Anne of Green Gables
nervousness that Marilla had given him up in despair, but Anne took him
in hand so successfully that he now sat at the table in his best clothes
and white collar and talked to the minister not uninterestingly.
He never said a word to Mrs. Allan, but that perhaps was not to be
expected.
All went merry as a marriage bell until Anne’s layer cake was passed.
Mrs. Allan, having already been helped to a bewildering variety,
declined it. But Marilla, seeing the disappointment on Anne’s face, said
smilingly:
“Oh, you must take a piece of this, Mrs. Allan. Anne made it on purpose
for you.”
“In that case I must sample it,” laughed Mrs. Allan, helping herself to
a plump triangle, as did also the minister and Marilla.
Mrs. Allan took a mouthful of hers and a most peculiar expression
crossed her face; not a word did she say, however, but steadily ate away
at it. Marilla saw the expression and hastened to taste the cake.
“Anne Shirley!” she exclaimed, “what on earth did you put into that
cake?”
“Nothing but what the recipe said, Marilla,” cried Anne with a look of
anguish. “Oh, isn’t it all right?”
“All right! It’s simply horrible. Mr. Allan, don’t try to eat it. Anne,
taste it yourself. What flavoring did you use?”
“Vanilla,” said Anne, her face scarlet with mortification after tasting
the cake. “Only vanilla. Oh, Marilla, it must have been the baking
powder. I had my suspicions of that bak--”
“Baking powder fiddlesticks! Go and bring me the bottle of vanilla you
used.”
Anne fled to the pantry and returned with a small bottle partially
filled with a brown liquid and labeled yellowly, “Best Vanilla.”
Marilla took it, uncorked it, smelled it.
“Mercy on us, Anne, you’ve flavored that cake with _Anodyne Liniment_. I
broke the liniment bottle last week and poured what was left into an
old empty vanilla bottle. I suppose it’s partly my fault--I should have
warned you--but for pity’s sake why couldn’t you have smelled it?”
Anne dissolved into tears under this double disgrace.
“I couldn’t--I had such a cold!” and with this she fairly fled to the
gable chamber, where she cast herself on the bed and wept as one who
refuses to be comforted.
Presently a light step sounded on the stairs and somebody entered the
room.
“Oh, Marilla,” sobbed Anne, without looking up, “I’m disgraced forever.
I shall never be able to live this down. It will get out--things always
do get out in Avonlea. Diana will ask me how my cake turned out and I
shall have to tell her the truth. I shall always be pointed at as the
girl who flavored a cake with anodyne liniment. Gil--the boys in school
will never get over laughing at it. Oh, Marilla, if you have a spark
of Christian pity don’t tell me that I must go down and wash the dishes
after this. I’ll wash them when the minister and his wife are gone, but
I cannot ever look Mrs. Allan in the face again. Perhaps she’ll think I
tried to poison her. Mrs. Lynde says she knows an orphan girl who tried
to poison her benefactor. But the liniment isn’t poisonous. It’s meant
to be taken internally--although not in cakes. Won’t you tell Mrs. Allan
so, Marilla?”
“Suppose you jump up and tell her so yourself,” said a merry voice.
Anne flew up, to find Mrs. Allan standing by her bed, surveying her with
laughing eyes.
“My dear little girl, you mustn’t cry like this,” she said, genuinely
disturbed by Anne’s tragic face. “Why, it’s all just a funny mistake
that anybody might make.”
“Oh, no, it takes me to make such a mistake,” said Anne forlornly. “And
I wanted to have that cake so nice for you, Mrs. Allan.”
“Yes, I know, dear. And I assure you I appreciate your kindness and
thoughtfulness just as much as if it had turned out all right. Now,
you mustn’t cry any more, but come down with me and show me your flower
garden. Miss Cuthbert tells me you have a little plot all your own. I
want to see it, for I’m very much interested in flowers.”
Anne permitted herself to be led down and comforted, reflecting that it
was really providential that Mrs. Allan was a kindred spirit. Nothing
more was said about the liniment cake, and when the guests went away
Anne found that she had enjoyed the evening more than could have been
expected, considering that terrible incident. Nevertheless, she sighed
deeply.
“Marilla, isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no
mistakes in it yet?”
“I’ll warrant you’ll make plenty in it,” said Marilla. “I never saw your
beat for making mistakes, Anne.”
“Yes, and well I know it,” admitted Anne mournfully. “But have you ever
noticed one encouraging thing about me, Marilla? I never make the same
mistake twice.”
“I don’t know as that’s much benefit when you’re always making new
ones.”
“Oh, don’t you see, Marilla? There must be a limit to the mistakes one
person can make, and when I get to the end of them, then I’ll be through
with them. That’s a very comforting thought.”
“Well, you’d better go and give that cake to the pigs,” said Marilla.
“It isn’t fit for any human to eat, not even Jerry Boute.”
CHAPTER XXII. Anne Is Invited Out to Tea
AND what are your eyes popping out of your head about. Now?” asked
Marilla, when Anne had just come in from a run to the post office. “Have
you discovered another kindred spirit?” Excitement hung around Anne like
a garment, shone in her eyes, kindled in every feature. She had come
dancing up the lane, like a wind-blown sprite, through the mellow
sunshine and lazy shadows of the August evening.
“No, Marilla, but oh, what do you think? I am invited to tea at the
manse tomorrow afternoon! Mrs. Allan left the letter for me at the post
office. Just look at it, Marilla. ‘Miss Anne Shirley, Green Gables.’
That is the first time I was ever called ‘Miss.’ Such a thrill as it
gave me! I shall cherish it forever among my choicest treasures.”
“Mrs. Allan told me she meant to have all the members of her
Sunday-school class to tea in turn,” said Marilla, regarding the
wonderful event very coolly. “You needn’t get in such a fever over it.
Do learn to take things calmly, child.”
For Anne to take things calmly would have been to change her nature. All
“spirit and fire and dew,” as she was, the pleasures and pains of life
came to her with trebled intensity. Marilla felt this and was vaguely
troubled over it, realizing that the ups and downs of existence would
probably bear hardly on this impulsive soul and not sufficiently
understanding that the equally great capacity for delight might more
than compensate. Therefore Marilla conceived it to be her duty to drill
Anne into a tranquil uniformity of disposition as impossible and alien
to her as to a dancing sunbeam in one of the brook shallows. She did not
make much headway, as she sorrowfully admitted to herself. The downfall
of some dear hope or plan plunged Anne into “deeps of affliction.” The
fulfillment thereof exalted her to dizzy realms of delight. Marilla had
almost begun to despair of ever fashioning this waif of the world into
her model little girl of demure manners and prim deportment. Neither
would she have believed that she really liked Anne much better as she
was.
Anne went to bed that night speechless with misery because Matthew had
said the wind was round northeast and he feared it would be a rainy day
tomorrow. The rustle of the poplar leaves about the house worried her,
it sounded so like pattering raindrops, and the full, faraway roar of
the gulf, to which she listened delightedly at other times, loving its
strange, sonorous, haunting rhythm, now seemed like a prophecy of storm
and disaster to a small maiden who particularly wanted a fine day. Anne
thought that the morning would never come.
But all things have an end, even nights before the day on which you are
invited to take tea at the manse. The morning, in spite of Matthew’s
predictions, was fine and Anne’s spirits soared to their highest.
“Oh, Marilla, there is something in me today that makes me just love
everybody I see,” she exclaimed as she washed the breakfast dishes.
“You don’t know how good I feel! Wouldn’t it be nice if it could last? I
believe I could be a model child if I were just invited out to tea every
day. But oh, Marilla, it’s a solemn occasion too. I feel so anxious.
What if I shouldn’t behave properly? You know I never had tea at a
manse before, and I’m not sure that I know all the rules of etiquette,
although I’ve been studying the rules given in the Etiquette Department
of the Family Herald ever since I came here. I’m so afraid I’ll do
something silly or forget to do something I should do. Would it be
good manners to take a second helping of anything if you wanted to _very_
much?”
“The trouble with you, Anne, is that you’re thinking too much about
yourself. You should just think of Mrs. Allan and what would be nicest
and most agreeable to her,” said Marilla, hitting for once in her life
on a very sound and pithy piece of advice. Anne instantly realized this.
“You are right, Marilla. I’ll try not to think about myself at all.”
Anne evidently got through her visit without any serious breach of
“etiquette,” for she came home through the twilight, under a great,
high-sprung sky gloried over with trails of saffron and rosy cloud, in
a beatified state of mind and told Marilla all about it happily, sitting
on the big red-sandstone slab at the kitchen door with her tired curly
head in Marilla’s gingham lap.
A cool wind was blowing down over the long harvest fields from the rims
of firry western hills and whistling through the poplars. One clear star
hung over the orchard and the fireflies were flitting over in Lover’s
Lane, in and out among the ferns and rustling boughs. Anne watched them
as she talked and somehow felt that wind and stars and fireflies were
all tangled up together into something unutterably sweet and enchanting.
“Oh, Marilla, I’ve had a most _fascinating_ time. I feel that I have not
lived in vain and I shall always feel like that even if I should never
be invited to tea at a manse again. When I got there Mrs. Allan met me
at the door. She was dressed in the sweetest dress of pale-pink organdy,
with dozens of frills and elbow sleeves, and she looked just like a
seraph. I really think I’d like to be a minister’s wife when I grow up,
Marilla. A minister mightn’t mind my red hair because he wouldn’t be
thinking of such worldly things. But then of course one would have to
be naturally good and I’ll never be that, so I suppose there’s no use in
thinking about it. Some people are naturally good, you know, and others
are not. I’m one of the others. Mrs. Lynde says I’m full of original
sin. No matter how hard I try to be good I can never make such a success
of it as those who are naturally good. It’s a good deal like geometry,
I expect. But don’t you think the trying so hard ought to count for
something? Mrs. Allan is one of the naturally good people. I love her
passionately. You know there are some people, like Matthew and Mrs.
Allan that you can love right off without any trouble. And there are
others, like Mrs. Lynde, that you have to try very hard to love. You
know you _ought_ to love them because they know so much and are such
active workers in the church, but you have to keep reminding yourself of
it all the time or else you forget. There was another little girl at the
manse to tea, from the White Sands Sunday-school. Her name was Laurette
Bradley, and she was a very nice little girl. Not exactly a kindred
spirit, you know, but still very nice. We had an elegant tea, and I
think I kept all the rules of etiquette pretty well. After tea Mrs.
Allan played and sang and she got Lauretta and me to sing too.
Mrs. Allan says I have a good voice and she says I must sing in the