Anne of Avonlea
there, with her soft eyes, and the wind ruffling her dark hair,
wandering about, putting her fingertips under the chins of the lilies
and whispering secrets with the roses; and I would go forward, oh, so
softly, and hold out my hands and say to her, ‘Little Hester Gray,
won’t you let me be your playmate, for I love the roses too?’ And we
would sit down on the old bench and talk a little and dream a little,
or just be beautifully silent together. And then the moon would rise
and I would look around me . . . and there would be no Hester Gray and
no little vine-hung house, and no roses . . . only an old waste garden
starred with June lilies amid the grasses, and the wind sighing, oh, so
sorrowfully in the cherry trees. And I would not know whether it had
been real or if I had just imagined it all.” Diana crawled up and got
her back against the headboard of the bed. When your companion of
twilight hour said such spooky things it was just as well not to be
able to fancy there was anything behind you.
“I’m afraid the Improvement Society will go down when you and Gilbert
are both gone,” she remarked dolefully.
“Not a bit of fear of it,” said Anne briskly, coming back from
dreamland to the affairs of practical life. “It is too firmly
established for that, especially since the older people are becoming so
enthusiastic about it. Look what they are doing this summer for their
lawns and lanes. Besides, I’ll be watching for hints at Redmond and
I’ll write a paper for it next winter and send it over. Don’t take such
a gloomy view of things, Diana. And don’t grudge me my little hour of
gladness and jubilation now. Later on, when I have to go away, I’ll
feel anything but glad.”
“It’s all right for you to be glad . . . you’re going to college and
you’ll have a jolly time and make heaps of lovely new friends.”
“I hope I shall make new friends,” said Anne thoughtfully. “The
possibilities of making new friends help to make life very fascinating.
But no matter how many friends I make they’ll never be as dear to me as
the old ones . . . especially a certain girl with black eyes and
dimples. Can you guess who she is, Diana?”
“But there’ll be so many clever girls at Redmond,” sighed Diana, “and
I’m only a stupid little country girl who says ‘I seen’ sometimes. . .
though I really know better when I stop to think. Well, of course these
past two years have really been too pleasant to last. I know _somebody_
who is glad you are going to Redmond anyhow. Anne, I’m going to ask you
a question . . . a serious question. Don’t be vexed and do answer
seriously. Do you care anything for Gilbert?”
“Ever so much as a friend and not a bit in the way you mean,” said Anne
calmly and decidedly; she also thought she was speaking sincerely.
Diana sighed. She wished, somehow, that Anne had answered differently.
“Don’t you mean _ever_ to be married, Anne?”
“Perhaps . . . some day . . . when I meet the right one,” said Anne,
smiling dreamily up at the moonlight.
“But how can you be sure when you do meet the right one?” persisted
Diana.
“Oh, I should know him . . . _something_ would tell me. You know what
my ideal is, Diana.”
“But people’s ideals change sometimes.”
“Mine won’t. And I _couldn’t_ care for any man who didn’t fulfill it.”
“What if you never meet him?”
“Then I shall die an old maid,” was the cheerful response. “I daresay
it isn’t the hardest death by any means.”
“Oh, I suppose the dying would be easy enough; it’s the living an old
maid I shouldn’t like,” said Diana, with no intention of being
humorous. “Although I wouldn’t mind being an old maid _very_ much if I
could be one like Miss Lavendar. But I never could be. When I’m
forty-five I’ll be horribly fat. And while there might be some romance
about a thin old maid there couldn’t possibly be any about a fat one.
Oh, mind you, Nelson Atkins proposed to Ruby Gillis three weeks ago.
Ruby told me all about it. She says she never had any intention of
taking him, because any one who married him will have to go in with the
old folks; but Ruby says that he made such a perfectly beautiful and
romantic proposal that it simply swept her off her feet. But she didn’t
want to do anything rash so she asked for a week to consider; and two
days later she was at a meeting of the Sewing Circle at his mother’s
and there was a book called ‘The Complete Guide to Etiquette,’ lying on
the parlor table. Ruby said she simply couldn’t describe her feelings
when in a section of it headed, ‘The Deportment of Courtship and
Marriage,’ she found the very proposal Nelson had made, word for word.
She went home and wrote him a perfectly scathing refusal; and she says
his father and mother have taken turns watching him ever since for fear
he’ll drown himself in the river; but Ruby says they needn’t be afraid;
for in the Deportment of Courtship and Marriage it told how a rejected
lover should behave and there’s nothing about drowning in _that_. And
she says Wilbur Blair is literally pining away for her but she’s
perfectly helpless in the matter.”
Anne made an impatient movement.
“I hate to say it . . . it seems so disloyal . . . but, well, I don’t
like Ruby Gillis now. I liked her when we went to school and Queen’s
together . . . though not so well as you and Jane of course. But this
last year at Carmody she seems so different . . . so . . . so . . .”
“I know,” nodded Diana. “It’s the Gillis coming out in her . . . she
can’t help it. Mrs. Lynde says that if ever a Gillis girl thought about
anything but the boys she never showed it in her walk and conversation.
She talks about nothing but boys and what compliments they pay her, and
how crazy they all are about her at Carmody. And the strange thing is,
they _are_, too . . .” Diana admitted this somewhat resentfully. “Last
night when I saw her in Mr. Blair’s store she whispered to me that
she’d just made a new ‘mash.’ I wouldn’t ask her who it was, because I
knew she was dying to _be_ asked. Well, it’s what Ruby always wanted, I
suppose. You remember even when she was little she always said she
meant to have dozens of beaus when she grew up and have the very gayest
time she could before she settled down. She’s so different from Jane,
isn’t she? Jane is such a nice, sensible, lady-like girl.”
“Dear old Jane is a jewel,” agreed Anne, “but,” she added, leaning
forward to bestow a tender pat on the plump, dimpled little hand
hanging over her pillow, “there’s nobody like my own Diana after all.
Do you remember that evening we first met, Diana, and ‘swore’ eternal
friendship in your garden? We’ve kept that ‘oath,’ I think . . . we’ve
never had a quarrel nor even a coolness. I shall never forget the
thrill that went over me the day you told me you loved me. I had had
such a lonely, starved heart all through my childhood. I’m just
beginning to realize how starved and lonely it really was. Nobody cared
anything for me or wanted to be bothered with me. I should have been
miserable if it hadn’t been for that strange little dream-life of mine,
wherein I imagined all the friends and love I craved. But when I came
to Green Gables everything was changed. And then I met you. You don’t
know what your friendship meant to me. I want to thank you here and
now, dear, for the warm and true affection you’ve always given me.”
“And always, always will,” sobbed Diana. “I shall _never_ love anybody
. . . any _girl_ . . . half as well as I love you. And if I ever do
marry and have a little girl of my own I’m going to name her _Anne_.”
XXVII
An Afternoon at the Stone House
“Where are you going, all dressed up, Anne?” Davy wanted to know. “You
look bully in that dress.”
Anne had come down to dinner in a new dress of pale green muslin . . .
the first color she had worn since Matthew’s death. It became her
perfectly, bringing out all the delicate, flower-like tints of her face
and the gloss and burnish of her hair.
“Davy, how many times have I told you that you mustn’t use that word,”
she rebuked. “I’m going to Echo Lodge.”
“Take me with you,” entreated Davy.
“I would if I were driving. But I’m going to walk and it’s too far for
your eight-year-old legs. Besides, Paul is going with me and I fear you
don’t enjoy yourself in his company.”
“Oh, I like Paul lots better’n I did,” said Davy, beginning to make
fearful inroads into his pudding. “Since I’ve got pretty good myself I
don’t mind his being gooder so much. If I can keep on I’ll catch up
with him some day, both in legs and goodness. ‘Sides, Paul’s real nice
to us second primer boys in school. He won’t let the other big boys
meddle with us and he shows us lots of games.”
“How came Paul to fall into the brook at noon hour yesterday?” asked
Anne. “I met him on the playground, such a dripping figure that I sent
him promptly home for clothes without waiting to find out what had
happened.”
“Well, it was partly a zacksident,” explained Davy. “He stuck his head
in on purpose but the rest of him fell in zacksidentally. We was all
down at the brook and Prillie Rogerson got mad at Paul about something
. . . she’s awful mean and horrid anyway, if she IS pretty . . . and
said that his grandmother put his hair up in curl rags every night.
Paul wouldn’t have minded what she said, I guess, but Gracie Andrews
laughed, and Paul got awful red, ’cause Gracie’s his girl, you know.
He’s _clean gone_ on her . . . brings her flowers and carries her books
as far as the shore road. He got as red as a beet and said his
grandmother didn’t do any such thing and his hair was born curly. And
then he laid down on the bank and stuck his head right into the spring
to show them. Oh, it wasn’t the spring we drink out of . . .” seeing a
horrified look on Marilla’s face . . . “it was the little one lower
down. But the bank’s awful slippy and Paul went right in. I tell you he
made a bully splash. Oh, Anne, Anne, I didn’t mean to say that . . . it
just slipped out before I thought. He made a _splendid_ splash. But he
looked so funny when he crawled out, all wet and muddy. The girls
laughed more’n ever, but Gracie didn’t laugh. She looked sorry.
Gracie’s a nice girl but she’s got a snub nose. When I get big enough
to have a girl I won’t have one with a snub nose . . . I’ll pick one
with a pretty nose like yours, Anne.”
“A boy who makes such a mess of syrup all over his face when he is
eating his pudding will never get a girl to look at him,” said Marilla
severely.
“But I’ll wash my face before I go courting,” protested Davy, trying to
improve matters by rubbing the back of his hand over the smears. “And
I’ll wash behind my ears too, without being told. I remembered to this
morning, Marilla. I don’t forget half as often as I did. But . . .” and
Davy sighed . . . “there’s so many corners about a fellow that it’s
awful hard to remember them all. Well, if I can’t go to Miss Lavendar’s
I’ll go over and see Mrs. Harrison. Mrs. Harrison’s an awful nice
woman, I tell you. She keeps a jar of cookies in her pantry a-purpose
for little boys, and she always gives me the scrapings out of a pan
she’s mixed up a plum cake in. A good many plums stick to the sides,
you see. Mr. Harrison was always a nice man, but he’s twice as nice
since he got married over again. I guess getting married makes folks
nicer. Why don’t _you_ get married, Marilla? I want to know.”
Marilla’s state of single blessedness had never been a sore point with
her, so she answered amiably, with an exchange of significant looks
with Anne, that she supposed it was because nobody would have her.
“But maybe you never asked anybody to have you,” protested Davy.
“Oh, Davy,” said Dora primly, shocked into speaking without being
spoken to, “it’s the _men_ that have to do the asking.”
“I don’t know why they have to do it _always_,” grumbled Davy. “Seems