Summary:
Anne of Green Gables #2
At sixteen, Anne is both exhilarated and slightly terrified to be teaching at the Avonlea schoolhouse. But she's determined to win the heart of every student―especially troublemaker Anthony Pye. After all, she still knows a thing or two about troublemaking herself...
With rambunctious six-year-old twins staying at Green Gables, a village "improvement" project that goes disastrously wrong, and her college entrance exams to study for, Anne will more than have her hands full. At least her best friend Diana and tormentor-turned-ally, the dashing Gilbert Blythe, will be there to help see her through.
Inspiring the dreamer in all of us, Anne is hailed as a favorite by everyone from Mark Twain to Duchess Kate.
Summary:
Anne of Green Gables #3
Leaving home for college is never easy. Yet being on her own and making new friends is more exciting than Anne Shirley every dreamed possible. Not only does she sell her first story, but she also gets a marriage proposal—from the last person she expects. There's never a dull moment when she moves into a cozy cottage with her girlfriends, gets adopted by a troublemaker of a cat, and helps her best friend Diana plan the most beautiful wedding Prince Edward Island has ever seen.
Just like Anne's friend Philippa says, something about Anne makes us "long to be better and wiser and stronger." It's no wonder she's a favorite character of everyone from Mark Twain to Duchess Kate and loved by generations of readers around the world.
Anne of Green Gables #4
Anne Shirley has a tendency to stir up controversy wherever she goes. And her new position as principal of Summerside High School is no exception. The Pringles, the ruling family in town, want one of their own in the job, and they've made it their mission to drive Annie out.
As Anne settles into her tower room at Windy Poplars with the widows Aunt Kate and Aunt Chatty, she finds she has more allies than she knows. And letters from her dear Gilbert Blythe help her remember that with a little bit of imagination, she can triumph over anything...
Through Anne's eyes, the ordinary world becomes magical and every day is an adventure. It's no surprise she is a favorite of everyone from Mark Twain to Duchess Kate.
Anne of Avonlea #2
Chapter 1
An Irate Neighbor
A tall, slim girl, "half-past sixteen," with serious gray eyes and hair which her friends called auburn, had sat down on the broad red sandstone doorstep of a Prince Edward Island farmhouse one ripe afternoon in August, firmly resolved to construe so many lines of Virgil.
But an August afternoon, with blue hazes scarfing the harvest slopes, little winds whispering elfishly in the poplars, and a dancing splendor of red poppies outflaming against the dark coppice of young firs in a corner of the cherry orchard, was fitter for dreams than dead languages. The Virgil soon slipped unheeded to the ground, and Anne, her chin propped on her clasped hands, and her eyes on the splendid mass of fluffy clouds that were heaping up just over Mr. J. A. Harrison's house like a great white mountain, was far away in a delicious world where a certain schoolteacher was doing a wonderful work, shaping the destinies of future statesmen, and inspiring youthful minds and hearts with high and lofty ambitions.
To be sure, if you came down to harsh facts...which, it must be confessed, Anne seldom did until she had to...it did not seem likely that there was much promising material for celebrities in Avonlea school; but you could never tell what might happen if a teacher used her influence for good. Anne had certain rose-tinted ideals of what a teacher might accomplish if she only went the right way about it; and she was in the midst of a delightful scene, forty years hence, with a famous personage...just exactly what he was to be famous for was left in convenient haziness, but Anne thought it would be rather nice to have him a college president or a Canadian premier...bowing low over her wrinkled hand and assuring her that it was she who had first kindled his ambition, and that all his success in life was due to the lessons she had instilled so long ago in Avonlea school. This pleasant vision was shattered by a most unpleasant interruption.
A demure little Jersey cow came scuttling down the lane and five seconds later Mr. Harrison arrived...if "arrived" be not too mild a term to describe the manner of his irruption into the yard.
He bounced over the fence without waiting to open the gate, and angrily confronted astonished Anne, who had risen to her feet and stood looking at him in some bewilderment. Mr. Harrison was their new right-hand neighbor and she had never met him before, although she had seen him once or twice.
In early April, before Anne had come home from Queen's, Mr. Robert Bell, whose farm adjoined the Cuthbert place on the west, had sold out and moved to Charlottetown. His farm had been bought by a certain Mr. J. A. Harrison, whose name, and the fact that he was a New Brunswick man, were all that was known about him. But before he had been a month in Avonlea he had won the reputation of being an odd person..."a crank," Mrs. Rachel Lynde said. Mrs. Rachel was an outspoken lady, as those of you who may have already made her acquaintance will remember. Mr. Harrison was certainly different from other people...and that is the essential characteristic of a crank, as everybody knows.
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 house-keeping 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. Harrison "got a bite" when he felt hungry, and if John Henry were around at the time, he came in for a share, but if he were not, he had to wait until Mr. Harrison's next hungry spell. John Henry mournfully averred that he would have starved to death if it wasn't that he got home on Sundays and got a good filling up, and that his mother always gave him a basket of "grub" to take back with him on Monday mornings.
As for washing dishes, Mr. Harrison never made any pretense of doing it unless a rainy Sunday came. Then he went to work and washed them all at once in the rainwater hogshead, and left them to drain dry.
Again, Mr. Harrison was "close." When he was asked to subscribe to the Rev. Mr. Allan's salary he said he'd wait and see how many dollars' worth of good he got out of his preaching first...he didn't believe in buying a pig in a poke. And when Mrs. Lynde went to ask for a contribution to missions...and incidentally to see the inside of the house...he told her there were more heathens among the old woman gossips in Avonlea than anywhere else he knew of, and he'd cheerfully contribute to a mission for Christianizing them if she'd undertake it. Mrs. Rachel got herself away and said it was a mercy poor Mrs. Robert Bell was safe in her grave, for it would have broken her heart to see the state of her house in which she used to take so much pride.
"Why, she scrubbed the kitchen floor every second day," Mrs. Lynde told Marilla Cuthbert indignantly, "and if you could see it now! I had to hold up my skirts as I walked across it."
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. Besides, Ginger had bitten a piece right out of the back of John Henry's neck one day when he had stooped down too near the cage. Mrs. Carter showed everybody the mark when the luckless John Henry went home on Sundays.
All these things flashed through Anne's mind as Mr. Harrison stood, quite speechless with wrath apparently, before her. In his most amiable mood Mr. Harrison could not have been considered a handsome man; he was short and fat and bald; and now, with his round face purple with rage and his prominent blue eyes almost sticking out of his head, Anne thought he was really the ugliest person she had ever seen.
All at once Mr. Harrison found his voice.
"I'm not going to put up with this," he spluttered, "not a day longer, do you hear, miss. Bless my soul, this is the third time, miss...the third time! Patience has ceased to be a virtue, miss. I warned your aunt the last time not to let it occur again...and she's let it...she's done it...what does she mean by it, that is what I want to know. That is what I'm here about, miss."
"Will you explain what the trouble is?" asked Anne, in her most dignified manner. She had been practicing it considerably of late to have it in good working order when school began; but it had no apparent effect on the irate J. A. Harrison.
"Trouble, is it? Bless my soul, trouble enough, I should think. The trouble is, miss, that I found that Jersey cow of your aunt's in my oats again, not half an hour ago. The third time, mark you. I found her in last Tuesday and I found her in yesterday. I came here and told your aunt not to let it occur again. She has let it occur again. Where's your aunt, miss? I just want to see her for a minute and give her a piece of my mind...a piece of J. A. Harrison's mind, miss."
"If you mean Miss Marilla Cuthbert she is not my aunt, and she has gone down to East Grafton to see a distant relative of hers who is very ill," said Anne, with due increase of dignity at every word. "I am very sorry that my cow should have broken into your oats...she is my cow and not Miss Cuthbert's...Matthew gave her to me three years ago when she was a little calf and he bought her from Mr. Bell."
"Sorry, miss! Sorry isn't going to help matters any. You'd better go and look at the havoc that animal has made in my oats...trampled them from center to circumference, miss."
"I am very sorry," repeated Anne firmly, "but perhaps if you kept your fences in better repair Dolly might not have broken in. It is your part of the line fence that separates your oat field from our pasture and I noticed the other day that it was not in very good condition."
"My fence is all right," snapped Mr. Harrison, angrier than ever at this carrying of the war into the enemy's country. "The jail fence couldn't keep a demon of a cow like that out. And I can tell you, you redheaded snippet, that if the cow is yours, as you say, you'd be better employed in watching her out of other people's grain than in sitting round reading yellow-covered novels,"...with a scathing glance at the innocent tan-colored Virgil by Anne's feet.
Something at that moment was red besides Anne's hair...which had always been a tender point with her.
"I'd rather have red hair than none at all, except a little fringe round my ears," she flashed.
The shot told, for Mr. Harrison was really very sensitive about his bald head. His anger choked him up again and he could only glare speechlessly at Anne, who recovered her temper and followed up her advantage.
"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 give you my word of honor on that point."
"Well, mind you she doesn't," muttered Mr. Harrison in a somewhat subdued tone; but he stamped off angrily enough and Anne heard him growling to himself until he was out of earshot.
Grievously disturbed in mind, Anne marched across the yard and shut the naughty Jersey up in the milking pen.
"She can't possibly get out of that unless she tears the fence down," she reflected. "She looks pretty quiet now. I daresay she has sickened herself on those oats. I wish I'd sold her to Mr. Shearer when he wanted her last week, but I thought it was just as well to wait until we had the auction of the stock and let them all go together. 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.
"I'll be glad when the auction is over," said Marilla. "It is too much responsibility having so much stock about the place and nobody but that unreliable Martin to look after them. He has never come back yet and he promised that he would certainly be back last night if I'd give him the day off to go to his aunt's funeral. I don't know how many aunts he has got, I am sure. That's the fourth that's died since he hired here a year ago. I'll be more than thankful when the crop is in and Mr. Barry takes over the farm. We'll have to keep Dolly shut up in the pen till Martin comes, for she must be put in the back pasture and the fences there have to be fixed. I declare, it is a world of trouble, as Rachel says. Here's poor Mary Keith dying and what is to become of those two children of hers is more than I know. She has a brother in British Columbia and she has written to him about them, but she hasn't heard from him yet."
"What are the children like? How old are they?"
"Six past...they're twins."
"Oh, I've always been especially interested in twins ever since Mrs. Hammond had so many," said Anne eagerly. "Are they pretty?"
"Goodness, you couldn't tell...they were too dirty. Davy had been out making mud pies and Dora went out to call him in. Davy pushed her headfirst into the biggest pie and then, because she cried, he got into it himself and wallowed in it to show her it was nothing to cry about. Mary said Dora was really a very good child but that Davy was full of mischief. He has never had any bringing up you might say. His father died when he was a baby and Mary has been sick almost ever since."
"I'm always sorry for children that have had no bringing up," said Anne soberly. "You know I hadn't any till you took me in hand. I hope their uncle will look after them. Just what relation is Mrs. Keith to you?"
"Mary? None in the world. It was her husband...he was our third cousin. There's Mrs. Lynde coming through the yard. I thought she'd be up to hear about Mary."
"Don't tell her about Mr. Harrison and the cow," implored Anne.
Marilla promised; but the promise was quite unnecessary, for Mrs. Lynde was no sooner fairly seated than she said,
"I saw Mr. Harrison chasing your Jersey out of his oats today when I was coming home from Carmody. I thought he looked pretty mad. Did he make much of a rumpus?"
Anne and Marilla furtively exchanged amused smiles. Few things in Avonlea ever escaped Mrs. Lynde. It was only that morning Anne had said,
"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!"
"I believe he did," admitted Marilla. "I was away. He gave Anne a piece of his mind."
"I think he is a very disagreeable man," said Anne, with a resentful toss of her ruddy head.
"You never said a truer word," said Mrs. Rachel solemnly. "I knew there'd be trouble when Robert Bell sold his place to a New Brunswick man, that's what. I don't know what Avonlea is coming to, with so many strange people rushing into it. It'll soon not be safe to go to sleep in our beds."
"Why, what other strangers are coming in?" asked Marilla.
"Haven't you heard? Well, there's a family of Donnells, for one thing. They've rented Peter Sloane's old house. Peter has hired the man to run his mill. They belong down east and nobody knows anything about them. Then that shiftless Timothy Cotton family are going to move up from White Sands and they'll simply be a burden on the public. He is in consumption...when he isn't stealing...and his wife is a slack-twisted creature that can't turn her hand to a thing. She washes her dishes sitting down. Mrs. George Pye has taken her husband's orphan nephew, Anthony Pye. He'll be going to school to you, Anne, so you may expect trouble, that's what. And you'll have another strange pupil, too. Paul Irving is coming from the States to live with his grandmother. You remember his father, Marilla...Stephen Irving, him that jilted Lavendar Lewis over at Grafton?"
"I don't think he jilted her. There was a quarrel...I suppose there was blame on both sides."
"Well, anyway, he didn't marry her, and she's been as queer as possible ever since, they say...living all by herself in that little stone house she calls Echo Lodge. Stephen went off to the States and went into business with his uncle and married a Yankee. He's never been home since, though his mother has been up to see him once or twice. His wife died two years ago and he's sending the boy home to his mother for a spell. He's ten years old and I don't know if he'll be a very desirable pupil. You can never tell about those Yankees."
Mrs. Lynde looked upon all people who had the misfortune to be born or brought up elsewhere than in Prince Edward Island with a decided can-any-good-thing-come-out-of-Nazareth air. They might be good people, of course; but you were on the safe side in doubting it. She had a special prejudice against "Yankees." Her husband had been cheated out of ten dollars by an employer for whom he had once worked in Boston and neither angels nor principalities nor powers could have convinced Mrs. Rachel that the whole United States was not responsible for it.
"Avonlea school won't be the worse for a little new blood," said Marilla drily, "and if this boy is anything like his father he'll be all right. Steve Irving was the nicest boy that was ever raised in these parts, though some people did call him proud. I should think Mrs. Irving would be very glad to have the child. She has been very lonesome since her husband died."
"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?"
"I was just talking it over with some of the girls and boys at the last Debating Club," said Anne, flushing. "They thought it would be rather nice...and so do Mr. and Mrs. Allan. Lots of villages have them now."
"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."
"Oh, we are not going to try to improve the people. It is Avonlea itself. There are lots of things which might be done to make it prettier. For instance, if we could coax Mr. Levi Boulter to pull down that dreadful old house on his upper farm wouldn't that be an improvement?"
"It certainly would," admitted Mrs. Rachel. "That old ruin has been an eyesore to the settlement for years. But if you Improvers can coax Levi Boulter to do anything for the public that he isn't to be paid for doing, may I be there to see and hear the process, that's what. I don't want to discourage you, Anne, for there may be something in your idea, though I suppose you did get it out of some rubbishy Yankee magazine; but you'll have your hands full with your school and I advise you as a friend not to bother with your improvements, that's what. But there, I know you'll go ahead with it if you've set your mind on it. You were always one to carry a thing through somehow."
Something about the firm outlines of Anne's lips told that Mrs. Rachel was not far astray in this estimate. Anne's heart was bent on forming the Improvement Society. Gilbert Blythe, who was to teach in White Sands but would always be home from Friday night to Monday morning, was enthusiastic about it; and most of the other young folks were willing to go in for anything that meant occasional meetings and consequently some "fun." As for what the "improvements" were to be, nobody had any very clear idea except Anne and Gilbert. They had talked them over and planned them out until an ideal Avonlea existed in their minds, if nowhere else.
Mrs. Rachel had still another item of news.
"They've given the Carmody school to a Priscilla Grant. Didn't you go to Queen's with a girl of that name, Anne?"
"Yes, indeed. Priscilla to teach at Carmody! How perfectly lovely!" exclaimed Anne, her gray eyes lighting up until they looked like evening stars, causing Mrs. Lynde to wonder anew if she would ever get it settled to her satisfaction whether Anne Shirley were really a pretty girl or not.
Anne of the Island #3
Chapter One
The Shadow of Change
"Harvest is ended and summer is gone," quoted Anne Shirley, gazing across the shorn fields dreamily. She and Diana Barry had been picking apples in the Green Gables orchard, but were now resting from their labors in a sunny corner, where airy fleets of thistledown drifted by on the wings of a wind that was still summer-sweet with the incense of ferns in the Haunted Wood.
But everything in the landscape around them spoke of autumn. The sea was roaring hollowly in the distance, the fields were bare and sere, scarfed with goldenrod, the brook valley below Green Gables overflowed with asters of ethereal purple, and the Lake of Shining Waters was blue -- blue -- blue; not the changeful blue of spring, nor the pale azure of summer, but a clear, steadfast, serene blue, as if the water were past all moods and tenses of emotion and had settled down to a tranquility unbroken by fickle dreams.
"It has been a nice summer," said Diana, twisting the new ring on her left hand with a smile. "And Miss Lavendar's wedding seemed to come as a sort of crown to it. I suppose Mr. and Mrs. Irving are on the Pacific coast now."
"It seems to me they have been gone long enough to go around the world," sighed Anne. "I can't believe it is only a week since they were married. Everything has changed. Miss Lavendar and Mr. and Mrs. Allan gone -- how lonely the manse looks with the shutters all closed! I went past it last night, and it made me feel as if everybody in it had died."
"We'll never get another minister as nice as Mr. Allan," said Diana, with gloomy conviction. "I suppose we'll have all kinds of supplies this winter, and half the Sundays no preaching at all. And you and Gilbert gone -- it will be awfully dull."
"Fred will be here," insinuated Anne slyly.
"When is Mrs. Lynde going to move up?" asked Diana, as if she had not heard Anne's remark.
"Tomorrow. I'm glad she's coming -- but it will be another change. Marilla and I cleared everything out of the spare room yesterday. Do you know, I hated to do it? Of course, it was silly -- but it did seem as if we were committing sacrilege. That old spare room has always seemed like a shrine to me. When I was a child I thought it the most wonderful apartment in the world. You remember what a consuming desire I had to sleep in a spare room bed -- but not the Green Gables spare room. Oh, no, never there! It would have been too terrible -- I couldn't have slept a wink from awe. I never walked through that room when Marilla sent me in on an errand -- no, indeed, I tiptoed through it and held my breath, as if I were in church, and felt relieved when I got out of it. The pictures of George Whitefield and the Duke of Wellington hung there, one on each side of the mirror, and frowned so sternly at me all the time I was in, especially if I dared peep in the mirror, which was the only one in the house that didn't twist my face a little. I always wondered how Marilla dared houseclean that room. And now it's not only cleaned but stripped bare. George Whitefield and the Duke have been relegated to the upstairs hall. 'So passes the glory of this world,'" concluded Anne, with a laugh in which there was a little note of regret. It is never pleasant to have our old shrines desecrated, even when we have outgrown them.
"I'll be so lonesome when you go," moaned Diana for the hundredth time. "And to think you go next week!"
"But we're together still," said Anne cheerily. "We mustn't let next week rob us of this week's joy. I hate the thought of going myself -- home and I are such good friends. Talk of being lonesome! It's I who should groan. You'll be here with any number of your old friends -- and Fred! While I shall be alone among strangers, not knowing a soul!"
"Except Gilbert -- and Charlie Sloane," said Diana, imitating Anne's italics and slyness.
"Charlie Sloane will be a great comfort, of course," agreed Anne sarcastically; whereupon both those irresponsible damsels laughed. Diana knew exactly what Anne thought of Charlie Sloane; but, despite sundry confidential talks, she did not know just what Anne thought of Gilbert Blythe. To be sure, Anne herself did not know that.
"The boys may be boarding at the other end of Kingsport, for all I know," Anne went on. "I am glad I'm going to Redmond, and I am sure I shall like it after a while. But for the first few weeks I know I won't. I shan't even have the comfort of looking forward to the weekend visit home, as I had when I went to Queen's. Christmas will seem like a thousand years away."
Everything is changing -- or going to change," said Diana sadly. "I have a feeling that things will never be the same again, Anne."
"We have come to a parting of the ways, I suppose," said Anne thoughtfully. "We had to come to it. Do you think, Diana, that being grown-up is really as nice as we used to imagine it would be when we were children?"
"I don't know -- there are some nice things about it," answered Diana, again caressing her ring with that little smile which always had the effect of making Anne feel suddenly left out and inexperienced. "But there are so many puzzling things, too. Sometimes I feel as if being grown-up just frightened me -- and then I would give anything to be a little girl again."
“I suppose we’ll get used to being grown-up in time,” said Anne cheerfully. “There won’t be so many unexpected things about it by and by—though, after all, I fancy it’s the unexpected things that give spice to life. We’re eighteen, Diana. In two more years we’ll be twenty. When I was ten I thought twenty was a green old age. In no time you’ll be a staid, middle-aged matron, and I shall be nice, old maid Aunt Anne, coming to visit you on vacations. You’ll always keep a corner for me, won’t you, Di darling? Not the spare room, of course—old maids can’t aspire to spare rooms, and I shall be as ’umble as Uriah Heep, and quite content with a little over-the-porch or off-the-parlor cubby hole.”
“What nonsense you do talk, Anne,” laughed Diana. “You’ll marry somebody splendid and handsome and rich—and no spare room in Avonlea will be half gorgeous enough for you—and you’ll turn up your nose at all the friends of your youth.”
“That would be a pity; my nose is quite nice, but I fear turning it up would spoil it,” said Anne, patting that shapely organ. “I haven’t so many good features that I could afford to spoil those I have; so, even if I should marry the King of the Cannibal Islands, I promise you I won’t turn up my nose at you, Diana.”
With another gay laugh the girls separated, Diana to return to Orchard Slope, Anne to walk to the post office. She found a letter awaiting her there, and when Gilbert Blythe overtook her on the bridge over the Lake of Shining Waters she was sparkling with the excitement of it.
“Priscilla Grant is going to Redmond, too,” she exclaimed. “Isn’t that splendid? I hoped she would, but she didn’t think her father would consent. He has, however, and we’re to board together. I feel that I can face an army with banners—or all the professors of Redmond in one fell phalanx—with a chum like Priscilla by my side.”
“I think we’ll like Kingsport,” said Gilbert. “It’s a nice old burg, they tell me, and has the finest natural park in the world. I’ve heard that the scenery in it is magnificent.”
“I wonder if it will be—can be—any more beautiful than this,” murmured Anne, looking around her with the loving, enraptured eyes of those to whom “home” must always be the loveliest spot in the world, no matter what fairer lands may lie under alien stars.
They were leaning on the bridge of the old pond, drinking deep of the enchantment of the dusk, just at the spot where Anne had climbed from her sinking dory on the day Elaine floated down to Camelot. The fine, empurpling dye of sunset still stained the western skies, but the moon was rising and the water lay like a great, silver dream in her light. Remembrance wove a sweet and subtle spell over the two young creatures.
“You are very quiet, Anne,” said Gilbert at last.
“I’m afraid to speak or move for fear all this wonderful beauty will vanish just like a broken silence,” breathed Anne.
Gilbert suddenly laid his hand over the slender white one lying on the rail of the bridge. His hazel eyes deepened into darkness, his still boyish lips opened to say something of the dream and hope that thrilled his soul. But Anne snatched her hand away and turned quickly. The spell of the dusk was broken for her.
“I must go home,” she exclaimed, with a rather overdone carelessness. “Marilla had a headache this afternoon, and I’m sure the twins will be in some dreadful mischief by this time. I really shouldn’t have stayed away so long.”
She chattered ceaselessly and inconsequently until they reached the Green Gables lane. Poor Gilbert hardly had a chance to get a word in edgewise. Anne felt rather relieved when they parted. There had been a new, secret self-consciousness in her heart with regard to Gilbert, ever since that fleeting moment of revelation in the garden of Echo Lodge. Something alien had intruded into the old, perfect, school-day comradeship—something that threatened to mar it.
“I never felt glad to see Gilbert go before,” she thought, half-resentfully, half-sorrowfully, as she walked alone up the lane. “Our friendship will be spoiled if he goes on with this nonsense. It mustn’t be spoiled—I won’t let it. Oh, why can’t boys be just sensible!”
Anne had an uneasy doubt that it was not strictly “sensible” that she should still feel on her hand the warm pressure of Gilbert’s, as distinctly as she had felt it for the swift second his had rested there; and still less sensible that the sensation was far from being an unpleasant one—very different from that which had attended a similar demonstration on Charlie Sloane’s part, when she had been sitting out a dance with him at a White Sands party three nights before. Anne shivered over the disagreeable recollection. But all problems connected with infatuated swains vanished from her mind when she entered the homely, unsentimental atmosphere of the Green Gables kitchen where an eight-year-old boy was crying grievously on the sofa.
“What is the matter, Davy?” asked Anne, taking him up in her arms. “Where are Marilla and Dora?”
“Marilla’s putting Dora to bed,” sobbed Davy, “and I’m crying ’cause Dora fell down the outside cellar steps, heels over head, and scraped all the skin off her nose, and—”
“Oh, well, don’t cry about it, dear. Of course, you are sorry for her, but crying won’t help her any. She’ll be all right tomorrow. Crying never helps any one, Davy-boy, and—”
“I ain’t crying ’cause Dora fell down the cellar,” said Davy, cutting short Anne’s well-meant preachment with increasing bitterness. “I’m crying ’cause I wasn’t there to see her fall. I’m always missing some fun or other, seems to me.”
“Oh, Davy!” Anne choked back an unholy shriek of laughter. “Would you call it fun to see poor little Dora fall down the steps and get hurt?”
“She wasn’t much hurt,” said Davy defiantly. “ ’Course, if she’d been killed I’d have been real sorry, Anne. But the Keiths ain’t so easy killed. They’re like the Blewetts, I guess. Herb Blewett fell off the hayloft last Wednesday, and rolled right down through the turnip chute into the box stall, where they had a fearful wild, cross horse, and rolled right under his heels. And still he got out alive, with only three bones broke. Mrs. Lynde says there are some folks you can’t kill with a meat-axe. Is Mrs. Lynde coming here tomorrow, Anne?”
“Yes, Davy, and I hope you’ll be always very nice and good to her.”
“I’ll be nice and good. But will she ever put me to bed at nights, Anne?”
“Perhaps. Why?”
“ ’Cause,” said Davy very decidedly, “if she does I won’t say my prayers before her like I do before you, Anne.”
“Why not?”
“ ’Cause I don’t think it would be nice to talk to God before strangers, Anne. Dora can say hers to Mrs. Lynde if she likes, but I won’t. I’ll wait till she’s gone and then say ’em. Won’t that be all right, Anne?”
“Yes, if you are sure you won’t forget to say them, Davy-boy.”
“Oh, I won’t forget, you bet. I think saying my prayers is great fun. But it won’t be as good fun saying them alone as saying them to you. I wish you’d stay home, Anne. I don’t see what you want to go away and leave us for.”
“I don’t exactly want to, Davy, but I feel I ought to go.”
“If you don’t want to go you needn’t. You’re grown up. When I’m grown up I’m not going to do one single thing I don’t want to do, Anne.”
“All your life, Davy, you’ll find yourself doing things you don’t want to do.”
“I won’t,” said Davy flatly. “Catch me! I have to do things I don’t want to now, ’cause you and Marilla’ll send me to bed if I don’t. But when I grow up you can’t do that, and there’ll be nobody to tell me not to do things. Won’t I have the time! Say, Anne, Milty Boulter says his mother says you’re going to college to see if you can catch a man. Are you, Anne? I want to know.”
For a second Anne burned with resentment. Then she laughed, reminding herself that Mrs. Boulter’s crude vulgarity of thought and speech could not harm her.
“No, Davy, I’m not. I’m going to study and grow and learn about many things.”
“What things?”
“ ‘Shoes and ships and sealing wax
And cabbages and kings,’ ”
quoted Anne.
“But if you did want to catch a man how would you go about it? I want to know,” persisted Davy, for whom the subject evidently possessed a certain fascination.
“You’d better ask Mrs. Boulter,” said Anne thoughtlessly. “I think it’s likely she knows more about the process than I do.”
“I will, the next time I see her,” said Davy gravely.
“Davy! If you do!” cried Anne, realizing her mistake.
“But you just told me to,” protested Davy, aggrieved.
“It’s time you went to bed,” decreed Anne, by way of getting out of the scrape.
After Davy had gone to bed Anne wandered down to Victoria Island and sat there alone, curtained with fine-spun, moonlit gloom, while the water laughed around her in a duet of brook and wind. Anne had always loved that brook. Many a dream had she spun over its sparkling water in days gone by. She forgot lovelorn youths, and the cayenne speeches of malicious neighbors, and all the problems of her girlish existence. In imagination she sailed over storied seas that wash the distant shining shores of “faëry lands forlorn,” where lost Atlantis and Elysium lie, with the evening star for pilot, to the land of Heart’s Desire. And she was richer in those dreams than in realities; for things seen pass away, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
Anne of Windy Poplars #4
Chapter 1
(Letter from Anne Shirley, B.A., Principal of Summerside High School, to Gilbert Blythe, medical student at Redmond College, Kingsport.)
Windy Poplars,
Spook's Lane,
S'side, P. E. I.,
Monday, September 12th.
Dearest:
Isn't that an address! Did you ever hear anything so delicious? Windy Poplars is the name of my new home and I love it. I also love Spook's Lane, which has no legal existence. It should be Trent Street but it is never called Trent Street except on the rare occasions when it is mentioned in the Weekly Courier...and then people look at each other and say, "Where on earth is that?" Spook's Lane it is...although for what reason I cannot tell you. I have already asked Rebecca Dew about it, but all she can say is that it has always been Spook's Lane and there was some old yarn years ago of its being haunted. But she has never seen anything worse-looking than herself in it.
However, I mustn't get ahead of my story. You don't know Rebecca Dew yet. But you will, oh, yes, you will. I foresee that Rebecca Dew will figure largely in my future correspondence.
It's dusk, dearest. (In passing, isn't "dusk" a lovely word? I like it better than twilight. It sounds so velvety and shadowy and...and...dusky.) In daylight I belong to the world...in the night to sleep and eternity. But in the dusk I'm free from both and belong only to myself...and you. So I'm going to keep this hour sacred to writing to you. Though this won't be a love-letter. I have a scratchy pen and I can't write love-letters with a scratchy pen...or a sharp pen...or a stub pen. So you'll only get that kind of letter from me when I have exactly the right kind of pen. Meanwhile, I'll tell you about my new domicile and its inhabitants. Gilbert, they're such dears.
I came up yesterday to look for a boarding-house. Mrs. Rachel Lynde came with me, ostensibly to do some shopping but really, I know, to choose a boarding-house for me. In spite of my Arts course and my B.A., Mrs. Lynde still thinks I am an inexperienced young thing who must be guided and directed and overseen.
We came by train and oh, Gilbert, I had the funniest adventure. You know I've always been one to whom adventures came unsought. I just seem to attract them, as it were.
It happened just as the train was coming to a stop at the station. I got up and, stooping to pick up Mrs. Lynde's suitcase (she was planning to spend Sunday with a friend in Summerside), I leaned my knuckles heavily on what I thought was the shiny arm of a seat. In a second I received a violent crack across them that nearly made me howl. Gilbert, what I had taken for the arm of a seat was a man's bald head. He was glaring fiercely at me and had evidently just waked up. I apologized abjectly and got off the train as quickly as possible. The last I saw of him he was still glaring. Mrs. Lynde was horrified and my knuckles are sore yet!
I did not expect to have much trouble in finding a boarding-house, for a certain Mrs. Tom Pringle has been boarding the various principals of the High School for the last fifteen years. But, for some unknown reason, she has grown suddenly tired of "being bothered" and wouldn't take me. Several other desirable places had some polite excuse. Several other places weren't desirable. We wandered about the town the whole afternoon and got hot and tired and blue and headachy...at least I did. I was ready to give up in despair...and then, Spook's Lane just happened!
We had dropped in to see Mrs. Braddock, an old crony of Mrs. Lynde's. And Mrs. Braddock said she thought "the widows" might take me in.
"I've heard they want a boarder to pay Rebecca Dew's wages. They can't afford to keep Rebecca any longer unless a little extra money comes in. And if Rebecca goes, who is to milk that old red cow?"
Mrs. Braddock fixed me with a stern eye as if she thought I ought to milk the red cow but wouldn't believe me on oath if I claimed I could.
"What widows are you talking about?" demanded Mrs. Lynde.
"Why, Aunt Kate and Aunt Chatty," said Mrs. Braddock, as if everybody, even an ignorant B.A., ought to know that. "Aunt Kate is Mrs. Amasa MacComber (she's the Captain's widow) and Aunt Chatty is Mrs. Lincoln MacLean, just a plain widow. But everyone calls them ‘aunt.' They live at the end of Spook's Lane."
Spook's Lane! That settled it. I knew I just had to board with the widows.
"Let's go and see them at once," I implored Mrs. Lynde. It seemed to me if we lost a moment Spook's Lane would vanish back into fairyland.
"You can see them but it'll be Rebecca who'll really decide whether they'll take you or not. Rebecca Dew rules the roost at Windy Poplars, I can tell you."
Windy Poplars! It couldn't be true...no it couldn't. I must be dreaming. And Mrs. Rachel Lynde was actually saying it was a funny name for a place.
"Oh, Captain MacComber called it that. It was his house, you know. He planted all the poplars round it and was mighty proud of it, though he was seldom home and never stayed long. Aunt Kate used to say that was inconvenient, but we never got it figured out whether she meant his staying such a little time or his coming back at all. Well, Miss Shirley, I hope you'll get there. Rebecca Dew's a good cook and a genius with cold potatoes. If she takes a notion to you you'll be in clover. If she doesn't...well, she won't, that's all. I hear there's a new banker in town looking for a boarding-house and she may prefer him. It's kind of funny Mrs. Tom Pringle wouldn't take you. Summerside is full of Pringles and half Pringles. They're called "The Royal Family" and you'll have to get on their good side, Miss Shirley, or you'll never get along in Summerside High. They've always ruled the roost hereabouts...there's a street called after old Captain Abraham Pringle. There's a regular clan of them, but the two old ladies at Maplehurst boss the tribe. I did hear they were down on you."
"Why should they be?" I exclaimed. "I'm a total stranger to them."
"Well, a third cousin of theirs applied for the Principalship and they all think he should have got it. When your application was accepted the whole kit and boodle of them threw back their heads and howled. Well, people are like that. We have to take them as we find them, you know. They'll be as smooth as cream to you but they'll work against you every time. I'm not wanting to discourage you but forewarned is forearmed. I hope you'll make good just to spite them. If the widows take you, you won't mind eating with Rebecca Dew, will you? She isn't a servant, you know. She's a far-off cousin of the Captain's. She doesn't come to the table when there's company...she knows her place then...but if you were boarding there she wouldn't consider you company, of course."
I assured the anxious Mrs. Braddock that I'd love eating with Rebecca Dew and dragged Mrs. Lynde away. I must get ahead of the banker.
Mrs. Braddock followed us to the door.
"And don't hurt Aunt Chatty's feelings, will you? Her feelings are so easily hurt. She's so sensitive, poor thing. You see, she hasn't quite as much money as Aunt Kate...though Aunt Kate hasn't any too much either. And then Aunt Kate liked her husband real well...her own husband, I mean...but Aunt Chatty didn't...didn't like hers, I mean. Small wonder! Lincoln MacLean was an old crank...but she thinks people hold it against her. It's lucky this is Saturday. If it was Friday Aunt Chatty wouldn't even consider taking you. You'd think Aunt Kate would be the superstitious one, wouldn't you? Sailors are kind of like that. But it's Aunt Chatty...although her husband was a carpenter. She was very pretty in her day, poor thing."
I assured Mrs. Braddock that Aunt Chatty's feelings would be sacred to me, but she followed us down the walk.
"Kate and Chatty won't explore your belongings when you're out. They're very conscientious. Rebecca Dew may, but she won't tell on you. And I wouldn't go to the front door if I was you. They only use it for something real important. I don't think it's been opened since Amasa's funeral. Try the side door. They keep the key under the flowerpot on the windowsill, so if nobody's home just unlock the door and go in and wait. And whatever you do, don't praise the cat, because Rebecca Dew doesn't like him."
I promised I wouldn't praise the cat and we actually got away. Erelong we found ourselves in Spook's Lane. It is a very short side street, leading out to open country, and far away a blue hill makes a beautiful back-drop for it. On one side there are no houses at all and the land slopes down to the harbor. On the other side there are only three. The first one is just a house...nothing more to be said of it. The next one is a big, imposing, gloomy mansion of stone-trimmed red brick, with a mansard roof warty with dormer-windows, an iron railing around the flat top and so many spruces and firs crowding about it that you can hardly see the house. It must be frightfully dark inside. And the third and last is Windy Poplars right on the corner, with the grass-grown street on the front and a real country road, beautiful with tree shadows, on the other side.
I fell in love with it at once. You know there are houses which impress themselves upon you at first sight for some reason you can hardly define. Windy Poplars is like that. I may describe it to you as a white frame house...very white...with green shutters...very green...with a "tower" in the corner and a dormer-window on either side, a low stone wall dividing it from the street, with aspen poplars growing at intervals along it, and a big garden at the back where flowers and vegetables are delightfully jumbled up together...but all this can't convey its charm to you. In short, it is a house with a delightful personality and has something of the flavor of Green Gables about it.
"This is the spot for me...it's been foreordained," I said rapturously.
Mrs. Lynde looked as if she didn't quite trust foreordination.
"It'll be a long walk to school," she said dubiously.
"I don't mind that. It will be good exercise. Oh, look at that lovely birch and maple grove across the road."
Mrs. Lynde looked but all she said was, "I hope you won't be pestered with mosquitoes."
I hoped so, too. I detest mosquitoes. One mosquito can keep me "awaker" than a bad conscience.
I was glad we didn't have to go in by the front door. It looked so forbidding...a big, double-leaved, grained-wood affair, flanked by panels of red, flowered glass. It doesn't seem to belong to the house at all. The little green side door, which we reached by a darling path of thin, flat sandstones sunk at intervals in the grass, was much more friendly and inviting. The path was edged by very prim, well-ordered beds of ribbon grass and bleeding-heart and tiger lilies and sweet-William and southernwood and bride's bouquet and red-and-white daisies and what Mrs. Lynde calls "pinies." Of course they weren't all in bloom at this season, but you could see they had bloomed at the proper time and done it well. There was a rose plot in a far corner and between Windy Poplars and the gloomy house next a brick wall all overgrown with Virginia creeper, with an arched trellis above a faded green door in the middle of it. A vine ran right across it, so it was plain it hadn't been opened for some time. It was really only half a door, for its top half is merely an open oblong through which we could catch a glimpse of a jungly garden on the other side.
Just as we entered the gate of the garden of Windy Poplars I noticed a little clump of clover right by the path. Some impulse led me to stoop down and look at it. Would you believe it, Gilbert? There, right before my eyes, were three four-leafed clovers! Talk about omens! Even the Pringles can't contend against that. And I felt sure the banker hadn't an earthly chance.
The side door was open so it was evident somebody was at home and we didn't have to look under the flowerpot. We knocked and Rebecca Dew came to the door. We knew it was Rebecca Dew because it couldn't have been anyone else in the whole wide world. And she couldn't have had any other name.
Rebecca Dew is "around forty" and if a tomato had black hair racing away from its forehead, little twinkling black eyes, a tiny nose with a knobby end and a slit of a mouth, it would look exactly like her. Everything about her is a little too short...arms and legs and neck and nose...everything but her smile. It is long enough to reach from ear to ear.
But we didn't see her smile just then. She looked very grim when I asked if I could see Mrs. MacComber.
"You mean Mrs. Captain MacComber?" she said rebukingly, as if there were at least a dozen Mrs. MacCombers in the house.
"Yes," I said meekly. And we were forthwith ushered into the parlor and left there. It was rather a nice little room, a bit cluttered up with antimacassars but with a quiet, friendly atmosphere about it that I liked. Every bit of furniture had its own particular place which it had occupied for years. How that furniture shone! No bought polish ever produced that mirror-like gloss. I knew it was Rebecca Dew's elbow grease. There was a full-rigged ship in a bottle on the mantelpiece which interested Mrs. Lynde greatly. She couldn't imagine how it ever got into the bottle...but she thought it gave the room "a nautical air."
"The widows" came in. I liked them at once. Aunt Kate was tall and thin and gray, and a little austere...Marilla's type exactly; and Aunt Chatty was short and thin and gray, and a little wistful. She may have been very pretty once but nothing is now left of her beauty except her eyes. They are lovely...soft and big and brown.
I explained my errand and the widows looked at each other.
"We must consult Rebecca Dew," said Aunt Chatty.
"Undoubtedly," said Aunt Kate.
Rebecca Dew was accordingly summoned from the kitchen. The cat came in with her...a big fluffy Maltese, with a white breast and a white collar. I should have liked to stroke him, but, remembering Mrs. Braddock's warning, I ignored him.
Rebecca gazed at me without the glimmer of a smile.
"Rebecca," said Aunt Kate, who, I have discovered, does not waste words, "Miss Shirley wishes to board here. I don't think we can take her."
"Why not?" said Rebecca Dew.
"It would be too much trouble for you, I am afraid," said Aunt Chatty.
"I'm well used to trouble," said Rebecca Dew. You can't separate those names, Gilbert. It's impossible...though the widows do it. They call her Rebecca when they speak to her. I don't know how they manage it.
"We are rather old to have young people coming and going," persisted Aunt Chatty.
"Speak for yourself," retorted Rebecca Dew. "I'm only forty-five and I still have the use of my faculties. And I think it would be nice to have a young person sleeping in the house. A girl would be better than a boy any time. He'd be smoking day and night...burn us in our beds. If you must take a boarder, my advice would be to take her. But of course it's your house."
She said and vanished...as Homer was so fond of remarking. I knew the whole thing was settled but Aunt Chatty said I must go up and see if I was suited with my room.
"We will give you the tower room, dear. It's not quite as large as the spare room, but it has a stove-pipe hole for a stove in winter and a much nicer view. You can see the old graveyard from it."
I knew I would love the room...the very name, "tower room," thrilled me. I felt as if we were living in that old song we used to sing in Avonlea School about the maiden who "dwelt in a high tower beside a gray sea." It proved to be the dearest place. We ascended to it by a little flight of corner steps leading up from the stair-landing. It was rather small...but not nearly as small as that dreadful hall bedroom I had my first year at Redmond. It had two windows, a dormer one looking west and a gable one looking north, and in the corner formed by the tower another three-sided window with casements opening outward and shelves underneath for my books. The floor was covered with round, braided rugs, the big bed had a canopy top and a "wild-goose" quilt and looked so perfectly smooth and level that it seemed a shame to spoil it by sleeping in it. And, Gilbert, it is so high that I have to climb into it by a funny little movable set of steps which in daytime are stowed away under it. It seems Captain MacComber bought the whole contraption in some "foreign" place and brought it home.
There was a dear little corner cupboard with shelves trimmed with white scalloped paper and bouquets painted on its door. There was a round blue cushion on the window-seat...a cushion with a button deep in the center, making it look like a fat blue doughnut. And there was a sweet washstand with two shelves...the top one just big enough for a basin and jug of robin's-egg blue and the under one for a soap dish and hot water pitcher. It had a little brass-handled drawer full of towels and on a shelf over it a white china lady sat, with pink shoes and gilt sash and a red china rose in her golden china hair.
The whole place was engoldened by the light that came through the corn-colored curtains and there was the rarest tapestry on the whitewashed walls where the shadow patterns of the aspens outside fell...living tapestry, always changing and quivering. Somehow, it seemed such a happy room. I felt as if I were the richest girl in the world.
"You'll be safe there, that's what," said Mrs. Lynde, as we went away.
"I expect I'll find some things a bit cramping after the freedom of Patty's Place," I said, just to tease her.
"Freedom!" Mrs. Lynde sniffed. "Freedom! Don't talk like a Yankee, Anne."
I came up today, bag and baggage. Of course I hated to leave Green Gables. No matter how often and long I'm away from it, the minute a vacation comes I'm part of it again as if I had never been away, and my heart is torn over leaving it. But I know I'll like it here. And it likes me. I always know whether a house likes me or not.
The views from my windows are lovely...even the old graveyard, which is surrounded by a row of dark fir trees and reached by a winding, dyke-bordered lane. From my west window I can see all over the harbor to distant, misty shores, with the dear little sail-boats I love and the ships outward bound "for ports unknown"...fascinating phrase! Such "scope for imagination" in it! From the north window I can see into the grove of birch and maple across the road. You know I've always been a tree worshiper. When we studied Tennyson in our English course at Redmond I was always sorrowfully at one with poor Enone, mourning her ravished pines.
Beyond the grove and the graveyard is a lovable valley with the glossy red ribbon of a road winding through it and white houses dotted along it. Some valleys are lovable...you can't tell why. Just to look at them gives you pleasure. And beyond it again is my blue hill. I'm naming it Storm King...the ruling passion, etc.
I can be so alone up here when I want to be. You know it's lovely to be alone once in a while. The winds will be my friends. They'll wail and sigh and croon around my tower...the white winds of winter...the green winds of spring...the blue winds of summer...the crimson winds of autumn...and the wild winds of all seasons..."stormy wind fulfilling his word." How I've always thrilled to that Bible verse...as if each and every wind had a message for me. I've always envied the boy who flew with the north wind in that lovely old story of George MacDonald's. Some night, Gilbert, I'll open my tower casement and just step into the arms of the wind...and Rebecca Dew will never know why my bed wasn't slept in that night.
I hope when we find our "house of dreams," dearest, that there will be winds around it. I wonder where it is...that unknown house. Shall I love it best by moonlight or dawn? That home of the future where we will have love and friendship and work...and a few funny adventures to bring laughter in our old age. Old age! Can we ever be old, Gilbert? It seems impossible.
From the left window in the tower I can see the roofs of the town...this place where I am to live for at least a year. People are living in those houses who will be my friends, though I don't know them yet. And perhaps my enemies. For the ilk of Pye are found everywhere, under all kinds of names, and I understand the Pringles are to be reckoned with. School begins tomorrow. I shall have to teach geometry! Surely that can't be any worse than learning it. I pray heaven there are no mathematical geniuses among the Pringles.
I've been here only for half a day, but I feel as if I had known the widows and Rebecca Dew all my life. They've asked me to call them "aunt" already and I've asked them to call me Anne. I called Rebecca Dew "Miss Dew"...once.
"Miss What?" quoth she.
"Dew," I said meekly. "Isn't that your name?"
"Well, yes, it is, but I ain't been called Miss Dew for so long it gave me quite a turn. You'd better not do it any more, Miss Shirley, me not being used to it."
"I'll remember, Rebecca...Dew," I said, trying my hardest to leave off the Dew but not succeeding.
Mrs. Braddock was quite right in saying Aunt Chatty was sensitive. I discovered that at suppertime. Aunt Kate had said something about "Chatty's sixty-sixth birthday." Happening to glance at Aunt Chatty I saw that she had...no, not burst into tears. That is entirely too explosive a term for her performance. She just overflowed. The tears welled up in her big brown eyes and brimmed over, effortlessly and silently.
"What's the matter now, Chatty?" asked Aunt Kate rather dourly.
"It...it was only my sixty-fifth birthday," said Aunt Chatty.
"I beg your pardon, Charlotte," said Aunt Kate...and all was sunshine again.
The cat is a lovely big Tommy-cat with golden eyes, an elegant coat of dusty Maltese and irreproachable linen. Aunts Kate and Chatty call him Dusty Miller, because that is his name, and Rebecca Dew calls him That Cat because she resents him and resents the fact that she has to give him a square inch of liver every morning and evening, clean his hairs off the parlor arm-chair seat with an old toothbrush whenever he has sneaked in and hunt him up if he is out late at night.
"Rebecca Dew has always hated cats," Aunt Chatty tells me, "and she hates Dusty especially. Old Mrs. Campbell's dog...she kept a dog then...brought him here two years ago in his mouth. I suppose he thought it was no use to take him to Mrs. Campbell. Such a poor miserable little kitten, all wet and cold, with its poor little bones almost sticking through its skin. A heart of stone couldn't have refused it shelter. So Kate and I adopted it, but Rebecca Dew has never really forgiven us. We were not diplomatic that time. We should have refused to take it in. I don't know if you've noticed..." Aunt Chatty looked cautiously around at the door between the dining-room and kitchen..."how we manage Rebecca Dew."
I had noticed it...and it was beautiful to behold. Summerside and Rebecca Dew may think she rules the roost but the widows know differently.
"We didn't want to take the banker...a young man would have been so unsettling and we would have had to worry so much if he didn't go to church regularly. But we pretended we did and Rebecca Dew simply wouldn't hear of it. I'm so glad we have you, dear. I feel sure you'll be a very nice person to cook for. I hope you'll like us all. Rebecca Dew has some very fine qualities. She was not so tidy when she came fifteen years ago as she is now. Once Kate had to write her name...‘Rebecca Dew'...right across the parlor mirror to show the dust. But she never had to do it again. Rebecca Dew can take a hint. I hope you'll find your room comfortable, dear. You may have the window open at night. Kate does not approve of night air but she knows boarders must have privileges. She and I sleep together and we have arranged it so that one night the window is shut for her and the next it is open for me. One can always work out little problems like that, don't you think? Where there is a will there is always a way. Don't be alarmed if you hear Rebecca prowling a good deal in the night. She is always hearing noises and getting up to investigate them. I think that is why she didn't want the banker. She was afraid she might run into him in her nightgown. I hope you won't mind Kate not talking much. It's just her way. And she must have so many things to talk of...she was all over the world with Amasa MacComber in her young days. I wish I had the subjects for conversation she has, but I've never been off P. E. Island. I've often wondered why things should be arranged so...me loving to talk and with nothing to talk about and Kate with everything and hating to talk. But I suppose Providence knows best."
Although Aunt Chatty is a talker all right, she didn't say all this without a break. I interjected remarks at suitable intervals, but they were of no importance.
They keep a cow which is pastured at Mr. James Hamilton's up the road and Rebecca Dew goes there to milk her. There is any amount of cream and every morning and evening I understand Rebecca Dew passes a glass of new milk through the opening in the wall gate to Mrs. Campbell's "Woman." It is for "little Elizabeth," who must have it under doctor's orders. Who the Woman is, or who little Elizabeth is, I have yet to discover. Mrs. Campbell is the inhabitant and owner of the fortress next door...which is called The Evergreens.
I don't expect to sleep tonight...I never do sleep my first night in a strange bed and this is the very strangest bed I've ever seen. But I won't mind. I've always loved the night and I'll like lying awake and thinking over everything in life, past, present and to come. Especially to come.
This is a merciless letter, Gilbert. I won't inflict such a long one on you again. But I wanted to tell you everything, so that you could picture my new surroundings for yourself. It has come to an end now, for far up the harbor the moon is "sinking into shadow-land." I must write a letter to Marilla yet. It will reach Green Gables the day after tomorrow and Davy will bring it home from the post-office, and he and Dora will crowd around Marilla while she opens it and Mrs. Lynde will have both ears open... Ow...w...w! That has made me homesick. Good-night, dearest, from one who is now and ever will be,
Fondestly yours,
Anne Shirley
Anne is now a teacher, argues with her old school rival, Gilbert, leaves Avonlea, and returns to marry Gilbert.
Release Date: May 19 - Jun 9, 1987
Release Time: 228 minutes
Director: Kevin Sullivan
Cast:
Megan Follows as Anne Shirley
Colleen Dewhurst as Marilla Cuthbert
Jonathan Crombie as Gilbert Blythe
Richard Farnsworth as Matthew Cuthbert
Schuyler Grant as Diana Barry
Patricia Hamilton as Rachel Lynde
Marilyn Lightstone as Miss Stacey
Wendy Hiller as Mrs. Margaret Harris
Frank Converse as Morgan Harris
Kate Lynch as Pauline Harris
Genevieve Appleton as Emmeline Harris
Rosemary Dunsmore as Katherine Brooke
Susannah Hoffman as Jen Pringle
Nuala Fitzgerald as Mrs. Tom Pringle
Molly MacNeil as Myra Pringle
Fiona McGillivray as Hattie Pringle
London Juno as Jimsie Pringle
Bruce McCulloch as Fred Wright
Sheila Harcourt as Christine Stuart
Kathryn Trainor as Essie
Rosemary Radcliffe as Mrs. Barry
Charmion King as Aunt Josephine Barry
Robert Collins as Mr. Barry
Kay Hawtrey as Mabel Sloane
Jacqueline Blais as Mrs. Harrison
Anna Ferguson as Mrs. Boulter
Trish Nettleton as Jane Andrews
Jennifer Inch as Ruby Gillis
Brigit Wilson as Tillie Boulter
Miranda de Pencier as Josie Pye (uncredited)
Ian Heath as Anthony Pye
Mag Ruffman as Alice Lawson
Dave Foley as Lewis Allen
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Lucy Maud Montgomery was a Canadian author, best known for a series of novels beginning with Anne of Green Gables, published in 1908.
Montgomery was born at Clifton, Prince Edward Island, Nov. 30, 1874. She came to live at Leaskdale, north of Uxbridge Ontario, after her wedding with Rev. Ewen Macdonald on July 11, 1911. She had three children and wrote close to a dozen books while she was living in the Leaskdale Manse before the family moved to Norval, Ontario in 1926. She died in Toronto April 24, 1942 and was buried at Cavendish, Prince Edward Island.
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