The second term at Redmond sped as quickly as had the
first—“actually whizzed away,” Philippa said. Anne enjoyed it
thoroughly in all its phases—the stimulating class rivalry, the making
and deepening of new and helpful friendships, the gay little social stunts, the
doings of the various societies of which she was a member, the widening of
horizons and interests. She studied hard, for she had made up her mind to win
the Thorburn Scholarship in English. This being won, meant that she could come
back to Redmond the next year without trenching on Marilla’s small
savings—something Anne was determined she would not do.
Gilbert, too, was in full chase after a scholarship, but found plenty of time
for frequent calls at Thirty-eight, St. John’s. He was Anne’s
escort at nearly all the college affairs, and she knew that their names were
coupled in Redmond gossip. Anne raged over this but was helpless; she could not
cast an old friend like Gilbert aside, especially when he had grown suddenly
wise and wary, as behooved him in the dangerous proximity of more than one
Redmond youth who would gladly have taken his place by the side of the slender,
red-haired coed, whose gray eyes were as alluring as stars of evening. Anne was
never attended by the crowd of willing victims who hovered around
Philippa’s conquering march through her Freshman year; but there was a
lanky, brainy Freshie, a jolly, little, round Sophomore, and a tall, learned
Junior who all liked to call at Thirty-eight, St. John’s, and talk over
’ologies and ’isms, as well as lighter subjects, with Anne, in the
becushioned parlor of that domicile. Gilbert did not love any of them, and he
was exceedingly careful to give none of them the advantage over him by any
untimely display of his real feelings Anne-ward. To her he had become again the
boy-comrade of Avonlea days, and as such could hold his own against any smitten
swain who had so far entered the lists against him. As a companion, Anne
honestly acknowledged nobody could be so satisfactory as Gilbert; she was very
glad, so she told herself, that he had evidently dropped all nonsensical
ideas—though she spent considerable time secretly wondering why.
Only one disagreeable incident marred that winter. Charlie Sloane, sitting bolt
upright on Miss Ada’s most dearly beloved cushion, asked Anne one night
if she would promise “to become Mrs. Charlie Sloane some day.”
Coming after Billy Andrews’ proxy effort, this was not quite the shock to
Anne’s romantic sensibilities that it would otherwise have been; but it
was certainly another heart-rending disillusion. She was angry, too, for she
felt that she had never given Charlie the slightest encouragement to suppose
such a thing possible. But what could you expect of a Sloane, as Mrs. Rachel
Lynde would ask scornfully? Charlie’s whole attitude, tone, air, words,
fairly reeked with Sloanishness. “He was conferring a great
honor—no doubt whatever about that. And when Anne, utterly insensible to
the honor, refused him, as delicately and considerately as she could—for
even a Sloane had feelings which ought not to be unduly
lacerated—Sloanishness still further betrayed itself. Charlie certainly
did not take his dismissal as Anne’s imaginary rejected suitors did.
Instead, he became angry, and showed it; he said two or three quite nasty
things; Anne’s temper flashed up mutinously and she retorted with a
cutting little speech whose keenness pierced even Charlie’s protective
Sloanishness and reached the quick; he caught up his hat and flung himself out
of the house with a very red face; Anne rushed upstairs, falling twice over
Miss Ada’s cushions on the way, and threw herself on her bed, in tears of
humiliation and rage. Had she actually stooped to quarrel with a Sloane? Was it
possible anything Charlie Sloane could say had power to make her angry? Oh,
this was degradation, indeed—worse even than being the rival of Nettie
Blewett!
“I wish I need never see the horrible creature again,” she sobbed
vindictively into her pillows.
She could not avoid seeing him again, but the outraged Charlie took care that
it should not be at very close quarters. Miss Ada’s cushions were
henceforth safe from his depredations, and when he met Anne on the street, or
in Redmond’s halls, his bow was icy in the extreme. Relations between
these two old schoolmates continued to be thus strained for nearly a year! Then
Charlie transferred his blighted affections to a round, rosy, snub-nosed,
blue-eyed, little Sophomore who appreciated them as they deserved, whereupon he
forgave Anne and condescended to be civil to her again; in a patronizing manner
intended to show her just what she had lost.
One day Anne scurried excitedly into Priscilla’s room.
“Read that,” she cried, tossing Priscilla a letter.
“It’s from Stella—and she’s coming to Redmond next
year—and what do you think of her idea? I think it’s a perfectly
splendid one, if we can only carry it out. Do you suppose we can, Pris?”
“I’ll be better able to tell you when I find out what it is,”
said Priscilla, casting aside a Greek lexicon and taking up Stella’s
letter. Stella Maynard had been one of their chums at Queen’s Academy and
had been teaching school ever since.
“But I’m going to give it up, Anne dear,” she wrote,
“and go to college next year. As I took the third year at Queen’s I
can enter the Sophomore year. I’m tired of teaching in a back country
school. Some day I’m going to write a treatise on ‘The Trials of a
Country Schoolmarm.’ It will be a harrowing bit of realism. It seems to
be the prevailing impression that we live in clover, and have nothing to do but
draw our quarter’s salary. My treatise shall tell the truth about us.
Why, if a week should pass without some one telling me that I am doing easy
work for big pay I would conclude that I might as well order my ascension robe
‘immediately and to onct.’ ‘Well, you get your money
easy,’ some rate-payer will tell me, condescendingly. ‘All you have
to do is to sit there and hear lessons.’ I used to argue the matter at
first, but I’m wiser now. Facts are stubborn things, but as some one has
wisely said, not half so stubborn as fallacies. So I only smile loftily now in
eloquent silence. Why, I have nine grades in my school and I have to teach a
little of everything, from investigating the interiors of earthworms to the
study of the solar system. My youngest pupil is four—his mother sends him
to school to ‘get him out of the way’—and my oldest
twenty—it ‘suddenly struck him’ that it would be easier to go
to school and get an education than follow the plough any longer. In the wild
effort to cram all sorts of research into six hours a day I don’t wonder
if the children feel like the little boy who was taken to see the biograph.
‘I have to look for what’s coming next before I know what went
last,’ he complained. I feel like that myself.
“And the letters I get, Anne! Tommy’s mother writes me that Tommy
is not coming on in arithmetic as fast as she would like. He is only in simple
reduction yet, and Johnny Johnson is in fractions, and Johnny isn’t half
as smart as her Tommy, and she can’t understand it. And Susy’s
father wants to know why Susy can’t write a letter without misspelling
half the words, and Dick’s aunt wants me to change his seat, because that
bad Brown boy he is sitting with is teaching him to say naughty words.
“As to the financial part—but I’ll not begin on that. Those
whom the gods wish to destroy they first make country schoolmarms!
“There, I feel better, after that growl. After all, I’ve enjoyed
these past two years. But I’m coming to Redmond.
“And now, Anne, I’ve a little plan. You know how I loathe boarding.
I’ve boarded for four years and I’m so tired of it. I don’t
feel like enduring three years more of it.
“Now, why can’t you and Priscilla and I club together, rent a
little house somewhere in Kingsport, and board ourselves? It would be cheaper
than any other way. Of course, we would have to have a housekeeper and I have
one ready on the spot. You’ve heard me speak of Aunt Jamesina?
She’s the sweetest aunt that ever lived, in spite of her name. She
can’t help that! She was called Jamesina because her father, whose name
was James, was drowned at sea a month before she was born. I always call her
Aunt Jimsie. Well, her only daughter has recently married and gone to the
foreign mission field. Aunt Jamesina is left alone in a great big house, and
she is horribly lonesome. She will come to Kingsport and keep house for us if
we want her, and I know you’ll both love her. The more I think of the
plan the more I like it. We could have such good, independent times.
“Now, if you and Priscilla agree to it, wouldn’t it be a good idea
for you, who are on the spot, to look around and see if you can find a suitable
house this spring? That would be better than leaving it till the fall. If you
could get a furnished one so much the better, but if not, we can scare up a few
sticks of finiture between us and old family friends with attics. Anyhow,
decide as soon as you can and write me, so that Aunt Jamesina will know what
plans to make for next year.”
“I think it’s a good idea,” said Priscilla.
“So do I,” agreed Anne delightedly. “Of course, we have a
nice boardinghouse here, but, when all’s said and done, a boardinghouse
isn’t home. So let’s go house-hunting at once, before exams come
on.”
“I’m afraid it will be hard enough to get a really suitable
house,” warned Priscilla. “Don’t expect too much, Anne. Nice
houses in nice localities will probably be away beyond our means. We’ll
likely have to content ourselves with a shabby little place on some street
whereon live people whom to know is to be unknown, and make life inside
compensate for the outside.”
Accordingly they went house-hunting, but to find just what they wanted proved
even harder than Priscilla had feared. Houses there were galore, furnished and
unfurnished; but one was too big, another too small; this one too expensive,
that one too far from Redmond. Exams were on and over; the last week of the
term came and still their “house o’dreams,” as Anne called
it, remained a castle in the air.
“We shall have to give up and wait till the fall, I suppose,” said
Priscilla wearily, as they rambled through the park on one of April’s
darling days of breeze and blue, when the harbor was creaming and shimmering
beneath the pearl-hued mists floating over it. “We may find some shack to
shelter us then; and if not, boardinghouses we shall have always with
us.”
“I’m not going to worry about it just now, anyway, and spoil this
lovely afternoon,” said Anne, gazing around her with delight. The fresh
chill air was faintly charged with the aroma of pine balsam, and the sky above
was crystal clear and blue—a great inverted cup of blessing.
“Spring is singing in my blood today, and the lure of April is abroad on
the air. I’m seeing visions and dreaming dreams, Pris. That’s
because the wind is from the west. I do love the west wind. It sings of hope
and gladness, doesn’t it? When the east wind blows I always think of
sorrowful rain on the eaves and sad waves on a gray shore. When I get old I
shall have rheumatism when the wind is east.”
“And isn’t it jolly when you discard furs and winter garments for
the first time and sally forth, like this, in spring attire?” laughed
Priscilla. “Don’t you feel as if you had been made over new?”
“Everything is new in the spring,” said Anne. “Springs
themselves are always so new, too. No spring is ever just like any other
spring. It always has something of its own to be its own peculiar sweetness.
See how green the grass is around that little pond, and how the willow buds are
bursting.”
“And exams are over and gone—the time of Convocation will come
soon—next Wednesday. This day next week we’ll be home.”
“I’m glad,” said Anne dreamily. “There are so many
things I want to do. I want to sit on the back porch steps and feel the breeze
blowing down over Mr. Harrison’s fields. I want to hunt ferns in the
Haunted Wood and gather violets in Violet Vale. Do you remember the day of our
golden picnic, Priscilla? I want to hear the frogs singing and the poplars
whispering. But I’ve learned to love Kingsport, too, and I’m glad
I’m coming back next fall. If I hadn’t won the Thorburn I
don’t believe I could have. I couldn’t take any of
Marilla’s little hoard.”
“If we could only find a house!” sighed Priscilla. “Look over
there at Kingsport, Anne—houses, houses everywhere, and not one for
us.”
“Stop it, Pris. ‘The best is yet to be.’ Like the old Roman,
we’ll find a house or build one. On a day like this there’s no such
word as fail in my bright lexicon.”
They lingered in the park until sunset, living in the amazing miracle and glory
and wonder of the springtide; and they went home as usual, by way of Spofford
Avenue, that they might have the delight of looking at Patty’s Place.
“I feel as if something mysterious were going to happen right
away—‘by the pricking of my thumbs,’” said Anne, as
they went up the slope. “It’s a nice story-bookish feeling.
Why—why—why! Priscilla Grant, look over there and tell me if
it’s true, or am I seein’ things?”
Priscilla looked. Anne’s thumbs and eyes had not deceived her. Over the
arched gateway of Patty’s Place dangled a little, modest sign. It said
“To Let, Furnished. Inquire Within.”
“Priscilla,” said Anne, in a whisper, “do you suppose
it’s possible that we could rent Patty’s Place?”
“No, I don’t,” averred Priscilla. “It would be too good
to be true. Fairy tales don’t happen nowadays. I won’t hope, Anne.
The disappointment would be too awful to bear. They’re sure to want more
for it than we can afford. Remember, it’s on Spofford Avenue.”
“We must find out anyhow,” said Anne resolutely. “It’s
too late to call this evening, but we’ll come tomorrow. Oh, Pris, if we
can get this darling spot! I’ve always felt that my fortunes were linked
with Patty’s Place, ever since I saw it first.”
