ANNE OF GREEN GABLES
Lucy Maud Montgomery
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I Mrs. Rachel Lynde Is Surprised
CHAPTER II Matthew Cuthbert Is Surprised
CHAPTER III Marilla Cuthbert Is Surprised
CHAPTER IV Morning at Green Gables
CHAPTER V Anne's History
CHAPTER VI Marilla Makes Up Her Mind
CHAPTER VII Anne Says Her Prayers
CHAPTER VIII Anne's Bringing-Up Is Begun
CHAPTER IX Mrs. Rachel Lynde Is Properly Horrified
CHAPTER X Anne's Apology
CHAPTER XI Anne's Impressions of Sunday School
CHAPTER XII A Solemn Vow and Promise
CHAPTER XIII The Delights of Anticipation
CHAPTER XIV Anne's Confession
CHAPTER XV A Tempest in the School Teapot
CHAPTER XVI Diana Is Invited to Tea with Tragic Results
CHAPTER XVII A New Interest in Life
CHAPTER XVIII Anne to the Rescue
CHAPTER XIX A Concert a Catastrophe and a Confession
CHAPTER XX A Good Imagination Gone Wrong
CHAPTER XXI A New Departure in Flavorings
CHAPTER XXII Anne is Invited Out to Tea
CHAPTER XXIII Anne Comes to Grief in an Affair of Honor
CHAPTER XXIV Miss Stacy and Her Pupils Get Up a Concert
CHAPTER XXV Matthew Insists on Puffed Sleeves
CHAPTER XXVI The Story Club Is Formed
CHAPTER XXVII Vanity and Vexation of Spirit
CHAPTER XXVIII An Unfortunate Lily Maid
CHAPTER XXIX An Epoch in Anne's Life
CHAPTER XXX The Queens Class Is Organized
CHAPTER XXXI Where the Brook and River Meet
CHAPTER XXXII The Pass List Is Out
CHAPTER XXXIII The Hotel Concert
CHAPTER XXXIV A Queen's Girl
CHAPTER XXXV The Winter at Queen's
CHAPTER XXXVI The Glory and the Dream
CHAPTER XXXVII The Reaper Whose Name Is Death
CHAPTER XXXVIII The Bend in the road
Anne of Green Gables
CHAPTER I
Mrs. Rachel Lynde is Surprised
Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main
road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders
and ladies' eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its
source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place;
it was reputed to be an
intricate,
headlong brook in its
earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of
pool and
cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde's
Hollow it was a quiet, well-conducted little
stream, for not
even a brook could run past Mrs. Rachel Lynde's door
without due regard for
decency and decorum; it probably
was
conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at her window,
keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks
and children up, and that if she noticed anything odd or
out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted
out the whys and wherefores thereof.
There are plenty of people in Avonlea and out of it,
who can attend closely to their neighbor's business by dint
of neglecting their own; but Mrs. Rachel Lynde was one of
those
capable creatures who can manage their own concerns
and those of other folks into the
bargain. She was a
notable
housewife; her work was always done and well done;
she "ran" the Sewing Circle, helped run the Sunday-school,
and was the strongest prop of the Church Aid Society and
Foreign Missions Auxiliary. Yet with all this Mrs. Rachel
found
abundant time to sit for hours at her kitchen window,
knitting "cotton warp" quilts--she had knitted sixteen of
them, as Avonlea housekeepers were wont to tell in awed
voices--and keeping a sharp eye on the main road that
crossed the hollow and wound up the steep red hill beyond.
Since Avonlea occupied a little
triangularpeninsula jutting
out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence with water on two sides of
it, anybody who went out of it or into it had to pass over
that hill road and so run the
unseen gauntlet of Mrs. Rachel's
all-seeing eye.
She was sitting there one afternoon in early June. The
sun was coming in at the window warm and bright; the
orchardon the slope below the house was in a
bridal flush of pinky-
white bloom, hummed over by a
myriad of bees. Thomas Lynde--
a meek little man whom Avonlea people called "Rachel
Lynde's husband"--was sowing his late
turnip seed on the
hill field beyond the barn; and Matthew Cuthbert ought to
have been sowing his on the big red brook field away over by
Green Gables. Mrs. Rachel knew that he ought because she
had heard him tell Peter Morrison the evening before in
William J. Blair's store over at Carmody that he meant to
sow his
turnip seed the next afternoon. Peter had asked him, of
course, for Matthew Cuthbert had never been known to
volunteer information about anything in his whole life.
And yet here was Matthew Cuthbert, at half-past three
on the afternoon of a busy day, placidly driving over the
hollow and up the hill;
moreover, he wore a white
collar and
his best suit of clothes, which was plain proof that he was
going out of Avonlea; and he had the buggy and the sorrel mare,
which betokened that he was going a
considerable distance.
Now, where was Matthew Cuthbert going and why was he going there?
Had it been any other man in Avonlea, Mrs. Rachel,
deftly putting this and that together, might have given a
pretty good guess as to both questions. But Matthew so
rarely went from home that it must be something pressing and
unusual which was
taking him; he was the shyest man alive
and hated to have to go among strangers or to any place
where he might have to talk. Matthew, dressed up with a
white
collar and driving in a buggy, was something that
didn't happen often. Mrs. Rachel,
ponder as she might,
could make nothing of it and her afternoon's
enjoyment was spoiled.
"I'll just step over to Green Gables after tea and find
out from Marilla where he's gone and why," the
worthy woman
finally concluded. "He doesn't generally go to town this
time of year and he NEVER visits; if he'd run out of
turnipseed he wouldn't dress up and take the buggy to go for more;
he wasn't driving fast enough to be going for a doctor. Yet
something must have happened since last night to start him
off. I'm clean puzzled, that's what, and I won't know a
minute's peace of mind or
conscience until I know what has
taken Matthew Cuthbert out of Avonlea today."
Accordingly after tea Mrs. Rachel set out; she had not
far to go; the big, rambling,
orchard-embowered house where
the Cuthberts lived was a scant quarter of a mile up the
road from Lynde's Hollow. To be sure, the long lane made it
a good deal further. Matthew Cuthbert's father, as shy and
silent as his son after him, had got as far away as he
possibly could from his fellow men without actually
retreating into the woods when he founded his homestead.
Green Gables was built at the furthest edge of his cleared
land and there it was to this day,
barelyvisible from the
main road along which all the other Avonlea houses were so
sociably
situated. Mrs. Rachel Lynde did not call living in
such a place LIVING at all.
"It's just STAYING, that's what," she said as she
stepped along the deep-rutted,
grassy lane bordered with
wild rose bushes. "It's no wonder Matthew and Marilla are
both a little odd, living away back here by themselves.
Trees aren't much company, though dear knows if they were
there'd be enough of them. I'd ruther look at people.
To be sure, they seem
contented enough; but then, I suppose,
they're used to it. A body can get used to anything, even to
being hanged, as the Irishman said."
With this Mrs. Rachel stepped out of the lane into the
backyard of Green Gables. Very green and neat and precise
was that yard, set about on one side with great patriarchal
willows and the other with prim Lombardies. Not a stray
stick nor stone was to be seen, for Mrs. Rachel would have
seen it if there had been. Privately she was of the opinion
that Marilla Cuthbert swept that yard over as often as she
swept her house. One could have eaten a meal off the ground
without overbrimming the proverbial peck of dirt.
Mrs. Rachel rapped smartly at the kitchen door and
stepped in when bidden to do so. The kitchen at Green
Gables was a
cheerful apartment--or would have been
cheerfulif it had not been so
painfully clean as to give it
something of the appearance of an
unusedparlor. Its
windows looked east and west; through the west one, looking
out on the back yard, came a flood of
mellow June sunlight;
but the east one,
whence you got a
glimpse of the bloom
white cherry-trees in the left
orchard and nodding, slender
birches down in the hollow by the brook, was greened over by
a
tangle of vines. Here sat Marilla Cuthbert, when she sat
at all, always
slightly distrustful of
sunshine, which
seemed to her too dancing and irresponsible a thing for a
world which was meant to be taken
seriously; and here she sat
now,
knitting, and the table behind her was laid for supper.
Mrs. Rachel, before she had fairly closed the door, had
taken a
mental note of everything that was on that table.
There were three plates laid, so that Marilla must be
expecting some one home with Matthew to tea; but the dishes
were
everyday dishes and there was only crab-apple preserves
and one kind of cake, so that the expected company could not
be any particular company. Yet what of Matthew's white
collarand the sorrel mare? Mrs. Rachel was getting fairly dizzy with
this
unusualmystery about quiet, unmysterious Green Gables.
"Good evening, Rachel," Marilla said
briskly. "This is
a real fine evening, isn't it" Won't you sit down? How are
all your folks?"
Something that for lack of any other name might be
called friendship existed and always had existed between
Marilla Cuthbert and Mrs. Rachel, in spite of--or perhaps
because of--their dissimilarity.
Marilla was a tall, thin woman, with angles and without
curves; her dark hair showed some gray streaks and was
always twisted up in a hard little knot behind with two wire
hairpins stuck aggressively through it. She looked like a
woman of narrow experience and rigid
conscience, which she
was; but there was a saving something about her mouth which,
if it had been ever so
slightly developed, might have been
considered
indicative of a sense of humor.
"We're all pretty well," said Mrs. Rachel. "I was kind
of afraid YOU weren't, though, when I saw Matthew starting
off today. I thought maybe he was going to the doctor's."
Marilla's lips twitched understandingly. She had
expected Mrs. Rachel up; she had known that the sight of
Matthew jaunting off so unaccountably would be too much for
her neighbor's curiosity.
"Oh, no, I'm quite well although I had a bad headache
yesterday," she said. "Matthew went to Bright River. We're
getting a little boy from an
orphanasylum in Nova Scotia
and he's coming on the train tonight."
If Marilla had said that Matthew had gone to Bright River to