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Title: Anne of Windy Poplars
Author: L. M. Montgomery (1874-1942)
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Language:   English
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Title:      Anne of Windy Poplars
Author:     L. M. Montgomery (1874-1942)


Please note: References to omitted pages are part of the text.
Italics used for emphasis have been converted to uppercase lettering,
except for the word I which is shown as _I_.





THE FIRST YEAR


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 every one 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 flower-pot on the window-sill, 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 flower-pot.  We knocked and
Rebecca Dew came to the door.  We knew it was Rebecca Dew because
it couldn't have been any one 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 supper-time.  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
tooth-brush 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."



2


(Extracts from various letters from the same to the same.)


"September 26th.

"Do you know where I go to read your letters?  Across the road into
the grove.  There is a little dell there where the sun dapples the
ferns.  A brook meanders through it; there is a twisted mossy tree-
trunk on which I sit, and the most delightful row of young sister
birches.  After this, when I have a dream of a certain kind . . . a
golden-green, crimson-veined dream . . . a very dream of dreams . . .
I shall please my fancy with the belief that it came from my secret
dell of birches and was born of some mystic union between the
slenderest, airiest of the sisters and the crooning brook.  I love
to sit there and listen to the silence of the grove.  Have you ever
noticed how many different silences there are, Gilbert?  The silence
of the woods . . . of the shore . . . of the meadows . . . of the
night . . . of the summer afternoon.  All different because all the
undertones that thread them are different.  I'm sure if I were
totally blind and insensitive to heat and cold I could easily tell
just where I was by the quality of the silence about me.

"School has been 'keeping' for two weeks now and I've got things
pretty well organized.  But Mrs. Braddock was right . . . the
Pringles are my problem.  And as yet I don't see exactly how I'm
going to solve it in spite of my lucky clovers.  As Mrs. Braddock
says, they are as smooth as cream . . . and as slippery.

"The Pringles are a kind of clan who keeps tabs on each other and
fight a good bit among themselves but stand shoulder to shoulder in
regard to any outsider.  I have come to the conclusion that there
are just two kinds of people in Summerside . . . those who are
Pringles and those who aren't.

"My room is full of Pringles and a good many students who bear
another name have Pringle blood in them.  The ring-leader of them
seems to be Jen Pringle, a green-eyed bantling who looks as BECKY
SHARP must have looked at fourteen.  I believe she is deliberately
organizing a subtle campaign of insubordination and disrespect,
with which I am going to find it hard to cope.  She has a knack of
making irresistibly comic faces and when I hear a smothered ripple
of laughter running over the room behind my back I know perfectly
well what has caused it, but so far I haven't been able to catch
her out in it.  She has brains, too . . . the little wretch! . . .
can write compositions that are fourth cousins to literature and is
quite brilliant in mathematics . . . woe is me!  There is a certain
SPARKLE in everything she says or does and she has a sense of
humorous situations which would be a bond of kinship between us if
she hadn't started out by hating me.  As it is, I fear it will be a
long time before Jen and I can laugh TOGETHER over anything.

"Myra Pringle, Jen's cousin, is the beauty of the school . . . and
apparently stupid.  She does perpetrate some amusing howlers . . .
as, for instance, when she said today in history class that the
Indians thought Champlain and his men were gods or 'something
inhuman.'

"Socially the Pringles are what Rebecca Dew calls 'the e-light' of
Summerside.  Already I have been invited to two Pringle homes for
supper . . . because it is the proper thing to invite a new teacher
to supper and the Pringles are not going to omit the required
gestures.  Last night I was at James Pringle's . . . the father of
the aforesaid Jen.  He looks like a college professor but is in
reality stupid and ignorant.  He talked a great deal about
'disCIPline,' tapping the tablecloth with a finger the nail of
which was not impeccable and occasionally doing dreadful things to
grammar.  The Summerside High had always required a firm hand . . .
an experienced teacher, male preferred.  He was afraid I was a
LEETLE too young . . . 'a fault which time will cure all too soon,'
he said sorrowfully.  I didn't say anything because if I had said
anything I might have said too much.  So I was as smooth and creamy
as any Pringle of them all could have been and contented myself
with looking limpidly at him and saying inside of myself, 'You
cantankerous, prejudiced old creature!'

"Jen must have got her brains from her mother . . . whom I found
myself liking.  Jen, in her parents' presence, was a model of
decorum.  But though her words were polite her tone was insolent.
Every time she said 'Miss Shirley' she contrived to make it sound
like an insult.  And every time she looked at my hair I felt that
it was just plain carroty red.  No Pringle, I am certain, would
ever admit it was auburn.

"I liked the Morton Pringles much better . . . though Morton
Pringle never really listens to anything you say.  He says
something to you and then, while you're replying, he is busy
thinking out his next remark.

"Mrs. Stephen Pringle . . . the Widow Pringle . . . Summerside
abounds in widows . . . wrote me a letter yesterday . . . a nice,
polite, poisonous letter.  Millie has too much home work . . .
Millie is a delicate child and must not be overworked.  Mr. Bell
NEVER gave her home work.  She is a sensitive child that must be
UNDERSTOOD.  Mr. Bell understood her so well!  Mrs. Stephen is sure
I will, too, if I try!

"I do not doubt Mrs. Stephen thinks I made Adam Pringle's nose
bleed in class today by reason of which he had to go home.  And I
woke up last night and couldn't go to sleep again because I
remembered an 'i' I hadn't dotted in a question I wrote on the
board.  I'm certain Jen Pringle would notice it and a whisper will
go around the clan about it.

"Rebecca Dew says that all the Pringles will invite me to supper,
except the old ladies at Maplehurst, and then ignore me forever
afterwards.  As they are the 'e-light,' this may mean that socially
I may be banned in Summerside.  Well, we'll see.  The battle is on
but is not yet either won or lost.  Still, I feel rather unhappy
over it all.  You can't reason with prejudice.  I'm still just as I
used to be in my childhood . . . I can't bear to have people not
liking me.  It isn't pleasant to think that the families of half my
pupils hate me.  And for no fault of my own.  It is the INJUSTICE
that stings me.  There go more italics!  But a few italics really
do relieve your feelings.

"Apart from the Pringles I like my pupils very much.  There are
some clever, ambitious, hard-working ones who are really interested
in getting an education.  Lewis Allen is paying for his board by
doing HOUSEWORK at his boarding-house and isn't a bit ashamed of
it.  And Sophy Sinclair rides bareback on her father's old gray
mare six miles in and six miles out every day.  There's pluck for
you!  If I can help a girl like that, am I to mind the Pringles?

"The trouble is . . . if I can't win the Pringles I won't have much
chance of helping anybody.

"But I love Windy Poplars.  It isn't a boardinghouse . . . it's a
home!  And they like me . . . even Dusty Miller likes me, though he
sometimes disapproves of me and shows it by deliberately sitting
with his back turned towards me, occasionally cocking a golden eye
over his shoulder at me to see how I'm taking it.  I don't pet him
much when Rebecca Dew is around because it really does irritate
her.  By day he is a homely, comfortable, meditative animal . . .
but he is decidedly a weird creature at night.  Rebecca says it is
because he is never allowed to stay out after dark.  She hates to
stand in the back yard and call him.  She says the neighbors will
all be laughing at her.  She calls in such fierce, stentorian tones
that she really can be heard all over the town on a still night
shouting for 'Puss . . . PUSS . . . PUSS!'  The widows would have
a conniption if Dusty Miller wasn't in when they went to bed.
'Nobody knows what I've gone through on account of That Cat. . .
NOBODY,' Rebecca has assured me.

"The widows are going to wear well.  Every day I like them better.
Aunt Kate doesn't believe in reading novels, but informs me that
she does not propose to censor my reading-matter.  Aunt Chatty
loves novels.  She has a 'hidy-hole' where she keeps them . . . she
smuggles them in from the town library . . . together with a pack
of cards for solitaire and anything else she doesn't want Aunt Kate
to see.  It is in a chair seat which nobody but Aunt Chatty knows
is more than a chair seat.  She has shared the secret with me,
because, I strongly suspect, she wants me to aid and abet her in
the aforesaid smuggling.  There shouldn't really be any need for
hidy-holes at Windy Poplars, for I never saw a house with so many
mysterious cupboards.  Though to be sure, Rebecca Dew won't let
them BE mysterious.  She is always cleaning them out ferociously.
'A house can't keep itself clean,' she says sorrowfully when either
of the widows protests.  I am sure she would make short work of a
novel or a pack of cards if she found them.  They are both a horror
to her orthodox soul.  Rebecca Dew says cards are the devil's books
and novels even worse.  The only things Rebecca ever reads, apart
from her Bible, are the society columns of the Montreal Guardian.
She loves to pore over the houses and furniture and doings of
millionaires.

"'Just fancy soaking in a golden bathtub, Miss Shirley,' she said
wistfully.

"But she's really an old duck.  She has produced from somewhere a
comfortable old wing chair of faded brocade that just fits my kinks
and says, 'This is YOUR chair.  We'll keep it for YOU.'  And she
won't let Dusty Miller sleep on it lest I get hairs on my school
skirt and give the Pringles something to talk about.

"The whole three are very much interested in my circlet of pearls
. . . and what it signifies.  Aunt Kate showed me her engagement
ring (she can't wear it because it has grown too small) set with
turquoises.  But poor Aunt Chatty owned to me with tears in her eyes
that she had never had an engagement ring . . . her husband thought
it 'an unnecessary expenditure.'  She was in my room at the time,
giving her face a bath in buttermilk.  She does it every night to
preserve her complexion, and has sworn me to secrecy because she
doesn't want Aunt Kate to know it.

"'She would think it ridiculous vanity in a woman of my age.  And I
am sure Rebecca Dew thinks that no Christian woman should try to be
beautiful.  I used to slip down to the kitchen to do it after Kate
had gone to sleep but I was always afraid of Rebecca Dew coming
down.  She has ears like a cat's even when she is asleep.  If I
could just slip in here every night and do it . . . oh, thank you,
my dear.'

"I have found out a little about our neighbors at The Evergreens.
Mrs. Campbell (who was a Pringle!) is eighty.  I haven't seen her
but from what I can gather she is a very grim old lady.  She has a
maid, Martha Monkman, almost as ancient and grim as herself, who is
generally referred to as 'Mrs. Campbell's Woman.'  And she has her
great-granddaughter, little Elizabeth Grayson, living with her.
Elizabeth . . . on whom I have never laid eyes in spite of my two
weeks' sojourn . . . is eight years old and goes to the public
school by 'the back way' . . . a short cut through the back yards
. . . so I never encounter her, going or coming.  Her mother, who
is dead, was a granddaughter of Mrs. Campbell, who brought her up
also . . . HER parents being dead.  She married a certain Pierce
Grayson, a 'Yankee,' as Mrs. Rachel Lynde would say.  She died when
Elizabeth was born and as Pierce Grayson had to leave America at
once to take charge of a branch of his firm's business in Paris, the
baby was sent home to old Mrs. Campbell.  The story goes that he
'couldn't bear the sight of her' because she had cost her mother's
life, and has never taken any notice of her.  This of course may be
sheer gossip because neither Mrs. Campbell nor the Woman ever opens
her lips about him.

"Rebecca Dew says they are far too strict with little Elizabeth and
she hasn't much of a time of it with them.

"'She isn't like other children . . . far too old for eight years.
The things that she says sometimes!  "Rebecca," she sez to me one
day, "suppose just as you were ready to get into bed you felt your
ankle NIPPED?"  No wonder she's afraid to go to bed in the dark.
And they make her do it.  Mrs. Campbell says there are to be no
cowards in HER house.  They watch her like two cats watching a
mouse, and boss her within an inch of her life.  If she makes a
speck of noise they nearly pass out.  It's "hush, hush" all the
time.  I tell you that child is being hush-hushed to death.  And
what is to be done about it?'

"What, indeed?

"I feel that I'd like to see her.  She seems to me a bit pathetic.
Aunt Kate says she is well looked after from a physical point of
view . . . what Aunt Kate really said was, 'They feed and dress her
well' . . . but a child can't live by bread alone.  I can never
forget what my own life was before I came to Green Gables.

"I'm going home next Friday evening to spend two beautiful days in
Avonlea.  The only drawback will be that everybody I see will ask
me how I like teaching in Summerside.

"But think of Green Gables now, Gilbert . . . the Lake of Shining
Waters with a blue mist on it . . . the maples across the brook
beginning to turn scarlet . . . the ferns golden brown in the
Haunted Wood . . . and the sunset shadows in Lover's Lane, darling
spot.  I find it in my heart to wish I were there now with . . .
with . . . guess whom?

"Do you know, Gilbert, there are times when I strongly suspect that
I love you!"



"Windy Poplars,
"Spook's Lane,
"S'side,
"October 10th.

"HONORED AND RESPECTED SIR:--

 "That is how a love letter of Aunt Chatty's grandmother began.
Isn't it delicious?  What a thrill of superiority it must have
given the grandfather!  Wouldn't you really prefer it to 'Gilbert
darling, etc.'?  But, on the whole, I think I'm glad you're not the
grandfather . . . or A grandfather.  It's wonderful to think we're
young and have our whole lives before us . . . TOGETHER . . . isn't
it?"


(Several pages omitted.  Anne's pen being evidently neither sharp,
stub nor rusty.)


"I'm sitting on the window seat in the tower looking out into the
trees waving against an amber sky and beyond them to the harbor.
Last night I had such a lovely walk with myself.  I really had to
go somewhere for it was just a trifle dismal at Windy Poplars.
Aunt Chatty was crying in the sitting-room because her feelings had
been hurt and Aunt Kate was crying in her bedroom because it was
the anniversary of Captain Amasa's death and Rebecca Dew was crying
in the kitchen for no reason that I could discover.  I've never
seen Rebecca Dew cry before.  But when I tried tactfully to find
out what was wrong she pettishly wanted to know if a body couldn't
enjoy a cry when she felt like it.  So I folded my tent and stole
away, leaving her to her enjoyment.

"I went out and down the harbor road.  There was such a nice
frosty, Octobery smell in the air, blent with the delightful odor
of newly plowed fields.  I walked on and on until twilight had
deepened into a moonlit autumn night.  I was alone but not lonely.
I held a series of imaginary conversations with imaginary comrades
and thought out so many epigrams that I was agreeably surprised at
myself.  I couldn't help enjoying myself in spite of my Pringle
worries.

"The spirit moves me to utter a few yowls regarding the Pringles.
I hate to admit it but things are not going any too well in
Summerside High.  There is no doubt that a cabal has been organized
against me.

"For one thing, home work is never done by any of the Pringles or
half Pringles.  And there is no use in appealing to the parents.
They are suave, polite, evasive.  I know all the pupils who are
not Pringles like me but the Pringle virus of disobedience is
undermining the morale of the whole room.  One morning I found my
desk turned inside out and upside down.  Nobody knew who did it, of
course.  And no one could or would tell who left on it another day
the box out of which popped an artificial snake when I opened it.
But every Pringle in the school screamed with laughter over my
face.  I suppose I did look wildly startled.

"Jen Pringle comes late for school half the time, always with some
perfectly water-tight excuse, delivered politely, with an insolent
tilt to her mouth.  She passes notes in class under my very nose.
I found a peeled onion in the pocket of my coat when I put it on
today.  I should love to lock that girl up on bread and water until
she learned how to behave herself.

"The worst thing to date was the caricature of myself I found on
the blackboard one morning . . . done in white chalk with SCARLET
hair.  Everybody denied doing it, Jen among the rest, but I knew
Jen was the only pupil in the room who could draw like that.  It
WAS done well.  My nose . . . which, as you know, has always been
my one pride and joy . . . was humpbacked and my mouth was the
mouth of a vinegary spinster who had been teaching a school full of
Pringles for thirty years.  But it was ME.  I woke up at three
o'clock that night and writhed over the recollection.  Isn't it
queer that the things we writhe over at night are seldom wicked
things?  Just humiliating ones.

"All sorts of things are being said.  I am accused of 'marking
down' Hattie Pringle's examination papers just because she is a
Pringle.  I am said to 'laugh when the children make mistakes.'
(Well, I DID laugh when Fred Pringle defined a centurion as 'a man
who had lived a hundred years.'  I couldn't help it.)

"James Pringle is saying, 'There is no disCIPline in the school
. . . no disCIPline whatever.'  And a report is being circulated
that I am a 'foundling.'

"I am beginning to encounter the Pringle antagonism in other
quarters.  Socially as well as educationally, Summerside seems to
be under the Pringle thumb.  No wonder they are called the Royal
Family.  I wasn't invited to Alice Pringle's walking party last
Friday.  And when Mrs. Frank Pringle got up a tea in aid of a
church project (Rebecca Dew informs me that the ladies are going to
'build' the new spire!), I was the only girl in the Presbyterian
church who was not asked to take a table.  I have heard that the
minister's wife, who is a newcomer in Summerside, suggested asking
me to sing in the choir and was informed that all the Pringles
would drop out of it if she did.  That would leave such a skeleton
that the choir simply couldn't carry on.

"Of course I'm not the only one of the teachers who has trouble
with pupils.  When the other teachers send theirs up to me to be
'disciplined' . . . how I hate that word! . . . half of them are
Pringles.  But there is never any complaint made about THEM.

"Two evenings ago I kept Jen in after school to do some work she
had deliberately left undone.  Ten minutes later the carriage from
Maplehurst drew up before the school house and Miss Ellen was at
the door . . . a beautifully dressed, sweetly smiling old lady,
with elegant black lace mitts and a fine hawk-like nose, looking as
if she had just stepped out of an 1840 band-box.  She was so sorry
but could she have Jen?  She was going to visit friends in Lowvale
and had promised to take Jen.  Jen went off triumphantly and I
realized afresh the forces arrayed against me.

"In my pessimistic moods I think the Pringles are a compound of
Sloanes and Pyes.  But I know they're not.  I feel that I could
like them if they were not my enemies.  They are, for the most
part, a frank, jolly, loyal set.  I could even like Miss Ellen.
I've never seen Miss Sarah.  Miss Sarah has not left Maplehurst
for ten years.

"'Too delicate . . . or thinks she is,' says Rebecca Dew with a
sniff.  'But there ain't anything the matter with her pride.  All
the Pringles are proud but those two old girls pass everything.
You should hear them talk about their ancestors.  Well, their old
father, Captain Abraham Pringle, WAS a fine old fellow.  His
brother Myrom wasn't quite so fine, but you don't hear the Pringles
talking much about HIM.  But I'm desprit afraid you're going to
have a hard time with them all.  When they make up their mind about
anything or anybody they've never been known to change it.  But
keep your chin up, Miss Shirley . . . keep your chin up.'

"'I wish I could get Miss Ellen's recipe for pound cake,' sighed
Aunt Chatty.  'She's promised it to me time and again but it never
comes.  It's an old English family recipe.  They're SO exclusive
about their recipes.'

"In wild fantastic dreams I see myself compelling Miss Ellen to
hand that recipe over to Aunt Chatty on bended knee and make Jen
mind her p's and q's.  The maddening thing is that I could easily
make Jen do it myself if her whole clan weren't backing her up in
her deviltry."

(Two pages omitted.)

"Your obedient servant,

"ANNE SHIRLEY.

"P.S.  That was how Aunt Chatty's grandmother signed her love
letters."



"October 15th.

"We heard today that there had been a burglary at the other end of
the town last night.  A house was entered and some money and a
dozen silver spoons stolen.  So Rebecca Dew has gone up to Mr.
Hamilton's to see if she can borrow a dog.  She will tie him on the
back veranda and she advises me to lock up my engagement ring!

"By the way, I found out why Rebecca Dew cried.  It seems there had
been a domestic convulsion.  Dusty Miller had 'misbehaved again'
and Rebecca Dew told Aunt Kate she would really have to do
something about That Cat.  He was wearing her to a fiddle-string.
It was the third time in a year and she knew he did it on purpose.
And Aunt Kate said that if Rebecca Dew would always let the cat out
when he meowed there would be no danger of his misbehaving.

"'Well, this IS the last straw,' said Rebecca Dew.

"Consequently, tears!

"The Pringle situation grows a little more acute every week.
Something very impertinent was written across one of my books
yesterday and Homer Pringle turned handsprings all the way down
the aisle when leaving school.  Also, I got an anonymous letter
recently full of nasty innuendoes.  Somehow, I don't blame Jen for
either the book or the letter.  Imp as she is, there are things she
wouldn't stoop to.  Rebecca Dew is furious and I shudder to think
what she would do to the Pringles if she had them in her power.
Nero's wish isn't to be compared to it.  I really don't blame her,
for there are times when I feel myself that I could cheerfully hand
any and all of the Pringles a poisoned philter of Borgia brewing.

"I don't think I've told you much about the other teachers.  There
are two, you know . . . the Vice-principal, Katherine Brooke of the
Junior Room, and George MacKay of the Prep.  Of George I have
little to say.  He is a shy, good-natured lad of twenty, with a
slight, delicious Highland accent suggestive of low shielings and
misty islands . . . his grandfather 'was Isle of Skye' . . . and
does very well with the Preps.  So far as I know him I like him.
But I'm afraid I'm going to have a hard time liking Katherine
Brooke.

"Katherine is a girl of, I think, about twenty-eight, though she
looks thirty-five.  I have been told she cherished hopes of
promotion to the Principalship and I suppose she resents my getting
it, especially when I am considerably her junior.  She is a good
teacher . . . a bit of a martinet . . . but she is not popular with
any one.  And doesn't worry over it!  She doesn't seem to have any
friends or relations and boards in a gloomy-looking house on grubby
little Temple Street.  She dresses very dowdily, never goes out
socially and is said to be 'mean.'  She is very sarcastic and her
pupils dread her biting remarks.  I am told that her way of raising
her thick black eyebrows and drawling at them reduces them to a
pulp.  I wish I could work it on the Pringles.  But I really
shouldn't like to govern by fear as she does.  I want my pupils to
love me.

"In spite of the fact that she has apparently no trouble in making
them toe the line she is constantly sending some of them up to me
. . . especially Pringles.  I know she does it purposely and I feel
miserably certain that she exults in my difficulties and would be
glad to see me worsted.

"Rebecca Dew says that no one can make friends with her.  The
widows have invited her several times to Sunday supper . . . the
dear souls are always doing that for lonely people, and always have
the most delicious chicken salad for them . . . but she never came.
So they have given it up because, as Aunt Kate says, 'there are
limits.'

"There are rumors that she is very clever and can sing and recite
. . . 'elocute,' a la Rebecca Dew . . . but will not do either.
Aunt Chatty once asked her to recite at a church supper.

"'We thought she refused very ungraciously,' said Aunt Kate.

"'Just growled,' said Rebecca Dew.

"Katherine has a deep throaty voice . . . almost a man's voice . . .
and it does sound like a growl when she isn't in good humor.

"She isn't pretty but she might make more of herself.  She is dark
and swarthy, with magnificent black hair always dragged back from
her high forehead and coiled in a clumsy knot at the base of her
neck.  Her eyes don't match her hair, being a clear, light amber
under her black brows.  She has ears she needn't be ashamed to show
and the most beautiful hands I've ever seen.  Also, she has a well-
cut mouth.  But she dresses terribly.  Seems to have a positive
genius for getting the colors and lines she should not wear.  Dull
dark greens and drab grays, when she is too sallow for greens and
grays, and stripes which make her tall, lean figure even taller and
leaner.  And her clothes always look as if she'd slept in them.

"Her manner is very repellent . . . as Rebecca Dew would say, she
always has a chip on her shoulder.  Every time I pass her on the
stairs I feel that she is thinking horrid things about me.  Every
time I speak to her she makes me feel I've said the wrong thing.
And yet I'm very sorry for her . . . though I know she would resent
my pity furiously.  And I can't do anything to help her because she
doesn't want to be helped.  She is really hateful to me.  One day,
when we three teachers were all in the staff room, I did something
which, it seems, transgressed one of the unwritten laws of the
school, and Katherine said cuttingly, 'Perhaps you think YOU are
above rules, Miss Shirley.'  At another time, when I was suggesting
some changes which I thought would be for the good of the school,
she said with a scornful smile, 'I'm not interested in fairy
tales.'  Once, when I said some nice things about her work and
methods, she said, 'And what is to be the pill in all this jam?'

"But the thing that annoyed me most . . . well, one day when I
happened to pick up a book of hers in the staff room and glanced at
the flyleaf I said,

"'I'm glad you spell your name with a K.  Katherine is so much more
alluring than Catherine, just as K is ever so much gypsier a letter
than smug C.'

"She made no response, but the next note she sent up was signed
'Catherine Brooke'!

"I sneezed all the way home.

"I really would give up trying to be friends with her if I hadn't
a queer, unaccountable feeling that under all her bruskness and
aloofness she is actually starved for companionship.

"Altogether, what with Katherine's antagonism and the Pringle
attitude, I don't know just what I'd do if it wasn't for dear
Rebecca Dew and your letters . . . and little Elizabeth.

"Because I've got acquainted with little Elizabeth.  And she is a
darling.

"Three nights ago I took the glass of milk to the wall door and
little Elizabeth herself was there to get it instead of the Woman,
her head just coming above the solid part of the door, so that her
face was framed in the ivy.  She is small, pale, golden and
wistful.  Her eyes, looking at me through the autumn twilight, are
large and golden-hazel.  Her silver-gold hair was parted in the
middle, sleeked plainly down over her head with a circular comb,
and fell in waves on her shoulders.  She wore a pale blue gingham
dress and the expression of a princess of elf-land.  She had what
Rebecca Dew calls 'a delicate air,' and gave me the impression of a
child who was more or less undernourished . . . not in body, but in
soul.  More of a moonbeam than a sunbeam.

"'And this is Elizabeth?' I said.

"'Not tonight,' she answered gravely.  'This is my night for being
Betty because I love everything in the world tonight.  I was
Elizabeth last night and tomorrow night I'll prob'ly be Beth.
It all depends on how I feel.'

"There was the touch of the kindred spirit for you.  I thrilled to
it at once.

"'How very nice to have a name you can change so easily and still
feel it's your own.'

"Little Elizabeth nodded.

"'I can make so many names out of it.  Elsie and Betty and Bess and
Elisa and Lisbeth and Beth . . . but not Lizzie.  I never can feel
like Lizzie.'

"'Who could?' I said.

"'Do you think it silly of me, Miss Shirley?  Grandmother and the
Woman do.'

"'Not silly at all . . . very wise and very delightful,' I said.

"Little Elizabeth made saucer eyes at me over the rim of her glass.
I felt that I was being weighed in some secret spiritual balance
and presently I realized thankfully that I had not been found
wanting.  For little Elizabeth asked a favor of me . . . and little
Elizabeth does not ask favors of people she does not like.

"'Would you mind lifting up the cat and letting me pat him?' she
asked shyly.

"Dusty Miller was rubbing against my legs.  I lifted him and little
Elizabeth put out a tiny hand and stroked his head delightedly.

"'I like kittens better than babies,' she said, looking at me with
an odd little air of defiance, as if she knew I would be shocked
but tell the truth she must.

"'I suppose you've never had much to do with babies, so you don't
know how sweet they are,' I said, smiling.  'Have you a kitten of
your own?'

"Elizabeth shook her head.

"'Oh, no; Grandmother doesn't like cats.  And the Woman hates them.
The Woman is out tonight, so that is why I could come for the milk.
I love coming for the milk because Rebecca Dew is such an agree'ble
person.'

"'Are you sorry she didn't come tonight?' I laughed.

"Little Elizabeth shook her head.

"'No.  You are very agree'ble, too.  I've been wanting to get
'quainted with you but I was afraid it mightn't happen before
Tomorrow comes.'

"We stood there and talked while Elizabeth sipped her milk daintily
and she told me all about Tomorrow.  The Woman had told her that
Tomorrow never comes, but Elizabeth knows better.  It WILL come
sometime.  Some beautiful morning she will just wake up and find it
is Tomorrow.  Not Today but Tomorrow.  And then things will happen
. . . wonderful things.  She may even have a day to do exactly as
she likes in, with nobody watching her . . . though I think
Elizabeth feels THAT is too good to happen even in Tomorrow.  Or
she may find out what is at the end of the harbor road . . . that
wandering, twisting road like a nice red snake, that leads, so
Elizabeth thinks, to the end of the world.  Perhaps the Island of
Happiness is there.  Elizabeth feels sure there is an Island of
Happiness somewhere where all the ships that never come back are
anchored, and she will find it when Tomorrow comes.

"'And when Tomorrow comes,' said Elizabeth, 'I will have a million
dogs and forty-five cats.  I told Grandmother that when she
wouldn't let me have a kitten, Miss Shirley, and she was angry
and said, "I'm not 'customed to be spoken to like that, Miss
Impert'nence."  I was sent to bed without supper . . . but I didn't
mean to be impert'nent.  And I couldn't sleep, Miss Shirley,
because the Woman told me that she knew a child once that died in
her sleep after being impert'nent.'

"When Elizabeth had finished her milk there came a sharp tapping at
some unseen window behind the spruces.  I think we had been watched
all the time.  My elf-maiden ran, her golden head glimmering along
the dark spruce aisle until she vanished.

"'She's a fanciful little creature,' said Rebecca Dew when I told
her of my adventure . . . really, it somehow had the quality of an
adventure, Gilbert.  'One day she said to me, "Are you scared of
lions, Rebecca Dew?"  "I never met any so I can't tell you," sez I.
"There will be any amount of lions in Tomorrow," sez she, "but they
will be nice friendly lions."  "Child, you'll turn into eyes if you
look like that," sez I.  She was looking clean through me at
something she saw in that Tomorrow of hers.  "I'm thinking deep
thoughts, Rebecca Dew," she sez.  The trouble with that child is
she doesn't laugh enough.'

"I remembered Elizabeth had never laughed once during our talk.  I
feel that she hasn't learned how.  The great house is so still and
lonely and laughterless.  It looks dull and gloomy even now when
the world is a riot of autumn color.  Little Elizabeth is doing too
much listening to lost whispers.

"I think one of my missions in Summerside will be to teach her how
to laugh.

"Your tenderest, most faithful friend,

"ANNE SHIRLEY.

"P.S.  More of Aunt Chatty's grandmother!"



3


"Windy Poplars,
"Spook's Lane,
"S'side,
"October 25th.

"GILBERT DEAR:--

"What do you think?  I've been to supper at Maplehurst!

"Miss Ellen herself wrote the invitation.  Rebecca Dew was really
excited . . . she had never believed they would take any notice of
me.  And she was quite sure it was not out of friendliness.

"'They have some sinister motive, that I'm certain of!' she
exclaimed.

"I really had some such feeling in my own mind.

"'Be sure you put on your best,' ordered Rebecca Dew.

"So I put on my pretty cream challis dress with the purple violets
in it and did my hair the new way with the dip in the forehead.
It's very becoming.

"The ladies of Maplehurst are positively delightful in their own
way, Gilbert.  I could love them if they'd let me.  Maplehurst is a
proud, exclusive house which draws its trees around it and won't
associate with common houses.  It has a big, white, wooden woman
off the bow of old Captain Abraham's famous ship, the Go and Ask
Her, in the orchard and billows of southernwood about the front
steps, which was brought out from the old country over a hundred
years ago by the first emigrating Pringle.  They have another
ancestor who fought at the battle of Minden and his sword is
hanging on the parlor wall beside Captain Abraham's portrait.
Captain Abraham was their father and they are evidently
tremendously proud of him.

"They have stately mirrors over the old, black, fluted mantels, a
glass case with wax flowers in it, pictures full of the beauty of
the ships of long ago, a hair-wreath containing the hair of every
known Pringle, big conch shells and a quilt on the spare-room bed
quilted in infinitesimal fans.

"We sat in the parlor on mahogany Sheraton chairs.  It was hung
with silver-stripe wallpaper.  Heavy brocade curtains at the
windows.  Marble-topped tables, one bearing a beautiful model of
a ship with crimson hull and snow-white sails--the Go and Ask Her.
An enormous chandelier, all glass and dingle-dangles, suspended
from the ceiling.  A round mirror with a clock in the center . . .
something Captain Abraham had brought home from 'foreign parts.'
It was wonderful.  I'd like something like it in our house of
dreams.

"The very shadows were eloquent and traditional.  Miss Ellen showed
me millions . . . more or less . . . of Pringle photographs, many
of them daguerreotypes in leather cases.  A big tortoise-shell cat
came in, jumped on my knee and was at once whisked out to the
kitchen by Miss Ellen.  She apologized to me.  But I expect she had
previously apologized to the cat in the kitchen.

"Miss Ellen did most of the talking.  Miss Sarah, a tiny thing in a
black silk dress and starched petticoat, with snow-white hair and
eyes as black as her dress, thin, veined hands folded on her lap
amid fine lace ruffles, sad, lovely, gentle, looked almost too
fragile to talk.  And yet I got the impression, Gilbert, that every
Pringle of the clan, including Miss Ellen herself, danced to her
piping.

"We had a delicious supper.  The water was cold, the linen
beautiful, the dishes and glassware thin.  We were waited on by a
maid, quite as aloof and aristocratic as themselves.  But Miss
Sarah pretended to be a little deaf whenever I spoke to her and I
thought every mouthful would choke me.  All my courage oozed out of
me.  I felt just like a poor fly caught on fly-paper.  Gilbert, I
can never, never conquer or win the Royal Family.  I can see myself
resigning at New Year's.  I haven't a chance against a clan like
that.

"And yet I couldn't help feeling a little sorry for the old ladies
as I looked around their house.  It had once LIVED . . . people had
been born there . . . died there . . . exulted there . . . known
sleep, despair, fear, joy, love, hope, hate.  And now it has
nothing but the memories by which they live . . . and their pride
in them.

"Aunt Chatty is much upset because when she unfolded clean sheets
for my bed today she found a diamond-shaped crease in the center.
She is sure it foretells a death in the household.  Aunt Kate is
very much disgusted with such superstition.  But I believe I rather
like superstitious people.  They lend color to life.  Wouldn't it
be a rather drab world if everybody was wise and sensible . . . and
GOOD?  What would we find to talk about?

"We had a catastrophe here two nights ago.  Dusty Miller stayed out
all night, in spite of Rebecca Dew's stentorian shouts of 'Puss' in
the back yard.  And when he turned up in the morning . . . oh, such
a looking cat!  One eye was closed completely and there was a lump
as big as an egg on his jaw.  His fur was stiff with mud and one
paw was bitten through.  But what a triumphant, unrepentant look he
had in his one good eye!  The widows were horrified but Rebecca Dew
said exultantly, 'That Cat has never had a good fight in his life
before.  And I'll bet the other cat looks far worse than he does!'

"A fog is creeping up the harbor tonight, blotting out the red road
that little Elizabeth wants to explore.  Weeds and leaves are
burning in all the town gardens and the combination of smoke and
fog is making Spook's Lane an eerie, fascinating, enchanted place.
It is growing late and my bed says, 'I have sleep for you.'  I've
grown used to climbing a flight of steps into bed . . . and
climbing down them.  Oh, Gilbert, I've never told any one this, but
it's too funny to keep any longer.  The first morning I woke up in
Windy Poplars I forgot all about the steps and made a blithe
morning-spring out of bed.  I came down like a thousand of brick,
as Rebecca Dew would say.  Luckily I didn't break any bones, but I
was black and blue for a week.

"Little Elizabeth and I are very good friends by now.  She comes
every evening for her milk because the Woman is laid up with what
Rebecca Dew calls 'brownkites.'  I always find her at the wall
gate, waiting for me, her big eyes full of twilight.  We talk with
the gate, which has never been opened for years, between us.
Elizabeth sips the glass of milk as slowly as possible in order to
spin our conversation out.  Always, when the last drop is drained,
comes the tap-tap on the window.

"I have found that one of the things that is going to happen in
Tomorrow is that she will get a letter from her father.  She had
never got one.  I wonder what the man can be thinking of.

"'You know, he couldn't bear the sight of me, Miss Shirley,' she
told me, 'but he mightn't mind writing to me.'

"'Who told you he couldn't bear the sight of you?' I asked
indignantly.

"'The Woman.'  (Always when Elizabeth says 'the Woman,' I can see
her like a great big forbidding 'W,' all angles and corners.)  'And
it must be true or he would come to see me sometimes.'

"She was Beth that night . . . it is only when she is Beth that she
will talk of her father.  When she is Betty she makes faces at her
grandmother and the Woman behind their backs; but when she turns
into Elsie she is sorry for it and thinks she ought to confess, but
is scared to.  Very rarely she is Elizabeth and then she has the
face of one who listens to fairy music and knows what roses and
clovers talk about.  She's the quaintest thing, Gilbert . . . as
sensitive as one of the leaves of the windy poplars, and I love
her.  It infuriates me to know that those two terrible old women
make her go to bed in the dark.

"'The Woman said I was big enough to sleep without a light.  But I
feel so small, Miss Shirley, because the night is so big and awful.
And there is a stuffed crow in my room and I am afraid of it.  The
Woman told me it would pick my eyes out if I cried.  Of course,
Miss Shirley, I don't believe that, but still I'm scared.  Things
WHISPER so to each other at night.  But in Tomorrow I'll never be
scared of anything . . . not even of being kidnaped!'

"'But there is no danger of your being kidnaped, Elizabeth.'

"'The Woman said there was if I went anywhere alone or talked to
strange persons.  But you're not a strange person, are you, Miss
Shirley?'

"'No, darling.  We've always known each other in Tomorrow,' I
said."



4


"Windy Poplars,
"Spook's Lane,
"S'side,
"November 10th.

"DEAREST:

"It used to be that the person I hated most in the world was the
person who spoiled my pen-nib.  But I can't hate Rebecca Dew in
spite of her habit of using my pen to copy recipes when I'm in
school.  She's been doing it again and as a result you won't get a
long or a loving letter this time.  (Belovedest.)

"The last cricket song has been sung.  The evenings are so chilly
now that I have a small chubby, oblong wood-stove in my room.
Rebecca Dew put it up . . . I forgive her the pen for it.  There's
nothing that woman can't do; and she always has a fire lighted for
me in it when I come home from school.  It is the tiniest of stoves
. . . I could pick it up in my hands.  It looks just like a pert
little black dog on its four bandy iron legs.  But when you fill it
with hardwood sticks it blooms rosy red and throws a wonderful heat
and you can't think how cozy it is.  I'm sitting before it now,
with my feet on its tiny hearth, scribbling to you on my knee.

"Every one else in S'side . . . more or less . . . is at the Hardy
Pringles' dance.  _I_ was not invited.  And Rebecca Dew is so cross
about it that I'd hate to be Dusty Miller.  But when I think of
Hardy's daughter Myra, beautiful and brainless, trying to prove in
an examination paper that the ANGELS at the base of an isosceles
triangle are equal, I forgive the entire Pringle clan.  And last
week she included 'gallows tree' quite seriously in a list of
trees!  But, to be just, all the howlers don't originate with the
Pringles.  Blake Fenton defined an alligator recently as 'a large
kind of insect.'  Such are the high lights of a teacher's life!

"It feels like snow tonight.  I like an evening when it feels like
snow.  The wind is blowing 'in turret and tree' and making my cozy
room seem even cozier.  The last golden leaf will be blown from the
aspens tonight.

"I think I've been invited to supper everywhere by now . . . I mean
to the homes of all my pupils, both in town and country.  And oh,
Gilbert darling, I am SO sick of pumpkin preserves!  Never, never
let us have pumpkin preserves in our house of dreams.

"Almost everywhere I've gone for the last month I've had P. P. for
supper.  The first time I had it I loved it . . . it was so golden
that I felt I was eating preserved sunshine . . . and I incautiously
raved about it.  It got bruited about that I was very fond of P. P.
and people had it on purpose for me.  Last night I was going to Mr.
Hamilton's and Rebecca Dew assured me that I wouldn't have to eat
P. P. there because none of the Hamiltons liked it.  But when we sat
down to supper, there on the sideboard was the inevitable cut-glass
bowl full of P. P.

"'I hadn't any punkin preserves of my own,' said Mrs. Hamilton,
ladling me out a generous dishful, 'but I heard you was terrible
partial to it, so when I was to my cousin's in Lowvale last Sunday
I sez to her, "I'm having Miss Shirley to supper this week and
she's terrible partial to punkin preserves.  I wish you'd lend me a
jar for her."  So she did and here it is and you can take home
what's left.'

"You should have seen Rebecca Dew's face when I arrived home from
the Hamiltons' bearing a glass jar two-thirds full of P. P.!
Nobody likes it here so we buried it darkly at dead of night in the
garden.

"'You won't put this in a story, will you?' she asked anxiously.
Ever since Rebecca Dew discovered that I do an occasional bit of
fiction for the magazines she has lived in the fear . . . or hope,
I don't know which . . . that I'll put everything that happens at
Windy Poplars into a story.  She wants me to 'write up the Pringles
and blister them.'  But alas, it's the Pringles that are doing the
blistering and between them and my work in school I have scant time
for writing fiction.

"There are only withered leaves and frosted stems in the garden
now.  Rebecca Dew has done the standard roses up in straw and
potato bags, and in the twilight they look exactly like a group
of humped-back old men leaning on staffs.

"I got a post-card from Davy today with ten kisses crossed on it
and a letter from Priscilla written on some paper that 'a friend
of hers in Japan' sent her . . . silky thin paper with dim cherry
blossoms on it like ghosts.  I'm beginning to have my suspicions
about that friend of hers.  But your big fat letter was the purple
gift the day gave me.  I read it four times over to get every bit
of its savor . . . like a dog polishing off a plate!  THAT
certainly isn't a romantic simile, but it's the one that just
popped into my head.  Still, letters, even the nicest, aren't
SATISFACTORY.  I want to see YOU.  I'm glad it's only five weeks
to Christmas holidays."



5


Anne, sitting at her tower window one late November evening, with
her pen at her lip and dreams in her eyes, looked out on a twilight
world and suddenly thought she would like a walk to the old
graveyard.  She had never visited it yet, preferring the birch and
maple grove or the harbor road for her evening rambles.  But there
is always a November space after the leaves have fallen when she
felt it was almost indecent to intrude on the woods . . . for their
glory terrestrial had departed and their glory celestial of spirit
and purity and whiteness had not yet come upon them.  So Anne
betook herself to the graveyard instead.  She was feeling for the
time so dispirited and hopeless that she thought a graveyard would
be a comparatively cheerful place.  Besides, it was full of
Pringles, so Rebecca Dew said.  They had buried there for
generations, keeping it up in preference to the new graveyard until
"no more of them could be squeezed in."  Anne felt that it would be
positively encouraging to see how many Pringles were where they
couldn't annoy anybody any more.

In regard to the Pringles Anne felt that she was at the end of her
tether.  More and more the whole situation was coming to seem like
a nightmare.  The subtle campaign of insubordination and disrespect
which Jen Pringle had organized had at last come to a head.  One
day, a week previously, she had asked the Seniors to write a
composition on "The Most Important Happenings of the Week."  Jen
Pringle had written a brilliant one . . . the little imp WAS clever
. . . and had inserted in it a sly insult to her teacher . . . one
so pointed that it was impossible to ignore it.  Anne had sent her
home, telling her that she would have to apologize before she would
be allowed to come back.  The fat was fairly in the fire.  It was
open warfare now between her and the Pringles.  And poor Anne had
no doubt on whose banner victory would perch.  The school board
would back the Pringles up and she would be given her choice
between letting Jen come back or being asked to resign.

She felt very bitter.  She had done her best and she knew she could
have succeeded if she had had even a fighting chance.

"It's not my fault," she thought miserably.  "Who COULD succeed
against such a phalanx and such tactics?"

But to go home to Green Gables defeated!  To endure Mrs. Lynde's
indignation and the Pyes' exultation!  Even the sympathy of friends
would be an anguish.  And with her Summerside failure bruited
abroad she would never be able to get another school.

But at least they had not got the better of her in the matter of
the play.  Anne laughed a little wickedly and her eyes filled with
mischievous delight over the memory.

She had organized a High School Dramatic Club and directed it in a
little play hurriedly gotten up to provide some funds for one of
her pet schemes . . . buying some good engravings for the rooms.
She had made herself ask Katherine Brooke to help her because
Katherine always seemed so left out of everything.  She could not
help regretting it many times, for Katherine was even more brusk
and sarcastic than usual.  She seldom let a practice pass without
some corrosive remark and she overworked her eyebrows.  Worse
still, it was Katherine who had insisted on having Jen Pringle take
the part of Mary Queen of Scots.

"There's no one else in the school who can play it," she said
impatiently.  "No one who has the necessary personality."

Anne was not so sure of this.  She rather thought that Sophy
Sinclair, who was tall and had hazel eyes and rich chestnut hair,
would make a far better Queen Mary than Jen.  But Sophy was not
even a member of the club and had never taken part in a play.

"We don't want absolute greenhorns in this.  I'm not going to be
associated with anything that is not successful," Katherine had
said disagreeably, and Anne had yielded.  She could not deny that
Jen was very good in the part.  She had a natural flair for acting
and she apparently threw herself into it wholeheartedly.  They
practiced four evenings a week and on the surface things went along
very smoothly.  Jen seemed to be so interested in her part that she
behaved herself as far as the play was concerned.  Anne did not
meddle with her but left her to Katherine's coaching.  Once or
twice, though, she surprised a certain look of sly triumph on Jen's
face that puzzled her.  She could not guess just what it meant.

One afternoon, soon after the practices had begun, Anne found Sophy
Sinclair in tears in a corner of the girls' coatroom.  At first she
had blinked her hazel eyes vigorously and denied it . . . then
broke down.

"I did so want to be in the play . . . to be Queen Mary," she
sobbed.  "I've never had a chance . . . father wouldn't let me join
the club because there are dues to pay and every cent counts so
much.  And of course I haven't had any experience.  I've always
loved Queen Mary . . . her very name just thrills me to my finger
tips.  I don't believe . . . I never will believe she had anything
to do with murdering Darnley.  It would have been wonderful to
fancy I was she for a little while!"

Afterwards Anne concluded that it was her guardian angel who
prompted her reply.

"I'll write the part out for you, Sophy, and coach you in it.  It
will be good training for you.  And, as we plan to give the play in
other places if it goes well here, it will be just as well to have
an understudy in case Jen shouldn't always be able to go.  But
we'll say nothing about it to any one."

Sophy had the part memorized by the next day.  She went home to
Windy Poplars with Anne every afternoon when school came out and
rehearsed it in the tower.  They had a lot of fun together, for
Sophy was full of quiet vivacity.  The play was to be put on the
last Friday in November in the town hall; it was widely advertised
and the reserved seats were sold to the last one.  Anne and
Katherine spent two evenings decorating the hall, the band was
hired, and a noted soprano was coming up from Charlottetown to sing
between the acts.  The dress rehearsal was a success.  Jen was
really excellent and the whole cast played up to her.  Friday
morning Jen was not in school; and in the afternoon her mother sent
word that Jen was ill with a very sore throat . . . they were
afraid it was tonsillitis.  Everybody concerned was very sorry, but
it was out of the question that she should take part in the play
that night.

Katherine and Anne stared at each other, drawn together for once in
their common dismay.

"We'll have to put it off," said Katherine slowly.  "And that means
failure.  Once we're into December there's so much going on.  Well,
I always thought it was foolish to try to get up a play this time
of the year."

"We are not going to postpone it," said Anne, her eyes as green as
Jen's own.  She was not going to say it to Katherine Brooke, but
she knew as well as she had ever known anything in her life that
Jen Pringle was in no more danger of tonsillitis than she was.  It
was a deliberate device, whether any of the other Pringles were a
party to it or not, to ruin the play because she, Anne Shirley, had
sponsored it.

"Oh, if you feel that way about it!" said Katherine with a nasty
shrug.  "But what do you intend to do?  Get some one to read the
part?  That would ruin it . . . Mary is the whole play."

"Sophy Sinclair can play the part as well as Jen.  The costume will
fit her and, thanks be, you made it and have it, not Jen."

The play was put on that night before a packed audience.  A
delighted Sophy played Mary . . . WAS Mary, as Jen Pringle could
never have been . . . LOOKED Mary in her velvet robes and ruff and
jewels.  Students of Summerside High, who had never seen Sophy in
anything but her plain, dowdy, dark serge dresses, shapeless coat
and shabby hats, stared at her in amazement.  It was insisted on
the spot that she become a permanent member of the Dramatic Club--
Anne herself paid the membership fee--and from then on she was one
of the pupils who "counted" in Summerside High.  But nobody knew or
dreamed, Sophy herself least of all, that she had taken the first
step that night on a pathway that was to lead to the stars.  Twenty
years later Sophy Sinclair was to be one of the leading actresses
in America.  But probably no plaudits ever sounded so sweet in her
ears as the wild applause amid which the curtain fell that night in
Summerside town hall.

Mrs. James Pringle took a tale home to her daughter Jen which would
have turned that damsel's eyes green if they had not been already
so.  For once, as Rebecca Dew said feelingly, Jen had got her come-
uppance.  And the eventual result was the insult in the composition
on Important Happenings.

Anne went down to the old graveyard along a deep-rutted lane
between high, mossy stone dykes, tasseled with frosted ferns.
Slim, pointed lombardies, from which November winds had not yet
stripped all the leaves, grew along it at intervals, coming out
darkly against the amethyst of the far hills; but the old
graveyard, with half its tombstones leaning at a drunken slant, was
surrounded by a four-square row of tall, somber fir trees.  Anne
had not expected to find any one there and was a little taken aback
when she met Miss Valentine Courtaloe, with her long delicate nose,
her thin delicate mouth, her sloping delicate shoulders and her
general air of invincible lady-likeness, just inside the gate.  She
knew Miss Valentine, of course, as did everyone in Summerside.  She
was "the" local dressmaker and what she didn't know about people,
living or dead, was not worth taking into account.  Anne had wanted
to wander about by herself, read the odd old epitaphs and puzzle
out the names of forgotten lovers under the lichens that were
growing over them.  But she could not escape when Miss Valentine
slipped an arm through hers and proceeded to do the honors of the
graveyard, where there were evidently as many Courtaloes buried as
Pringles.  Miss Valentine had not a drop of Pringle blood in her
and one of Anne's favorite pupils was her nephew.  So it was no
great mental strain to be nice to her, except that one must be very
careful never to hint that she "sewed for a living."  Miss
Valentine was said to be very sensitive on that point.

"I'm glad I happened to be here this evening," said Miss Valentine.
"I can tell you all about everybody buried here.  I always say you
have to know the ins and outs of the corpses to find a graveyard
real enjoyable.  I like a walk here better than in the new.  It's
only the OLD families that are buried here but every Tom, Dick and
Harry is being buried in the new.  The Courtaloes are buried in
this corner.  My, we've had a terrible lot of funerals in our
family."

"I suppose every old family has," said Anne, because Miss Valentine
evidently expected her to say something.

"Don't tell me ANY family has ever had as many as ours," said Miss
Valentine jealously.  "We're VERY consumptive.  Most of us died of
a cough.  This is my Aunt Bessie's grave.  She was a saint if ever
there was one.  But there's no doubt her sister, Aunt Cecilia, was
the more interesting to talk to.  The last time I ever saw her she
said to me, 'Sit down, my dear, sit down.  I'm going to die tonight
at ten minutes past eleven but that's no reason why we shouldn't
have a real good gossip for the last.'  The strange thing, Miss
Shirley, is that she did die that night at ten minutes past eleven.
Can you tell me how she knew it?"

Anne couldn't.

"My Great-great-grandfather Courtaloe is buried HERE.  He came out
in 1760 and he made spinning-wheels for a living.  I've heard he
made fourteen hundred in the course of his life.  When he died the
minister preached from the text, 'Their works do follow them,' and
old Myrom Pringle said in that case the road to heaven behind my
great-great-grandfather would be choked with spinning-wheels.  Do
you think such a remark was in good taste, Miss Shirley?"

Had any one but a Pringle said it, Anne might not have remarked so
decidedly, "I certainly do not," looking at a gravestone adorned
with a skull and cross-bones as if she questioned the good taste of
that also.

"My cousin Dora is buried HERE.  She had three husbands but they
all died very rapidly.  Poor Dora didn't seem to have any luck
picking a healthy man.  Her last one was Benjamin Banning . . . NOT
buried here . . . buried in Lowvale beside HIS first wife . . . and
he wasn't reconciled to dying.  Dora told him he was going to a
better world.  'Mebbe, mebbe,' says poor Ben, 'but I'm sorter used
to the imperfections of this one.'  He took sixty-one different
kinds of medicine but in spite of that he lingered for a good
while.  All Uncle David Courtaloe's family are HERE.  There's a
cabbage rose planted at the foot of every grave and, my, don't they
bloom!  I come here every summer and gather them for my rose-jar.
It would be a pity to let them go to waste, don't you think?"

"I . . . I suppose so."

"My poor young sister Harriet lies HERE," sighed Miss Valentine.
"She had magnificent hair . . . about the color of yours . . . not
so red perhaps.  It reached to her knees.  She was engaged when she
died.  They tell me you're engaged.  I never much wanted to be
married but I think it would have been nice to be engaged.  Oh,
I've had some chances of course . . . perhaps I was too fastidious
. . . but a Courtaloe couldn't marry EVERYBODY, could she?"

It did not seem likely she could.

"Frank Digby . . . over in that corner under the sumacs . . .
wanted me.  I DID feel a little regretful over refusing him . . .
but a Digby, my dear!  He married Georgina Troop.  She always went
to church a little late to show off her clothes.  My, she was fond
of clothes.  She was buried in such a pretty blue dress . . . I
made it for her to wear to a wedding but in the end she wore it to
her own funeral.  She had three darling little children.  They used
to sit in front of me at church and I always gave them candy.  Do
you think it wrong to give children candy in church, Miss Shirley?
Not peppermints . . . that would be all right . . . there's
something RELIGIOUS about peppermints, don't you think?  But the
poor things don't like them."

When the Courtaloe's plots were exhausted Miss Valentine's
reminiscences became a bit spicier.  It did not make so much
difference if you weren't a Courtaloe.

"Old Mrs. Russell Pringle is here.  I often wonder if she's in
heaven or not."

"But why?" gasped a rather shocked Anne.

"Well, she always hated her sister, Mary Ann, who had died a few
months before.  'If Mary Ann is in heaven I won't stay there,' says
she.  And she was a woman who always kept her word, my dear . . .
Pringle-like.  She was born a Pringle and married her cousin
Russell.  This is Mrs. Dan Pringle . . . Janetta Bird.  Seventy to
a day when she died.  Folks say she would have thought it wrong to
die a day older than three-score and ten because that is the Bible
limit.  People do say such funny things, don't they?  I've heard
that dying was the only thing she ever dared do without asking her
husband.  Do you know, my dear, what he did once when she bought a
hat he didn't like?"

"I can't imagine."

"He ET it," said Miss Valentine solemnly.  "Of course it was only a
small hat . . . lace and flowers . . . no feathers.  Still, it must
have been rather indigestible.  I understand he had gnawing pains
in his stomach for quite a time.  Of course I didn't SEE him eat
it, but I've always been assured the story was true.  Do you
suppose it was?"

"I'd believe anything of a Pringle," said Anne bitterly.

Miss Valentine pressed her arm sympathetically.

"I feel for you . . . indeed I do.  It's terrible the way they're
treating you.  But Summerside isn't ALL Pringle, Miss Shirley."

"Sometimes I think it is," said Anne with a rueful smile.

"No, it isn't.  And there are plenty of people would like to see
you get the better of them.  Don't you give in to them no matter
what they do.  It's just the old Satan that's got into them.  But
they hang together so and Miss Sarah did want that cousin of theirs
to get the school.

"The Nathan Pringles are HERE.  Nathan always believed his wife was
trying to poison him but he didn't seem to mind.  He said it made
life kind of exciting.  Once he kind of suspected she'd put arsenic
in his porridge.  He went out and fed it to a pig.  The pig died
three weeks afterwards.  But he said maybe it was only a coincidence
and anyway he couldn't be sure it was the same pig.  In the end she
died before him and he said she'd always been a real good wife to
him except for that one thing.  I think it would be charitable to
believe that he was mistaken about IT."

"'Sacred to the memory of MISS KINSEY,'" read Anne in amazement.
"What an extraordinary inscription!  Had she no other name?"

"If she had, nobody ever knew it," said Miss Valentine.  "She came
from Nova Scotia and worked for the George Pringles for forty
years.  She gave her name as Miss Kinsey and everybody called her
that.  She died suddenly and then it was discovered that nobody
knew her first name and she had no relations that anybody could
find.  So they put that on her stone . . . the George Pringles
buried her very nicely and paid for the monument.  She was a
faithful, hard-working creature but if you'd ever seen her you'd
have thought she was BORN Miss Kinsey.  The James Morleys are HERE.
I was at their golden wedding.  Such a to-do . . . gifts and
speeches and flowers . . . and their children all home and them
smiling and bowing and just hating each other as hard as they
could."

"Hating each other?"

"Bitterly, my dear.  Every one knew it.  They had for years and
years . . . almost all their married life in fact.  They quarreled
on the way home from church after the wedding.  I often wonder how
they manage to lie here so peaceably side by side."

Again Anne shivered.  How terrible . . . sitting opposite each
other at table . . . lying down beside each other at night . . .
going to church with their babies to be christened . . . and hating
each other through it all!  Yet they must have loved to begin with.
Was it possible she and Gilbert could ever . . . nonsense!  The
Pringles were getting on her nerves.

"Handsome John MacTabb is buried here.  He was always suspected of
being the reason why Annetta Kennedy drowned herself.  The MacTabbs
were all handsome but you could never believe a word they said.
There used to be a stone here for his Uncle Samuel, who was
reported drowned at sea fifty years ago.  When he turned up alive
the family took the stone down.  The man they bought it from
wouldn't take it back so Mrs. Samuel used it for a baking-board.
Talk about a marble slab for mixing on!  That old tombstone was
just fine, she said.  The MacTabb children were always bringing
cookies to school with raised letters and figures on them . . .
scraps of the epitaph.  They gave them away real generous, but I
never could bring myself to eat one.  I'm peculiar that way.  Mr.
Harley Pringle is HERE.  He had to wheel Peter MacTabb down Main
Street once, in a wheelbarrow, wearing a bonnet, for an election
bet.  All Summerside turned out to see it . . . except the
Pringles, of course.  THEY nearly died of shame.  Milly Pringle is
HERE.  I was very fond of Milly, even if she was a Pringle.  She
was so pretty and as light-footed as a fairy.  Sometimes I think,
my dear, on nights like this she must slip out of her grave and
dance like she used to do.  But I suppose a Christian shouldn't be
harboring such thoughts.  This is Herb Pringle's grave.  He was one
of the jolly Pringles.  He always made you laugh.  He laughed right
out in church once . . . when the mouse dropped out of the flowers
on Meta Pringle's hat when she bowed in prayer.  _I_ didn't feel
much like laughing.  I didn't know where the mouse had gone.  I
pulled my skirts tight about my ankles and held them there till
church was out, but it spoiled the sermon for me.  Herb sat behind
me and such a shout as he gave.  People who couldn't see the mouse
thought he'd gone crazy.  It seemed to me that laugh of his
COULDN'T die.  If HE was alive he'd stand up for you, Sarah or no
Sarah.  THIS, of course, is Captain Abraham Pringle's monument."

It dominated the whole graveyard.  Four receding platforms of stone
formed a square pedestal on which rose a huge pillar of marble
topped with a ridiculous draped urn beneath which a fat cherub was
blowing a horn.

"How ugly!" said Anne candidly.

"Oh, do you think so?"  Miss Valentine seemed rather shocked.  "It
was thought very handsome when it was erected.  That is supposed to
be Gabriel blowing his trumpet.  I think it gives quite a touch of
elegance to the graveyard.  It cost nine hundred dollars.  Captain
Abraham was a very fine old man.  It is a great pity he is dead.
If he was living they wouldn't be persecuting you the way they are.
I don't wonder Sarah and Ellen are proud of him, though I think
they carry it a bit too far."

At the graveyard gate Anne turned and looked back.  A strange,
peaceful hush lay over the windless land.  Long fingers of
moonlight were beginning to pierce the darkling firs, touching a
gravestone here and there, and making strange shadows among them.
But the graveyard wasn't a sad place after all.  Really, the people
in it seemed alive after Miss Valentine's tales.

"I've heard you write," said Miss Valentine anxiously, as they went
down the lane.  "You won't put the things I've told you in your
stories, will you?"

"You may be sure I won't," promised Anne.

"Do you think it is really wrong . . . or dangerous . . . to speak
ill of the dead?" whispered Miss Valentine a bit anxiously.

"I don't suppose it's exactly either," said Anne.  "Only . . .
rather unfair . . . like hitting those who can't defend themselves.
But you didn't say anything very dreadful of anybody, Miss
Courtaloe."

"I told you Nathan Pringle thought his wife was trying to poison
him . . ."

"But you give her the benefit of the doubt . . ." and Miss
Valentine went her way reassured.



6


"I wended my way to the graveyard this evening," wrote Anne to
Gilbert after she got home.  "I think 'wend your way' is a lovely
phrase and I work it in whenever I can.  It sounds funny to say I
enjoyed my stroll in the graveyard but I really did.  Miss
Courtaloe's stories were so funny.  Comedy and tragedy are so mixed
up in life, Gilbert.  The only thing that haunts me is that tale of
the two who lived together fifty years and hated each other all
that time.  I can't believe they really did.  Somebody has said
that 'hate is only love that has missed its way.'  I feel sure that
under the hatred they really loved each other . . . just as I
really loved you all those years I thought I hated you . . . and I
think death would show it to them.  I'm glad _I_ found out in life.
And I have found out there ARE some decent Pringles . . . dead
ones.

"Last night when I went down late for a drink of water I found Aunt
Kate buttermilking her face in the pantry.  She asked me not to
tell Chatty . . . she would think it so silly.  I promised I
wouldn't.

"Elizabeth still comes for the milk, though the Woman is pretty
well over her bronchitis.  I wonder they let her, especially since
old Mrs. Campbell is a Pringle.  Last Saturday night Elizabeth . . .
she was Betty that night I think . . . ran in singing when she
left me and I distinctly heard the Woman say to her at the porch
door, 'It's too near the Sabbath for you to be singing THAT song.'
I am sure that Woman would prevent Elizabeth from singing on any
day if she could!

"Elizabeth had on a new dress that night, a dark wine color . . .
they DO dress her nicely . . . and she said wistfully, 'I thought I
looked a little bit pretty when I put it on tonight, Miss Shirley,
and I wished father could see me.  Of course he will see me in
Tomorrow . . . but it sometimes seems so slow in coming.  I wish we
could hurry time a bit, Miss Shirley.'

"Now, dearest, I must work out some geometrical exercises.
Geometry exercises have taken the place of what Rebecca calls my
'literary efforts.'  The specter that haunts my daily path now is
the dread of an exercise popping up in class that I can't do.  And
what would the Pringles say then, oh, then . . . oh, what would the
Pringles say then!

"Meanwhile, as you love me and the cat tribe, pray for a poor
broken-hearted, ill-used Thomas cat.  A mouse ran over Rebecca
Dew's foot in the pantry the other day and she has fumed ever
since.  'That Cat does nothing but eat and sleep and let mice
overrun everything.  This IS the last straw.'  So she chivies him
from pillar to post, routs him off his favorite cushion and . . . I
know, for I caught her at it . . . assists him none too gently with
her foot when she lets him out."



7


One Friday evening, at the end of a mild, sunny December day Anne
went out to Lowvale to attend a turkey supper.  Wilfred Bryce's
home was in Lowvale, where he lived with an uncle, and he had asked
her shyly if she would go out with him after school, go to the
turkey supper in the church and spend Saturday at his home.  Anne
agreed, hoping that she might be able to influence the uncle to let
Wilfred keep on going to High School.  Wilfred was afraid that he
would not be able to go back after New Year.  He was a clever,
ambitious boy and Anne felt a special interest in him.

It could not be said that she enjoyed her visit overmuch, except in
the pleasure it gave Wilfred.  His uncle and aunt were a rather odd
and uncouth pair.  Saturday morning was windy and dark, with
showers of snow, and at first Anne wondered how she was going to
put in the day.  She felt tired and sleepy after the late hours of
the turkey supper; Wilfred had to help thrash; and there was not
even a book in sight.  Then she thought of the battered old
seaman's chest she had seen in the back of the hall upstairs and
recalled Mrs. Stanton's request.  Mrs. Stanton was writing a
history of Prince County and had asked Anne if she knew of, or
could find, any old diaries or documents that might be helpful.

"The Pringles, of course, have lots that I could use," she told
Anne.  "But I can't ask THEM.  You know the Pringles and Stantons
have never been friends."

"_I_ can't ask them either, unfortunately," said Anne.

"Oh, I'm not expecting you to.  All I want is for you to keep your
eyes open when you are visiting round in other people's homes and
if you find or hear of any old diaries or maps or anything like
that, try to get the loan of them for me.  You've no idea what
interesting things I've found in old diaries . . . little bits of
real life that make the old pioneers live again.  I want to get
things like that for my book as well as statistics and genealogical
tables."

Anne asked Mrs. Bryce if they had any such old records.  Mrs. Bryce
shook her head.

"Not as I knows on.  In course . . ." brightening up . . . "there's
old Uncle Andy's chist up there.  There might be something in it.
He used to sail with old Captain Abraham Pringle.  I'll go out and
ask Duncan if ye kin root in it."

Duncan sent word back that she could "root" in it all she liked and
if she found any "dockymints" she could have them.  He'd been
meaning to burn the hull contents anyway and take the chest for a
tool-box.  Anne accordingly rooted, but all she found was an old
yellowed diary or "log" which Andy Bryce seemed to have kept all
through his years at sea.  Anne beguiled the stormy forenoon away
by reading it with interest and amusement.  Andy was learned in sea
lore and had gone on many voyages with Captain Abraham Pringle,
whom he evidently admired immensely.  The diary was full of ill-
spelled, ungrammatical tributes to the Captain's courage and
resourcefulness, especially in one wild enterprise of beating round
the Horn.  But his admiration had not, it seemed, extended to
Abraham's brother Myrom, who was also a captain but of a different
ship.

"Up to Myrom Pringle's tonight.  His wife made him mad and he up
and throwed a glass of water in her face."

"Myrom is home.  His ship was burned and they took to the boats.
Nearly starved.  In the end they et up Jonas Selkirk, who had shot
himself.  They lived on him till the Mary G. picked them up.
Myrom told me this himself.  Seemed to think it a good joke."

Anne shivered over this last entry, which seemed all the more
horrifying for Andy's unimpassioned statement of the grim facts.
Then she fell into a reverie.  There was nothing in the book that
could be of any use to Mrs. Stanton, but wouldn't Miss Sarah and
Miss Ellen be interested in it since it contained so much about
their adored old father?  Suppose she sent it to them?  Duncan
Bryce had said she could do as she liked with it.

No, she wouldn't.  Why should she try to please them or cater to
their absurd pride, which was great enough now without any more
food?  They had set themselves to drive her out of the school and
they were succeeding.  They and their clan had beaten her.

Wilfred took her back to Windy Poplars that evening, both of them
feeling happy.  Anne had talked Duncan Bryce into letting Wilfred
finish out his year in High School.

"Then I'll manage Queen's for a year and after that teach and
educate myself," said Wilfred.  "How can I ever repay you, Miss
Shirley?  Uncle wouldn't have listened to any one else, but he
likes you.  He said to me out in the barn, 'Red-haired women could
always do what they liked with me.'  But I don't think it was your
hair, Miss Shirley, although it is so beautiful.  It was just . . .
YOU."

At two o'clock that night Anne woke up and decided that she would
send Andy Bryce's diary to Maplehurst.  After all, she had a bit of
liking for the old ladies.  And they had so little to make life
warm . . . only their pride in their father.  At three she woke
again and decided she wouldn't.  Miss Sarah pretending to be deaf,
indeed!  At four she was in the swithers again.  Finally she
determined she would send it to them.  She wouldn't be petty.
Anne had a horror of being petty . . . like the Pyes.

Having settled this, Anne went to sleep for keeps, thinking how
lovely it was to wake up in the night and hear the first snowstorm
of the winter around your tower and then snuggle down in your
blankets and drift into dreamland again.

Monday morning she wrapped up the old diary carefully and sent it
to Miss Sarah with a little note.


"DEAR MISS PRINGLE:

"I wonder if you would be interested in this old diary.  Mr. Bryce
gave it to me for Mrs. Stanton, who is writing a history of the
county, but I don't think it would be of any use to her and I
thought you might like to have it.

"Yours sincerely,

"ANNE SHIRLEY."


"That's a horribly stiff note," thought Anne, "but I can't write
naturally to them.  And I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they sent
it haughtily back to me."

In the fine blue of the early winter evening Rebecca Dew got the
shock of her life.  The Maplehurst carriage drove along Spook's
Lane, over the powdery snow, and stopped at the front gate.  Miss
Ellen got out of it and then . . . to every one's amazement . . .
Miss Sarah, who had not left Maplehurst for ten years.

"They're coming to the front door," gasped Rebecca Dew, panic-
stricken.

"Where else would a Pringle come to?" asked Aunt Kate.

"Of course . . . of course . . . but it sticks," said Rebecca
tragically.  "It DOES stick . . . you know it does.  And it hasn't
been opened since we house-cleaned last spring.  This IS the last
straw."

The front door did stick . . . but Rebecca Dew wrenched it open
with desperate violence and showed the Maplehurst ladies into the
parlor.

"Thank heaven, we've had a fire in it today," she thought, "and all
I hope is That Cat hasn't haired up the sofa.  If Sarah Pringle got
cat hairs on her dress in our parlor . . ."

Rebecca Dew dared not imagine the consequences.  She called Anne
from the tower room, Miss Sarah having asked if Miss Shirley were
in, and then betook herself to the kitchen, half mad with curiosity
as to what on earth was bringing the old Pringle girls to see Miss
Shirley.

"If there's any more persecution in the wind . . ." said Rebecca
Dew darkly.

Anne herself descended with considerable trepidation.  Had they
come to return the diary with icy scorn?

It was little, wrinkled, inflexible Miss Sarah who rose and spoke
without preamble when Anne entered the room.

"We have come to capitulate," she said bitterly.  "We can do
nothing else . . . of course you knew that when you found that
scandalous entry about poor Uncle Myrom.  It wasn't true . . . it
COULDN'T be true.  Uncle Myrom was just taking a rise out of Andy
Bryce . . . Andy was SO credulous.  But everybody outside of our
family will be glad to believe it.  You knew it would make us all a
laughing stock . . . and worse.  Oh, you are very clever.  We admit
THAT.  Jen will apologize and behave herself in future . . . I,
Sarah Pringle, assure you of that.  If you will only promise not to
tell Mrs. Stanton . . . not to tell any one . . . we will do
anything . . . ANYTHING."

Miss Sarah wrung her fine lace handkerchief in her little blue-
veined hands.  She was literally trembling.

Anne stared in amazement . . . and horror.  The poor old darlings!
They thought she had been threatening them!

"Oh, you've misunderstood me dreadfully," she exclaimed, taking
Miss Sarah's poor, piteous hands.  "I . . . I never dreamed you
would think I was trying to . . . oh, it was just because I thought
you would like to have all those interesting details about your
splendid father.  I never dreamed of showing or telling that other
little item to any one.  I didn't think it was of the least
importance.  And I never will."

There was a moment's silence.  Then Miss Sarah freed her hands
gently, put her handkerchief to her eyes and sat down, with a faint
blush on her fine wrinkled face.

"We . . . we HAVE misunderstood you, my dear.  And we've . . .
we've been abominable to you.  Will you forgive us?"

Half an hour later . . . a half hour which nearly was the death of
Rebecca Dew . . . the Misses Pringle went away.  It had been a half
hour of friendly chat and discussion about the non-combustible
items of Andy's diary.  At the front door Miss Sarah . . . who had
not had the least trouble with her hearing during the interview
. . . turned back for a moment and took a bit of paper, covered
with very fine, sharp writing, from her reticule.

"I had almost forgotten . . . we promised Mrs. MacLean our recipe
for pound cake some time ago.  Perhaps you won't mind handing it to
her?  And tell her the sweating process is very important . . .
quite indispensable, indeed.  Ellen, your bonnet is slightly over
one ear.  You had better adjust it before we leave.  We . . . we
were somewhat agitated while dressing."

Anne told the widows and Rebecca Dew that she had given Andy
Bryce's old diary to the ladies of Maplehurst and that they had
come to thank her for it.  With this explanation they had to be
contented, although Rebecca Dew always felt that there was more
behind it than that . . . much more.  Gratitude for an old faded,
tobacco-stained diary would never have brought Sarah Pringle to the
front door of Windy Poplars.  Miss Shirley was deep . . . very
deep!

"I'm going to open that front door once a day after this," vowed
Rebecca.  "Just to keep it in practice.  I all but went over flat
when it DID give way.  Well, we've got the recipe for the pound
cake anyway.  Thirty-six eggs!  If you'd dispose of That Cat and
let me keep hens we might be able to afford it once a year."

Whereupon Rebecca Dew marched to the kitchen and got square with
fate by giving That Cat milk when she knew he wanted liver.

The Shirley-Pringle feud was over.  Nobody outside of the Pringles
ever knew why, but Summerside people understood that Miss Shirley,
single-handed, had, in some mysterious way, routed the whole clan,
who ate out of her hand from then on.  Jen came back to school the
next day and apologized meekly to Anne before the whole room.  She
was a model pupil thereafter and every Pringle student followed her
lead.  As for the adult Pringles, their antagonism vanished like
mist before the sun.  There were no more complaints regarding
"disCIPline" or home work.  No more of the fine, subtle snubs
characteristic of the ilk.  They fairly fell over one another
trying to be nice to Anne.  No dance or skating party was complete
without her.  For, although the fatal diary had been committed to
the flames by Miss Sarah herself, memory was memory and Miss
Shirley had a tale to tell if she chose to tell it.  It would never
do to have that nosey Mrs. Stanton know that Captain Myrom Pringle
had been a cannibal!



8


(Extract from letter to Gilbert)

"I am in my tower and Rebecca Dew is caroling Could I but climb? in
the kitchen.  Which reminds me that the minister's wife has asked
me to sing in the choir!  Of course the Pringles have told her to
do it.  I may do it on the Sundays I don't spend at Green Gables.
The Pringles have held out the right hand of fellowship with a
vengeance . . . accepted me lock, stock and barrel.  What a clan!

"I've been to three Pringle parties.  I set nothing down in malice
but I think all the Pringle girls are imitating my style of hair-
dressing.  Well, 'imitation is the sincerest flattery.'  And,
Gilbert, I'm really liking them . . . as I always knew I would if
they would give me a chance.  I'm even beginning to suspect that
sooner or later I'll find myself liking Jen.  She can be charming
when she wants to be and it is very evident she wants to be.

"Last night I bearded the lion in his den . . . in other words, I
went boldly up the front steps of The Evergreens to the square
porch with the four whitewashed iron urns in its corners, and rang
the bell.  When Miss Monkman came to the door I asked her if she
would lend little Elizabeth to me for a walk.  I expected a
refusal, but after the Woman had gone in and conferred with Mrs.
Campbell, she came back and said dourly that Elizabeth could go
but, please, I wasn't to keep her out late.  I wonder if even Mrs.
Campbell has got her orders from Miss Sarah.

"Elizabeth came dancing down the dark stairway, looking like a pixy
in a red coat and little green cap, and almost speechless for joy.

"'I feel all squirmy and excited, Miss Shirley,' she whispered as
soon as we got away.  'I'm Betty . . . I'm always Betty when I feel
like that.'

"We went as far down the Road that Leads to the End of the World as
we dared and then back.  Tonight the harbor, lying dark under a
crimson sunset, seemed full of implications of 'fairylands forlorn'
and mysterious isles in uncharted seas.  I thrilled to it and so
did the mite I held by the hand.

"'If we ran hard, Miss Shirley, could we get into the sunset?' she
wanted to know.  I remembered Paul and his fancies about the
'sunset land.'

"'We must wait for Tomorrow before we can do that,' I said.  'Look,
Elizabeth, at that golden island of cloud just over the harbor
mouth.  Let's pretend that's your island of Happiness.'

"'There is an island down there somewhere,' said Elizabeth
dreamily.  'Its name is Flying Cloud.  Isn't that a lovely name
. . . a name just out of Tomorrow?  I can see it from the garret
windows.  It belongs to a gentleman from Boston and he has a summer
home there.  But I pretend it's mine.'

"At the door I stooped and kissed Elizabeth's cheek before she went
in.  I shall never forget her eyes.  Gilbert, that child is just
starved for love.

"Tonight, when she came over for her milk, I saw that she had been
crying.

"'They . . . they made me wash your kiss off, Miss Shirley,' she
sobbed.  'I didn't want ever to wash my face again.  I VOWED I
wouldn't.  Because, you see, I didn't want to wash your kiss off.
I got away to school this morning without doing it, but tonight the
Woman just took me and SCRUBBED it off.'

"I kept a straight face.

"'You couldn't go through life without washing your face
occasionally, darling.  But never mind about the kiss.  I'll kiss
you every night when you come for the milk and then it won't matter
if it is washed off the next morning.'

"'You are the only person who loves me in the world,' said
Elizabeth.  'When you talk to me I smell violets.'

"Was anybody ever paid a prettier compliment?  But I couldn't quite
let the first sentence pass.

"'Your grandmother loves you, Elizabeth.'

"'She doesn't . . . she hates me.'

"'You're just a wee bit foolish, darling.  Your grandmother and
Miss Monkman are both old people and old people are easily
disturbed and worried.  Of course you annoy them sometimes.  And
. . . of course . . . when THEY were young, children were brought
up much more strictly than they are now.  They cling to the old
way.'

"But I felt I was not convincing Elizabeth.  After all, they DON'T
love her and she knows it.  She looked carefully back at the house
to see if the door was shut.  Then she said deliberately:

"'Grandmother and the Woman are just two old tyrants and when
Tomorrow comes I'm going to escape them forever.'

"I think she expected I'd die of horror. . . .  I really suspect
Elizabeth said it just to make a sensation.  I merely laughed and
kissed her.  I hope Martha Monkman saw it from the kitchen window.

"I can see over Summerside from the left window in the tower.  Just
now it is a huddle of friendly white roofs . . . friendly at last
since the Pringles are my friends.  Here and there a light is
gleaming in gable and dormer.  Here and there is a suggestion of
gray-ghost smoke.  Thick stars are low over it all.  It is 'a
dreaming town.'  Isn't that a lovely phrase?  You remember . . .
'Galahad through dreaming towns did go'?

"I feel so happy, Gilbert.  I won't have to go home to Green Gables
at Christmas, defeated and discredited.  Life is good . . . good!

"So is Miss Sarah's pound cake.  Rebecca Dew made one and 'sweated'
it according to directions . . . which simply means that she
wrapped it in several thicknesses of brown paper and several more
towels and left it for three days.  I can recommend it.

"(Are there, or are there not, two 'c's' in recommend'?  In spite
of the fact that I am a B.A. I can never be certain.  Fancy if the
Pringles had discovered that before I found Andy's diary!)"



9


Trix Taylor was curled up in the tower one night in February, while
little flurries of snow hissed against the windows and that
absurdly tiny stove purred like a red-hot black cat.  Trix was
pouring out her woes to Anne.  Anne was beginning to find herself
the recipient of confidences on all sides.  She was known to be
engaged, so that none of the Summerside girls feared her as a
possible rival, and there was something about her that made you
feel it was safe to tell her secrets.

Trix had come up to ask Anne to dinner the next evening.  She was a
jolly, plump little creature, with twinkling brown eyes and rosy
cheeks, and did not look as if life weighed too heavily on her
twenty years.  But it appeared that she had troubles of her own.

"Dr. Lennox Carter is coming to dinner tomorrow night.  That is why
we want you especially.  He is the new Head of the Modern Languages
Department at Redmond and dreadfully clever, so we want somebody
with brains to talk to him.  You know I haven't any to boast of,
nor Pringle either.  As for Esme . . . well, you know, Anne, Esme
is the sweetest thing and she's really clever, but she's so shy and
timid she can't even make use of what brains she has when Dr.
Carter is around.  She's so terribly in love with him.  It's
pitiful.  I'M very fond of Johnny . . . but before I'd dissolve
into such a liquid state for him!"

"Are Esme and Dr. Carter engaged?"

"Not yet" . . . significantly.  "But, oh, Anne, she's hoping he
means to ask her this time.  Would he come over to the Island to
visit his cousin right in the middle of the term if he didn't
intend to?  I hope he will for Esme's sake, because she'll just die
if he doesn't.  But between you and me and the bed-post I'm not
terribly struck on him for a brother-in-law.  He's awfully
fastidious, Esme says, and she's desperately afraid he won't
approve of US.  If he doesn't, she thinks he'll never ask her to
marry him.  So you can't imagine how she's hoping everything will
go well at the dinner tomorrow night.  I don't see why it shouldn't
. . . Mamma is the most wonderful cook . . . and we have a good
maid and I've bribed Pringle with half my week's allowance to
behave himself.  Of course he doesn't like Dr. Carter either . . .
says he's got swelled head . . . but he's fond of Esme.  If only
Papa won't have a sulky fit on!"

"Have you any reason to fear it?" asked Anne.  Every one in
Summerside knew about Cyrus Taylor's sulky fits.

"You never can tell when he'll take one," said Trix dolefully.
"He was frightfully upset tonight because he couldn't find his new
flannel nightshirt.  Esme had put it in the wrong drawer.  He may
be over it by tomorrow night or he may not.  If he's not, he'll
disgrace us all and Dr. Carter will conclude he can't marry into
such a family.  At least, that is what Esme says and I'm afraid she
may be right.  I think, Anne, that Lennox Carter is very fond of
Esme . . . thinks she would make a 'very suitable wife' for him
. . . but doesn't want to do anything rash or throw his wonderful
self away.  I've heard that he told his cousin a man couldn't be too
careful what kind of family he married into.  He's just at the point
where he might be turned either way by a trifle.  And, if it comes
to that, one of Papa's sulky fits isn't any trifle."

"Doesn't he like Dr. Carter?"

"Oh, he does.  He thinks it would be a wonderful match for Esme.
But when Father has one of his spells on, NOTHING has any influence
over him while it lasts.  That's the Pringle for you, Anne.
Grandmother Taylor was a Pringle, you know.  You just can't imagine
what we've gone through as a family.  He never goes into rages, you
know . . . like Uncle George.  Uncle George's family don't mind his
rages.  When he goes into a temper he blows off . . . you can hear
him roaring three blocks away . . . and then he's like a lamb and
brings every one a new dress for a peace-offering.  But Father just
sulks and glowers, and won't say a word to ANYBODY at meal times.
Esme says that, after all, that's better than cousin Richard
Taylor, who is always saying sarcastic things at the table and
insulting his wife; but it seems to me NOTHING could be worse than
those awful silences of Papa's.  They rattle us and we're terrified
to open our mouths.  It wouldn't be so bad, of course, if it was
only when we are alone.  But it's just as apt to be where we have
company.  Esme and I are simply tired of trying to explain away
Papa's insulting silences.  She's just sick with fear that he won't
have got over the nightshirt before tomorrow night . . . and what
will Lennox think?  And she wants you to wear your blue dress.  Her
new dress is blue, because Lennox likes blue.  But Papa hates it.
Yours may reconcile him to hers."

"Wouldn't it be better for her to wear something else?"

"She hasn't anything else fit to wear at a company dinner except
the green poplin Father gave her at Christmas.  It's a lovely dress
in itself . . . Father likes us to have pretty dresses . . . but
you can't think of anything as awful as Esme in green.  Pringle
says it makes her look as if she was in the last stages of
consumption.  And Lennox Carter's cousin told Esme he would never
marry a delicate person.  I'm more than glad Johnny isn't so
'fastidious.'"

"Have you told your father about your engagement to Johnny yet?"
asked Anne, who knew all about Trix's love affair.

"No," poor Trix groaned.  "I can't summon up the courage, Anne.  I
know he'll make a frightful scene.  Papa has always been so down on
Johnny because he's poor.  Papa forgets that he was poorer than
Johnny when he started out in the hardware business.  Of course
he'll have to be told soon . . . but I want to wait until Esme's
affair is settled.  I know Papa won't speak to ANY of us for weeks
after I tell him, and Mamma will worry so . . . she can't BEAR
Father's sulky fits.  We're all such cowards before Papa.  Of
course, Mamma and Esme are naturally timid with every one, but
Pringle and I have lots of ginger.  It's only Papa who can cow us.
Sometimes I think if we had any one to back us up . . . but we
haven't, and we just feel paralyzed.  You can't imagine, Anne
darling, what a company dinner is like at our place when Papa is
sulking.  But if he only behaves tomorrow night I'll forgive him
for everything.  He CAN be very agreeable when he wants to be . . .
Papa is really just like Longfellow's little girl . . . 'when he's
good he's very, very good and when he's bad he's horrid.'  I've
seen him the life of the party."

"He was very nice the night I had dinner with you last month."

"Oh, he likes you, as I've said.  That's one of the reasons why we
want you so much.  It may have a good influence on him.  We're not
neglecting ANYTHING that may please him.  But when he has a really
bad fit of sulks on he seems to hate everything and everybody.
Anyhow, we've got a bang-up dinner planned, with an elegant orange-
custard dessert.  Mamma wanted pie because she says every man in
the world but Papa likes pie for dessert better than anything else
. . . even Professors of Modern Languages.  But Papa doesn't, so it
would never do to take a chance on it tomorrow night, when so much
depends on it.  Orange custard is Papa's favorite dessert.  As for
poor Johnny and me, I suppose I'll just have to elope with him some
day and Papa will never forgive me."

"I believe if you'd just get up enough spunk to tell him and endure
his resulting sulks you'd find he'd come round to it beautifully
and you'd be saved months of anguish."

"You don't know Papa," said Trix darkly.

"Perhaps I know him better than you do.  You've lost your
perspective."

"Lost my . . . what?  Anne darling, remember I'm not a B.A.  I only
went through the High.  I'd have loved to go to college, but Papa
doesn't believe in the Higher Education of women."

"I only meant that you're too close to him to understand him.  A
stranger could very well see him more clearly . . . understand him
better."

"I understand that nothing can induce Papa to speak if he has made
up his mind not to . . . NOTHING.  He prides himself on that."

"Then why don't the rest of you just go on and talk as if nothing
was the matter?"

"We CAN'T . . . I've told you he paralyzes us.  You'll find it out
for yourself tomorrow night if he hasn't got over the nightshirt.
I don't know how he does it but he does.  I don't believe we'd mind
so much how cranky he was if he would only talk.  It's the silence
that shatters us.  I'll never forgive Papa if he acts up tomorrow
night when so much is at stake."

"Let's hope for the best, dear."

"I'm trying to.  And I know it will help to have you there.  Mamma
thought we ought to have Katherine Brooke too, but I knew it
wouldn't have a good effect on Papa.  He hates her.  I don't blame
him for THAT, I must say.  I haven't any use for her myself.  I
don't see how you can be as nice to her as you are."

"I'm sorry for her, Trix."

"Sorry for her!  But it's all her own fault she isn't liked.  Oh,
well, it takes all kinds of people to make a world . . . but
Summerside could spare Katherine Brooke . . . glum old cat!"

"She's an excellent teacher, Trix. . . ."

"Oh, do I know it?  I was in her class.  She DID hammer things into
my head . . . and flayed the flesh off my bones with sarcasm as
well.  And the way she dresses!  Papa can't bear to see a woman
badly dressed.  He says he has no use for dowds and he's sure God
hasn't either.  Mamma would be horrified if she knew I told you
that, Anne.  She excused it in Papa because he is a man.  If that
was all we had to excuse in him!  And poor Johnny hardly daring to
come to the house now because Papa is so rude to him.  I slip out
on fine nights and we walk round and round the square and get half
frozen."

Anne drew what was something like a breath of relief when Trix had
gone, and slipped down to coax a snack out of Rebecca Dew.

"Going to the Taylors for dinner, are you?  Well, I hope old Cyrus
will be decent.  If his family weren't all so afraid of him in his
sulky fits he wouldn't indulge in them so often, of that I feel
certain.  I tell you, Miss Shirley, he ENJOYS his sulks.  And now I
suppose I must warm That Cat's milk.  Pampered animal!"



10


When Anne arrived at the Cyrus Taylor house the next evening she
felt the chill in the atmosphere as soon as she entered the door.
A trim maid showed her up to the guest room but as Anne went up the
stairs she caught sight of Mrs. Cyrus Taylor scuttling from the
dining-room to the kitchen and Mrs. Cyrus was wiping tears away
from her pale, careworn, but still rather sweet face.  It was all
too clear that Cyrus had not yet "got over" the nightshirt.

This was confirmed by