You must come and see it, Marilla—won’t you?
We have great big stones, all covered with moss, for seats, and boards from tree to tree for shelves.
And we have all our dishes on them.
Of course, they’re all broken but it’s the easiest thing in the world to imagine that they are whole.
There’s a piece of a plate with a spray of red and yellow ivy on it that is especially beautiful.
We keep it in the parlor and we have the fairy glass there, too. The fairy glass is as lovely as a dream.
Diana found it out in the woods behind their chicken house.
It’s all full of rainbows—just little young rainbows that haven’t grown big yet—and Diana’s mother told her it was broken off a hanging lamp they once had.
But it’s nice to imagine the fairies lost it one night when they had a ball, so we call it the fairy glass.
Matthew is going to make us a table.
Oh, we have named that little round pool over in Mr. Barry’s field Willowmere.
I got that name out of the book Diana lent me.
That was a thrilling book, Marilla.
The heroine had five lovers.
I’d be satisfied with one, wouldn’t you?
She was very handsome and she went through great tribulations.
She could faint as easy as anything.
I’d love to be able to faint, wouldn’t you, Marilla?
It’s so romantic.
But I’m really very healthy for all I’m so thin.
I believe I’m getting fatter, though.
Don’t you think I am?
I look at my elbows every morning when I get up to see if any dimples are coming. Diana is having a new dress made with elbow sleeves.
She is going to wear it to the picnic.
Oh, I do hope it will be fine next Wednesday.
I don’t feel that I could endure the disappointment if anything happened to prevent me from getting to the picnic.
I suppose I’d live through it, but I’m certain it would be a lifelong sorrow.
It wouldn’t matter if I got to a hundred picnics in after years; they wouldn’t make up for missing this one.
They’re going to have boats on the Lake of Shining Waters—and ice cream, as I told you.
I have never tasted ice cream.
Diana tried to explain what it was like, but I guess ice cream is one of those things that are beyond imagination.”
“Anne, you have talked even on for ten minutes by the clock,” said Marilla.
“Now, just for curiosity’s sake, see if you can hold your tongue for the same length of time.”
Anne held her tongue as desired.
But for the rest of the week she talked picnic and thought picnic and dreamed picnic.
On Saturday it rained and she worked herself up into such a frantic state lest it should keep on raining until and over Wednesday that Marilla made her sew an extra patchwork square by way of steadying her nerves.
On Sunday Anne confided to Marilla on the way home from church that she grew actually cold all over with excitement when the minister announced the picnic from the pulpit.
“Such a thrill as went up and down my back, Marilla!
I don’t think I’d ever really believed until then that there was honestly going to be a picnic.
I couldn’t help fearing I’d only imagined it.
But when a minister says a thing in the pulpit you just have to believe it.”
“You set your heart too much on things, Anne,” said Marilla, with a sigh.
“I’m afraid there’ll be a great many disappointments in store for you through life.”
“Oh, Marilla, looking forward to things is half the pleasure of them,” exclaimed Anne.
“You mayn’t get the things themselves; but nothing can prevent you from having the fun of looking forward to them.
Mrs. Lynde says,
‘Blessed are they who expect nothing for they shall not be disappointed.’
But I think it would be worse to expect nothing than to be disappointed.”
Marilla wore her amethyst brooch to church that day as usual.
Marilla always wore her amethyst brooch to church. She would have thought it rather sacrilegious to leave it off—as bad as forgetting her Bible or her collection dime.