Anne of Avonlea quotes

In the first place he kept house for himself and had publicly stated that he wanted no fools of women around his diggings.

Feminine Avonlea took its revenge by the gruesome tales it related about his housekeeping and cooking.

He had hired little John Henry Carter of White Sands and John Henry started the stories. For one thing, there was never any stated time for meals in the Harrison establishment. Mr.

Finally, Mr. Harrison kept a parrot called Ginger.

Nobody in Avonlea had ever kept a parrot before; consequently that proceeding was considered barely respectable.

And such a parrot! If you took John Henry Carter’s word for it, never was such an unholy bird. It swore terribly. Mrs. Carter would have taken John Henry away at once if she had been sure she could get another place for him.

“

I’d rather have red hair than none at all, except a little fringe round my ears

,” she flashed.

“

I can make allowance for you, Mr. Harrison, because I have an imagination.

I can easily imagine how very trying it must be to find a cow in your oats and I shall not cherish any hard feelings against you for the things you’ve said. I promise you that Dolly shall never break into your oats again.

I believe it is true about Mr. Harrison being a crank. Certainly there’s nothing of the kindred spirit about him.”

Anne had always a weather eye open for kindred spirits.

Marilla Cuthbert was driving into the yard as Anne returned from the house, and the latter flew to get tea ready. They discussed the matter at the tea table.

“

If you went to your own room at midnight, locked the door, pulled down the blind, and sneezed, Mrs. Lynde would ask you the next day how your cold was!

”

“Oh, the boy may be well enough, but he’ll be different from Avonlea children,” said Mrs. Rachel, as if that clinched the matter.

Mrs. Rachel’s opinions concerning any person, place, or thing, were always warranted to wear.

“What’s this I hear about your going to start up a Village Improvement Society, Anne?”

“Well, you’ll get into no end of hot water if you do. Better leave it alone, Anne, that’s what.

People don’t like being improved.

”

“I begin to see what you mean by educating public sentiment, Anne. There’s the old Boulter house now. Did you ever see such a rookery? And perched right close to the road too.

An old house with its windows gone always makes me think of something dead with its eyes picked out.

”

Anne smothered a little sigh. She loved Diana dearly and they had always been good comrades.

But she had long ago learned that when she wandered into the realm of fancy she must go alone. The way to it was by an enchanted path where not even her dearest might follow her.

A thundershower came up while the girls were at Carmody; it did not last long, however, and the drive home, through lanes where the raindrops sparkled on the boughs and little leafy valleys where the drenched ferns gave out spicy odours, was delightful.

But oh dear, if Mr. Harrison sees that grain he will know she has been in again, and after my giving him my word of honour that I’d never let it happen!

Well, it has taught me a lesson not to give my word of honour about cows.

A cow that could jump over or break through our milk-pen fence couldn’t be trusted anywhere.”

“I like it all the better for them,” said loyal Anne. “

I don’t like places or people either that haven’t any faults. I think a truly perfect person would be very uninteresting.

Mrs. Milton White says she never met a perfect person, but she’s heard enough about one … her husband’s first wife. Don’t you think it must be very uncomfortable to be married to a man whose first wife was perfect?”

“

I’d rather have my pupils love me and look back to me in after years as a real helper than be on the roll of honour

,” asserted Anne decidedly.

“Bless my soul, here’s that pretty little girl again,” or something equally flattering. But Ginger saw through the scheme and scorned it.

Anne was never to know how many compliments Mr. Harrison paid her behind her back. He certainly never paid her any to her face.

“Well, I suppose you’ve been back in the woods laying in a supply of switches for tomorrow?” was his greeting as Anne came up the veranda steps.

She slept poorly and was so pale and tragic at breakfast next morning that Marilla was alarmed and insisted on making her take a cup of scorching ginger tea. Anne sipped it patiently, although she could not imagine what good ginger tea would do.

Had it been some magic brew, potent to confer age and experience, Anne would have swallowed a quart of it without flinching.

“Marilla, what if I fail!”

She had sat up until nearly twelve the preceding night composing a speech she meant to make to her pupils upon opening the school. She had revised and improved it painstakingly, and then she had learned it off by heart.

It was a very good speech and had some very fine ideas in it, especially about mutual help and earnest striving after knowledge. The only trouble was that she could not now remember a word of it.

After what seemed to her a year … about ten seconds in reality … she said faintly,

Best of all, it was involuntary, born of no external effort or motive, but simply the outflashing of a hidden personality, rare and fine and sweet.

With a quick interchange of smiles Anne and Paul were fast friends forever before a word had passed between them.

The day went by like a dream. Anne could never clearly recall it afterwards. It almost seemed as if it were not she who was teaching but somebody else. She heard classes and worked sums and set copies mechanically. The children behaved quite well;

Harrison’s on an overdressed female he had seen in a Charlottetown store. “

She looked like a head-on collision between a fashion plate and a nightmare.

”

My thoughts feel as if they had been all stirred up until they were thick and muddy. The only thing I feel really sure of having accomplished today is that I taught Cliffie Wright that A is A. He never knew it before.

Isn’t it something to have started a soul along a path that may end in Shakespeare and Paradise Lost?

”

The woman is crazy, that’s what. She has a pug dog she calls Queenie and it has its meals at the table along with the family, eating off a china plate. I’d be afraid of a judgment if I was her.

Thomas says Donnell himself is a sensible, hardworking man, but he hadn’t much gumption when he picked out a wife, that’s what.

”

“The air has magic in it. Look at the purple in the cup of the harvest valley, Diana. And oh, do smell the dying fir! It’s coming up from that little sunny hollow where Mr. Eben Wright has been cutting fence poles.

Bliss is it on such a day to be alive; but to smell dying fir is very heaven.

That’s two thirds Wordsworth and one third Anne Shirley. It doesn’t seem possible that there should be dying fir in heaven, does it?

Eliza was there … very much so … and looked even grimmer than usual.

Miss Eliza was one of those people who give you the impression that life is indeed a vale of tears, and that a smile, never to speak of a laugh, is a waste of nervous energy truly reprehensible.

The Andrews girls had been “girls” for fifty odd years and seemed likely to remain girls to the end of their earthly pilgrimage. Catherine, it was said, had not entirely given up hope, but Eliza, who was born a pessimist, had never had any.

“I’d like to give you a dollar but I don’t dare take more from my egg money for Eliza would find it out if I did. I’m real interested in your society and I believe you’re going to do a lot of good.

I’m an optimist. I have to be, living with Eliza.

I must hurry back before she misses me … she thinks I’m feeding the hens. I hope you’ll have good luck canvassing, and don’t be cast down over what Eliza said. The world is getting better … it certainly is.”

“

A few more experiences such as I have had today would make me as much of a pessimist as Miss Eliza Andrews

,” Anne told her reflection in the east gable mirror at bedtime.

“Have you ever noticed,” asked Anne reflectively, “that when people say it is their duty to tell you a certain thing you may prepare for something disagreeable?

Why is it that they never seem to think it a duty to tell you the pleasant things they hear about you?

Mrs. H. B. Donnell called at the school again yesterday and told me she thought it her duty to inform me that Mrs. Harmon Andrews didn’t approve of my reading fairy tales to the children, and that Mr.

And he was right.

Anne was one of the children of light by birthright. After she had passed through a life with a smile or a word thrown across it like a gleam of sunshine the owner of that life saw it, for the time being at least, as hopeful and lovely and of good report.

“Well, I must run up to MacPhersons’. Moody Spurgeon came home from Queen’s today for Sunday and he was to bring me out a book Professor Boyd is lending me.”

“I don’t rush into things in your headlong way, Anne. Third cousinship is a pretty slim claim. And it will be a fearful responsibility to have two children of six years to look after … twins, at that.”

Marilla had an idea that twins were just twice as bad as single children.

“Twins are very interesting … at least one pair of them,” said Anne. “It’s only when there are two or three pairs that it gets monotonous.

Dear me, it doesn’t seem a day since poor Matthew brought Anne herself home and everybody laughed at the idea of Marilla bringing up a child. And now she has adopted twins.

You’re never safe from being surprised till you’re dead.

”

“

I’m so hungry I ain’t got time to eat p’litely

,” he said when Marilla reproved him. “Dora ain’t half as hungry as I am. Look at all the ex’cise I took on the road here. That cake’s awful nice and plummy.

“

When I’m grown up the very first thing I’m going to do is stay up all night just to see what it would be like,

” he told her confidentially.

“That old nuisance of a Rachel Lynde was here again today, pestering me for a subscription towards buying a carpet for the vestry room,” said Mr. Harrison wrathfully. “I detest that woman more than anybody I know.

She can put a whole sermon, text, comment, and application, into six words, and throw it at you like a brick.

”

“The trouble is, you and Mrs. Lynde don’t understand one another,” she explained. “

That is always what is wrong when people don’t like each other.

I didn’t like Mrs. Lynde at first either; but as soon as I came to understand her I learned to.”

“

Mrs. Lynde may be an acquired taste with some folks; but I didn’t keep on eating bananas because I was told I’d learn to like them if I did

,” growled Mr. Harrison. “And as for understanding her, I understand that she is a confirmed busybody and I told her so.”

“But you don’t tell the whole truth,” objected Anne. “You only tell the disagreeable part of the truth.

Now, you’ve told me a dozen times that my hair was red, but you’ve never once told me that I had a nice nose.

”

“Splendidly. We had a meeting of the A.V.I.S. last Friday night and found that we had plenty of money subscribed to paint the hall and shingle the roof too. Most people gave very liberally, Mr. Harrison.”

Anne was a sweet-souled lass, but she could instill some venom into innocent italics when occasion required.

“What colour are you going to have it?”

“He’s peculiar enough all right then,” said Mr. Harrison drily. “Or at least, folks here will call him so.

I never was much of a talker till I came to Avonlea and then I had to begin in self-defense or Mrs. Lynde would have said I was dumb and started a subscription to have me taught sign language.

You’re not going yet, Anne?”

“I must cry, even if I am almost seventeen, Marilla,” she sobbed. “It is so mortifying. And it sounds the death knell of our society. We’ll simply be laughed out of existence.”

In life, as in dreams, however, things often go by contraries.

The Avonlea people did not laugh; they were too angry. Their money had gone to paint the hall and consequently they felt themselves bitterly aggrieved by the mistake. Public indignation centered on the Pyes. Roger Pye and John Andrew had bungled the matter between them;

“Never mind, Anne.

Most paints fade uglier every year but that blue is as ugly as it can be to begin with, so it’s bound to fade prettier.

And the roof is shingled and painted all right. Folks will be able to sit in the hall after this without being leaked on. You’ve accomplished so much anyhow.”

“Well, one can’t get over the habit of being a little girl all at once,” said Anne gaily. “You see,

I was little for fourteen years and I’ve only been grown-uppish for scarcely three.

I’m sure I shall always feel like a child in the woods. These walks home from school are almost the only time I have for dreaming … except the half hour or so before I go to sleep.

I always imagine I’m something very brilliant and triumphant and splendid … a great prima donna or a Red Cross nurse or a queen. Last night I was a queen.

It’s really splendid to imagine you are a queen. You have all the fun of it without any of the inconveniences and you can stop being a queen whenever you want to, which you couldn’t in real life.

But here in the woods I like best to imagine quite different things … I’m a dryad living in an old pine, or a little brown wood-elf hiding under a crinkled leaf. That white birch you caught me kissing is a sister of mine.

“But punishments are so horrid and I like to imagine only pleasant things,” said Anne, cuddling Davy. “

There are so many unpleasant things in the world already that there is no use in imagining any more.

”

“Marilla isn’t to blame for what you thought.

Bad things aren’t always exciting. They’re very often just nasty and stupid.

”

“Anne, you never were bad … never. I see that now, when I’ve learned what real badness is. You were always getting into terrible scrapes, I’ll admit, but your motive was always good.

Davy is just bad from sheer love of it.

”

He fought St. Clair Donnell recently because St. Clair said the Union Jack was away ahead of the Stars and Stripes as a flag. The result was a drawn battle and a mutual agreement to respect each other’s patriotism henceforth.

St. Clair says he can hit the hardest but Paul can hit the oftenest.

“ ‘You told us we might write you about some interesting people we knew. I think the most interesting people I know are my rock people and I mean to tell you about them.

“

Well, never mind. This day’s done and there’s a new one coming tomorrow, with no mistakes in it yet, as you used to say yourself.

Just come downstairs and have your supper. You’ll see if a good cup of tea and those plum puffs I made today won’t hearten you up.”

“That wasn’t my fault,” laughed Anne. “If my parents had consulted me it would never have happened then. I should have chosen to be born in spring, of course.

It must be delightful to come into the world with the mayflowers and violets. You would always feel that you were their foster sister.

But since I didn’t, the next best thing is to celebrate my birthday in the spring. Priscilla is coming over Saturday and Jane will be home. We’ll all four start off to the woods and spend a golden day making the acquaintance of the spring.

“

If a kiss could be seen I think it would look like a violet

,” said Priscilla.

“

Because the person who first named them either had no imagination at all or else far too much

,” said Anne. “Oh, girls, look at that!”

“

You can’t be a wood-nymph if you have to wear rubbers

,” was her decision.

“

I’d wish it might be spring all the time and in everybody’s heart and all our lives

,” she said.

“

I’m rather glad of that, because I can imagine what she looked like, without being hampered by facts.

I think she was very slight and small, with softly curling dark hair and big, sweet, timid brown eyes, and a little wistful, pale face.”

“Oh dear me, no.” Anne shook her head with its fluffy wild cherry coronal positively. “

The lines and verses are only the outward garments of the poem and are no more really it than your ruffles and flounces are you, Jane.

The real poem is the soul within them … and that beautiful bit is the soul of an unwritten poem. It is not every day one sees a soul … even of a poem.”

“Like that, I should think,” answered Anne, pointing to a radiance of sifted sunlight streaming through a birch tree. “Only with shape and features of course.

I like to fancy souls as being made of light.

And some are all shot through with rosy stains and quivers … and some have a soft glitter like moonlight on the sea … and some are pale and transparent like mist at dawn.”

“I had her last week, for, though she’s too slow to stop quick, she’s better than nobody. But she’s sick and can’t come. Timothy’s sitting there, too, coughing and complaining.

He’s been dying for ten years and he’ll go on dying for ten years more.

That kind can’t even die and have done with it … they can’t stick to anything, even to being sick, long enough to finish it. They’re a terrible shiftless family and what is to become of them I don’t know, but perhaps Providence does.”

“Well, I wish you would. I guess we’ll have the supper in about a fortnight’s time.

Uncle Abe Andrews is prophesying rain and storms for about that time; and that’s a pretty sure sign we’ll have fine weather.

”

“But I tell you there is,” persisted Davy. “It was in that question Marilla taught me last Sunday. ‘Why should we love God?’ It says, ‘Because He makes preserves, and redeems us.’

Preserves is just a holy way of saying jam.

”

“

It takes all sorts of people to make a world, as I’ve often heard, but I think there are some who could be spared

,” Anne told her reflection in the east gable mirror that night. “I wouldn’t have mentioned the disgraceful thing to a soul anyhow, so my conscience is clear on that score. I really don’t know who or what is to be thanked for this.

Poor father, he must be dreadfully lonesome without me; but you see he has nobody but a housekeeper now and he thinks housekeepers are no good to bring up little boys, especially when he has to be away from home so much on business.

Grandmothers are better, next to mothers.

Some day, when I’m brought up, I’ll go back to father and we’re never going to be parted again.”

Grandma says father was brought up on porridge, and it certainly did work well in his case, for you ought to see the shoulders he has. But sometimes,” concluded Paul with a sigh and a meditative air “

I really think porridge will be the death of me.

”

It must be the gift of the good fairies at birth and the years can never deface it or take it away.

It is better to possess it, living in a garret, than to be the inhabitant of palaces without it.

The Avonlea graveyard was as yet the grass-grown solitude it had always been. To be sure, the Improvers had an eye on it, and Priscilla Grant had read a paper on cemeteries before the last meeting of the Society.

“None of us ever do,” said Mrs. Allan with a sigh. “But then, Anne, you know what Lowell says, ‘Not failure but low aim is crime.’

We must have ideals and try to live up to them, even if we never quite succeed. Life would be a sorry business without them.

With them it’s grand and great. Hold fast to your ideals, Anne.”

“Well, we all make mistakes, dear, so just put it behind you.

We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us.

There goes Gilbert Blythe on his wheel … home for his vacation too, I suppose. How are you and he getting on with your studies?”

“I think I understand what you mean,” said Anne thoughtfully, “and I know I have so much to feel thankful for … oh, so much … my work, and Paul Irving, and the dear twins, and all my friends.

Do you know, Mrs. Allan, I’m so thankful for friendship. It beautifies life so much.

”

“

’Cause heaven is in Simon Fletcher’s garret, and I don’t like Simon Fletcher.

”

Miss Rogerson looked awful offended. She was cross anyhow, because when she’d asked us what Elijah left Elisha when he went to heaven Milty Boulter said, ‘His old clo’es,’ and us fellows all laughed before we thought.

I wish you could think first and do things afterwards, ’cause then you wouldn’t do them.

But Milty didn’t mean to be disrespeckful. He just couldn’t think of the name of the thing. Miss Rogerson said heaven was where God was and I wasn’t to ask questions like that.

They seem to be born good housekeepers. You remember that Gertrude in Edgewood Days kept house for her father when she was only eight years old.

When I was eight years old I hardly knew how to do a thing except bring up children.

Mrs. Morgan must be an authority on girls when she has written so much about them, and I do want her to have a good opinion of us.

“I don’t like picking fowls,” she told Marilla, “but isn’t it fortunate we don’t have to put our souls into what our hands may be doing?

I’ve been picking chickens with my hands but in imagination I’ve been roaming the Milky Way.

”

“I forgot,” whimpered Davy. “

You’ve told me not to do such an awful lot of things that I can’t remember them all.

”

and then the first thing I realize I drop down to earth with a thud. But really, Marilla, the flying part is glorious as long as it lasts … it’s like soaring through a sunset.

I think it almost pays for the thud.

”

“I know I’m too much inclined that way,” agreed Anne ruefully. “

When I think something nice is going to happen I seem to fly right up on the wings of anticipation; and then the first thing I realize I drop down to earth with a thud.

But really, Marilla, the flying part is glorious as long as it lasts … it’s like soaring through a sunset. I think it almost pays for the thud.”

“Of course I was, dear boy.

Don’t you know that it is only very foolish folk who talk sense all the time?

”

“If they’re not back by sunset you’ll have to go for other assistance, I suppose,” said Anne reluctantly, “but you mustn’t go until you really have to. Oh dear, this is a dreadful predicament.

I wouldn’t mind my misfortunes so much if they were romantic, as Mrs. Morgan’s heroines’ always are, but they are always just simply ridiculous.

Fancy what the Copp girls will think when they drive into their yard and see a girl’s head and shoulders sticking out of the roof of one of their outhouses. Listen … is that a wagon? No, Diana, I believe it is thunder.”

He wanted me twenty years ago. I liked him real well but he was poor then and father packed him off. I s’pose I shouldn’t have let him go so meek but I was timid and frightened of father.

Besides, I didn’t know men were so skurse.

”

“After all,” Anne had said to Marilla once, “

I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string.

”

That is the time I ache to tell people things, and when nobody else is handy I just have to tell Mary Joe. But after this I won’t, if it makes her imagine I’m wrong in my upper story.

I’ll just ache and bear it.

”

“Mrs. Lynde was down here one day last week having tea with Grandma, and Grandma made me show her my little mother’s picture … the one father sent me for my birthday present. I didn’t exactly want to show it to Mrs. Lynde.

Mrs. Lynde is a good, kind woman, but she isn’t the sort of person you want to show your mother’s picture to.

You know, teacher. But of course I obeyed Grandma. Mrs. Lynde said she was very pretty but kind of actressy looking, and must have been an awful lot younger than father. Then she said, ‘Some of these days your pa will be marrying again likely.

I never mind not having the light when I go to bed now, because it just seems as if my little mother was right here with me. Father knew just what I would like for a birthday present, although he never asked me.

Isn’t it wonderful how much fathers do know?

”

I think the evening star is a lighthouse on the land where the fairies dwell.’ And Mary Joe said, ‘Well, yous are de queer one. Dare ain’t no such ting as fairies.’ I was very much provoked.

Of course, I knew there are no fairies; but that needn’t prevent my thinking there is.

You know, teacher. But I tried again quite patiently. I said, ‘Well then, Mary Joe, do you know what I think?

“Yes; but if dryads are foolish they must take the consequences, just as if they were real people,” said Paul gravely. “Do you know what I think about the new moon, teacher?

I think it is a little golden boat full of dreams.

”

“Exactly, teacher. Oh, you do know. And

I think the violets are little snips of the sky that fell down when the angels cut out holes for the stars to shine through.

And the buttercups are made out of old sunshine; and I think the sweet peas will be butterflies when they go to heaven. Now, teacher, do you see anything so very queer about those thoughts?”

“No … o … o,” he admitted at last, “

I like Dora because she’s my sister but I like you because you’re you.

”

“Of course,” admitted Davy, “Dora wasn’t very hungry and she only et half her slice and then she give the rest to me.

But I didn’t know she was going to do that when I give it to her, so I was good, Anne.

”

“Now, Davy, you try to be a good boy and don’t bother Anne,” she straitly charged him. “If you are good I’ll bring you a striped candy cane from town.”

For alas, Marilla had stooped to the evil habit of bribing people to be good!

“I won’t be bad on purpose, but s’posen I’m bad zacksidentally?” Davy wanted to know.

“And you told Minnie May Barry the other day, when you found her crying ’cause someone said she was ugly, that if she was nice and kind and loving people wouldn’t mind her looks,” said Davy discontentedly. “

Seems to me you can’t get out of being good in this world for some reason or ’nother. You just have to behave.

”

“

Yes, I want to be good but not too good,

” said Davy cautiously. “You don’t have to be very good to be a Sunday School superintendent. Mr. Bell’s that, and he’s a real bad man.”

In the dismay of the moment one thought stood out from the confusion of Anne’s mind and she grasped at it as at the proverbial straw. All Mrs. Morgan’s heroines were noted for “rising to the occasion.”

No matter what their troubles were, they invariably rose to the occasion and showed their superiority over all ills of time, space, and quantity.

Anne therefore felt it was her duty to rise to the occasion and she did it, so perfectly that Priscilla afterward declared she never admired Anne Shirley more than at that moment. No matter what her outraged feelings were she did not show them.

“Perhaps it won’t wash off.

First I dye my hair; then I dye my nose.

Marilla cut my hair off when I dyed it but that remedy would hardly be practicable in this case. Well, this is another punishment for vanity and I suppose I deserve it … though there’s not much comfort in that.

“I shall never try any beautifying messes again,” she said, darkly resolute. “

They may do for careful, deliberate people; but for anyone so hopelessly given over to making mistakes as I seem to be it’s tempting fate to meddle with them.

”

“

It’s as if the year were kneeling to pray in a vast cathedral full of mellow stained light, isn’t it?

” said Anne dreamily. “It doesn’t seem right to hurry through it, does it? It seems irreverent, like running in a church.”

“Yes, I do,” she confessed, boldly. “Of course it’s silly in anybody as old as I am.

But what is the use of being an independent old maid if you can’t be silly when you want to, and when it doesn’t hurt anybody?

A person must have some compensations. I don’t believe I could live at times if I didn’t pretend things. I’m not often caught at it though, and Charlotta the Fourth never tells.

“

She looks just as music sounds, I think,

” answered Anne.

Charlotta the Fourth is the last of the Bowman girls, and the best. The other Charlottas always let me see that they thought it silly of me to pretend things but Charlotta the Fourth never does, no matter what she may really think.

I don’t care what people think about me if they don’t let me see it.

”

“If they had been so blind as to name her Elizabeth or Nellie or Muriel she must have been called Lavendar just the same, I think. It’s so suggestive of sweetness and old-fashioned graces and ‘silk attire.’

Now, my name just smacks of bread and butter, patchwork and chores.

”

“

People who are different from other people are always called peculiar,

” said Anne. “And Miss Lavendar is certainly different, though it’s hard to say just where the difference comes in. Perhaps it is because she is one of those people who never grow old.”

“Perhaps it was nothing very dreadful after all.

I think the little things in life often make more trouble than the big things,

” said Anne, with one of those flashes of insight which experience could not have bettered. “Marilla, please don’t say anything about my being at Miss Lavendar’s to Mrs. Lynde.

“Rachel says if he’d only brace up and exert his will power he’d get better.

But what is the use of asking a jellyfish to sit up straight?

” continued Marilla. “Thomas Lynde never had any will power to exert. His mother ruled him till he married and then Rachel carried it on. It’s a wonder he dared to get sick without asking her permission. But there, I shouldn’t talk so.

“All the boys of his class have Indian headdresses, and Davy wants one too,” said Anne. “I know how it feels …

I’ll never forget how I used to long for puffed sleeves when all the other girls had them.

And Davy isn’t being spoiled. He is improving every day. Think what a difference there is in him since he came here a year ago.”

The rent of the farm doesn’t do any more than keep the house and I was bound that not a cent of your money should be spent on them. You do far too much for them as it is.

Dora didn’t need that new hat you bought her any more than a cat needs two tails.

But now the way is made clear and they are provided for.”

Now, Anne, don’t look as if you were trying to understand. Seventeen can’t understand. I’m going to pretend right away that I am seventeen too, and I can do it, now that you’re here.

You always bring youth in your hand like a gift.

We’re going to have a jolly evening. Tea first … what do you want for tea? We’ll have whatever you like. Do think of something nice and indigestible.”

“I’m so glad you’re here, Anne,” said Miss Lavendar, nibbling at her candy. “If you weren’t I should be blue … very blue … almost navy blue.

Dreams and make-believes are all very well in the daytime and the sunshine, but when dark and storm come they fail to satisfy.

One wants real things then. But you don’t know this … seventeen never knows it. At seventeen dreams do satisfy because you think the realities are waiting for you further on.

But don’t overdo it. I’m really a very happy, contented little person in spite of my broken heart. My heart did break, if ever a heart did, when I realized that Stephen Irving was not coming back.

But, Anne, a broken heart in real life isn’t half as dreadful as it is in books.

It’s a good deal like a bad tooth … though you won’t think that a very romantic simile.

“Ah, well, we’ll just have to plant them over again next spring,” said Anne philosophically. “

That is one good thing about this world⁠ ⁠… there are always sure to be more springs.

”

“Dead! Everything will be all right then,” cried the rosy lady jubilantly. “

I can manage James A. if that bird is out of the way.

”

“I’m not supposed to know anything about her arrival, and Mr. Harrison was to bring some medicine for Thomas from Carmody today, so that will be a good excuse. I’ll find out the whole story and come in and tell you on the way back.”

Mrs. Lynde rushed in where Anne had feared to tread.

Nothing would have induced the latter to go over to the Harrison place; but she had her natural and proper share of curiosity and she felt secretly glad that Mrs. Lynde was going to solve the mystery.

“

It’s a kind of disappointing world after all,

” he remarked. “Milty has a cat that takes fits … she’s took a fit regular every day for three weeks. Milty says it’s awful fun to watch her.

It doesn’t seem likely she’d stop having them all at once when she’s been so in the habit of it, does it? This jam is awful nice.”

Davy had no sorrows that plum jam could not cure.

Sunday proved so rainy that there was no stirring abroad; but by Monday everybody had heard some version of the Harrison story. The school buzzed with it and Davy came home, full of information.

I didn’t try to improve as I might have done … I just got cranky and disagreeable when she found fault. I told her one day she hadn’t complained of my grammar when I proposed to her. It wasn’t an overly tactful thing to say.

A woman would forgive a man for beating her sooner than for hinting she was too much pleased to get him.

Well, we bickered along like that and it wasn’t exactly pleasant, but we might have got used to each other after a spell if it hadn’t been for Ginger. Ginger was the rock we split on at last.

I wasn’t back in my own house an hour before I wished I hadn’t been so hasty but I wouldn’t give in. I see now that I expected too much of a man. And I was real foolish to mind his bad grammar.

It doesn’t matter if a man does use bad grammar so long as he is a good provider and doesn’t go poking round the pantry to see how much sugar you’ve used in a week.

I feel that James A. and I are going to be real happy now. I wish I knew who ‘Observer’ is, so that I could thank him. I owe him a real debt of gratitude.”

Rachel to herself. “But really, Green Gables doesn’t seem as out of the world as it used to do … Anne has lots of company and the twins make it real lively. And anyhow,

I’d rather live at the bottom of a well than leave Avonlea.

”

“Monotonous? Exactly,” supplied Mrs. Rachel. “Like a book where every page is the same, that’s what.

Dora will make a good, reliable woman but she’ll never set the pond on fire.

Well, that sort of folks are comfortable to have round, even if they’re not as interesting as the other kind.”

I believe I will cry after I go to bed. It wouldn’t show on my eyes tomorrow, would it? And it would be such a relief. But anyway, I can’t eat porridge.

I’m going to need all my strength of mind to bear up against this, Grandma, and I won’t have any left to grapple with porridge.

Oh Grandma, I don’t know what I’ll do when my beautiful teacher goes away. Milty Boulter says he bets Jane Andrews will get the school. I suppose Miss Andrews is very nice. But I know she won’t understand things like Miss Shirley.”

“I don’t know why they have to do it always,” grumbled Davy. “

Seems to me everything’s put on the men in this world.

Can I have some more pudding, Marilla?”

“Welcome, Anne. I thought you’d come today. You belong to the afternoon so it brought you.

Things that belong together are sure to come together.

What a lot of trouble that would save some people if they only knew it. But they don’t … and so they waste beautiful energy moving heaven and earth to bring things together that don’t belong. And you, Paul … why, you’ve grown!

Anne laughed, sipped the honey from the tribute, and cast away the sting.

She was used to taking her compliments mixed.

Public opinion never agreed on Anne’s looks. People who had heard her called handsome met her and were disappointed. People who had heard her called plain saw her and wondered where other people’s eyes were.

Those who knew Anne best felt, without realizing that they felt it, that her greatest attraction was the aura of possibility surrounding her … the power of future development that was in her.

She seemed to walk in an atmosphere of things about to happen.

As they picked, Charlotta the Fourth confided to Anne her fears regarding Miss Lavendar. The warmhearted little handmaiden was honestly worried over her adored mistress’ condition.

… by all her careful precepts, that it was good and necessary in the years that were before them to live their lives finely and graciously, holding fast to truth and courtesy and kindness, keeping aloof from all that savoured of falsehood and meanness and vulgarity.

They were, perhaps, all unconscious of having learned such lessons; but they would remember and practice them long after they had forgotten the capital of Afghanistan and the dates of the Wars of the Roses.

“Another chapter in my life is closed,” said Anne aloud, as she locked her desk. She really felt very sad over it; but the romance in the idea of that “closed chapter” did comfort her a little.

Would she not? Oh, indeed she would! Yes, this was romance, the very, the real thing, with all the charm of rhyme and story and dream.

It was a little belated, perhaps, like a rose blooming in October which should have bloomed in June; but none the less a rose, all sweetness and fragrance, with the gleam of gold in its heart.

Never did Anne’s feet bear her on a more willing errand than on that walk through the beechwoods to Grafton the next morning. She found Miss Lavendar in the garden. Anne was fearfully excited. Her hands grew cold and her voice trembled.

“

Oh, it’s delightful to be living in a storybook,

” she thought gaily. “It will come out all right of course … it must … and Paul will have a mother after his own heart and everybody will be happy. But Mr.

“

Sometimes the prince comes too late,

” he said. He did not ask Anne to translate her remark into prose. Like all kindred spirits he “understood.”

And I heard of another case where a man thought he wanted one girl awful bad when it was really her sister he wanted all the time.

When a man don’t know his own mind, Miss Shirley, ma’am, how’s a poor woman going to be sure of it?

”

“No, I can understand that,” said Charlotta. “

A wedding ain’t poetry.

Why, Miss Shirley, ma’am, you’re crying! What for?”

Mrs. Lynde says she thoroughly approves of the match and thinks its likely Miss Lavendar will give up her queer notions and be like other people, now that she’s going to be married.

But I hope she won’t give her queer notions up, teacher, because I like them. And I don’t want her to be like other people. There are too many other people around as it is.

You know, teacher.”

“Oh, there isn’t any, when you put it that way,” gasped Anne, rather as if somebody had thrown cold water over her. “

I suppose that’s how it looks in prose. But it’s very different if you look at it through poetry

… and I think it’s nicer …” Anne recovered herself and her eyes shone and her cheeks flushed … “to look at it through poetry.”