Don’t you think Diana has got very soulful eyes?
I wish I had soulful eyes.
Diana is going to teach me to sing a song called
‘Nelly in the Hazel Dell.’ She’s going to give me a picture to put up in my room; it’s a perfectly beautiful picture, she says—a lovely lady in a pale blue silk dress.
A sewing-machine agent gave it to her.
I wish I had something to give Diana.
I’m an inch taller than Diana, but she is ever so much fatter; she says she’d like to be thin because it’s so much more graceful, but I’m afraid she only said it to soothe my feelings.
We’re going to the shore some day to gather shells.
We have agreed to call the spring down by the log bridge the Dryad’s Bubble.
Isn’t that a perfectly elegant name?
I read a story once about a spring called that.
A dryad is sort of a grown-up fairy, I think.”
“Well, all I hope is you won’t talk Diana to death,” said Marilla.
“But remember this in all your planning, Anne. You’re not going to play all the time nor most of it.
You’ll have your work to do and it’ll have to be done first.”
Anne’s cup of happiness was full, and Matthew caused it to overflow.
He had just got home from a trip to the store at Carmody, and he sheepishly produced a small parcel from his pocket and handed it to Anne, with a deprecatory look at Marilla.
“I heard you say you liked chocolate sweeties, so I got you some,” he said.
“Humph,” sniffed Marilla. “It’ll ruin her teeth and stomach.
There, there, child, don’t look so dismal.
You can eat those, since Matthew has gone and got them.
He’d better have brought you peppermints.
They’re wholesomer.
Don’t sicken yourself eating all them at once now.”
“Oh, no, indeed, I won’t,” said Anne eagerly.
“I’ll just eat one tonight, Marilla.
And I can give Diana half of them, can’t I?
The other half will taste twice as sweet to me if I give some to her.
It’s delightful to think I have something to give her.”
“I will say it for the child,” said Marilla when Anne had gone to her gable, “she isn’t stingy.
I’m glad, for of all faults I detest stinginess in a child.
Dear me, it’s only three weeks since she came, and it seems as if she’d been here always.
I can’t imagine the place without her.
Now, don’t be looking I told-you-so, Matthew.
That’s bad enough in a woman, but it isn’t to be endured in a man.
I’m perfectly willing to own up that I’m glad I consented to keep the child and that I’m getting fond of her, but don’t you rub it in, Matthew Cuthbert.”
CHAPTER XIII.
The Delights of Anticipation
IT’S time Anne was in to do her sewing,” said Marilla, glancing at the clock and then out into the yellow August afternoon where everything drowsed in the heat.
“She stayed playing with Diana more than half an hour more ‘n I gave her leave to; and now she’s perched out there on the woodpile talking to Matthew, nineteen to the dozen, when she knows perfectly well she ought to be at her work.
And of course he’s listening to her like a perfect ninny.
I never saw such an infatuated man.
The more she talks and the odder the things she says, the more he’s delighted evidently.
Anne Shirley, you come right in here this minute, do you hear me!”
A series of staccato taps on the west window brought Anne flying in from the yard, eyes shining, cheeks faintly flushed with pink, unbraided hair streaming behind her in a torrent of brightness.
“Oh, Marilla,” she exclaimed breathlessly, “there’s going to be a Sunday-school picnic next week—in Mr. Harmon Andrews’s field, right near the lake of Shining Waters.
And Mrs. Superintendent Bell and Mrs. Rachel Lynde are going to make ice cream—think of it, Marilla—ice cream!
And, oh, Marilla, can I go to it?”
“Just look at the clock, if you please, Anne.
What time did I tell you to come in?”