“Pretty well. We plan to finish the Virgil
tonight . . . there are only twenty lines to do.
Then we are not going to study any more until September.”
“Do you think you will ever get to college?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Anne looked
dreamily afar to the opal-tinted horizon. “Marilla’s
eyes will never be much better than they are now,
although we are so thankful to think that they will
not get worse. And then there are the twins .
. . somehow I don’t believe their uncle will
ever really send for them. Perhaps college may
be around the bend in the road, but I haven’t
got to the bend yet and I don’t think much about
it lest I might grow discontented.”
“Well, I should like to see you go to college,
Anne; but if you never do, don’t be discontented
about it. We make our own lives wherever we are,
after all . . . college can only help us to do it more
easily. They are broad or narrow according to
what we put into them, not what we get out. Life
is rich and full here . . . everywhere . . . if we
can only learn how to open our whole hearts to its
richness and fulness.”
“I think I understand what you mean,”
said Anne thoughtfully, “and I know I have so
much to feel thankful for . . . oh, so much . . .
my work, and Paul Irving, and the dear twins, and
all my friends. Do you know, Mrs. Allan, I’m
so thankful for friendship. It beautifies life
so much.”
“True friendship is a very helpfulul thing indeed,”
said Mrs. Allan, “and we should have a very
high ideal of it, and never sully it by any failure
in truth and sincerity. I fear the name of friendship
is often degraded to a kind of intimacy that has nothing
of real friendship in it.”
“Yes . . . like Gertie Pye’s and Julia
Bell’s. They are very intimate and go everywhere
together; but Gertie is always saying nasty things
of Julia behind her back and everybody thinks she
is jealous of her because she is always so pleased
when anybody criticizes Julia. I think it is
desecration to call that friendship. If we have
friends we should look only for the best in them and
give them the best that is in us, don’t you
think? Then friendship would be the most beautiful
thing in the world.”
“Friendship is very beautiful,” smiled
Mrs. Allan, “but some day . . .”
Then she paused abruptly. In the delicate, white-browed
face beside her, with its candid eyes and mobile features,
there was still far more of the child than of the
woman. Anne’s heart so far harbored only
dreams of friendship and ambition, and Mrs. Allan
did not wish to brush the bloom from her sweet unconsciousness.
So she left her sentence for the future years to finish.
The Substance of Things Hoped For
“Anne,” said Davy appealingly, scrambling
up on the shiny, leather-covered sofa in the Green
Gables kitchen, where Anne sat, reading a letter,
“Anne, I’m awful hungry. You’ve
no idea.”
