Anne of Green Gables
a very nice little girl, and perhaps she will be a playmate for you when
she comes home. She’s visiting her aunt over at Carmody just now. You’ll
have to be careful how you behave yourself, though. Mrs. Barry is a
very particular woman. She won’t let Diana play with any little girl who
isn’t nice and good.”
Anne looked at Marilla through the apple blossoms, her eyes aglow with
interest.
“What is Diana like? Her hair isn’t red, is it? Oh, I hope not. It’s bad
enough to have red hair myself, but I positively couldn’t endure it in a
bosom friend.”
“Diana is a very pretty little girl. She has black eyes and hair and
rosy cheeks. And she is good and smart, which is better than being
pretty.”
Marilla was as fond of morals as the Duchess in Wonderland, and was
firmly convinced that one should be tacked on to every remark made to a
child who was being brought up.
But Anne waved the moral inconsequently aside and seized only on the
delightful possibilities before it.
“Oh, I’m so glad she’s pretty. Next to being beautiful oneself--and
that’s impossible in my case--it would be best to have a beautiful bosom
friend. When I lived with Mrs. Thomas she had a bookcase in her sitting
room with glass doors. There weren’t any books in it; Mrs. Thomas kept
her best china and her preserves there--when she had any preserves to
keep. One of the doors was broken. Mr. Thomas smashed it one night
when he was slightly intoxicated. But the other was whole and I used to
pretend that my reflection in it was another little girl who lived in
it. I called her Katie Maurice, and we were very intimate. I used to
talk to her by the hour, especially on Sunday, and tell her everything.
Katie was the comfort and consolation of my life. We used to pretend
that the bookcase was enchanted and that if I only knew the spell I
could open the door and step right into the room where Katie Maurice
lived, instead of into Mrs. Thomas’ shelves of preserves and china. And
then Katie Maurice would have taken me by the hand and led me out into a
wonderful place, all flowers and sunshine and fairies, and we would have
lived there happy for ever after. When I went to live with Mrs. Hammond
it just broke my heart to leave Katie Maurice. She felt it dreadfully,
too, I know she did, for she was crying when she kissed me good-bye
through the bookcase door. There was no bookcase at Mrs. Hammond’s. But
just up the river a little way from the house there was a long green
little valley, and the loveliest echo lived there. It echoed back every
word you said, even if you didn’t talk a bit loud. So I imagined that it
was a little girl called Violetta and we were great friends and I loved
her almost as well as I loved Katie Maurice--not quite, but almost, you
know. The night before I went to the asylum I said good-bye to Violetta,
and oh, her good-bye came back to me in such sad, sad tones. I had
become so attached to her that I hadn’t the heart to imagine a bosom
friend at the asylum, even if there had been any scope for imagination
there.”
“I think it’s just as well there wasn’t,” said Marilla drily. “I
don’t approve of such goings-on. You seem to half believe your own
imaginations. It will be well for you to have a real live friend to
put such nonsense out of your head. But don’t let Mrs. Barry hear you
talking about your Katie Maurices and your Violettas or she’ll think you
tell stories.”
“Oh, I won’t. I couldn’t talk of them to everybody--their memories are
too sacred for that. But I thought I’d like to have you know about them.
Oh, look, here’s a big bee just tumbled out of an apple blossom. Just
think what a lovely place to live--in an apple blossom! Fancy going to
sleep in it when the wind was rocking it. If I wasn’t a human girl I
think I’d like to be a bee and live among the flowers.”
“Yesterday you wanted to be a sea-gull,” sniffed Marilla. “I think you
are very fickle minded. I told you to learn that prayer and not talk.
But it seems impossible for you to stop talking if you’ve got anybody
that will listen to you. So go up to your room and learn it.”
“Oh, I know it pretty nearly all now--all but just the last line.”
“Well, never mind, do as I tell you. Go to your room and finish learning
it well, and stay there until I call you down to help me get tea.”
“Can I take the apple blossoms with me for company?” pleaded Anne.
“No; you don’t want your room cluttered up with flowers. You should have
left them on the tree in the first place.”
“I did feel a little that way, too,” said Anne. “I kind of felt I
shouldn’t shorten their lovely lives by picking them--I wouldn’t want
to be picked if I were an apple blossom. But the temptation was
_irresistible_. What do you do when you meet with an irresistible
temptation?”
“Anne, did you hear me tell you to go to your room?”
Anne sighed, retreated to the east gable, and sat down in a chair by the
window.
“There--I know this prayer. I learned that last sentence coming
upstairs. Now I’m going to imagine things into this room so that they’ll
always stay imagined. The floor is covered with a white velvet carpet
with pink roses all over it and there are pink silk curtains at the
windows. The walls are hung with gold and silver brocade tapestry. The
furniture is mahogany. I never saw any mahogany, but it does sound _so_
luxurious. This is a couch all heaped with gorgeous silken cushions,
pink and blue and crimson and gold, and I am reclining gracefully on it.
I can see my reflection in that splendid big mirror hanging on the wall.
I am tall and regal, clad in a gown of trailing white lace, with a
pearl cross on my breast and pearls in my hair. My hair is of midnight
darkness and my skin is a clear ivory pallor. My name is the Lady
Cordelia Fitzgerald. No, it isn’t--I can’t make _that_ seem real.”
She danced up to the little looking-glass and peered into it. Her
pointed freckled face and solemn gray eyes peered back at her.
“You’re only Anne of Green Gables,” she said earnestly, “and I see you,
just as you are looking now, whenever I try to imagine I’m the Lady
Cordelia. But it’s a million times nicer to be Anne of Green Gables than
Anne of nowhere in particular, isn’t it?”
She bent forward, kissed her reflection affectionately, and betook
herself to the open window.
“Dear Snow Queen, good afternoon. And good afternoon, dear birches down
in the hollow. And good afternoon, dear gray house up on the hill.
I wonder if Diana is to be my bosom friend. I hope she will, and I
shall love her very much. But I must never quite forget Katie Maurice
and Violetta. They would feel so hurt if I did and I’d hate to hurt
anybody’s feelings, even a little bookcase girl’s or a little echo
girl’s. I must be careful to remember them and send them a kiss every
day.”
Anne blew a couple of airy kisses from her fingertips past the cherry
blossoms and then, with her chin in her hands, drifted luxuriously out
on a sea of daydreams.
CHAPTER IX. Mrs. Rachel Lynde Is Properly Horrified
ANNE had been a fortnight at Green Gables before Mrs. Lynde arrived to
inspect her. Mrs. Rachel, to do her justice, was not to blame for this.
A severe and unseasonable attack of grippe had confined that good lady
to her house ever since the occasion of her last visit to Green Gables.
Mrs. Rachel was not often sick and had a well-defined contempt for
people who were; but grippe, she asserted, was like no other illness on
earth and could only be interpreted as one of the special visitations
of Providence. As soon as her doctor allowed her to put her foot
out-of-doors she hurried up to Green Gables, bursting with curiosity to
see Matthew and Marilla’s orphan, concerning whom all sorts of stories
and suppositions had gone abroad in Avonlea.
Anne had made good use of every waking moment of that fortnight. Already
she was acquainted with every tree and shrub about the place. She had
discovered that a lane opened out below the apple orchard and ran up
through a belt of woodland; and she had explored it to its furthest end
in all its delicious vagaries of brook and bridge, fir coppice and wild
cherry arch, corners thick with fern, and branching byways of maple and
mountain ash.
She had made friends with the spring down in the hollow--that wonderful
deep, clear icy-cold spring; it was set about with smooth red sandstones
and rimmed in by great palm-like clumps of water fern; and beyond it was
a log bridge over the brook.
That bridge led Anne’s dancing feet up over a wooded hill beyond, where
perpetual twilight reigned under the straight, thick-growing firs and
spruces; the only flowers there were myriads of delicate “June bells,”
those shyest and sweetest of woodland blooms, and a few pale, aerial
starflowers, like the spirits of last year’s blossoms. Gossamers
glimmered like threads of silver among the trees and the fir boughs and
tassels seemed to utter friendly speech.
All these raptured voyages of exploration were made in the odd half
hours which she was allowed for play, and Anne talked Matthew and
Marilla half-deaf over her discoveries. Not that Matthew complained, to
be sure; he listened to it all with a wordless smile of enjoyment on his
face; Marilla permitted the “chatter” until she found herself becoming
too interested in it, whereupon she always promptly quenched Anne by a
curt command to hold her tongue.
Anne was out in the orchard when Mrs. Rachel came, wandering at her
own sweet will through the lush, tremulous grasses splashed with ruddy
evening sunshine; so that good lady had an excellent chance to talk
her illness fully over, describing every ache and pulse beat with
such evident enjoyment that Marilla thought even grippe must bring its
compensations. When details were exhausted Mrs. Rachel introduced the
real reason of her call.
“I’ve been hearing some surprising things about you and Matthew.”
“I don’t suppose you are any more surprised than I am myself,” said
Marilla. “I’m getting over my surprise now.”
“It was too bad there was such a mistake,” said Mrs. Rachel
sympathetically. “Couldn’t you have sent her back?”
“I suppose we could, but we decided not to. Matthew took a fancy to her.
And I must say I like her myself--although I admit she has her faults.
The house seems a different place already. She’s a real bright little
thing.”
Marilla said more than she had intended to say when she began, for she
read disapproval in Mrs. Rachel’s expression.
“It’s a great responsibility you’ve taken on yourself,” said that
lady gloomily, “especially when you’ve never had any experience with
children. You don’t know much about her or her real disposition, I
suppose, and there’s no guessing how a child like that will turn out.
But I don’t want to discourage you I’m sure, Marilla.”
“I’m not feeling discouraged,” was Marilla’s dry response, “when I make
up my mind to do a thing it stays made up. I suppose you’d like to see
Anne. I’ll call her in.”
Anne came running in presently, her face sparkling with the delight of
her orchard rovings; but, abashed at finding the delight herself in
the unexpected presence of a stranger, she halted confusedly inside
the door. She certainly was an odd-looking little creature in the short
tight wincey dress she had worn from the asylum, below which her thin
legs seemed ungracefully long. Her freckles were more numerous and
obtrusive than ever; the wind had ruffled her hatless hair into
over-brilliant disorder; it had never looked redder than at that moment.
“Well, they didn’t pick you for your looks, that’s sure and certain,”
was Mrs. Rachel Lynde’s emphatic comment. Mrs. Rachel was one of those
delightful and popular people who pride themselves on speaking their
mind without fear or favor. “She’s terrible skinny and homely, Marilla.