made the child cry. "I don't want to send you back to the
asylum, I'm sure. All I want is that you should
behave like
other little girls and not make yourself
ridiculous. Don't
cry any more. I've got some news for you. Diana Barry came
home this afternoon. I'm 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."
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.
"Oh, Marilla, I'm frightened--now that it has come I'm
actually frightened. What if she shouldn't like me! It
would be the most tragical
disappointment of my life."
"Now, don't get into a fluster. And I do wish you wouldn't
use such long words. It sounds so funny in a little girl.
I guess Diana'll like you well enough. It's her mother
you've got to
reckon with. If she doesn't like you it won't
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 don't know what she'll think of you. You
must be
polite and well
behaved, and don't make any of your
startling speeches. For pity's sake, if the child isn't
actually trembling!"
Anne WAS trembling. Her face was pale and tense.
"Oh, Marilla, you'd be excited, too, if you were going to
meet a little girl you hoped to be your bosom friend and
whose mother mightn't like you," 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 Marilla's 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.
"How do you do, Marilla?" she said
cordially. "Come in.
And this is the little girl you have adopted, I suppose?"
"Yes, this is Anne Shirley," said Marilla.
"Spelled with an E," 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:
"How are you?"
"I am well in body although
considerable rumpled up in
spirit, thank you ma'am," said Anne
gravely. Then aside
to Marilla in an
audiblewhisper, "There wasn't anything
startling in that, was there, Marilla?"
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 mother's black eyes and hair, and
rosy cheeks, and the merry expression which was her
inheritance from her father.
"This is my little girl Diana," said Mrs. Barry. "Diana,
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 much--" this
to Marilla as the little girls went out--"and I can't prevent
her, for her father aids and abets her. She's always poring
over a book. I'm glad she has the
prospect of a playmate--
perhaps it will take her more out-of-doors."
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 Anne's 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.
"Oh, Diana," said Anne at last, clasping her hands and
speaking almost in a
whisper, "oh, do you think you can
like me a little--enough to be my bosom friend?"
Diana laughed. Diana always laughed before she spoke.
"Why, I guess so," she said
frankly. "I'm
awfully glad you've
come to live at Green Gables. It will be jolly to have somebody
to play with. There isn't any other girl who lives near enough
to play with, and I've no sisters big enough."
"Will you swear to be my friend forever and ever?" demanded
Anne
eagerly.
Diana looked shocked.
"Why it's
dreadfullywicked to swear," she said rebukingly.
"Oh no, not my kind of swearing. There are two kinds, you know."
"I never heard of but one kind," said Diana doubtfully.
"There really is another. Oh, it isn't
wicked at all. It
just means vowing and
promisingsolemnly."
"Well, I don't mind doing that," agreed Diana, relieved.
"How do you do it?"
"We must join hands--so," said Anne
gravely. "It ought
to be over
running water. We'll just imagine this path is
running water. I'll repeat the oath first. I
solemnly swear
to be
faithful to my bosom friend, Diana Barry, as long as the
sun and moon shall
endure. Now you say it and put my name in."
Diana
repeated the "oath" with a laugh fore and aft. Then
she said:
"You're a queer girl, Anne. I heard before that you were
queer. But I believe I'm going to like you real well."
When Marilla and Anne went home Diana went with them as
for as the log
bridge. The two little girls walked with
their arms about each other. At the brook they parted with
many promises to spend the next afternoon together.
"Well, did you find Diana a
kindred spirit?" asked Marilla
as they went up through the garden of Green Gables.
"Oh yes," sighed Anne, blissfully
unconscious of any
sarcasm on Marilla's part. "Oh Marilla, I'm the happiest
girl on Prince Edward Island this very moment. I assure
you I'll say my prayers with a right good-will tonight.
Diana and I are going to build a playhouse in Mr. William
Bell's birch grove tomorrow. Can I have those broken
pieces of china that are out in the woodshed? Diana's
birthday is in February and mine is in March. Don't you
think that is a very strange
coincidence? Diana is
going to lend me a book to read. She says it's
perfectlysplendid and
tremendously exciting. She's going to show me
a place back in the woods where rice lilies grow. Don't
you think Diana has got very soulful eyes? I wish I had
soulful eyes. Diana is going to teach me to sing a song
called `Nelly in the Hazel Dell.' She's going to give me
a picture to put up in my room; it's a
perfectly beautiful
picture, she says--a lovely lady in a pale blue silk dress.
A sewing-machine agent gave it to her. I wish I had something
to give Diana. I'm an inch taller than Diana, but she is ever
so much fatter; she says she'd like to be thin because it's so
much more
graceful, but I'm afraid she only said it to
soothe my
feelings. We're going to the shore some day to gather shells.
We have agreed to call the spring down by the log
bridge the
Dryad's Bubble. Isn't that a
perfectlyelegant name? I read a
story once about a spring called that. A dryad is sort of a
grown-up fairy, I think."
"Well, all I hope is you won't talk Diana to death," said
Marilla. "But remember this in all your planning, Anne.
You're not going to play all the time nor most of it. You'll
have your work to do and it'll have to be done first."
Anne's cup of happiness was full, and Matthew caused it
to
overflow. He had just got home from a trip to the store
at Carmody, and he sheepishly produced a small parcel
from his pocket and handed it to Anne, with a deprecatory
look at Marilla.
"I heard you say you liked chocolate sweeties, so I got
you some," he said.
"Humph," sniffed Marilla. "It'll ruin her teeth and stomach.
There, there, child, don't look so
dismal. You can eat
those, since Matthew has gone and got them. He'd better
have brought you peppermints. They're wholesomer. Don't
sicken yourself eating all them at once now."
"Oh, no, indeed, I won't," said Anne
eagerly. "I'll just
eat one tonight, Marilla. And I can give Diana half of
them, can't I? The other half will taste twice as sweet to
me if I give some to her. It's
delightful to think I have
something to give her."
"I will say it for the child," said Marilla when Anne had
gone to her gable, "she isn't stingy. I'm glad, for of all
faults I
detest stinginess in a child. Dear me, it's only
three weeks since she came, and it seems as if she'd been
here always. I can't imagine the place without her. Now,
don't be looking I told-you-so, Matthew. That's bad enough
in a woman, but it isn't to be
endured in a man. I'm
perfectlywilling to own up that I'm glad I consented to keep
the child and that I'm getting fond of her, but don't you
rub it in, Matthew Cuthbert."
CHAPTER XIII
The Delights of Anticipation
"It's time Anne was in to do her sewing," said Marilla, glancing
at the clock and then out into the yellow August afternoon where
everything drowsed in the heat. "She stayed playing with Diana
more than half an hour more'n I gave her leave to; and now she's
perched out there on the woodpile talking to Matthew, nineteen to
the dozen, when she knows
perfectly well she ought to be at her
work. And of course he's listening to her like a perfect ninny.
I never saw such an infatuated man. The more she talks and the
odder the things she says, the more he's
delighted evidently.
Anne Shirley, you come right in here this minute, do you hear me!"
A
series of staccato taps on the west window brought Anne flying
in from the yard, eyes shining, cheeks
faintly flushed with pink,
unbraided hair streaming behind her in a
torrent of brightness.
"Oh, Marilla," she exclaimed
breathlessly, "there's going to be a
Sunday-school
picnic next week--in Mr. Harmon Andrews's field,
right near the lake of Shining Waters. And Mrs. Superintendent
Bell and Mrs. Rachel Lynde are going to make ice cream--think of
it, Marilla--ICE CREAM! And, oh, Marilla, can I go to it?"
"Just look at the clock, if you please, Anne. What time did I
tell you to come in?"
"Two o'clock--but isn't it splendid about the
picnic, Marilla?
Please can I go? Oh, I've never been to a
picnic--I've dreamed of
picnics, but I've never--"
"Yes, I told you to come at two o'clock. And it's a quarter to
three. I'd like to know why you didn't obey me, Anne."
"Why, I meant to, Marilla, as much as could be. But you have no
idea how
fascinating Idlewild is. And then, of course, I had to
tell Matthew about the
picnic. Matthew is such a
sympathetic