Anne of Green Gables
tell you that right off. Those dresses are good, sensible, serviceable
dresses, without any frills or furbelows about them, and they’re all
you’ll get this summer. The brown gingham and the blue print will do
you for school when you begin to go. The sateen is for church and
Sunday-school. I’ll expect you to keep them neat and clean and not to
tear them. I should think you’d be grateful to get most anything after
those skimpy wincey things you’ve been wearing.”
“Oh, I _am_ grateful,” protested Anne. “But I’d be ever so much
gratefuller if--if you’d made just one of them with puffed sleeves.
Puffed sleeves are so fashionable now. It would give me such a thrill,
Marilla, just to wear a dress with puffed sleeves.”
“Well, you’ll have to do without your thrill. I hadn’t any material
to waste on puffed sleeves. I think they are ridiculous-looking things
anyhow. I prefer the plain, sensible ones.”
“But I’d rather look ridiculous when everybody else does than plain and
sensible all by myself,” persisted Anne mournfully.
“Trust you for that! Well, hang those dresses carefully up in your
closet, and then sit down and learn the Sunday-school lesson. I got
a quarterly from Mr. Bell for you and you’ll go to Sunday-school
tomorrow,” said Marilla, disappearing downstairs in high dudgeon.
Anne clasped her hands and looked at the dresses.
“I did hope there would be a white one with puffed sleeves,” she
whispered disconsolately. “I prayed for one, but I didn’t much expect it
on that account. I didn’t suppose God would have time to bother about
a little orphan girl’s dress. I knew I’d just have to depend on
Marilla for it. Well, fortunately I can imagine that one of them is of
snow-white muslin with lovely lace frills and three-puffed sleeves.”
The next morning warnings of a sick headache prevented Marilla from
going to Sunday-school with Anne.
“You’ll have to go down and call for Mrs. Lynde, Anne,” she said.
“She’ll see that you get into the right class. Now, mind you behave
yourself properly. Stay to preaching afterwards and ask Mrs. Lynde to
show you our pew. Here’s a cent for collection. Don’t stare at people
and don’t fidget. I shall expect you to tell me the text when you come
home.”
Anne started off irreproachable, arrayed in the stiff black-and-white
sateen, which, while decent as regards length and certainly not open to
the charge of skimpiness, contrived to emphasize every corner and angle
of her thin figure. Her hat was a little, flat, glossy, new sailor, the
extreme plainness of which had likewise much disappointed Anne, who
had permitted herself secret visions of ribbon and flowers. The latter,
however, were supplied before Anne reached the main road, for being
confronted halfway down the lane with a golden frenzy of wind-stirred
buttercups and a glory of wild roses, Anne promptly and liberally
garlanded her hat with a heavy wreath of them. Whatever other people
might have thought of the result it satisfied Anne, and she tripped
gaily down the road, holding her ruddy head with its decoration of pink
and yellow very proudly.
When she had reached Mrs. Lynde’s house she found that lady gone.
Nothing daunted, Anne proceeded onward to the church alone. In the porch
she found a crowd of little girls, all more or less gaily attired in
whites and blues and pinks, and all staring with curious eyes at this
stranger in their midst, with her extraordinary head adornment. Avonlea
little girls had already heard queer stories about Anne. Mrs. Lynde said
she had an awful temper; Jerry Buote, the hired boy at Green Gables,
said she talked all the time to herself or to the trees and flowers
like a crazy girl. They looked at her and whispered to each other behind
their quarterlies. Nobody made any friendly advances, then or later
on when the opening exercises were over and Anne found herself in Miss
Rogerson’s class.
Miss Rogerson was a middle-aged lady who had taught a Sunday-school
class for twenty years. Her method of teaching was to ask the printed
questions from the quarterly and look sternly over its edge at the
particular little girl she thought ought to answer the question. She
looked very often at Anne, and Anne, thanks to Marilla’s drilling,
answered promptly; but it may be questioned if she understood very much
about either question or answer.
She did not think she liked Miss Rogerson, and she felt very miserable;
every other little girl in the class had puffed sleeves. Anne felt that
life was really not worth living without puffed sleeves.
“Well, how did you like Sunday-school?” Marilla wanted to know when Anne
came home. Her wreath having faded, Anne had discarded it in the lane,
so Marilla was spared the knowledge of that for a time.
“I didn’t like it a bit. It was horrid.”
“Anne Shirley!” said Marilla rebukingly.
Anne sat down on the rocker with a long sigh, kissed one of Bonny’s
leaves, and waved her hand to a blossoming fuchsia.
“They might have been lonesome while I was away,” she explained. “And
now about the Sunday-school. I behaved well, just as you told me. Mrs.
Lynde was gone, but I went right on myself. I went into the church, with
a lot of other little girls, and I sat in the corner of a pew by the
window while the opening exercises went on. Mr. Bell made an awfully
long prayer. I would have been dreadfully tired before he got through
if I hadn’t been sitting by that window. But it looked right out on the
Lake of Shining Waters, so I just gazed at that and imagined all sorts
of splendid things.”
“You shouldn’t have done anything of the sort. You should have listened
to Mr. Bell.”
“But he wasn’t talking to me,” protested Anne. “He was talking to God
and he didn’t seem to be very much interested in it, either. I think
he thought God was too far off though. There was a long row of white
birches hanging over the lake and the sunshine fell down through them,
‘way, ‘way down, deep into the water. Oh, Marilla, it was like a
beautiful dream! It gave me a thrill and I just said, ‘Thank you for
it, God,’ two or three times.”
“Not out loud, I hope,” said Marilla anxiously.
“Oh, no, just under my breath. Well, Mr. Bell did get through at last
and they told me to go into the classroom with Miss Rogerson’s class.
There were nine other girls in it. They all had puffed sleeves. I tried
to imagine mine were puffed, too, but I couldn’t. Why couldn’t I? It was
as easy as could be to imagine they were puffed when I was alone in
the east gable, but it was awfully hard there among the others who had
really truly puffs.”
“You shouldn’t have been thinking about your sleeves in Sunday-school.
You should have been attending to the lesson. I hope you knew it.”
“Oh, yes; and I answered a lot of questions. Miss Rogerson asked ever so
many. I don’t think it was fair for her to do all the asking. There were
lots I wanted to ask her, but I didn’t like to because I didn’t think
she was a kindred spirit. Then all the other little girls recited a
paraphrase. She asked me if I knew any. I told her I didn’t, but I could
recite, ‘The Dog at His Master’s Grave’ if she liked. That’s in the
Third Royal Reader. It isn’t a really truly religious piece of poetry,
but it’s so sad and melancholy that it might as well be. She said it
wouldn’t do and she told me to learn the nineteenth paraphrase for next
Sunday. I read it over in church afterwards and it’s splendid. There are
two lines in particular that just thrill me.
“‘Quick as the slaughtered squadrons fell
In Midian’s evil day.’
“I don’t know what ‘squadrons’ means nor ‘Midian,’ either, but it sounds
_so_ tragical. I can hardly wait until next Sunday to recite it.
I’ll practice it all the week. After Sunday-school I asked Miss
Rogerson--because Mrs. Lynde was too far away--to show me your pew.
I sat just as still as I could and the text was Revelations, third
chapter, second and third verses. It was a very long text. If I was a
minister I’d pick the short, snappy ones. The sermon was awfully long,
too. I suppose the minister had to match it to the text. I didn’t think
he was a bit interesting. The trouble with him seems to be that he
hasn’t enough imagination. I didn’t listen to him very much. I just let
my thoughts run and I thought of the most surprising things.”
Marilla felt helplessly that all this should be sternly reproved, but
she was hampered by the undeniable fact that some of the things Anne had
said, especially about the minister’s sermons and Mr. Bell’s prayers,
were what she herself had really thought deep down in her heart for
years, but had never given expression to. It almost seemed to her that
those secret, unuttered, critical thoughts had suddenly taken visible
and accusing shape and form in the person of this outspoken morsel of
neglected humanity.
CHAPTER XII. A Solemn Vow and Promise
IT was not until the next Friday that Marilla heard the story of the
flower-wreathed hat. She came home from Mrs. Lynde’s and called Anne to
account.
“Anne, Mrs. Rachel says you went to church last Sunday with your hat
rigged out ridiculous with roses and buttercups. What on earth put you
up to such a caper? A pretty-looking object you must have been!”
“Oh. I know pink and yellow aren’t becoming to me,” began Anne.
“Becoming fiddlesticks! It was putting flowers on your hat at all,
no matter what color they were, that was ridiculous. You are the most
aggravating child!”
“I don’t see why it’s any more ridiculous to wear flowers on your hat
than on your dress,” protested Anne. “Lots of little girls there had
bouquets pinned on their dresses. What’s the difference?”
Marilla was not to be drawn from the safe concrete into dubious paths of
the abstract.
“Don’t answer me back like that, Anne. It was very silly of you to do
such a thing. Never let me catch you at such a trick again. Mrs. Rachel
says she thought she would sink through the floor when she saw you come
in all rigged out like that. She couldn’t get near enough to tell you
to take them off till it was too late. She says people talked about it
something dreadful. Of course they would think I had no better sense
than to let you go decked out like that.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Anne, tears welling into her eyes. “I never
thought you’d mind. The roses and buttercups were so sweet and pretty
I thought they’d look lovely on my hat. Lots of the little girls had
artificial flowers on their hats. I’m afraid I’m going to be a dreadful
trial to you. Maybe you’d better send me back to the asylum. That would
be terrible; I don’t think I could endure it; most likely I would go
into consumption; I’m so thin as it is, you see. But that would be
better than being a trial to you.”
“Nonsense,” said Marilla, vexed at herself for having made the child
cry. “I don’t want to send you back to the asylum, I’m sure. All I want
is that you should behave like other little girls and not make yourself
ridiculous. Don’t cry any more. I’ve got some news for you. Diana Barry
came home this afternoon. I’m going up to see if I can borrow a skirt
pattern from Mrs. Barry, and if you like you can come with me and get
acquainted with Diana.”
Anne rose to her feet, with clasped hands, the tears still glistening on
her cheeks; the dish towel she had been hemming slipped unheeded to the
floor.
“Oh, Marilla, I’m frightened--now that it has come I’m actually
frightened. What if she shouldn’t like me! It would be the most tragical
disappointment of my life.”
“Now, don’t get into a fluster. And I do wish you wouldn’t use such long
words. It sounds so funny in a little girl. I guess Diana ‘ll like you
well enough. It’s her mother you’ve got to reckon with. If she doesn’t
like you it won’t matter how much Diana does. If she has heard about