ANNE OF AVONLEA
by Lucy Maud Montgomery
To
my former teacher
HATTIE GORDON SMITH
in grateful remembrance of her
sympathy and encouragement.
Flowers spring to blossom where she walks
The careful ways of duty,
Our hard, stiff lines of life with her
Are flowing curves of beauty.
—WHITTIER
Contents
CHAPTER I. An Irate Neighbor
CHAPTER II. Selling in Haste and Repenting at Leisure
CHAPTER III. Mr. Harrison at Home
CHAPTER IV. Different Opinions
CHAPTER V. A Full-fledged Schoolma’am
CHAPTER VI. All Sorts and Conditions of Men . . . and women
CHAPTER VII. The Pointing of Duty
CHAPTER VIII. Marilla Adopts Twins
CHAPTER IX. A Question of Color
CHAPTER X. Davy in Search of a Sensation
CHAPTER XI. Facts and Fancies
CHAPTER XII. A Jonah Day
CHAPTER XIII. A Golden Picnic
CHAPTER XIV. A Danger Averted
CHAPTER XV. The Beginning of Vacation
CHAPTER XVI. The Substance of Things Hoped For
CHAPTER XVII. A Chapter of Accidents
CHAPTER XVIII. An Adventure on the Tory Road
CHAPTER XIX. Just a Happy Day
CHAPTER XX. The Way It Often Happens
CHAPTER XXI. Sweet Miss Lavendar
CHAPTER XXII. Odds and Ends
CHAPTER XXIII. Miss Lavendar’s Romance
CHAPTER XXIV. A Prophet in His Own Country
CHAPTER XXV. An Avonlea Scandal
CHAPTER XXVI. Around the Bend
CHAPTER XXVII. An Afternoon at the Stone House
CHAPTER XXVIII. The Prince Comes Back to the Enchanted Palace
CHAPTER XXIX. Poetry and Prose
CHAPTER XXX. A Wedding at the Stone House
I
An Irate Neighbor
A tall, slim girl, “half-past sixteen,” with serious gray eyes and hair
which her friends called auburn, had sat down on the broad red
sandstone doorstep of a Prince Edward Island farmhouse one ripe
afternoon in August, firmly resolved to construe so many lines of
Virgil.
But an August afternoon, with blue hazes scarfing the harvest slopes,
little winds whispering elfishly in the poplars, and a dancing slendor
of red poppies outflaming against the dark coppice of young firs in a
corner of the cherry orchard, was fitter for dreams than dead
languages. The Virgil soon slipped unheeded to the ground, and Anne,
her chin propped on her clasped hands, and her eyes on the splendid
mass of fluffy clouds that were heaping up just over Mr. J. A.
Harrison’s house like a great white mountain, was far away in a
delicious world where a certain schoolteacher was doing a wonderful
work, shaping the destinies of future statesmen, and inspiring youthful
minds and hearts with high and lofty ambitions.
To be sure, if you came down to harsh facts . . . which, it must be
confessed, Anne seldom did until she had to . . . it did not seem
likely that there was much promising material for celebrities in
Avonlea school; but you could never tell what might happen if a teacher
used her influence for good. Anne had certain rose-tinted ideals of
what a teacher might accomplish if she only went the right way about
it; and she was in the midst of a delightful scene, forty years hence,
with a famous personage . . . just exactly what he was to be famous for
was left in convenient haziness, but Anne thought it would be rather
nice to have him a college president or a Canadian premier . . . bowing
low over her wrinkled hand and assuring her that it was she who had
first kindled his ambition, and that all his success in life was due to
the lessons she had instilled so long ago in Avonlea school. This
pleasant vision was shattered by a most unpleasant interruption.
A demure little Jersey cow came scuttling down the lane and five
seconds later Mr. Harrison arrived . . . if “arrived” be not too mild a
term to describe the manner of his irruption into the yard.
He bounced over the fence without waiting to open the gate, and angrily
confronted astonished Anne, who had risen to her feet and stood looking
at him in some bewilderment. Mr. Harrison was their new righthand
neighbor and she had never met him before, although she had seen him
once or twice.
In early April, before Anne had come home from Queen’s, Mr. Robert
Bell, whose farm adjoined the Cuthbert place on the west, had sold out
and moved to Charlottetown. His farm had been bought by a certain Mr.
J. A. Harrison, whose name, and the fact that he was a New Brunswick
man, were all that was known about him. But before he had been a month
in Avonlea he had won the reputation of being an odd person . . . “a
crank,” Mrs. Rachel Lynde said. Mrs. Rachel was an outspoken lady, as
those of you who may have already made her acquaintance will remember.
Mr. Harrison was certainly different from other people . . . and that
is the essential characteristic of a crank, as everybody knows.
In the first place he kept house for himself and had publicly stated
that he wanted no fools of women around his diggings. Feminine Avonlea
took its revenge by the gruesome tales it related about his
house-keeping and cooking. He had hired little John Henry Carter of
White Sands and John Henry started the stories. For one thing, there
was never any stated time for meals in the Harrison establishment. Mr.
Harrison “got a bite” when he felt hungry, and if John Henry were
around at the time, he came in for a share, but if he were not, he had
to wait until Mr. Harrison’s next hungry spell. John Henry mournfully
averred that he would have starved to death if it wasn’t that he got
home on Sundays and got a good filling up, and that his mother always
gave him a basket of “grub” to take back with him on Monday mornings.
As for washing dishes, Mr. Harrison never made any pretence of doing it
unless a rainy Sunday came. Then he went to work and washed them all at
once in the rainwater hogshead, and left them to drain dry.
Again, Mr. Harrison was “close.” When he was asked to subscribe to the
Rev. Mr. Allan’s salary he said he’d wait and see how many dollars’
worth of good he got out of his preaching first . . . he didn’t believe
in buying a pig in a poke. And when Mrs. Lynde went to ask for a
contribution to missions . . . and incidentally to see the inside of
the house . . . he told her there were more heathens among the old
woman gossips in Avonlea than anywhere else he knew of, and he’d
cheerfully contribute to a mission for Christianizing them if she’d
undertake it. Mrs. Rachel got herself away and said it was a mercy poor
Mrs. Robert Bell was safe in her grave, for it would have broken her
heart to see the state of her house in which she used to take so much
pride.
“Why, she scrubbed the kitchen floor every second day,” Mrs. Lynde told
Marilla Cuthbert indignantly, “and if you could see it now! I had to
hold up my skirts as I walked across it.”
Finally, Mr. Harrison kept a parrot called Ginger. Nobody in Avonlea
had ever kept a parrot before; consequently that proceeding was
considered barely respectable. And such a parrot! If you took John
Henry Carter’s word for it, never was such an unholy bird. It swore
terribly. Mrs. Carter would have taken John Henry away at once if she
had been sure she could get another place for him. Besides, Ginger had
bitten a piece right out of the back of John Henry’s neck one day when
he had stooped down too near the cage. Mrs. Carter showed everybody the
mark when the luckless John Henry went home on Sundays.
All these things flashed through Anne’s mind as Mr. Harrison stood,
quite speechless with wrath apparently, before her. In his most amiable
mood Mr. Harrison could not have been considered a handsome man; he was
short and fat and bald; and now, with his round face purple with rage
and his prominent blue eyes almost sticking out of his head, Anne
thought he was really the ugliest person she had ever seen.
All at once Mr. Harrison found his voice.
“I’m not going to put up with this,” he spluttered, “not a day longer,
do you hear, miss. Bless my soul, this is the third time, miss . . .
the third time! Patience has ceased to be a virtue, miss. I warned your
aunt the last time not to let it occur again . . . and she’s let it . .
. she’s done it . . . what does she mean by it, that is what I want to
know. That is what I’m here about, miss.”
“Will you explain what the trouble is?” asked Anne, in her most
dignified manner. She had been practicing it considerably of late to
have it in good working order when school began; but it had no apparent
effect on the irate J. A. Harrison.
“Trouble, is it? Bless my soul, trouble enough, I should think. The
trouble is, miss, that I found that Jersey cow of your aunt’s in my
oats again, not half an hour ago. The third time, mark you. I found her
in last Tuesday and I found her in yesterday. I came here and told your
aunt not to let it occur again. She has let it occur again. Where’s
your aunt, miss? I just want to see her for a minute and give her a
piece of my mind . . . a piece of J. A. Harrison’s mind, miss.”
“If you mean Miss Marilla Cuthbert, she is not my aunt, and she has
gone down to East Grafton to see a distant relative of hers who is very
ill,” said Anne, with due increase of dignity at every word. “I am very
sorry that my cow should have broken into your oats . . . she is my cow
and not Miss Cuthbert’s . . . Matthew gave her to me three years ago
when she was a little calf and he bought her from Mr. Bell.”
“Sorry, miss! Sorry isn’t going to help matters any. You’d better go
and look at the havoc that animal has made in my oats . . . trampled
them from center to circumference, miss.”
“I am very sorry,” repeated Anne firmly, “but perhaps if you kept your
fences in better repair Dolly might not have broken in. It is your part
of the line fence that separates your oatfield from our pasture and I
noticed the other day that it was not in very good condition.”
“My fence is all right,” snapped Mr. Harrison, angrier than ever at
this carrying of the war into the enemy’s country. “The jail fence
couldn’t keep a demon of a cow like that out. And I can tell you, you
redheaded snippet, that if the cow is yours, as you say, you’d be
better employed in watching her out of other people’s grain than in
sitting round reading yellow-covered novels,” . . . with a scathing
glance at the innocent tan-colored Virgil by Anne’s feet.
Something at that moment was red besides Anne’s hair . . . which had
always been a tender point with her.
“I’d rather have red hair than none at all, except a little fringe
round my ears,” she flashed.
The shot told, for Mr. Harrison was really very sensitive about his
bald head. His anger choked him up again and he could only glare
speechlessly at Anne, who recovered her temper and followed up her
advantage.
“I can make allowance for you, Mr. Harrison, because I have an
imagination. I can easily imagine how very trying it must be to find a
cow in your oats and I shall not cherish any hard feelings against you
for the things you’ve said. I promise you that Dolly shall never break
into your oats again. I give you my word of honor on _that_ point.”
“Well, mind you she doesn’t,” muttered Mr. Harrison in a somewhat
subdued tone; but he stamped off angrily enough and Anne heard him
growling to himself until he was out of earshot.
Grievously disturbed in mind, Anne marched across the yard and shut the
naughty Jersey up in the milking pen.
“She can’t possibly get out of that unless she tears the fence down,”
she reflected. “She looks pretty quiet now. I daresay she has sickened
herself on those oats. I wish I’d sold her to Mr. Shearer when he
wanted her last week, but I thought it was just as well to wait until
we had the auction of the stock and let them all go together. I believe
it is true about Mr. Harrison being a crank. Certainly there’s nothing
of the kindred spirit about _him_.”
Anne had always a weather eye open for kindred spirits.