Anne of Avonlea
front door, and threw the blue and white parcel in, before St. Clair,
who had sprung to his feet, could utter a word. Then he dodged back
just in time.
For a few moments the terrified occupants of Avonlea school did not
know whether it was an earthquake or a volcanic explosion that had
occurred. The innocent looking parcel which Anne had rashly supposed to
contain Mrs. Hiram’s nut cakes really held an assortment of
firecrackers and pinwheels for which Warren Sloane had sent to town by
St. Clair Donnell’s father the day before, intending to have a birthday
celebration that evening. The crackers went off in a thunderclap of
noise and the pinwheels bursting out of the door spun madly around the
room, hissing and spluttering. Anne dropped into her chair white with
dismay and all the girls climbed shrieking upon their desks. Joe Sloane
stood as one transfixed in the midst of the commotion and St. Clair,
helpless with laughter, rocked to and fro in the aisle. Prillie
Rogerson fainted and Annetta Bell went into hysterics.
It seemed a long time, although it was really only a few minutes,
before the last pinwheel subsided. Anne, recovering herself, sprang to
open doors and windows and let out the gas and smoke which filled the
room. Then she helped the girls carry the unconscious Prillie into the
porch, where Barbara Shaw, in an agony of desire to be useful, poured a
pailful of half frozen water over Prillie’s face and shoulders before
anyone could stop her.
It was a full hour before quiet was restored . . . but it was a quiet
that might be felt. Everybody realized that even the explosion had not
cleared the teacher’s mental atmosphere. Nobody, except Anthony Pye,
dared whisper a word. Ned Clay accidentally squeaked his pencil while
working a sum, caught Anne’s eye and wished the floor would open and
swallow him up. The geography class were whisked through a continent
with a speed that made them dizzy. The grammar class were parsed and
analyzed within an inch of their lives. Chester Sloane, spelling
“odoriferous” with two f’s, was made to feel that he could never live
down the disgrace of it, either in this world or that which is to come.
Anne knew that she had made herself ridiculous and that the incident
would be laughed over that night at a score of tea-tables, but the
knowledge only angered her further. In a calmer mood she could have
carried off the situation with a laugh but now that was impossible; so
she ignored it in icy disdain.
When Anne returned to the school after dinner all the children were as
usual in their seats and every face was bent studiously over a desk
except Anthony Pye’s. He peered across his book at Anne, his black eyes
sparkling with curiosity and mockery. Anne twitched open the drawer of
her desk in search of chalk and under her very hand a lively mouse
sprang out of the drawer, scampered over the desk, and leaped to the
floor.
Anne screamed and sprang back, as if it had been a snake, and Anthony
Pye laughed aloud.
Then a silence fell . . . a very creepy, uncomfortable silence. Annetta
Bell was of two minds whether to go into hysterics again or not,
especially as she didn’t know just where the mouse had gone. But she
decided not to. Who could take any comfort out of hysterics with a
teacher so white-faced and so blazing-eyed standing before one?
“Who put that mouse in my desk?” said Anne. Her voice was quite low but
it made a shiver go up and down Paul Irving’s spine. Joe Sloane caught
her eye, felt responsible from the crown of his head to the sole of his
feet, but stuttered out wildly,
“N . . . n . . . not m . . . m . . . me t . . . t . . . teacher, n . .
. n . . . not m . . . m . . . me.”
Anne paid no attention to the wretched Joseph. She looked at Anthony
Pye, and Anthony Pye looked back unabashed and unashamed.
“Anthony, was it you?”
“Yes, it was,” said Anthony insolently.
Anne took her pointer from her desk. It was a long, heavy hardwood
pointer.
“Come here, Anthony.”
It was far from being the most severe punishment Anthony Pye had ever
undergone. Anne, even the stormy-souled Anne she was at that moment,
could not have punished any child cruelly. But the pointer nipped
keenly and finally Anthony’s bravado failed him; he winced and the
tears came to his eyes.
Anne, conscience-stricken, dropped the pointer and told Anthony to go
to his seat. She sat down at her desk feeling ashamed, repentant, and
bitterly mortified. Her quick anger was gone and she would have given
much to have been able to seek relief in tears. So all her boasts had
come to this . . . she had actually whipped one of her pupils. How Jane
would triumph! And how Mr. Harrison would chuckle! But worse than this,
bitterest thought of all, she had lost her last chance of winning
Anthony Pye. Never would he like her now.
Anne, by what somebody has called “a Herculaneum effort,” kept back her
tears until she got home that night. Then she shut herself in the east
gable room and wept all her shame and remorse and disappointment into
her pillows . . . wept so long that Marilla grew alarmed, invaded the
room, and insisted on knowing what the trouble was.
“The trouble is, I’ve got things the matter with my conscience,” sobbed
Anne. “Oh, this has been such a Jonah day, Marilla. I’m so ashamed of
myself. I lost my temper and whipped Anthony Pye.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Marilla with decision. “It’s what you
should have done long ago.”
“Oh, no, no, Marilla. And I don’t see how I can ever look those
children in the face again. I feel that I have humiliated myself to the
very dust. You don’t know how cross and hateful and horrid I was. I
can’t forget the expression in Paul Irving’s eyes . . . he looked so
surprised and disappointed. Oh, Marilla, I _have_ tried so hard to be
patient and to win Anthony’s liking . . . and now it has all gone for
nothing.”
Marilla passed her hard work-worn hand over the girl’s glossy, tumbled
hair with a wonderful tenderness. When Anne’s sobs grew quieter she
said, very gently for her,
“You take things too much to heart, Anne. We all make mistakes . . .
but people forget them. And Jonah days come to everybody. As for
Anthony Pye, why need you care if he does dislike you? He is the only
one.”
“I can’t help it. I want everybody to love me and it hurts me so when
anybody doesn’t. And Anthony never will now. Oh, I just made an idiot
of myself today, Marilla. I’ll tell you the whole story.”
Marilla listened to the whole story, and if she smiled at certain parts
of it Anne never knew. When the tale was ended she said briskly,
“Well, never mind. This day’s done and there’s a new one coming
tomorrow, with no mistakes in it yet, as you used to say yourself. Just
come downstairs and have your supper. You’ll see if a good cup of tea
and those plum puffs I made today won’t hearten you up.”
“Plum puffs won’t minister to a mind diseased,” said Anne
disconsolately; but Marilla thought it a good sign that she had
recovered sufficiently to adapt a quotation.
The cheerful supper table, with the twins’ bright faces, and Marilla’s
matchless plum puffs . . . of which Davy ate four . . . did “hearten
her up” considerably after all. She had a good sleep that night and
awakened in the morning to find herself and the world transformed. It
had snowed softly and thickly all through the hours of darkness and the
beautiful whiteness, glittering in the frosty sunshine, looked like a
mantle of charity cast over all the mistakes and humiliations of the
past.
“Every morn is a fresh beginning,
Every morn is the world made new,”
sang Anne, as she dressed.
Owing to the snow she had to go around by the road to school and she
thought it was certainly an impish coincidence that Anthony Pye should
come ploughing along just as she left the Green Gables lane. She felt
as guilty as if their positions were reversed; but to her unspeakable
astonishment Anthony not only lifted his cap . . . which he had never
done before . . . but said easily,
“Kind of bad walking, ain’t it? Can I take those books for you,
teacher?”
Anne surrendered her books and wondered if she could possibly be awake.
Anthony walked on in silence to the school, but when Anne took her
books she smiled down at him . . . not the stereotyped “kind” smile she
had so persistently assumed for his benefit but a sudden outflashing of
good comradeship. Anthony smiled . . . no, if the truth must be told,
Anthony _grinned_ back. A grin is not generally supposed to be a
respectful thing; yet Anne suddenly felt that if she had not yet won
Anthony’s liking she had, somehow or other, won his respect.
Mrs. Rachel Lynde came up the next Saturday and confirmed this.
“Well, Anne, I guess you’ve won over Anthony Pye, that’s what. He says
he believes you are some good after all, even if you are a girl. Says
that whipping you gave him was ‘just as good as a man’s.’”
“I never expected to win him by whipping him, though,” said Anne, a
little mournfully, feeling that her ideals had played her false
somewhere. “It doesn’t seem right. I’m _sure_ my theory of kindness
_can’t_ be wrong.”
“No, but the Pyes are an exception to every known rule, that’s what,”
declared Mrs. Rachel with conviction.
Mr. Harrison said, “Thought you’d come to it,” when he heard it, and
Jane rubbed it in rather unmercifully.
XIII
A Golden Picnic
Anne, on her way to Orchard Slope, met Diana, bound for Green Gables,
just where the mossy old log bridge spanned the brook below the Haunted
Wood, and they sat down by the margin of the Dryad’s Bubble, where tiny
ferns were unrolling like curly-headed green pixy folk wakening up from
a nap.
“I was just on my way over to invite you to help me celebrate my
birthday on Saturday,” said Anne.
“Your birthday? But your birthday was in March!”
“That wasn’t my fault,” laughed Anne. “If my parents had consulted me
it would never have happened then. I should have chosen to be born in
spring, of course. It must be delightful to come into the world with
the mayflowers and violets. You would always feel that you were their
foster sister. But since I didn’t, the next best thing is to celebrate
my birthday in the spring. Priscilla is coming over Saturday and Jane
will be home. We’ll all four start off to the woods and spend a golden
day making the acquaintance of the spring. We none of us really know
her yet, but we’ll meet her back there as we never can anywhere else. I
want to explore all those fields and lonely places anyhow. I have a
conviction that there are scores of beautiful nooks there that have
never really been _seen_ although they may have been _looked_ at. We’ll
make friends with wind and sky and sun, and bring home the spring in
our hearts.”
“It _sounds_ awfully nice,” said Diana, with some inward distrust of
Anne’s magic of words. “But won’t it be very damp in some places yet?”
“Oh, we’ll wear rubbers,” was Anne’s concession to practicalities. “And
I want you to come over early Saturday morning and help me prepare
lunch. I’m going to have the daintiest things possible . . . things
that will match the spring, you understand . . . little jelly tarts and
lady fingers, and drop cookies frosted with pink and yellow icing, and
buttercup cake. And we must have sandwiches too, though they’re _not_
very poetical.”
Saturday proved an ideal day for a picnic . . . a day of breeze and
blue, warm, sunny, with a little rollicking wind blowing across meadow
and orchard. Over every sunlit upland and field was a delicate,
flower-starred green.
Mr. Harrison, harrowing at the back of his farm and feeling some of the
spring witch-work even in his sober, middle-aged blood, saw four girls,
basket laden, tripping across the end of his field where it joined a