Anne of Green Gables quotes

Mrs. Rachel knew that he ought because she had heard him tell Peter Morrison the evening before in William J. Blair’s store over at Carmody that he meant to sow his turnip seed the next afternoon.

Peter had asked him, of course, for Matthew Cuthbert had never been known to volunteer information about anything in his whole life.

And yet here was Matthew Cuthbert, at half-past three on the afternoon of a busy day, placidly driving over the hollow and up the hill;

“It’s just staying, that’s what,” she said as she stepped along the deep-rutted, grassy lane bordered with wild rose bushes. “It’s no wonder Matthew and Marilla are both a little odd, living away back here by themselves.

Trees aren’t much company, though dear knows if they were there’d be enough of them.

I’d ruther look at people. To be sure, they seem contented enough; but then, I suppose, they’re used to it. A body can get used to anything, even to being hanged, as the Irishman said.”

Trees aren’t much company, though dear knows if they were there’d be enough of them. I’d ruther look at people. To be sure, they seem contented enough; but then, I suppose, they’re used to it.

A body can get used to anything, even to being hanged, as the Irishman said.

”

Mrs. Rachel felt that she had received a severe mental jolt.

She thought in exclamation points.

A boy! Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert of all people adopting a boy! From an orphan asylum! Well, the world was certainly turning upside down! She would be surprised at nothing after this! Nothing!

Mrs. Rachel would have liked to stay until Matthew came home with his imported orphan. But reflecting that it would be a good two hours at least before his arrival she concluded to go up the road to Robert Bell’s and tell them the news.

It would certainly make a sensation second to none, and Mrs. Rachel dearly loved to make a sensation.

So she took herself away, somewhat to Marilla’s relief, for the latter felt her doubts and fears reviving under the influence of Mrs. Rachel’s pessimism.

Matthew, barely noting that it was a girl, sidled past her as quickly as possible without looking at her. Had he looked he could hardly have failed to notice the tense rigidity and expectation of her attitude and expression.

She was sitting there waiting for something or somebody and, since sitting and waiting was the only thing to do just then, she sat and waited with all her might and main.

Matthew encountered the stationmaster locking up the ticket office preparatory to going home for supper, and asked him if the five-thirty train would soon be along.

Matthew, much to his own surprise, was enjoying himself.

Like most quiet folks he liked talkative people when they were willing to do the talking themselves and did not expect him to keep up his end of it.

But he had never expected to enjoy the society of a little girl. Women were bad enough in all conscience, but little girls were worse.

“Fancy! It’s always been one of my dreams to live near a brook. I never expected I would, though.

Dreams don’t often come true, do they? Wouldn’t it be nice if they did?

But just now I feel pretty nearly perfectly happy. I can’t feel exactly perfectly happy because—well, what colour would you call this?”

Through Newbridge, a bustling little village where dogs barked at them and small boys hooted and curious faces peered from the windows, they drove, still in silence. When three more miles had dropped away behind them the child had not spoken.

She could keep silence, it was evident, as energetically as she could talk.

“I guess you’re feeling pretty tired and hungry,” Matthew ventured at last, accounting for her long visitation of dumbness with the only reason he could think of. “But we haven’t very far to go now—only another mile.”

“Pretty? Oh, pretty doesn’t seem the right word to use. Nor beautiful, either. They don’t go far enough. Oh, it was wonderful—wonderful.

It’s the first thing I ever saw that couldn’t be improved upon by imagination.

It just satisfied me here”—she put one hand on her breast—“it made a queer funny ache and yet it was a pleasant ache. Did you ever have an ache like that, Mr. Cuthbert?”

Because, you see, if the bridge did crumple up I’d want to see it crumple. What a jolly rumble it makes! I always like the rumble part of it.

Isn’t it splendid there are so many things to like in this world?

There, we’re over. Now I’ll look back. Good night, dear Lake of Shining Waters. I always say good night to the things I love, just as I would to people. I think they like it. That water looks as if it was smiling at me.”

What a jolly rumble it makes! I always like the rumble part of it. Isn’t it splendid there are so many things to like in this world? There, we’re over. Now I’ll look back. Good night, dear Lake of Shining Waters.

I always say good night to the things I love, just as I would to people. I think they like it.

That water looks as if it was smiling at me.”

“

How can you call it a good night when you know it must be the very worst night I’ve ever had?

” she said reproachfully.

Isn’t it a splendid thing that there are mornings? But I feel very sad. I’ve just been imagining that it was really me you wanted after all and that I was to stay here forever and ever. It was a great comfort while it lasted.

But the worst of imagining things is that the time comes when you have to stop and that hurts.

”

It’s hard enough now, so I won’t make it any harder. I want to go out so much—everything seems to be calling to me, ‘Anne, Anne, come out to us. Anne, Anne, we want a playmate’—but it’s better not.

There is no use in loving things if you have to be torn from them, is there?

And it’s so hard to keep from loving things, isn’t it? That was why I was so glad when I thought I was going to live here. I thought I’d have so many things to love and nothing to hinder me.

“

Oh, I like things to have handles even if they are only geraniums.

It makes them seem more like people. How do you know but that it hurts a geranium’s feelings just to be called a geranium and nothing else? You wouldn’t like to be called nothing but a woman all the time.

“Oh, I like things to have handles even if they are only geraniums. It makes them seem more like people.

How do you know but that it hurts a geranium’s feelings just to be called a geranium and nothing else?

You wouldn’t like to be called nothing but a woman all the time. Yes, I shall call it Bonny. I named that cherry tree outside my bedroom window this morning. I called it Snow Queen because it was so white.

“Well, that is another hope gone.

My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.

That’s a sentence I read in a book once, and I say it over to comfort myself whenever I’m disappointed in anything.”

“We’re not talking about poetry, Anne—we are talking about saying your prayers. Don’t you know it’s a terrible wicked thing not to say your prayers every night? I’m afraid you are a very bad little girl.”

“You’d find it easier to be bad than good if you had red hair,” said Anne reproachfully.

“People who haven’t red hair don’t know what trouble is. Mrs. Thomas told me that God made my hair red on purpose, and I’ve never cared about Him since. And anyhow I’d always be too tired at night to bother saying prayers.

“Diana is a very pretty little girl. She has black eyes and hair and rosy cheeks. And she is good and smart, which is better than being pretty.”

Marilla was as fond of morals as the Duchess in Wonderland, and was firmly convinced that one should be tacked on to every remark made to a child who was being brought up.

But Anne waved the moral inconsequently aside and seized only on the delightful possibilities before it.

“You’re only Anne of Green Gables,” she said earnestly, “and I see you, just as you are looking now, whenever I try to imagine I’m the Lady Cordelia.

But it’s a million times nicer to be Anne of Green Gables than Anne of nowhere in particular, isn’t it?

”

“Well, they didn’t pick you for your looks, that’s sure and certain,” was Mrs. Rachel Lynde’s emphatic comment.

Mrs. Rachel was one of those delightful and popular people who pride themselves on speaking their mind without fear or favour.

“She’s terrible skinny and homely, Marilla. Come here, child, and let me have a look at you. Lawful heart, did any one ever see such freckles? And hair as red as carrots! Come here, child, I say.”

“Oh, but there’s such a difference between saying a thing yourself and hearing other people say it,” wailed Anne. “

You may know a thing is so, but you can’t help hoping other people don’t quite think it is.

I suppose you think I have an awful temper, but I couldn’t help it. When she said those things something just rose right up in me and choked me. I had to fly out at her.”

Lynde I’m sorry I said those things to her. How can I? I’m not sorry. I’m sorry I’ve vexed you; but I’m glad I told her just what I did. It was a great satisfaction.

I can’t say I’m sorry when I’m not, can I? I can’t even imagine I’m sorry.

”

“You have given me a hope. I shall always feel that you are a benefactor. Oh, I could endure anything if I only thought my hair would be a handsome auburn when I grew up.

It would be so much easier to be good if one’s hair was a handsome auburn, don’t you think?

And now may I go out into your garden and sit on that bench under the apple trees while you and Marilla are talking? There is so much more scope for imagination out there.”

“

It’s lovely to be going home and know it’s home,

” she said. “I love Green Gables already, and I never loved any place before. No place ever seemed like home. Oh, Marilla, I’m so happy. I could pray right now and not find it a bit hard.”

“If you’ll be a good girl you’ll always be happy, Anne. And you should never find it hard to say your prayers.”

“Saying one’s prayers isn’t exactly the same thing as praying,” said Anne meditatively.

“But I’m going to imagine that I’m the wind that is blowing up there in those treetops. When I get tired of the trees I’ll imagine I’m gently waving down here in the ferns—and then I’ll fly over to Mrs.

She did not think she liked Miss Rogerson, and she felt very miserable; every other little girl in the class had puffed sleeves.

Anne felt that life was really not worth living without puffed sleeves.

“Well, how did you like Sunday school?” Marilla wanted to know when Anne came home. Her wreath having faded, Anne had discarded it in the lane, so Marilla was spared the knowledge of that for a time.

“Oh, Marilla, looking forward to things is half the pleasure of them,” exclaimed Anne. “

You mayn’t get the things themselves; but nothing can prevent you from having the fun of looking forward to them.

Mrs. Lynde says, ‘Blessed are they who expect nothing for they shall not be disappointed.’ But I think it would be worse to expect nothing than to be disappointed.”

“What a splendid day!” said Anne, drawing a long breath. “

Isn’t it good just to be alive on a day like this? I pity the people who aren’t born yet for missing it.

They may have good days, of course, but they can never have this one. And it’s splendider still to have such a lovely way to go to school by, isn’t it?”

“Why, he makes fun of all the girls. He laughs at mine because it’s so black. He’s called me a crow a dozen times; and I never heard him apologize for anything before, either.”

“There’s a great deal of difference between being called a crow and being called carrots,” said Anne with dignity.

“Gilbert Blythe has hurt my feelings excruciatingly, Diana.”

“

Anne, you certainly have a genius for getting into trouble.

You went and gave Diana currant wine instead of raspberry cordial. Didn’t you know the difference yourself?”

“I must cry,” said Anne. “My heart is broken.

The stars in their courses fight against me, Marilla.

Diana and I are parted forever. Oh, Marilla, I little dreamed of this when first we swore our vows of friendship.”

Her face hardened.

Mrs. Barry was a woman of strong prejudices and dislikes, and her anger was of the cold, sullen sort which is always hardest to overcome.

To do her justice, she really believed Anne had made Diana drunk out of sheer malice prepense, and she was honestly anxious to preserve her little daughter from the contamination of further intimacy with such a child.

“Diana has gone over to Carmody with her father,” said Mrs. Barry, going in and shutting the door.

Anne went back to Green Gables calm with despair.

“My last hope is gone,” she told Marilla. “I went up and saw Mrs. Barry myself and she treated me very insultingly. Marilla, I do not think she is a well-bred woman.

“I went up and saw Mrs. Barry myself and she treated me very insultingly. Marilla, I do not think she is a well-bred woman. There is nothing more to do except to pray and I haven’t much hope that that’ll do much good because, Marilla,

I do not believe that God Himself can do very much with such an obstinate person as Mrs. Barry.

”

“

I don’t think there is much fear of your dying of grief as long as you can talk, Anne,

” said Marilla unsympathetically.

The rivalry between them was soon apparent; it was entirely good-natured on Gilbert’s side; but it is much to be feared that the same thing cannot be said of Anne, who had certainly an unpraiseworthy tenacity for holding grudges.

She was as intense in her hatreds as in her loves.

She would not stoop to admit that she meant to rival Gilbert in schoolwork, because that would have been to acknowledge his existence which Anne persistently ignored; but the rivalry was there and honours fluctuated between them. Now Gilbert was head of the spelling class;

The second Anne beat him by five. But her triumph was marred by the fact that Gilbert congratulated her heartily before the whole school. It would have been ever so much sweeter to her if he had felt the sting of his defeat.

Mr. Phillips might not be a very good teacher; but a pupil so inflexibly determined on learning as Anne was could hardly escape making progress under any kind of a teacher.

By the end of the term Anne and Gilbert were both promoted into the fifth class and allowed to begin studying the elements of “the branches”—by which Latin, geometry, French, and algebra were meant. In geometry Anne met her Waterloo.

All things great are wound up with all things little.

At first glance it might not seem that the decision of a certain Canadian Premier to include Prince Edward Island in a political tour could have much or anything to do with the fortunes of little Anne Shirley at Green Gables. But it had.

“Oh, Matthew, isn’t it a wonderful morning? The world looks like something God had just imagined for His own pleasure, doesn’t it? Those trees look as if I could blow them away with a breath—pouf!

I’m so glad I live in a world where there are white frosts, aren’t you?

And I’m so glad Mrs. Hammond had three pairs of twins after all. If she hadn’t I mightn’t have known what to do for Minnie May. I’m real sorry I was ever cross with Mrs. Hammond for having twins. But, oh, Matthew, I’m so sleepy.

“Oh, Matthew, isn’t it a wonderful morning?

The world looks like something God had just imagined for His own pleasure, doesn’t it?

Those trees look as if I could blow them away with a breath—pouf! I’m so glad I live in a world where there are white frosts, aren’t you? And I’m so glad Mrs. Hammond had three pairs of twins after all.

“You see before you a perfectly happy person, Marilla,” she announced. “I’m perfectly happy—yes, in spite of my red hair.

Just at present I have a soul above red hair.

Mrs. Barry kissed me and cried and said she was so sorry and she could never repay me. I felt fearfully embarrassed, Marilla, but I just said as politely as I could, ‘I have no hard feelings for you, Mrs. Barry.

And we had fruitcake and pound cake and doughnuts and two kinds of preserves, Marilla. And Mrs. Barry asked me if I took tea and said ‘Pa, why don’t you pass the biscuits to Anne?’

It must be lovely to be grown up, Marilla, when just being treated as if you were is so nice.

”

“Well, anyway, when I am grown up,” said Anne decidedly, “

I’m always going to talk to little girls as if they were, too, and I’ll never laugh when they use big words.

I know from sorrowful experience how that hurts one’s feelings. After tea Diana and I made taffy. The taffy wasn’t very good, I suppose because neither Diana nor I had ever made any before.

and when Mr. Phillips gave Mark Antony’s oration over the dead body of Caesar in the most heart-stirring tones—looking at Prissy Andrews at the end of every sentence—

Anne felt that she could rise and mutiny on the spot if but one Roman citizen led the way.

Only one number on the programme failed to interest her.

“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.

”

“

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.

“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.

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.

“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.

”

If I had perhaps I could influence people for good. Mrs. Allan said we ought always to try to influence other people for good. She talked so nice about everything.

I never knew before that religion was such a cheerful thing.

I always thought it was kind of melancholy, but Mrs. Allan’s isn’t, and I’d like to be a Christian if I could be one like her. I wouldn’t want to be one like Mr. Superintendent Bell.”

“Oh, of course he’s good,” agreed Anne, “but he doesn’t seem to get any comfort out of it.

If I could be good I’d dance and sing all day because I was glad of it.

I suppose Mrs. Allan is too old to dance and sing and of course it wouldn’t be dignified in a minister’s wife.

“

Marilla, isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?

”

“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.”

The fulfilment 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 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 for her,” said Marilla, hitting for once in her life on a very sound and pithy piece of advice. Anne instantly realized this.

“Isn’t it fortunate I’ve got such an imagination?” said Anne. “It will help me through splendidly, I expect.

What do people who haven’t any imagination do when they break their bones, do you suppose, Marilla?

”

“All I hope is that you’ll behave yourself. I’ll be heartily glad when all this fuss is over and you’ll be able to settle down. You are simply good for nothing just now with your head stuffed full of dialogues and groans and tableaus.

As for your tongue, it’s a marvel it’s not clean worn out.

”

but it’s more likely to cultivate envy and discontent. I’m sure the child must feel the difference between her clothes and the other girls’. But to think of Matthew taking notice of it!

That man is waking up after being asleep for over sixty years.

”

But them as never have think it’s all as plain and easy as Rule of Three—just set your three terms down so fashion, and the sum’ll work out correct.

But flesh and blood don’t come under the head of arithmetic and that’s where Marilla Cuthbert makes her mistake.

I suppose she’s trying to cultivate a spirit of humility in Anne by dressing her as she does; but it’s more likely to cultivate envy and discontent. I’m sure the child must feel the difference between her clothes and the other girls’.

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 practised those recitations so often up in the garret, or I’d never have been able to get through.

But alas, he had forgotten he couldn’t swim, and they were both drowned, clasped in each other’s arms. Their bodies were washed ashore soon afterwards. They were buried in the one grave and their funeral was most imposing, Diana.

It’s so much more romantic to end a story up with a funeral than a wedding.

As for Cordelia, she went insane with remorse and was shut up in a lunatic asylum. I thought that was a poetical retribution for her crime.”

Jane never puts any because she says it makes her feel so silly when she has to read it out loud. Jane’s stories are extremely sensible. Then Diana puts too many murders into hers.

She says most of the time she doesn’t know what to do with the people so she kills them off to get rid of them.

I mostly always have to tell them what to write about, but that isn’t hard for I’ve millions of ideas.”

I’m sure that must have a wholesome effect. The moral is the great thing. Mr. Allan says so. I read one of my stories to him and Mrs. Allan and they both agreed that the moral was excellent.

Only they laughed in the wrong places. I like it better when people cry.

Jane and Ruby almost always cry when I come to the pathetic parts. Diana wrote her Aunt Josephine about our club and her Aunt Josephine wrote back that we were to send her some of our stories.

“The way I feel at present, Anne,” said Marilla, “is that it’s high time you had those dishes washed. You’ve taken half an hour longer than you should with all your chattering.

Learn to work first and talk afterwards.

”

“My head is better now. It was terrible bad this afternoon, though. These headaches of mine are getting worse and worse. I’ll have to see a doctor about them. As for your chatter, I don’t know that I mind it—I’ve got so used to it.”

Which was Marilla’s way of saying that she liked to hear it.

And there I was, Mrs. Allan, clinging to that slippery old pile with no way of getting up or down. It was a very unromantic position, but I didn’t think about that at the time.

You don’t think much about romance when you have just escaped from a watery grave.

I said a grateful prayer at once and then I gave all my attention to holding on tight, for I knew I should probably have to depend on human aid to get back to dry land.”

The affair of the amethyst brooch cured me of meddling with things that didn’t belong to me. The Haunted Wood mistake cured me of letting my imagination run away with me. The liniment cake mistake cured me of carelessness in cooking.

Dyeing my hair cured me of vanity.

I never think about my hair and nose now—at least, very seldom. And today’s mistake is going to cure me of being too romantic. I have come to the conclusion that it is no use trying to be romantic in Avonlea.

I was so tired I couldn’t sleep at night. Miss Barry put us in the spare room, according to promise. It was an elegant room, Marilla, but somehow sleeping in a spare room isn’t what I used to think it was.

That’s the worst of growing up, and I’m beginning to realize it. The things you wanted so much when you were a child don’t seem half so wonderful to you when you get them.

”

“

Oh, but it’s good to be alive and to be going home,

” breathed Anne.

“I’ve had a splendid time,” she concluded happily, “and I feel that it marks an epoch in my life.

But the best of it all was the coming home.

”

Marilla looked at her with a tenderness that would never have been suffered to reveal itself in any clearer light than that soft mingling of fireshine and shadow.

The lesson of a love that should display itself easily in spoken word and open look was one Marilla could never learn.

But she had learned to love this slim, gray-eyed girl with an affection all the deeper and stronger from its very undemonstrativeness. Her love made her afraid of being unduly indulgent, indeed.

I didn’t mind promising not to read any more like it, but it was agonizing to give back that book without knowing how it turned out. But my love for Miss Stacy stood the test and I did.

It’s really wonderful, Marilla, what you can do when you’re truly anxious to please a certain person.

”

“I shall take more interest than ever in my studies now,” said Anne blissfully, “because I have a purpose in life.

Mr. Allan says everybody should have a purpose in life and pursue it faithfully.

Only he says we must first make sure that it is a worthy purpose. I would call it a worthy purpose to want to be a teacher like Miss Stacy, wouldn’t you, Marilla? I think it’s a very noble profession.”

she says of course it is different with orphans who are living on charity—they have to hustle. Moody Spurgeon is going to be a minister.

Mrs. Lynde says he couldn’t be anything else with a name like that to live up to.

I hope it isn’t wicked of me, Marilla, but really the thought of Moody Spurgeon being a minister makes me laugh. He’s such a funny-looking boy with that big fat face, and his little blue eyes, and his ears sticking out like flaps.

“I thought how splendid it would have been if Diana had only been going to study for the Entrance, too. But we can’t have things perfect in this imperfect world, as Mrs. Lynde says.

Mrs. Lynde isn’t exactly a comforting person sometimes, but there’s no doubt she says a great many very true things.

And I think the Queen’s class is going to be extremely interesting. Jane and Ruby are just going to study to be teachers. That is the height of their ambition.

He talked and jested with the other girls, exchanged books and puzzles with them, discussed lessons and plans, sometimes walked home with one or the other of them from prayer meeting or Debating Club.

But Anne Shirley he simply ignored, and Anne found out that it is not pleasant to be ignored.

It was in vain that she told herself with a toss of her head that she did not care.

Otherwise the winter passed away in a round of pleasant duties and studies.

For Anne the days slipped by like golden beads on the necklace of the year.

She was happy, eager, interested; there were lessons to be learned and honour to be won; delightful books to read; new pieces to be practised for the Sunday-school choir; pleasant Saturday afternoons at the manse with Mrs. Allan;

“Yes, I believe she could,” said Marilla drily. “She does plenty of unofficial preaching as it is.

Nobody has much of a chance to go wrong in Avonlea with Rachel to oversee them.

”

“If you are I guess I am too, Anne, for Rachel often has that very effect on me. I sometimes think she’d have more of an influence for good, as you say yourself, if she didn’t keep nagging people to do right.

There should have been a special commandment against nagging.

But there, I shouldn’t talk so. Rachel is a good Christian woman and she means well. There isn’t a kinder soul in Avonlea and she never shirks her share of work.”

Of course I know it wasn’t really necessary, but flounces are so stylish this fall and Josie Pye has flounces on all her dresses. I know I’ll be able to study better because of mine.

I shall have such a comfortable feeling deep down in my mind about that flounce.

”

Allan and Miss Stacy I ought to grow up successfully, and I’m sure it will be my own fault if I don’t. I feel it’s a great responsibility because I have only the one chance.

If I don’t grow up right I can’t go back and begin over again.

I’ve grown two inches this summer, Marilla. Mr. Gillis measured me at Ruby’s party. I’m so glad you made my new dresses longer. That dark green one is so pretty and it was sweet of you to put on the flounce.

“I don’t know—I don’t want to talk as much,” she said, denting her chin thoughtfully with her forefinger. “

It’s nicer to think dear, pretty thoughts and keep them in one’s heart, like treasures.

I don’t like to have them laughed at or wondered over. And somehow I don’t want to use big words any more. It’s almost a pity, isn’t it, now that I’m really growing big enough to say them if I did want to.

“No; Miss Stacy has made us promise not to open a book at all. She says it would only tire and confuse us and we are to go out walking and not think about the exams at all and go to bed early.

It’s good advice, but I expect it will be hard to follow; good advice is apt to be, I think.

Prissy Andrews told me that she sat up half the night every night of her Entrance week and crammed for dear life; and I had determined to sit up at least as long as she did.

“

I’m just dazzled inside

,” said Anne. “I want to say a hundred things, and I can’t find words to say them in. I never dreamed of this—yes, I did, too, just once! I let myself think once, ‘What if I should come out first?’

“I’m so glad my window looks east into the sunrising,” said Anne, going over to Diana. “It’s so splendid to see the morning coming up over those long hills and glowing through those sharp fir tops.

It’s new every morning, and I feel as if I washed my very soul in that bath of earliest sunshine.

Oh, Diana, I love this little room so dearly. I don’t know how I’ll get along without it when I go to town next month.”

“

Being interpreted it means plain red, I guess

,” laughed Anne. “Titian was a very famous artist who liked to paint red-haired women.”

“We are rich,” said Anne staunchly. “

Why, we have sixteen years to our credit, and we’re happy as queens, and we’ve all got imaginations, more or less.

Look at that sea, girls—all silver and shadow and vision of things not seen. We couldn’t enjoy its loveliness any more if we had millions of dollars and ropes of diamonds. You wouldn’t change into any of those women if you could.

“

Well, I don’t want to be anyone but myself, even if I go uncomforted by diamonds all my life

,” declared Anne. “I’m quite content to be Anne of Green Gables, with my string of pearl beads. I know Matthew gave me as much love with them as ever went with Madame the Pink Lady’s jewels.”

“Well, I don’t want to be anyone but myself, even if I go uncomforted by diamonds all my life,” declared Anne. “

I’m quite content to be Anne of Green Gables, with my string of pearl beads.

I know Matthew gave me as much love with them as ever went with Madame the Pink Lady’s jewels.”

“Marilla!” Anne sat down on Marilla’s gingham lap, took Marilla’s lined face between her hands, and looked gravely and tenderly into Marilla’s eyes. “I’m not a bit changed—not really.

I’m only just pruned down and branched out.

The real me—back here—is just the same. It won’t make a bit of difference where I go or how much I change outwardly;

“I’ll win that scholarship if hard work can do it,” she resolved. “Wouldn’t Matthew be proud if I got to be a B.A.?

Oh, it’s delightful to have ambitions.

I’m so glad I have such a lot. And there never seems to be any end to them—that’s the best of it. Just as soon as you attain to one ambition you see another one glittering higher up still. It does make life so interesting.”

“Wouldn’t Matthew be proud if I got to be a B.A.? Oh, it’s delightful to have ambitions. I’m so glad I have such a lot. And there never seems to be any end to them—that’s the best of it.

Just as soon as you attain to one ambition you see another one glittering higher up still. It does make life so interesting.

”

“That Anne-girl improves all the time,” she said. “I get tired of other girls—there is such a provoking and eternal sameness about them.

Anne has as many shades as a rainbow and every shade is the prettiest while it lasts.

I don’t know that she is as amusing as she was when she was a child, but she makes me love her and I like people who make me love them. It saves me so much trouble in making myself love them.”

Anne has as many shades as a rainbow and every shade is the prettiest while it lasts. I don’t know that she is as amusing as she was when she was a child, but she makes me love her and

I like people who make me love them. It saves me so much trouble in making myself love them.

”

I’ve done my best and I begin to understand what is meant by the ‘joy of the strife.’

Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing.

Girls, don’t talk about exams! Look at that arch of pale green sky over those houses and picture to yourselves what it must look like over the purply-dark beechwoods back of Avonlea.”