Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery (best ereader for textbooks txt) đ
- Author: Lucy Maud Montgomery
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She did not think she liked Miss Rogerson, and she felt very miserable; every other little girl in the class had puffed sleeves. Anne felt that life was really not worth living without puffed sleeves.
âWell, how did you like Sunday school?â Marilla wanted to know when Anne came home. Her wreath having faded, Anne had discarded it in the lane, so Marilla was spared the knowledge of that for a time.
âI didnât like it a bit. It was horrid.â
âAnne Shirley!â said Marilla rebukingly.
Anne sat down on the rocker with a long sigh, kissed one of Bonnyâs leaves, and waved her hand to a blossoming fuchsia.
âThey might have been lonesome while I was away,â she explained. âAnd now about the Sunday school. I behaved well, just as you told me. Mrs. Lynde was gone, but I went right on myself. I went into the church, with a lot of other little girls, and I sat in the corner of a pew by the window while the opening exercises went on. Mr. Bell made an awfully long prayer. I would have been dreadfully tired before he got through if I hadnât been sitting by that window. But it looked right out on the Lake of Shining Waters, so I just gazed at that and imagined all sorts of splendid things.â
âYou shouldnât have done anything of the sort. You should have listened to Mr. Bell.â
âBut he wasnât talking to me,â protested Anne. âHe was talking to God and he didnât seem to be very much interested in it, either. I think he thought God was too far off though. There was a long row of white birches hanging over the lake and the sunshine fell down through them, âway, âway down, deep into the water. Oh, Marilla, it was like a beautiful dream! It gave me a thrill and I just said, `Thank you for it, God,â two or three times.â
âNot out loud, I hope,â said Marilla anxiously.
âOh, no, just under my breath. Well, Mr. Bell did get through at last and they told me to go into the classroom with Miss Rogersonâs class. There were nine other girls in it. They all had puffed sleeves. I tried to imagine mine were puffed, too, but I couldnât. Why couldnât I? It was as easy as could be to imagine they were puffed when I was alone in the east gable, but it was awfully hard there among the others who had really truly puffs.â
âYou shouldnât have been thinking about your sleeves in Sunday school. You should have been attending to the lesson. I hope you knew it.â
âOh, yes; and I answered a lot of questions. Miss Rogerson asked ever so many. I donât think it was fair for her to do all the asking. There were lots I wanted to ask her, but I didnât like to because I didnât think she was a kindred spirit. Then all the other little girls recited a paraphrase. She asked me if I knew any. I told her I didnât, but I could recite, `The Dog at His Masterâs Graveâ if she liked. Thatâs in the Third Royal Reader. It isnât a really truly religious piece of poetry, but itâs so sad and melancholy that it might as well be. She said it wouldnât do and she told me to learn the nineteenth paraphrase for next Sunday. I read it over in church afterwards and itâs splendid. There are two lines in particular that just thrill me.
â`Quick as the slaughtered squadrons fell In Midianâs evil day.â
I donât know what `squadronsâ means nor `Midian,â either, but it sounds SO tragical. I can hardly wait until next Sunday to recite it. Iâll practice it all the week. After Sunday school I asked Miss Rogersonâbecause Mrs. Lynde was too far awayâto show me your pew. I sat just as still as I could and the text was Revelations, third chapter, second and third verses. It was a very long text. If I was a minister Iâd pick the short, snappy ones. The sermon was awfully long, too. I suppose the minister had to match it to the text. I didnât think he was a bit interesting. The trouble with him seems to be that he hasnât enough imagination. I didnât listen to him very much. I just let my thoughts run and I thought of the most surprising things.â
Marilla felt helplessly that all this should be sternly reproved, but she was hampered by the undeniable fact that some of the things Anne had said, especially about the ministerâs sermons and Mr. Bellâs prayers, were what she herself had really thought deep down in her heart for years, but had never given expression to. It almost seemed to her that those secret, unuttered, critical thoughts had suddenly taken visible and accusing shape and form in the person of this outspoken morsel of neglected humanity.
It was not until the next Friday that Marilla heard the story of the flower-wreathed hat. She came home from Mrs. Lyndeâs and called Anne to account.
âAnne, Mrs. Rachel says you went to church last Sunday with your hat rigged out ridiculous with roses and buttercups. What on earth put you up to such a caper? A pretty-looking object you must have been!â
âOh. I know pink and yellow arenât becoming to me,â began Anne.
âBecoming fiddlesticks! It was putting flowers on your hat at all, no matter what color they were, that was ridiculous. You are the most aggravating child!â
âI donât see why itâs any more ridiculous to wear flowers on your hat than on your dress,â protested Anne. âLots of little girls there had bouquets pinned on their dresses. Whatâs the difference?â
Marilla was not to be drawn from the safe concrete into dubious paths of the abstract.
âDonât answer me back like that, Anne. It was very silly of you to do such a thing. Never let me catch you at such a trick again. Mrs. Rachel says she thought she would sink through the floor when she saw you come in all rigged out like that. She couldnât get near enough to tell you to take them off till it was too late. She says people talked about it something dreadful. Of course they would think I had no better sense than to let you go decked out like that.â
âOh, Iâm so sorry,â said Anne, tears welling into her eyes. âI never thought youâd mind. The roses and buttercups were so sweet and pretty I thought theyâd look lovely on my hat. Lots of the little girls had artificial flowers on their hats. Iâm afraid Iâm going to be a dreadful trial to you. Maybe youâd better send me back to the asylum. That would be terrible; I donât think I could endure it; most likely I would go into consumption; Iâm so thin as it is, you see. But that would be better than being a trial to you.â
âNonsense,â said Marilla, vexed at herself for having made the child cry. âI donât want to send you back to the asylum, Iâm sure. All I want is that you should behave like other little girls and not make yourself ridiculous. Donât cry any more. Iâve got some news for you. Diana Barry came home this afternoon. Iâm going up to see if I can borrow a skirt pattern from Mrs. Barry, and if you like you can come with me and get acquainted with Diana.â
Anne rose to her feet, with clasped hands, the tears still glistening on her cheeks; the dish towel she had been hemming slipped unheeded to the floor.
âOh, Marilla, Iâm frightenedânow that it has come Iâm actually frightened. What if she shouldnât like me! It would be the most tragical disappointment of my life.â
âNow, donât get into a fluster. And I do wish you wouldnât use such long words. It sounds so funny in a little girl. I guess Dianaâll like you well enough. Itâs her mother youâve got to reckon with. If she doesnât like you it wonât matter how much Diana does. If she has heard about your outburst to Mrs. Lynde and going to church with buttercups round your hat I donât know what sheâll think of you. You must be polite and well behaved, and donât make any of your startling speeches. For pityâs sake, if the child isnât actually trembling!â
Anne WAS trembling. Her face was pale and tense.
âOh, Marilla, youâd be excited, too, if you were going to meet a little girl you hoped to be your bosom friend and whose mother mightnât like you,â she said as she hastened to get her hat.
They went over to Orchard Slope by the short cut across the brook and up the firry hill grove. Mrs. Barry came to the kitchen door in answer to Marillaâs knock. She was a tall black-eyed, black-haired woman, with a very resolute mouth. She had the reputation of being very strict with her children.
âHow do you do, Marilla?â she said cordially. âCome in. And this is the little girl you have adopted, I suppose?â
âYes, this is Anne Shirley,â said Marilla.
âSpelled with an E,â gasped Anne, who, tremulous and excited as she was, was determined there should be no misunderstanding on that important point.
Mrs. Barry, not hearing or not comprehending, merely shook hands and said kindly:
âHow are you?â
âI am well in body although considerable rumpled up in spirit, thank you maâam,â said Anne gravely. Then aside to Marilla in an audible whisper, âThere wasnât anything startling in that, was there, Marilla?â
Diana was sitting on the sofa, reading a book which she dropped when the callers entered. She was a very pretty little girl, with her motherâs black eyes and hair, and rosy cheeks, and the merry expression which was her inheritance from her father.
âThis is my little girl Diana,â said Mrs. Barry. âDiana, you might take Anne out into the garden and show her your flowers. It will be better for you than straining your eyes over that book. She reads entirely too muchââ this to Marilla as the little girls went outââand I canât prevent her, for her father aids and abets her. Sheâs always poring over a book. Iâm glad she has the prospect of a playmateâ perhaps it will take her more out-of-doors.â
Outside in the garden, which was full of mellow sunset light streaming through the dark old firs to the west of it, stood Anne and Diana, gazing bashfully at each other over a clump of gorgeous tiger lilies.
The Barry garden was a bowery wilderness of flowers which would have delighted Anneâs heart at any time less fraught with destiny. It was encircled by huge old willows and tall firs, beneath which flourished flowers that loved the shade. Prim, right-angled paths neatly bordered with clamshells, intersected it like moist red ribbons and in the beds between old-fashioned flowers ran riot. There were rosy bleeding-hearts and great splendid crimson peonies; white, fragrant narcissi and thorny, sweet Scotch roses; pink and blue and white columbines and lilac-tinted Bouncing Bets; clumps of southernwood and ribbon grass and mint; purple Adam-and-Eve, daffodils, and masses of sweet clover white with its delicate, fragrant, feathery sprays; scarlet lightning that shot its fiery lances over prim white musk-flowers; a garden it was where sunshine lingered and bees hummed, and winds, beguiled into loitering, purred and rustled.
âOh, Diana,â said Anne at last, clasping her hands and speaking almost in a whisper, âoh, do you think you can like me a littleâenough to be my bosom friend?â
Diana laughed. Diana always laughed before she spoke.
âWhy, I guess so,â she said frankly. âIâm awfully glad
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