Anne of Avonlea
and youthful curves, and there were fine, patient lines about eyes and
mouth. A tiny grave in that very cemetery accounted for some of them;
and some new ones had come during the recent illness, now happily over,
of her little son. But Mrs. Allan’s dimples were as sweet and sudden as
ever, her eyes as clear and bright and true; and what her face lacked
of girlish beauty was now more than atoned for in added tenderness and
strength.
“I suppose you are looking forward to your vacation, Anne?” she said,
as they left the graveyard.
Anne nodded.
“Yes. . . . I could roll the word as a sweet morsel under my tongue. I
think the summer is going to be lovely. For one thing, Mrs. Morgan is
coming to the Island in July and Priscilla is going to bring her up. I
feel one of my old ‘thrills’ at the mere thought.”
“I hope you’ll have a good time, Anne. You’ve worked very hard this
past year and you have succeeded.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve come so far short in so many things. I haven’t
done what I meant to do when I began to teach last fall. I haven’t
lived up to my ideals.”
“None of us ever do,” said Mrs. Allan with a sigh. “But then, Anne, you
know what Lowell says, ‘Not failure but low aim is crime.’ We must have
ideals and try to live up to them, even if we never quite succeed. Life
would be a sorry business without them. With them it’s grand and great.
Hold fast to your ideals, Anne.”
“I shall try. But I have to let go most of my theories,” said Anne,
laughing a little. “I had the most beautiful set of theories you ever
knew when I started out as a schoolma’am, but every one of them has
failed me at some pinch or another.”
“Even the theory on corporal punishment,” teased Mrs. Allan.
But Anne flushed.
“I shall never forgive myself for whipping Anthony.”
“Nonsense, dear, he deserved it. And it agreed with him. You have had
no trouble with him since and he has come to think there’s nobody like
you. Your kindness won his love after the idea that a ‘girl was no
good’ was rooted out of his stubborn mind.”
“He may have deserved it, but that is not the point. If I had calmly
and deliberately decided to whip him because I thought it a just
punishment for him I would not feel over it as I do. But the truth is,
Mrs. Allan, that I just flew into a temper and whipped him because of
that. I wasn’t thinking whether it was just or unjust . . . even if he
hadn’t deserved it I’d have done it just the same. That is what
humiliates me.”
“Well, we all make mistakes, dear, so just put it behind you. We should
regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward
into the future with us. There goes Gilbert Blythe on his wheel . . .
home for his vacation too, I suppose. How are you and he getting on
with your studies?”
“Pretty well. We plan to finish the Virgil tonight . . . there are only
twenty lines to do. Then we are not going to study any more until
September.”
“Do you think you will ever get to college?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Anne looked dreamily afar to the opal-tinted
horizon. “Marilla’s eyes will never be much better than they are now,
although we are so thankful to think that they will not get worse. And
then there are the twins . . . somehow I don’t believe their uncle will
ever really send for them. Perhaps college may be around the bend in
the road, but I haven’t got to the bend yet and I don’t think much
about it lest I might grow discontented.”
“Well, I should like to see you go to college, Anne; but if you never
do, don’t be discontented about it. We make our own lives wherever we
are, after all . . . college can only help us to do it more easily.
They are broad or narrow according to what we put into them, not what
we get out. Life is rich and full here . . . everywhere . . . if we can
only learn how to open our whole hearts to its richness and fulness.”
“I think I understand what you mean,” said Anne thoughtfully, “and I
know I have so much to feel thankful for . . . oh, so much . . . my
work, and Paul Irving, and the dear twins, and all my friends. Do you
know, Mrs. Allan, I’m so thankful for friendship. It beautifies life so
much.”
“True friendship is a very helpful thing indeed,” said Mrs. Allan, “and
we should have a very high ideal of it, and never sully it by any
failure in truth and sincerity. I fear the name of friendship is often
degraded to a kind of intimacy that has nothing of real friendship in
it.”
“Yes . . . like Gertie Pye’s and Julia Bell’s. They are very intimate
and go everywhere together; but Gertie is always saying nasty things of
Julia behind her back and everybody thinks she is jealous of her
because she is always so pleased when anybody criticizes Julia. I think
it is desecration to call _that_ friendship. If we have friends we
should look only for the best in them and give them the best that is in
us, don’t you think? Then friendship would be the most beautiful thing
in the world.”
“Friendship _is_ very beautiful,” smiled Mrs. Allan, “but some day . .
.”
Then she paused abruptly. In the delicate, white-browed face beside
her, with its candid eyes and mobile features, there was still far more
of the child than of the woman. Anne’s heart so far harbored only
dreams of friendship and ambition, and Mrs. Allan did not wish to brush
the bloom from her sweet unconsciousness. So she left her sentence for
the future years to finish.
XVI
The Substance of Things Hoped For
“Anne,” said Davy appealingly, scrambling up on the shiny,
leather-covered sofa in the Green Gables kitchen, where Anne sat,
reading a letter, “Anne, I’m _awful_ hungry. You’ve no idea.”
“I’ll get you a piece of bread and butter in a minute,” said Anne
absently. Her letter evidently contained some exciting news, for her
cheeks were as pink as the roses on the big bush outside, and her eyes
were as starry as only Anne’s eyes could be.
“But I ain’t bread and butter hungry,” said Davy in a disgusted tone.
“I’m plum cake hungry.”
“Oh,” laughed Anne, laying down her letter and putting her arm about
Davy to give him a squeeze, “that’s a kind of hunger that can be
endured very comfortably, Davy-boy. You know it’s one of Marilla’s
rules that you can’t have anything but bread and butter between meals.”
“Well, gimme a piece then . . . please.”
Davy had been at last taught to say “please,” but he generally tacked
it on as an afterthought. He looked with approval at the generous slice
Anne presently brought to him. “You always put such a nice lot of
butter on it, Anne. Marilla spreads it pretty thin. It slips down a lot
easier when there’s plenty of butter.”
The slice “slipped down” with tolerable ease, judging from its rapid
disappearance. Davy slid head first off the sofa, turned a double
somersault on the rug, and then sat up and announced decidedly,
“Anne, I’ve made up my mind about heaven. I don’t want to go there.”
“Why not?” asked Anne gravely.
“Cause heaven is in Simon Fletcher’s garret, and I don’t like Simon
Fletcher.”
“Heaven in . . . Simon Fletcher’s garret!” gasped Anne, too amazed even
to laugh. “Davy Keith, whatever put such an extraordinary idea into
your head?”
“Milty Boulter says that’s where it is. It was last Sunday in Sunday
School. The lesson was about Elijah and Elisha, and I up and asked Miss
Rogerson where heaven was. Miss Rogerson looked awful offended. She was
cross anyhow, because when she’d asked us what Elijah left Elisha when
he went to heaven Milty Boulter said, ‘His old clo’es,’ and us fellows
all laughed before we thought. I wish you could think first and do
things afterwards, ’cause then you wouldn’t do them. But Milty didn’t
mean to be disrespeckful. He just couldn’t think of the name of the
thing. Miss Rogerson said heaven was where God was and I wasn’t to ask
questions like that. Milty nudged me and said in a whisper, ‘Heaven’s
in Uncle Simon’s garret and I’ll esplain about it on the road home.’ So
when we was coming home he esplained. Milty’s a great hand at
esplaining things. Even if he don’t know anything about a thing he’ll
make up a lot of stuff and so you get it esplained all the same. His
mother is Mrs. Simon’s sister and he went with her to the funeral when
his cousin, Jane Ellen, died. The minister said she’d gone to heaven,
though Milty says she was lying right before them in the coffin. But he
s’posed they carried the coffin to the garret afterwards. Well, when
Milty and his mother went upstairs after it was all over to get her
bonnet he asked her where heaven was that Jane Ellen had gone to, and
she pointed right to the ceiling and said, ‘Up there.’ Milty knew there
wasn’t anything but the garret over the ceiling, so that’s how _he_
found out. And he’s been awful scared to go to his Uncle Simon’s ever
since.”
Anne took Davy on her knee and did her best to straighten out this
theological tangle also. She was much better fitted for the task than
Marilla, for she remembered her own childhood and had an instinctive
understanding of the curious ideas that seven-year-olds sometimes get
about matters that are, of course, very plain and simple to grown up
people. She had just succeeded in convincing Davy that heaven was _not_
in Simon Fletcher’s garret when Marilla came in from the garden, where
she and Dora had been picking peas. Dora was an industrious little soul
and never happier than when “helping” in various small tasks suited to
her chubby fingers. She fed chickens, picked up chips, wiped dishes,
and ran errands galore. She was neat, faithful and observant; she never
had to be told how to do a thing twice and never forgot any of her
little duties. Davy, on the other hand, was rather heedless and
forgetful; but he had the born knack of winning love, and even yet Anne
and Marilla liked him the better.
While Dora proudly shelled the peas and Davy made boats of the pods,
with masts of matches and sails of paper, Anne told Marilla about the
wonderful contents of her letter.
“Oh, Marilla, what do you think? I’ve had a letter from Priscilla and
she says that Mrs. Morgan is on the Island, and that if it is fine
Thursday they are going to drive up to Avonlea and will reach here
about twelve. They will spend the afternoon with us and go to the hotel
at White Sands in the evening, because some of Mrs. Morgan’s American
friends are staying there. Oh, Marilla, isn’t it wonderful? I can
hardly believe I’m not dreaming.”
“I daresay Mrs. Morgan is a lot like other people,” said Marilla drily,
although she did feel a trifle excited herself. Mrs. Morgan was a
famous woman and a visit from her was no commonplace occurrence.
“They’ll be here to dinner, then?”
“Yes; and oh, Marilla, may I cook every bit of the dinner myself? I
want to feel that I can do something for the author of ‘The Rosebud
Garden,’ if it is only to cook a dinner for her. You won’t mind, will
you?”
“Goodness, I’m not so fond of stewing over a hot fire in July that it
would vex me very much to have someone else do it. You’re quite welcome
to the job.”
“Oh, thank you,” said Anne, as if Marilla had just conferred a
tremendous favor, “I’ll make out the menu this very night.”
“You’d better not try to put on too much style,” warned Marilla, a
little alarmed by the high-flown sound of ‘menu.’ “You’ll likely come
to grief if you do.”
“Oh, I’m not going to put on any ‘style,’ if you mean trying to do or
have things we don’t usually have on festal occasions,” assured Anne.
“That would be affectation, and, although I know I haven’t as much
sense and steadiness as a girl of seventeen and a schoolteacher ought
to have, I’m not so silly as _that_. But I want to have everything as
nice and dainty as possible. Davy-boy, don’t leave those peapods on the
back stairs . . . someone might slip on them. I’ll have a light soup to