before Anne realized it, spring had come again to Green Gables and all the world was abloom once more.
Studies palled just a wee bit then; the Queen’s class, left behind in school while the others scattered to green lanes and leafy wood cuts and meadow byways, looked wistfully out of the windows and discovered that Latin verbs and French exercises had somehow lost the tang and zest they had possessed in the crisp winter months. Even Anne and Gilbert lagged and grew indifferent. Teacher and taught were alike glad when the term was ended and the glad vacation days stretched rosily before them.
“But you’ve done good work this past year,” Miss Stacy told them on the last evening, “and you deserve a good, jolly vacation. Have the best time you can in the out-of-door world and lay in a good stock of health and vitality and ambition to carry you through next year. It will be the tug of war, you know — the last year before the Entrance.”
“Are you going to be back next year, Miss Stacy?” asked Josie Pye.
Josie Pye never scrupled to ask questions; in this instance the rest of the class felt grateful to her; none of them would have dared to ask it of Miss Stacy, but all wanted to, for there had been alarming rumors running at large through the school for some time that Miss Stacy was not coming back the next year — that she had been offered a position in the grade school of her own home district and meant to accept. The Queen’s class listened in breathless suspense for her answer.
“Yes, I think I will,” said Miss Stacy. “I thought of taking another school, but I have decided to come back to Avonlea. To tell the truth, I’ve grown so interested in my pupils here that I found I couldn’t leave them. So I’ll stay and see you through.”
“Hurrah!” said Moody Spurgeon. Moody Spurgeon had never been so carried away by his feelings before, and he blushed uncomfortably every time he thought about it for a week.
“Oh, I’m so glad,” said Anne, with shining eyes. “Dear Stacy, it would be perfectly dreadful if you didn’t come back. I don’t believe I could have the heart to go on with my studies at all if another teacher came here.”
When Anne got home that night she stacked all her textbooks away in an old trunk in the attic, locked it, and threw the key into the blanket box.
“I’m not even going to look at a schoolbook in vacation,” she told Marilla. “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.”
Mrs. Lynde came up the next afternoon to find out why Marilla had not been at the Aid meeting on Thursday. When Marilla was not at Aid meeting people knew there was something wrong at Green Gables.
“Matthew had a bad spell with his heart Thursday,” Marilla explained, “and I didn’t feel like leaving him. Oh, yes, he’s all right again now, but he takes them spells oftener than he used to and I’m anxious about him. The doctor says he must be careful to avoid excitement. That’s easy enough, for Matthew doesn’t go about looking for excitement by any means and never did, but he’s not to do any very heavy work either and you might as well tell Matthew not to breathe as not to work. Come and lay off your things, Rachel. You’ll stay to tea?”
“Well, seeing you’re so pressing, perhaps I might as well, stay” said Mrs. Rachel, who had not the slightest intention of doing anything else.
Mrs. Rachel and Marilla sat comfortably in the parlor while Anne got the tea and made hot biscuits that were light and white enough to defy even Mrs. Rachel’s criticism.
“I must say Anne has turned out a real smart girl,” admitted Mrs. Rachel, as Marilla accompanied her to the end of the lane at sunset. “She must be a great help to you.”
“She is,” said Marilla, “and she’s real steady and reliable now. I used to be afraid she’d never get over her featherbrained ways, but she has and I wouldn’t be afraid to trust her in anything now.”
“I never would have thought she’d have turned out so well that first day I was here three years ago,” said Mrs. Rachel. “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.”
Chapter XXXI.
Where the Brook and River Meet
Anne had her “good” summer and enjoyed it wholeheartedly. She and Diana fairly lived outdoors, reveling in all the delights that Lover’s Lane and the Dryad’s Bubble and Willowmere and Victoria Island afforded. Marilla offered no objections to Anne’s gypsyings. The Spencervale doctor who had come the night Minnie May had the croup met Anne at the house of a patient one afternoon early in vacation, looked her over sharply, screwed up his mouth, shook his head, and sent a message to Marilla Cuthbert by another person. It was:
“Keep that redheaded girl of yours in the open air all summer and don’t let her read books until she gets more spring into her step.”
This message frightened Marilla wholesomely. She read Anne’s death warrant by consumption in it unless it was scrupulously obeyed. As a result, Anne had the golden summer of her life as far as freedom and frolic went. She walked, rowed, berried, and dreamed to her heart’s content; and when September came she was bright-eyed and alert, with a step that would have satisfied the Spencervale doctor and a heart full of ambition and zest once more.
“I feel
