Edgewise is a vertical SaaS enabled transactable marketplace for residential real estate

Edgewise

Anne of the Island by L. M. Montgomery, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . “Averil’s Atonement” Chapter XII - “Averil’s Atonement” “What are you dreaming of, Anne?” The two girls were loitering one evening in a fairy hollow of the brook. Ferns nodded in it, and little grasses were green, and wild pears hung finely-scented, white curtains around it. Anne roused herself from her reverie with a happy sigh. “I was thinking out my story, Diana.” “Oh, have you really begun it?” cried Diana, all alight with eager interest in a moment. “Yes, I have only a few pages written, but I have it all pretty well thought out. I’ve had such a time to get a suitable plot. None of the plots that suggested themselves suited a girl named Averil.” “Couldn’t you have changed her name?” “No, the thing was impossible. I tried to, but I couldn’t do it, any more than I could change yours. Averil was so real to me that no matter what other name I tried to give her I just thought of her as Averil behind it all. But finally I got a plot that matched her. Then came the excitement of choosing names for all my characters. You have no idea how fascinating that is. I’ve lain awake for hours thinking over those names. The hero’s name is Perceval Dalrymple.” “Have you named all the characters?” asked Diana wistfully. “If you hadn’t I was going to ask you to let me name one—just some unimportant person. I’d feel as if I had a share in the story then.” “You may name the little hired boy who lived with the Lesters,” conceded Anne. “He is not very important, but he is the only one left unnamed.” “Call him Raymond Fitzosborne,” suggested Diana, who had a store of such names laid away in her memory, relics of the old “Story Club,” which she and Anne and Jane Andrews and Ruby Gillis had had in their schooldays. Anne shook her head doubtfully. “I’m afraid that is too aristocratic a name for a chore boy, Diana. I couldn’t imagine a Fitzosborne feeding pigs and picking up chips, could you?” Diana didn’t see why, if you had an imagination at all, you couldn’t stretch it to that extent; but probably Anne knew best, and the chore boy was finally christened Robert Ray, to be called Bobby should occasion require. “How much do you suppose you’ll get for it?” asked Diana. But Anne had not thought about this at all. She was in pursuit of fame, not filthy lucre, and her literary dreams were as yet untainted by mercenary considerations. “You’ll let me read it, won’t you?” pleaded Diana. “When it is finished I’ll read it to you and Mr. Harrison, and I shall want you to criticize it severely. No one else shall see it until it is published.” “How are you going to end it—happily or unhappily?” “I’m not sure. I’d like it to end unhappily, because that would be so much more romantic. But I understand editors have a prejudice against sad endings. I heard Professor Hamilton say once that nobody but a genius should try to write an unhappy ending. And,” concluded Anne modestly, “I’m anything but a genius.” “Oh I like happy endings best. You’d better let him marry her,” said Diana, who, especially since her engagement to Fred, thought this was how every story should end. “But you like to cry over stories?” “Oh, yes, in the middle of them. But I like everything to come right at last.” “I must have one pathetic scene in it,” said Anne thoughtfully. “I might let Robert Ray be injured in an accident and have a death scene.” “No, you mustn’t kill Bobby off,” declared Diana, laughing. “He belongs to me and I want him to live and flourish. Kill somebody else if you have to.” For the next fortnight Anne writhed or reveled, according to mood, in her literary pursuits. Now she would be jubilant over a brilliant idea, now despairing because some contrary character would not behave properly. Diana could not understand this. “Make them do as you want them to,” she said. “I can’t,” mourned Anne. “Averil is such an unmanageable heroine. She will do and say things I never meant her to. Then that spoils everything that went before and I have to write it all over again.” Finally, however, the story was finished, and Anne read it to Diana in the seclusion of the porch gable. She had achieved her “pathetic scene” without sacrificing Robert Ray, and she kept a watchful eye on Diana as she read it. Diana rose to the occasion and cried properly; but, when the end came, she looked a little disappointed. “Why did you kill Maurice Lennox?” she asked reproachfully. “He was the villain,” protested Anne. “He had to be punished.” “I like him best of them all,” said unreasonable Diana. “Well, he’s dead, and he’ll have to stay dead,” said Anne, rather resentfully. “If I had let him live he’d have gone on persecuting Averil and Perceval.” “Yes—unless you had reformed him.” “That wouldn’t have been romantic, and, besides, it would have made the story too long.” “Well, anyway, it’s a perfectly elegant story, Anne, and will make you famous, of that I’m sure. Have you got a title for it?” “Oh, I decided on the title long ago. I call it Averil’s atonement. Doesn’t that sound nice and alliterative? Now, Diana, tell me candidly, do you see any faults in my story?” “Well,” hesitated Diana, “that part where Averil makes the cake doesn’t seem to me quite romantic enough to match the rest. It’s just what anybody might do. Heroines shouldn’t do cooking, I think.” “Why, that is where the humor comes in, and it’s one of the best parts of the whole story,” said Anne. And it may be stated that in this she was quite right. Diana prudently refrained from any further criticism, but Mr. Harrison was much harder to please. First he told her there was entirely too much description in the story. “Cut out all those flowery passages,” he said unfeelingly. Anne had an uncomfortable conviction that Mr. Harrison was right, and she forced herself to expunge most of her beloved descriptions, though it took three re-writings before the story could be pruned down to please the fastidious Mr. Harrison. “I’ve left out all the descriptions but the sunset,” she said at last. “I simply couldn’t let it go. It was the best of them all.” “It hasn’t anything to do with the story,” said Mr. Harrison, “and you shouldn’t have laid the scene among rich city people. What do you know of them? Why didn’t you lay it right here in Avonlea—changing the name, of course, or else Mrs. Rachel Lynde would probably think she was the heroine.” “Oh, that would never have done,” protested Anne. “Avonlea is the dearest place in the world, but it isn’t quite romantic enough for the scene of a story.” “I daresay there’s been many a romance in Avonlea—and many a tragedy, too,” said Mr. Harrison drily. “But your folks ain’t like real folks anywhere. They talk too much and use too high-flown language. There’s one place where that Dalrymple chap talks even on for two pages, and never lets the girl get a word in edgewise. If he’d done that in real life she’d have pitched him.” “I don’t believe it,” said Anne flatly. In her secret soul she thought that the beautiful, poetical things said to Averil would win any girl’s heart completely. Besides, it was gruesome to hear of Averil, the stately, queen-like Averil, “pitching” any one. Averil “declined her suitors.” “Anyhow,” resumed the merciless Mr. Harrison, “I don’t see why Maurice Lennox didn’t get her. He was twice the man the other is. He did bad things, but he did them. Perceval hadn’t time for anything but mooning.” “Mooning.” That was even worse than “pitching!” “Maurice Lennox was the villain,” said Anne indignantly. “I don’t see why every one likes him better than Perceval.” “Perceval is too good. He’s aggravating. Next time you write about a hero put a little spice of human nature in him.” “Averil couldn’t have married Maurice. He was bad.” “She’d have reformed him. You can reform a man; you can’t reform a jelly-fish, of course. Your story isn’t bad—it’s kind of interesting, I’ll admit. But you’re too young to write a story that would be worth while. Wait ten years.” Anne made up her mind that the next time she wrote a story she wouldn’t ask anybody to criticize it. It was too discouraging. She would not read the story to Gilbert, although she told him about it. “If it is a success you’ll see it when it is published, Gilbert, but if it is a failure nobody shall ever see it.” Marilla knew nothing about the venture. In imagination Anne saw herself reading a story out of a magazine to Marilla, entrapping her into praise of it—for in imagination all things are possible—and then triumphantly announcing herself the author. One day Anne took to the Post Office a long, bulky envelope, addressed, with the delightful confidence of youth and inexperience, to the very biggest of the “big” magazines. Diana was as excited over it as Anne herself. “How long do you suppose it will be before you hear from it?” she asked. “It shouldn’t be longer than a fortnight. Oh, how happy and proud I shall be if it is accepted!” “Of course it will be accepted, and they will likely ask you to send them more. You may be as famous as Mrs. Morgan some day, Anne, and then how proud I’ll be of knowing you,” said Diana, who possessed, at least, the striking merit of an unselfish admiration of the gifts and graces of her friends. A week of delightful dreaming followed, and then came a bitter awakening. One evening Diana found Anne in the porch gable, with suspicious-looking eyes. On the table lay a long envelope and a crumpled manuscript. “Anne, your story hasn’t come back?” cried Diana incredulously. “Yes, it has,” said Anne shortly. “Well, that editor must be crazy. What reason did he give?” “No reason at all. There is just a printed slip saying that it wasn’t found acceptable.” “I never thought much of that magazine, anyway,” said Diana hotly. “The stories in it are not half as interesting as those in the Canadian Woman, although it costs so much more. I suppose the editor is prejudiced against any one who isn’t a Yankee. Don’t be discouraged, Anne. Remember how Mrs. Morgan’s stories came back. Send yours to the Canadian Woman.” “I believe I will,” said Anne, plucking up heart. “And if it is published I’ll send that American editor a marked copy. But I’ll cut the sunset out. I believe Mr. Harrison was right.” Out came the sunset; but in spite of this heroic mutilation the editor of the Canadian Woman sent Averil’s Atonement back so promptly that the indignant Diana declared that it couldn’t have been read at all, and vowed she was going to stop her subscription immediately. Anne took this second rejection with the calmness of despair. She locked the story away in the garret trunk where the old Story Club tales reposed; but first she yielded to Diana’s entreaties and gave her a copy. “This is the end of my literary ambitions,” she said bitterly. She never mentioned the matter to Mr. Harrison, but one evening he asked her bluntly if her story had been accepted. “No, the editor wouldn’t take it,” she answered briefly. Mr. Harrison looked sidewise at the flushed, delicate profile. “Well, I suppose you’ll keep on writing them,” he said encouragingly. “No, I shall never try to write a story again,” declared Anne, with the hopeless finality of nineteen when a door is shut in its face. “I wouldn’t give up altogether,” said Mr. Harrison reflectively. “I’d write a story once in a while, but I wouldn’t pester editors with it. I’d write of people and places like I knew, and I’d make my characters talk everyday English; and I’d let the sun rise and set in the usual quiet way without much fuss over the fact. If I had to have villains at all, I’d give them a chance, Anne—I’d give them a chance. There are some terrible bad men in the world, I suppose, but you’d have to go a long piece to find them—though Mrs. Lynde believes we’re all bad. But most of us have got a little decency somewhere in us. Keep on writing, Anne.” “No. It was very foolish of me to attempt it. When I’m through Redmond I’ll stick to teaching. I can teach. I can’t write stories.” “It’ll be time for you to be getting a husband when you’re through Redmond,” said Mr. Harrison. “I don’t believe in putting marrying off too long—like I did.” Anne got up and marched home. There were times when Mr. Harrison was really intolerable. “Pitching,” “mooning,” and “getting a husband.” Ow!! About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. L. M. Montgomery (2006). Anne of the Island. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/51/pg51-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html. The lead image was generated using HackerNoon's Stable Disffusion Al Image Generator feature, via the prompt "Anne of the Island".

“Averil’s Atonement”

Anne of the Island by L. M. Montgomery, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . The Shadow of Change Chapter I - The Shadow of Change “Harvest is ended and summer is gone,” quoted Anne Shirley, gazing across the shorn fields dreamily. She and Diana Barry had been picking apples in the Green Gables orchard, but were now resting from their labors in a sunny corner, where airy fleets of thistledown drifted by on the wings of a wind that was still summer-sweet with the incense of ferns in the Haunted Wood. But everything in the landscape around them spoke of autumn. The sea was roaring hollowly in the distance, the fields were bare and sere, scarfed with golden rod, the brook valley below Green Gables overflowed with asters of ethereal purple, and the Lake of Shining Waters was blue—blue—blue; not the changeful blue of spring, nor the pale azure of summer, but a clear, steadfast, serene blue, as if the water were past all moods and tenses of emotion and had settled down to a tranquility unbroken by fickle dreams. “It has been a nice summer,” said Diana, twisting the new ring on her left hand with a smile. “And Miss Lavendar’s wedding seemed to come as a sort of crown to it. I suppose Mr. and Mrs. Irving are on the Pacific coast now.” “It seems to me they have been gone long enough to go around the world,” sighed Anne. “I can’t believe it is only a week since they were married. Everything has changed. Miss Lavendar and Mr. and Mrs. Allan gone—how lonely the manse looks with the shutters all closed! I went past it last night, and it made me feel as if everybody in it had died.” “We’ll never get another minister as nice as Mr. Allan,” said Diana, with gloomy conviction. “I suppose we’ll have all kinds of supplies this winter, and half the Sundays no preaching at all. And you and Gilbert gone—it will be awfully dull.” “Fred will be here,” insinuated Anne slyly. “When is Mrs. Lynde going to move up?” asked Diana, as if she had not heard Anne’s remark. “Tomorrow. I’m glad she’s coming—but it will be another change. Marilla and I cleared everything out of the spare room yesterday. Do you know, I hated to do it? Of course, it was silly—but it did seem as if we were committing sacrilege. That old spare room has always seemed like a shrine to me. When I was a child I thought it the most wonderful apartment in the world. You remember what a consuming desire I had to sleep in a spare room bed—but not the Green Gables spare room. Oh, no, never there! It would have been too terrible—I couldn’t have slept a wink from awe. I never walked through that room when Marilla sent me in on an errand—no, indeed, I tiptoed through it and held my breath, as if I were in church, and felt relieved when I got out of it. The pictures of George Whitefield and the Duke of Wellington hung there, one on each side of the mirror, and frowned so sternly at me all the time I was in, especially if I dared peep in the mirror, which was the only one in the house that didn’t twist my face a little. I always wondered how Marilla dared houseclean that room. And now it’s not only cleaned but stripped bare. George Whitefield and the Duke have been relegated to the upstairs hall. ‘So passes the glory of this world,’” concluded Anne, with a laugh in which there was a little note of regret. It is never pleasant to have our old shrines desecrated, even when we have outgrown them. “I’ll be so lonesome when you go,” moaned Diana for the hundredth time. “And to think you go next week!” “But we’re together still,” said Anne cheerily. “We mustn’t let next week rob us of this week’s joy. I hate the thought of going myself—home and I are such good friends. Talk of being lonesome! It’s I who should groan. You’ll be here with any number of your old friends—and Fred! While I shall be alone among strangers, not knowing a soul!” “Except Gilbert—and Charlie Sloane,” said Diana, imitating Anne’s italics and slyness. “Charlie Sloane will be a great comfort, of course,” agreed Anne sarcastically; whereupon both those irresponsible damsels laughed. Diana knew exactly what Anne thought of Charlie Sloane; but, despite sundry confidential talks, she did not know just what Anne thought of Gilbert Blythe. To be sure, Anne herself did not know that. “The boys may be boarding at the other end of Kingsport, for all I know,” Anne went on. “I am glad I’m going to Redmond, and I am sure I shall like it after a while. But for the first few weeks I know I won’t. I shan’t even have the comfort of looking forward to the weekend visit home, as I had when I went to Queen’s. Christmas will seem like a thousand years away.” “Everything is changing—or going to change,” said Diana sadly. “I have a feeling that things will never be the same again, Anne.” “We have come to a parting of the ways, I suppose,” said Anne thoughtfully. “We had to come to it. Do you think, Diana, that being grown-up is really as nice as we used to imagine it would be when we were children?” “I don’t know—there are some nice things about it,” answered Diana, again caressing her ring with that little smile which always had the effect of making Anne feel suddenly left out and inexperienced. “But there are so many puzzling things, too. Sometimes I feel as if being grown-up just frightened me—and then I would give anything to be a little girl again.” “I suppose we’ll get used to being grownup in time,” said Anne cheerfully. “There won’t be so many unexpected things about it by and by—though, after all, I fancy it’s the unexpected things that give spice to life. We’re eighteen, Diana. In two more years we’ll be twenty. When I was ten I thought twenty was a green old age. In no time you’ll be a staid, middle-aged matron, and I shall be nice, old maid Aunt Anne, coming to visit you on vacations. You’ll always keep a corner for me, won’t you, Di darling? Not the spare room, of course—old maids can’t aspire to spare rooms, and I shall be as ’umble as Uriah Heep, and quite content with a little over-the-porch or off-the-parlor cubby hole.” “What nonsense you do talk, Anne,” laughed Diana. “You’ll marry somebody splendid and handsome and rich—and no spare room in Avonlea will be half gorgeous enough for you—and you’ll turn up your nose at all the friends of your youth.” “That would be a pity; my nose is quite nice, but I fear turning it up would spoil it,” said Anne, patting that shapely organ. “I haven’t so many good features that I could afford to spoil those I have; so, even if I should marry the King of the Cannibal Islands, I promise you I won’t turn up my nose at you, Diana.” With another gay laugh the girls separated, Diana to return to Orchard Slope, Anne to walk to the Post Office. She found a letter awaiting her there, and when Gilbert Blythe overtook her on the bridge over the Lake of Shining Waters she was sparkling with the excitement of it. “Priscilla Grant is going to Redmond, too,” she exclaimed. “Isn’t that splendid? I hoped she would, but she didn’t think her father would consent. He has, however, and we’re to board together. I feel that I can face an army with banners—or all the professors of Redmond in one fell phalanx—with a chum like Priscilla by my side.” “I think we’ll like Kingsport,” said Gilbert. “It’s a nice old burg, they tell me, and has the finest natural park in the world. I’ve heard that the scenery in it is magnificent.” “I wonder if it will be—can be—any more beautiful than this,” murmured Anne, looking around her with the loving, enraptured eyes of those to whom “home” must always be the loveliest spot in the world, no matter what fairer lands may lie under alien stars. They were leaning on the bridge of the old pond, drinking deep of the enchantment of the dusk, just at the spot where Anne had climbed from her sinking Dory on the day Elaine floated down to Camelot. The fine, empurpling dye of sunset still stained the western skies, but the moon was rising and the water lay like a great, silver dream in her light. Remembrance wove a sweet and subtle spell over the two young creatures. “You are very quiet, Anne,” said Gilbert at last. “I’m afraid to speak or move for fear all this wonderful beauty will vanish just like a broken silence,” breathed Anne. Gilbert suddenly laid his hand over the slender white one lying on the rail of the bridge. His hazel eyes deepened into darkness, his still boyish lips opened to say something of the dream and hope that thrilled his soul. But Anne snatched her hand away and turned quickly. The spell of the dusk was broken for her. “I must go home,” she exclaimed, with a rather overdone carelessness. “Marilla had a headache this afternoon, and I’m sure the twins will be in some dreadful mischief by this time. I really shouldn’t have stayed away so long.” She chattered ceaselessly and inconsequently until they reached the Green Gables lane. Poor Gilbert hardly had a chance to get a word in edgewise. Anne felt rather relieved when they parted. There had been a new, secret self-consciousness in her heart with regard to Gilbert, ever since that fleeting moment of revelation in the garden of Echo Lodge. Something alien had intruded into the old, perfect, school-day comradeship—something that threatened to mar it. “I never felt glad to see Gilbert go before,” she thought, half-resentfully, half-sorrowfully, as she walked alone up the lane. “Our friendship will be spoiled if he goes on with this nonsense. It mustn’t be spoiled—I won’t let it. Oh, why can’t boys be just sensible!” Anne had an uneasy doubt that it was not strictly “sensible” that she should still feel on her hand the warm pressure of Gilbert’s, as distinctly as she had felt it for the swift second his had rested there; and still less sensible that the sensation was far from being an unpleasant one—very different from that which had attended a similar demonstration on Charlie Sloane’s part, when she had been sitting out a dance with him at a White Sands party three nights before. Anne shivered over the disagreeable recollection. But all problems connected with infatuated swains vanished from her mind when she entered the homely, unsentimental atmosphere of the Green Gables kitchen where an eight-year-old boy was crying grievously on the sofa. “What is the matter, Davy?” asked Anne, taking him up in her arms. “Where are Marilla and Dora?” “Marilla’s putting Dora to bed,” sobbed Davy, “and I’m crying ’cause Dora fell down the outside cellar steps, heels over head, and scraped all the skin off her nose, and—” “Oh, well, don’t cry about it, dear. Of course, you are sorry for her, but crying won’t help her any. She’ll be all right tomorrow. Crying never helps any one, Davy-boy, and—” “I ain’t crying ’cause Dora fell down cellar,” said Davy, cutting short Anne’s wellmeant preachment with increasing bitterness. “I’m crying, cause I wasn’t there to see her fall. I’m always missing some fun or other, seems to me.” “Oh, Davy!” Anne choked back an unholy shriek of laughter. “Would you call it fun to see poor little Dora fall down the steps and get hurt?” “She wasn’t much hurt,” said Davy, defiantly. “’Course, if she’d been killed I’d have been real sorry, Anne. But the Keiths ain’t so easy killed. They’re like the Blewetts, I guess. Herb Blewett fell off the hayloft last Wednesday, and rolled right down through the turnip chute into the box stall, where they had a fearful wild, cross horse, and rolled right under his heels. And still he got out alive, with only three bones broke. Mrs. Lynde says there are some folks you can’t kill with a meat-axe. Is Mrs. Lynde coming here tomorrow, Anne?” “Yes, Davy, and I hope you’ll be always very nice and good to her.” “I’ll be nice and good. But will she ever put me to bed at nights, Anne?” “Perhaps. Why?” “’Cause,” said Davy very decidedly, “if she does I won’t say my prayers before her like I do before you, Anne.” “Why not?” “’Cause I don’t think it would be nice to talk to God before strangers, Anne. Dora can say hers to Mrs. Lynde if she likes, but I won’t. I’ll wait till she’s gone and then say ’em. Won’t that be all right, Anne?” “Yes, if you are sure you won’t forget to say them, Davy-boy.” “Oh, I won’t forget, you bet. I think saying my prayers is great fun. But it won’t be as good fun saying them alone as saying them to you. I wish you’d stay home, Anne. I don’t see what you want to go away and leave us for.” “I don’t exactly want to, Davy, but I feel I ought to go.” “If you don’t want to go you needn’t. You’re grown up. When I’m grown up I’m not going to do one single thing I don’t want to do, Anne.” “All your life, Davy, you’ll find yourself doing things you don’t want to do.” “I won’t,” said Davy flatly. “Catch me! I have to do things I don’t want to now ’cause you and Marilla’ll send me to bed if I don’t. But when I grow up you can’t do that, and there’ll be nobody to tell me not to do things. Won’t I have the time! Say, Anne, Milty Boulter says his mother says you’re going to college to see if you can catch a man. Are you, Anne? I want to know.” For a second Anne burned with resentment. Then she laughed, reminding herself that Mrs. Boulter’s crude vulgarity of thought and speech could not harm her. “No, Davy, I’m not. I’m going to study and grow and learn about many things.” “What things?” “‘Shoes and ships and sealing wax And cabbages and kings,’” quoted Anne. “But if you did want to catch a man how would you go about it? I want to know,” persisted Davy, for whom the subject evidently possessed a certain fascination. “You’d better ask Mrs. Boulter,” said Anne thoughtlessly. “I think it’s likely she knows more about the process than I do.” “I will, the next time I see her,” said Davy gravely. “Davy! If you do!” cried Anne, realizing her mistake. “But you just told me to,” protested Davy aggrieved. “It’s time you went to bed,” decreed Anne, by way of getting out of the scrape. After Davy had gone to bed Anne wandered down to Victoria Island and sat there alone, curtained with fine-spun, moonlit gloom, while the water laughed around her in a duet of brook and wind. Anne had always loved that brook. Many a dream had she spun over its sparkling water in days gone by. She forgot lovelorn youths, and the cayenne speeches of malicious neighbors, and all the problems of her girlish existence. In imagination she sailed over storied seas that wash the distant shining shores of “faery lands forlorn,” where lost Atlantis and Elysium lie, with the evening star for pilot, to the land of Heart’s Desire. And she was richer in those dreams than in realities; for things seen pass away, but the things that are unseen are eternal. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. L. M. Montgomery (2006). Anne of the Island. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/51/pg51-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html. The lead image was generated using HackerNoon's Stable Disffusion Al Image Generator feature, via the prompt "Anne of the Island".

The Shadow of Change

The Queens Class Is Organized

Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . Morning at Green Gables CHAPTER IV. Morning at Green Gables It was broad daylight when Anne awoke and sat up in bed, staring confusedly at the window through which a flood of cheery sunshine was pouring and outside of which something white and feathery waved across glimpses of blue sky. For a moment she could not remember where she was. First came a delightful thrill, as something very pleasant; then a horrible remembrance. This was Green Gables and they didn’t want her because she wasn’t a boy! But it was morning and, yes, it was a cherry-tree in full bloom outside of her window. With a bound she was out of bed and across the floor. She pushed up the sash—it went up stiffly and creakily, as if it hadn’t been opened for a long time, which was the case; and it stuck so tight that nothing was needed to hold it up. Anne dropped on her knees and gazed out into the June morning, her eyes glistening with delight. Oh, wasn’t it beautiful? Wasn’t it a lovely place? Suppose she wasn’t really going to stay here! She would imagine she was. There was scope for imagination here. A huge cherry-tree grew outside, so close that its boughs tapped against the house, and it was so thick-set with blossoms that hardly a leaf was to be seen. On both sides of the house was a big orchard, one of apple-trees and one of cherry-trees, also showered over with blossoms; and their grass was all sprinkled with dandelions. In the garden below were lilac-trees purple with flowers, and their dizzily sweet fragrance drifted up to the window on the morning wind. Below the garden a green field lush with clover sloped down to the hollow where the brook ran and where scores of white birches grew, upspringing airily out of an undergrowth suggestive of delightful possibilities in ferns and mosses and woodsy things generally. Beyond it was a hill, green and feathery with spruce and fir; there was a gap in it where the gray gable end of the little house she had seen from the other side of the Lake of Shining Waters was visible. Off to the left were the big barns and beyond them, away down over green, low-sloping fields, was a sparkling blue glimpse of sea. Anne’s beauty-loving eyes lingered on it all, taking everything greedily in. She had looked on so many unlovely places in her life, poor child; but this was as lovely as anything she had ever dreamed. She knelt there, lost to everything but the loveliness around her, until she was startled by a hand on her shoulder. Marilla had come in unheard by the small dreamer. “It’s time you were dressed,” she said curtly. Marilla really did not know how to talk to the child, and her uncomfortable ignorance made her crisp and curt when she did not mean to be. Anne stood up and drew a long breath. “Oh, isn’t it wonderful?” she said, waving her hand comprehensively at the good world outside. “It’s a big tree,” said Marilla, “and it blooms great, but the fruit don’t amount to much never—small and wormy.” “Oh, I don’t mean just the tree; of course it’s lovely—yes, it’s radiantly lovely—it blooms as if it meant it—but I meant everything, the garden and the orchard and the brook and the woods, the whole big dear world. Don’t you feel as if you just loved the world on a morning like this? And I can hear the brook laughing all the way up here. Have you ever noticed what cheerful things brooks are? They’re always laughing. Even in winter-time I’ve heard them under the ice. I’m so glad there’s a brook near Green Gables. Perhaps you think it doesn’t make any difference to me when you’re not going to keep me, but it does. I shall always like to remember that there is a brook at Green Gables even if I never see it again. If there wasn’t a brook I’d be haunted by the uncomfortable feeling that there ought to be one. I’m not in the depths of despair this morning. I never can be in the morning. Isn’t it a splendid thing that there are mornings? But I feel very sad. I’ve just been imagining that it was really me you wanted after all and that I was to stay here for ever and ever. It was a great comfort while it lasted. But the worst of imagining things is that the time comes when you have to stop and that hurts.” “You’d better get dressed and come down-stairs and never mind your imaginings,” said Marilla as soon as she could get a word in edgewise. “Breakfast is waiting. Wash your face and comb your hair. Leave the window up and turn your bedclothes back over the foot of the bed. Be as smart as you can.” Anne could evidently be smart to some purpose for she was down-stairs in ten minutes’ time, with her clothes neatly on, her hair brushed and braided, her face washed, and a comfortable consciousness pervading her soul that she had fulfilled all Marilla’s requirements. As a matter of fact, however, she had forgotten to turn back the bedclothes. “I’m pretty hungry this morning,” she announced as she slipped into the chair Marilla placed for her. “The world doesn’t seem such a howling wilderness as it did last night. I’m so glad it’s a sunshiny morning. But I like rainy mornings real well, too. All sorts of mornings are interesting, don’t you think? You don’t know what’s going to happen through the day, and there’s so much scope for imagination. But I’m glad it’s not rainy today because it’s easier to be cheerful and bear up under affliction on a sunshiny day. I feel that I have a good deal to bear up under. It’s all very well to read about sorrows and imagine yourself living through them heroically, but it’s not so nice when you really come to have them, is it?” “For pity’s sake hold your tongue,” said Marilla. “You talk entirely too much for a little girl.” Thereupon Anne held her tongue so obediently and thoroughly that her continued silence made Marilla rather nervous, as if in the presence of something not exactly natural. Matthew also held his tongue,—but this was natural,—so that the meal was a very silent one. As it progressed Anne became more and more abstracted, eating mechanically, with her big eyes fixed unswervingly and unseeingly on the sky outside the window. This made Marilla more nervous than ever; she had an uncomfortable feeling that while this odd child’s body might be there at the table her spirit was far away in some remote airy cloudland, borne aloft on the wings of imagination. Who would want such a child about the place? Yet Matthew wished to keep her, of all unaccountable things! Marilla felt that he wanted it just as much this morning as he had the night before, and that he would go on wanting it. That was Matthew’s way—take a whim into his head and cling to it with the most amazing silent persistency—a persistency ten times more potent and effectual in its very silence than if he had talked it out. When the meal was ended Anne came out of her reverie and offered to wash the dishes. “Can you wash dishes right?” asked Marilla distrustfully. “Pretty well. I’m better at looking after children, though. I’ve had so much experience at that. It’s such a pity you haven’t any here for me to look after.” “I don’t feel as if I wanted any more children to look after than I’ve got at present. You’re problem enough in all conscience. What’s to be done with you I don’t know. Matthew is a most ridiculous man.” “I think he’s lovely,” said Anne reproachfully. “He is so very sympathetic. He didn’t mind how much I talked—he seemed to like it. I felt that he was a kindred spirit as soon as ever I saw him.” “You’re both queer enough, if that’s what you mean by kindred spirits,” said Marilla with a sniff. “Yes, you may wash the dishes. Take plenty of hot water, and be sure you dry them well. I’ve got enough to attend to this morning for I’ll have to drive over to White Sands in the afternoon and see Mrs. Spencer. You’ll come with me and we’ll settle what’s to be done with you. After you’ve finished the dishes go up-stairs and make your bed.” Anne washed the dishes deftly enough, as Marilla who kept a sharp eye on the process, discerned. Later on she made her bed less successfully, for she had never learned the art of wrestling with a feather tick. But is was done somehow and smoothed down; and then Marilla, to get rid of her, told her she might go out-of-doors and amuse herself until dinner time. Anne flew to the door, face alight, eyes glowing. On the very threshold she stopped short, wheeled about, came back and sat down by the table, light and glow as effectually blotted out as if some one had clapped an extinguisher on her. “What’s the matter now?” demanded Marilla. “I don’t dare go out,” said Anne, in the tone of a martyr relinquishing all earthly joys. “If I can’t stay here there is no use in my loving Green Gables. And if I go out there and get acquainted with all those trees and flowers and the orchard and the brook I’ll not be able to help loving it. It’s hard enough now, so I won’t make it any harder. I want to go out so much—everything seems to be calling to me, ‘Anne, Anne, come out to us. Anne, Anne, we want a playmate’—but it’s better not. There is no use in loving things if you have to be torn from them, is there? And it’s so hard to keep from loving things, isn’t it? That was why I was so glad when I thought I was going to live here. I thought I’d have so many things to love and nothing to hinder me. But that brief dream is over. I am resigned to my fate now, so I don’t think I’ll go out for fear I’ll get unresigned again. What is the name of that geranium on the window-sill, please?” “That’s the apple-scented geranium.” “Oh, I don’t mean that sort of a name. I mean just a name you gave it yourself. Didn’t you give it a name? May I give it one then? May I call it—let me see—Bonny would do—may I call it Bonny while I’m here? Oh, do let me!” “Goodness, I don’t care. But where on earth is the sense of naming a geranium?” “Oh, I like things to have handles even if they are only geraniums. It makes them seem more like people. How do you know but that it hurts a geranium’s feelings just to be called a geranium and nothing else? You wouldn’t like to be called nothing but a woman all the time. Yes, I shall call it Bonny. I named that cherry-tree outside my bedroom window this morning. I called it Snow Queen because it was so white. Of course, it won’t always be in blossom, but one can imagine that it is, can’t one?” “I never in all my life saw or heard anything to equal her,” muttered Marilla, beating a retreat down to the cellar after potatoes. “She is kind of interesting as Matthew says. I can feel already that I’m wondering what on earth she’ll say next. She’ll be casting a spell over me, too. She’s cast it over Matthew. That look he gave me when he went out said everything he said or hinted last night over again. I wish he was like other men and would talk things out. A body could answer back then and argue him into reason. But what’s to be done with a man who just looks?” Anne had relapsed into reverie, with her chin in her hands and her eyes on the sky, when Marilla returned from her cellar pilgrimage. There Marilla left her until the early dinner was on the table. “I suppose I can have the mare and buggy this afternoon, Matthew?” said Marilla. Matthew nodded and looked wistfully at Anne. Marilla intercepted the look and said grimly: “I’m going to drive over to White Sands and settle this thing. I’ll take Anne with me and Mrs. Spencer will probably make arrangements to send her back to Nova Scotia at once. I’ll set your tea out for you and I’ll be home in time to milk the cows.” Still Matthew said nothing and Marilla had a sense of having wasted words and breath. There is nothing more aggravating than a man who won’t talk back—unless it is a woman who won’t. Matthew hitched the sorrel into the buggy in due time and Marilla and Anne set off. Matthew opened the yard gate for them and as they drove slowly through, he said, to nobody in particular as it seemed: “Little Jerry Buote from the Creek was here this morning, and I told him I guessed I’d hire him for the summer.” Marilla made no reply, but she hit the unlucky sorrel such a vicious clip with the whip that the fat mare, unused to such treatment, whizzed indignantly down the lane at an alarming pace. Marilla looked back once as the buggy bounced along and saw that aggravating Matthew leaning over the gate, looking wistfully after them. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. L. M. Montgomery (2008). Anne of Green Gables. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/45/pg45-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html . The lead image was generated using HackerNoon's Stable Disffusion Al Image Generator feature, via the prompt "Anne of Green Fables".

EDGEWISE

edgewiserealty.com

-- employees

Since n.d.

COMPANY RANKING

EDGEWISE

EVERGREEN INDEX #4458

Representing this company? Click here to claim and customize this page!

Edgewise WIKI

Apply to get your Tech Company News Page live on HackerNoon.com today!

EDGEWISE

edgewiserealty.com

-- employees

Since n.d.

COMPANY RANKING

EDGEWISE

EVERGREEN INDEX #4458

RELATED COMPANIESRANK

STORIES ABOUT EDGEWISE

Representing this company? Click here to claim and customize this page!

Edgewise WIKI

Apply to get your Tech Company News Page live on HackerNoon.com today!