“Oh, don’t say that, Marilla. Remember
how bad I was when I came here.”
“Anne, you never were bad . . . Never.
I see that now, when I’ve learned what real
badness is. You were always getting into terrible
scrapes, I’ll admit, but your motive was always
good. Davy is just bad from sheer love of it.”
“Oh, no, I don’t think it is real badness
with him either,” pleaded Anne. “It’s
just mischief. And it is rather quiet for him
here, you know. He has no other boys to play
with and his mind has to have something to occupy
it. Dora is so prim and proper she is no good
for a boy’s playmate. I really think it
would be better to let them go to school, Marilla.”
“No,” said Marilla resolutely, “my
father always said that no child should be cooped
up in the four walls of a school until it was seven
years old, and Mr. Allan says the same thing.
The twins can have a few lessons at home but go to
school they shan’t till they’re seven.”
“Well, we must try to reform Davy at home then,”
said Anne cheerfully. “With all his faults
he’s really a dear little chap. I can’t
help loving him. Marilla, it may be a dreadful
thing to say, but honestly, I like Davy better than
Dora, for all she’s so good.”
“I don’t know but that I do, myself,”
confessed Marilla, “and it isn’t fair,
for Dora isn’t a bit of trouble. There couldn’t
be a better child and you’d hardly know she
was in the house.”
“Dora is too good,” said Anne. “She’d
behave just as well if there wasn’t a soul to
tell her what to do. She was born already brought
up, so she doesn’t need us; and I think,”
concluded Anne, hitting on a very vital truth, “that
we always love best the people who need us. Davy
needs us badly.”
“He certainly needs something,” agreed
Marilla. “Rachel Lynde would say it was
a good spanking.”
Facts and Fancies
“Teaching is really very interesting work,”
wrote Anne to a Queen’s Academy chum. “Jane
says she thinks it is monotonous but I don’t
find it so. Something funny is almost sure to
happen every day, and the children say such amusing
things. Jane says she punishes her pupils when
they make funny speeches, which is probably why she
finds teaching monotonous. This afternoon little
Jimmy Andrews was trying to spell ‘speckled’
and couldn’t manage it. ‘Well,’
he said finally, ’I can’t spell it but
I know what it means.’
“‘What?’ I asked.
“‘St. Clair Donnell’s face, miss.’
“St. Clair is certainly very much freckled,
although I try to prevent the others from commenting
on it . . . for I was freckled once and well do I
remember it. But I don’t think St. Clair
minds. It was because Jimmy called him ‘St.
Clair’ that St. Clair pounded him on the way
home from school. I heard of the pounding, but
not officially, so I don’t think I’ll
take any notice of it.
“Yesterday I was trying to teach Lottie Wright
to do addition. I said, ’If you had three
candies in one hand and two in the other, how many
would you have altogether?’ ‘A mouthful,’
said Lottie. And in the nature study class, when
I asked them to give me a good reason why toads shouldn’t
be killed, Benjie Sloane gravely answered, ’Because
it would rain the next day.’
