Anne of Green Gables
“That’s a Christmas present for you, Anne,” said Matthew shyly.
“Why--why--Anne, don’t you like it? Well now--well now.”
For Anne’s eyes had suddenly filled with tears.
“Like it! Oh, Matthew!” Anne laid the dress over a chair and clasped
her hands. “Matthew, it’s perfectly exquisite. Oh, I can never thank you
enough. Look at those sleeves! Oh, it seems to me this must be a happy
dream.”
“Well, well, let us have breakfast,” interrupted Marilla. “I must say,
Anne, I don’t think you needed the dress; but since Matthew has got it
for you, see that you take good care of it. There’s a hair ribbon Mrs.
Lynde left for you. It’s brown, to match the dress. Come now, sit in.”
“I don’t see how I’m going to eat breakfast,” said Anne rapturously.
“Breakfast seems so commonplace at such an exciting moment. I’d rather
feast my eyes on that dress. I’m so glad that puffed sleeves are still
fashionable. It did seem to me that I’d never get over it if they went
out before I had a dress with them. I’d never have felt quite satisfied,
you see. It was lovely of Mrs. Lynde to give me the ribbon too. I feel
that I ought to be a very good girl indeed. It’s at times like this I’m
sorry I’m not a model little girl; and I always resolve that I will
be in future. But somehow it’s hard to carry out your resolutions when
irresistible temptations come. Still, I really will make an extra effort
after this.”
When the commonplace breakfast was over Diana appeared, crossing the
white log bridge in the hollow, a gay little figure in her crimson
ulster. Anne flew down the slope to meet her.
“Merry Christmas, Diana! And oh, it’s a wonderful Christmas. I’ve
something splendid to show you. Matthew has given me the loveliest
dress, with _such_ sleeves. I couldn’t even imagine any nicer.”
“I’ve got something more for you,” said Diana breathlessly. “Here--this
box. Aunt Josephine sent us out a big box with ever so many things in
it--and this is for you. I’d have brought it over last night, but it
didn’t come until after dark, and I never feel very comfortable coming
through the Haunted Wood in the dark now.”
Anne opened the box and peeped in. First a card with “For the Anne-girl
and Merry Christmas,” written on it; and then, a pair of the daintiest
little kid slippers, with beaded toes and satin bows and glistening
buckles.
“Oh,” said Anne, “Diana, this is too much. I must be dreaming.”
“I call it providential,” said Diana. “You won’t have to borrow Ruby’s
slippers now, and that’s a blessing, for they’re two sizes too big for
you, and it would be awful to hear a fairy shuffling. Josie Pye would
be delighted. Mind you, Rob Wright went home with Gertie Pye from the
practice night before last. Did you ever hear anything equal to that?”
All the Avonlea scholars were in a fever of excitement that day, for the
hall had to be decorated and a last grand rehearsal held.
The concert came off in the evening and was a pronounced success. The
little hall was crowded; all the performers did excellently well, but
Anne was the bright particular star of the occasion, as even envy, in
the shape of Josie Pye, dared not deny.
“Oh, hasn’t it been a brilliant evening?” sighed Anne, when it was all
over and she and Diana were walking home together under a dark, starry
sky.
“Everything went off very well,” said Diana practically. “I guess we
must have made as much as ten dollars. Mind you, Mr. Allan is going to
send an account of it to the Charlottetown papers.”
“Oh, Diana, will we really see our names in print? It makes me thrill to
think of it. Your solo was perfectly elegant, Diana. I felt prouder than
you did when it was encored. I just said to myself, ‘It is my dear bosom
friend who is so honored.’”
“Well, your recitations just brought down the house, Anne. That sad one
was simply splendid.”
“Oh, I was so nervous, Diana. When Mr. Allan called out my name I really
cannot tell how I ever got up on that platform. I felt as if a million
eyes were looking at me and through me, and for one dreadful moment I
was sure I couldn’t begin at all. Then I thought of my lovely puffed
sleeves and took courage. I knew that I must live up to those sleeves,
Diana. So I started in, and my voice seemed to be coming from ever so
far away. I just felt like a parrot. It’s providential that I practiced
those recitations so often up in the garret, or I’d never have been able
to get through. Did I groan all right?”
“Yes, indeed, you groaned lovely,” assured Diana.
“I saw old Mrs. Sloane wiping away tears when I sat down. It was
splendid to think I had touched somebody’s heart. It’s so romantic
to take part in a concert, isn’t it? Oh, it’s been a very memorable
occasion indeed.”
“Wasn’t the boys’ dialogue fine?” said Diana. “Gilbert Blythe was just
splendid. Anne, I do think it’s awful mean the way you treat Gil. Wait
till I tell you. When you ran off the platform after the fairy dialogue
one of your roses fell out of your hair. I saw Gil pick it up and put
it in his breast pocket. There now. You’re so romantic that I’m sure you
ought to be pleased at that.”
“It’s nothing to me what that person does,” said Anne loftily. “I simply
never waste a thought on him, Diana.”
That night Marilla and Matthew, who had been out to a concert for the
first time in twenty years, sat for a while by the kitchen fire after
Anne had gone to bed.
“Well now, I guess our Anne did as well as any of them,” said Matthew
proudly.
“Yes, she did,” admitted Marilla. “She’s a bright child, Matthew. And
she looked real nice too. I’ve been kind of opposed to this concert
scheme, but I suppose there’s no real harm in it after all. Anyhow, I
was proud of Anne tonight, although I’m not going to tell her so.”
“Well now, I was proud of her and I did tell her so ‘fore she went
upstairs,” said Matthew. “We must see what we can do for her some of
these days, Marilla. I guess she’ll need something more than Avonlea
school by and by.”
“There’s time enough to think of that,” said Marilla. “She’s only
thirteen in March. Though tonight it struck me she was growing quite a
big girl. Mrs. Lynde made that dress a mite too long, and it makes Anne
look so tall. She’s quick to learn and I guess the best thing we can do
for her will be to send her to Queen’s after a spell. But nothing need
be said about that for a year or two yet.”
“Well now, it’ll do no harm to be thinking it over off and on,” said
Matthew. “Things like that are all the better for lots of thinking
over.”
CHAPTER XXVI. The Story Club Is Formed
JUNIOR Avonlea found it hard to settle down to humdrum existence
again. To Anne in particular things seemed fearfully flat, stale, and
unprofitable after the goblet of excitement she had been sipping for
weeks. Could she go back to the former quiet pleasures of those faraway
days before the concert? At first, as she told Diana, she did not really
think she could.
“I’m positively certain, Diana, that life can never be quite the
same again as it was in those olden days,” she said mournfully, as if
referring to a period of at least fifty years back. “Perhaps after a
while I’ll get used to it, but I’m afraid concerts spoil people for
everyday life. I suppose that is why Marilla disapproves of them.
Marilla is such a sensible woman. It must be a great deal better to be
sensible; but still, I don’t believe I’d really want to be a sensible
person, because they are so unromantic. Mrs. Lynde says there is no
danger of my ever being one, but you can never tell. I feel just now
that I may grow up to be sensible yet. But perhaps that is only because
I’m tired. I simply couldn’t sleep last night for ever so long. I just
lay awake and imagined the concert over and over again. That’s one
splendid thing about such affairs--it’s so lovely to look back to them.”
Eventually, however, Avonlea school slipped back into its old groove
and took up its old interests. To be sure, the concert left traces. Ruby
Gillis and Emma White, who had quarreled over a point of precedence in
their platform seats, no longer sat at the same desk, and a promising
friendship of three years was broken up. Josie Pye and Julia Bell did
not “speak” for three months, because Josie Pye had told Bessie Wright
that Julia Bell’s bow when she got up to recite made her think of a
chicken jerking its head, and Bessie told Julia. None of the Sloanes
would have any dealings with the Bells, because the Bells had declared
that the Sloanes had too much to do in the program, and the Sloanes had
retorted that the Bells were not capable of doing the little they had to
do properly. Finally, Charlie Sloane fought Moody Spurgeon MacPherson,
because Moody Spurgeon had said that Anne Shirley put on airs about
her recitations, and Moody Spurgeon was “licked”; consequently Moody
Spurgeon’s sister, Ella May, would not “speak” to Anne Shirley all the
rest of the winter. With the exception of these trifling frictions, work
in Miss Stacy’s little kingdom went on with regularity and smoothness.
The winter weeks slipped by. It was an unusually mild winter, with so
little snow that Anne and Diana could go to school nearly every day by
way of the Birch Path. On Anne’s birthday they were tripping lightly
down it, keeping eyes and ears alert amid all their chatter, for Miss
Stacy had told them that they must soon write a composition on “A
Winter’s Walk in the Woods,” and it behooved them to be observant.
“Just think, Diana, I’m thirteen years old today,” remarked Anne in an
awed voice. “I can scarcely realize that I’m in my teens. When I woke
this morning it seemed to me that everything must be different. You’ve
been thirteen for a month, so I suppose it doesn’t seem such a novelty
to you as it does to me. It makes life seem so much more interesting.
In two more years I’ll be really grown up. It’s a great comfort to think
that I’ll be able to use big words then without being laughed at.”
“Ruby Gillis says she means to have a beau as soon as she’s fifteen,”
said Diana.
“Ruby Gillis thinks of nothing but beaus,” said Anne disdainfully.
“She’s actually delighted when anyone writes her name up in a
take-notice for all she pretends to be so mad. But I’m afraid that is an
uncharitable speech. Mrs. Allan says we should never make uncharitable
speeches; but they do slip out so often before you think, don’t they? I
simply can’t talk about Josie Pye without making an uncharitable speech,
so I never mention her at all. You may have noticed that. I’m trying to
be as much like Mrs. Allan as I possibly can, for I think she’s perfect.
Mr. Allan thinks so too. Mrs. Lynde says he just worships the ground she
treads on and she doesn’t really think it right for a minister to
set his affections so much on a mortal being. But then, Diana, even
ministers are human and have their besetting sins just like everybody
else. I had such an interesting talk with Mrs. Allan about besetting
sins last Sunday afternoon. There are just a few things it’s proper
to talk about on Sundays and that is one of them. My besetting sin is
imagining too much and forgetting my duties. I’m striving very hard
to overcome it and now that I’m really thirteen perhaps I’ll get on
better.”
“In four more years we’ll be able to put our hair up,” said Diana.
“Alice Bell is only sixteen and she is wearing hers up, but I think
that’s ridiculous. I shall wait until I’m seventeen.”
“If I had Alice Bell’s crooked nose,” said Anne decidedly, “I
wouldn’t--but there! I won’t say what I was going to because it was
extremely uncharitable. Besides, I was comparing it with my own nose and
that’s vanity. I’m afraid I think too much about my nose ever since I
heard that compliment about it long ago. It really is a great comfort to