Reading books romantic stories you will plunge into the world of feelings and love. Most of the time the story ends happily. Very interesting and informative to read books historical romance novels to feel the atmosphere of that time.Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery (freenovel24 .txt) 📖
- Author: Lucy Maud Montgomery
- Performer: 0553213172
Book online «Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery (freenovel24 .txt) 📖». Author Lucy Maud Montgomery
“I never felt glad to see Gilbert go before,” she thought, half-resentfully, half-sorrowfully, as she walked alone up the lane. “Our friendship will be spoiled if he goes on with this nonsense. It mustn’t be spoiled — I won’t let it. Oh, WHY can’t boys be just sensible!”
Anne had an uneasy doubt that it was not strictly “sensible” that she should still feel on her hand the warm pressure of Gilbert’s, as distinctly as she had felt it for the swift second his had rested there; and still less sensible that the sensation was far from being an unpleasant one — very different from that which had attended a similar demonstration on Charlie Sloane’s part, when she had been sitting out a dance with him at a White Sands party three nights before. Anne shivered over the disagreeable recollection. But all problems connected with infatuated swains vanished from her mind when she entered the homely, unsentimental atmosphere of the Green Gables kitchen where an eight-year-old boy was crying grievously on the sofa.
“What is the matter, Davy?” asked Anne, taking him up in her arms. “Where are Marilla and Dora?”
“Marilla’s putting Dora to bed,” sobbed Davy, “and I’m crying ‘cause Dora fell down the outside cellar steps, heels over head, and scraped all the skin off her nose, and — “
“Oh, well, don’t cry about it, dear. Of course, you are sorry for her, but crying won’t help her any. She’ll be all right tomorrow. Crying never helps any one, Davy-boy, and — “
“I ain’t crying ‘cause Dora fell down cellar,” said Davy, cutting short Anne’s wellmeant preachment with increasing bitterness. “I’m crying, cause I wasn’t there to see her fall. I’m always missing some fun or other, seems to me.”
“Oh, Davy!” Anne choked back an unholy shriek of laughter. “Would you call it fun to see poor little Dora fall down the steps and get hurt?”
“She wasn’t MUCH hurt,” said Davy, defiantly. “‘Course, if she’d been killed I’d have been real sorry, Anne. But the Keiths ain’t so easy killed. They’re like the Blewetts, I guess. Herb Blewett fell off the hayloft last Wednesday, and rolled right down through the turnip chute into the box stall, where they had a fearful wild, cross horse, and rolled right under his heels. And still he got out alive, with only three bones broke. Mrs. Lynde says there are some folks you can’t kill with a meat-axe. Is Mrs. Lynde coming here tomorrow, Anne?”
“Yes, Davy, and I hope you’ll be always very nice and good to her.”
“I’ll be nice and good. But will she ever put me to bed at nights, Anne?”
“Perhaps. Why?”
“‘Cause,” said Davy very decidedly, “if she does I won’t say my prayers before her like I do before you, Anne.”
“Why not?”
“‘Cause I don’t think it would be nice to talk to God before strangers, Anne. Dora can say hers to Mrs. Lynde if she likes, but I won’t. I’ll wait till she’s gone and then say ‘em. Won’t that be all right, Anne?”
“Yes, if you are sure you won’t forget to say them, Davy-boy.”
“Oh, I won’t forget, you bet. I think saying my prayers is great fun. But it won’t be as good fun saying them alone as saying them to you. I wish you’d stay home, Anne. I don’t see what you want to go away and leave us for.”
“I don’t exactly WANT to, Davy, but I feel I ought to go.”
“If you don’t want to go you needn’t. You’re grown up. When I‘m grown up I’m not going to do one single thing I don’t want to do, Anne.”
“All your life, Davy, you’ll find yourself doing things you don’t want to do.”
“I won’t,” said Davy flatly. “Catch me! I have to do things I don’t want to now ‘cause you and Marilla’ll send me to bed if I don’t. But when I grow up you can’t do that, and there’ll be nobody to tell me not to do things. Won’t I have the time! Say, Anne, Milty Boulter says his mother says you’re going to college to see if you can catch a man. Are you, Anne? I want to know.”
For a second Anne burned with resentment. Then she laughed, reminding herself that Mrs. Boulter’s crude vulgarity of thought and speech could not harm her.
“No, Davy, I’m not. I’m going to study and grow and learn about many things.”
“What things?”
“`Shoes and ships and sealing wax And cabbages and kings,’”
quoted Anne.
“But if you DID want to catch a man how would you go about it? I want to know,” persisted Davy, for whom the subject evidently possessed a certain fascination.
“You’d better ask Mrs. Boulter,” said Anne thoughtlessly. “I think it’s likely she knows more about the process than I do.”
“I will, the next time I see her,” said Davy gravely.
“Davy! If you do!” cried Anne, realizing her mistake.
“But you just told me to,” protested Davy aggrieved.
“It’s time you went to bed,” decreed Anne, by way of getting out of the scrape.
After Davy had gone to bed Anne wandered down to Victoria Island and sat there alone, curtained with fine-spun, moonlit gloom, while the water laughed around her in a duet of brook and wind. Anne had always loved that brook. Many a dream had she spun over its sparkling water in days gone by. She forgot lovelorn youths, and the cayenne speeches of malicious neighbors, and all the problems of her girlish existence. In imagination she sailed over storied seas that wash the distant shining shores of “faery lands forlorn,” where lost Atlantis and Elysium lie, with the evening star for pilot, to the land of Heart’s Desire. And she was richer in those dreams than in realities; for things seen pass away, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
The following week sped swiftly, crowded with innumerable “last things,” as Anne called them. Goodbye calls had to be made and received, being pleasant or otherwise, according to whether callers and called-upon were heartily in sympathy with Anne’s hopes, or thought she was too much puffed-up over going to college and that it was their duty to “take her down a peg or two.”
The A.V.I.S. gave a farewell party in honor of Anne and Gilbert one evening at the home of Josie Pye, choosing that place, partly because Mr. Pye’s house was large and convenient, partly because it was strongly suspected that the Pye girls would have nothing to do with the affair if their offer of the house for the party was not accepted. It was a very pleasant little time, for the Pye girls were gracious, and said and did nothing to mar the harmony of the occasion — which was not according to their wont. Josie was unusually amiable — so much so that she even remarked condescendingly to Anne,
“Your new dress is rather becoming to you, Anne. Really, you look ALMOST PRETTY in it.”
“How kind of you to say so,” responded Anne, with dancing eyes. Her sense of humor was developing, and the speeches that would have hurt her at fourteen were becoming merely food for amusement now. Josie suspected that Anne was laughing at her behind those wicked eyes; but she contented herself with whispering to Gertie, as they went downstairs, that Anne Shirley would put on more airs than ever now that she was going to college — you’d see!
All the “old crowd” was there, full of mirth and zest and youthful lightheartedness. Diana Barry, rosy and dimpled, shadowed by the faithful Fred; Jane Andrews, neat and sensible and plain; Ruby Gillis, looking her handsomest and brightest in a cream silk blouse, with red geraniums in her golden hair; Gilbert Blythe and Charlie Sloane, both trying to keep as near the elusive Anne as possible; Carrie Sloane, looking pale and melancholy because, so it was reported, her father would not allow Oliver Kimball to come near the place; Moody Spurgeon MacPherson, whose round face and objectionable ears were as round and objectionable as ever; and Billy Andrews, who sat in a corner all the evening, chuckled when any one spoke to him, and watched Anne Shirley with a grin of pleasure on his broad, freckled countenance.
Anne had known beforehand of the party, but she had not known that she and Gilbert were, as the founders of the Society, to be presented with a very complimentary “address” and “tokens of respect” — in her case a volume of Shakespeare’s plays, in Gilbert’s a fountain pen. She was so taken by surprise and pleased by the nice things said in the address, read in Moody Spurgeon’s most solemn and ministerial tones, that the tears quite drowned the sparkle of her big gray eyes. She had worked hard and faithfully for the A.V.I.S., and it warmed the cockles of her heart that the members appreciated her efforts so sincerely. And they were all so nice and friendly and jolly — even the Pye girls had their merits; at that moment Anne loved all the world.
She enjoyed the evening tremendously, but the end of it rather spoiled all. Gilbert again made the mistake of saying something sentimental to her as they ate their supper on the moonlit verandah; and Anne, to punish him, was gracious to Charlie Sloane and allowed the latter to walk home with her. She found, however, that revenge hurts nobody quite so much as the one who tries to inflict it. Gilbert walked airily off with Ruby Gillis, and Anne could hear them laughing and talking gaily as they loitered along in the still, crisp autumn air. They were evidently having the best of good times, while she was horribly bored by Charlie Sloane, who talked unbrokenly on, and never, even by accident, said one thing that was worth listening to. Anne gave an occasional absent “yes” or “no,” and thought how beautiful Ruby had looked that night, how very goggly Charlie’s eyes were in the moonlight — worse even than by daylight — and that the world, somehow, wasn’t quite such a nice place as she had believed it to be earlier in the evening.
“I’m just tired out — that is what is the matter with me,” she said, when she thankfully found herself alone in her own room. And she honestly believed it was. But a certain little gush of joy, as from some secret, unknown spring, bubbled up in her heart the next evening, when she saw Gilbert striding down through the Haunted Wood and crossing the old log bridge with that firm, quick step of his. So Gilbert was not going to spend this last evening with Ruby Gillis after all!
“You look tired, Anne,” he said.
“I am tired, and, worse than that, I’m disgruntled. I’m tired because I’ve been packing my trunk and sewing all day. But I’m disgruntled because six women have been here to say good-bye to me, and every one of the six managed to say something that seemed to take the color right out of life and leave it as gray and dismal and cheerless as a November morning.”
“Spiteful old cats!” was Gilbert’s elegant comment.
“Oh, no, they weren’t,” said Anne seriously. “That is just the trouble. If they had been spiteful cats I wouldn’t have minded them. But they are all nice, kind, motherly souls, who like me and whom I like, and that is why what they said, or hinted, had such undue weight with me. They let me see they thought I was crazy going to Redmond and trying to take a B.A., and ever since I’ve been wondering if
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