But there’s a bottle half full of raspberry cordial that was left over from the church social the other night.
It’s on the second shelf of the sitting-room closet and you and Diana can have it if you like, and a cooky to eat with it along in the afternoon, for I daresay Matthew ‘ll be late coming in to tea since he’s hauling potatoes to the vessel.”
Anne flew down to the hollow, past the Dryad’s Bubble and up the spruce path to Orchard Slope, to ask Diana to tea.
As a result just after Marilla had driven off to Carmody, Diana came over, dressed in her second-best dress and looking exactly as it is proper to look when asked out to tea.
At other times she was wont to run into the kitchen without knocking; but now she knocked primly at the front door.
And when Anne, dressed in her second best, as primly opened it, both little girls shook hands as gravely as if they had never met before.
This unnatural solemnity lasted until after Diana had been taken to the east gable to lay off her hat and then had sat for ten minutes in the sitting room, toes in position.
“How is your mother?” inquired Anne politely, just as if she had not seen Mrs. Barry picking apples that morning in excellent health and spirits.
“She is very well, thank you.
I suppose Mr. Cuthbert is hauling potatoes to the lily sands this afternoon, is he?” said Diana, who had ridden down to Mr. Harmon Andrews’s that morning in Matthew’s cart.
“Yes.
Our potato crop is very good this year.
I hope your father’s crop is good too.”
“It is fairly good, thank you.
Have you picked many of your apples yet?”
“Oh, ever so many,” said Anne forgetting to be dignified and jumping up quickly.
“Let’s go out to the orchard and get some of the Red Sweetings, Diana.
Marilla says we can have all that are left on the tree.
Marilla is a very generous woman.
She said we could have fruit cake and cherry preserves for tea.
But it isn’t good manners to tell your company what you are going to give them to eat, so I won’t tell you what she said we could have to drink.
Only it begins with an R and a C and it’s bright red color.
I love bright red drinks, don’t you?
They taste twice as good as any other color.”
The orchard, with its great sweeping boughs that bent to the ground with fruit, proved so delightful that the little girls spent most of the afternoon in it, sitting in a grassy corner where the frost had spared the green and the mellow autumn sunshine lingered warmly, eating apples and talking as hard as they could.
Diana had much to tell Anne of what went on in school.
She had to sit with Gertie Pye and she hated it; Gertie squeaked her pencil all the time and it just made her—Diana’s—blood run cold; Ruby Gillis had charmed all her warts away, true’s you live, with a magic pebble that old Mary Joe from the Creek gave her.
You had to rub the warts with the pebble and then throw it away over your left shoulder at the time of the new moon and the warts would all go.
Charlie Sloane’s name was written up with Em White’s on the porch wall and Em White was awful mad about it; Sam Boulter had “sassed” Mr. Phillips in class and Mr. Phillips whipped him and Sam’s father came down to the school and dared Mr. Phillips to lay a hand on one of his children again; and Mattie Andrews had a new red hood and a blue crossover with tassels on it and the airs she put on about it were perfectly sickening; and Lizzie Wright didn’t speak to Mamie Wilson because Mamie Wilson’s grown-up sister had cut out Lizzie Wright’s grown-up sister with her beau; and everybody missed Anne so and wished she’s come to school again; and Gilbert Blythe—
But Anne didn’t want to hear about Gilbert Blythe.
She jumped up hurriedly and said suppose they go in and have some raspberry cordial.
Anne looked on the second shelf of the room pantry but there was no bottle of raspberry cordial there.
Search revealed it away back on the top shelf.
Anne put it on a tray and set it on the table with a tumbler.
“Now, please help yourself, Diana,” she said politely.
“I don’t believe I’ll have any just now.
I don’t feel as if I wanted any after all those apples.”
Diana poured herself out a tumblerful, looked at its bright-red hue admiringly, and then sipped it daintily.
“That’s awfully nice raspberry cordial, Anne,” she said.
“I didn’t know raspberry cordial was so nice.”
“I’m real glad you like it.
Take as much as you want.
I’m going to run out and stir the fire up.
There are so many responsibilities on a person’s mind when they’re keeping house, isn’t there?”
When Anne came back from the kitchen Diana was drinking her second glassful of cordial; and, being entreated thereto by Anne, she offered no particular objection to the drinking of a third.
The tumblerfuls were generous ones and the raspberry cordial was certainly very nice.
“The nicest I ever drank,” said Diana.
“It’s ever so much nicer than Mrs. Lynde’s, although she brags of hers so much.
It doesn’t taste a bit like hers.”
“I should think Marilla’s raspberry cordial would prob’ly be much nicer than Mrs. Lynde’s,” said Anne loyally.