Anne of Avonlea
took sick all of a sudden and Rachel sent up for me to go at once. When
I left here Dora was playing with her doll in the kitchen and Davy was
making mud pies behind the barn. I only got home half an hour ago . . .
and no Dora to be seen. Davy declares he never saw her since I left.”
“Neither I did,” avowed Davy solemnly.
“She must be somewhere around,” said Anne. “She would never wander far
away alone . . . you know how timid she is. Perhaps she has fallen
asleep in one of the rooms.”
Marilla shook her head.
“I’ve hunted the whole house through. But she may be in some of the
buildings.”
A thorough search followed. Every corner of house, yard, and
outbuildings was ransacked by those two distracted people. Anne roved
the orchards and the Haunted Wood, calling Dora’s name. Marilla took a
candle and explored the cellar. Davy accompanied each of them in turn,
and was fertile in thinking of places where Dora could possibly be.
Finally they met again in the yard.
“It’s a most mysterious thing,” groaned Marilla.
“Where can she be?” said Anne miserably
“Maybe she’s tumbled into the well,” suggested Davy cheerfully.
Anne and Marilla looked fearfully into each other’s eyes. The thought
had been with them both through their entire search but neither had
dared to put it into words.
“She . . . she might have,” whispered Marilla.
Anne, feeling faint and sick, went to the wellbox and peered over. The
bucket sat on the shelf inside. Far down below was a tiny glimmer of
still water. The Cuthbert well was the deepest in Avonlea. If Dora. . .
but Anne could not face the idea. She shuddered and turned away.
“Run across for Mr. Harrison,” said Marilla, wringing her hands.
“Mr. Harrison and John Henry are both away . . . they went to town
today. I’ll go for Mr. Barry.”
Mr. Barry came back with Anne, carrying a coil of rope to which was
attached a claw-like instrument that had been the business end of a
grubbing fork. Marilla and Anne stood by, cold and shaken with horror
and dread, while Mr. Barry dragged the well, and Davy, astride the
gate, watched the group with a face indicative of huge enjoyment.
Finally Mr. Barry shook his head, with a relieved air.
“She can’t be down there. It’s a mighty curious thing where she could
have got to, though. Look here, young man, are you sure you’ve no idea
where your sister is?”
“I’ve told you a dozen times that I haven’t,” said Davy, with an
injured air. “Maybe a tramp come and stole her.”
“Nonsense,” said Marilla sharply, relieved from her horrible fear of
the well. “Anne, do you suppose she could have strayed over to Mr.
Harrison’s? She has always been talking about his parrot ever since
that time you took her over.”
“I can’t believe Dora would venture so far alone but I’ll go over and
see,” said Anne.
Nobody was looking at Davy just then or it would have been seen that a
very decided change came over his face. He quietly slipped off the gate
and ran, as fast as his fat legs could carry him, to the barn.
Anne hastened across the fields to the Harrison establishment in no
very hopeful frame of mind. The house was locked, the window shades
were down, and there was no sign of anything living about the place.
She stood on the veranda and called Dora loudly.
Ginger, in the kitchen behind her, shrieked and swore with sudden
fierceness; but between his outbursts Anne heard a plaintive cry from
the little building in the yard which served Mr. Harrison as a
toolhouse. Anne flew to the door, unhasped it, and caught up a small
mortal with a tearstained face who was sitting forlornly on an upturned
nail keg.
“Oh, Dora, Dora, what a fright you have given us! How came you to be
here?”
“Davy and I came over to see Ginger,” sobbed Dora, “but we couldn’t see
him after all, only Davy made him swear by kicking the door. And then
Davy brought me here and run out and shut the door; and I couldn’t get
out. I cried and cried, I was frightened, and oh, I’m so hungry and
cold; and I thought you’d never come, Anne.”
“Davy?” But Anne could say no more. She carried Dora home with a heavy
heart. Her joy at finding the child safe and sound was drowned out in
the pain caused by Davy’s behavior. The freak of shutting Dora up might
easily have been pardoned. But Davy had told falsehoods . . . downright
coldblooded falsehoods about it. That was the ugly fact and Anne could
not shut her eyes to it. She could have sat down and cried with sheer
disappointment. She had grown to love Davy dearly . . . how dearly she
had not known until this minute . . . and it hurt her unbearably to
discover that he was guilty of deliberate falsehood.
Marilla listened to Anne’s tale in a silence that boded no good
Davy-ward; Mr. Barry laughed and advised that Davy be summarily dealt
with. When he had gone home Anne soothed and warmed the sobbing,
shivering Dora, got her her supper and put her to bed. Then she
returned to the kitchen, just as Marilla came grimly in, leading, or
rather pulling, the reluctant, cobwebby Davy, whom she had just found
hidden away in the darkest corner of the stable.
She jerked him to the mat on the middle of the floor and then went and
sat down by the east window. Anne was sitting limply by the west
window. Between them stood the culprit. His back was toward Marilla and
it was a meek, subdued, frightened back; but his face was toward Anne
and although it was a little shamefaced there was a gleam of
comradeship in Davy’s eyes, as if he knew he had done wrong and was
going to be punished for it, but could count on a laugh over it all
with Anne later on.
But no half hidden smile answered him in Anne’s gray eyes, as there
might have done had it been only a question of mischief. There was
something else . . . something ugly and repulsive.
“How could you behave so, Davy?” she asked sorrowfully.
Davy squirmed uncomfortably.
“I just did it for fun. Things have been so awful quiet here for so
long that I thought it would be fun to give you folks a big scare. It
was, too.”
In spite of fear and a little remorse Davy grinned over the
recollection.
“But you told a falsehood about it, Davy,” said Anne, more sorrowfully
than ever.
Davy looked puzzled.
“What’s a falsehood? Do you mean a whopper?”
“I mean a story that was not true.”
“Course I did,” said Davy frankly. “If I hadn’t you wouldn’t have been
scared. I _had_ to tell it.”
Anne was feeling the reaction from her fright and exertions. Davy’s
impenitent attitude gave the finishing touch. Two big tears brimmed up
in her eyes.
“Oh, Davy, how could you?” she said, with a quiver in her voice. “Don’t
you know how wrong it was?”
Davy was aghast. Anne crying . . . he had made Anne cry! A flood of
real remorse rolled like a wave over his warm little heart and engulfed
it. He rushed to Anne, hurled himself into her lap, flung his arms
around her neck, and burst into tears.
“I didn’t know it was wrong to tell whoppers,” he sobbed. “How did you
expect me to know it was wrong? All Mr. Sprott’s children told them
_regular_ every day, and cross their hearts too. I s’pose Paul Irving
never tells whoppers and here I’ve been trying awful hard to be as good
as him, but now I s’pose you’ll never love me again. But I think you
might have told me it was wrong. I’m awful sorry I’ve made you cry,
Anne, and I’ll never tell a whopper again.”
Davy buried his face in Anne’s shoulder and cried stormily. Anne, in a
sudden glad flash of understanding, held him tight and looked over his
curly thatch at Marilla.
“He didn’t know it was wrong to tell falsehoods, Marilla. I think we
must forgive him for that part of it this time if he will promise never
to say what isn’t true again.”
“I never will, now that I know it’s bad,” asseverated Davy between
sobs. “If you ever catch me telling a whopper again you can . . .” Davy
groped mentally for a suitable penance . . . “you can skin me alive,
Anne.”
“Don’t say ‘whopper,’ Davy . . . say ‘falsehood,’” said the
schoolma’am.
“Why?” queried Davy, settling comfortably down and looking up with a
tearstained, investigating face. “Why ain’t whopper as good as
falsehood? I want to know. It’s just as big a word.”
“It’s slang; and it’s wrong for little boys to use slang.”
“There’s an awful lot of things it’s wrong to do,” said Davy with a
sigh. “I never s’posed there was so many. I’m sorry it’s wrong to tell
whop . . . falsehoods, ’cause it’s awful handy, but since it is I’m
never going to tell any more. What are you going to do to me for
telling them this time? I want to know.” Anne looked beseechingly at
Marilla.
“I don’t want to be too hard on the child,” said Marilla. “I daresay
nobody ever did tell him it was wrong to tell lies, and those Sprott
children were no fit companions for him. Poor Mary was too sick to
train him properly and I presume you couldn’t expect a six-year-old
child to know things like that by instinct. I suppose we’ll just have
to assume he doesn’t know _anything_ right and begin at the beginning.
But he’ll have to be punished for shutting Dora up, and I can’t think
of any way except to send him to bed without his supper and we’ve done
that so often. Can’t you suggest something else, Anne? I should think
you ought to be able to, with that imagination you’re always talking
of.”
“But punishments are so horrid and I like to imagine only pleasant
things,” said Anne, cuddling Davy. “There are so many unpleasant things
in the world already that there is no use in imagining any more.”
In the end Davy was sent to bed, as usual, there to remain until noon
next day. He evidently did some thinking, for when Anne went up to her
room a little later she heard him calling her name softly. Going in,
she found him sitting up in bed, with his elbows on his knees and his
chin propped on his hands.
“Anne,” he said solemnly, “is it wrong for everybody to tell whop . . .
falsehoods? I want to know?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“Is it wrong for a grown-up person?”
“Yes.”
“Then,” said Davy decidedly, “Marilla is bad, for _she_ tells them. And
she’s worse’n me, for I didn’t know it was wrong but she does.”
“Davy Keith, Marilla never told a story in her life,” said Anne
indignantly.
“She did so. She told me last Tuesday that something dreadful _would_
happen to me if I didn’t say my prayers every night. And I haven’t said
them for over a week, just to see what would happen . . . and nothing
has,” concluded Davy in an aggrieved tone.
Anne choked back a mad desire to laugh with the conviction that it
would be fatal, and then earnestly set about saving Marilla’s
reputation.
“Why, Davy Keith,” she said solemnly, “something dreadful _has_
happened to you this very day.”
Davy looked sceptical.
“I s’pose you mean being sent to bed without any supper,” he said
scornfully, “but _that_ isn’t dreadful. Course, I don’t like it, but
I’ve been sent to bed so much since I come here that I’m getting used
to it. And you don’t save anything by making me go without supper
either, for I always eat twice as much for breakfast.”
“I don’t mean your being sent to bed. I mean the fact that you told a
falsehood today. And, Davy,” . . . Anne leaned over the footboard of
the bed and shook her finger impressively at the culprit . . . “for a
boy to tell what isn’t true is almost the worst thing that _could_
happen to him . . . almost the very worst. So you see Marilla told you
the truth.”
“But I thought the something bad would be exciting,” protested Davy in
an injured tone.
“Marilla isn’t to blame for what you thought. Bad things aren’t always
exciting. They’re very often just nasty and stupid.”
“It was awful funny to see Marilla and you looking down the well,
though,” said Davy, hugging his knees.