Anne of Avonlea
Marilla Cuthbert was driving into the yard as Anne returned from the
house, and the latter flew to get tea ready. They discussed the matter
at the tea table.
“I’ll be glad when the auction is over,” said Marilla. “It is too much
responsibility having so much stock about the place and nobody but that
unreliable Martin to look after them. He has never come back yet and he
promised that he would certainly be back last night if I’d give him the
day off to go to his aunt’s funeral. I don’t know how many aunts he has
got, I am sure. That’s the fourth that’s died since he hired here a
year ago. I’ll be more than thankful when the crop is in and Mr. Barry
takes over the farm. We’ll have to keep Dolly shut up in the pen till
Martin comes, for she must be put in the back pasture and the fences
there have to be fixed. I declare, it is a world of trouble, as Rachel
says. Here’s poor Mary Keith dying and what is to become of those two
children of hers is more than I know. She has a brother in British
Columbia and she has written to him about them, but she hasn’t heard
from him yet.”
“What are the children like? How old are they?”
“Six past . . . they’re twins.”
“Oh, I’ve always been especially interested in twins ever since Mrs.
Hammond had so many,” said Anne eagerly. “Are they pretty?”
“Goodness, you couldn’t tell . . . they were too dirty. Davy had been
out making mud pies and Dora went out to call him in. Davy pushed her
headfirst into the biggest pie and then, because she cried, he got into
it himself and wallowed in it to show her it was nothing to cry about.
Mary said Dora was really a very good child but that Davy was full of
mischief. He has never had any bringing up you might say. His father
died when he was a baby and Mary has been sick almost ever since.”
“I’m always sorry for children that have no bringing up,” said Anne
soberly. “You know _I_ hadn’t any till you took me in hand. I hope
their uncle will look after them. Just what relation is Mrs. Keith to
you?”
“Mary? None in the world. It was her husband . . . he was our third
cousin. There’s Mrs. Lynde coming through the yard. I thought she’d be
up to hear about Mary.”
“Don’t tell her about Mr. Harrison and the cow,” implored Anne.
Marilla promised; but the promise was quite unnecessary, for Mrs. Lynde
was no sooner fairly seated than she said,
“I saw Mr. Harrison chasing your Jersey out of his oats today when I
was coming home from Carmody. I thought he looked pretty mad. Did he
make much of a rumpus?”
Anne and Marilla furtively exchanged amused smiles. Few things in
Avonlea ever escaped Mrs. Lynde. It was only that morning Anne had
said,
“If you went to your own room at midnight, locked the door, pulled down
the blind, and _sneezed_, Mrs. Lynde would ask you the next day how
your cold was!”
“I believe he did,” admitted Marilla. “I was away. He gave Anne a piece
of his mind.”
“I think he is a very disagreeable man,” said Anne, with a resentful
toss of her ruddy head.
“You never said a truer word,” said Mrs. Rachel solemnly. “I knew
there’d be trouble when Robert Bell sold his place to a New Brunswick
man, that’s what. I don’t know what Avonlea is coming to, with so many
strange people rushing into it. It’ll soon not be safe to go to sleep
in our beds.”
“Why, what other strangers are coming in?” asked Marilla.
“Haven’t you heard? Well, there’s a family of Donnells, for one thing.
They’ve rented Peter Sloane’s old house. Peter has hired the man to run
his mill. They belong down east and nobody knows anything about them.
Then that shiftless Timothy Cotton family are going to move up from
White Sands and they’ll simply be a burden on the public. He is in
consumption . . . when he isn’t stealing . . . and his wife is a
slack-twisted creature that can’t turn her hand to a thing. She washes
her dishes _sitting down_. Mrs. George Pye has taken her husband’s
orphan nephew, Anthony Pye. He’ll be going to school to you, Anne, so
you may expect trouble, that’s what. And you’ll have another strange
pupil, too. Paul Irving is coming from the States to live with his
grandmother. You remember his father, Marilla . . . Stephen Irving, him
that jilted Lavendar Lewis over at Grafton?”
“I don’t think he jilted her. There was a quarrel . . . I suppose there
was blame on both sides.”
“Well, anyway, he didn’t marry her, and she’s been as queer as possible
ever since, they say . . . living all by herself in that little stone
house she calls Echo Lodge. Stephen went off to the States and went
into business with his uncle and married a Yankee. He’s never been home
since, though his mother has been up to see him once or twice. His wife
died two years ago and he’s sending the boy home to his mother for a
spell. He’s ten years old and I don’t know if he’ll be a very desirable
pupil. You can never tell about those Yankees.”
Mrs Lynde looked upon all people who had the misfortune to be born or
brought up elsewhere than in Prince Edward Island with a decided
can-any-good-thing-come-out-of-Nazareth air. They _might_ be good
people, of course; but you were on the safe side in doubting it. She
had a special prejudice against “Yankees.” Her husband had been cheated
out of ten dollars by an employer for whom he had once worked in Boston
and neither angels nor principalities nor powers could have convinced
Mrs. Rachel that the whole United States was not responsible for it.
“Avonlea school won’t be the worse for a little new blood,” said
Marilla drily, “and if this boy is anything like his father he’ll be
all right. Steve Irving was the nicest boy that was ever raised in
these parts, though some people did call him proud. I should think Mrs.
Irving would be very glad to have the child. She has been very lonesome
since her husband died.”
“Oh, the boy may be well enough, but he’ll be different from Avonlea
children,” said Mrs. Rachel, as if that clinched the matter. Mrs.
Rachel’s opinions concerning any person, place, or thing, were always
warranted to wear. “What’s this I hear about your going to start up a
Village Improvement Society, Anne?”
“I was just talking it over with some of the girls and boys at the last
Debating Club,” said Anne, flushing. “They thought it would be rather
nice . . . and so do Mr. and Mrs. Allan. Lots of villages have them
now.”
“Well, you’ll get into no end of hot water if you do. Better leave it
alone, Anne, that’s what. People don’t like being improved.”
“Oh, we are not going to try to improve the _people_. It is Avonlea
itself. There are lots of things which might be done to make it
prettier. For instance, if we could coax Mr. Levi Boulter to pull down
that dreadful old house on his upper farm wouldn’t that be an
improvement?”
“It certainly would,” admitted Mrs. Rachel. “That old ruin has been an
eyesore to the settlement for years. But if you Improvers can coax Levi
Boulter to do anything for the public that he isn’t to be paid for
doing, may I be there to see and hear the process, that’s what. I don’t
want to discourage you, Anne, for there may be something in your idea,
though I suppose you did get it out of some rubbishy Yankee magazine;
but you’ll have your hands full with your school and I advise you as a
friend not to bother with your improvements, that’s what. But there, I
know you’ll go ahead with it if you’ve set your mind on it. You were
always one to carry a thing through somehow.”
Something about the firm outlines of Anne’s lips told that Mrs. Rachel
was not far astray in this estimate. Anne’s heart was bent on forming
the Improvement Society. Gilbert Blythe, who was to teach in White
Sands but would always be home from Friday night to Monday morning, was
enthusiastic about it; and most of the other folks were willing to go
in for anything that meant occasional meetings and consequently some
“fun.” As for what the “improvements” were to be, nobody had any very
clear idea except Anne and Gilbert. They had talked them over and
planned them out until an ideal Avonlea existed in their minds, if
nowhere else.
Mrs. Rachel had still another item of news.
“They’ve given the Carmody school to a Priscilla Grant. Didn’t you go
to Queen’s with a girl of that name, Anne?”
“Yes, indeed. Priscilla to teach at Carmody! How perfectly lovely!”
exclaimed Anne, her gray eyes lighting up until they looked like
evening stars, causing Mrs. Lynde to wonder anew if she would ever get
it settled to her satisfaction whether Anne Shirley were really a
pretty girl or not.
II
Selling in Haste and Repenting at Leisure
Anne drove over to Carmody on a shopping expedition the next afternoon
and took Diana Barry with her. Diana was, of course, a pledged member
of the Improvement Society, and the two girls talked about little else
all the way to Carmody and back.
“The very first thing we ought to do when we get started is to have
that hall painted,” said Diana, as they drove past the Avonlea hall, a
rather shabby building set down in a wooded hollow, with spruce trees
hooding it about on all sides. “It’s a disgraceful looking place and we
must attend to it even before we try to get Mr. Levi Boulder to pull
his house down. Father says we’ll never succeed in doing _that_ . . .
Levi Boulter is too mean to spend the time it would take.”
“Perhaps he’ll let the boys take it down if they promise to haul the
boards and split them up for him for kindling wood,” said Anne
hopefully. “We must do our best and be content to go slowly at first.
We can’t expect to improve everything all at once. We’ll have to
educate public sentiment first, of course.”
Diana wasn’t exactly sure what educating public sentiment meant; but it
sounded fine and she felt rather proud that she was going to belong to
a society with such an aim in view.
“I thought of something last night that we could do, Anne. You know
that three-cornered piece of ground where the roads from Carmody and
Newbridge and White Sands meet? It’s all grown over with young spruce;
but wouldn’t it be nice to have them all cleared out, and just leave
the two or three birch trees that are on it?”
“Splendid,” agreed Anne gaily. “And have a rustic seat put under the
birches. And when spring comes we’ll have a flower-bed made in the
middle of it and plant geraniums.”
“Yes; only we’ll have to devise some way of getting old Mrs. Hiram
Sloane to keep her cow off the road, or she’ll eat our geraniums up,”
laughed Diana. “I begin to see what you mean by educating public
sentiment, Anne. There’s the old Boulter house now. Did you ever see
such a rookery? And perched right close to the road too. An old house
with its windows gone always makes me think of something dead with its
eyes picked out.”
“I think an old, deserted house is such a sad sight,” said Anne
dreamily. “It always seems to me to be thinking about its past and
mourning for its old-time joys. Marilla says that a large family was
raised in that old house long ago, and that it was a real pretty place,
with a lovely garden and roses climbing all over it. It was full of
little children and laughter and songs; and now it is empty, and
nothing ever wanders through it but the wind. How lonely and sorrowful
it must feel! Perhaps they all come back on moonlit nights . . . the
ghosts of the little children of long ago and the roses and the songs .
. . and for a little while the old house can dream it is young and
joyous again.”
Diana shook her head.
“I never imagine things like that about places now, Anne. Don’t you
remember how cross mother and Marilla were when we imagined ghosts into
the Haunted Wood? To this day I can’t go through that bush comfortably
after dark; and if I began imagining such things about the old Boulter
house I’d be frightened to pass it too. Besides, those children aren’t