AI Classic Books

35308.

35309.

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35313.

Marilla looked at her with a tenderness that would never have been suffered to reveal itself in any clearer light than that soft mingling of fireshine and shadow. The lesson of a love that should display itself easily in spoken word and open look was one Marilla could never learn. But she had learned to love this slim, gray-eyed girl with an affection all the deeper and stronger from its very undemonstrativeness. Her love made her afraid of being unduly indulgent, indeed. She had an uneasy feeling that it was rather sinful to set one’s heart so intensely on any human creature as she had set hers on Anne, and perhaps she performed a sort of unconscious penance for this by being stricter and more critical than if the girl had been less dear to her. Certainly Anne herself had no idea how Marilla loved her. She sometimes thought wistfully that Marilla was very hard to please and distinctly lacking in sympathy and understanding. But she always checked the thought reproachfully, remembering what she owed to Marilla.

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"Was she? Oh, I’m so sorry I wasn’t in. Why didn’t you call me, Marilla? Diana and I were only over in the Haunted Wood. It’s lovely in the woods now. All the little wood things--the ferns and the satin leaves and the crackerberries--have gone to sleep, just as if somebody had tucked them away until spring under a blanket of leaves. I think it was a little gray fairy with a rainbow scarf that came tiptoeing along the last moonlight night and did it. Diana wouldn’t say much about that, though. Diana has never forgotten the scolding her mother gave her about imagining ghosts into the Haunted Wood. It had a very bad effect on Diana’s imagination. It blighted it. Mrs. Lynde says Myrtle Bell is a blighted being. I asked Ruby Gillis why Myrtle was blighted, and Ruby said she guessed it was because her young man had gone back on her. Ruby Gillis thinks of nothing but young men, and the older she gets the worse she is. Young men are all very well in their place, but it doesn’t do to drag them into everything, does it? Diana and I are thinking seriously of promising each other that we will never marry but be nice old maids and live together forever. Diana hasn’t quite made up her mind though, because she thinks perhaps it would be nobler to marry some wild, dashing, wicked young man and reform him. Diana and I talk a great deal about serious subjects now, you know. We feel that we are so much older than we used to be that it isn’t becoming to talk of childish matters. It’s such a solemn thing to be almost fourteen, Marilla. Miss Stacy took all us girls who are in our teens down to the brook last Wednesday, and talked to us about it. She said we couldn’t be too careful what habits we formed and what ideals we acquired in our teens, because by the time we were twenty our characters would be developed and the foundation laid for our whole future life. And she said if the foundation was shaky we could never build anything really worth while on it. Diana and I talked the matter over coming home from school. We felt extremely solemn, Marilla. And we decided that we would try to be very careful indeed and form respectable habits and learn all we could and be as sensible as possible, so that by the time we were twenty our characters would be properly developed. It’s perfectly appalling to think of being twenty, Marilla. It sounds so fearfully old and grown up. But why was Miss Stacy here this afternoon?"

35319.

35320.

35321.

35322.

"Oh, I know what she was saying. I meant to tell you, Marilla, honestly I did, but I forgot. Miss Stacy caught me reading Ben Hur in school yesterday afternoon when I should have been studying my Canadian history. Jane Andrews lent it to me. I was reading it at dinner hour, and I had just got to the chariot race when school went in. I was simply wild to know how it turned out--although I felt sure Ben Hur must win, because it wouldn’t be poetical justice if he didn’t--so I spread the history open on my desk lid and then tucked Ben Hur between the desk and my knee. I just looked as if I were studying Canadian history, you know, while all the while I was reveling in Ben Hur. I was so interested in it that I never noticed Miss Stacy coming down the aisle until all at once I just looked up and there she was looking down at me, so reproachful-like. I can’t tell you how ashamed I felt, Marilla, especially when I heard Josie Pye giggling. Miss Stacy took Ben Hur away, but she never said a word then. She kept me in at recess and talked to me. She said I had done very wrong in two respects. First, I was wasting the time I ought to have put on my studies; and secondly, I was deceiving my teacher in trying to make it appear I was reading a history when it was a storybook instead. I had never realized until that moment, Marilla, that what I was doing was deceitful. I was shocked. I cried bitterly, and asked Miss Stacy to forgive me and I’d never do such a thing again; and I offered to do penance by never so much as looking at Ben Hur for a whole week, not even to see how the chariot race turned out. But Miss Stacy said she wouldn’t require that, and she forgave me freely. So I think it wasn’t very kind of her to come up here to you about it after all."

35323.

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35332.

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"I thought how splendid it would have been if Diana had only been going to study for the Entrance, too. But we can’t have things perfect in this imperfect world, as Mrs. Lynde says. Mrs. Lynde isn’t exactly a comforting person sometimes, but there’s no doubt she says a great many very true things. And I think the Queen’s class is going to be extremely interesting. Jane and Ruby are just going to study to be teachers. That is the height of their ambition. Ruby says she will only teach for two years after she gets through, and then she intends to be married. Jane says she will devote her whole life to teaching, and never, never marry, because you are paid a salary for teaching, but a husband won’t pay you anything, and growls if you ask for a share in the egg and butter money. I expect Jane speaks from mournful experience, for Mrs. Lynde says that her father is a perfect old crank, and meaner than second skimmings. Josie Pye says she is just going to college for education’s sake, because she won’t have to earn her own living; she says of course it is different with orphans who are living on charity-- they  have to hustle. Moody Spurgeon is going to be a minister. Mrs. Lynde says he couldn’t be anything else with a name like that to live up to. I hope it isn’t wicked of me, Marilla, but really the thought of Moody Spurgeon being a minister makes me laugh. He’s such a funny-looking boy with that big fat face, and his little blue eyes, and his ears sticking out like flaps. But perhaps he will be more intellectual looking when he grows up. Charlie Sloane says he’s going to go into politics and be a member of Parliament, but Mrs. Lynde says he’ll never succeed at that, because the Sloanes are all honest people, and it’s only rascals that get on in politics nowadays."

35351.

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35356.

Since the day by the pond when she had refused to listen to his plea for forgiveness, Gilbert, save for the aforesaid determined rivalry, had evinced no recognition whatever of the existence of Anne Shirley. He talked and jested with the other girls, exchanged books and puzzles with them, discussed lessons and plans, sometimes walked home with one or the other of them from prayer meeting or Debating Club. But Anne Shirley he simply ignored, and Anne found out that it is not pleasant to be ignored. It was in vain that she told herself with a toss of her head that she did not care. Deep down in her wayward, feminine little heart she knew that she did care, and that if she had that chance of the Lake of Shining Waters again she would answer very differently. All at once, as it seemed, and to her secret dismay, she found that the old resentment she had cherished against him was gone--gone just when she most needed its sustaining power. It was in vain that she recalled every incident and emotion of that memorable occasion and tried to feel the old satisfying anger. That day by the pond had witnessed its last spasmodic flicker. Anne realized that she had forgiven and forgotten without knowing it. But it was too late.

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35379.

"I’ve studied as hard all the term as I possibly could and I’ve pored over that geometry until I know every proposition in the first book off by heart, even when the letters  are  changed. I just feel tired of everything sensible and I’m going to let my imagination run riot for the summer. Oh, you needn’t be alarmed, Marilla. I’ll only let it run riot within reasonable limits. But I want to have a real good jolly time this summer, for maybe it’s the last summer I’ll be a little girl. Mrs. Lynde says that if I keep stretching out next year as I’ve done this I’ll have to put on longer skirts. She says I’m all running to legs and eyes. And when I put on longer skirts I shall feel that I have to live up to them and be very dignified. It won’t even do to believe in fairies then, I’m afraid; so I’m going to believe in them with all my whole heart this summer. I think we’re going to have a very gay vacation. Ruby Gillis is going to have a birthday party soon and there’s the Sunday school picnic and the missionary concert next month. And Mr. Barry says that some evening he’ll take Diana and me over to the White Sands Hotel and have dinner there. They have dinner there in the evening, you know. Jane Andrews was over once last summer and she says it was a dazzling sight to see the electric lights and the flowers and all the lady guests in such beautiful dresses. Jane says it was her first glimpse into high life and she’ll never forget it to her dying day."

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35395.

"Lawful heart, shall I ever forget that tantrum of hers! When I went home that night I says to Thomas, says I, ‘Mark my words, Thomas, Marilla Cuthbert ‘ll live to rue the step she’s took.’ But I was mistaken and I’m real glad of it. I ain’t one of those kind of people, Marilla, as can never be brought to own up that they’ve made a mistake. No, that never was my way, thank goodness. I did make a mistake in judging Anne, but it weren’t no wonder, for an odder, unexpecteder witch of a child there never was in this world, that’s what. There was no ciphering her out by the rules that worked with other children. It’s nothing short of wonderful how she’s improved these three years, but especially in looks. She’s a real pretty girl got to be, though I can’t say I’m overly partial to that pale, big-eyed style myself. I like more snap and color, like Diana Barry has or Ruby Gillis. Ruby Gillis’s looks are real showy. But somehow--I don’t know how it is but when Anne and them are together, though she ain’t half as handsome, she makes them look kind of common and overdone--something like them white June lilies she calls narcissus alongside of the big, red peonies, that’s what."

35396.