But what’s to be done with a man who just looks?”
Anne had relapsed into reverie, with her chin in her hands and her eyes on the sky, when Marilla returned from her cellar pilgrimage.
There Marilla left her until the early dinner was on the table.
“I suppose I can have the mare and buggy this afternoon, Matthew?” said Marilla.
Matthew nodded and looked wistfully at Anne.
Marilla intercepted the look and said grimly:
“I’m going to drive over to White Sands and settle this thing.
I’ll take Anne with me and Mrs. Spencer will probably make arrangements to send her back to Nova Scotia at once.
I’ll set your tea out for you and I’ll be home in time to milk the cows.”
Still Matthew said nothing and Marilla had a sense of having wasted words and breath.
There is nothing more aggravating than a man who won’t talk back—unless it is a woman who won’t.
Matthew hitched the sorrel into the buggy in due time and Marilla and Anne set off.
Matthew opened the yard gate for them and as they drove slowly through, he said, to nobody in particular as it seemed:
“Little Jerry Buote from the Creek was here this morning, and I told him I guessed I’d hire him for the summer.”
Marilla made no reply, but she hit the unlucky sorrel such a vicious clip with the whip that the fat mare, unused to such treatment, whizzed indignantly down the lane at an alarming pace.
Marilla looked back once as the buggy bounced along and saw that aggravating Matthew leaning over the gate, looking wistfully after them.
CHAPTER V.
Anne’s History
DO you know,” said Anne confidentially, “I’ve made up my mind to enjoy this drive.
It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.
Of course, you must make it up firmly.
I am not going to think about going back to the asylum while we’re having our drive.
I’m just going to think about the drive.
Oh, look, there’s one little early wild rose out!
Isn’t it lovely?
Don’t you think it must be glad to be a rose?
Wouldn’t it be nice if roses could talk?
I’m sure they could tell us such lovely things.
And isn’t pink the most bewitching color in the world?
I love it, but I can’t wear it.
Redheaded people can’t wear pink, not even in imagination.
Did you ever know of anybody whose hair was red when she was young, but got to be another color when she grew up?”
“No, I don’t know as I ever did,” said Marilla mercilessly, “and I shouldn’t think it likely to happen in your case either.”
Anne sighed.
“Well, that is another hope gone.
‘My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.’
That’s a sentence I read in a book once, and I say it over to comfort myself whenever I’m disappointed in anything.”
“I don’t see where the comforting comes in myself,” said Marilla.
“Why, because it sounds so nice and romantic, just as if I were a heroine in a book, you know.
I am so fond of romantic things, and a graveyard full of buried hopes is about as romantic a thing as one can imagine isn’t it?
I’m rather glad I have one.
Are we going across the Lake of Shining Waters today?”
“We’re not going over Barry’s pond, if that’s what you mean by your Lake of Shining Waters.
We’re going by the shore road.”
“Shore road sounds nice,” said Anne dreamily.
“Is it as nice as it sounds?
Just when you said ‘shore road’ I saw it in a picture in my mind, as quick as that!
And White Sands is a pretty name, too; but I don’t like it as well as Avonlea.
Avonlea is a lovely name.
It just sounds like music.