"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
romanticexperience 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 un
romantic; 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
writingtake-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
actuallywent and put her milk bottle in my place in the brook
yesterday.
Did you ever? I don't speak to her now."