“Don’t answer me back like that, Anne.
It was very silly of you to do such a thing. Never let me catch you at such a trick again.
Mrs. Rachel says she thought she would sink through the floor when she saw you come in all rigged out like that.
She couldn’t get near enough to tell you to take them off till it was too late.
She says people talked about it something dreadful. Of course they would think I had no better sense than to let you go decked out like that.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Anne, tears welling into her eyes.
“I never thought you’d mind.
The roses and buttercups were so sweet and pretty I thought they’d look lovely on my hat.
Lots of the little girls had artificial flowers on their hats.
I’m afraid I’m going to be a dreadful trial to you.
Maybe you’d better send me back to the asylum.
That would be terrible; I don’t think I could endure it; most likely I would go into consumption; I’m so thin as it is, you see.
But that would be better than being a trial to you.”
“Nonsense,” said Marilla, vexed at herself for having made the child cry.
“I don’t want to send you back to the asylum, I’m sure.
All I want is that you should behave like other little girls and not make yourself ridiculous.
Don’t cry any more.
I’ve got some news for you.
Diana Barry came home this afternoon.
I’m going up to see if I can borrow a skirt pattern from Mrs. Barry, and if you like you can come with me and get acquainted with Diana.”
Anne rose to her feet, with clasped hands, the tears still glistening on her cheeks; the dish towel she had been hemming slipped unheeded to the floor.
“Oh, Marilla, I’m frightened—now that it has come I’m actually frightened.
What if she shouldn’t like me!
It would be the most tragical disappointment of my life.”
“Now, don’t get into a fluster.
And I do wish you wouldn’t use such long words. It sounds so funny in a little girl.
I guess Diana ‘ll like you well enough.
It’s her mother you’ve got to reckon with.
If she doesn’t like you it won’t matter how much Diana does.
If she has heard about your outburst to Mrs. Lynde and going to church with buttercups round your hat I don’t know what she’ll think of you.
You must be polite and well behaved, and don’t make any of your startling speeches.
For pity’s sake, if the child isn’t actually trembling!”
Anne was trembling.
Her face was pale and tense.
“Oh, Marilla, you’d be excited, too, if you were going to meet a little girl you hoped to be your bosom friend and whose mother mightn’t like you,” she said as she hastened to get her hat.
They went over to Orchard Slope by the short cut across the brook and up the firry hill grove.
Mrs. Barry came to the kitchen door in answer to Marilla’s knock.
She was a tall black-eyed, black-haired woman, with a very resolute mouth.
She had the reputation of being very strict with her children.
“How do you do, Marilla?” she said cordially.
“Come in.
And this is the little girl you have adopted, I suppose?”
“Yes, this is Anne Shirley,” said Marilla.
“Spelled with an E,” gasped Anne, who, tremulous and excited as she was, was determined there should be no misunderstanding on that important point.
Mrs. Barry, not hearing or not comprehending, merely shook hands and said kindly:
“How are you?”
“I am well in body although considerable rumpled up in spirit, thank you ma’am,” said Anne gravely. Then aside to Marilla in an audible whisper, “There wasn’t anything startling in that, was there, Marilla?”
Diana was sitting on the sofa, reading a book which she dropped when the callers entered.
She was a very pretty little girl, with her mother’s black eyes and hair, and rosy cheeks, and the merry expression which was her inheritance from her father.
“This is my little girl Diana,” said Mrs. Barry.