Anne Shirley (Complete 14 Book Collection). Люси Мод Монтгомери

      Marilla disengaged Anne’s clinging hands stonily.

      “You needn’t plead, Anne. You are not going to the picnic and that’s final. No, not a word.”

      Anne realized that Marilla was not to be moved. She clasped her hands together, gave a piercing shriek, and then flung herself face downward on the bed, crying and writhing in an utter abandonment of disappointment and despair.

      “For the land’s sake!” gasped Marilla, hastening from the room. “I believe the child is crazy. No child in her senses would behave as she does. If she isn’t she’s utterly bad. Oh dear, I’m afraid Rachel was right from the first. But I’ve put my hand to the plow and I won’t look back.”

      That was a dismal morning. Marilla worked fiercely and scrubbed the porch floor and the dairy shelves when she could find nothing else to do. Neither the shelves nor the porch needed it — but Marilla did. Then she went out and raked the yard.

      When dinner was ready she went to the stairs and called Anne. A tearstained face appeared, looking tragically over the banisters.

      “Come down to your dinner, Anne.”

      “I don’t want any dinner, Marilla,” said Anne, sobbingly. “I couldn’t eat anything. My heart is broken. You’ll feel remorse of conscience someday, I expect, for breaking it, Marilla, but I forgive you. Remember when the time comes that I forgive you. But please don’t ask me to eat anything, especially boiled pork and greens. Boiled pork and greens are so unromantic when one is in affliction.”

      Exasperated, Marilla returned to the kitchen and poured out her tale of woe to Matthew, who, between his sense of justice and his unlawful sympathy with Anne, was a miserable man.

      “Well now, she shouldn’t have taken the brooch, Marilla, or told stories about it,” he admitted, mournfully surveying his plateful of unromantic pork and greens as if he, like Anne, thought it a food unsuited to crises of feeling, “but she’s such a little thing — such an interesting little thing. Don’t you think it’s pretty rough not to let her go to the picnic when she’s so set on it?”

      “Matthew Cuthbert, I’m amazed at you. I think I’ve let her off entirely too easy. And she doesn’t appear to realize how wicked she’s been at all — that’s what worries me most. If she’d really felt sorry it wouldn’t be so bad. And you don’t seem to realize it, neither; you’re making excuses for her all the time to yourself — I can see that.”

      “Well now, she’s such a little thing,” feebly reiterated Matthew. “And there should be allowances made, Marilla. You know she’s never had any bringing up.”

      “Well, she’s having it now” retorted Marilla.

      The retort silenced Matthew if it did not convince him. That dinner was a very dismal meal. The only cheerful thing about it was Jerry Buote, the hired boy, and Marilla resented his cheerfulness as a personal insult.

      When her dishes were washed and her bread sponge set and her hens fed Marilla remembered that she had noticed a small rent in her best black lace shawl when she had taken it off on Monday afternoon on returning from the Ladies’ Aid.

      She would go and mend it. The shawl was in a box in her trunk. As Marilla lifted it out, the sunlight, falling through the vines that clustered thickly about the window, struck upon something caught in the shawl — something that glittered and sparkled in facets of violet light. Marilla snatched at it with a gasp. It was the amethyst brooch, hanging to a thread of the lace by its catch!

      “Dear life and heart,” said Marilla blankly, “what does this mean? Here’s my brooch safe and sound that I thought was at the bottom of Barry’s pond. Whatever did that girl mean by saying she took it and lost it? I declare I believe Green Gables is bewitched. I remember now that when I took off my shawl Monday afternoon I laid it on the bureau for a minute. I suppose the brooch got caught in it somehow. Well!”

      Marilla betook herself to the east gable, brooch in hand. Anne had cried herself out and was sitting dejectedly by the window.

      “Anne Shirley,” said Marilla solemnly, “I’ve just found my brooch hanging to my black lace shawl. Now I want to know what that rigmarole you told me this morning meant.”

      “Why, you said you’d keep me here until I confessed,” returned Anne wearily, “and so I decided to confess because I was bound to get to the picnic. I thought out a confession last night after I went to bed and made it as interesting as I could. And I said it over and over so that I wouldn’t forget it. But you wouldn’t let me go to the picnic after all, so all my trouble was wasted.”

      Marilla had to laugh in spite of herself. But her conscience pricked her.

      “Anne, you do beat all! But I was wrong — I see that now. I shouldn’t have doubted your word when I’d never known you to tell a story. Of course, it wasn’t right for you to confess to a thing you hadn’t done — it was very wrong to do so. But I drove you to it. So if you’ll forgive me, Anne, I’ll forgive you and we’ll start square again. And now get yourself ready for the picnic.”

      Anne flew up like a rocket.

      “Oh, Marilla, isn’t it too late?”

      “No, it’s only two o’clock. They won’t be more than well gathered yet and it’ll be an hour before they have tea. Wash your face and comb your hair and put on your gingham. I’ll fill a basket for you. There’s plenty of stuff baked in the house. And I’ll get Jerry to hitch up the sorrel and drive you down to the picnic ground.”

      “Oh, Marilla,” exclaimed Anne, flying to the washstand. “Five minutes ago I was so miserable I was wishing I’d never been born and now I wouldn’t change places with an angel!”

      That night a thoroughly happy, completely tired-out Anne returned to Green Gables in a state of beatification impossible to describe.

      “Oh, Marilla, I’ve had a perfectly scrumptious time. Scrumptious is a new word I learned today. I heard Mary Alice Bell use it. Isn’t it very expressive? Everything was lovely. We had a splendid tea and then Mr. Harmon Andrews took us all for a row on the Lake of Shining Waters — six of us at a time. And Jane Andrews nearly fell overboard. She was leaning out to pick water lilies and if Mr. Andrews hadn’t caught her by her sash just in the nick of time she’d fallen in and prob’ly been drowned. I wish it had been me. It would have been such a romantic experience to have been nearly drowned. It would be such a thrilling tale to tell. And we had the ice cream. Words fail me to describe that ice cream. Marilla, I assure you it was sublime.”

      That evening Marilla told the whole story to Matthew over her stocking basket.

      “I’m willing to own up that I made a mistake,” she concluded candidly, “but I’ve learned a lesson. I have to laugh when I think of Anne’s ‘confession,’ although I suppose I shouldn’t for it really was a falsehood. But it doesn’t seem as bad as the other would have been, somehow, and anyhow I’m responsible for it. That child is hard to understand in some respects. But I believe she’ll turn out all right yet. And there’s one thing certain, no house will ever be dull that she’s in.”

Chapter XV.

       A Tempest in the School Teapot

       Table of Contents

      “What a splendid day!” said Anne, drawing a long breath. “Isn’t it good just to be alive on a day like this? I pity the people who aren’t born yet for missing it. They may have good days, of course, but they can never have this one. And it’s splendider still to have such a lovely way to go to school by, isn’t it?”

      “It’s a lot nicer than going round by the road; that is so dusty and hot,” said Diana practically, peeping into her dinner basket and mentally calculating if the three juicy, toothsome, raspberry tarts