The Classic Children's Literature Collection: 39 Classic Novels

by Various Authors

  “That’s my little mother,” said Paul with loving pride. “I got Grandma to hang it there where I’d see it as soon as I opened my eyes in the morning. I never mind not having the light when I go to bed now, because it just seems as if my little mother was right here with me. Father knew just what I would like for a birthday present, although he never asked me. Isn’t it wonderful how much fathers DO know?”

  “Your mother was very lovely, Paul, and you look a little like her. But her eyes and hair are darker than yours.”

  “My eyes are the same color as father’s,” said Paul, flying about the room to heap all available cushions on the window seat, “but father’s hair is gray. He has lots of it, but it is gray. You see, father is nearly fifty. That’s ripe old age, isn’t it? But it’s only OUTSIDE he’s old. INSIDE he’s just as young as anybody. Now, teacher, please sit here; and I’ll sit at your feet. May I lay my head against your knee? That’s the way my little mother and I used to sit. Oh, this is real splendid, I think.”

  “Now, I want to hear those thoughts which Mary Joe pronounces so queer,” said Anne, patting the mop of curls at her side. Paul never needed any coaxing to tell his thoughts . . . at least, to congenial souls.

  “I thought them out in the fir grove one night,” he said dreamily. “Of course I didn’t BELIEVE them but I THOUGHT them. YOU know, teacher. And then I wanted to tell them to somebody and there was nobody but Mary Joe. Mary Joe was in the pantry setting bread and I sat down on the bench beside her and I said, ‘Mary Joe, do you know what I think? I think the evening star is a lighthouse on the land where the fairies dwell.’ And Mary Joe said, ‘Well, yous are de queer one. Dare ain’t no such ting as fairies.’ I was very much provoked. Of course, I knew there are no fairies; but that needn’t prevent my thinking there is. You know, teacher. But I tried again quite patiently. I said, ‘Well then, Mary Joe, do you know what I think? I think an angel walks over the world after the sun sets . . . a great, tall, white angel, with silvery folded wings . . . and sings the flowers and birds to sleep. Children can hear him if they know how to listen.’ Then Mary Joe held up her hands all over flour and said, ‘Well, yous are de queer leetle boy. Yous make me feel scare.’ And she really did looked scared. I went out then and whispered the rest of my thoughts to the garden. There was a little birch tree in the garden and it died. Grandma says the salt spray killed it; but I think the dryad belonging to it was a foolish dryad who wandered away to see the world and got lost. And the little tree was so lonely it died of a broken heart.”

  “And when the poor, foolish little dryad gets tired of the world and comes back to her tree HER heart will break,” said Anne.

  “Yes; but if dryads are foolish they must take the consequences, just as if they were real people,” said Paul gravely. “Do you know what I think about the new moon, teacher? I think it is a little golden boat full of dreams.”

  “And when it tips on a cloud some of them spill out and fall into your sleep.”

  “Exactly, teacher. Oh, you DO know. And I think the violets are little snips of the sky that fell down when the angels cut out holes for the stars to shine through. And the buttercups are made out of old sunshine; and I think the sweet peas will be butterflies when they go to heaven. Now, teacher, do you see anything so very queer about those thoughts?”

  “No, laddie dear, they are not queer at all; they are strange and beautiful thoughts for a little boy to think, and so people who couldn’t think anything of the sort themselves, if they tried for a hundred years, think them queer. But keep on thinking them, Paul . . . some day you are going to be a poet, I believe.”

  When Anne reached home she found a very different type of boyhood waiting to be put to bed. Davy was sulky; and when Anne had undressed him he bounced into bed and buried his face in the pillow.

  “Davy, you have forgotten to say your prayers,” said Anne rebukingly.

  “No, I didn’t forget,” said Davy defiantly, “but I ain’t going to say my prayers any more. I’m going to give up trying to be good, ‘cause no matter how good I am you’d like Paul Irving better. So I might as well be bad and have the fun of it.”

  “I don’t like Paul Irving BETTER,” said Anne seriously. “I like you just as well, only in a different way.”

  “But I want you to like me the same way,” pouted Davy.

  “You can’t like different people the same way. You don’t like Dora and me the same way, do you?”

  Davy sat up and reflected.

  “No . . . o . . . o,” he admitted at last, “I like Dora because she’s my sister but I like you because you’re YOU.”

  “And I like Paul because he is Paul and Davy because he is Davy,” said Anne gaily.

  “Well, I kind of wish I’d said my prayers then,” said Davy, convinced by this logic. “But it’s too much bother getting out now to say them. I’ll say them twice over in the morning, Anne. Won’t that do as well?”

  No, Anne was positive it would not do as well. So Davy scrambled out and knelt down at her knee. When he had finished his devotions he leaned back on his little, bare, brown heels and looked up at her.

  “Anne, I’m gooder than I used to be.”

  “Yes, indeed you are, Davy,” said Anne, who never hesitated to give credit where credit was due.

  “I KNOW I’m gooder,” said Davy confidently, “and I’ll tell you how I know it. Today Marilla give me two pieces of bread and jam, one for me and one for Dora. One was a good deal bigger than the other and Marilla didn’t say which was mine. But I give the biggest piece to Dora. That was good of me, wasn’t it?”

  “Very good, and very manly, Davy.”

  “Of course,” admitted Davy, “Dora wasn’t very hungry and she only et half her slice and then she give the rest to me. But I didn’t know she was going to do that when I give it to her, so I WAS good, Anne.”

  In the twilight Anne sauntered down to the Dryad’s Bubble and saw Gilbert Blythe coming down through the dusky Haunted Wood. She had a sudden realization that Gilbert was a schoolboy no longer. And how manly he looked—the tall, frank-faced fellow, with the clear, straightforward eyes and the broad shoulders. Anne thought Gilbert was a very handsome lad, even though he didn’t look at all like her ideal man. She and Diana had long ago decided what kind of a man they admired and their tastes seemed exactly similar. He must be very tall and distinguished looking, with melancholy, inscrutable eyes, and a melting, sympathetic voice. There was nothing either melancholy or inscrutable in Gilbert’s physiognomy, but of course that didn’t matter in friendship!

  Gilbert stretched himself out on the ferns beside the Bubble and looked approvingly at Anne. If Gilbert had been asked to describe his ideal woman the description would have answered point for point to Anne, even to those seven tiny freckles whose obnoxious presence still continued to vex her soul. Gilbert was as yet little more than a boy; but a boy has his dreams as have others, and in Gilbert’s future there was always a girl with big, limpid gray eyes, and a face as fine and delicate as a flower. He had made up his mind, also, that his future must be worthy of its goddess. Even in quiet Avonlea there were temptations to be met and faced. White Sands youth were a rather “fast” set, and Gilbert was popular wherever he went. But he meant to keep himself worthy of Anne’s friendship and perhaps some distant day her love; and he watched over word and thought and deed as jealously as if her clear eyes were to pass in judgment on it. She held over him the unconscious influence that every girl, whose ideals are high and pure, wields over her friends; an influence which would endure as long as she was faithful to those ideals and which she would as certainly lose if she were ever false to them. In Gilbert’s eyes Anne’s greatest charm was the fact that she never stooped to the petty practices of so many of the Avonlea girls—the small jealousies, the little deceits and rivalries, the palpable bids for favor. Anne held herself apart from all this, not consciously or of design, but simply b
ecause anything of the sort was utterly foreign to her transparent, impulsive nature, crystal clear in its motives and aspirations.

  But Gilbert did not attempt to put his thoughts into words, for he had already too good reason to know that Anne would mercilessly and frostily nip all attempts at sentiment in the bud—or laugh at him, which was ten times worse.

  “You look like a real dryad under that birch tree,” he said teasingly.

  “I love birch trees,” said Anne, laying her cheek against the creamy satin of the slim bole, with one of the pretty, caressing gestures that came so natural to her.

  “Then you’ll be glad to hear that Mr. Major Spencer has decided to set out a row of white birches all along the road front of his farm, by way of encouraging the A.V.I.S.,” said Gilbert. “He was talking to me about it today. Major Spencer is the most progressive and public-spirited man in Avonlea. And Mr. William Bell is going to set out a spruce hedge along his road front and up his lane. Our Society is getting on splendidly, Anne. It is past the experimental stage and is an accepted fact. The older folks are beginning to take an interest in it and the White Sands people are talking of starting one too. Even Elisha Wright has come around since that day the Americans from the hotel had the picnic at the shore. They praised our roadsides so highly and said they were so much prettier than in any other part of the Island. And when, in due time, the other farmers follow Mr. Spencer’s good example and plant ornamental trees and hedges along their road fronts Avonlea will be the prettiest settlement in the province.”

  “The Aids are talking of taking up the graveyard,” said Anne, “and I hope they will, because there will have to be a subscription for that, and it would be no use for the Society to try it after the hall affair. But the Aids would never have stirred in the matter if the Society hadn’t put it into their thoughts unofficially. Those trees we planted on the church grounds are flourishing, and the trustees have promised me that they will fence in the school grounds next year. If they do I’ll have an arbor day and every scholar shall plant a tree; and we’ll have a garden in the corner by the road.”

  “We’ve succeeded in almost all our plans so far, except in getting the old Boulter house removed,” said Gilbert, “and I’ve given THAT up in despair. Levi won’t have it taken down just to vex us. There’s a contrary streak in all the Boulters and it’s strongly developed in him.”

  “Julia Bell wants to send another committee to him, but I think the better way will just be to leave him severely alone,” said Anne sagely.

  “And trust to Providence, as Mrs. Lynde says,” smiled Gilbert. “Certainly, no more committees. They only aggravate him. Julia Bell thinks you can do anything, if you only have a committee to attempt it. Next spring, Anne, we must start an agitation for nice lawns and grounds. We’ll sow good seed betimes this winter. I’ve a treatise here on lawns and lawnmaking and I’m going to prepare a paper on the subject soon. Well, I suppose our vacation is almost over. School opens Monday. Has Ruby Gillis got the Carmody school?”

  “Yes; Priscilla wrote that she had taken her own home school, so the Carmody trustees gave it to Ruby. I’m sorry Priscilla is not coming back, but since she can’t I’m glad Ruby has got the school. She will be home for Saturdays and it will seem like old times, to have her and Jane and Diana and myself all together again.”

  Marilla, just home from Mrs. Lynde’s, was sitting on the back porch step when Anne returned to the house.

  “Rachel and I have decided to have our cruise to town tomorrow,” she said. “Mr. Lynde is feeling better this week and Rachel wants to go before he has another sick spell.”

  “I intend to get up extra early tomorrow morning, for I’ve ever so much to do,” said Anne virtuously. “For one thing, I’m going to shift the feathers from my old bedtick to the new one. I ought to have done it long ago but I’ve just kept putting it off . . . it’s such a detestable task. It’s a very bad habit to put off disagreeable things, and I never mean to again, or else I can’t comfortably tell my pupils not to do it. That would be inconsistent. Then I want to make a cake for Mr. Harrison and finish my paper on gardens for the A.V.I.S., and write Stella, and wash and starch my muslin dress, and make Dora’s new apron.”

  “You won’t get half done,” said Marilla pessimistically. “I never yet planned to do a lot of things but something happened to prevent me.”

  CHAPTER XX. The Way It Often Happens

  Anne rose betimes the next morning and blithely greeted the fresh day, when the banners of the sunrise were shaken triumphantly across the pearly skies. Green Gables lay in a pool of sunshine, flecked with the dancing shadows of poplar and willow. Beyond the land was Mr. Harrison’s wheatfield, a great, windrippled expanse of pale gold. The world was so beautiful that Anne spent ten blissful minutes hanging idly over the garden gate drinking the loveliness in.

  After breakfast Marilla made ready for her journey. Dora was to go with her, having been long promised this treat.

  “Now, Davy, you try to be a good boy and don’t bother Anne,” she straitly charged him. “If you are good I’ll bring you a striped candy cane from town.”

  For alas, Marilla had stooped to the evil habit of bribing people to be good!

  “I won’t be bad on purpose, but s’posen I’m bad zacksidentally?” Davy wanted to know.

  “You’ll have to guard against accidents,” admonished Marilla. “Anne, if Mr. Shearer comes today get a nice roast and some steak. If he doesn’t you’ll have to kill a fowl for dinner tomorrow.”

  Anne nodded.

  “I’m not going to bother cooking any dinner for just Davy and myself today,” she said. “That cold ham bone will do for noon lunch and I’ll have some steak fried for you when you come home at night.”

  “I’m going to help Mr. Harrison haul dulse this morning,” announced Davy. “He asked me to, and I guess he’ll ask me to dinner too. Mr. Harrison is an awful kind man. He’s a real sociable man. I hope I’ll be like him when I grow up. I mean BEHAVE like him . . . I don’t want to LOOK like him. But I guess there’s no danger, for Mrs. Lynde says I’m a very handsome child. Do you s’pose it’ll last, Anne? I want to know?”

  “I daresay it will,” said Anne gravely. “You ARE a handsome boy, Davy,”

  . . . Marilla looked volumes of disapproval . . . “but you must live up to

  it and be just as nice and gentlemanly as you look to be.”

  “And you told Minnie May Barry the other day, when you found her crying ‘cause some one said she was ugly, that if she was nice and kind and loving people wouldn’t mind her looks,” said Davy discontentedly. “Seems to me you can’t get out of being good in this world for some reason or ‘nother. You just HAVE to behave.”

  “Don’t you want to be good?” asked Marilla, who had learned a great deal but had not yet learned the futility of asking such questions.

  “Yes, I want to be good but not TOO good,” said Davy cautiously. “You don’t have to be very good to be a Sunday School superintendent. Mr. Bell’s that, and he’s a real bad man.”

  “Indeed he’s not,” said Marila indignantly.

  “He is . . . he says he is himself,” asseverated Davy. “He said it when he prayed in Sunday School last Sunday. He said he was a vile worm and a miserable sinner and guilty of the blackest ‘niquity. What did he do that was so bad, Marilla? Did he kill anybody? Or steal the collection cents? I want to know.”

  Fortunately Mrs. Lynde came driving up the lane at this moment and Marilla made off, feeling that she had escaped from the snare of the fowler, and wishing devoutly that Mr. Bell were not quite so highly figurative in his public petitions, especially in the hearing of small boys who were always “wanting to know.”

  Anne, left alone in her glory, worked with a will. The floor was swept, the beds made, the hens fed, the muslin dress washed and hung out on the line. Then Anne prepared for the transfer of feathers. Sh
e mounted to the garret and donned the first old dress that came to hand . . . a navy blue cashmere she had worn at fourteen. It was decidedly on the short side and as “skimpy” as the notable wincey Anne had worn upon the occasion of her debut at Green Gables; but at least it would not be materially injured by down and feathers. Anne completed her toilet by tying a big red and white spotted handkerchief that had belonged to Matthew over her head, and, thus accoutred, betook herself to the kitchen chamber, whither Marilla, before her departure, had helped her carry the feather bed.

  A cracked mirror hung by the chamber window and in an unlucky moment Anne looked into it. There were those seven freckles on her nose, more rampant than ever, or so it seemed in the glare of light from the unshaded window.

  “Oh, I forgot to rub that lotion on last night,” she thought. “I’d better run down to the pantry and do it now.”

  Anne had already suffered many things trying to remove those freckles. On one occasion the entire skin had peeled off her nose but the freckles remained. A few days previously she had found a recipe for a freckle lotion in a magazine and, as the ingredients were within her reach, she straightway compounded it, much to the disgust of Marilla, who thought that if Providence had placed freckles on your nose it was your bounden duty to leave them there.

  Anne scurried down to the pantry, which, always dim from the big willow growing close to the window, was now almost dark by reason of the shade drawn to exclude flies. Anne caught the bottle containing the lotion from the shelf and copiously anointed her nose therewith by means of a little sponge sacred to the purpose. This important duty done, she returned to her work. Any one who has ever shifted feathers from one tick to another will not need to be told that when Anne finished she was a sight to behold. Her dress was white with down and fluff, and her front hair, escaping from under the handkerchief, was adorned with a veritable halo of feathers. At this auspicious moment a knock sounded at the kitchen door.