzling and bubbling that ought to sizzle and bubble. We'd better go and rest now, said Anne, for they may be here by twelve. We must have dinner at sharp one, for the soup must be served as soon as it's done. Serious indeed were the toilet rites presently performed in the East Gable. Anne peered anxiously at her nose and rejoiced to see that its freckles were not at all prominent, thanks either to the lemon juice or to the unusual flush on her cheeks. When they were ready they looked quite as sweet and trim and girlish as ever did any of Mrs. Morgan's heroines. I do hope I'll be able to say something once in a while and not sit like a mute, said Diana anxiously. All Mrs. Morgan's heroines converse so beautifully, but I'm afraid I'll be tongue-tied and stupid, and I'll be sure to say Iseen. I haven't often said it since Miss Stacy taught here, but in moments of excitement it's sure to pop out. Anne, if I were to say Iseen before Mrs. Morgan I'd die of mortification, and it would be almost as bad to have nothing to say. I'm nervous about a good many things, said Anne, but I don't think there is much fear that I won't be able to talk. Anne, to do her justice, there wasn't. Anne shrouded her muslin glories in a big apron and went down to concoct her soup. Marilla had dressed herself and the twins and looked more excited than she had ever been known to look before. At half-past twelve the Allens and Miss Stacy came. Everything was going well, but Anne was beginning to feel nervous. It was surely time for Priscilla and Mrs. Morgan to arrive. She made frequent trips to the gate and looked as anxiously down the lane as ever her namesake in the blue-beard story appeared from her tower casement. "'Suppose they don't come at all,' she said piteously. "'Don't suppose it. It would be too mean,' said Diana, who, however, was beginning to have uncomfortable misgivings on the subject.' Anne, said Marilla, coming out from the parlor, Miss Stacy wants to see Miss Barry's willow-wear platter. Anne hastened to the sitting-room closet to get the platter. She had, in accordance with her promise to Mrs. Lynde, written to Miss Barry of Charlottetown, asking for the loan of it. Miss Barry was an old friend of Anne's, and she promptly sent the platter out, with a letter exhorting Anne to be very careful of it, for she had paid twenty dollars for it. The platter had served its purpose at the aid-bazaar, and had then been returned to the Green Gable's closet, for Anne would not trust anybody but herself to take it back to town. She carried the platter carefully to the front door where her guests were enjoying the cool breeze that blew up from the brook. It was examined and admired. Then, just as Anne had taken it back into her own hands, a terrific crashant clatter sounded from the kitchen pantry. Marilla, Diana, and Anne fled out, the latter pausing only long enough to set the precious platter hastily down on the second step of the stairs. When they reached the pantry a truly harrowing spectacle met their eyes. A guilty-looking small boy scrambling down from the table with his clean-print blouse liberally plastered with yellow filling, and on the table the shattered remnants of what had been two brave, becreamed lemon pies. Davy had finished raveling out his herring net, and had wound the twine into a ball. Then he had gone into the pantry to put it up on the shelf above the table, where he already kept a score or so of similar balls, which, so far as could be discovered, served no useful purpose save to yield the joy of possession. Davy had to climb on the table and reach over to the shelf at a dangerous angle, something he had been forbidden by Marilla to do, as he had come to grieve once before in the experiment. The result in this instance was disastrous. Davy slipped and came sprawling squarely down on the lemon pies. His clean blouse was ruined for that time, and the pies for all time. It is, however, an ill wind that blows nobody good, and the pig was eventually the gainer by Davy's mischance. "'David Keith,' said Marilla, shaking him by the shoulder, "'didn't I forbid you to climb up on that table again, didn't I? I forgot,' whimpered Davy. "'You've told me not to do such an awful lot of things that I can't remember them all.' "'Well, you march upstairs and stay there till after dinner. Perhaps you'll get them sorted out in your memory by that time. No, Anne. Never you mind interceding for him. I'm not punishing him because he spoiled your pies. That was an accident. I'm punishing him for his disobedience. Go, Davy,' I say. "'Ain't I to have any dinner?' wailed Davy. "'You can come down after dinner is over and have yours in the kitchen.' "'Oh, all right,' said Davy, somewhat comforted. "'I know Anne'll save some nice bones for me. Won't you, Anne?' "'Cause you know I didn't mean to fall on the pies. Say, Anne, since they are spoiled, can I take some of the pieces upstairs with me?' "'No, no lemon pie for you, Master Davy,' said Marilla, pushing him toward the hall. "'What shall we do for dessert?' asked Anne, looking regretfully at the wreck and ruin. "'Get out a crock of strawberry preserves,' said Marilla consolingly. "'There's plenty of whipped cream left in the bowl for it.' One o'clock came, but no Priscilla or Mrs. Morgan. Anne was in an agony. Everything was done to return, and the soup was just what soup should be, but couldn't be depended on to remain so for any length of time. "'I don't believe they're coming after all,' said Marilla crossly. Anne and Diana sought comfort in each other's eyes. At half-past one Marilla again emerged from the parlor. Girls, we must have dinner. Everybody is hungry, and it's no use waiting any longer. Priscilla and Mrs. Morgan are not coming. That's plain, and nothing is being improved by waiting.' Anne and Diana set about lifting the dinner, with all the zest gone out of the performance. "'I don't believe I'll be able to eat a mouthful,' said Diana dolefully. Nor I. "'But I hope everything will be nice for Miss Stacy and Mr. and Mrs. Allen's sakes,' said Anne listlessly. When Diana dished the peas, she tasted them, and a very peculiar expression crossed her face. "'Anne, did you put sugar in these peas?' "'Yes,' said Anne, mashing the potatoes with the air of one expected to do her duty. I put a spoonful of sugar in. We always do. Don't you like it?' "'But I put a spoonful in, too, when I set them on the stove,' said Diana. Anne dropped her masher and tasted the peas also. Then she made a grimace. How awful! I never dreamed you had put sugar in, because I knew your mother never does. I happen to think of it, for a wonder. I'm always forgetting it, so I popped a spoonful in. "'In case of too many cooks, I guess,' said Marilla, who had listened to this dialogue with a rather guilty expression, I didn't think you'd remember about the sugar, Anne, for I'm perfectly certain you never did before, so I put in a spoonful. The guests in the parlor heard peel after peel of laughter from the kitchen, but they never knew what the fun was about. There were no green peas on the dinner-table that day, however.' "'Well,' said Anne, sobering down again with a sigh of recollection, "'we have the salad anyhow, and I don't think anything has happened to the beans. Let's carry the things in and get it out of here.' It cannot be said that that dinner was a notable success socially. The Allens and Miss Stacy exerted themselves to save the situation, and Marilla's customary placidity was not noticeably ruffled. But Anne and Diana, between their disappointment and the reaction from their excitement of the forenoon, could neither talk nor eat. Anne tried heroically to bear her part in the conversation for the sake of her guests, but all the sparkle had been quenched in her for the time being, and in spite of her love for the Allens and Miss Stacy, she couldn't help thinking how nice it would be when everybody had gone home, and she could bury her weariness and disappointment in the pillows of the East Gable. There is an old proverb that really seems at times to be inspired. It never rains, but it pours. The measure of that day's tribulations was not yet full. Just as Mr. Allen had finished returning thanks, there arose a strange, ominous sound on the stairs, as of some hard, heavy object bounding from step to step, finishing up with a grand smash at the bottom. Everybody ran out into the hall, and gave a shriek of dismay. At the bottom of the stairs lay a big pink conch-shell amid the fragments of what had been Miss Barry's platter, and at the top of the stairs knelt a terrified Davey gazing down with wide open eyes at the havoc. Davey, said Marilla ominously, did you throw that conch down on purpose? No, I never did! whimpered Davey. I was just kneeling here, quiet as quiet to watch you folks through the bannisters, and my foot struck that old thing and pushed it off, and I'm awful hungry, and I do wish you'd lick a fellow and have done with it instead of always sending him upstairs to miss all the fun. Don't blame Davey, said Anne, gathering up the fragments with trembling fingers. It was my fault. I set that platter there and forgot all about it. I am properly punished for my carelessness. But oh, what will Miss Barry say? Well, you know she only bought it, so it isn't the same as if it was an heirloom, said Diana, trying to console. The guests went away soon after, feeling that it was the most tactful thing to do, and Anne and Diana washed the dishes, talking less than they had ever been known to do before. Then Diana went home with a headache, and Anne went with another to the East Gable, where she stayed until Marilla came home from the post-office at sunset, with a letter from Priscilla written the day before. Mrs. Morgan had sprained her ankle so severely that she could not leave her room. And oh, Anne dear, wrote Priscilla, I'm so sorry, but I'm afraid we won't get up to Green Gables at all now, for by the time Aunty's ankle is well she will have to go back to Toronto. She has to be there by a certain date. Well, sighed Anne, laying the letter down on the red sandstone step of the back porch where she was sitting, while the twilight rained down out of a dappled sky. I always thought it was too good to be true that Mrs. Morgan should really come. But there, that speech sounds as pessimistic as Miss Eliza Andrews, and I am ashamed of making it. After all, it was not too good to be true. Things just as good and far better are coming true for me all the time, and I suppose the events of today have a funny side too. Perhaps when Diana and I are old and grey we shall be able to laugh over them. But I feel that I can't expect to do it before then, for it has truly been a bitter disappointment. You'll probably have a good many more and worse disappointments than that before you get through life," said Marilla, who honestly thought she was making a comforting speech. It seems to me, Ann, that you are never going to outgrow your fashion of setting your heart so on things and then crashing down into despair because you don't get them. I know I'm too much inclined that way, agreed Anne ruefully. When I think something nice is going to happen I seem to fly right up on the wings of anticipation, and then the first thing I realise I drop down to earth with a thud. But really, Marilla, the flying part is glorious as long as it lasts. It's like soaring through a sunset. I think it almost pays for the thud. Well, maybe it does, admitted Marilla. I'd rather walk calmly along and do without both flying and thud. But everybody has her own way of living. I used to think there was only one right way, but since I've had you and the twins to bring up I don't feel so sure of it. What are you going to do about Miss Berry's platter? Pay her back the twenty dollars she paid for it, I suppose. I'm so thankful it wasn't a cherished heirloom because then no money could replace it. Maybe you could find one like it somewhere and buy it for her. I'm afraid not. Platters as old as that are very scarce. Mrs. Lynde couldn't find one anywhere for the supper. I only wish I could, for of course Miss Berry would just as soon have one platter as another if both were equally old and genuine. Marilla, look at that big star over Mr. Harrison's maple grove with all that hollybush of silvery sky about it. It gives me a feeling that it's like a prayer. After all, when one can see stars and skies like that, little disappointments and accidents can't matter so much, can they? Where is Davy? said Marilla with an indifferent glance at the star. In bed. I've promised to take him and Dora to the shore for a picnic to-morrow. Of course, the original agreement was that he must be good, but he tried to be good, and I hadn't the heart to disappoint him. You'll drown yourself or the twins rowing about the pond in that flat, grumbled Marilla. I've lived here for sixty years and I've never been on the pond yet. Well, it's never too late to mend, said Anne roguishly. Suppose you come with us to-morrow. We'll shut Green Gables up and spend the whole day at the shore daffing the world aside. No, thank you, said Marilla with indignant emphasis. I'd be a nice sight, wouldn't I, rowing down the pond in a flat? I think I hear Rachel pronouncing on it. There is Mr. Harrison driving away somewhere. Do you suppose there is any truth in the gossip that Mr. Harrison is going to see Isabella Andrews? No, I'm sure there isn't. He just called there one evening on business with Mr. Harmon Andrews and Mrs. Lynn saw him and said she knew he was courting because he had a white collar on. I don't believe Mr. Harrison will ever marry. He seems to have a prejudice against marriage. Well, you can never tell about those old bachelors. And if he had a white collar on, I'd agree with Rachel that it looks suspicious, for I'm sure he was never seen with one before. I think he only put it on because he wanted to conclude a business deal with Harmon Andrews, said Anne. I've heard him say that's the only time a man needs to be particular about his appearance, because if he looks prosperous, the party of the second part won't be so likely to try to cheat him. I really feel sorry for Mr. Harrison. I don't believe he feels satisfied with his life. It must be very lonely to have no one to care about except a parrot, don't you think? But I noticed Mr. Harrison doesn't like to be pitied. Nobody does, I imagine. There is Gilbert coming up the lane, said Marilla. If he wants you to go for a row on the pond, mind you, put on your coat and rubbers. There's a heavy dew to-night. CHAPTER XVIII. An Adventure on the Tory Road. Anne, said Davy, sitting up in bed and propping his chin on his hands. Anne, where is sleep? People go to sleep every night, and of course I know it's the place where I do the things I dream, but I want to know where it is, and how I get there and back without knowing anything about it. And am I nighty, too? Where is it? Anne was kneeling at the west gable window watching the sunset sky that was like a great flower with petals of crocus and a heart of fiery yellow. She turned her head at Davy's question and answered dreamily, over the mountains of the moon, down the valley of the shadow. Paul Irving would have known the meaning of this, or made a meaning out of it for himself if he didn't. But practical Davy, who, as Anne often despairingly remarked, hadn't a particle of imagination, was only puzzled and disgusted. Anne, I believe you're just talking nonsense. Of course I was, dear boy. Don't you know that it is only very foolish folk who talk sense all the time? Well, I think you might give a sensible answer when I ask a sensible question," said Davy, in an injured tone. Oh, you were too little to understand, said Anne. But she felt rather ashamed of saying it, for had she not, in keen remembrance of many similar snubs administered in her own early years, solemnly vowed that she would never tell any child it was too little to understand, yet here she was doing it, so wide sometimes as the gulf between theory and practice. Well, I'm doing my best to grow, said Davy, but it's a thing you can't hurry much. If Marilla wasn't so stingy with her jam I believe I'd grow a lot faster. Marilla is not stingy, Davy, said Anne, severely. It is very ungrateful of you to say such a thing. There's another word that means the same thing and sounds a lot better, but I don't just remember it," said Davy, frowning intently. I heard Marilla say she was it herself the other day. If you mean economical, it's a very different thing from being stingy. It is an excellent trait in a person if she is economical. If Marilla had been stingy she wouldn't have taken you and Dora when your mother died. Would you have liked to live with Mrs. Wiggins? You just sped I wouldn't." Davy was emphatic on that point. Nor I don't want to go out to Uncle Richard neither. I'd far rather live here, even if Marilla is that long-tailed word when it comes to jam, because you're here, Anne. Say, Anne, won't you tell me a story before I go to sleep? I don't want a fairy story. They're all right for girls, I suppose, but I want something exciting, lots of killing and shooting in it, and a house on fire and interesting things like that. Fortunately for Anne, Marilla called out of this moment from her room. Anne, Diane is signalling at a great rate. You'd better see what she wants. Anne ran to the East Gable and saw flashes of light coming through the twilight from Diana's window in groups of five, which meant, according to their old childish code, come over at once for I have something important to reveal. Anne threw her white shawl over her head and hastened through the haunted wood and across Mr. Bell's pasture-corner to Orchard's slope. I've good news for you, Anne, said Diana. Mother and I have just got home from Carmody, and I saw Mary Sentner from Spencer Vale in Mr. Blair's store. She says the old cop girls on the Tory Road have a willow-ware platter, and she thinks it's exactly like the one we had at the supper. She says they'll likely sell it for Martha Coppe has never been known to keep anything she could sell, but if they won't, there's a platter at Wesley Kieson's in Spencer Vale, and she knows they'd sell it, but she isn't sure it's just the same kind as Aunt Josephine's. I'll go right over to Spencer Vale after it tomorrow, said Anne resolutely, and you must come with me. It will be such a weight off my mind, for I have to go to town day after tomorrow, and how can I face your Aunt Josephine without a willow-ware platter? It would be even worse than the time I had to confess about jumping on the spare-room bed. Both girls laughed over the old memory, concerning which, if any of my readers are ignorant and curious, I must refer them to Anne's earlier history. The next afternoon the girls fared forth on their platter-hunting expedition. It was ten miles to Spencer Vale, and the day was not especially pleasant for travelling. It was very warm and windless, and the dust on the road was such as might have been expected after six weeks of dry weather. Oh, I do wish it would rain soon, sighed Anne. Everything is so parched up. The poor fields just seemed pitiful to me, and the trees seemed to be stretching out their hands pleading for rain. As for my garden, it hurts me every time I go into it. I suppose I shouldn't complain about a garden when the farmers' crops are suffering so. Mr. Harrison says his pastures are so scorched up that his poor cows can hardly get a bite to eat, and he feels guilty of cruelty to animals every time he meets their eyes. After a weird sum drive the girls reached Spencer Vale and turned down the Tory Road, a green, solitary highway where the strips of grass between the wheel tracks bore evidence to lack of travel. Along most of its extent it was lined with thick-set young spruces crowding down to the roadway, with here and there a break where the backfield of a Spencer Vale farm came out to the fence, or an expense of stumps was aflame with fire-weed and gold-um-rod. Why is it called the Tory Road? asked Anne. Mr. Allen says it is on the principle of calling a place a grove because there are no trees in it, said Diana. For nobody lives along the road except the cop-girls and old Martin Boyver at the further end, who is a liberal. The Tory government ran the road through when they were in power just to show they were doing something. Diana's father was a liberal, for which reason she and Anne never discussed politics. Green Gables' folk had always been conservatives. Finally the girls came to the old cop homestead, a place of such exceeding external neatness that even Green Gables would have suffered by contrast. The house was a very old-fashioned one, situated on a slope, which fact had necessitated the building of a stone basement under one end. The house and out-buildings were all whitewashed to a condition of blinding perfection, and not a weed was visible in the prim-kitchen garden surrounded by its white pailing. The shades are all down, said Diana ruefully. I believe that nobody is home. This proved to be the case. The girls looked at each other in perplexity. I don't know what to do, said Anne. If I were sure the platter was the right kind I would not mind waiting until they came home. But if it isn't, it may be too late to go to Wesley Kieson's afterwards. Diana looked at a certain little square window over the basement. That is the pantry window, I feel sure, she said, because this house is just like Uncle Charles's at Newbridge, and that is their pantry window. The shade isn't down, so if we climbed up on the roof of that little house we could look into the pantry and might be able to see the platter. Do you think it would be any harm? No, I don't think so, decided Anne after due reflection, since our motive is not idle curiosity. This important point of ethics being settled, Anne prepared to mount the aforesaid little house, a construction of lathes with a peaked roof which had in times past served as a habitation for ducks. The cop girls had given up keeping ducks, because they were such untidy birds, and the house had not been in use for some years, save as an abode of correction for setting hens. Although scrupulously whitewashed, it had become somewhat shaky, and Anne felt rather dubious as she scrambled up from the vantage point of a keg placed on a box. I'm afraid it won't bear my weight," she said as she gingerly stepped on the roof. "'Lean on the window-sill,' advised Diana, and Anne accordingly leaned. Much to her delight she saw as she peered through the pane a willow-wear platter exactly such as she was in quest of, on the shelf in front of the window. So much she saw before the catastrophe came. In her joy Anne forgot the precarious nature of her footing, incautiously ceased to lean on the window-sill, gave an impulsive little hop of pleasure, and the next moment she had crashed through the roof up to her arm-pids, and there she hung, quite unable to extricate herself. Diana dashed into the duck-house, and, seizing her unfortunate friend by the waist, tried to draw her down. "'Ow! Don't!' shrieked poor Anne. There were some long splinters sticking into me. See if we can put something under my feet, and then perhaps I can draw myself up.' Diana hastily dragged in the previously mentioned keg, and Anne found that it was just sufficiently high to furnish a secure resting-place for her feet, but she could not release herself. "'Could I pull you out if I crawled up?' suggested Diana. Anne shook her head hopelessly. No. The splinters hurt too badly. If you can find an axe you might chop me out, though. Oh, dear! I do really begin to believe that I was born under an ill-omance star.' Diana searched faithfully, but no axe was to be found. "'I'll have to go for help,' she said, returning to the prisoner. "'No, indeed you won't,' said Anne vehemently. "'If you do the story of this, we'll get out everywhere, and I shall be ashamed to show my face. No, we must just wait until the cop-girls come home and bind them to secrecy. They'll know where the axe is, and get me out. I'm not uncomfortable, as long as I keep perfectly still. Not uncomfortable in body, I mean. I wonder what the cop-girls value this house at. I shall have to pay for the damage I've done, but I wouldn't mind that if I were only sure they would understand my motive in peeping in at their pantry window. My sole comfort is that the platter is just the kind I want, and if Miss Cop will only sell it to me, I shall be resigned to what has happened.' "'What if the cop-girls don't come home until after night, or till to-morrow?' suggested Diana. "'If they're not backed by sunset, you'll have to go for other assistants, I suppose,' said Anne reluctantly. "'But you mustn't go until you really have to. Oh, dear, this is a dreadful predicament. I wouldn't mind my misfortune so much if they were romantic, as Mrs. Morgan's heroines always are, but they are always just simply ridiculous. Fancy what the cop-girls will think when they drive into their yard and see a girl's head and shoulders sticking up out of the roof of one of their outhouses. "'Listen, is that a wagon?' "'No, Diana, I believe it is thunder.' Thunder it was, undoubtedly, and Diana, having made a hasty pilgrimage around the house, returned to announce that a very black cloud was rising rapidly in the north-west. "'I believe we're going to have a heavy thundershower,' she exclaimed in dismay. "'Oh, Anne, what will we do?' "'We must prepare for it,' said Anne tranquilly. A thunderstorm seemed a trifle in comparison with what had already happened. You'd better drive the horse and buggy into that open shed. Fortunately my parasol is in the buggy. Here, take my hat with you. Marilla told me I was a goose to put on my best hat to come to the Tory Road, and she was right, as she always is.' Diana untied the pony and drove into the shed, just as the first heavy drops of rain fell. There she sat and watched the resulting downpour, which was so thick and heavy that she could hardly see Anne through it, holding the parasol bravely over her bare head. There was not a great deal of thunder, but for the best part of an hour the rain came merrily down. Occasionally Anne slanted back her parasol and waved an encouraging hand to her friend, but conversation at that distance was quite out of the question. Finally the rain ceased, the sun came out, and Diana ventured across the puddles of the yard. "'Did you get very wet?' she asked anxiously. "'Oh, no,' returned Anne cheerfully. "'My head and shoulders are quite dry, and my skirt is only a little damp, with the rain beat through the lathes. Don't pity me, Diana, for I haven't minded it at all. I kept thinking how much good the rain will do, and how glad my garden must be for it, and imagining what the flowers and buds would think when the drops began to fall. I imagined out a most interesting dialogue between the asters and the sweet peas and the wild canaries and the lilac bush, and the guardian spirit as a garden. When I go home I mean to write it down. I wish I had a pencil and paper to do it now, because I dare say I'll forget the best parts before I reach home.' Diana, the faithful, had a pencil and discovered a sheet of wrapping paper in the box of the buggy. Anne folded up her dripping parasol, put on her hat, spread the wrapping paper on a shingle Diana handed up, and wrote out her garden idol under conditions that could hardly be considered as favourable to literature. Nevertheless the result was quite pretty, and Diana was enraptured when Anne read it to her. "'Oh, Anne, it's sweet, just sweet. Do send it to the Canadian woman?' Anne shook her head. "'Oh, no, it wouldn't be suitable at all. There's no plot in it, you see. It's just a string of fancies. I like writing such things, but of course nothing of the sort would ever do for publication, for editors insist on plots,' so Priscilla says. "'Oh, there's Miss Sarah Copp now. Please, Diana, go and explain.' Miss Sarah Copp was a small person, garbed in shabby black, with a hat chosen less for vain adornment than for qualities that would wear well. She looked as amazed as might be expected on seeing the curious Tableau in her yard, but when she heard Diana's explanation she was all sympathy. She hurriedly unlocked the back door, produced the axe, and with a few skillful blows set Anne free. The latter, somewhat tired and stiff, ducked down into the interior of her prison and thankfully emerged into liberty once more. "'Miss Copp,' she said earnestly, "'I assure you, I looked into your pantry window only to discover if you had a willow wear platter. I didn't see anything else. I didn't look for anything else.' "'Bless you, that's all right,' said Miss Sarah amably. "'You needn't worry, there's no harm done. Thank goodness we Copps keep our pantries presentable at all times and don't care who sees into them. As for that old duckhouse, I'm glad it's smashed, for maybe now Martha will agree to having it taken down. She never would before for fear it might come in handy some time, and I've had to whitewash it every spring. But you might as well argue with a post as with Martha.' She went to town to-day. I drove her to the station. "'And you want to buy my platter?' "'Well, what will you give for it?' "'Twenty dollars,' said Anne, who was never meant to match business with a cop, or she would not have offered her price at the start.' "'Well, I'll see,' said Miss Sarah cautiously. "'That platter is mine, fortunately, or I'd never dare to sell it when Martha wasn't here. As it is, I dare say she'll raise a fuss. Martha's the boss of this establishment, I can tell you. I'm getting awful tired of living under another woman's thumb. But come in, come in. You must be real tired and hungry. I'll do the best I can for you in the way of tea, but I warn you not to expect anything but bread and butter and some cow-cumbers. Martha locked up all the cake and cheese and preserves before she went. She always does, because she says I'm too extravagant with them if company comes. The girls were hungry enough to do justice to any fair, and they enjoyed Miss Sarah's excellent bread and butter and cow-cumbers thoroughly. When the meal was over, Miss Sarah said, "'I don't know as I mind selling the platter, but it's worth twenty-five dollars. It's a very old platter.' Diana gave Anne's foot a gentle kick under the table, meaning don't agree. She'll let it go for twenty if you hold out. But Anne was not minded to take any chances in regard to that precious platter. She promptly agreed to give twenty-five, and Miss Sarah looked as if she felt sorry she hadn't asked for thirty. Well, I guess you may have it. I want all the money I can scare up just now. The fact is, Miss Sarah threw up her head importantly with a proud flush on her thin cheeks. I'm going to be married, to Luther Wallace. He wanted me twenty years ago. I liked him real well, but he was poor then, and father packed him off. I suppose I shouldn't have let him go so neat, but I was timid and frightened of father. Besides, I didn't know men were so skirse. When the girls were safely away, Diana driving and Anne holding the coveted platter carefully on her lap, the green, rain-freshened solitudes of the Tory Road were enlivened by ripples of girlish laughter. I'll amuse your Aunt Josephine with the strange, eventful history of this afternoon when I go to town to-morrow. We've had a rather trying time, but it's over now. I've got the platter, and that rain has laid the dust beautifully, so all's well that ends well. We're not home yet," said Diana, rather pessimistically, and there's no telling what may happen before we are. You're such a girl to have adventures, Anne. Having adventures comes natural to some people, said Anne serenely. You just have a gift for them, or you haven't? End of Chapter 18 Chapter 19 of Anne of Avonlea by Lucy Maud Montgomery Read for LibriVox.org by Karen Savage in February 2008 Chapter 19 Just a Happy Day After all, Anne had said to Marilla once, I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens, but just those that bring simple little pleasures following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string. Life at Green Gables was full of just such days, for Anne's adventures and misadventures, like those of other people, did not all happen at once, but were sprinkled over the year with long stretches of harmless, happy days between, filled with work and dreams and laughter and lessons. Such a day came late in August. In the forenoon, Anne and Diana rode the delighted twins down the pond to the sand-tor to pick sweet grass and paddle in the surf over which the wind was harping an old lyric learned when the world was young. In the afternoon, Anne walked down to the old Irving place to see Paul. She found him stretched out on the grassy bank beside the thick fur-grove that sheltered the house on the north, absorbed in a book of fairy tales. He sprang up radiantly at the sight of her. Oh, I'm so glad you've come, teacher, he said eagerly, because Grandma's away. You'll stay and have tea with me, won't you? It's so lonesome to have tea all by one's self. You know, teacher. I've had serious thoughts of asking young Mary Joe to sit down and eat her tea with me, but I expect Grandma wouldn't approve. She says the French have to be kept in their place, and anyhow it's difficult to talk with young Mary Joe. She just laughs and says, Well, you stupid all the kids I ever knowed. That isn't my idea of conversation. Of course I'll stay to tea, said Anne Gailey. I was dying to be asked. My mouth has been watering for some more of your Grandma's delicious shortbread ever since I had tea here before. Paul looked very sober. If it depended on me, teacher, he said, standing before Anne with his hands in his pockets and his beautiful little face shadowed with sudden care, you should have shortbread with a right good will. But it depends on Mary Joe. I heard Grandma tell her before she left that she wasn't to give me any shortcake because it was too rich for little boy's stomachs. But maybe Mary Joe will cut some for you if I promise I won't eat any. Let us hope for the best. Yes, let us, agreed Anne, whom this cheerful philosophy suited exactly. And if Mary Joe proves hard-hearted and won't give me any shortbread, it doesn't matter in the least, so you are not to worry over that. You're sure you won't mind if she doesn't? said Paul anxiously. Perfectly sure, dear heart. Then I won't worry, said Paul, with a long breath of relief, especially as I really think Mary Joe will listen to reason. She's not a naturally unreasonable person, but she has learned by experience that it doesn't do to disobey Grandma's orders. Grandma is an excellent woman, but people must do as she tells them. She was very much pleased with me this morning because I managed at last to eat all my plateful of porridge. It was a great effort, but I succeeded. Grandma says she thinks she'll make a man of me yet. But teacher, I want to ask you a very important question. You will answer it truthfully, won't you? I'll try, promised Anne. Do you think I'm wrong in my upper story? asked Paul as if his very existence depended on her reply. Goodness, no, Paul! exclaimed Anne in amazement. Certainly you're not. What put such an idea into your head? Mary Joe. But she didn't know I heard her. Mrs. Peter Sloan's hired girl Veronica came to see Mary Joe last evening, and I heard them talking in the kitchen as I was going through the hall. I heard Mary Joe say that Paul is the queer little boy. He talks that queer. I think there's something wrong in his upper story. I couldn't sleep last night for ever so long, thinking of it, and wondering if Mary Joe was right. I couldn't bear to ask Grandma about it somehow, but I made up my mind I'd ask you. I'm so glad you think I'm all right in my upper story. Of course you are. Mary Joe is a silly ignorant girl, and you are never to worry about anything she says, said Anne indignantly, secretly resolving to give Mrs. Irving a discreet hint as to the advisability of restraining Mary Joe's tongue. Well, that's a weight off my mind, said Paul. I'm perfectly happy now, Teacher, thanks to you. It wouldn't be nice to have something wrong in your upper story, would it, Teacher? I suppose the reason Mary Joe imagines I have is because I tell her what I think about things sometimes. It is a rather dangerous practice, admitted Anne, out of the depths of her own experience. Well, by and by I'll tell you the thoughts I told Mary Joe, and you can see for yourself if there's anything queer in them, said Paul. But I'll wait till it begins to get dark. That is the time I ache to tell people things, and when nobody else is handy I just have to tell Mary Joe. But after this I won't, if it makes her imagine I'm wrong in my upper story. I'll just ache and bear it. And if the ache gets too bad you can come up to Green Gables and tell me your thoughts, suggested Anne, with all the gravity that endeared her to children, who so dearly love to be taken seriously. Yes, I will. But I hope Davy won't be there when I go, because he makes faces at me. I don't mind very much, because he is such a little boy, and I am quite a big one. But still it is not pleasant to have faces made at you. And Davy makes such terrible ones. Sometimes I am frightened he will never get his face straightened out again. He makes them at me in church when I ought to be thinking of sacred things. Dora likes me, though, and I like her, but not so well as I did before she told Minnie May Berry that she meant to marry me when I grew up. I may marry somebody when I grow up, but I am far too young to be thinking of it yet. Don't you think teacher? Rather young, a great teacher. Speaking of marrying reminds me of another thing that has been troubling me of late, continued Paul. Mrs. Lynde was down here one day last week having tea with Grandma, and Grandma made me show her my little mother's picture, the one Father sent me for my birthday present. I didn't exactly want to show it to Mrs. Lynde. Mrs. Lynde is a good, kind woman, but she isn't the sort of person you want to show your mother's picture to, you know, teacher. But of course I obeyed Grandma. Mrs. Lynde said she was very pretty, but kind of actressy-looking, and must have been an awful lot younger than Father. Then she said, some of these days your Pa will be marrying again likely. How will you like to have a new Ma, Master Paul? Well, the idea almost took my breath away, teacher, but I wasn't going to let Mrs. Lynde see that. I just looked her straight in the face, like this. And I said, Mrs. Lynde, Father made a pretty good job of picking out my first mother, and I could trust him to pick out just as good a one the second time. And I can trust him, teacher. But still, I hope—if he ever does give me a new mother, he'll ask my opinion about her before it's too late. There's Mary Joe coming to call us to tea. I'll go and consult with her about the shortbread. As a result of the consultation, Mary Joe cut the shortbread and added a dish of preserves to the bill of fare. Anne poured the tea, and she and Paul had a very merry meal in the dim old sitting-room whose windows were open to the gulf breezes, and they talked so much nonsense that Mary Joe was quite scandalized, and told Veronica the next evening that Descoulmes was as queer as Paul. After tea, Paul took Anne up to his room to show her his mother's picture, which had been the mysterious birthday present kept by Mrs. Irving in the bookcase. Paul's little low ceiling-droom was a soft whirl of ruddy light from the sun that was setting over the sea, and swinging shadows from the fur trees that grew close to the square, deep-set window. From out this soft glow and glamour shone a sweet girlish face with tender mother eyes that was hanging on the wall at the foot of the bed. "'That's my little mother,' said Paul with loving pride. I got Grandma to hang it there where I'd see it as soon as I opened my eyes in the morning. I never mind not having the light when I go to bed now, because it just seems as if my little mother was right here with me. Father knew just what I would like for a birthday present, although he never asked me. Isn't it wonderful how much fathers do know?' Your mother was very lovely, Paul, and you look a little like her, but her eyes and hair are darker than yours. "'My eyes are the same colour as father's,' said Paul, flying about the room to heap all available cushions on the window seat. But father's hair is grey. He has lots of it, but it is grey. You see, father is nearly fifty. That's a ripe old age, isn't it? But it's only outside he's old. Inside he's just as young as anybody. "'Now, teacher, please sit here, and I'll sit at your feet. May I lay my head against your knee? That's the way my little mother and I used to sit. Oh, this is real splendid, I think. Now, I want to hear those thoughts which Mary Jo pronounces so queer,' said Anne, patting them up of curls at her side. Paul never needed any coaxing to tell his thoughts, at least to congenial souls. "'I thought them out in the fur-grove one night,' he said dreamily. "'Of course I didn't believe them, but I thought them. You know, teacher. And then I wanted to tell them to somebody, and there was nobody but Mary Jo. Mary Jo was in the pantry setting bread, and I sat down on the bench beside her and I said, Mary Jo, do you know what I think? I think the evening star is a lighthouse on the land where the fairies dwell. And Mary Jo said, well, use our the queer one. There ain't no such thing as fairies.' I was very much provoked. Of course I knew there were no fairies, but that needn't prevent my thinking there is. You know, teacher. But I tried again quite patiently. I said, well, then, Mary Jo, do you know what I think? I think an angel walks over the world after the sun sets, a great, tall, white angel with silvery folded wings, and sings the flowers and birds to sleep. Children can hear them if they know how to listen. Then Mary Jo held up her hands all over flower and said, well, use our the queer little boy. Use makes me feel scared. And she really did look scared. I went out then and whispered the rest of my thoughts to the garden. There was a little birch tree in the garden, and it died. Grandma says the salt spray killed it, but I think the dryad belonging to it was a foolish dryad who wandered away to see the world and got lost, and the little tree was so lonely it died of a broken heart. And when the poor, foolish little dryad gets tired of the world and comes back to her tree, her heart will break, said Anne. Yes. But if dryads are foolish, they must take the consequences, just as if they were real people, said Paul Gravely. Do you know what I think about the new moon teacher? I think it is a little golden boat full of dreams. And when it tips on a cloud some of them spill out and fall into your sleep. Exactly, teacher. Oh, you do know. And I think the violets are little snips of the sky that fell down when the angels cut out holes for the stars to shine through, and the buttercups are made out of old sunshine. And I think the sweet peas will be butterflies when they go to heaven. Now, teacher, do you see anything so very queer about those thoughts? No, laddie dear. They're not queer at all. They're strange and beautiful thoughts for a little boy to think, and so people who couldn't think anything of the sort themselves if they tried for a hundred years think them queer. But keep on thinking them, Paul. Someday you are going to be a poet, I believe. When Anne reached home, she found a very different type of boyhood waiting to be put to bed. Davy was sulky, and when Anne had undressed him, he bounced into bed and buried his face in the pillow. Davy, you have forgotten to say your prayers, said Anne rebukingly. No, I didn't forget, said Davy defiantly. But I ain't going to say my prayers any more. I'm going to give up trying to be good, because no matter how good I am you'd like Paul Irving better, so I might as well be bad and have the fun of it. I don't like Paul Irving better, said Anne seriously. I like you just as well, only in a different way. But how won't you like me the same way? powdered Davy. You can't like different people the same way. You don't like Dora and me the same way, do you? Davy sat up and reflected. No, he admitted at last. I like Dora because she's my sister, but I like you because you're you. And I like Paul because he is Paul, and Davy because he is Davy, said Anne gaily. Well, I kind of wish I'd said my prayers then, said Davy, convinced by this logic. But it's too much bother getting out now to say them. I'll say them twice over in the morning, Anne. Won't that do as well? No, Anne was positive it would not do as well. So Davy scrambled out and knelt down at her knee. When he had finished his devotions he leaned back on his little bare brown heels and looked up at her. Anne, I'm gooder than I used to be. Yes indeed you are, Davy, said Anne, who never hesitated to give credit where credit was due. I know I'm gooder, said Davy confidently, and I'll tell you how I know it. Today Marilla gave me two pieces of bread and jam, one for me and one for Dora, one was a good deal bigger than the other, and Marilla didn't say which was mine, but I give the biggest piece to Dora. That was good of me, wasn't it? Very good, and very manly, Davy. Of course, admitted Davy, Dora wasn't very hungry, and she only had half her slice, and then she'd give the rest to me. But I didn't know she was going to do that when I'd give it to her, so I was good at hand. In the twilight Anne sauntered down to the dry-heads bubble, and saw Gilbert Blythe coming down through the dusky haunted wood. She had a sudden realization that Gilbert was a schoolboy no longer, and how manly he looked, the tall, frank-faced fellow with the clear, straightforward eyes and the broad shoulders. Anne thought Gilbert was a very handsome lad, even though he didn't look at all like her ideal man. She and Diana had long ago decided what kind of a man they admired, and their tastes seemed exactly similar. He must be very tall and distinguished-looking, with melancholy, inscrutable eyes, and a melting, sympathetic voice. There was nothing either melancholy or inscrutable in Gilbert's physiognomy, but of course that didn't matter in friendship. Gilbert stretched himself out on the ferns beside the bubble and looked approvingly at Anne. If Gilbert had been asked to describe his ideal woman, the description would have answered point for point to Anne, even to those seven tiny freckles whose obnoxious presence still continued to vex her soul. Gilbert was as yet little more than a boy, but a boy has his dreams as have others, and in Gilbert's future there was always a girl with big, limpid gray eyes, and a face as fine and delicate as a flower. He had made up his mind also that his future must be worthy of its goddess. Even in quiet Avonlea there were temptations to be met and faced. White sand's youth were a rather fast-set, and Gilbert was popular wherever he went, but he meant to keep himself worthy of Anne's friendship, and perhaps some distant day her love. And he watched over word and thought, indeed, as jealously as if her clear eyes were to pass judgment on it. She held over him the unconscious influence that every girl whose ideals are high and pure wields over her friends, an influence which would endure as long as she was faithful to those ideals, and which she would certainly lose if she were ever false to them. In Gilbert's eyes Anne's greatest charm was the fact that she never stooped to the petty practices of so many of the Avonlea girls, the small jealousies, the little deceits and rivalries, the palpable bids for favour. Anne held herself apart from all this, not consciously or of design, but simply because anything of the sort was utterly foreign to her transparent, impulsive nature, crystal clear in its motives and aspirations. But Gilbert did not attempt to put his thoughts into words, for he had already too good reason to know that Anne would mercilessly and frostily nip all attempts at sentiment in the bud, or laugh at him, which was ten times worse. You look like a real dried under that birch tree, he said teasingly. I love birch trees, said Anne, laying her cheek against the creamy satin of the slim bowl with one of the pretty caressing gestures which came so naturally to her. Then you'll be glad to hear that Mr. Major Spencer has decided to set out a row of white birches all along the road-front of his farm by way of encouraging the avus, said Gilbert. He was talking to me about it today. Major Spencer is the most progressive and public spirited man in Avonlea, and Mr. William Bell is going to set out a spruce hedge along his road-front and up his lane. Our society is getting on splendidly, Anne. It is past the experimental stage, and is an accepted fact. The older folks are beginning to take an interest in it, and the white sands people are talking of starting one too. Even Elisha Wright has come round since that day the Americans from the hotel had the picnic at the shore. They praised our roadside so highly, and said they were so much prettier than in any other part of the island. And when, in due time, the other farmers follow Mr. Spencer's good example in plant ornamental trees and hedges along their road-fronts, Avonlea will be the prettiest settlement in the province. The aides are talking of taking up the graveyard, said Anne, and I hope they will, because there will have to be a subscription for that, and it would be no use for the society to try it after the Hall affair. But the aides would never have stirred in the matter if the society hadn't put it into their thoughts unofficially. Those trees we planted on the church grounds are flourishing, and the trustees have promised me that they will fence in the school grounds next year. If they do, I'll have an arbor day, and every scholar shall plant a tree, and we'll have a garden in the corner by the road. We've succeeded in almost all our plans so far, excepting getting the old bolter-house removed, said Gilbert, and I've given that up in despair. Leave, I won't have it taken down just to vex us. There's a contrary streak in all the bolters, and it's strongly developed in him. Julia Bell wants to send another committee to him, but I think the better way will be just to leave him severely alone, said Anne, sagely, and trust a providence, as Mrs. Lin says, smiled Gilbert. Certainly no more committees. They only aggravate him. Julia Bell thinks you can do anything if you only have a committee to attempted. Next spring, Anne, we must start an agitation for nice lawns and grounds. We'll sow good seed betimes this winter. I have a treatise here on lawns and lawn-making, and I'm going to prepare a paper on the subject soon. Well, I suppose our vacation is almost over. School opens Monday. Has Ruby Gillis got the Carmody School? Yes. Priscilla wrote that she had taken her own homeschool, so the Carmody trustees gave it to Ruby. I'm sorry Priscilla's not coming back, but since she can't, I'm glad Ruby has got the school. She will be home for Saturdays, and it will seem like old times to have her and Jane and Diana and myself all together again. Marilla, just home from Mrs. Lin's, was sitting on the back porch step when Anne returned to the house. Rachel and I have decided to have our cruise to town tomorrow, she said. Mr. Lin is feeling better this week, and Rachel wants to go before he has another six-spell. I intend to get up extra early tomorrow morning, for I've ever so much to do, said Anne virtuously. For one thing, I'm going to shift the feathers from my old bed-tick to the new one. I ought to have done it long ago, but I've just kept putting it off. It's such a detestable task. It's a very bad habit to put off disagreeable things, and I never mean to again, or else I can't comfortably tell my pupils not to do it. That would be inconsistent. Then I want to make a cake for Mr. Harrison and finish my paper on gardens for the Avis, and write Stella, and wash and starch my muslin dress and make doors new apron. You won't get half done, said Marilla pessimistically. I never yet clav to do a lot of things, but something happened to prevent me. CHAPTER XXI. The Way It Often Happens. Anne rose betimes the next morning, and blithely greeted the fresh day when the banners of the sunrise were shaken triumphantly across the pearly skies. Green gables lay in a pool of sunshine flecked with the dancing shadows of poplar and willow. Beyond the land was Mr. Harrison's wheat-field, a great, wind-rippled expanse of pale gold. The world was so beautiful that Anne spent ten blissful minutes hanging idly over the garden gate drinking the loveliness in. After breakfast Marilla made ready for her journey. Dora was to go wither, having been long promised this treat. Now Davy, you try to be a good boy and don't bother Anne, she straightly charged him. If you are good I'll bring you a striped candy cane from town. For alas, Marilla had stooped to the evil habit of bribing people to be good. I won't be bad on purpose, but suppose and I'm bad's accidentally, Davy wanted to know. You'll have to guard against accidents, admonished Marilla. And if Mr. Shearer comes to-day get a nice roast and some steak. If he doesn't you'll have to kill a foul for dinner to-morrow. Anne nodded. I'm not going to bother cooking any dinner for just Davy and myself to-day, she said. That cold ham-bone will do for noon lunch and I'll have some steak-fried for you when you come home at night. I'm going to help Mr. Harrison Hall-dulse this morning, announced Davy. He asked me to, and I guess he'll ask me to dinner too. Mr. Harrison is an awful kind man. He's a real sociable man. I hope I'll be like him when I grow up. I mean, behave like him. I don't want to look like him. But I guess there's no danger. For Mrs. Lynn says I'm a very handsome child. Do you suppose it'll last, Anne? I want to know. I daresay it will, said Anne gravely. You are a handsome boy, Davy. Marilla looked volumes of disapproval. But you must live up to it and be just as nice and gentlemanly as you look to be. And you told Minnie Mayberry the other day when you found her crying because someone said she was ugly, that if she was nice and kind and loving people wouldn't mind her looks, said Davy discontentedly. Seems to me you can't get out of being good in this world for some reason or another. You just have to behave. Don't you want to be good? asked Marilla, who had learned a great deal that had not yet learned the futility of asking such questions. Yes, I want to be good, but not too good, said Davy cautiously. You don't have to be very good to be a Sunday school superintendent. Mr. Bell's that. He's a real bad man. Indeed he's not, said Marilla indignantly. He is. He says he is himself, a severated Davy. He said it when he prayed in Sunday school last Sunday. He said he was a vile worm and a miserable sinner and guilty of the blackest niquity. What did he do that was so bad, Marilla? Did he kill anybody, or steal the collection sense? I want to know. Fortunately Mrs. Lynde came driving up the lane at this moment and Marilla made off, feeling that she had escaped from the snare of the fowler, and wishing devoutly that Mr. Bell were not quite so highly figurative in its public petitions, especially in the hearing of small boys who were always wanting to know. Ann, left alone in her glory, worked with a will. The floor was swept, the beds made, the hens fed, the muslin dress washed and hung out on the line. Then Ann prepared for the transfer of feathers. She mounted to the garret and donned the first old dress that came to hand, a navy blue cashmere she had worn at fourteen. It was decidedly on the short side and as skimpy as the notable wincy Ann had worn upon the occasion of her debut at Green Gables. But at least it would not be materially injured by down and feathers. Ann completed her toilet by tying a big red-and-white spotted handkerchief that had belonged to Matthew over her head, and thus a-cootered, but took herself to the kitchen chamber with her Marilla, before her departure, had helped her carry the feather-bed. A cracked mirror hung by the chamber window, and in an unlucky moment Ann looked into it. There were those seven freckles on her nose more rampant than ever, or so it seemed in the glare of light from the unshaded window. Oh! I forgot to rub that lotion on last night, she thought. I'd better run down to the pantry and do it now. Ann had already suffered many things trying to remove those freckles. On one occasion the entire skin had peeled off her nose, but the freckles remained. A few days previously she had found a recipe for a freckle lotion in a magazine, and as the ingredients were within her reach she straightaway compounded it, much to the disgust of Marilla, who thought that if Providence had placed freckles on your nose it was your bound and duty to leave them there. Ann scurried down to the pantry, which always dimmed from the big willow growing close to the window, was now almost dark by reason of the shade drawn to exclude flies. Ann caught the little bottle containing the lotion from the shelf, and copiously anointed her nose therewith by means of a little sponge sacred to the purpose. This important duty done she returned to her work. Anyone who has ever shifted feathers from one tick to another will not need to be told that when Ann finished she was a sight to behold. Her dress was white with down and fluff, and her front hair escaping from under the handkerchief was adorned with a veritable halo of feathers. At this auspicious moment a knock sounded at the kitchen door. That must be Mr. Shearer, thought Ann. I'm in a dreadful mess, but I'll have to run down as I am for he's always in a hurry. Down flew Ann to the kitchen door. If ever a charitable floor did open to swallow up a miserable, befeathered damsel, the Green Gable's porch floor should promptly have engulfed Ann at that moment. On the doorstep were standing Priscilla Grant, Golden and Fair in silk attire, a short, stout, gray-haired lady in a tweed suit, and another lady, tall, stately, wonderfully gowned with a beautiful, high-bred face, and large, black-lashed violet eyes, whom Ann instinctively felt, as she would have said in her earlier days, to be Mrs. Charlotte E. Morgan. In the dismay of the moment one thought stood out from the confusion of Ann's mind, and she grasped at it as at the proverbial straw. All Mrs. Morgan's heroines were noted for rising to the occasion. No matter what their troubles were, they invariably rose to the occasion and showed their superiority over all ills of time, space, and quantity, and, therefore, felt it was her duty to rise to the occasion, and she did it so perfectly that Priscilla afterwards declared that she never admired Ann Shirley more than at that moment. No matter what her outraged feelings were, she did not show them. She greeted Priscilla and was introduced to her companions as calmly and composedly as if she had been arrayed in purple and fine linen. To be sure it was somewhat of a shock to find that the lady she had instinctively felt to be Mrs. Morgan was not Mrs. Morgan at all, but an unknown Mrs. Pendexter, while the stout little grey-haired woman was Mrs. Morgan. But in the greater shock the lesser lost its power. Ann ushered her guests to the spare room and then sent to the parlor, where she left them while she hastened out to help Priscilla unharness her horse. It's dreadful to come upon you so unexpectedly as this, apologized Priscilla, but I did not know till last night that we were coming. Ann Charlotte is going away Monday and she had promised to spend a day with a friend in town, but last night her friend telephoned to her not to come because they were quarantined for scarlet fever, so I suggested we come here instead, for I knew you were longing to see her. We called at the White Sands Hotel and brought Mrs. Pendexter with us. She is a friend of Ann's and lives in New York and her husband is a millionaire. We can't stay very long, for Mrs. Pendexter has to be back at the hotel by five o'clock. Several times while they were putting away the horse, Ann caught Priscilla looking at her in a furtive, puzzled way. She didn't stare at me so, Ann thought a little resentfully. If she doesn't know what it is to change a feather bed, she might imagine it. When Priscilla had gone to the parlor, and before Ann could escape upstairs, Diana walked into the kitchen. Ann caught her astonished friend by the arm. Diana Barry, who do you suppose is in that parlor at this very moment, Mrs. Charlotte E. Morgan and a New York millionaire's wife, and here I am like this and not a thing in the house for dinner but a cold, ham-bone Diana. By this time, Ann had become aware that Diana was staring at her in precisely the same bewildered fashion as Priscilla had done. It was really too much. Oh, Diana, don't look at me so, she implored. You at least must know that the neatest person in the world couldn't empty feathers from one tick into another and remain neat in the process. It isn't the feathers, hesitated Diana. It's your nose, Ann. My nose! Oh, Diana, surely nothing has gone wrong with it. Ann rushed to the little looking glass over the sink. One glance revealed the fatal truth. Her nose was a brilliant scarlet. Ann sat down on the sofa. Her dauntless spirit subdued at last. What is the matter with it? asked Diana, curiosity overcoming delicacy. I thought I was rubbing my freckle lotion on it, but I must have used that red dimer will I has for marking the pattern on her rugs. Was the despairing response. What shall I do? Wash it off, said Diana practically. Perhaps it won't wash off. First I dye my hair, then I dye my nose. Marilla cut my hair off when I dyed it, but that remedy would hardly be practicable in this case. Well, this is another punishment for vanity and I suppose I deserve it. Though there's not much comfort in that, it is really almost enough to make one believe in ill luck, though Mrs. Lynde says there is no such thing because everything is forordained. Fortunately the dye washed off easily, and Ann somewhat consoled but took herself to the east gable while Diana ran home. Presently Ann came down again, clothed and in her right mind. The muslin dress she had fondly hoped to wear was bobbing merrily about on the line outside, so she was forced to content herself with her black lawn. She had the fire on and the tea steeping when Diana returned. The latter wore her muslin at least and carried a covered platter in her hand. Mother sent you this, she said, lifting the cover and displaying a nicely carved and jointed chicken to Ann's grateful eyes. The chicken was supplemented by light new bread, excellent butter and cheese, Marilla's fruit-cake and a dish of preserved plums floating in their golden syrup as in congealed summer sunshine. There was a big bowlful of pink and white asters also by way of decoration, yet the spread seemed very meager beside the elaborate one formally prepared for Mrs. Morgan. Ann's hungry guests, however, did not seem to think anything was lacking, and they ate the simple vines with apparent enjoyment. But after the first few moments Ann thought no more of what was or was not on her bill of fare. Mrs. Morgan's appearance might be somewhat disappointing, as even her loyal worshippers had been forced to admit to each other, but she proved to be a delightful conversationalist. She had travelled extensively and was an excellent storyteller. She had seen much of men and women and crystallized her experiences into witty little sentences and epigrams which made her hearers feel as if they were listening to one of the people in clever books. But under all her sparkle there was a strongly felt undercurrent of true, womanly sympathy and kind-heartedness which won affection as easily as her brilliancy won admiration. Nor did she monopolize the conversation. She could draw others out as skillfully and fully as she could talk herself, and Ann and Diana found themselves chattering freely to her. Mrs. Pendexter said little. She merely smiled with her lovely eyes and lips, and ate chicken and fruitcake and preserves with such exquisite grace that she conveyed the impression of dining on ambrosia and honeydew. But then, as Ann said to Diana later on, anybody so divinely beautiful as Mrs. Pendexter didn't need to talk, it was enough for her just to look. After dinner they all had a walk through lover's lane and violet veil in the birch path, then back through the haunted wood to the dryad's bubble where they sat down and talked for a delightful last half-hour. Mrs. Morgan wanted to know how the haunted wood came by its name and laughed until she cried when she heard the story, and Ann's dramatic account of a certain memorable walk through it at the witching hour of twilight. "'It has indeed been a feast of reason and flow of soul, hasn't it?' said Ann when her guests had gone, and she and Diana were alone again. I don't know which I enjoyed more, listening to Mrs. Morgan or gazing at Mrs. Pendexter. I believe we had a nicer time than if we'd known they were coming and being combered with much serving. You must stay to tea with me, Diana, and we'll talk it all over." Priscilla says Mrs. Pendexter's husband's sister is married to an English Earl, and yet she took a second helping of the plum preserves, said Diana, as if the two facts were somehow incompatible. I daresay even the English Earl himself wouldn't have turned up his aristocratic nose that Marilla's plum preserves, said Ann proudly. Ann did not mention the misfortune which had befallen her nose when she related the day's history to Marilla that evening. But she took the bottle of freckle lotion and emptied it out of the window. I shall never try any beautifying messes again," she said, darkly resolute. They may do for careful deliberate people, but for any one so hopelessly given over to making mistakes as I seem to be, it's tempting fate to meddle with them. CHAPTER XXI. Sweet Miss Lavender. School opened, and Ann returned to her work with fewer theories but considerably more experience. She had several new pupils, six and seven-year-olds just venturing round-eyed into a world of wonder. Among them were Davy and Dora. Davy sat with Melty Bolter, who had been going to school for a year, and was, therefore, quite a man of the world. Dora had made a compact at Sunday School the previous Sunday to sit with Lily Sloan. But Lily Sloan not coming the first day, she was temporarily assigned to Mirabel Cotton, who was ten years old, and, therefore, in Dora's eyes, one of the big girls. I think school is great fun, Davy told Marilla when he got home that night. You said I'd find it hard to sit still, and I did. You mostly do tell the truth, I notice. But you can wriggle your legs about under the desk, and that helps a lot. It's splendid to have so many boys to play with. I sit with Melty Bolter and he's fine. He's longer than me, but I'm wider. It's nicer to sit in the back seats, but you can't sit there till your legs grow long enough to touch the floor. Melty draw'd a picture of Anne on his slate, and it was awful ugly, and I told him if he'd made pictures of Anne like that I'd lick him at recess. I thought first I'd draw one of him and put horns in a tail on it, but I was afraid it would hurt his feelings, and Anne says you should never hurt anyone's feelings. It seems it's dreadful to have your feelings hurt. It's better to knock a boy down than hurt his feelings if you must do something. Melty said he wasn't scared of me, but he'd just assumed call it somebody else to blige me, so he rubbed out Anne's name and printed Barbara Shaw's under it. Melty doesn't like Barbara because she calls him a sweet little boy, and once she patted him on his head. Dora said primly that she liked school. But she was very quiet, even for her. And when at twilight Marilla bade her go upstairs to bed, she hesitated and began to cry. I'm—I'm frightened," she sobbed. I—I don't want to go upstairs alone in the dark. What notion have you got into your head now? demanded Marilla. I'm sure you've gone to bed alone all summer and never been frightened before. Dora still continued to cry, so Anne picked her up, cuddled her sympathetically and whispered, Tell Anne all about it, sweetheart. What are you frightened of? Of—of Mirabelle Cotton's uncle, sobbed Dora. Mirabelle Cotton told me all about her family today in school. Newly everybody in her family has died, all her grandfathers and grandmothers and ever so many uncles and aunts. They have a habit of dying, Mirabelle says. Mirabelle's awful proud of having so many dead relations, and she told me what they all died of and what they said and how they looked in their coffins. And Mirabelle says one of her uncles was seen walking around the house after he was buried. Her mother saw him. I don't mind the rest so much, but I can't help thinking about that uncle. Anne went upstairs with Dora and sat by her until she fell asleep. The next day Mirabelle Cotton was kept in at recess and gently but firmly given to understand that when you were so unfortunate as to possess an uncle who persisted in walking about houses after he had been decently interred, it was not in good taste to talk about that eccentric gentleman to your deskmate of tender years. Mirabelle thought this very harsh. The Cotton's had not much to boast of. How was she to keep up her prestige among her schoolmates if she were forbidden to make capital out of the family ghost? September slipped by into a golden crimson graciousness of October. One Friday evening Diana came over. I'd a letter from Ella Kimball to-day, Anne, and she wants us to go over to Tea to-morrow afternoon and meet her cousin, Irene Trent, from town. But we can't get one of our horses to go, for they'll all be in use to-morrow and your pony is lame. So I suppose we can't go. Why can't we walk? suggested Anne. If we go straight back through the woods we'll strike the West Grafton Road not far from the Kimball place. I was through that way last winter, and I know the road. It's no more than four miles, and we don't have to walk home, for Oliver Kimball will be sure to drive us. He'll be only too glad of the excuse where he goes to see Kerry Sloan, and they say his father will hardly ever let him have a horse. It was accordingly arranged that they should walk, and the following afternoon they set out, going by way of Lover's Lane to the back of the Cuthbert farm, where they found a road leading into the heart of acres of glimmering beach and maple woods, which were all in a wondrous glow of flame and gold lying in a great purple stillness in peace. It's as if the year we're kneeling to pray in a vast cathedral full of mellow, stained light. Isn't it? said Anne dreamily. It doesn't seem right to hurry through it, does it? It seems irreverent, like running in a church. We must hurry, though, said Anne, glancing at her watch. We've left ourselves little enough time as it is. Well, I'll walk fast, but don't ask me to talk, said Anne, quickening her pace. I just want to drink the day's loveliness in. I feel as if she were holding it out to my lips like a cup of airy wine, and I'll take a sip at every step. Perhaps it was because she was so absorbed in drinking it in that Anne took the left turning when they came to a fork in the road. She should have taken the right, but ever afterward she counted it the most fortunate mistake of her life. They came out finally to a lonely, grassy road with nothing inside along it but ranks of spruce saplings. Why, where are we? exclaimed Anne in bewilderment. This isn't the West Grafton Road. No, it's the baseline road in Middle Grafton, said Anne rather shame-phasedly. I must have taken the wrong turning at the fork. I don't know where we are exactly, but we must be all of three miles from Kimball still. Then we can't get there by five for it's half past four now, said Diana with a despairing look at her watch. We'll arrive after they have had their tea, and they'll have all the bother of getting hours over again. We'd better turn back and go home, suggested Anne humbly. But Diana, after consideration, vetoed this. No, we may as well go and spend the evening since we have come this far. A few yards further on the girls came to a place where the road forked again. Which of these do we take? asked Diana dubiously. Anne shook her head. I don't know, and we can't afford to make any more mistakes. Here is a gate and a lane leading right into the wood. There must be a house at the other side. Let us go down and inquire. What a romantic old lane this is! said Diana as they walked along its twists and turns. It ran under patriarchal old furs whose branches met above creating a perpetual gloom in which nothing except moss could grow. On either hand were brown wood floors crossed here and there by fallen lances of sunlight. All was very still and remote, as if the world and the cares of the world were far away. I feel as if we were walking through an enchanted forest, said Anne, and at hushed tone. Do you suppose we'll ever find our way back to the real world again, Diana? We shall presently come to a palace with a spellbound princess in it, I think. Around the next turn they came in sight not indeed of a palace, but of a little house, almost as surprising as a palace would have been in this province of conventional wooden farmhouses, all as much alike in general characteristics as if they had grown from the same seed. Anne stopped short in rapture, and Diana exclaimed, Oh, I know where we are now. That is the little stone house where Miss Lavender Lewis lives. Echo Lodge, she calls it, I think. I've often heard of it, but I've never seen it before. Isn't it a romantic spot? It's the sweetest, prettiest place I ever saw or imagined, said Anne delightedly. It looks like a bit out of a storybook or a dream. The house was a low-weaved structure built of undressed blocks of red-island sandstone with a little peaked roof out of which peered two dormer windows with quaint wooden hoods over them and two great chimneys. The whole house was covered with a luxuriant growth of ivy, finding easy foothold on the rough stonework and turned by autumn frost to most beautiful bronze and wine-red tints. Before the house was an oblong garden into which the lane gate where the girls were standing opened. The house bounded it on one side. On the three others it was enclosed by an old stone dyke so overgrown with moss and grass and ferns that it looked like a high green bank. On the right and left the tall dark spruces spread their palm-like branches over it, but below it was a little meadow, green with clover aftermath, sloping down to the blue loop of the Grafton River. No other house or clearing was in sight—nothing but hills and valleys covered with feathery young furs. I wonder what sort of a person Miss Lubas is, speculated Diana as they opened the gate into the garden. They say she is very peculiar. She'll be interesting, then, said Anne decidedly. Peculiar people are always that at least, whatever else they are or are not. Didn't I tell you we would come to an enchanted palace? I knew the elves hadn't woven magic over that lane for nothing. But Miss Lavender Lewis is hardly a spell-bound princess, laughed Diana. She's an old maid. She's forty-five and quite gray I've heard. Oh, that's only part of the spell, asserted Anne confidently. At heart she's young and beautiful still, and if we only knew how to unloose the spell she would step forth radiant and fair again. But we don't know how. It's always and only the prince who knows that, and Miss Lavender's prince hasn't come yet. Perhaps some fatal mischance has befallen him, though that's against the law of all fairytales. I'm afraid he came long ago and went away again, said Diana. They say she used to be engaged to see even Irving Paul's father when they were young, but they quarreled and parted. Hush! warned Anne. The door's open. The girls paused in the port under the tendrils of Ivy and knocked at the open door. There was a patter of steps inside and a rather odd little personage presented herself. A girl of about fourteen, with a freckled face, a snub nose, a mouth so wide that it did really seem as if it stretched from ear to ear, and two long braids of fair hair tied with two enormous bows of blue ribbon. Is Miss Lewis at home? asked Diana. Yes, ma'am. Come in, ma'am. I'll tell Miss Lavender you're here, ma'am. She's upstairs, ma'am. With this the small handmaiden whisked out of side, and the girls, left alone, looked about them with delighted eyes. The interior of this wonderful little house was quite as interesting as its exterior. The room had a low ceiling and two square, small-pained windows curting with muslin frills. All the furnishings were old-fashioned, but so well and daintily kept that the effect was delicious. But it must be candidly admitted that the most attractive feature to two healthy girls who had just tramped four miles through autumn air was a table set out with pale blue china and laden with delicacies, while little golden huge fern scattered over the cloth gave it what Anne would have termed a festival air. Miss Lavender must be expecting company to tea, she whispered. There are six places, said. But what a funny little girl she has. She looked like a messenger from Pixieland. I suppose she could have told us the road, but I was curious to see Miss Lavender. Sh! She's coming. And with that Miss Lavender Lewis was standing in the doorway. The girls were so surprised that they forgot good manners and simply stared. They had unconsciously been expecting to see the usual type of elderly spinster as known to their experience, a rather angular personage with prim-grey hair and spectacles. Nothing more unlike Miss Lavender could possibly be imagined. She was a little lady with snow-white hair beautifully wavy and thick and carefully arranged in becoming puffs and coils. Beneath it was an almost girlish face, pink-cheeked and sweet-lipped, with big, soft brown eyes and dimples—actually dimples. She wore a very dainty gown of cream muslin with pale, huge roses on it, a gown which would have seemed ridiculously juvenile on most women of her age, but which suited Miss Lavender so perfectly that you never thought about it at all. Carlotta IV says that you wish to see me, she said in a voice that matched her appearance. We wanted to ask the right road to West Grafton, said Diana. We were invited to tea at Mr. Kimball's, but we took the wrong path coming through the woods and came out to the baseline instead of the West Grafton road. Do we take the right or left turning at your gate? The left, said Miss Lavender, with a hesitating glance at her tea table. Then she exclaimed as if in a sudden little burst of resolution, but—oh, won't you stay and have tea with me? Please do. Mr. Kimball's will have tea over before you get there, and Carlotta IV and I will be so glad to have you. Diana looked mute and quiet at Anne. We'd like to stay, said Anne promptly, for she had made up her mind that she wanted to know more of this surprising Miss Lavender if it won't inconvenience you. But you are expecting other guests, aren't you? Miss Lavender looked at her tea table again and blushed. I know you'll think me dreadfully foolish, she said. I am foolish, and I am ashamed of it when I am found out, but never unless I am found out. I'm not expecting anybody. I was just pretending I was. You see, I was so lonely. I love company—that is, the right kind of company—but so few people ever come here because it is so far out of the way. Carlotta IV was lonely, too, so I just pretended I was going to have a tea-party. I cooked for it, and decorated the table for it, and set it with my mother's wedding-china. And I dressed up for it. Diana secretly thought Miss Lavender quite as peculiar as report had pictured her—the idea of a woman of forty-five playing at having a tea-party just as if she were a little girl. But Anne of the Shining Eyes exclaimed joyfully, oh, do you imagine things, too? That, too, revealed a kindred spirit to Miss Lavender. Yes, I do, she confessed boldly. Of course, it's silly in anybody as old as I am. But what is the use of being an independent old maid if you can't be silly when you want to, and when it doesn't hurt anybody? A person must have some compensations. I don't believe I could live at times if I didn't pretend things. I'm not often caught at it, though, and Carlotta IV never tells. But I'm glad to be caught today, for you have really come, and I have tea all ready for you. Will you go up to the spare room and take off your hats? It's the white door at the head of the stairs. I must run out to the kitchen and see that Carlotta IV isn't letting the tea boil. Carlotta IV is a very good girl, but she will let the tea boil. Miss Lavender tripped off to the kitchen on hospitable thoughts in tent, and the girls found their way up to the spare room, an apartment as white as its door, lighted by the ivy-hung dormer window and looking, as Anne said, like the place where happy dreams grew. This is quite an adventure, isn't it? said Diana. And isn't Miss Lavender sweet, if she is a little odd? She doesn't look a bit like an old maid. She looks just as music sounds, I think," answered Anne. When they went down Miss Lavender was carrying in the teapot, and behind her, looking vastly pleased, was Carlotta IV with a plate of hot biscuits. Now you must tell me your names, said Miss Lavender. I'm so glad you are young girls. I love young girls. It's so easy to pretend I'm a girl myself when I'm with them. I do hate, with a little grimace, to believe I'm old. Now, who are you? Just for convenience's sake. Diana Barry and Anne Shirley. May I pretend that I've known you for a hundred years and call you Anne and Diana right away? You may, the girls said both together. Then let's just sit comfortably down and eat everything, said Miss Lavender happily. Carlotta, you sit at the foot and help with the chicken. It is so fortunate that I made the sponge cake and donuts. Of course it was foolish to do it for imaginary guests. I know Carlotta IV thought so, didn't you, Carlotta? But you see how well it has turned out. Of course they wouldn't have been wasted. For Carlotta IV and I could have eaten them through time. But sponge cake is not a thing that improves with time. That was a merry and memorable meal. And when it was over they all went out to the garden, lying in the glamour of sunset. I do think you have the loveliest place here, said Diana, looking round her admiringly. Why do you call it Echo Lodge? asked Anne. Carlotta, said Miss Lavender, go into the house and bring out the little tin horn that is hanging over the clock shelf. Carlotta IV skipped off and returned with the horn. Blow it, Carlotta, commanded Miss Lavender. Carlotta accordingly blew, a rather raucous strident blast. There was a moment stillness. And then from the woods over the river came a multitude of fairy echoes, sweet, elusive, silvery, as if all the horns of Elfland were blowing against the sunset. Anne and Diana exclaimed in delight. Now laugh, Carlotta, laugh loudly. Carlotta, who would probably have obeyed if Miss Lavender had told her to stand on her head, climbed up on the stone bench and laughed loud and heartily. Back came the echoes as if a host of pixie people were mimicking her laughter in the purple woodlands and along the fur-fringed points. People always admire my echoes very much, said Miss Lavender, as if the echoes were her personal property. I love them myself. They are very good company, with a little pretending. On calm evenings, Carlotta the Fourth and I often sit out here and amuse ourselves with them. Carlotta, take back the horn and hang it carefully in its place. Why do you call her Carlotta the Fourth? asked Diana, who was bursting with curiosity on this point. Just to keep her from getting mixed up with other Carlottas in my thoughts, said Miss Lavender seriously, they all look so much alike there's no telling them apart. Her name isn't really Carlotta at all. It is—let me see. What is it? I think it's Leonora. Yes, it is Leonora. You see, it is this way. When mother died ten years ago, I couldn't stay here alone, and I couldn't afford to pay the wages of a grown-up girl, so I got little Carlotta Bowman to come and stay with me for board and clothes. Her name really was Carlotta. She was Carlotta the First. She was just Thirteen. She stayed with me till she was Sixteen, and then she went away to Boston because she could do better there. Her sister came to stay with me then. Her name was Julietta. Mrs. Bowman had a weakness for fancy names, I think, but she looked so like Carlotta that I kept calling her that all the time, and she didn't mind, so I just gave up trying to remember her right name. She was Carlotta the Second. And when she went away, Evelina came, and she was Carlotta the Third. Now I have Carlotta the Fourth, but when she is Sixteen—she's fourteen now—she will want to go to Boston too, and what I shall do then I really do not know. Carlotta the Fourth is the last of the Bowman girls, and the best. The other Carlottas always let me see that they thought it silly of me to pretend things, but Carlotta the Fourth never does, no matter what she may really think. I don't care what people think about me if they don't let me see it. Well, said Diana, looking regretfully at the setting sun, I suppose we must go if we want to get to Mr. Kimball's before dark. We've had a lovely time, Miss Lewis. Won't you come again to see me? pleaded Miss Lavender. Tall Anne put her arm about the little lady. Indeed we shall, she promised. Now that we've discovered you we'll wear out our welcome coming to see you. Yes, we must go. We must tear ourselves away, as Paul Irving says every time he comes to Green Gables. Paul Irving? There was a subtle change in Miss Lavender's voice. Who is he? I didn't think there was anybody of that name in Avonlea. Anne felt vexed at her own heedlessness. She had forgotten about Miss Lavender's old romance when Paul's name slipped out. He is a little pupil of mine, she explained slowly. He came from Boston last year to live with his grandmother, Mrs. Irving, of the Shore Road. Is he Stephen Irving's son? Miss Lavender asked, bending over her namesake border so that her face was hidden. Yes. I'm going to give you girls a bunch of Lavender apiece, said Miss Lavender brightly, as if she had not heard the answer to her question. It's very sweet, don't you think? Mother always loved it. She planted these borders long ago. Father named me Lavender because he was so fond of it. The very first time he saw Mother was when he visited her home in East Grafton with her brother. He fell in love with her at first sight. And they put him in the spare-room bed to sleep, and the sheets were scented with Lavender, and he lay awake all night and thought of her. He always loved the scent of Lavender after that. And that was why he gave me the name. Don't forget to come back soon, girls, dear. We'll be looking for you, Carlotta IV and I. She opened the gate under the furs for them to pass through. She looked suddenly old and tired. The glow and radiance had faded from her face. Her parting smile was as sweet with ineradicable youth as ever. But when the girls looked back from the first curve in the lane, they saw her sitting on the old stone bench under the silver poplar in the middle of the garden, with her head leaning wearily on her hand. She does look lonely, said Diana softly. We must come often to see her. I think her parents gave her the only right and fitting name that could possibly be given her, said Anne. If they had been so blind as to name her Elizabeth, or Nelly, or Muriel, she must have been called Lavender just the same, I think. It's so suggestive of sweetness and old-fashioned graces and silk attire. Now my name just smacks of bread and butter, patchwork and chores. Oh, I don't think so, said Diana. Anne seems to be real stately and like a queen. But I'd like Karen Hapook if it happened to be your name. I think people make their names nice or ugly just by what they are themselves. I can't bear Josie or Gertie for names now, but before I knew the pie girls I thought them real pretty. It's a lovely idea, Diana, said Anne enthusiastically, living so that you beautify your name, even if it wasn't beautiful to begin with, making it stand in people's thoughts for something so lovely and pleasant that they never think of it by itself. Thank you, Diana. What is she like now? It's over fifteen years since I saw her last. It was one Sunday in Grafton Church. I suppose she has changed a great deal. Davy Keith, when you want something you can't reach, ask to have it passed and don't spread yourself over the table in that fashion. Did you ever see Paul Irving doing that when he was here to meals? But Paul's arms are longer in mine, grumbled Davy. They've had eleven years to grow and mine have only had seven. Sides, I did ask, but you and Anne were so busy talking you didn't pay any attention. Sides, Paul's never been here to any meal except tea, and it's easier to be polite at tea than at breakfast. You ain't half as hungry. It's an awful long time between supper and breakfast. Now, Anne, that spoonful ain't me bigger than it was last year, and I'm ever so much bigger. Of course I don't know what Miss Lavender used to look like, but I don't fancy somehow that she has changed a great deal, said Anne after she had helped Davy to Mabel's syrup, giving him two spoonfuls to pacify him. Her hair is snow-white but her face is fresh and almost girlish, and she has the sweetest brown eyes, such a pretty shade of wood brown with little gold and glints in them, and her voice makes you think of white satin and tinkling water and fairy bells all mixed up together. She was reckoned a great beauty when she was a girl, said Marilla. I never knew her very well, but I liked her as far as I did know her. Some folks thought her peculiar even then. Davy, if ever I catch you at such a trick again, you'll be made to wait for your meals till everyone else is done like the French. Most conversations between Anne and Marilla in the presence of the twins were punctuated by these rebukes, Davy word. In this instance, Davy, sad to relate, not being able to scoop up the last drops of his syrup with his spoon, had solved the difficulty by lifting his plate in both hands and applying his small pink tongue to it. Anne looked at him with such horrified eyes that the little sinner turned red and said half-shame-fazedly, half-defiantly, there ain't any wasted that way. People who are different from other people are always called peculiar, said Anne, and Miss Lavender is certainly different, though it's hard to say just where the difference comes in. Perhaps it is because she is one of those people who never grow old. One might as well grow old when all your generation do, said Marilla, rather reckless of her pronouns. If you don't, you don't fit in anywhere. Far as I can learn Lavender Lewis has just dropped out of everything. She's lived in that out-of-the-way place until everybody has forgotten her. That stone house is one of the oldest on the island. Old Mr. Lewis built it eighty years ago when he came out from England. Davey stopped juggling Doris' elbow. Oh, I saw you. You needn't try to look innocent. What does make you behave so this morning? Maybe I got out on the wrong side of the bed, suggested Davey. Melty Bolter says if you do that things are bound to go wrong with you all day. His grandmother told him. But which is the right side? And what do you have to do when your bed's against the wall? I want to know. I've always wondered what went wrong between Stephen Irving and Lavender Lewis. Continued Marilla, ignoring Davey. They were certainly engaged twenty-five years ago, and then all at once it was broken off. I don't know what the trouble was, but it must have been something terrible, for he went away to the States and never come home since. Perhaps it was nothing very dreadful after all. I think the little things in life often make more trouble than the big things, said Anne, with one of those flashes of insight which experience could not have bettered. Marilla, please don't say anything about my being at Miss Lavender's to Mrs. Lind. She'd be sure to ask a hundred questions, and somehow I wouldn't like it, nor Miss Lavender either if she knew I feel sure. I daresay Rachel would be curious, admitted Marilla, though she hasn't as much time as she used to for looking after other people's affairs. She's tied home now on account of Thomas, and she's feeling pretty downhearted, for I think she's beginning to lose hope of his ever getting better. Rachel would be left pretty lonely if anything happens to him, with all her children settled out west, except Eliza in town, and she doesn't like her husband. Marilla's pronoun slandered Eliza, who was very fond of her husband. Rachel says if he'd only brace up and exert his willpower he'd get better. But what is the use of asking a jellyfish to sit up straight? continued Marilla. Thomas Lind never had any willpower to exert. His mother ruled him till he married, and then Rachel carried it on. It's a wonder he dared to get sick without asking her permission. But there, I shouldn't talk so. Rachel has been a good wife to him. He'd never have amounted to anything without her, that's certain. He was born to be ruled, and it's well he fell into the hands of a clever, capable manager like Rachel. He didn't mind her way. It saved him the bother of ever making up his own mind about anything. Davey, do stop squirming like an eel. I've nothing else to do, protested Davey. I can't eat any more, and it's no fun watching you and Anne eat. Well, you and Dora go out and give the hens their wheat, said Marilla, and don't you try to pull any more feathers out of the white rooster's tail, either. I wanted some feathers for an Indian headdress, said Davey sulkily. Milty Bolter has a dandy one made out of the feathers his mother gave him when she killed their old white gobbler. You might let me have some. That rooster's got ever so many more than he wants. You may have the old feather duster in the garret, said Anne, and I'll dye them green and red and yellow for you. You do spoil that boy dreadfully, said Marilla, when Davey with a radiant face had followed Prim Dora out. Marilla's education had made great strides in the past six years, but she had not yet been able to rid herself of the idea that it was very bad for a child to have too many of its wishes indulged. All the boys of his class have Indian headdresses, and Davey wants one too, said Anne. I know how it feels. I'll never forget how I used to long for puffed sleeves when all the other girls had them. And Davey isn't being spoiled. He is improving every day. Think what a difference there is in him since he came here a year ago. He certainly doesn't get into as much mischief since he began to go to school, acknowledged Marilla. I suppose he works off the tendency with the other boys. But it's a wonder to me we haven't heard from Richard Keith before this. Never a word since last May. I'll be afraid to hear from him, sighed Anne, beginning to clear away the dishes. If a letter should come I'd dread opening it, for fear it would tell us to send the twins to him. A month later a letter did come, but it was not from Richard Keith. A friend of his wrote to say that Richard Keith had died of consumption a fortnight previously. The rider of the letter was the executor of his will, and by that will the sum of two thousand dollars was left to Miss Marilla Cuthbert in trust for David and Dora Keith until they came of age or married. In the meantime the interest was to be used for their maintenance. It seems dreadful to be glad of anything in connection with the death, said Anne soberly. I'm sorry for poor Mr. Keith, but I am glad that we can keep the twins. It's a very good thing about the money, said Marilla practically. I wanted to keep them, but I really didn't see how I could afford to do it, especially when they grew older. The rent of the farm doesn't do any more than keep the house, and I was bound that not a cent of your money should be spent on them. You do far too much for them as it is. Dora didn't need that new hat you bought her any more than a cat needs two tails, but now the way is made clear and they are provided for. Davy and Dora were delighted when they heard that they were to live at Green Gables for good. The death of an uncle whom they had never seen could not weigh a moment in the balance against that. But Dora had one misgiving. Was Uncle Richard buried? She whispered to Anne. Yes, dear, of course. He—he—isn't like Maribel Cotton's uncle, is he? In a still more agitated whisper, he won't walk about houses after being buried, will he, Anne? End of Chapter 22 Chapter 23 of Anne of Avonlea by Lucy Maud Montgomery Read for LibriVox.org by Karen Savage in March 2008 Chapter 23 Miss Lavender's Romance I think I'll take a walk through to Echo Lodge this evening, said Anne, one Friday afternoon in December. It looks like snow, said Marilla dubiously. I'll be there before the snow comes, and I mean to stay all night long. Diana can't go because she has company, and I'm sure Miss Lavender will be looking for me tonight. It's a whole fortnight since I was there. Anne had paid many a visit to Echo Lodge since that October day. Sometimes she and Diana drove around by the road. Sometimes they walked through the woods. When Diana could not go, Anne went alone. Between her and Miss Lavender had sprung up one of those fervent, helpful friendships, possible only between a woman who has kept the freshness of youth in her heart and soul, and a girl whose imagination and intuition supplied the place of experience. Anne had at last discovered a real kindred spirit, while into the little lady's lonely sequestered life of dreams, Anne and Diana came with the wholesome joy and exhilaration of the outer existence, which Miss Lavender, the world forgetting by the world forgot, had long ceased to share. They brought an atmosphere of youth and reality to the little stone house. Carlotta the Fourth always greeted them with her very widest smile, and Carlotta's smiles were fearfully wide, loving them for the sake of her adored mistress as well as for her own. Never had there been such hijinks held in the little stone house as were held that beautiful late lingering autumn, when November seemed October over again, and even December ate the sunshine and hazes of summer. But on this particular day it seemed as if December had remembered that it was time for winter, and had suddenly turned dull and brooding, with a windless hush predictive of coming snow. Nevertheless, Anne keenly enjoyed her walk through the great gray maze of the beachlands. Though alone, she never found it lonely. Her imagination peopled her path with merry companions, and with these she carried on a gay, pretended conversation that was wittier and more fascinating than conversations or apt to be in real life, where peoples sometimes fail most lamentably to talk up to the requirements. In a make-believe assembly of choice spirits, everybody says just the thing you want her to say, and so gives you the chance to say just what you want to say. Attended by this invisible company, Anne traversed the woods and arrived at the fur lane just as broad and feathery flakes began to flutter down softly. At the first bend, she came upon Miss Lavender, standing under a big, broad-branching fur. She wore a gown of warm, rich red, and her head and shoulders were wrapped in a silvery gray silk shawl. He looked like the queen of the furwood fairies, called Anne merely. I thought you would come to-night, Anne, said Miss Lavender, running forward, and I'm doubly glad for Carlotta IV is away. Her mother is sick and she had to go home for the night. I should have been very lonely if you hadn't come. Even the dreams and the echoes wouldn't have been enough company. Oh, Anne, how pretty you are! She added suddenly, looking up at the tall, slim girl with a soft, rose-flush of walking on her face. How pretty and how young! It's so delightful to be seventeen, isn't it? I do envy you! concluded Miss Lavender candidly. But you are only seventeen at heart, smiled Anne. No, I'm old, or rather middle-aged, which is far worse, sighed Miss Lavender. Sometimes I can pretend I'm not, but at other times I realize it, and I can't reconcile myself to it as most women seem to. I'm just as rebellious as I was when I discovered my first gray hair. Now, Anne, don't look as if you were trying to understand. Seventeen can't understand. I'm going to pretend right away that I am seventeen too, and I can do it now that you're here. You always bring youth in your hand like a gift. We're going to have a jolly evening. Tea first. What do you want for tea? We'll have whatever you like. Do think of something nice and indigestible. There were sounds of riot and mirth in the little stone house that night. What with cooking and feasting and making candy and laughing and pretending, it is quite true that Miss Lavender and Anne comported themselves in a fashion entirely unsuited to the dignity of a spinster of forty-five and a sedate school-ma'am. Then, when they were tired, they sat down on the rug before the grate in the parlor, lighted only by the soft fireshine, and perfumed deliciously by Miss Lavender's open rose jar on the mantel. The wind had risen and was sighing and wailing around the eaves, and the snow was thudding softly against the windows, as if a hundred storm-sprites were tapping for entrance. I'm so glad you're here, Anne, said Miss Lavender, nibbling at her candy. If you weren't, I should be blue—very blue—almost navy blue. Dreams and make-believes are all very well in the daytime and the sunshine, but when dark and storm come, they fail to satisfy. One wants real things, then. But you don't know this. Seventeen never knows it. At seventeen dreams do satisfy, because you think the realities are waiting for you further on. When I was seventeen, Anne, I didn't think forty-five would find me a white-haired little old maid with nothing but dreams to fill my life. But you aren't an old maid, said Anne, smiling into Miss Lavender's wistful wood-brown eyes. Old maids are born—they don't become. Some are born old maids, some achieve old maidenhood, and some have old maidenhood thrust upon them, parodied Miss Lavender whimsically. You are one of those who have achieved it, then, laughed, Anne, and you've done it so beautifully that if every old maid were like you, they would come into the fashion, I think. I always like to do things as well as possible, said Miss Lavender meditatively, and since an old maid I had to be, I was determined to be a very nice one. People say I'm odd, but it's just because I follow my own way of being an old maid and refuse to copy the traditional pattern. Did any one ever tell you anything about Stephen Irving and me? Yes, said Anne candidly. I've heard that you and he were engaged once. So we were, twenty-five years ago—a lifetime ago. And we were to have been married that next spring. I had my wedding dress made, although nobody but Mother and Stephen ever knew that. We'd been engaged in a way almost all our lives, you might say. When Stephen was a little boy his mother would bring him here when she came to see my mother, and the second time he ever came—he was nine and I was six—he told me out in the garden that he had pretty well made up his mind to marry me when he grew up. I remember that I said, thank you, and when he was gone I told Mother very gravely that there was a great weight off my mind because I wasn't frightened any more about having to be an old maid. How poor Mother laughed! And what went wrong? asked Anne breathlessly. We had just a stupid, silly, commonplace quarrel—so commonplace that, if you'll believe me, I don't even remember just how it began. I hardly know who was the more to blame for it. Stephen did really begin it, but I suppose I provoked him by some foolishness of mine. He had a rival or two, you see. I was vain and cuchetish and liked to tease him a little. He was a very high, strung, sensitive fellow. Well, we parted in a temper on both sides. But I thought it would come all right, and it would have if Stephen hadn't come back too soon. Anne, my dear, I'm sorry to say—Miss Lavender dropped her voice as if she were about to confess a predilection for murdering people—that I am a dreadfully sulky person. Oh, you needn't smile. It's only too true. I do sulk. And Stephen came back before I had finished sulking. I wouldn't listen to him, and I wouldn't forgive him. And so he went away for good. He was too proud to come again. And then I sulked because he didn't come. I might have sent for him, perhaps, but I couldn't humble myself to do that. I was just as proud as he was. Pride and sulkiness make a very bad combination, Anne. But I could never care for anybody else, and I didn't want to. I knew I would rather be an old maid for a thousand years than marry anybody who wasn't Stephen Irving. Well, it all seems like a dream now, of course. How sympathetic you look, Anne. As sympathetic as only seventeen can look. But don't overdo it. I am really a very happy, contented little person in spite of my broken heart. My heart did break, if ever a heart did, when I realized that Stephen Irving was not coming back. But, Anne, a broken heart in real life isn't half as dreadful as it is in books. It's a good deal like a bad tooth, though you won't think that a very romantic simile. It takes spells of aching and gives you a sleepless night now and then. But between times it lets you enjoy life and dreams and echoes and peanut candy as if there were nothing to matter with it. And now you're looking disappointed. You don't think I'm half as interesting a person as you did five minutes ago, when you believed I was always the prey of a tragic memory bravely hidden beneath external smiles. That's the worst or the best of real life, Anne. It won't let you be miserable. It keeps on trying to make you comfortable and succeeding, even when you're determined to be unhappy and romantic. Isn't this candy scrumptious? I've eaten far more than is good for me already, but I'm going to keep recklessly on. After a little silence, Miss Lavender said abruptly, it gave me a shock to hear about Stephen's son that first day you were here, Anne. I have never been able to mention him to you since, but I've wanted to know all about him. What sort of a boy is he? He is the dearest, sweetest child I ever knew, Miss Lavender, and he pretends things too, just as you and I do. I'd like to see him, said Miss Lavender softly as if talking to herself. I wonder if he looks anything like the little dream boy who lives here with me—my little dream boy. If you would like to see Paul, I'll bring him through with me sometime, said Anne. I would like it. But not too soon. I want to get used to the thought. There might be more pain than pleasure in it if he looked too much like Stephen, or if he didn't look enough like him. In a month's time you may bring him. Accordingly, a month later, Anne and Paul walked through the woods to the Stone House and met Miss Lavender in the lane. She had not been expecting them just then, and she turned very pale. So this is Stephen's boy, she said, in a low tone, taking Paul's hand and looking at him as he stood, beautiful and boyish in his smart little fur coat and cap. He is very like his father. Everybody says I'm a chip off the old block, remarked Paul quite at his ease. Anne, who had been watching the little scene, drew a relieved breath. She saw that Miss Lavender and Paul had taken to each other, and that there would be no constraint or stiffness. Miss Lavender was a very sensible person, in spite of her dreams and romance, and after that first little betrayal she tucked her feelings out of sight, and entertained Paul as brightly and naturally as if he were anybody's son who had come to see her. They all had a jolly afternoon together, and such a feast of fat things by way of supper as would have made old Miss deserving hold up her hands in horror believing that Paul's digestion would be ruined forever. Come again, laddie, said Miss Lavender shaking hands with him at parting. You may kiss me, if you like, said Paul gravely. Miss Lavender stooped and kissed him. How did you know I wanted to, she whispered. Because you looked at me just as my little mother used to do when she wanted to kiss me. As a rule I don't like to be kissed. Boys don't, you know, Miss Lewis. But I think I'd rather like to have you kiss me. And of course I'll come to see you again. I think I'd like to have you for a particular friend of mine if you don't object. I—I don't think I shall object, said Miss Lavender. She turned and went in very quickly, but a moment later she was waving a gay and smiling goodbye to them from the window. I like Miss Lavender, announced Paul as they walked through the beach woods. I like the way she looked at me. And I like her stone house. And I like Carlotta the Fourth. I wish Grandma Irving had a Carlotta the Fourth instead of a Mary Jo. I feel sure Carlotta the Fourth wouldn't think I was wrong in my upper story when I told her what I think about things. Wasn't that a splendid tea we had, teacher? Grandma says a boy shouldn't be thinking about what he gets to eat, but he can't help it sometimes when he is real hungry, you know, teacher. I don't think Miss Lavender would make a boy eat porridge for breakfast if he didn't like it. She'd get things for him he did like. But of course—Paul was nothing if not fair-minded—that mightn't be very good for him. It's very nice for a change, though, teacher, you know. One May Day, Avonlea folks were mildly excited over some Avonlea notes, signed observer, which appeared in the Charlottetown Daily Enterprise. Gossip ascribed the authorship thereof to Charlie Sloane, partly because the said Charlie had indulged in similar literary flights in times past, and partly because one of the notes seemed to embody a sneer at Gilbert Blythe. Avonlea Juvenile Society persisted in regarding Gilbert Blythe and Charlie Sloane as rivals in the good graces of a certain damsel with grey eyes and an imagination. Gossip as usual was wrong. Gilbert Blythe, aided and abetted by Anne, had written the notes, putting in the one about himself as a blind. Only two of the notes have any bearing on this history. Rumour has it that there will be a wedding in our village ere the daisies are in bloom. A new and highly respected citizen will lead to the hymenil altar one of our most popular ladies. Uncle Abe, our well-known weather-profit, predicts a violent storm of thunder and lightning for the evening of the twenty-third of May, beginning at seven o'clock sharp. The area of the storm will extend over the greater part of the province. People travelling that evening will do well to take umbrellas and macintoshes with them. Uncle Abe really has predicted a storm for some time this spring, said Gilbert, but do you suppose Mr. Harrison really does go to see Isabella Andrews? No, said Anne, laughing. I'm sure he only goes to play checkers with Mr. Harrison Andrews, but Mrs. Lynn says she knows Isabella Andrews must be going to get married. She's in such good spirits this spring. Poor old Uncle Abe felt rather indignant over the notes. He suspected that observer was making fun of him. He angrily denied having assigned any particular date for his storm, but nobody believed him. Life and Avonlea continued on the smooth and even tenor of its way. The planting was put in, the improvers celebrated an arbor day. Each improver set out or caused to be set out five ornamental trees. As the society now numbered forty members, this meant a total of two hundred young trees. Early oats greened over the red fields. Apple orchards flung great blossoming arms about the farmhouses, and the Snow Queen adorned itself as a bride for her husband. Anne liked to sleep with her window open and let the cherry fragrance blow over her face all night. She thought it very poetical. Marilla thought she was risking her life. Thanksgiving should be celebrated in the spring, said Anne, one evening to Marilla, as they sat on the front doorsteps and listened to the silver sweet chorus of the frogs. I think it would be ever so much better than having it in November when everything is dead or asleep. Then you have to remember to be thankful. But in May one simply can't help being thankful—that they are alive if for nothing else. I feel exactly as Eve must have felt in the Garden of Eden before the trouble began. Is that grass in the hollow green or golden? It seems to me, Marilla, that a pearl of a day like this when the blossoms are out and the winds don't know where to blow from next for sheer, crazy delight must be pretty near as good as heaven. Marilla looked scandalized and glanced apprehensively around to make sure the twins were not within earshot. They came around the corner of the house just then. Ain't it an awful night-smelling evening, asked Davy, sniffing delightedly as he swung a hoe in his grimy hands. He had been working in his garden. That spring, Marilla, by way of turning Davy's passion for reveling in mud and clay into useful channels, had given him and Dora a small plot of ground for a garden. Both had eagerly gone to work in a characteristic fashion. Dora planted, weeded, and watered carefully, systematically, and dispassionately. As a result, her plot was already green, with prim, orderly little rows of vegetables and annuals. Davy, however, worked with more zeal than discretion. He dug, and hod, and raked, and watered, and transplanted so energetically that his seeds had no chance for their lives. How is your garden coming on, Davy-boy? asked Anne. Kind of slow, said Davy with a sigh. I don't know why the things don't grow better. Melty Bolcher says I must have planted them in the dark of the moon, and that's the whole trouble. He says you must never sow seeds, or kill pork, or cut your hair, or do any important thing in the wrong time of the moon. Is that true, Anne? I want to know. Maybe if you didn't pull your plants out by the roots every other day to see how they're getting on at the other end, they'd do better, said Marilla sarcastically. I only pulled six of them up, protested Davy. I wanted to see if there was grubs at the roots. Melty Bolcher said if it wasn't the moon's fault it must be grubs. But I only found one grub. It was a great, big, juicy, curly grub. I put him on a stone and got another stone and smashed him flat. He made a jolly squish, I tell you. I was sorry there wasn't more of them. Dora's garden was planted at the same time as mine, and her things are growing all right. It can't be the moon, concluded Davy in a reflective tone. Marilla, look at that apple-tree, said Anne. Why, the thing is human. It's reaching out long arms to pick its own pink skirts dangerly up and provoke us to admiration. Those yellow duchess trees always bear well, said Marilla complacently. That tree'll be loaded this year. I'm real glad. They're great for pies. But neither Marilla nor Anne nor anybody else was fated to make pies out of yellow duchess apples that year. The twenty-third of May came—an unseasonably warm day, as none realized more keenly than Anne and her little beehive of pupils, sweltering over fractions and syntax in the Avonlea schoolroom. A hot breeze blew all the forenoon, but after noon hour it died away into a heavy stillness. At half-past three Anne heard a low rumble of thunder. She promptly dismissed school at once, so that the children might get home before the storm came. As they went out to the playground Anne perceived a certain shadow and gloom over the world, in spite of the fact that the sun was still shining brightly. Annette Bell caught her hand nervously. Oh, teacher, look at that awful cloud! Anne looked and gave an exclamation of dismay. In the northwest a mass of cloud, such as she had never in all her life beheld before, was rapidly rolling up. It was dead black, save where its curled and fringed edges showed a ghastly, livid white. There was something about it indescribably menacing as it gloomed up in the clear blue sky. Now and again a bolt of lightning shot across it, followed by a savage growl. It hung so low that it almost seemed to be touching the tops of the wooded hills. Mr. Harmon Andrews came clattering up the hill in his truck-wagon, urging his team of greys to their utmost speed. He pulled them to a halt opposite the school. Guess Uncle Lates hid it for once in his life, Anne, he shouted, his storm's coming a little ahead of time. Did you ever see the like of that cloud? Here all you young ones that are going my way pile in, and those that ain't, scoot for the post office if you've got more than a quarter of a mile to go, and stay there till the shower's over. Anne caught Davion Dora by the hands and flew down the hill, along the birch path, and passed Violet Vale and Willowmere as fast as the twin's fat legs could go. They reached Green Gables not a moment too soon, and were joined at the door by Marilla, who had been hustling her ducks and chickens under shelter. As they dashed into the kitchen the light seemed to vanish, as if blown out by some mighty breath. The awful cloud rolled over the sun, and a darkness as of late twilight fell across the world. At the same moment, with a crash of thunder and a blinding glare of lightning, the hail swooped down and blotted the landscape out in one white fury. Through all the clamour of the storm came the thud of torn branches striking the house, and the sharp crack of breaking glass. In three minutes every pain in the west and north windows was broken, and the hail poured in through the apertures covering the floor with stones, the smallest of which was as big as a hen's egg. For three quarters of an hour the storm raged unabated, and no one who underwent it ever forgot it. Marilla for once in her life shaken out of her composure by sheer terror knelt by her rocking chair in a corner of the kitchen, gasping and sobbing between the deafening thunder-peels. Anne, white as paper, had dragged the sofa away from the window, and sat on it with a twin on either side. Davy at the first crash had howled, Anne, Anne, is it the judgment day, Anne, and I'm never meant to be naughty, and then had buried his face in Anne's lap and kept it there, his little body quivering. Dora, somewhat pale but quite composed, sat with her hand clasped in Anne's, quiet and motionless. It is doubtful if an earthquake would have disturbed Dora. Then, almost as suddenly as it began, the storm ceased. The hail stopped, the thunder rolled and muttered away to the eastward, and the sun burst out, merry and radiant, over a world so changed that it seemed an absurd thing to think that a scant three quarters of an hour could have affected such a transformation. Marilla rose from her knees, weak and trembling, and dropped on her rocker. Her face was haggard, and she looked ten years older. Have we all come out of that alive? She asked solemnly. You bet we have, pied Davy cheerfully, quite his own man again. I wasn't a bit scared, either, only just at the first. It come on a fellow so sudden. I made up my mind, quick as a wink, that I wouldn't fight Teddy Sloan on Monday, as I'd promised. But now maybe I will. Say, Dora, was you scared? Yes, I was a little scared, said Dora primly, but I held tight to Anne's hand and said my prayers over and over again. Well, I'd have said my prayers too if I'd thought of it, said Davy. But, he added triumphantly, you see I came through just as safe as you for all I didn't say him. Anne got Marilla glassful of her potent current wine. How potent! it was Anne in her earlier days had had all too good reason to know. And then they went to the door to look out on the strange scene. Far and wide was a white carpet, knee deep of hailstones. Drifts of them were heaped up under the eaves and on the steps. When three or four days later those hailstones melted, the havoc they had wrought was plainly seen. For every green, growing thing in the field or garden was cut off. Not only was every blossom stripped from the apple trees, but great boughs and branches were wrenched away. And out of the two hundred trees set out by the improvers by far the greater number were snapped off or torn to shreds. Can it possibly be the same world it was an hour ago? asked Anne daisedly. It must have taken longer than that to place such havoc. The like of this has never been known in Prince Edward Island, said Marilla. Never. I remember when I was a girl there was a bad storm. But it was nothing to this. We'll hear of terrible destruction, you may be sure. I do hope none of the children were caught out in it, murmured Anne anxiously. As it was discovered later none of the children had been, since all those who had any distance to go had taken Mr. Andrew's excellent advice and sought refuge at the post office. There comes John Henry Carter, said Marilla. John Henry came wading through the hailstones with the rather scared grin. Oh, ain't this awful, Miss Cuthbert! Mr. Harrison sent me over to see if yous had come out all right. Were none of us killed, said Marilla grimly, and none of the buildings was struck? I hope you got off equally well. Yes, sir. Not quite so well, ma'am. We was struck. The lightning knocked over the kitchen chimbly and come down the flue and knocked over Ginger's cage and tore a hole in the floor and went into the cellar. Yes, sir. Was Ginger hurt? queried Anne. Yes, sir. He was hurt pretty bad. He was killed. Later on Anne went over to comfort Mr. Harrison. She found him sitting by the table stroking Ginger's gay, dead body with a trembling hand. Poor Ginger won't call you any more names, Anne, he said mournfully. Anne could never have imagined herself crying on Ginger's account, but the tears came into her eyes. It was all the company I had, Anne, and now he's dead. Well, well, I'm an old fool to care so much. I let on, I don't care. I know you're going to say something sympathetic as soon as I stop talking, but don't. If you did, I'd cry like a baby. Hasn't this been a terrible storm? I guess folks won't laugh at Uncle Lape's predictions again. Seems as if all the storms that he's been prophesying all his life that never happened came all at once. Beats all how he struck the very day, though, don't it? Look at the mess we have here. I must hustle round and get some boards to patch up that hole in the floor. Avonlea folks did nothing the next day but visit each other and compare damages. The roads were impassable for wheels by reason of the hailstones, so they walked or rode on horseback. The mail came late with ill tidings from all over the province. Houses had been struck, people killed and injured, the whole telephone and telegraph system had been disorganized, and any number of young stock exposed in the fields had perished. Uncle Lape waited out to the blacksmith's forge early in the morning and spent the whole day there. It was Uncle Lape's hour of triumph, and he enjoyed it to the full. It would be doing Uncle Lape an injustice to say that he was glad the storm had happened. But since it had to be, he was very glad he had predicted it, to the very day, too. Uncle Lape forgot that he had ever denied setting the day. As for the trifling discrepancy in the hour, that was nothing. Gilbert arrived at Green Gables in the evening and found Marilla and Anne busily engaged in nailing strips of oilcloth over the broken windows. Goodness only knows when we'll get glass for them, said Marilla. Mr. Barry went over to Carmody this afternoon, but not a pain could he get for love or money. Lawson and Blair were cleaned out by the Carmody people by ten o'clock. Was the storm bad at White Sands, Gilbert? I should say so. I was caught in the school with all the children, and I thought some of them would go mad with fright. Three of them fainted, and two girls took hysterics, and Tommy Blewett did nothing but shriek at the top of his voice the whole time. I only squealed once, said Davy proudly. My garden was all smashed flat, he continued mournfully. But so was Doris, he added, in a tone which indicated that there was yet bomb in Gilead. Anne came running down from the West Gable. Oh, Gilbert, have you heard the news? Mr. Levi Bolter's old house was struck and burned to the ground. It seems to me that I'm dreadfully wicked to feel glad over that when so much damage has been done. Mr. Bolter says he believes the avus magicked up that storm on purpose. Well, one thing is certain, said Gilbert, laughing. Observer has made Uncle Labe's reputation as a weather-profit. Uncle Labe's storm will go down in local history. It is a most extraordinary coincidence that it should have come on the very day we selected. I actually have a half-guilty feeling as if I really had magicked it up. We may as well rejoice over the old house being removed, for there's not much to rejoice over where our young trees are concerned. Not ten of them have escaped. Oh, well, we'll just have to plant them over again next spring, said Anne philosophically. That is one good thing about this world. There are always sure to be more springs.