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"Oh, Marilla, I've had a perfectly scrumptious time. Scrumptious
is a new word I learned today. I heard Mary Alice Bell use it.

Isn't it very expressive? Everything was lovely. We had a
splendid tea and then Mr. Harmon Andrews took us all for a row

on the Lake of Shining Waters--six of us at a time. And Jane
Andrews nearly fell overboard. She was leaning out to pick water

lilies and if Mr. Andrews hadn't caught her by her sash just
in the nick of time she'd fallen in and prob'ly been drowned.

I wish it had been me. It would have been such a romantic
experience to have been nearly drowned. It would be such a

thrilling tale to tell. And we had the ice cream. Words fail me
to describe that ice cream. Marilla, I assure you it was sublime."

That evening Marilla told the whole story to Matthew over her
stocking basket.

"I'm willing to own up that I made a mistake," she concluded
candidly, "but I've learned a lesson. I have to laugh when I

think of Anne's `confession,' although I suppose I shouldn't for
it really was a falsehood. But it doesn't seem as bad as the

other would have been, somehow, and anyhow I'm responsible for
it. That child is hard to understand in some respects. But I

believe she'll turn out all right yet. And there's one thing
certain, no house will ever be dull that she's in."

CHAPTER XV
A Tempest in the School Teapot

"What a splendid day!" said Anne, drawing a long breath. "Isn't
it good just to be alive on a day like this? I pity the people

who aren't born yet for missing it. They may have good days, of
course, but they can never have this one. And it's splendider

still to have such a lovely way to go to school by, isn't it?"
"It's a lot nicer than going round by the road; that is so dusty

and hot," said Diana practically, peeping into her dinner basket
and mentally calculating if the three juicy, toothsome, raspberry

tarts reposing there were divided among ten girls how many bites
each girl would have.

The little girls of Avonlea school always pooled their lunches,
and to eat three raspberry tarts all alone or even to share them

only with one's best chum would have forever and ever branded as
"awful mean" the girl who did it. And yet, when the tarts were

divided among ten girls you just got enough to tantalize you.
The way Anne and Diana went to school WAS a pretty one. Anne

thought those walks to and from school with Diana couldn't be
improved upon even by imagination. Going around by the main road

would have been so unromantic; but to go by Lover's Lane and
Willowmere and Violet Vale and the Birch Path was romantic, if

ever anything was.
Lover's Lane opened out below the orchard at Green Gables and

stretched far up into the woods to the end of the Cuthbert farm.
It was the way by which the cows were taken to the back pasture

and the wood hauled home in winter. Anne had named it Lover's
Lane before she had been a month at Green Gables.

"Not that lovers ever really walk there," she explained to Marilla,
"but Diana and I are reading a perfectlymagnificent book and there's

a Lover's Lane in it. So we want to have one, too. And it's a very
pretty name, don't you think? So romantic! We can't imagine the

lovers into it, you know. I like that lane because you can think
out loud there without people calling you crazy."

Anne, starting out alone in the morning, went down Lover's Lane
as far as the brook. Here Diana met her, and the two little

girls went on up the lane under the leafy arch of maples--"maples
are such sociable trees," said Anne; "they're always rustling and

whispering to you"--until they came to a rusticbridge. Then
they left the lane and walked through Mr. Barry's back field and

past Willowmere. Beyond Willowmere came Violet Vale--a little
green dimple in the shadow of Mr. Andrew Bell's big woods. "Of

course there are no violets there now," Anne told Marilla, "but
Diana says there are millions of them in spring. Oh, Marilla,

can't you just imagine you see them? It actually takes away my
breath. I named it Violet Vale. Diana says she never saw the

beat of me for hitting on fancy names for places. It's nice to
be clever at something, isn't it? But Diana named the Birch

Path. She wanted to, so I let her; but I'm sure I could have
found something more poetical than plain Birch Path. Anybody can

think of a name like that. But the Birch Path is one of the
prettiest places in the world, Marilla."

It was. Other people besides Anne thought so when they stumbled
on it. It was a little narrow, twisting path, winding down over

a long hill straight through Mr. Bell's woods, where the light
came down sifted through so many emerald screens that it was as

flawless as the heart of a diamond. It was fringed in all its
length with slim young birches, white stemmed and lissom boughed;

ferns and starflowers and wild lilies-of-the-valley and scarlet
tufts of pigeonberries grew thickly along it; and always there

was a delightful spiciness in the air and music of bird calls and
the murmur and laugh of wood winds in the trees overhead. Now

and then you might see a rabbit skipping across the road if you
were quiet--which, with Anne and Diana, happened about once in a

blue moon. Down in the valley the path came out to the main road
and then it was just up the spruce hill to the school.

The Avonlea school was a whitewashed building, low in the eaves
and wide in the windows, furnished inside with comfortable

substantial old-fashioned desks that opened and shut, and were
carved all over their lids with the initials and hieroglyphics of

three generations of school children. The schoolhouse was set
back from the road and behind it was a dusky fir wood and a brook

where all the children put their bottles of milk in the morning
to keep cool and sweet until dinner hour.

Marilla had seen Anne start off to school on the first day of
September with many secret misgivings. Anne was such an odd girl.

How would she get on with the other children? And how on earth
would she ever manage to hold her tongue during school hours?

Things went better than Marilla feared, however. Anne came home
that evening in high spirits.

"I think I'm going to like school here," she announced. "I don't
think much of the master, through. He's all the time curling his

mustache and making eyes at Prissy Andrews. Prissy is grown up,
you know. She's sixteen and she's studying for the entrance

examination into Queen's Academy at Charlottetown next year.
Tillie Boulter says the master is DEAD GONE on her. She's got a

beautiful complexion and curly brown hair and she does it up so
elegantly. She sits in the long seat at the back and he sits

there, too, most of the time--to explain her lessons, he says.
But Ruby Gillis says she saw him writing something on her slate

and when Prissy read it she blushed as red as a beet and giggled;
and Ruby Gillis says she doesn't believe it had anything to do

with the lesson."
"Anne Shirley, don't let me hear you talking about your teacher

in that way again," said Marilla sharply. "You don't go to school
to criticize the master. I guess he can teach YOU something,

and it's your business to learn. And I want you to understand
right off that you are not to come home telling tales about him.

That is something I won't encourage. I hope you were a good girl."
"Indeed I was," said Anne comfortably. "It wasn't so hard as you

might imagine, either. I sit with Diana. Our seat is right by
the window and we can look down to the Lake of Shining Waters.

There are a lot of nice girls in school and we had scrumptious
fun playing at dinnertime. It's so nice to have a lot of little

girls to play with. But of course I like Diana best and always
will. I ADORE Diana. I'm dreadfully far behind the others.

They're all in the fifth book and I'm only in the fourth. I feel
that it's kind of a disgrace. But there's not one of them has

such an imagination as I have and I soon found that out. We had
reading and geography and Canadian history and dictation today.

Mr. Phillips said my spelling was disgraceful and he held up my
slate so that everybody could see it, all marked over. I felt so

mortified, Marilla; he might have been politer to a stranger, I
think. Ruby Gillis gave me an apple and Sophia Sloane lent me a

lovely pink card with `May I see you home?' on it. I'm to give
it back to her tomorrow. And Tillie Boulter let me wear her bead

ring all the afternoon. Can I have some of those pearl beads off
the old pincushion in the garret to make myself a ring? And oh,

Marilla, Jane Andrews told me that Minnie MacPherson told her
that she heard Prissy Andrews tell Sara Gillis that I had a very

pretty nose. Marilla, that is the first compliment I have ever
had in my life and you can't imagine what a strange feeling it

gave me. Marilla, have I really a pretty nose? I know you'll
tell me the truth."

"Your nose is well enough," said Marilla shortly. Secretly she
thought Anne's nose was a remarkable pretty one; but she had no

intention of telling her so.
That was three weeks ago and all had gone smoothly so far. And now,

this crisp September morning, Anne and Diana were tripping blithely
down the Birch Path, two of the happiest little girls in Avonlea.

"I guess Gilbert Blythe will be in school today," said Diana.
"He's been visiting his cousins over in New Brunswick all summer

and he only came home Saturday night. He's AW'FLY handsome, Anne.
And he teases the girls something terrible. He just torments our

lives out."
Diana's voice indicated that she rather liked having her life

tormented out than not.
"Gilbert Blythe?" said Anne. "Isn't his name that's written up on

the porch wall with Julia Bell's and a big `Take Notice' over them?"
"Yes," said Diana, tossing her head, "but I'm sure he doesn't

like Julia Bell so very much. I've heard him say he studied the
multiplication table by her freckles."

"Oh, don't speak about freckles to me," implored Anne. "It isn't
delicate when I've got so many. But I do think that writing

take-notices up on the wall about the boys and girls is the
silliest ever. I should just like to see anybody dare to write

my name up with a boy's. Not, of course," she hastened to add,
"that anybody would."

Anne sighed. She didn't want her name written up. But it was a
little humiliating to know that there was no danger of it.

"Nonsense," said Diana, whose black eyes and glossy tresses had
played such havoc with the hearts of Avonlea schoolboys that her

name figured on the porch walls in half a dozen take-notices.
"It's only meant as a joke. And don't you be too sure your name

won't ever be written up. Charlie Sloane is DEAD GONE on you.
He told his mother--his MOTHER, mind you--that you were the

smartest girl in school. That's better than being good looking."
"No, it isn't," said Anne, feminine to the core. "I'd rather be

pretty than clever. And I hate Charlie Sloane, I can't bear a boy
with goggle eyes. If anyone wrote my name up with his I'd never GET

over it, Diana Barry. But it IS nice to keep head of your class."
"You'll have Gilbert in your class after this," said Diana, "and

he's used to being head of his class, I can tell you. He's only
in the fourth book although he's nearly fourteen. Four years ago

his father was sick and had to go out to Alberta for his health
and Gilbert went with him. They were there three years and Gil

didn't go to school hardly any until they came back. You won't
find it so easy to keep head after this, Anne."

"I'm glad," said Anne quickly. "I couldn't really feel proud of
keeping head of little boys and girls of just nine or ten. I got

up yesterdayspelling `ebullition.' Josie Pye was head and, mind
you, she peeped in her book. Mr. Phillips didn't see her--he

was looking at Prissy Andrews--but I did. I just swept her a
look of freezing scorn and she got as red as a beet and spelled

it wrong after all."
"Those Pye girls are cheats all round," said Diana indignantly,

as they climbed the fence of the main road. "Gertie Pye actually
went and put her milk bottle in my place in the brook yesterday.

Did you ever? I don't speak to her now."


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