Anne of Avonlea
begin with . . . you know I can make lovely cream-of-onion soup . . .
and then a couple of roast fowls. I’ll have the two white roosters. I
have real affection for those roosters and they’ve been pets ever since
the gray hen hatched out just the two of them . . . little balls of
yellow down. But I know they would have to be sacrificed sometime, and
surely there couldn’t be a worthier occasion than this. But oh,
Marilla, _I_ cannot kill them . . . not even for Mrs. Morgan’s sake.
I’ll have to ask John Henry Carter to come over and do it for me.”
“I’ll do it,” volunteered Davy, “if Marilla’ll hold them by the legs,
’cause I guess it’d take both my hands to manage the axe. It’s awful
jolly fun to see them hopping about after their heads are cut off.”
“Then I’ll have peas and beans and creamed potatoes and a lettuce
salad, for vegetables,” resumed Anne, “and for dessert, lemon pie with
whipped cream, and coffee and cheese and lady fingers. I’ll make the
pies and lady fingers tomorrow and do up my white muslin dress. And I
must tell Diana tonight, for she’ll want to do up hers. Mrs. Morgan’s
heroines are nearly always dressed in white muslin, and Diana and I
have always resolved that that was what we would wear if we ever met
her. It will be such a delicate compliment, don’t you think? Davy,
dear, you mustn’t poke peapods into the cracks of the floor. I must ask
Mr. and Mrs. Allan and Miss Stacy to dinner, too, for they’re all very
anxious to meet Mrs. Morgan. It’s so fortunate she’s coming while Miss
Stacy is here. Davy dear, don’t sail the peapods in the water bucket .
. . go out to the trough. Oh, I do hope it will be fine Thursday, and I
think it will, for Uncle Abe said last night when he called at Mr.
Harrison’s, that it was going to rain most of this week.”
“That’s a good sign,” agreed Marilla.
Anne ran across to Orchard Slope that evening to tell the news to
Diana, who was also very much excited over it, and they discussed the
matter in the hammock swung under the big willow in the Barry garden.
“Oh, Anne, mayn’t I help you cook the dinner?” implored Diana. “You
know I can make splendid lettuce salad.”
“Indeed you, may” said Anne unselfishly. “And I shall want you to help
me decorate too. I mean to have the parlor simply a _bower_ of blossoms
. . . and the dining table is to be adorned with wild roses. Oh, I do
hope everything will go smoothly. Mrs. Morgan’s heroines _never_ get
into scrapes or are taken at a disadvantage, and they are always so
selfpossessed and such good housekeepers. They seem to be _born_ good
housekeepers. You remember that _Gertrude_ in ‘Edgewood Days’ kept
house for her father when she was only eight years old. When I was
eight years old I hardly knew how to do a thing except bring up
children. Mrs. Morgan must be an authority on girls when she has
written so much about them, and I do want her to have a good opinion of
us. I’ve imagined it all out a dozen different ways . . . what she’ll
look like, and what she’ll say, and what I’ll say. And I’m so anxious
about my nose. There are seven freckles on it, as you can see. They
came at the A.V.I S. picnic, when I went around in the sun without my
hat. I suppose it’s ungrateful of me to worry over them, when I should
be thankful they’re not spread all over my face as they once were; but
I do wish they hadn’t come . . . all Mrs. Morgan’s heroines have such
perfect complexions. I can’t recall a freckled one among them.”
“Yours are not very noticeable,” comforted Diana. “Try a little lemon
juice on them tonight.”
The next day Anne made her pies and lady fingers, did up her muslin
dress, and swept and dusted every room in the house . . . a quite
unnecessary proceeding, for Green Gables was, as usual, in the apple
pie order dear to Marilla’s heart. But Anne felt that a fleck of dust
would be a desecration in a house that was to be honored by a visit
from Charlotte E. Morgan. She even cleaned out the “catch-all” closet
under the stairs, although there was not the remotest possibility of
Mrs. Morgan’s seeing its interior.
“But I want to _feel_ that it is in perfect order, even if she isn’t to
see it,” Anne told Marilla. “You know, in her book ‘Golden Keys,’ she
makes her two heroines _Alice_ and _Louisa_ take for their motto that
verse of Longfellow’s,
‘In the elder days of art
Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part,
For the gods see everywhere,’
and so they always kept their cellar stairs scrubbed and never forgot
to sweep under the beds. I should have a guilty conscience if I thought
this closet was in disorder when Mrs. Morgan was in the house. Ever
since we read ‘Golden Keys,’ last April, Diana and I have taken that
verse for our motto too.”
That night John Henry Carter and Davy between them contrived to execute
the two white roosters, and Anne dressed them, the usually distasteful
task glorified in her eyes by the destination of the plump birds.
“I don’t like picking fowls,” she told Marilla, “but isn’t it fortunate
we don’t have to put our souls into what our hands may be doing? I’ve
been picking chickens with my hands but in imagination I’ve been
roaming the Milky Way.”
“I thought you’d scattered more feathers over the floor than usual,”
remarked Marilla.
Then Anne put Davy to bed and made him promise that he would behave
perfectly the next day.
“If I’m as good as good can be all day tomorrow will you let me be just
as bad as I like all the next day?” asked Davy.
“I couldn’t do that,” said Anne discreetly, “but I’ll take you and Dora
for a row in the flat right to the bottom of the pond, and we’ll go
ashore on the sandhills and have a picnic.”
“It’s a bargain,” said Davy. “I’ll be good, you bet. I meant to go over
to Mr. Harrison’s and fire peas from my new popgun at Ginger but
another day’ll do as well. I espect it will be just like Sunday, but a
picnic at the shore’ll make up for _that_.”
XVII
A Chapter of Accidents
Anne woke three times in the night and made pilgrimages to her window
to make sure that Uncle Abe’s prediction was not coming true. Finally
the morning dawned pearly and lustrous in a sky full of silver sheen
and radiance, and the wonderful day had arrived.
Diana appeared soon after breakfast, with a basket of flowers over one
arm and _her_ muslin dress over the other . . . for it would not do to
don it until all the dinner preparations were completed. Meanwhile she
wore her afternoon pink print and a lawn apron fearfully and
wonderfully ruffled and frilled; and very neat and pretty and rosy she
was.
“You look simply sweet,” said Anne admiringly.
Diana sighed.
“But I’ve had to let out every one of my dresses _again_. I weigh four
pounds more than I did in July. Anne, _where_ will this end? Mrs.
Morgan’s heroines are all tall and slender.”
“Well, let’s forget our troubles and think of our mercies,” said Anne
gaily. “Mrs. Allan says that whenever we think of anything that is a
trial to us we should also think of something nice that we can set over
against it. If you are slightly too plump you’ve got the dearest
dimples; and if I have a freckled nose the _shape_ of it is all right.
Do you think the lemon juice did any good?”
“Yes, I really think it did,” said Diana critically; and, much elated,
Anne led the way to the garden, which was full of airy shadows and
wavering golden lights.
“We’ll decorate the parlor first. We have plenty of time, for Priscilla
said they’d be here about twelve or half past at the latest, so we’ll
have dinner at one.”
There may have been two happier and more excited girls somewhere in
Canada or the United States at that moment, but I doubt it. Every snip
of the scissors, as rose and peony and bluebell fell, seemed to chirp,
“Mrs. Morgan is coming today.” Anne wondered how Mr. Harrison _could_
go on placidly mowing hay in the field across the lane, just as if
nothing were going to happen.
The parlor at Green Gables was a rather severe and gloomy apartment,
with rigid horsehair furniture, stiff lace curtains, and white
antimacassars that were always laid at a perfectly correct angle,
except at such times as they clung to unfortunate people’s buttons.
Even Anne had never been able to infuse much grace into it, for Marilla
would not permit any alterations. But it is wonderful what flowers can
accomplish if you give them a fair chance; when Anne and Diana finished
with the room you would not have recognized it.
A great blue bowlful of snowballs overflowed on the polished table. The
shining black mantelpiece was heaped with roses and ferns. Every shelf
of the what-not held a sheaf of bluebells; the dark corners on either
side of the grate were lighted up with jars full of glowing crimson
peonies, and the grate itself was aflame with yellow poppies. All this
splendor and color, mingled with the sunshine falling through the
honeysuckle vines at the windows in a leafy riot of dancing shadows
over walls and floor, made of the usually dismal little room the
veritable “bower” of Anne’s imagination, and even extorted a tribute of
admiration from Marilla, who came in to criticize and remained to
praise.
“Now, we must set the table,” said Anne, in the tone of a priestess
about to perform some sacred rite in honor of a divinity. “We’ll have a
big vaseful of wild roses in the center and one single rose in front of
everybody’s plate—and a special bouquet of rosebuds only by Mrs.
Morgan’s—an allusion to ‘The Rosebud Garden’ you know.”
The table was set in the sitting room, with Marilla’s finest linen and
the best china, glass, and silver. You may be perfectly certain that
every article placed on it was polished or scoured to the highest
possible perfection of gloss and glitter.
Then the girls tripped out to the kitchen, which was filled with
appetizing odors emanating from the oven, where the chickens were
already sizzling splendidly. Anne prepared the potatoes and Diana got
the peas and beans ready. Then, while Diana shut herself into the
pantry to compound the lettuce salad, Anne, whose cheeks were already
beginning to glow crimson, as much with excitement as from the heat of
the fire, prepared the bread sauce for the chickens, minced her onions
for the soup, and finally whipped the cream for her lemon pies.
And what about Davy all this time? Was he redeeming his promise to be
good? He was, indeed. To be sure, he insisted on remaining in the
kitchen, for his curiosity wanted to see all that went on. But as he
sat quietly in a corner, busily engaged in untying the knots in a piece
of herring net he had brought home from his last trip to the shore,
nobody objected to this.
At half past eleven the lettuce salad was made, the golden circles of
the pies were heaped with whipped cream, and everything was sizzling
and bubbling that ought to sizzle and bubble.
“We’d better go and dress now,” said Anne, “for they may be here by
twelve. We must have dinner at sharp one, for the soup must be served
as soon as it’s done.”
Serious indeed were the toilet rites presently performed in the east
gable. Anne peered anxiously at her nose and rejoiced to see that its
freckles were not at all prominent, thanks either to the lemon juice or
to the unusual flush on her cheeks. When they were ready they looked
quite as sweet and trim and girlish as ever did any of “Mrs. Morgan’s
heroines.”
“I do hope I’ll be able to say something once in a while, and not sit
like a mute,” said Diana anxiously. “All Mrs. Morgan’s heroines
converse so beautifully. But I’m afraid I’ll be tongue-tied and stupid.
And I’ll be sure to say ‘I seen.’ I haven’t often said it since Miss
Stacy taught here; but in moments of excitement it’s sure to pop out.
Anne, if I were to say ‘I seen’ before Mrs. Morgan I’d die of