“Plum puffs won’t minister to a mind diseased,”
said Anne disconsolately; but Marilla thought it a
good sign that she had recovered sufficiently to adapt
a quotation.
The cheerful supper table, with the twins’ bright
faces, and Marilla’s matchless plum puffs .
. . of which Davy ate four . . . did “hearten
her up” considerably after all. She had
a good sleep that night and and awakened in the morning
to find herself and the world transformed. It
had snowed softly and thickly all through the hours
of darkness and the beautiful whiteness, glittering
in the frosty sunshine, looked like a mantle of charity
cast over all the mistakes and humiliations of the
past.
“Every morn is
a fresh beginning,
Every morn is the world
made new,”
sang Anne, as she dressed.
Owing to the snow she had to go around by the road
to school and she thought it was certainly an impish
coincidence that Anthony Pye should come ploughing
along just as she left the Green Gables lane.
She felt as guilty as if their positions were reversed;
but to her unspeakable astonishment Anthony not only
lifted his cap . . . which he had never done before
. . . but said easily,
“Kind of bad walking, ain’t it? Can
I take those books for you, teacher?”
Anne surrendered her books and wondered if she could
possibly be awake. Anthony walked on in silence
to the school, but when Anne took her books she smiled
down at him . . . not the stereotyped “kind”
smile she had so persistently assumed for his benefit
but a sudden outflashing of good comradeship.
Anthony smiled . . . no, if the truth must be told,
Anthony grinned back. A grin is not generally
supposed to be a respectful thing; yet Anne suddenly
felt that if she had not yet won Anthony’s liking
she had, somehow or other, won his respect.
Mrs. Rachel Lynde came up the next Saturday and confirmed
this.
“Well, Anne, I guess you’ve won over Anthony
Pye, that’s what. He says he believes you
are some good after all, even if you are a girl.
Says that whipping you gave him was ‘just as
good as a man’s.’”
“I never expected to win him by whipping him,
though,” said Anne, a little mournfully, feeling
that her ideals had played her false somewhere.
“It doesn’t seem right. I’m
sure my theory of kindness can’t be wrong.”
“No, but the Pyes are an exception to every
known rule, that’s what,” declared Mrs.
Rachel with conviction.
Mr. Harrison said, “Thought you’d come
to it,” when he heard it, and Jane rubbed it
in rather unmercifully.
A Golden Picnic
Anne, on her way to Orchard Slope, met Diana, bound
for Green Gables, just where the mossy old log bridge
spanned the brook below the Haunted Wood, and they
sat down by the margin of the Dryad’s Bubble,
where tiny ferns were unrolling like curly-headed
green pixy folk wakening up from a nap.
