We feel that we are so much older than we used to be that it isn’t becoming to talk of childish matters.
It’s such a solemn thing to be almost fourteen, Marilla.
Miss Stacy took all us girls who are in our teens down to the brook last Wednesday, and talked to us about it.
She said we couldn’t be too careful what habits we formed and what ideals we acquired in our teens, because by the time we were twenty our characters would be developed and the foundation laid for our whole future life.
And she said if the foundation was shaky we could never build anything really worth while on it.
Diana and I talked the matter over coming home from school.
We felt extremely solemn, Marilla.
And we decided that we would try to be very careful indeed and form respectable habits and learn all we could and be as sensible as possible, so that by the time we were twenty our characters would be properly developed.
It’s perfectly appalling to think of being twenty, Marilla.
It sounds so fearfully old and grown up.
But why was Miss Stacy here this afternoon?”
“That is what I want to tell you, Anne, if you’ll ever give me a chance to get a word in edgewise.
She was talking about you.”
“About me?”
Anne looked rather scared.
Then she flushed and exclaimed: “Oh, I know what she was saying.
I meant to tell you, Marilla, honestly I did, but I forgot.
Miss Stacy caught me reading Ben Hur in school yesterday afternoon when I should have been studying my Canadian history.
Jane Andrews lent it to me.
I was reading it at dinner hour, and I had just got to the chariot race when school went in.
I was simply wild to know how it turned out—although I felt sure Ben Hur must win, because it wouldn’t be poetical justice if he didn’t—so I spread the history open on my desk lid and then tucked Ben Hur between the desk and my knee.
I just looked as if I were studying Canadian history, you know, while all the while I was reveling in Ben Hur.
I was so interested in it that I never noticed Miss Stacy coming down the aisle until all at once I just looked up and there she was looking down at me, so reproachful-like.
I can’t tell you how ashamed I felt, Marilla, especially when I heard Josie Pye giggling. Miss Stacy took Ben Hur away, but she never said a word then.
She kept me in at recess and talked to me.
She said I had done very wrong in two respects.
First, I was wasting the time I ought to have put on my studies; and secondly, I was deceiving my teacher in trying to make it appear I was reading a history when it was a storybook instead.
I had never realized until that moment, Marilla, that what I was doing was deceitful.
I was shocked.
I cried bitterly, and asked Miss Stacy to forgive me and I’d never do such a thing again; and I offered to do penance by never so much as looking at Ben Hur for a whole week, not even to see how the chariot race turned out.
But Miss Stacy said she wouldn’t require that, and she forgave me freely.
So I think it wasn’t very kind of her to come up here to you about it after all.”
“Miss Stacy never mentioned such a thing to me, Anne, and its only your guilty conscience that’s the matter with you.
You have no business to be taking storybooks to school. You read too many novels anyhow.
When I was a girl I wasn’t so much as allowed to look at a novel.”
“Oh, how can you call Ben Hur a novel when it’s really such a religious book?” protested Anne.
“Of course it’s a little too exciting to be proper reading for Sunday, and I only read it on weekdays.
And I never read any book now unless either Miss Stacy or Mrs. Allan thinks it is a proper book for a girl thirteen and three-quarters to read.
Miss Stacy made me promise that.
She found me reading a book one day called, The Lurid Mystery of the Haunted Hall.
It was one Ruby Gillis had lent me, and, oh, Marilla, it was so fascinating and creepy.
It just curdled the blood in my veins.
But Miss Stacy said it was a very silly, unwholesome book, and she asked me not to read any more of it or any like it.
I didn’t mind promising not to read any more like it, but it was agonizing to give back that book without knowing how it turned out.
But my love for Miss Stacy stood the test and I did.
It’s really wonderful, Marilla, what you can do when you’re truly anxious to please a certain person.”
“Well, I guess I’ll light the lamp and get to work,” said Marilla.
“I see plainly that you don’t want to hear what Miss Stacy had to say.
You’re more interested in the sound of your own tongue than in anything else.”
“Oh, indeed, Marilla, I do want to hear it,” cried Anne contritely.