Reading Challenge: Anne of Avonlea Book 2
Welcome to the blog post for Anne of Avonlea book 2 of the Anne of the Green Gables book series reading challenge!
Anne of Avonlea is such an enjoyable read…a look into Anne's grown-up teaching years instilling lessons and values into the Avonlea youths. Anne is very busy helping Marilla raise the twins (trying to keep Davey on the straight and narrow path and out of trouble), starting an Avonlea improvement society, making new friends, keeping up on her studies, and of course teaching. Anne still manages to get into scrapes even at her age, but they make this book worth the read.
I started reading Anne of Avonlea in my special collector's edition book. Then I received this antique edition of Anne of Avonlea copyright 1909 for my birthday. It was a joy to read the other half of it in this beautiful old book.
Anne has grown, but not out of her childhood imaginings entirely, thank God for that. I can’t picture her without that valuable piece of her personality.
“To be sure, if you came down to harsh facts... which, it must be confessed, Anne seldom did until she had to...it did not seem likely that there was much promising material for celebrities in Avonlea school; but you could never tell what might happen if a teacher used her influence for good. Anne had certain rosetinted ideals of what a teacher might accomplish if she only went the right way about it; and she was in the midst of a delightful scene, forty years hence, with a famous personage...just exactly what he was to be famous for was left in convenient haziness, but Anne thought it would be rather nice to have him a college president or a Canadian premier...bowing low over her wrinkled hand and assuring her that it was she who had first kindled his ambition, and that all his success in life was due to the lessons she had instilled so long ago in Avonlea school.”
Of course, Anne must have high hopes and ambitions for her future students, just as she has always had them for herself.
“Sorry, miss! Sorry isn’t going to help matters any. You’d better go and look at the havoc that animal has made in my oats ...trampled them from center to circumference, miss.”
“I am very sorry,” repeated Anne firmly, “but perhaps if you kept your fences in better repair Dolly might not have broken in.”
“I believe it is true about Mr. Harrison being a crank. Certainly there’s nothing of the kindred spirit about him.
Anne had always a weather eye open for kindred spirits.”
“...he offered Anne a very dusty chair politely, and her reception would have passed off pleasantly enough if it had not been for that telltale of a parrot who was peering through the bars of his cage with wicked golden eyes. No sooner had Anne seated herself than Ginger exclaimed, “Bless my soul, what’s that redheaded snippet coming here for? ”
What a beautiful sentiment in the quote below, L. M. Montgomery had such a way with words.
“Marilla, what if I fail!”
“You’ll hardly fail completely in one day and there’s plenty more days coming,” said Marilla. “The trouble with you, Anne, is that you’ll expect to teach those children everything and reform all their faults right off, and if you can’t you’ll think you’ve failed.”
“The only thing I feel really sure of having accomplished today is that I taught Cliffie Wright that A is A. He never knew it before. Isn’t it something to have started a soul along a path that could end in Shakespeare and Paradise Lost?”
“There isn’t any bright side.”
“Oh, indeed there is,” cried Anne, who couldn’t endure such heresy in silence. “Why, there are ever so many bright sides, Miss Andrews. It’s really a beautiful world.”
“...they talked for a time of their plans and wishes...gravely, earnestly, hopefully, as youth love to talk, while the future is yet an untrodden path full of wonderful possibilities.”
I think I found my new A Little Dash of Sunshine Co. motto🌻💛
“I think you’re fufilling that ambition every day,” said Gilbert admiringly.
And he was right. Anne was one of the children of light by birthright. After she had passed through a life with a smile or a word thrown across it like a gleam of sunshine the owner of that life saw it, for the time being at least, as hopeful and lovely and of good report. ”
“I daresay I’ll tell Mary I’ll take them. You needn’t look so delighted, Anne. It will mean a good deal of extra work for you. I can’t sew a stitch on account of my eyes, so you’ll have to see to the making and mending of their clothes. And you don’t like sewing.”
“I hate it,” said Anne calmly, “but if you are willing to take those children from a sense of duty surely I can do their sewing from a sense of duty. It does people good to have to do things they don’t like...in moderation.”
If Marilla thought Anne was hard to manage, Davey is a new breed of mischief and trouble. Pulling Dora’s hair, stuffing an entire slice of cake in his mouth at once, and putting a caterpillar down a well-behaved little girl’s back during church are nothing compared to some of his future mischievous scrapes. The twins definitely keep Marilla and Anne on their toes.
“The twins were not noticeably alike, although both were fair. Dora had long sleek curls that never got out of order. Davey had a crop of fuzzy little yellow ringlets all over his round head. Doras’s hazel eyes were gentle and mild; Davey’s were roguish and dancing as an elf’s. Dora’s nose was straight, Davey’s was a positive snub; Dora had a “prunes and prisms” mouth, Davey’s was all smiles; and besides, he had a dimple in one cheek and none in the other, which gave him a dear comical, lopsided look when he laughed. Mirth and mischief lurked in every corner of his little face.”
“There’s Diana signaling me from her window. I’m glad...I really feel the need of some diversion, for what with Anthony Pye at school and Davey Keith at home my nerves have had about all they can endure for one day.”
“How’s your project of painting the hall coming on?”
“Splendidly. We had a meeting of the A.V.I.S. last Friday night and found that we had plenty of money subscribed to paint the hall and shingle the roof too. Most people gave very liberally, Mr. Harrison.”
“Everything that’s worth having is some trouble,” said Anne.”
The above quote is so true!
“...Joshua Pye has gone and painted the hall blue instead of green...a deep, brilliant blue, the shade they use for painting carts and wheelbarrows.
And Mrs. Lynde says it is the most hideous color for a building, especially when combined with a red roof, that she ever saw or imagined.”
They had all worked so hard to improve their little Avonlea community it is a shame it ended in such a comical display.
“What a nice month this November has been!” said Anne, who never quite got over her childish habit of talking to herself. “November is usually such a disagreeable month...as if the year had suddenly found out that she was growing old and could do nothing but weep and fret over it. This year is growing old gracefully...just like a stately old lady who knows she can be charming even with gray hair and wrinkles.We’ve had lovely days and delicious twilights. This last fortnight has been so peaceful, and even Davey has been almost well-behaved. I really think he is improving a great deal.
How quiet the woods are today...not a murmur except that soft wind purring in the treetops! It sounds like surf on a faraway shore.”
I love that Anne hasn't entirely grown up out of her Anneish ways.
“Oh, this has been such a Jonah day, Marilla. I’m so ashamed of myself. I lost my temper and whipped Anthony Pye.”
“Well, never mind. This day’s done and there’s a new one coming tomorrow, with no mistakes in it yet, as you used to say yourself. Just come downstairs and have your supper. You’ll see if a good cup of tea and those plum puffs I made today won’t hearten you up.”
“Plum puffs won’t minister to a mind diseased,” said Anne disconsolately.”
This spring picnic sounds simply delightful, and I wish I could go on one too.
“We’ll all four start off to the woods and spend a golden day making the acquaintance of the spring. We none of us really know her yet, but we’ll meet her back there as we never can anywhere else. I want to explore all those fields and lonely places anyhow. I have a conviction that there are scores of beautiful nooks there that have never really been seen although they may have been looked at. We’ll make friends with wind and sky and sun, and bring home the spring in our hearts.”
“Oh, girls, girls, see that patch of violets! There’s something for memory’s picture gallery. When I’m eighty years old...if I ever am...I shall shut my eyes and see those violets just as I see them now. That’s the first good gift our day has given us.”
“Pushing through the undergrowth beyond, the girls came out to the young green seclusion of Mr. Silas Sloane’s back pasture. Across it the they found the entrance to a lane striking up through the woods and voted to explore it also. It rewarded their quest with a succession of pretty surprises. First, skirting Mr. Sloane’s pasture came an archway of wild cherry trees all in bloom. The girls swung their hats on their arms and wreathed their hair with the creamy, fluffy blossoms. Then the lane turned at right angles and plunged into a spruce wood so thick and dark that they walked in a gloom as of twilight, with not a glimpse of sky or sunlight to be seen.”
“I’d wish it might be spring all the time and in everybody’s heart and all our lives,” she said.”
“The girls left their baskets in Hester’s garden and spent the rest of the afternoon rambling in the woods and fields surrounding it, discovering many pretty nooks and lanes. When they got hungry they had lunch in the prettiest spot of all...on the steep bank of a gurgling brook where white birches shot up out of long feathery grasses. The girls sat down by the roots and did full justice to Annes dainties, even the unpoetical sandwiches being greatly appreciated by hearty, unspoiled appetites sharpened by all the fresh air and exercise they had enjoyed.”
“We’re both that kind. You know, teacher,” he added, squeezing her hand chummily. “Isn’t splendid to be that kind, teacher?”
“Splendid,” Anne agreed, gray shining eyes looking down into blue shining ones. Anne and Paul both knew.
“How fair the realm
Imagination opens to the view”
and both knew the way to that happy land. There the rose of joy bloomed immortal by dale and stream; clouds never darkened the sunny sky; sweet bells never jangled out of tune; and kindred spirits abounded. The knowledge of that land’s geography... “east o’ the sun, west o’ the moon”...is priceless lore, not to be bought in any market place. It must be the gift of the good fairies at birth and the years can never deface it or take it away. It is better to possess it, living in a garret, than to be the inhabitant of palaces without it. ”
“Then Anne put Davey to bed and made him promise that he would behave perfectly the next day.
“If I’m as good as good can be all day tomorrow will you let me be just as bad as I like all the next day?” asked Davey.”
“...Anne led the way to the garden, which was full of airy shadows and wavering golden lights.”
“When Diana dished the peas she tasted them and a very peculiar expression crossed her face.
“Anne, did you put sugar in these peas?”
“Yes,” said Anne, mashing the potatoes with the air of one expected to do her duty.
“I put a spoonful of sugar in too, when I set them on the stove,” said Diana. Anne dropped her masher and tasted the peas also. Then she made a grimace.
“How awful! I never dreamed you had put sugar in, because I knew your mother never does. I happened to think of it, for a wonder...I’m always forgetting it...so I popped a spoonful in.”
“It’s a case of too many cooks, I guess,” said Marilla, who had listened to this dialogue with a rather guilty expression. “I didn’t think you would remember about the sugar, Anne, for I’m perfectly certain you never did before...so I put in a spoonful.”
The guests in the parlor heard peal after peal of laughter from the kitchen, but they never knew what the fun was about. There were no green peas on the dinner table that day, however. ”
“There is an old proverb that really seems at times to be inspired...”it never rains but it pours.” The measure of that day’s tribulations was not yet full…”
Davey slipping falling onto the becreamed lemon pies & Miss Barry's Willow Ware platter shattering into million pieces after meeting with the conch shell Davey accidentally knocked down the stairs. I find these mistakes such amusing plights.
“I know I’m too much inclined that way,” agreed Anne ruefully. “When I think something nice is going to happen I seem to fly right up on the wings of anticipation; and then the first thing I realize I drop down to earth with a thud. But really, Marilla, the flying part is glorious as it lasts... it’s like soaring through a sunset. I think it almost pays for the thud.”
“Well, maybe it does,” admitted Marilla. “I’d rather walk calmly along and do without both flying and thud.”
I'm rather inclined this way also Anne; I always get so excited about good things happening and when they don't, I'm supremely disappointed.
“Anne was kneeling at the west gable window watching the sunset sky that was like a great flower with petals of crocus and a heart of fiery yellow... ”
“Lean on the window sill,” advised Diana, and Anne accordingly leaned. Much to her delight, she saw, as she peered through the pane, a willow-ware platter, exactly such as she was in quest of, on the shelf in front of the window. So much she saw before the catastrophe came. In her joy Anne forgot the precarious nature of her footing , incautiously ceased to lean on the window sill, gave an impulsive little hop of pleasure...and the next moment she crashed through the roof up to her armpits, and there she hung, quite unable to extricate herself.”
“Oh dear, this is a dreadful predicament. I wouldn’t mind my misfortunes so much if they were romantic, as Mrs. Morgan’s heroines always are, but they are always just simply ridiculous.”
Poor Anne, falling through the Copp girl’s roof and being stuck there through a thunderstorm with her parasol high above her head, what a sight. Though she still managed to imagine out a dialogue between the flowers & the birds.
“I imagined out the most interesting dialogue between the asters and the sweet peas and the wild canaries in the lilac bush and the guardian spirit of the garden. When I go home I mean to write it down. I wish I had a pencil and paper to do it now, because I daresay I’ll forget the best parts before I reach home.”
Diana the faithful had a pencil and discovered a sheet of wrapping paper in the box of the buggy. Anne folded up her dripping parasol, put on her hat, spread the wrapping paper on a shingle Diana handed up, and wrote out her garden idyl under conditions that could hardly be considered as favorable to literature. Nevertheless, the result was quite pretty, and Diana was “enraptured” when Anne read it.”
“After all,” Anne had said to Marilla once, “I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string.”
“Gilbert stretched himself out on the ferns beside the Bubble and looked approvingly at Anne. If Gilbert had been asked to describe his ideal women 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.”
Oh, what a funny predicament! It has always been my experience that people come over when you're least expecting it or prepared for company.
“It’s...it’s...your nose Anne.”
My nose? Oh, Diana, surely nothing has gone wrong with it!”
Anne rushed to the little looking glass over the sink. One glance revealed the fatal truth. Her nose was a brilliant scarlet!...
...I thought I was rubbing my freckle lotion on it, but I must of used that red dye Marilla has for marking the pattern on her rugs,”...
...First I dye my hair; then I dye my nose.”
“After dinner they all had a walk through Lover’s Lane and Violet Vale and the Birch Path, and then back through the Haunted Wood to Dryad’s Bubble, where they sat down and talked for a delightful last half hour. Mrs. Morgan wanted to know how the Haunted Wood came by its name, and laughed until she cried when she heard the story and Anne’s dramatic account of a certain memorable walk through it at the witching hour of twilight.
“It has indeed been a feast of reason and flow of soul, hasn’t it?” said Anne, when her guests had gone and she and Diana were alone again. “I don’t know which I enjoyed more ...listening to Mrs. Morgan or gazing at Mrs. Pendexter.”
“It was accordingly arranged that they should walk, and the following afternoon they set out, going by way of Lover’s Lane to the back of the Cuthbert farm, where they found a road leading into the heart of acres of glimmering beech and maple woods, which were all in a wonderous glow of flame and gold, lying in a great purple stillness and peace.”
“Around the next turn they came in sight, not indeed a palace, but of a little house almost as surprising as a palace would have been in this province of conventional wooden farmhouses, all as much alike in general characteristics as if they had grown from the same seed. Anne stopped short in rapture and Diana exclaimed, “Oh, I know where we are now. That is the little stone house where Miss Lavendar Lewis lives...Echo Lodge, she calls it, I think. I’ve often heard of it but I’ve never seen it before. Isn’t it a romantic spot?”
“It’s the sweetest, prettiest place I ever saw or imagined,” said Anne delightedly. “It looks like a bit out of a story book or a dream.”
“Diana secretly thought Miss Lavendar quite as peculiar as report had pictured her. The idea of a woman of forty-five playing at having a tea party, just as if she were a little girl! But Anne of the shining eyes exclaimed joyfully,
“Oh do you imagine things too? “That “too” revealed a kindred spirit to Miss Lavendar.”
“She looks just as music sounds, I think,” answered Anne.”
How fortunate Anne took the wrong turn that day. And met Miss Lavendar, Charlotta the Fourth and the little stone house & it's echoes.
“People always admire my echoes very much,” said Miss Lavendar, as if the echoes were her personal property. “I love them myself. They are very good company...with a little pretending.”
“That’s a lovely idea, Diana,” said Anne enthusiastically. “Living so that you beautify your name, even if it wasn’t beautiful to begin with...
making it stand in people’s thoughts for something so lovely and pleasant that they never think of it by itself...”
“I’ve always wondered what went wrong between Stephen Irving and Lavendar Lewis,” continued Marilla, ignoring Davey. “They certainly were engaged twenty-five years ago and then all at once it was broken off. I don’t know what the trouble was but it must have been something terrible, for he went away to the States and never come home since.”
“Perhaps it was nothing very dreadful after all. I think the little things in life often make more trouble than the big things,” said Anne, with one of those flashes of insight which experience could not have bettered.”
“There were sounds of riot and mirth in the little stone house that night. What with cooking and feasting and making candy and laughing and “pretending,” it is quite true that Miss Lavendar and Anne comported themselves in a fashion entirely unsuited to the dignity of a spinster of forty-five and a sedate schoolma’am. ”
“You may kiss me if you like,” said Paul gravely. Miss Lavendar stooped and kissed him.
“How did you know I wanted to?” she whispered.
“Because you looked at me just as my little mother used to do when she wanted to kiss me.”
“Far and wide was a white carpet, knee deep, of hailstones; drifts of them were heaped up under the eaves and on the steps. When, three or four days later, those hailstones melted, the havoc they had wrought was plainly seen, for every green growing thing in field or garden was cut off. Not only was every blossom stripped from the apple trees but great boughs and branches were wrenched away. And out of the two hundred trees set out by the Improvers by far the greater number were snapped off or torn to shreds.
“Can it possibly be the same world it was an hour ago?” asked Anne, dazedly. “It must have taken longer than that to play such havoc.”
“I guess folks won’t laugh at Uncle Abe’s predictions again. Seems as if all the storms that he’s been prophesying all his life that never happened came all at once. ”
“My garden was all smashed flat,” he continued mournfully, “but so was Dora’s,” he added in a tone which indicated that there was yet balm in Gilead.”
“That is one good thing about this world ...there are always sure to be more springs.”
I love the above quote so much! It is nice to know no matter how dark and long the winter, there is sure to be a spring.
“Anne, who was that woman?”
“Marilla,” said Anne, but with dancing eyes, “do I look crazy?”
“Not more so than usual,” said Marilla, with no thought of being sarcastic.
“Well then, do you think I am awake?”
“Anne, what nonsense has got into you? Who was that woman, I say?”
“Marilla, if I’m not crazy and not asleep she can’t be such stuff as dreams are made of...she must be real. Anyway, I’m sure I couldn’t have imagined such a bonnet. She says she is Mr. Harrison’s wife, Marilla.
Marilla stared in her turn.
“His wife! Anne Shirley! Then what has he been passing himself off as an unmarried man for?”
“...This jam is awful nice.
Davey had no sorrows that plum jam could not cure.”
I'm the same way, I sort of have no sorrows that chocolate cannot help😊🍫
“You’re awful nice, Anne. Milty Boulter wrote on his slate today and showed it to Jennie Sloane,
“ ‘Roses red and vi’lets blue,
Sugars sweet, and so are you,’
and that ‘spresses my feelings for you ezackly, Anne.”
“I feel...as if...somebody...had handed me...the moon...and I didn’t know...exactly...what to do...with it,” said Anne dazedly.”
“Do you know, I’ve thought and dreamed so much about little Hester Gray that she has become strangely real to me. I think of her, back there in her little garden in that cool, still, green corner; and I have a fancy that if I could steal back there some spring evening, just at magic time ‘twixt light and dark, and tiptoe so softly up the beech hill that my footsteps could not frighten her, I would find the garden just as it used to be, all sweet with June lilies and early roses, with the tiny house beyond it all hung with vines; and little Hester Gray would be there, with her soft eyes, and the wind ruffling her dark hair, wandering about, putting her fingertips under the chins of the lilies and whispering secrets to the roses; and I would go forward, oh, so softly and hold out my hands and say to her, ‘Little Hester Gray, won’t you let me be your playmate, for I love roses too? And we would sit down on the old bench and talk a little and dream a little, or just be beautifully silent together. And then the moon would rise and I would look around me...and there would be no Hester Gray and no little vinehung house, and no roses...only an old waste garden starred with June lilies amid the grasses, and the wind sighing, oh, so sorrowfully in the cherry trees. And I would not know whether it had been real or if I had just imagined it all.”
“The possibilities of making new friends help to make life very fascinating. But no matter how many new friends I make they’ll never be as dear to me as the old ones...especially a certain girl with black eyes and dimples. ”
“Do you remember that evening we first met, Diana, and ‘swore’ eternal friendship in your garden? We’ve kept that ‘oath,’ I think...we’ve never had a quarrel or even a coolness. I shall never forget the thrill that went over me the day you told me you loved me. I had had such a lonely, starved heart all through my childhood...
...And then I met you. You don’t know what your friendship meant to me. I want to thank you here and now, dear, for the warm and true affection you’ve always given me.”
“I’m just tired of everything ...even of the echos. There is nothing in my life but echos...
echos of lost hopes and dreams and joys. They’re beautiful and mocking. Oh Anne, its horrid of me talk like this when I have company.”
Doing something I love or eating something I love usually cheers me up also, it doesn’t solve all the world’s problems, but cheers you up for even just a little while.
“Oh, isn’t it sweet and fresh back here?” breathed Anne. “I just feel as if I were drinking in the sunshine.”
“Just as if you were looking through me at somebody I put you in mind of,” said Paul, who had such occasional flashes of uncanny insight that it wasn’t quite safe to have secrets when he was about.
“You do put me in mind of somebody I knew long ago,” said Miss Lavendar.”
“Back in the schoolroom Anne was sitting alone at her desk, as she had sat on the first day of school two years before, her face leaning on her hand, her dewy eyes looking wistfully out of the window to the Lake of Shining Waters. Her heart was so wrung over the parting with her pupils that for the moment college had lost all its charm...
...For two years she had worked earnestly and faithfully, making many mistakes and learning from them. She had had her reward. She had taught her scholars something, but she felt that they had taught her much more... lessons of tenderness, self-control, innocent wisdom, lore of childish hearts. Perhaps she had not succeeded in “inspiring” any wonderful ambitions in her pupils, but she had taught them, more by her own sweet personality than by all her careful precepts, that it was good and necessary in the years that were before them to live their lives finely and graciously, holding fast to truth and courtesy and kindness, keeping aloof from all that savored of falsehood and meanness and vulgarity. They were, perhaps, all unconscious of having learned such lessons; but they would remember and practice them long after they had forgotten the capital of Afghanistan and the dates of the Wars of the roses.”
“Oh, Miss Shirley,” he cried excitedly, “you can’t think what has happened! Something so splendid. Father is here...just think of that!...
... “So this is my little son’s ‘ beautiful teacher,’ of whom I have heard so much,” said Mr. Irving with a hearty handshake. “Paul’s letters have been so full of you, Miss Shirley, that I feel as if I were pretty well acquainted with you already . I want to thank you for what you have done for Paul. I think that your influence has been just what he needed.”
“Just the face for a hero of romance, Anne thought with a thrill of intense satisfaction...
Anne would have thought it dreadful if the object of Miss Lavendar’s romance had not looked the part.”
“In Paul’s last letter he spoke of going with you to visit an old...friend of mine...Miss Lewis at the stone house in Grafton. Do you know her well?”
“Yes, indeed, she is a very dear friend of mine,” was Anne’s demure reply, which gave no hint of the sudden thrill that tingled over her from head to foot at Mr. Irving’s question. Anne “felt instinctively” that romance was peeping at her around a corner.”
“Stephen Irving is home?”
“How did you know? Who told you?” cried Anne disappointedly, vexed that her great revelation had been anticipated.
“Nobody. I knew that must be it, just from the way you spoke.”
“He wants to come and see you,” said Anne. “May I send him word that he may?”
“Yes, of course,” fluttered Miss Lavendar.
“There is no reason why he shouldn’t. He is only coming as any old friend might.”
“Oh, it’s delightful to be living in a storybook,” she thought gaily.”
“Charlotta the Fourth felt that some mystery pervaded the stone house that afternoon... a mystery from which she was excluded. Miss Lavendar roamed about the garden in a distracted fashion. Anne too, seemed possessed by a demon of unrest, and walked to and fro and went up and down. Charlotta the Fourth endured it till patience ceased to be a virtue; then she confronted Anne on the occasion of that romantic young person’s third aimless peregrination through the kitchen.
“Please, Miss Shirley, ma’am,” said Charlotta the Fourth, with an indignant toss of her very blue bows, “it’s plain to be seen you and Miss Lavendar have got a secret and I think, begging your pardon if I’m too forward, Miss Shirley, ma’am, that it’s real mean not to tell me when we’ve all been such chums.”
“Oh, Charlotta dear, I’d have told you all about it if it were my secret...but it’s Miss Lavendar’s, you see.”
“They flew to the window. Mr. Irving had no intention of going away. He and Miss Lavendar were strolling slowly down the middle path to the stone bench.
“Oh, Miss Shirley, ma’am, he’s got his arm around her waist,” whispered Charlotta the Fourth delightedly. “He must have proposed to her or she’d never allow it.
Anne caught Charlotta the Fourth by her own plump waist and danced her around the kitchen until they were both out of breath.”
“They are to be married in the garden under the honeysuckle trellis...the very spot where Mr. Irving proposed to her twenty-five years ago. Marilla, that is romantic, even in prose.”
“You must be my bridesmaid, you know, Anne. Promise me that...wherever you may be when I’m married.”
“I’ll come from the ends of the earth if necessary,” promised Anne solemnly.”
“I suppose it would be perfectly impossible to keep house with only thirty-six doilies,” conceded Anne, with a solemn face but dancing eyes.
Diana looked hurt.
“I didn’t think you’d make fun of me, Anne,” she said reproachfully.
“Dearest, I wasn’t making fun of you,” cried Anne repentantly. “I was only teasing you a bit. I think you’ll make the sweetest little housekeeper in the world. And I think it’s perfectly lovely of you to be planning already for your home o’dreams.”
Oh, Anne how do you not see how much you love Gilbert. It is so obvious to the rest of us. It can be so maddening to see Anne deny her feelings to keep things from changing
“Just as Miss Lavendar and Stephan Irving were pronounced man and wife a very beautiful and symbolic thing happened. The sun suddenly burst through the gray and poured a flood of radiance on the happy bride. Instantly the garden was alive with dancing shadows and flickering lights.”
“What are you thinking of, Anne? asked Gilbert, coming down the walk...
“Of Miss Lavendar and Mr. Irving,” answered Anne dreamily. “Isn’t it beautiful to think how everything has turned out...how they have come together again after all the years of separation and misunderstanding?”
“Yes, it’s beautiful,” said Gilbert, looking steadily down into Anne’s uplifted face, “but wouldn’t it have been more beautiful still, Anne, if there had been no separation or misunderstanding...if they had come hand and hand all the way through life, with no memories behind them but those which belonged to each other?”
For a moment Anne’s heart fluttered queerly and for the first time her eyes faltered under Gilberts gaze and a rosy flush stained the paleness of her face. It was as if a veil that had hung before her inner consciousness had been lifted, giving to her view a revelation of unsuspected feelings and realities.
Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one’s life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one’s side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music; perhaps...perhaps...love unfolded naturally out of beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath. ”
“Behind them in the garden the little stone house brooded among the shadows. It was lonely but not forsaken. It had not yet done with dreams and laughter and the joy of life; there were to be future summers for the little stone house; meanwhile, it could wait. And over the river in purple durance the echoes bided their time.”
I sighed as I finished this book, what charming poetic words, with a hint of romance perhaps around the next bend.
Thanks for reading along with me!
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