“Let me read some of your stories.”
“Well, here’s my masterpiece. Note
its cheerful title—’My Graves.’
I shed quarts of tears while writing it, and the other
girls shed gallons while I read it. Jane Andrews’
mother scolded her frightfully because she had so
many handkerchiefs in the wash that week. It’s
a harrowing tale of the wanderings of a Methodist
minister’s wife. I made her a Methodist
because it was necessary that she should wander.
She buried a child every place she lived in.
There were nine of them and their graves were severed
far apart, ranging from Newfoundland to Vancouver.
I described the children, pictured their several death
beds, and detailed their tombstones and epitaphs.
I had intended to bury the whole nine but when I had
disposed of eight my invention of horrors gave out
and I permitted the ninth to live as a hopeless cripple.”
While Stella read My Graves, punctuating its tragic
paragraphs with chuckles, and Rusty slept the sleep
of a just cat who has been out all night curled up
on a Jane Andrews tale of a beautiful maiden of fifteen
who went to nurse in a leper colony—of course
dying of the loathsome disease finally—Anne
glanced over the other manuscripts and recalled the
old days at Avonlea school when the members of the
Story Club, sitting under the spruce trees or down
among the ferns by the brook, had written them.
What fun they had had! How the sunshine and mirth
of those olden summers returned as she read.
Not all the glory that was Greece or the grandeur
that was Rome could weave such wizardry as those funny,
tearful tales of the Story Club. Among the manuscripts
Anne found one written on sheets of wrapping paper.
A wave of laughter filled her gray eyes as she recalled
the time and place of its genesis. It was the
sketch she had written the day she fell through the
roof of the Cobb duckhouse on the Tory Road.
Anne glanced over it, then fell to reading it intently.
It was a little dialogue between asters and sweet-peas,
wild canaries in the lilac bush, and the guardian
spirit of the garden. After she had read it, she
sat, staring into space; and when Stella had gone she
smoothed out the crumpled manuscript.
“I believe I will,” she said resolutely.
“Here is a letter with an Indian stamp for you,
Aunt Jimsie,” said Phil. “Here are
three for Stella, and two for Pris, and a glorious
fat one for me from Jo. There’s nothing
for you, Anne, except a circular.”
Nobody noticed Anne’s flush as she took the
thin letter Phil tossed her carelessly. But a
few minutes later Phil looked up to see a transfigured
Anne.
“Honey, what good thing has happened?”
“The Youth’s Friend has accepted a little
sketch I sent them a fortnight ago,” said Anne,
trying hard to speak as if she were accustomed to
having sketches accepted every mail, but not quite
succeeding.
