The child had evidently been crying and Marilla felt a pang of pity which she sternly repressed.
By night she was, as she expressed it, “beat out.”
“You’ll stay in this room until you confess, Anne.
You can make up your mind to that,” she said firmly.
“But the picnic is tomorrow, Marilla,” cried Anne.
“You won’t keep me from going to that, will you?
You’ll just let me out for the afternoon, won’t you?
Then I’ll stay here as long as you like afterwards cheerfully.
But I must go to the picnic.”
“You’ll not go to picnics nor anywhere else until you’ve confessed, Anne.”
“Oh, Marilla,” gasped Anne.
But Marilla had gone out and shut the door.
Wednesday morning dawned as bright and fair as if expressly made to order for the picnic.
Birds sang around Green Gables; the Madonna lilies in the garden sent out whiffs of perfume that entered in on viewless winds at every door and window, and wandered through halls and rooms like spirits of benediction.
The birches in the hollow waved joyful hands as if watching for Anne’s usual morning greeting from the east gable.
But Anne was not at her window.
When Marilla took her breakfast up to her she found the child sitting primly on her bed, pale and resolute, with tight-shut lips and gleaming eyes.
“Marilla, I’m ready to confess.”
“Ah!”
Marilla laid down her tray.
Once again her method had succeeded; but her success was very bitter to her.
“Let me hear what you have to say then, Anne.”
“I took the amethyst brooch,” said Anne, as if repeating a lesson she had learned.
“I took it just as you said.
I didn’t mean to take it when I went in.
But it did look so beautiful, Marilla, when I pinned it on my breast that I was overcome by an irresistible temptation.
I imagined how perfectly thrilling it would be to take it to Idlewild and play I was the Lady Cordelia Fitzgerald.
It would be so much easier to imagine I was the Lady Cordelia if I had a real amethyst brooch on. Diana and I make necklaces of roseberries but what are roseberries compared to amethysts?
So I took the brooch.
I thought I could put it back before you came home.
I went all the way around by the road to lengthen out the time.
When I was going over the bridge across the Lake of Shining Waters I took the brooch off to have another look at it.
Oh, how it did shine in the sunlight!
And then, when I was leaning over the bridge, it just slipped through my fingers—so—and went down—down—down, all purply-sparkling, and sank forevermore beneath the Lake of Shining Waters. And that’s the best I can do at confessing, Marilla.”
Marilla felt hot anger surge up into her heart again.
This child had taken and lost her treasured amethyst brooch and now sat there calmly reciting the details thereof without the least apparent compunction or repentance.
“Anne, this is terrible,” she said, trying to speak calmly.
“You are the very wickedest girl I ever heard of.”
“Yes, I suppose I am,” agreed Anne tranquilly.
“And I know I’ll have to be punished.
It’ll be your duty to punish me, Marilla.
Won’t you please get it over right off because I’d like to go to the picnic with nothing on my mind.”
“Picnic, indeed!
You’ll go to no picnic today, Anne Shirley.
That shall be your punishment.
And it isn’t half severe enough either for what you’ve done!”
“Not go to the picnic!”
Anne sprang to her feet and clutched Marilla’s hand.
“But you promised me I might!
Oh, Marilla, I must go to the picnic.