Anne of the Island
She could not avoid seeing him again, but the outraged Charlie took
care that it should not be at very close quarters. Miss Ada’s cushions
were henceforth safe from his depredations, and when he met Anne on the
street, or in Redmond’s halls, his bow was icy in the extreme.
Relations between these two old schoolmates continued to be thus
strained for nearly a year! Then Charlie transferred his blighted
affections to a round, rosy, snub-nosed, blue-eyed, little Sophomore
who appreciated them as they deserved, whereupon he forgave Anne and
condescended to be civil to her again; in a patronizing manner intended
to show her just what she had lost.
One day Anne scurried excitedly into Priscilla’s room.
“Read that,” she cried, tossing Priscilla a letter. “It’s from
Stella—and she’s coming to Redmond next year—and what do you think of
her idea? I think it’s a perfectly splendid one, if we can only carry
it out. Do you suppose we can, Pris?”
“I’ll be better able to tell you when I find out what it is,” said
Priscilla, casting aside a Greek lexicon and taking up Stella’s letter.
Stella Maynard had been one of their chums at Queen’s Academy and had
been teaching school ever since.
“But I’m going to give it up, Anne dear,” she wrote, “and go to college
next year. As I took the third year at Queen’s I can enter the
Sophomore year. I’m tired of teaching in a back country school. Some
day I’m going to write a treatise on ‘The Trials of a Country
Schoolmarm.’ It will be a harrowing bit of realism. It seems to be the
prevailing impression that we live in clover, and have nothing to do
but draw our quarter’s salary. My treatise shall tell the truth about
us. Why, if a week should pass without some one telling me that I am
doing easy work for big pay I would conclude that I might as well order
my ascension robe ‘immediately and to onct.’ ‘Well, you get your money
easy,’ some rate-payer will tell me, condescendingly. ‘All you have to
do is to sit there and hear lessons.’ I used to argue the matter at
first, but I’m wiser now. Facts are stubborn things, but as some one
has wisely said, not half so stubborn as fallacies. So I only smile
loftily now in eloquent silence. Why, I have nine grades in my school
and I have to teach a little of everything, from investigating the
interiors of earthworms to the study of the solar system. My youngest
pupil is four—his mother sends him to school to ‘get him out of the
way’—and my oldest twenty—it ‘suddenly struck him’ that it would be
easier to go to school and get an education than follow the plough any
longer. In the wild effort to cram all sorts of research into six hours
a day I don’t wonder if the children feel like the little boy who was
taken to see the biograph. ‘I have to look for what’s coming next
before I know what went last,’ he complained. I feel like that myself.
“And the letters I get, Anne! Tommy’s mother writes me that Tommy is
not coming on in arithmetic as fast as she would like. He is only in
simple reduction yet, and Johnny Johnson is in fractions, and Johnny
isn’t half as smart as her Tommy, and she can’t understand it. And
Susy’s father wants to know why Susy can’t write a letter without
misspelling half the words, and Dick’s aunt wants me to change his
seat, because that bad Brown boy he is sitting with is teaching him to
say naughty words.
“As to the financial part—but I’ll not begin on that. Those whom the
gods wish to destroy they first make country schoolmarms!
“There, I feel better, after that growl. After all, I’ve enjoyed these
past two years. But I’m coming to Redmond.
“And now, Anne, I’ve a little plan. You know how I loathe boarding.
I’ve boarded for four years and I’m so tired of it. I don’t feel like
enduring three years more of it.
“Now, why can’t you and Priscilla and I club together, rent a little
house somewhere in Kingsport, and board ourselves? It would be cheaper
than any other way. Of course, we would have to have a housekeeper and
I have one ready on the spot. You’ve heard me speak of Aunt Jamesina?
She’s the sweetest aunt that ever lived, in spite of her name. She
can’t help that! She was called Jamesina because her father, whose name
was James, was drowned at sea a month before she was born. I always
call her Aunt Jimsie. Well, her only daughter has recently married and
gone to the foreign mission field. Aunt Jamesina is left alone in a
great big house, and she is horribly lonesome. She will come to
Kingsport and keep house for us if we want her, and I know you’ll both
love her. The more I think of the plan the more I like it. We could
have such good, independent times.
“Now, if you and Priscilla agree to it, wouldn’t it be a good idea for
you, who are on the spot, to look around and see if you can find a
suitable house this spring? That would be better than leaving it till
the fall. If you could get a furnished one so much the better, but if
not, we can scare up a few sticks of finiture between us and old family
friends with attics. Anyhow, decide as soon as you can and write me, so
that Aunt Jamesina will know what plans to make for next year.”
“I think it’s a good idea,” said Priscilla.
“So do I,” agreed Anne delightedly. “Of course, we have a nice
boardinghouse here, but, when all’s said and done, a boardinghouse
isn’t home. So let’s go house-hunting at once, before exams come on.”
“I’m afraid it will be hard enough to get a really suitable house,”
warned Priscilla. “Don’t expect too much, Anne. Nice houses in nice
localities will probably be away beyond our means. We’ll likely have to
content ourselves with a shabby little place on some street whereon
live people whom to know is to be unknown, and make life inside
compensate for the outside.”
Accordingly they went house-hunting, but to find just what they wanted
proved even harder than Priscilla had feared. Houses there were galore,
furnished and unfurnished; but one was too big, another too small; this
one too expensive, that one too far from Redmond. Exams were on and
over; the last week of the term came and still their “house o’dreams,”
as Anne called it, remained a castle in the air.
“We shall have to give up and wait till the fall, I suppose,” said
Priscilla wearily, as they rambled through the park on one of April’s
darling days of breeze and blue, when the harbor was creaming and
shimmering beneath the pearl-hued mists floating over it. “We may find
some shack to shelter us then; and if not, boardinghouses we shall have
always with us.”
“I’m not going to worry about it just now, anyway, and spoil this
lovely afternoon,” said Anne, gazing around her with delight. The fresh
chill air was faintly charged with the aroma of pine balsam, and the
sky above was crystal clear and blue—a great inverted cup of blessing.
“Spring is singing in my blood today, and the lure of April is abroad
on the air. I’m seeing visions and dreaming dreams, Pris. That’s
because the wind is from the west. I do love the west wind. It sings of
hope and gladness, doesn’t it? When the east wind blows I always think
of sorrowful rain on the eaves and sad waves on a gray shore. When I
get old I shall have rheumatism when the wind is east.”
“And isn’t it jolly when you discard furs and winter garments for the
first time and sally forth, like this, in spring attire?” laughed
Priscilla. “Don’t you feel as if you had been made over new?”
“Everything is new in the spring,” said Anne. “Springs themselves are
always so new, too. No spring is ever just like any other spring. It
always has something of its own to be its own peculiar sweetness. See
how green the grass is around that little pond, and how the willow buds
are bursting.”
“And exams are over and gone—the time of Convocation will come
soon—next Wednesday. This day next week we’ll be home.”
“I’m glad,” said Anne dreamily. “There are so many things I want to do.
I want to sit on the back porch steps and feel the breeze blowing down
over Mr. Harrison’s fields. I want to hunt ferns in the Haunted Wood
and gather violets in Violet Vale. Do you remember the day of our
golden picnic, Priscilla? I want to hear the frogs singing and the
poplars whispering. But I’ve learned to love Kingsport, too, and I’m
glad I’m coming back next fall. If I hadn’t won the Thorburn I don’t
believe I could have. I _couldn’t_ take any of Marilla’s little hoard.”
“If we could only find a house!” sighed Priscilla. “Look over there at
Kingsport, Anne—houses, houses everywhere, and not one for us.”
“Stop it, Pris. ‘The best is yet to be.’ Like the old Roman, we’ll find
a house or build one. On a day like this there’s no such word as fail
in my bright lexicon.”
They lingered in the park until sunset, living in the amazing miracle
and glory and wonder of the springtide; and they went home as usual, by
way of Spofford Avenue, that they might have the delight of looking at
Patty’s Place.
“I feel as if something mysterious were going to happen right away—‘by
the pricking of my thumbs,’” said Anne, as they went up the slope.
“It’s a nice story-bookish feeling. Why—why—why! Priscilla Grant, look
over there and tell me if it’s true, or am I seein’ things?”
Priscilla looked. Anne’s thumbs and eyes had not deceived her. Over the
arched gateway of Patty’s Place dangled a little, modest sign. It said
“To Let, Furnished. Inquire Within.”
“Priscilla,” said Anne, in a whisper, “do you suppose it’s possible
that we could rent Patty’s Place?”
“No, I don’t,” averred Priscilla. “It would be too good to be true.
Fairy tales don’t happen nowadays. I won’t hope, Anne. The
disappointment would be too awful to bear. They’re sure to want more
for it than we can afford. Remember, it’s on Spofford Avenue.”
“We must find out anyhow,” said Anne resolutely. “It’s too late to call
this evening, but we’ll come tomorrow. Oh, Pris, if we can get this
darling spot! I’ve always felt that my fortunes were linked with
Patty’s Place, ever since I saw it first.”
Chapter X
Patty’s Place
The next evening found them treading resolutely the herring-bone walk
through the tiny garden. The April wind was filling the pine trees with
its roundelay, and the grove was alive with robins—great, plump, saucy
fellows, strutting along the paths. The girls rang rather timidly, and
were admitted by a grim and ancient handmaiden. The door opened
directly into a large living-room, where by a cheery little fire sat
two other ladies, both of whom were also grim and ancient. Except that
one looked to be about seventy and the other fifty, there seemed little
difference between them. Each had amazingly big, light-blue eyes behind
steel-rimmed spectacles; each wore a cap and a gray shawl; each was
knitting without haste and without rest; each rocked placidly and
looked at the girls without speaking; and just behind each sat a large
white china dog, with round green spots all over it, a green nose and
green ears. Those dogs captured Anne’s fancy on the spot; they seemed
like the twin guardian deities of Patty’s Place.
For a few minutes nobody spoke. The girls were too nervous to find
words, and neither the ancient ladies nor the china dogs seemed
conversationally inclined. Anne glanced about the room. What a dear
place it was! Another door opened out of it directly into the pine
grove and the robins came boldly up on the very step. The floor was
spotted with round, braided mats, such as Marilla made at Green Gables,
but which were considered out of date everywhere else, even in Avonlea.
And yet here they were on Spofford Avenue! A big, polished
grandfather’s clock ticked loudly and solemnly in a corner. There were
delightful little cupboards over the mantelpiece, behind whose glass
doors gleamed quaint bits of china. The walls were hung with old prints