It was hard at first.
I was so used to crowding in all the fine big words I could think of—and I thought of any number of them.
But I’ve got used to it now and I see it’s so much better.”
“What has become of your story club?
I haven’t heard you speak of it for a long time.”
“The story club isn’t in existence any longer.
We hadn’t time for it—and anyhow I think we had got tired of it.
It was silly to be writing about love and murder and elopements and mysteries.
Miss Stacy sometimes has us write a story for training in composition, but she won’t let us write anything but what might happen in Avonlea in our own lives, and she criticizes it very sharply and makes us criticize our own too.
I never thought my compositions had so many faults until I began to look for them myself.
I felt so ashamed I wanted to give up altogether, but Miss Stacy said I could learn to write well if I only trained myself to be my own severest critic.
And so I am trying to.”
“You’ve only two more months before the Entrance,” said Marilla.
“Do you think you’ll be able to get through?”
Anne shivered.
“I don’t know.
Sometimes I think I’ll be all right—and then I get horribly afraid.
We’ve studied hard and Miss Stacy has drilled us thoroughly, but we mayn’t get through for all that.
We’ve each got a stumbling block.
Mine is geometry of course, and Jane’s is Latin, and Ruby and Charlie’s is algebra, and Josie’s is arithmetic.
Moody Spurgeon says he feels it in his bones that he is going to fail in English history.
Miss Stacy is going to give us examinations in June just as hard as we’ll have at the Entrance and mark us just as strictly, so we’ll have some idea.
I wish it was all over, Marilla.
It haunts me.
Sometimes I wake up in the night and wonder what I’ll do if I don’t pass.”
“Why, go to school next year and try again,” said Marilla unconcernedly.
“Oh, I don’t believe I’d have the heart for it.
It would be such a disgrace to fail, especially if Gil—if the others passed.
And I get so nervous in an examination that I’m likely to make a mess of it.
I wish I had nerves like Jane Andrews.
Nothing rattles her.”
Anne sighed and, dragging her eyes from the witcheries of the spring world, the beckoning day of breeze and blue, and the green things upspringing in the garden, buried herself resolutely in her book.
There would be other springs, but if she did not succeed in passing the Entrance, Anne felt convinced that she would never recover sufficiently to enjoy them.
CHAPTER XXXII.
The Pass List Is Out
WITH the end of June came the close of the term and the close of Miss Stacy’s rule in Avonlea school.
Anne and Diana walked home that evening feeling very sober indeed.
Red eyes and damp handkerchiefs bore convincing testimony to the fact that Miss Stacy’s farewell words must have been quite as touching as Mr. Phillips’s had been under similar circumstances three years before.
Diana looked back at the schoolhouse from the foot of the spruce hill and sighed deeply.
“It does seem as if it was the end of everything, doesn’t it?” she said dismally.
“You oughtn’t to feel half as badly as I do,” said Anne, hunting vainly for a dry spot on her handkerchief.
“You’ll be back again next winter, but I suppose I’ve left the dear old school forever—if I have good luck, that is.”
“It won’t be a bit the same.
Miss Stacy won’t be there, nor you nor Jane nor Ruby probably.
I shall have to sit all alone, for I couldn’t bear to have another deskmate after you.
Oh, we have had jolly times, haven’t we, Anne?
It’s dreadful to think they’re all over.”
Two big tears rolled down by Diana’s nose.
“If you would stop crying I could,” said Anne imploringly.
“Just as soon as I put away my hanky I see you brimming up and that starts me off again.