Anne's House of Dreams by Lucy Maud Montgomery (free ebooks for android .txt) đ
- Author: Lucy Maud Montgomery
- Performer: 0553213180
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âYes.â
âAnne, I saw his little face as the wheel went over him. He fell on his back. AnneâAnneâI can see it now. I shall always see it. Anne, all I ask of heaven is that that recollection shall be blotted out of my memory. O my God!â
âLeslie, donât speak of it. I know the storyâdonât go into details that only harrow your soul up unavailingly. It WILL be blotted out.â
After a momentâs struggle, Leslie regained a measure of self-control.
âThen fatherâs health got worse and he grew despondentâhis mind became unbalancedâyouâve heard all that, too?â
âYes.â
âAfter that I had just mother to live for. But I was very ambitious. I meant to teach and earn my way through college. I meant to climb to the very topâoh, I wonât talk of that either. Itâs no use. You know what happened. I couldnât see my dear little heartbroken mother, who had been such a slave all her life, turned out of her home. Of course, I could have earned enough for us to live on. But mother COULDNâT leave her home. She had come there as a brideâand she had loved father soâand all her memories were there. Even yet, Anne, when I think that I made her last year happy Iâm not sorry for what I did. As for DickâI didnât hate him when I married himâI just felt for him the indifferent, friendly feeling I had for most of my schoolmates. I knew he drank someâbut I had never heard the story of the girl down at the fishing cove. If I had, I COULDNâT have married him, even for motherâs sake. AfterwardsâI DID hate himâbut mother never knew. She diedâand then I was alone. I was only seventeen and I was alone. Dick had gone off in the Four Sisters. I hoped he wouldnât be home very much more. The sea had always been in his blood. I had no other hope. Well, Captain Jim brought him home, as you knowâand thatâs all there is to say. You know me now, Anneâthe worst of meâthe barriers are all down. And you still want to be my friend?â
Anne looked up through the birches, at the white paper-lantern of a half moon drifting downwards to the gulf of sunset. Her face was very sweet.
âI am your friend and you are mine, for always,â she said. âSuch a friend as I never had before. I have had many dear and beloved friendsâbut there is a something in you, Leslie, that I never found in anyone else. You have more to offer me in that rich nature of yours, and I have more to give you than I had in my careless girlhood. We are both womenâand friends forever.â
They clasped hands and smiled at each other through the tears that filled the gray eyes and the blue.
Gilbert insisted that Susan should be kept on at the little house for the summer. Anne protested at first.
âLife here with just the two of us is so sweet, Gilbert. It spoils it a little to have anyone else. Susan is a dear soul, but she is an outsider. It wonât hurt me to do the work here.â
âYou must take your doctorâs advice,â said Gilbert. âThereâs an old proverb to the effect that shoemakersâ wives go barefoot and doctorsâ wives die young. I donât mean that it shall be true in my household. You will keep Susan until the old spring comes back into your step, and those little hollows on your cheeks fill out.â
âYou just take it easy, Mrs. Doctor, dear,â said Susan, coming abruptly in. âHave a good time and do not worry about the pantry. Susan is at the helm. There is no use in keeping a dog and doing your own barking. I am going to take your breakfast up to you every morning.â
âIndeed you are not,â laughed Anne. âI agree with Miss Cornelia that itâs a scandal for a woman who isnât sick to eat her breakfast in bed, and almost justifies the men in any enormities.â
âOh, Cornelia!â said Susan, with ineffable contempt. âI think you have better sense, Mrs. Doctor, dear, than to heed what Cornelia Bryant says. I cannot see why she must be always running down the men, even if she is an old maid. I am an old maid, but you never hear ME abusing the men. I like âem. I would have married one if I could. Is it not funny nobody ever asked me to marry him, Mrs. Doctor, dear? I am no beauty, but I am as good-looking as most of the married women you see. But I never had a beau. What do you suppose is the reason?â
âIt may be predestination,â suggested Anne, with unearthly solemnity.
Susan nodded.
âThat is what I have often thought, Mrs. Doctor, dear, and a great comfort it is. I do not mind nobody wanting me if the Almighty decreed it so for His own wise purposes. But sometimes doubt creeps in, Mrs. Doctor, dear, and I wonder if maybe the Old Scratch has not more to do with it than anyone else. I cannot feel resigned THEN. But maybe,â added Susan, brightening up, âI will have a chance to get married yet. I often and often think of the old verse my aunt used to repeat:
There never was a goose so gray but sometime soon or late Some honest gander came her way and took her for his mate!
A woman cannot ever be sure of not being married till she is buried, Mrs. Doctor, dear, and meanwhile I will make a batch of cherry pies. I notice the doctor favors âem, and I DO like cooking for a man who appreciates his victuals.â
Miss Cornelia dropped in that afternoon, puffing a little.
âI donât mind the world or the devil much, but the flesh DOES rather bother me,â she admitted. âYou always look as cool as a cucumber, Anne, dearie. Do I smell cherry pie? If I do, ask me to stay to tea. Havenât tasted a cherry pie this summer. My cherries have all been stolen by those scamps of Gilman boys from the Glen.â
âNow, now, Cornelia,â remonstrated Captain Jim, who had been reading a sea novel in a corner of the living room, âyou shouldnât say that about those two poor, motherless Gilman boys, unless youâve got certain proof. Jest because their father ainât none too honest isnât any reason for calling them thieves. Itâs more likely itâs been the robins took your cherries. Theyâre turrible thick this year.â
âRobins!â said Miss Cornelia disdainfully. âHumph! Two-legged robins, believe ME!â
âWell, most of the Four Winds robins ARE constructed on that principle,â said Captain Jim gravely.
Miss Cornelia stared at him for a moment. Then she leaned back in her rocker and laughed long and ungrudgingly.
âWell, you HAVE got one on me at last, Jim Boyd, Iâll admit. Just look how pleased he is, Anne, dearie, grinning like a Chessy-cat. As for the robinsâ legs if robins have great, big, bare, sunburned legs, with ragged trousers hanging on âem, such as I saw up in my cherry tree one morning at sunrise last week, Iâll beg the Gilman boysâ pardon. By the time I got down they were gone. I couldnât understand how they had disappeared so quick, but Captain Jim has enlightened me. They flew away, of course.â
Captain Jim laughed and went away, regretfully declining an invitation to stay to supper and partake of cherry pie.
âIâm on my way to see Leslie and ask her if sheâll take a boarder,â Miss Cornelia resumed. âIâd a letter yesterday from a Mrs. Daly in Toronto, who boarded a spell with me two years ago. She wanted me to take a friend of hers for the summer. His name is Owen Ford, and heâs a newspaper man, and it seems heâs a grandson of the schoolmaster who built this house. John Selwynâs oldest daughter married an Ontario man named Ford, and this is her son. He wants to see the old place his grandparents lived in. He had a bad spell of typhoid in the spring and hasnât got rightly over it, so his doctor has ordered him to the sea. He doesnât want to go to the hotelâhe just wants a quiet home place. I canât take him, for I have to be away in August. Iâve been appointed a delegate to the W.F.M.S. convention in Kingsport and Iâm going. I donât know whether Leslieâll want to be bothered with him, either, but thereâs no one else. If she canât take him heâll have to go over the harbor.â
âWhen youâve seen her come back and help us eat our cherry pies,â said Anne. âBring Leslie and Dick, too, if they can come. And so youâre going to Kingsport? What a nice time you will have. I must give you a letter to a friend of mine thereâMrs. Jonas Blake.â
âIâve prevailed on Mrs. Thomas Holt to go with me,â said Miss Cornelia complacently. âItâs time she had a little holiday, believe ME. She has just about worked herself to death. Tom Holt can crochet beautifully, but he canât make a living for his family. He never seems to be able to get up early enough to do any work, but I notice he can always get up early to go fishing. Isnât that like a man?â
Anne smiled. She had learned to discount largely Miss Corneliaâs opinions of the Four Winds men. Otherwise she must have believed them the most hopeless assortment of reprobates and neâer-do-wells in the world, with veritable slaves and martyrs for wives. This particular Tom Holt, for example, she knew to be a kind husband, a much loved father, and an excellent neighbor. If he were rather inclined to be lazy, liking better the fishing he had been born for than the farming he had not, and if he had a harmless eccentricity for doing fancy work, nobody save Miss Cornelia seemed to hold it against him. His wife was a âhustler,â who gloried in hustling; his family got a comfortable living off the farm; and his strapping sons and daughters, inheriting their motherâs energy, were all in a fair way to do well in the world. There was not a happier household in Glen St. Mary than the Holtsâ.
Miss Cornelia returned satisfied from the house up the brook.
âLeslieâs going to take him,â she announced. âShe jumped at the chance. She wants to make a little money to shingle the roof of her house this fall, and she didnât know how she was going to manage it. I expect Captain Jimâll be more than interested when he hears that a grandson of the Selwynsâ is coming here. Leslie said to tell you she hankered after cherry pie, but she couldnât come to tea because she has to go and hunt up her turkeys. Theyâve strayed away. But she said, if there was a piece left, for you to put it in the pantry and sheâd run over in the catâs light, when prowlingâs in order, to get it. You donât know, Anne, dearie, what good it did my heart to hear Leslie send you a message like that, laughing like she used to long ago.
Thereâs a great change come over her lately. She laughs and jokes like a girl, and from her talk I gather sheâs here real often.â
âEvery dayâor else Iâm over there,â said Anne. âI donât know what Iâd do without Leslie, especially just now when Gilbert is so busy. Heâs hardly ever home except for a few hours in the wee smaâs. Heâs really
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