Anne of Avonlea
take the children till the spring. He expects to be married then and
will have a home to take them to; but he says she must get some of the
neighbors to keep them for the winter. She says she can’t bear to ask
any of them. Mary never got on any too well with the East Grafton
people and that’s a fact. And the long and short of it is, Anne, that
I’m sure Mary wants me to take those children . . . she didn’t say so
but she _looked_ it.”
“Oh!” Anne clasped her hands, all athrill with excitement. “And of
course you will, Marilla, won’t you?”
“I haven’t made up my mind,” said Marilla rather tartly. “I don’t rush
into things in your headlong way, Anne. Third cousinship is a pretty
slim claim. And it will be a fearful responsibility to have two
children of six years to look after . . . twins, at that.”
Marilla had an idea that twins were just twice as bad as single
children.
“Twins are very interesting . . . at least one pair of them,” said
Anne. “It’s only when there are two or three pairs that it gets
monotonous. And I think it would be real nice for you to have something
to amuse you when I’m away in school.”
“I don’t reckon there’d be much amusement in it . . . more worry and
bother than anything else, I should say. It wouldn’t be so risky if
they were even as old as you were when I took you. I wouldn’t mind Dora
so much . . . she seems good and quiet. But that Davy is a limb.”
Anne was fond of children and her heart yearned over the Keith twins.
The remembrance of her own neglected childhood was very vivid with her
still. She knew that Marilla’s only vulnerable point was her stern
devotion to what she believed to be her duty, and Anne skillfully
marshalled her arguments along this line.
“If Davy is naughty it’s all the more reason why he should have good
training, isn’t it, Marilla? If we don’t take them we don’t know who
will, nor what kind of influences may surround them. Suppose Mrs.
Keith’s next door neighbors, the Sprotts, were to take them. Mrs. Lynde
says Henry Sprott is the most profane man that ever lived and you can’t
believe a word his children say. Wouldn’t it be dreadful to have the
twins learn anything like that? Or suppose they went to the Wiggins’.
Mrs. Lynde says that Mr. Wiggins sells everything off the place that
can be sold and brings his family up on skim milk. You wouldn’t like
your relations to be starved, even if they were only third cousins,
would you? It seems to me, Marilla, that it is our duty to take them.”
“I suppose it is,” assented Marilla gloomily. “I daresay I’ll tell Mary
I’ll take them. You needn’t look so delighted, Anne. It will mean a
good deal of extra work for you. I can’t sew a stitch on account of my
eyes, so you’ll have to see to the making and mending of their clothes.
And you don’t like sewing.”
“I hate it,” said Anne calmly, “but if you are willing to take those
children from a sense of duty surely I can do their sewing from a sense
of duty. It does people good to have to do things they don’t like . . .
in moderation.”
VIII
Marilla Adopts Twins
Mrs. Rachel Lynde was sitting at her kitchen window, knitting a quilt,
just as she had been sitting one evening several years previously when
Matthew Cuthbert had driven down over the hill with what Mrs. Rachel
called “his imported orphan.” But that had been in springtime; and this
was late autumn, and all the woods were leafless and the fields sere
and brown. The sun was just setting with a great deal of purple and
golden pomp behind the dark woods west of Avonlea when a buggy drawn by
a comfortable brown nag came down the hill. Mrs. Rachel peered at it
eagerly.
“There’s Marilla getting home from the funeral,” she said to her
husband, who was lying on the kitchen lounge. Thomas Lynde lay more on
the lounge nowadays than he had been used to do, but Mrs. Rachel, who
was so sharp at noticing anything beyond her own household, had not as
yet noticed this. “And she’s got the twins with her, . . . yes, there’s
Davy leaning over the dashboard grabbing at the pony’s tail and Marilla
jerking him back. Dora’s sitting up on the seat as prim as you please.
She always looks as if she’d just been starched and ironed. Well, poor
Marilla is going to have her hands full this winter and no mistake.
Still, I don’t see that she could do anything less than take them,
under the circumstances, and she’ll have Anne to help her. Anne’s
tickled to death over the whole business, and she has a real knacky way
with children, I must say. Dear me, it doesn’t seem a day since poor
Matthew brought Anne herself home and everybody laughed at the idea of
Marilla bringing up a child. And now she has adopted twins. You’re
never safe from being surprised till you’re dead.”
The fat pony jogged over the bridge in Lynde’s Hollow and along the
Green Gables lane. Marilla’s face was rather grim. It was ten miles
from East Grafton and Davy Keith seemed to be possessed with a passion
for perpetual motion. It was beyond Marilla’s power to make him sit
still and she had been in an agony the whole way lest he fall over the
back of the wagon and break his neck, or tumble over the dashboard
under the pony’s heels. In despair she finally threatened to whip him
soundly when she got him home. Whereupon Davy climbed into her lap,
regardless of the reins, flung his chubby arms about her neck and gave
her a bear-like hug.
“I don’t believe you mean it,” he said, smacking her wrinkled cheek
affectionately. “You don’t _look_ like a lady who’d whip a little boy
just ’cause he couldn’t keep still. Didn’t you find it awful hard to
keep still when you was only ‘s old as me?”
“No, I always kept still when I was told,” said Marilla, trying to
speak sternly, albeit she felt her heart waxing soft within her under
Davy’s impulsive caresses.
“Well, I s’pose that was ’cause you was a girl,” said Davy, squirming
back to his place after another hug. “You _was_ a girl once, I s’pose,
though it’s awful funny to think of it. Dora can sit still . . . but
there ain’t much fun in it _I_ don’t think. Seems to me it must be slow
to be a girl. Here, Dora, let me liven you up a bit.”
Davy’s method of “livening up” was to grasp Dora’s curls in his fingers
and give them a tug. Dora shrieked and then cried.
“How can you be such a naughty boy and your poor mother just laid in
her grave this very day?” demanded Marilla despairingly.
“But she was glad to die,” said Davy confidentially. “I know, ’cause
she told me so. She was awful tired of being sick. We’d a long talk the
night before she died. She told me you was going to take me and Dora
for the winter and I was to be a good boy. I’m going to be good, but
can’t you be good running round just as well as sitting still? And she
said I was always to be kind to Dora and stand up for her, and I’m
going to.”
“Do you call pulling her hair being kind to her?”
“Well, I ain’t going to let anybody else pull it,” said Davy, doubling
up his fists and frowning. “They’d just better try it. I didn’t hurt
her much . . . she just cried ’cause she’s a girl. I’m glad I’m a boy
but I’m sorry I’m a twin. When Jimmy Sprott’s sister conterdicks him he
just says, ‘I’m oldern you, so of course I know better,’ and that
settles _her_. But I can’t tell Dora that, and she just goes on
thinking diffrunt from me. You might let me drive the gee-gee for a
spell, since I’m a man.”
Altogether, Marilla was a thankful woman when she drove into her own
yard, where the wind of the autumn night was dancing with the brown
leaves. Anne was at the gate to meet them and lift the twins out. Dora
submitted calmly to be kissed, but Davy responded to Anne’s welcome
with one of his hearty hugs and the cheerful announcement, “I’m Mr.
Davy Keith.”
At the supper table Dora behaved like a little lady, but Davy’s manners
left much to be desired.
“I’m so hungry I ain’t got time to eat p’litely,” he said when Marilla
reproved him. “Dora ain’t half as hungry as I am. Look at all the
ex’cise I took on the road here. That cake’s awful nice and plummy. We
haven’t had any cake at home for ever’n ever so long, ’cause mother was
too sick to make it and Mrs. Sprott said it was as much as she could do
to bake our bread for us. And Mrs. Wiggins never puts any plums in
_her_ cakes. Catch her! Can I have another piece?”
Marilla would have refused but Anne cut a generous second slice.
However, she reminded Davy that he ought to say “Thank you” for it.
Davy merely grinned at her and took a huge bite. When he had finished
the slice he said,
“If you’ll give me _another_ piece I’ll say thank you for _it_.”
“No, you have had plenty of cake,” said Marilla in a tone which Anne
knew and Davy was to learn to be final.
Davy winked at Anne, and then, leaning over the table, snatched Dora’s
first piece of cake, from which she had just taken one dainty little
bite, out of her very fingers and, opening his mouth to the fullest
extent, crammed the whole slice in. Dora’s lip trembled and Marilla was
speechless with horror. Anne promptly exclaimed, with her best
“schoolma’am” air,
“Oh, Davy, gentlemen don’t do things like that.”
“I know they don’t,” said Davy, as soon as he could speak, “but I ain’t
a gemplum.”
“But don’t you want to be?” said shocked Anne.
“Course I do. But you can’t be a gemplum till you grow up.”
“Oh, indeed you can,” Anne hastened to say, thinking she saw a chance
to sow good seed betimes. “You can begin to be a gentleman when you are
a little boy. And gentlemen _never_ snatch things from ladies . . . or
forget to say thank you . . . or pull anybody’s hair.”
“They don’t have much fun, that’s a fact,” said Davy frankly. “I guess
I’ll wait till I’m grown up to be one.”
Marilla, with a resigned air, had cut another piece of cake for Dora.
She did not feel able to cope with Davy just then. It had been a hard
day for her, what with the funeral and the long drive. At that moment
she looked forward to the future with a pessimism that would have done
credit to Eliza Andrews herself.
The twins were not noticeably alike, although both were fair. Dora had
long sleek curls that never got out of order. Davy had a crop of fuzzy
little yellow ringlets all over his round head. Dora’s hazel eyes were
gentle and mild; Davy’s were as roguish and dancing as an elf’s. Dora’s
nose was straight, Davy’s a positive snub; Dora had a “prunes and
prisms” mouth, Davy’s was all smiles; and besides, he had a dimple in
one cheek and none in the other, which gave him a dear, comical,
lopsided look when he laughed. Mirth and mischief lurked in every
corner of his little face.
“They’d better go to bed,” said Marilla, who thought it was the easiest
way to dispose of them. “Dora will sleep with me and you can put Davy
in the west gable. You’re not afraid to sleep alone, are you, Davy?”
“No; but I ain’t going to bed for ever so long yet,” said Davy
comfortably.
“Oh, yes, you are.” That was all the much-tried Marilla said, but
something in her tone squelched even Davy. He trotted obediently
upstairs with Anne.
“When I’m grown up the very first thing I’m going to do is stay up
_all_ night just to see what it would be like,” he told her
confidentially.
In after years Marilla never thought of that first week of the twins’
sojourn at Green Gables without a shiver. Not that it really was so
much worse than the weeks that followed it; but it seemed so by reason
of its novelty. There was seldom a waking minute of any day when Davy
was not in mischief or devising it; but his first notable exploit
occurred two days after his arrival, on Sunday morning . . . a fine,
warm day, as hazy and mild as September. Anne dressed him for church
while Marilla attended to Dora. Davy at first objected strongly to
having his face washed.