“If I could only share the joke with some one!”
she thought. “But I can’t. Diana
is the only one I’d want to tell, and, even if
I hadn’t sworn secrecy to Jane, I can’t
tell Diana things now. She tells everything to
Fred—I know she does. Well, I’ve
had my first proposal. I supposed it would come
some day—but I certainly never thought it
would be by proxy. It’s awfully funny—and
yet there’s a sting in it, too, somehow.”
Anne knew quite well wherein the sting consisted,
though she did not put it into words. She had
had her secret dreams of the first time some one should
ask her the great question. And it had, in those
dreams, always been very romantic and beautiful:
and the “some one” was to be very handsome
and dark-eyed and distinguished-looking and eloquent,
whether he were Prince Charming to be enraptured with
“yes,” or one to whom a regretful, beautifully
worded, but hopeless refusal must be given. If
the latter, the refusal was to be expressed so delicately
that it would be next best thing to acceptance, and
he would go away, after kissing her hand, assuring
her of his unalterable, life-long devotion. And
it would always be a beautiful memory, to be proud
of and a little sad about, also.
And now, this thrilling experience had turned out
to be merely grotesque. Billy Andrews had got
his sister to propose for him because his father had
given him the upper farm; and if Anne wouldn’t
“have him” Nettie Blewett would.
There was romance for you, with a vengeance! Anne
laughed—and then sighed. The bloom
had been brushed from one little maiden dream.
Would the painful process go on until everything became
prosaic and hum-drum?
Chapter IX
An Unwelcome Lover and a Welcome Friend
The second term at Redmond sped as quickly as had
the first—“actually whizzed away,”
Philippa said. Anne enjoyed it thoroughly in all
its phases—the stimulating class rivalry,
the making and deepening of new and helpful friendships,
the gay little social stunts, the doings of the various
societies of which she was a member, the widening of
horizons and interests. She studied hard, for
she had made up her mind to win the Thorburn Scholarship
in English. This being won, meant that she could
come back to Redmond the next year without trenching
on Marilla’s small savings—something
Anne was determined she would not do.
Gilbert, too, was in full chase after a scholarship,
but found plenty of time for frequent calls at Thirty-eight,
St. John’s. He was Anne’s escort
at nearly all the college affairs, and she knew that
their names were coupled in Redmond gossip. Anne
raged over this but was helpless; she could not cast
an old friend like Gilbert aside, especially when
he had grown suddenly wise and wary, as behooved him
in the dangerous proximity of more than one Redmond
youth who would gladly have taken his place by the
side of the slender, red-haired coed, whose gray eyes
Copyrights
Anne of the Island from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
