Anne of Green Gables
reposing there were divided among ten girls how many bites each girl
would have.
The little girls of Avonlea school always pooled their lunches, and
to eat three raspberry tarts all alone or even to share them only with
one’s best chum would have forever and ever branded as “awful mean” the
girl who did it. And yet, when the tarts were divided among ten girls
you just got enough to tantalize you.
The way Anne and Diana went to school _was_ a pretty one. Anne thought
those walks to and from school with Diana couldn’t be improved upon
even by imagination. Going around by the main road would have been so
unromantic; but to go by Lover’s Lane and Willowmere and Violet Vale and
the Birch Path was romantic, if ever anything was.
Lover’s Lane opened out below the orchard at Green Gables and stretched
far up into the woods to the end of the Cuthbert farm. It was the way by
which the cows were taken to the back pasture and the wood hauled home
in winter. Anne had named it Lover’s Lane before she had been a month at
Green Gables.
“Not that lovers ever really walk there,” she explained to Marilla,
“but Diana and I are reading a perfectly magnificent book and there’s a
Lover’s Lane in it. So we want to have one, too. And it’s a very pretty
name, don’t you think? So romantic! We can’t imagine the lovers into it,
you know. I like that lane because you can think out loud there without
people calling you crazy.”
Anne, starting out alone in the morning, went down Lover’s Lane as far
as the brook. Here Diana met her, and the two little girls went on
up the lane under the leafy arch of maples--“maples are such sociable
trees,” said Anne; “they’re always rustling and whispering to
you”--until they came to a rustic bridge. Then they left the lane
and walked through Mr. Barry’s back field and past Willowmere. Beyond
Willowmere came Violet Vale--a little green dimple in the shadow of Mr.
Andrew Bell’s big woods. “Of course there are no violets there now,”
Anne told Marilla, “but Diana says there are millions of them in spring.
Oh, Marilla, can’t you just imagine you see them? It actually takes away
my breath. I named it Violet Vale. Diana says she never saw the beat
of me for hitting on fancy names for places. It’s nice to be clever at
something, isn’t it? But Diana named the Birch Path. She wanted to, so
I let her; but I’m sure I could have found something more poetical than
plain Birch Path. Anybody can think of a name like that. But the Birch
Path is one of the prettiest places in the world, Marilla.”
It was. Other people besides Anne thought so when they stumbled on it.
It was a little narrow, twisting path, winding down over a long hill
straight through Mr. Bell’s woods, where the light came down sifted
through so many emerald screens that it was as flawless as the heart
of a diamond. It was fringed in all its length with slim young birches,
white stemmed and lissom boughed; ferns and starflowers and wild
lilies-of-the-valley and scarlet tufts of pigeonberries grew thickly
along it; and always there was a delightful spiciness in the air and
music of bird calls and the murmur and laugh of wood winds in the trees
overhead. Now and then you might see a rabbit skipping across the road
if you were quiet--which, with Anne and Diana, happened about once in
a blue moon. Down in the valley the path came out to the main road and
then it was just up the spruce hill to the school.
The Avonlea school was a whitewashed building, low in the eaves and
wide in the windows, furnished inside with comfortable substantial
old-fashioned desks that opened and shut, and were carved all over their
lids with the initials and hieroglyphics of three generations of school
children. The schoolhouse was set back from the road and behind it was
a dusky fir wood and a brook where all the children put their bottles of
milk in the morning to keep cool and sweet until dinner hour.
Marilla had seen Anne start off to school on the first day of September
with many secret misgivings. Anne was such an odd girl. How would she
get on with the other children? And how on earth would she ever manage
to hold her tongue during school hours?
Things went better than Marilla feared, however. Anne came home that
evening in high spirits.
“I think I’m going to like school here,” she announced. “I don’t think
much of the master, though. He’s all the time curling his mustache
and making eyes at Prissy Andrews. Prissy is grown up, you know. She’s
sixteen and she’s studying for the entrance examination into Queen’s
Academy at Charlottetown next year. Tillie Boulter says the master is
_dead gone_ on her. She’s got a beautiful complexion and curly brown hair
and she does it up so elegantly. She sits in the long seat at the back
and he sits there, too, most of the time--to explain her lessons, he
says. But Ruby Gillis says she saw him writing something on her slate
and when Prissy read it she blushed as red as a beet and giggled; and
Ruby Gillis says she doesn’t believe it had anything to do with the
lesson.”
“Anne Shirley, don’t let me hear you talking about your teacher in that
way again,” said Marilla sharply. “You don’t go to school to criticize
the master. I guess he can teach _you_ something, and it’s your business
to learn. And I want you to understand right off that you are not to
come home telling tales about him. That is something I won’t encourage.
I hope you were a good girl.”
“Indeed I was,” said Anne comfortably. “It wasn’t so hard as you might
imagine, either. I sit with Diana. Our seat is right by the window and
we can look down to the Lake of Shining Waters. There are a lot of nice
girls in school and we had scrumptious fun playing at dinnertime. It’s
so nice to have a lot of little girls to play with. But of course I like
Diana best and always will. I _adore_ Diana. I’m dreadfully far behind the
others. They’re all in the fifth book and I’m only in the fourth. I feel
that it’s kind of a disgrace. But there’s not one of them has such an
imagination as I have and I soon found that out. We had reading and
geography and Canadian history and dictation today. Mr. Phillips said my
spelling was disgraceful and he held up my slate so that everybody could
see it, all marked over. I felt so mortified, Marilla; he might have
been politer to a stranger, I think. Ruby Gillis gave me an apple and
Sophia Sloane lent me a lovely pink card with ‘May I see you home?’ on
it. I’m to give it back to her tomorrow. And Tillie Boulter let me wear
her bead ring all the afternoon. Can I have some of those pearl beads
off the old pincushion in the garret to make myself a ring? And oh,
Marilla, Jane Andrews told me that Minnie MacPherson told her that she
heard Prissy Andrews tell Sara Gillis that I had a very pretty nose.
Marilla, that is the first compliment I have ever had in my life and you
can’t imagine what a strange feeling it gave me. Marilla, have I really
a pretty nose? I know you’ll tell me the truth.”
“Your nose is well enough,” said Marilla shortly. Secretly she thought
Anne’s nose was a remarkable pretty one; but she had no intention of
telling her so.
That was three weeks ago and all had gone smoothly so far. And now, this
crisp September morning, Anne and Diana were tripping blithely down the
Birch Path, two of the happiest little girls in Avonlea.
“I guess Gilbert Blythe will be in school today,” said Diana. “He’s been
visiting his cousins over in New Brunswick all summer and he only came
home Saturday night. He’s _aw’fly_ handsome, Anne. And he teases the
girls something terrible. He just torments our lives out.”
Diana’s voice indicated that she rather liked having her life tormented
out than not.
“Gilbert Blythe?” said Anne. “Isn’t his name that’s written up on the
porch wall with Julia Bell’s and a big ‘Take Notice’ over them?”
“Yes,” said Diana, tossing her head, “but I’m sure he doesn’t like Julia
Bell so very much. I’ve heard him say he studied the multiplication
table by her freckles.”
“Oh, don’t speak about freckles to me,” implored Anne. “It isn’t
delicate when I’ve got so many. But I do think that writing take-notices
up on the wall about the boys and girls is the silliest ever. I should
just like to see anybody dare to write my name up with a boy’s. Not, of
course,” she hastened to add, “that anybody would.”
Anne sighed. She didn’t want her name written up. But it was a little
humiliating to know that there was no danger of it.
“Nonsense,” said Diana, whose black eyes and glossy tresses had played
such havoc with the hearts of Avonlea schoolboys that her name figured
on the porch walls in half a dozen take-notices. “It’s only meant as
a joke. And don’t you be too sure your name won’t ever be written up.
Charlie Sloane is _dead gone_ on you. He told his mother--his _mother_,
mind you--that you were the smartest girl in school. That’s better than
being good-looking.”
“No, it isn’t,” said Anne, feminine to the core. “I’d rather be pretty
than clever. And I hate Charlie Sloane, I can’t bear a boy with goggle
eyes. If anyone wrote my name up with his I’d _never_ get over it, Diana
Barry. But it _is_ nice to keep head of your class.”
“You’ll have Gilbert in your class after this,” said Diana, “and he’s
used to being head of his class, I can tell you. He’s only in the fourth
book although he’s nearly fourteen. Four years ago his father was sick
and had to go out to Alberta for his health and Gilbert went with him.
They were there three years and Gil didn’t go to school hardly any
until they came back. You won’t find it so easy to keep head after this,
Anne.”
“I’m glad,” said Anne quickly. “I couldn’t really feel proud of keeping
head of little boys and girls of just nine or ten. I got up yesterday
spelling ‘ebullition.’ Josie Pye was head and, mind you, she peeped
in her book. Mr. Phillips didn’t see her--he was looking at Prissy
Andrews--but I did. I just swept her a look of freezing scorn and she
got as red as a beet and spelled it wrong after all.”
“Those Pye girls are cheats all round,” said Diana indignantly, as they
climbed the fence of the main road. “Gertie Pye actually went and put
her milk bottle in my place in the brook yesterday. Did you ever? I
don’t speak to her now.”
When Mr. Phillips was in the back of the room hearing Prissy Andrews’s
Latin, Diana whispered to Anne, “That’s Gilbert Blythe sitting right
across the aisle from you, Anne. Just look at him and see if you don’t
think he’s handsome.”
Anne looked accordingly. She had a good chance to do so, for the said
Gilbert Blythe was absorbed in stealthily pinning the long yellow braid
of Ruby Gillis, who sat in front of him, to the back of her seat. He
was a tall boy, with curly brown hair, roguish hazel eyes, and a mouth
twisted into a teasing smile. Presently Ruby Gillis started up to take
a sum to the master; she fell back into her seat with a little shriek,
believing that her hair was pulled out by the roots. Everybody looked at
her and Mr. Phillips glared so sternly that Ruby began to cry. Gilbert
had whisked the pin out of sight and was studying his history with the
soberest face in the world; but when the commotion subsided he looked at
Anne and winked with inexpressible drollery.
“I think your Gilbert Blythe _is_ handsome,” confided Anne to Diana,
“but I think he’s very bold. It isn’t good manners to wink at a strange
girl.”
But it was not until the afternoon that things really began to happen.
Mr. Phillips was back in the corner explaining a problem in algebra to
Prissy Andrews and the rest of the scholars were doing pretty much as
they pleased eating green apples, whispering, drawing pictures on their
slates, and driving crickets harnessed to strings, up and down aisle.