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"Oh, Marilla, I've had a most FASCINATING time. I feel that I
have not lived in vain and I shall always feel like that even if

I should never be invited to tea at a manse again. When I got
there Mrs. Allan met me at the door. She was dressed in the

sweetest dress of pale-pink organdy, with dozens of frills and
elbow sleeves, and she looked just like a seraph. I really think

I'd like to be a minister's wife when I grow up, Marilla. A
minister mightn't mind my red hair because he wouldn't be

thinking of such worldly things. But then of course one would
have to be naturally good and I'll never be that, so I suppose

there's no use in thinking about it. Some people are naturally
good, you know, and others are not. I'm one of the others. Mrs.

Lynde says I'm full of original sin. No matter how hard I try to
be good I can never make such a success of it as those who are

naturally good. It's a good deal like geometry, I expect. But
don't you think the trying so hard ought to count for something?

Mrs. Allan is one of the naturally good people. I love her
passionately. You know there are some people, like Matthew and

Mrs. Allan that you can love right off without any trouble. And
there are others, like Mrs. Lynde, that you have to try very

hard to love. You know you OUGHT to love them because they know
so much and are such active workers in the church, but you have

to keep reminding yourself of it all the time or else you forget.
There was another little girl at the manse to tea, from the White

Sands Sunday school. Her name was Laurette Bradley, and she was
a very nice little girl. Not exactly a kindred spirit, you know,

but still very nice. We had an elegant tea, and I think I kept
all the rules of etiquette pretty well. After tea Mrs. Allan

played and sang and she got Lauretta and me to sing too. Mrs.
Allan says I have a good voice and she says I must sing in the

Sunday-school choir after this. You can't think how I was
thrilled at the mere thought. I've longed so to sing in the

Sunday-school choir, as Diana does, but I feared it was an honor
I could never aspire to. Lauretta had to go home early because

there is a big concert in the White Sands Hotel tonight and her
sister is to recite at it. Lauretta says that the Americans at

the hotel give a concert every fortnight in aid of the
Charlottetown hospital, and they ask lots of the White Sands

people to recite. Lauretta said she expected to be asked
herself someday. I just gazed at her in awe. After she had

gone Mrs. Allan and I had a heart-to-heart talk. I told her
everything--about Mrs. Thomas and the twins and Katie Maurice

and Violetta and coming to Green Gables and my troubles over
geometry. And would you believe it, Marilla? Mrs. Allan told me

she was a dunce at geometry too. You don't know how that
encouraged me. Mrs. Lynde came to the manse just before I left,

and what do you think, Marilla? The trustees have hired a new
teacher and it's a lady. Her name is Miss Muriel Stacy. Isn't

that a romantic name? Mrs. Lynde says they've never had a female
teacher in Avonlea before and she thinks it is a dangerous

innovation. But I think it will be splendid to have a lady
teacher, and I really don't see how I'm going to live through the

two weeks before school begins. I'm so impatient to see her."
CHAPTER XXIII

Anne Comes to Grief in an Affair of Honor
Anne had to live through more than two weeks, as it happened.

Almost a month having elapsed since the liniment cake episode,
it was high time for her to get into fresh trouble of some sort,

little mistakes, such as absentmindedly emptying a pan of skim
milk into a basket of yarn balls in the pantry instead of into

the pigs' bucket, and walking clean over the edge of the log
bridge into the brook while wrapped in imaginative reverie, not

really being worth counting.
A week after the tea at the manse Diana Barry gave a party.

"Small and select," Anne assured Marilla. "Just the girls in our class."
They had a very good time and nothing untoward happened until after tea,

when they found themselves in the Barry garden, a little tired of all
their games and ripe for any enticing form of mischief which might

present itself. This presently took the form of "daring."
Daring was the fashionableamusement among the Avonlea small fry

just then. It had begun among the boys, but soon spread to the girls,
and all the silly things that were done in Avonlea that summer because

the doers thereof were "dared" to do them would fill a book by themselves.
First of all Carrie Sloane dared Ruby Gillis to climb to a

certain point in the huge old willow tree before the front door;
which Ruby Gillis, albeit in mortal dread of the fat green

caterpillars with which said tree was infested and with the fear
of her mother before her eyes if she should tear her new muslin

dress, nimbly did, to the discomfiture of the aforesaid Carrie Sloane.
Then Josie Pye dared Jane Andrews to hop on her left leg around

the garden without stopping once or putting her right foot to the
ground; which Jane Andrews gamely tried to do, but gave out at

the third corner and had to confess herself defeated.
Josie's triumph being rather more pronounced than good taste

permitted, Anne Shirley dared her to walk along the top of the
board fence which bounded the garden to the east. Now, to "walk"

board fences requires more skill and steadiness of head and heel
than one might suppose who has never tried it. But Josie Pye, if

deficient in some qualities that make for popularity, had at
least a natural and inborn gift, duly cultivated, for walking

board fences. Josie walked the Barry fence with an airy
unconcern which seemed to imply that a little thing like that

wasn't worth a "dare." Reluctant admiration greeted her exploit,
for most of the other girls could appreciate it, having suffered

many things themselves in their efforts to walk fences. Josie
descended from her perch, flushed with victory, and darted a

defiant glance at Anne.
Anne tossed her red braids.

"I don't think it's such a very wonderful thing to walk a little,
low, board fence," she said. "I knew a girl in Marysville who

could walk the ridgepole of a roof."
"I don't believe it," said Josie flatly. "I don't believe

anybody could walk a ridgepole. YOU couldn't, anyhow."
"Couldn't I?" cried Anne rashly.

"Then I dare you to do it," said Josie defiantly. "I dare you to
climb up there and walk the ridgepole of Mr. Barry's kitchen roof."

Anne turned pale, but there was clearly only one thing to be done.
She walked toward the house, where a ladder was leaning against the

kitchen roof. All the fifth-class girls said, "Oh!" partly in
excitement, partly in dismay.

"Don't you do it, Anne," entreated Diana. "You'll fall off
and be killed. Never mind Josie Pye. It isn't fair to dare

anybody to do anything so dangerous."
"I must do it. My honor is at stake," said Anne solemnly.

"I shall walk that ridgepole, Diana, or perish in the attempt.
If I am killed you are to have my pearl bead ring."

Anne climbed the ladder amid breathless silence, gained the
ridgepole, balanced herself uprightly on that precarious footing,

and started to walk along it, dizzily conscious that she was
uncomfortably high up in the world and that walking ridgepoles

was not a thing in which your imagination helped you out much.
Nevertheless, she managed to take several steps before the

catastrophe came. Then she swayed, lost her balance, stumbled,
staggered, and fell, sliding down over the sun-baked roof and

crashing off it through the tangle of Virginia creeper beneath--
all before the dismayed circle below could give a simultaneous,

terrified shriek.
If Anne had tumbled off the roof on the side up which she had

ascended Diana would probably have fallen heir to the pearl bead
ring then and there. Fortunately she fell on the other side,

where the roof extended down over the porch so nearly to the
ground that a fall therefrom was a much less serious thing.

Nevertheless, when Diana and the other girls had rushed frantically
around the house--except Ruby Gillis, who remained as if rooted to

the ground and went into hysterics--they found Anne lying all white
and limp among the wreck and ruin of the Virginia creeper.

"Anne, are you killed?" shrieked Diana, throwing herself on her
knees beside her friend. "Oh, Anne, dear Anne, speak just one

word to me and tell me if you're killed."
To the immenserelief of all the girls, and especially of Josie Pye,

who, in spite of lack of imagination, had been seized with horrible
visions of a future branded as the girl who was the cause of Anne Shirley's

early and tragic death, Anne sat dizzily up and answered uncertainly:
"No, Diana, I am not killed, but I think I am rendered unconscious."

"Where?" sobbed Carrie Sloane. "Oh, where, Anne?" Before Anne
could answer Mrs. Barry appeared on the scene. At sight of her

Anne tried to scramble to her feet, but sank back again with a
sharp little cry of pain.

"What's the matter? Where have you hurt yourself?" demanded Mrs. Barry.
"My ankle," gasped Anne. "Oh, Diana, please find your father and

ask him to take me home. I know I can never walk there. And I'm
sure I couldn't hop so far on one foot when Jane couldn't even hop

around the garden."
Marilla was out in the orchard picking a panful of summer apples

when she saw Mr. Barry coming over the log bridge and up the
slope, with Mrs. Barry beside him and a whole procession of

little girls trailing after him. In his arms he carried Anne,
whose head lay limply against his shoulder.

At that moment Marilla had a revelation. In the sudden stab of
fear that pierced her very heart she realized what Anne had come

to mean to her. She would have admitted that she liked Anne--nay,
that she was very fond of Anne. But now she knew as she hurried

wildly down the slope that Anne was dearer to her than anything
else on earth.

"Mr. Barry, what has happened to her?" she gasped, more white and shaken
than the self-contained, sensible Marilla had been for many years.

Anne herself answered, lifting her head.
"Don't be very frightened, Marilla. I was walking the ridgepole and

I fell off. I expect I have sprained my ankle. But, Marilla, I might
have broken my neck. Let us look on the bright side of things."

"I might have known you'd go and do something of the sort when I
let you go to that party," said Marilla, sharp and shrewish in

her very relief. "Bring her in here, Mr. Barry, and lay her on
the sofa. Mercy me, the child has gone and fainted!"

It was quite true. Overcome by the pain of her injury, Anne had
one more of her wishes granted to her. She had fainted dead away.

Matthew, hastily summoned from the harvest field, was straightway
dispatched for the doctor, who in due time came, to discover that

the injury was more serious than they had supposed. Anne's ankle
was broken.

That night, when Marilla went up to the east gable, where a white-faced
girl was lying, a plaintive voice greeted her from the bed.

"Aren't you very sorry for me, Marilla?"
"It was your own fault," said Marilla, twitching down the blind

and lighting a lamp.
"And that is just why you should be sorry for me," said Anne,

"because the thought that it is all my own fault is what makes it
so hard. If I could blame it on anybody I would feel so much

better. But what would you have done, Marilla, if you had been
dared to walk a ridgepole?"

"I'd have stayed on good firm ground and let them dare away.
Such absurdity!" said Marilla.

Anne sighed.
"But you have such strength of mind, Marilla. I haven't. I just

felt that I couldn't bear Josie Pye's scorn. She would have
crowed over me all my life. And I think I have been punished so

much that you needn't be very cross with me, Marilla. It's not a
bit nice to faint, after all. And the doctor hurt me dreadfully

when he was setting my ankle. I won't be able to go around for
six or seven weeks and I'll miss the new lady teacher. She won't

be new any more by the time I'm able to go to school. And Gil--


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