Anne of Green Gables
an idea she can be awful stubborn if she takes the notion. Far as I can
make out from her story, Mr. Phillips has been carrying matters with
a rather high hand. But it would never do to say so to her. I’ll just
talk it over with Rachel. She’s sent ten children to school and she
ought to know something about it. She’ll have heard the whole story,
too, by this time.”
Marilla found Mrs. Lynde knitting quilts as industriously and cheerfully
as usual.
“I suppose you know what I’ve come about,” she said, a little
shamefacedly.
Mrs. Rachel nodded.
“About Anne’s fuss in school, I reckon,” she said. “Tillie Boulter was
in on her way home from school and told me about it.”
“I don’t know what to do with her,” said Marilla. “She declares she
won’t go back to school. I never saw a child so worked up. I’ve been
expecting trouble ever since she started to school. I knew things were
going too smooth to last. She’s so high strung. What would you advise,
Rachel?”
“Well, since you’ve asked my advice, Marilla,” said Mrs. Lynde
amiably--Mrs. Lynde dearly loved to be asked for advice--“I’d just
humor her a little at first, that’s what I’d do. It’s my belief that
Mr. Phillips was in the wrong. Of course, it doesn’t do to say so to the
children, you know. And of course he did right to punish her yesterday
for giving way to temper. But today it was different. The others who
were late should have been punished as well as Anne, that’s what. And I
don’t believe in making the girls sit with the boys for punishment. It
isn’t modest. Tillie Boulter was real indignant. She took Anne’s part
right through and said all the scholars did too. Anne seems real popular
among them, somehow. I never thought she’d take with them so well.”
“Then you really think I’d better let her stay home,” said Marilla in
amazement.
“Yes. That is I wouldn’t say school to her again until she said it
herself. Depend upon it, Marilla, she’ll cool off in a week or so and
be ready enough to go back of her own accord, that’s what, while, if
you were to make her go back right off, dear knows what freak or tantrum
she’d take next and make more trouble than ever. The less fuss made the
better, in my opinion. She won’t miss much by not going to school, as
far as _that_ goes. Mr. Phillips isn’t any good at all as a teacher. The
order he keeps is scandalous, that’s what, and he neglects the young
fry and puts all his time on those big scholars he’s getting ready for
Queen’s. He’d never have got the school for another year if his uncle
hadn’t been a trustee--_the_ trustee, for he just leads the other two
around by the nose, that’s what. I declare, I don’t know what education
in this Island is coming to.”
Mrs. Rachel shook her head, as much as to say if she were only at the
head of the educational system of the Province things would be much
better managed.
Marilla took Mrs. Rachel’s advice and not another word was said to Anne
about going back to school. She learned her lessons at home, did her
chores, and played with Diana in the chilly purple autumn twilights;
but when she met Gilbert Blythe on the road or encountered him in
Sunday-school she passed him by with an icy contempt that was no whit
thawed by his evident desire to appease her. Even Diana’s efforts as
a peacemaker were of no avail. Anne had evidently made up her mind to
hate Gilbert Blythe to the end of life.
As much as she hated Gilbert, however, did she love Diana, with all the
love of her passionate little heart, equally intense in its likes and
dislikes. One evening Marilla, coming in from the orchard with a basket
of apples, found Anne sitting along by the east window in the twilight,
crying bitterly.
“Whatever’s the matter now, Anne?” she asked.
“It’s about Diana,” sobbed Anne luxuriously. “I love Diana so, Marilla.
I cannot ever live without her. But I know very well when we grow up
that Diana will get married and go away and leave me. And oh, what shall
I do? I hate her husband--I just hate him furiously. I’ve been imagining
it all out--the wedding and everything--Diana dressed in snowy garments,
with a veil, and looking as beautiful and regal as a queen; and me the
bridesmaid, with a lovely dress too, and puffed sleeves, but with a
breaking heart hid beneath my smiling face. And then bidding Diana
goodbye-e-e--” Here Anne broke down entirely and wept with increasing
bitterness.
Marilla turned quickly away to hide her twitching face; but it was no
use; she collapsed on the nearest chair and burst into such a hearty and
unusual peal of laughter that Matthew, crossing the yard outside, halted
in amazement. When had he heard Marilla laugh like that before?
“Well, Anne Shirley,” said Marilla as soon as she could speak, “if you
must borrow trouble, for pity’s sake borrow it handier home. I should
think you had an imagination, sure enough.”
CHAPTER XVI. Diana Is Invited to Tea with Tragic Results
OCTOBER was a beautiful month at Green Gables, when the birches in the
hollow turned as golden as sunshine and the maples behind the orchard
were royal crimson and the wild cherry-trees along the lane put on the
loveliest shades of dark red and bronzy green, while the fields sunned
themselves in aftermaths.
Anne reveled in the world of color about her.
“Oh, Marilla,” she exclaimed one Saturday morning, coming dancing in
with her arms full of gorgeous boughs, “I’m so glad I live in a world
where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from
September to November, wouldn’t it? Look at these maple branches. Don’t
they give you a thrill--several thrills? I’m going to decorate my room
with them.”
“Messy things,” said Marilla, whose aesthetic sense was not noticeably
developed. “You clutter up your room entirely too much with out-of-doors
stuff, Anne. Bedrooms were made to sleep in.”
“Oh, and dream in too, Marilla. And you know one can dream so much
better in a room where there are pretty things. I’m going to put these
boughs in the old blue jug and set them on my table.”
“Mind you don’t drop leaves all over the stairs then. I’m going on a
meeting of the Aid Society at Carmody this afternoon, Anne, and I won’t
likely be home before dark. You’ll have to get Matthew and Jerry their
supper, so mind you don’t forget to put the tea to draw until you sit
down at the table as you did last time.”
“It was dreadful of me to forget,” said Anne apologetically, “but that
was the afternoon I was trying to think of a name for Violet Vale and it
crowded other things out. Matthew was so good. He never scolded a bit.
He put the tea down himself and said we could wait awhile as well as
not. And I told him a lovely fairy story while we were waiting, so
he didn’t find the time long at all. It was a beautiful fairy story,
Marilla. I forgot the end of it, so I made up an end for it myself and
Matthew said he couldn’t tell where the join came in.”
“Matthew would think it all right, Anne, if you took a notion to get up
and have dinner in the middle of the night. But you keep your wits about
you this time. And--I don’t really know if I’m doing right--it may make
you more addlepated than ever--but you can ask Diana to come over and
spend the afternoon with you and have tea here.”
“Oh, Marilla!” Anne clasped her hands. “How perfectly lovely! You _are_
able to imagine things after all or else you’d never have understood how
I’ve longed for that very thing. It will seem so nice and grown-uppish.
No fear of my forgetting to put the tea to draw when I have company. Oh,
Marilla, can I use the rosebud spray tea set?”
“No, indeed! The rosebud tea set! Well, what next? You know I never use
that except for the minister or the Aids. You’ll put down the old brown
tea set. But you can open the little yellow crock of cherry preserves.
It’s time it was being used anyhow--I believe it’s beginning to work.
And you can cut some fruit cake and have some of the cookies and snaps.”
“I can just imagine myself sitting down at the head of the table and
pouring out the tea,” said Anne, shutting her eyes ecstatically. “And
asking Diana if she takes sugar! I know she doesn’t but of course I’ll
ask her just as if I didn’t know. And then pressing her to take another
piece of fruit cake and another helping of preserves. Oh, Marilla, it’s
a wonderful sensation just to think of it. Can I take her into the spare
room to lay off her hat when she comes? And then into the parlor to
sit?”
“No. The sitting room will do for you and your company. But there’s a
bottle half full of raspberry cordial that was left over from the church
social the other night. It’s on the second shelf of the sitting-room
closet and you and Diana can have it if you like, and a cooky to eat
with it along in the afternoon, for I daresay Matthew ‘ll be late coming
in to tea since he’s hauling potatoes to the vessel.”
Anne flew down to the hollow, past the Dryad’s Bubble and up the spruce
path to Orchard Slope, to ask Diana to tea. As a result just after
Marilla had driven off to Carmody, Diana came over, dressed in _her_
second-best dress and looking exactly as it is proper to look when asked
out to tea. At other times she was wont to run into the kitchen without
knocking; but now she knocked primly at the front door. And when Anne,
dressed in her second best, as primly opened it, both little girls
shook hands as gravely as if they had never met before. This unnatural
solemnity lasted until after Diana had been taken to the east gable to
lay off her hat and then had sat for ten minutes in the sitting room,
toes in position.
“How is your mother?” inquired Anne politely, just as if she had not
seen Mrs. Barry picking apples that morning in excellent health and
spirits.
“She is very well, thank you. I suppose Mr. Cuthbert is hauling potatoes
to the _lily sands_ this afternoon, is he?” said Diana, who had ridden
down to Mr. Harmon Andrews’s that morning in Matthew’s cart.
“Yes. Our potato crop is very good this year. I hope your father’s crop
is good too.”
“It is fairly good, thank you. Have you picked many of your apples yet?”
“Oh, ever so many,” said Anne forgetting to be dignified and jumping up
quickly. “Let’s go out to the orchard and get some of the Red Sweetings,
Diana. Marilla says we can have all that are left on the tree. Marilla
is a very generous woman. She said we could have fruit cake and cherry
preserves for tea. But it isn’t good manners to tell your company what
you are going to give them to eat, so I won’t tell you what she said we
could have to drink. Only it begins with an R and a C and it’s bright
red color. I love bright red drinks, don’t you? They taste twice as good
as any other color.”
The orchard, with its great sweeping boughs that bent to the ground
with fruit, proved so delightful that the little girls spent most of the
afternoon in it, sitting in a grassy corner where the frost had spared
the green and the mellow autumn sunshine lingered warmly, eating apples
and talking as hard as they could. Diana had much to tell Anne of what
went on in school. She had to sit with Gertie Pye and she hated
it; Gertie squeaked her pencil all the time and it just made
her--Diana’s--blood run cold; Ruby Gillis had charmed all her warts
away, true’s you live, with a magic pebble that old Mary Joe from the
Creek gave her. You had to rub the warts with the pebble and then throw
it away over your left shoulder at the time of the new moon and the
warts would all go. Charlie Sloane’s name was written up with Em White’s
on the porch wall and Em White was _awful mad_ about it; Sam Boulter had
“sassed” Mr. Phillips in class and Mr. Phillips whipped him and Sam’s
father came down to the school and dared Mr. Phillips to lay a hand on
one of his children again; and Mattie Andrews had a new red hood and a