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hired boy, and Marilla resented his cheerfulness as a personal insult.
CHAPTER XIV 108
When her dishes were washed and her bread sponge set and her hens fed
Marilla remembered that she had noticed a small rent in her best black lace
shawl when she had taken it off on Monday afternoon on returning from the
Ladies' Aid.
She would go and mend it. The shawl was in a box in her trunk. As Marilla
lifted it out, the sunlight, falling through the vines that clustered thickly
about the window, struck upon something caught in the shawl--something
that glittered and sparkled in facets of violet light. Marilla snatched at it
with a gasp. It was the amethyst brooch, hanging to a thread of the lace by
its catch!
"Dear life and heart," said Marilla blankly, "what does this mean? Here's
my brooch safe and sound that I thought was at the bottom of Barry's pond.
Whatever did that girl mean by saying she took it and lost it? I declare I
believe Green Gables is bewitched. I remember now that when I took off
my shawl Monday afternoon I laid it on the bureau for a minute. I suppose
the brooch got caught in it somehow. Well!"
Marilla betook herself to the east gable, brooch in hand. Anne had cried
herself out and was sitting dejectedly by the window.
"Anne Shirley," said Marilla solemnly, "I've just found my brooch hanging
to my black lace shawl. Now I want to know what that rigmarole you told
me this morning meant."
"Why, you said you'd keep me here until I confessed," returned Anne
wearily, "and so I decided to confess because I was bound to get to the
picnic. I thought out a confession last night after I went to bed and made it
as interesting as I could. And I said it over and over so that I wouldn't
forget it. But you wouldn't let me go to the picnic after all, so all my trouble
was wasted."
Marilla had to laugh in spite of herself. But her conscience pricked her.
CHAPTER XIV 109
"Anne, you do beat all! But I was wrong--I see that now. I shouldn't have
doubted your word when I'd never known you to tell a story. Of course, it
wasn't right for you to confess to a thing you hadn't done--it was very
wrong to do so. But I drove you to it. So if you'll forgive me, Anne, I'll
forgive you and we'll start square again. And now get yourself ready for the
picnic."
Anne flew up like a rocket.
"Oh, Marilla, isn't it too late?"
"No, it's only two o'clock. They won't be more than well gathered yet and
it'll be an hour before they have tea. Wash your face and comb your hair
and put on your gingham. I'll fill a basket for you. There's plenty of stuff
baked in the house. And I'll get Jerry to hitch up the sorrel and drive you
down to the picnic ground."
"Oh, Marilla," exclaimed Anne, flying to the washstand. "Five minutes ago
I was so miserable I was wishing I'd never been born and now I wouldn't
change places with an angel!"
That night a thoroughly happy, completely tired-out Anne returned to
Green Gables in a state of beatification impossible to describe.
"Oh, Marilla, I've had a perfectly scrumptious time. Scrumptious is a new
word I learned today. I heard Mary Alice Bell use it. Isn't it very
expressive? Everything was lovely. We had a splendid tea and then Mr.
Harmon Andrews took us all for a row on the Lake of Shining Waters--six
of us at a time. And Jane Andrews nearly fell overboard. She was leaning
out to pick water lilies and if Mr. Andrews hadn't caught her by her sash
just in the nick of time she'd fallen in and prob'ly been drowned. I wish it
had been me. It would have been such a romantic experience to have been
nearly drowned. It would be such a thrilling tale to tell. And we had the ice
cream. Words fail me to describe that ice cream. Marilla, I assure you it
was sublime."
CHAPTER XV 110
That evening Marilla told the whole story to Matthew over her stocking
basket.
"I'm willing to own up that I made a mistake," she concluded candidly, "but
I've learned a lesson. I have to laugh when I think of Anne's `confession,'
although I suppose I shouldn't for it really was a falsehood. But it doesn't
seem as bad as the other would have been, somehow, and anyhow I'm
responsible for it. That child is hard to understand in some respects. But I
believe she'll turn out all right yet. And there's one thing certain, no house
will ever be dull that she's in."
CHAPTER XV
A Tempest in the School Teapot
"What a splendid day!" said Anne, drawing a long breath. "Isn't it good just
to be alive on a day like this? I pity the people who aren't born yet for
missing it. They may have good days, of course, but they can never have
this one. And it's splendider still to have such a lovely way to go to school
by, isn't it?"
"It's a lot nicer than going round by the road; that is so dusty and hot," said
Diana practically, peeping into her dinner basket and mentally calculating if
the three juicy, toothsome, raspberry tarts reposing there were divided
among ten girls how many bites each girl would have.
The little girls of Avonlea school always pooled their lunches, and to eat
three raspberry tarts all alone or even to share them only with one's best
chum would have forever and ever branded as "awful mean" the girl who
did it. And yet, when the tarts were divided among ten girls you just got
enough to tantalize you.
The way Anne and Diana went to school WAS a pretty one. Anne thought
those walks to and from school with Diana couldn't be improved upon even
by imagination. Going around by the main road would have been so
CHAPTER XV 111
unromantic; but to go by Lover's Lane and Willowmere and Violet Vale
and the Birch Path was romantic, if ever anything was.
Lover's Lane opened out below the orchard at Green Gables and stretched
far up into the woods to the end of the Cuthbert farm. It was the way by
which the cows were taken to the back pasture and the wood hauled home
in winter. Anne had named it Lover's Lane before she had been a month at
Green Gables.
"Not that lovers ever really walk there," she explained to Marilla, "but
Diana and I are reading a perfectly magnificent book and there's a Lover's
Lane in it. So we want to have one, too. And it's a very pretty name, don't
you think? So romantic! We can't imagine the lovers into it, you know. I
like that lane because you can think out loud there without people calling
you crazy."
Anne, starting out alone in the morning, went down Lover's Lane as far as
the brook. Here Diana met her, and the two little girls went on up the lane
under the leafy arch of maples--"maples are such sociable trees," said
Anne; "they're always rustling and whispering to you"--until they came to
a rustic bridge. Then they left the lane and walked through Mr. Barry's back
field and past Willowmere. Beyond Willowmere came Violet Vale--a little
green dimple in the shadow of Mr. Andrew Bell's big woods. "Of course
there are no violets there now," Anne told Marilla, "but Diana says there
are millions of them in spring. Oh, Marilla, can't you just imagine you see
them? It actually takes away my breath. I named it Violet Vale. Diana says
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