Anne of Green Gables
you that. She wouldn’t speak to Diana at all.”
“It wasn’t Diana’s fault,” said Anne contritely. “It was mine. I
suggested racing to see who would get into bed first.”
“I knew it!” said Mrs. Lynde, with the exultation of a correct guesser.
“I knew that idea came out of your head. Well, it’s made a nice lot of
trouble, that’s what. Old Miss Barry came out to stay for a month, but
she declares she won’t stay another day and is going right back to town
tomorrow, Sunday and all as it is. She’d have gone today if they could
have taken her. She had promised to pay for a quarter’s music lessons
for Diana, but now she is determined to do nothing at all for such a
tomboy. Oh, I guess they had a lively time of it there this morning. The
Barrys must feel cut up. Old Miss Barry is rich and they’d like to keep
on the good side of her. Of course, Mrs. Barry didn’t say just that to
me, but I’m a pretty good judge of human nature, that’s what.”
“I’m such an unlucky girl,” mourned Anne. “I’m always getting into
scrapes myself and getting my best friends--people I’d shed my heart’s
blood for--into them too. Can you tell me why it is so, Mrs. Lynde?”
“It’s because you’re too heedless and impulsive, child, that’s what. You
never stop to think--whatever comes into your head to say or do you say
or do it without a moment’s reflection.”
“Oh, but that’s the best of it,” protested Anne. “Something just flashes
into your mind, so exciting, and you must out with it. If you stop to
think it over you spoil it all. Haven’t you never felt that yourself,
Mrs. Lynde?”
No, Mrs. Lynde had not. She shook her head sagely.
“You must learn to think a little, Anne, that’s what. The proverb you
need to go by is ‘Look before you leap’--especially into spare-room
beds.”
Mrs. Lynde laughed comfortably over her mild joke, but Anne remained
pensive. She saw nothing to laugh at in the situation, which to her
eyes appeared very serious. When she left Mrs. Lynde’s she took her way
across the crusted fields to Orchard Slope. Diana met her at the kitchen
door.
“Your Aunt Josephine was very cross about it, wasn’t she?” whispered
Anne.
“Yes,” answered Diana, stifling a giggle with an apprehensive glance
over her shoulder at the closed sitting-room door. “She was fairly
dancing with rage, Anne. Oh, how she scolded. She said I was the
worst-behaved girl she ever saw and that my parents ought to be ashamed
of the way they had brought me up. She says she won’t stay and I’m sure
I don’t care. But Father and Mother do.”
“Why didn’t you tell them it was my fault?” demanded Anne.
“It’s likely I’d do such a thing, isn’t it?” said Diana with just scorn.
“I’m no telltale, Anne Shirley, and anyhow I was just as much to blame
as you.”
“Well, I’m going in to tell her myself,” said Anne resolutely.
Diana stared.
“Anne Shirley, you’d never! why--she’ll eat you alive!”
“Don’t frighten me any more than I am frightened,” implored Anne. “I’d
rather walk up to a cannon’s mouth. But I’ve got to do it, Diana. It
was my fault and I’ve got to confess. I’ve had practice in confessing,
fortunately.”
“Well, she’s in the room,” said Diana. “You can go in if you want to. I
wouldn’t dare. And I don’t believe you’ll do a bit of good.”
With this encouragement Anne bearded the lion in its den--that is to
say, walked resolutely up to the sitting-room door and knocked faintly.
A sharp “Come in” followed.
Miss Josephine Barry, thin, prim, and rigid, was knitting fiercely by
the fire, her wrath quite unappeased and her eyes snapping through her
gold-rimmed glasses. She wheeled around in her chair, expecting to see
Diana, and beheld a white-faced girl whose great eyes were brimmed up
with a mixture of desperate courage and shrinking terror.
“Who are you?” demanded Miss Josephine Barry, without ceremony.
“I’m Anne of Green Gables,” said the small visitor tremulously, clasping
her hands with her characteristic gesture, “and I’ve come to confess, if
you please.”
“Confess what?”
“That it was all my fault about jumping into bed on you last night. I
suggested it. Diana would never have thought of such a thing, I am sure.
Diana is a very ladylike girl, Miss Barry. So you must see how unjust it
is to blame her.”
“Oh, I must, hey? I rather think Diana did her share of the jumping at
least. Such carryings on in a respectable house!”
“But we were only in fun,” persisted Anne. “I think you ought to forgive
us, Miss Barry, now that we’ve apologized. And anyhow, please forgive
Diana and let her have her music lessons. Diana’s heart is set on her
music lessons, Miss Barry, and I know too well what it is to set your
heart on a thing and not get it. If you must be cross with anyone, be
cross with me. I’ve been so used in my early days to having people cross
at me that I can endure it much better than Diana can.”
Much of the snap had gone out of the old lady’s eyes by this time
and was replaced by a twinkle of amused interest. But she still said
severely:
“I don’t think it is any excuse for you that you were only in fun.
Little girls never indulged in that kind of fun when I was young. You
don’t know what it is to be awakened out of a sound sleep, after a long
and arduous journey, by two great girls coming bounce down on you.”
“I don’t _know_, but I can _imagine_,” said Anne eagerly. “I’m sure it must
have been very disturbing. But then, there is our side of it too. Have
you any imagination, Miss Barry? If you have, just put yourself in
our place. We didn’t know there was anybody in that bed and you nearly
scared us to death. It was simply awful the way we felt. And then we
couldn’t sleep in the spare room after being promised. I suppose you are
used to sleeping in spare rooms. But just imagine what you would feel
like if you were a little orphan girl who had never had such an honor.”
All the snap had gone by this time. Miss Barry actually laughed--a
sound which caused Diana, waiting in speechless anxiety in the kitchen
outside, to give a great gasp of relief.
“I’m afraid my imagination is a little rusty--it’s so long since I used
it,” she said. “I dare say your claim to sympathy is just as strong as
mine. It all depends on the way we look at it. Sit down here and tell me
about yourself.”
“I am very sorry I can’t,” said Anne firmly. “I would like to, because
you seem like an interesting lady, and you might even be a kindred
spirit although you don’t look very much like it. But it is my duty to
go home to Miss Marilla Cuthbert. Miss Marilla Cuthbert is a very kind
lady who has taken me to bring up properly. She is doing her best, but
it is very discouraging work. You must not blame her because I jumped on
the bed. But before I go I do wish you would tell me if you will forgive
Diana and stay just as long as you meant to in Avonlea.”
“I think perhaps I will if you will come over and talk to me
occasionally,” said Miss Barry.
That evening Miss Barry gave Diana a silver bangle bracelet and told the
senior members of the household that she had unpacked her valise.
“I’ve made up my mind to stay simply for the sake of getting better
acquainted with that Anne-girl,” she said frankly. “She amuses me, and
at my time of life an amusing person is a rarity.”
Marilla’s only comment when she heard the story was, “I told you so.”
This was for Matthew’s benefit.
Miss Barry stayed her month out and over. She was a more agreeable guest
than usual, for Anne kept her in good humor. They became firm friends.
When Miss Barry went away she said:
“Remember, you Anne-girl, when you come to town you’re to visit me and
I’ll put you in my very sparest spare-room bed to sleep.”
“Miss Barry was a kindred spirit, after all,” Anne confided to Marilla.
“You wouldn’t think so to look at her, but she is. You don’t find it
right out at first, as in Matthew’s case, but after a while you come
to see it. Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It’s
splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.”
CHAPTER XX. A Good Imagination Gone Wrong
SPRING had come once more to Green Gables--the beautiful capricious,
reluctant Canadian spring, lingering along through April and May in a
succession of sweet, fresh, chilly days, with pink sunsets and miracles
of resurrection and growth. The maples in Lover’s Lane were red budded
and little curly ferns pushed up around the Dryad’s Bubble. Away up in
the barrens, behind Mr. Silas Sloane’s place, the Mayflowers blossomed
out, pink and white stars of sweetness under their brown leaves. All the
school girls and boys had one golden afternoon gathering them, coming
home in the clear, echoing twilight with arms and baskets full of
flowery spoil.
“I’m so sorry for people who live in lands where there are no
Mayflowers,” said Anne. “Diana says perhaps they have something better,
but there couldn’t be anything better than Mayflowers, could there,
Marilla? And Diana says if they don’t know what they are like they don’t
miss them. But I think that is the saddest thing of all. I think it
would be _tragic_, Marilla, not to know what Mayflowers are like and _not_
to miss them. Do you know what I think Mayflowers are, Marilla? I think
they must be the souls of the flowers that died last summer and this
is their heaven. But we had a splendid time today, Marilla. We had our
lunch down in a big mossy hollow by an old well--such a _romantic_ spot.
Charlie Sloane dared Arty Gillis to jump over it, and Arty did because
he wouldn’t take a dare. Nobody would in school. It is very _fashionable_
to dare. Mr. Phillips gave all the Mayflowers he found to Prissy Andrews
and I heard him to say ‘sweets to the sweet.’ He got that out of a
book, I know; but it shows he has some imagination. I was offered some
Mayflowers too, but I rejected them with scorn. I can’t tell you the
person’s name because I have vowed never to let it cross my lips. We
made wreaths of the Mayflowers and put them on our hats; and when the
time came to go home we marched in procession down the road, two by two,
with our bouquets and wreaths, singing ‘My Home on the Hill.’ Oh, it was
so thrilling, Marilla. All Mr. Silas Sloane’s folks rushed out to see us
and everybody we met on the road stopped and stared after us. We made a
real sensation.”
“Not much wonder! Such silly doings!” was Marilla’s response.
After the Mayflowers came the violets, and Violet Vale was empurpled
with them. Anne walked through it on her way to school with reverent
steps and worshiping eyes, as if she trod on holy ground.
“Somehow,” she told Diana, “when I’m going through here I don’t really
care whether Gil--whether anybody gets ahead of me in class or not. But
when I’m up in school it’s all different and I care as much as ever.
There’s such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is
why I’m such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would
be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn’t be half so
interesting.”
One June evening, when the orchards were pink blossomed again, when the
frogs were singing silverly sweet in the marshes about the head of the
Lake of Shining Waters, and the air was full of the savor of clover
fields and balsamic fir woods, Anne was sitting by her gable window.
She had been studying her lessons, but it had grown too dark to see the
book, so she had fallen into wide-eyed reverie, looking out past the
boughs of the Snow Queen, once more bestarred with its tufts of blossom.
In all essential respects the little gable chamber was unchanged. The
walls were as white, the pincushion as hard, the chairs as stiffly
and yellowly upright as ever. Yet the whole character of the room was
altered. It was full of a new vital, pulsing personality that seemed to