“Oh, Marilla, I’ve had a most _fascinating_ time.I feel that I have not lived in vain and I shall always feel like that even if I should never be invited to tea at a manse again.When I got there Mrs. Allan met me at the door.She was dressed in the sweetest dress of pale-pink organdy,with dozens of frills and elbow sleeves, and she looked just like a seraph.I really think I’d like to be a minister’s wife when I grow up, Marilla.A minister mightn’t mind my red hair because he wouldn’t be thinking of such worldly things.But then of course one would have to be naturally good and I’ll never be that,so I suppose there’s no use in thinking about it. Some people are naturally good, you know,and others are not. I’m one of the others. Mrs. Lynde says I’m full of original sin.No matter how hard I try to be good I can never make such a success of it as those who are naturally good.It’s a good deal like geometry, I expect.But don’t you think the trying so hard ought to count for something?Mrs. Allan is one of the naturally good people. I love her passionately.You know there are some people, like Matthew and Mrs.Allan that you can love right off without any trouble. And there are others, like Mrs. Lynde,that you have to try very hard to love.You know you _ought_ to love them because they know so much and are such active workers in the church,but you have to keep reminding yourself of it all the time or else you forget.There was another little girl at the manse to tea, from the White Sands Sunday-school.Her name was Laurette Bradley, and she was a very nice little girl. Not exactly a kindred spirit,you know, but still very nice. We had an elegant tea,and I think I kept all the rules of etiquette pretty well. After tea Mrs.Allan played and sang and she got Lauretta and me to sing too. Mrs.Allan says I have a good voice and she says I must sing in the Sunday-school choir after this.You can’t think how I was thrilled at the mere thought.I’ve longed so to sing in the Sunday-school choir, as Diana does,but I feared it was an honor I could never aspire to.Lauretta had to go home early because there is a big concert in the White Sands Hotel tonight and her sister is to recite at it.Lauretta says that the Americans at the hotel give a concert every fortnight in aid of the Charlottetown hospital,and they ask lots of the White Sands people to recite.Lauretta said she expected to be asked herself someday. I just gazed at her in awe.After she had gone Mrs. Allan and I had a heart-to-heart talk. I told her everything--about Mrs.Thomas and the twins and Katie Maurice and Violetta and coming to Green Gables and my troubles over geometry. And would you believe it, Marilla?Mrs. Allan told me she was a dunce at geometry too. You don’t know how that encouraged me. Mrs.Lynde came to the manse just before I left, and what do you think, Marilla?The trustees have hired a new teacher and it’s a lady. Her name is Miss Muriel Stacy. Isn’t that a romantic name?Mrs. Lynde says they’ve never had a female teacher in Avonlea before and she thinks it is a dangerous innovation.But I think it will be splendid to have a lady teacher,and I really don’t see how I’m going to live through the two weeks before school begins. I’m so impatient to see her.”
CHAPTER XXIII. Anne Comes to Grief in an Affair of Honor
ANNE had to live through more than two weeks, as it happened.Almost a month having elapsed since the liniment cake episode,it was high time for her to get into fresh trouble of some sort, little mistakes,such as absentmindedly emptying a pan of skim milk into a basket of yarn balls in the pantry instead of into the pigs’ bucket,and walking clean over the edge of the log bridge into the brook while wrapped in imaginative reverie, not really being worth counting.
A week after the tea at the manse Diana Barry gave a party.
“Small and select,” Anne assured Marilla. “Just the girls in our class.”
They had a very good time and nothing untoward happened until after tea,when they found themselves in the Barry garden,a little tired of all their games and ripe for any enticing form of mischief which might present itself.This presently took the form of “daring.”
Daring was the fashionable amusement among the Avonlea small fry just then.It had begun among the boys, but soon spread to the girls,and all the silly things that were done in Avonlea that summer because the doers thereof were “dared” to do them would fill a book by themselves.
First of all Carrie Sloane dared Ruby Gillis to climb to a certain point in the huge old willow tree before the front door;which Ruby Gillis, albeit in mortal dread of the fat green caterpillars with which said tree was infested and with the fear of her mother before her eyes if she should tear her new muslin dress, nimbly did, to the discomfiture of the aforesaid Carrie Sloane. Then Josie Pye dared Jane Andrews to hop on her left leg around the garden without stopping once or putting her right foot to the ground; which Jane Andrews gamely tried to do, but gave out at the third corner and had to confess herself defeated.
Josie’s triumph being rather more pronounced than good taste permitted,Anne Shirley dared her to walk along the top of the board fence which bounded the garden to the east.Now, to “walk” board fences requires more skill and steadiness of head and heel than one might suppose who has never tried it.But Josie Pye, if deficient in some qualities that make for popularity,had at least a natural and inborn gift, duly cultivated, for walking board fences.Josie walked the Barry fence with an airy unconcern which seemed to imply that a little thing like that wasn’t worth a “dare.” Reluctant admiration greeted her exploit, for most of the other girls could appreciate it,having suffered many things themselves in their efforts to walk fences.Josie descended from her perch, flushed with victory, and darted a defiant glance at Anne.
Anne tossed her red braids.
“I don’t think it’s such a very wonderful thing to walk a little, low, board fence,” she said.“I knew a girl in Marysville who could walk the ridgepole of a roof.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Josie flatly. “I don’t believe anybody could walk a ridgepole. _You_ couldn’t, anyhow.”
“Couldn’t I?” cried Anne rashly.
“Then I dare you to do it,” said Josie defiantly.“I dare you to climb up there and walk the ridgepole of Mr. Barry’s kitchen roof.”
Anne turned pale, but there was clearly only one thing to be done. She walked toward the house,where a ladder was leaning against the kitchen roof. All the fifth-class girls said, “Oh!” partly in excitement, partly in dismay.
“Don’t you do it, Anne,” entreated Diana. “You’ll fall off and be killed. Never mind Josie Pye.It isn’t fair to dare anybody to do anything so dangerous.”
“I must do it. My honor is at stake,” said Anne solemnly. “I shall walk that ridgepole, Diana,or perish in the attempt. If I am killed you are to have my pearl bead ring.”
Anne climbed the ladder amid breathless silence, gained the ridgepole,balanced herself uprightly on that precarious footing, and started to walk along it,dizzily conscious that she was uncomfortably high up in the world and that walking ridgepoles was not a thing in which your imagination helped you out much.Nevertheless, she managed to take several steps before the catastrophe came. Then she swayed,lost her balance, stumbled, staggered, and fell,sliding down over the sun-baked roof and crashing off it through the tangle of Virginia creeper beneath--all before the dismayed circle below could give a simultaneous, terrified shriek.
If Anne had tumbled off the roof on the side up which she had ascended Diana would probably have fallen heir to the pearl bead ring then and there.Fortunately she fell on the other side,where the roof extended down over the porch so nearly to the ground that a fall therefrom was a much less serious thing.Nevertheless, when Diana and the other girls had rushed frantically around the house--except Ruby Gillis,who remained as if rooted to the ground and went into hysterics--they found Anne lying all white and limp among the wreck and ruin of the Virginia creeper.
“Anne, are you killed?” shrieked Diana, throwing herself on her knees beside her friend. “Oh, Anne, dear Anne,speak just one word to me and tell me if you’re killed.”
To the immense relief of all the girls, and especially of Josie Pye, who,in spite of lack of imagination, had been seized with horrible visions of a future branded as the girl who was the cause of Anne Shirley’s early and tragic death, Anne sat dizzily up and answered uncertainly:
“No, Diana, I am not killed, but I think I am rendered unconscious.”
“Where?” sobbed Carrie Sloane. “Oh, where, Anne?” Before Anne could answer Mrs. Barry appeared on the scene.At sight of her Anne tried to scramble to her feet,but sank back again with a sharp little cry of pain.
“What’s the matter?Where have you hurt yourself?” demanded Mrs. Barry.
“My ankle,” gasped Anne. “Oh, Diana, please find your father and ask him to take me home.I know I can never walk there. And I’m sure I couldn’t hop so far on one foot when Jane couldn’t even hop around the garden. ”
Marilla was out in the orchard picking a panful of summer apples when she saw Mr.Barry coming over the log bridge and up the slope, with Mrs.Barry beside him and a whole procession of little girls trailing after him.In his arms he carried Anne, whose head lay limply against his shoulder.
At that moment Marilla had a revelation.In the sudden stab of fear that pierced her very heart she realized what Anne had come to mean to her.She would have admitted that she liked Anne--nay, that she was very fond of Anne.But now she knew as she hurried wildly down the slope that Anne was dearer to her than anything else on earth.
“Mr. Barry, what has happened to her?” she gasped, more white and shaken than the self-contained,sensible Marilla had been for many years.
Anne herself answered, lifting her head.
“Don’t be very frightened, Marilla. I was walking the ridgepole and I fell off.I expect I have sprained my ankle. But, Marilla, I might have broken my neck.Let us look on the bright side of things.”
“I might have known you’d go and do something of the sort when I let you go to that party,” said Marilla, sharp and shrewish in her very relief. “Bring her in here, Mr. Barry,and lay her on the sofa. Mercy me, the child has gone and fainted!”
It was quite true. Overcome by the pain of her injury,Anne had one more of her wishes granted to her. She had fainted dead away.
Matthew, hastily summoned from the harvest field, was straightway dispatched for the doctor,who in due time came, to discover that the injury was more serious than they had supposed. Anne’s ankle was broken.
That night, when Marilla went up to the east gable, where a white-faced girl was lying,a plaintive voice greeted her from the bed.
“Aren’t you very sorry for me, Marilla?”
“It was your own fault,” said Marilla, twitching down the blind and lighting a lamp.
“And that is just why you should be sorry for me,” said Anne,“because the thought that it is all my own fault is what makes it so hard.If I could blame it on anybody I would feel so much better. But what would you have done, Marilla,if you had been dared to walk a ridgepole?”
“I’d have stayed on good firm ground and let them dare away. Such absurdity!” said Marilla.
Anne sighed.
“But you have such strength of mind, Marilla. I haven’t.I just felt that I couldn’t bear Josie Pye’s scorn. She would have crowed over me all my life.And I think I have been punished so much that you needn’t be very cross with me, Marilla.It’s not a bit nice to faint, after all.And the doctor hurt me dreadfully when he was setting my ankle.I won’t be able to go around for six or seven weeks and I’ll miss the new lady teacher.She won’t be new any more by the time I’m able to go to school.And Gil--everybody will get ahead of me in class. Oh, I am an afflicted mortal.But I’ll try to bear it all bravely if only you won’t be cross with me, Marilla.”
“There, there, I’m not cross,” said Marilla. “You’re an unlucky child, there’s no doubt about that;but as you say, you’ll have the suffering of it. Here now, try and eat some supper.”
“Isn’t it fortunate I’ve got such an imagination?” said Anne. “It will help me through splendidly, I expect.What do people who haven’t any imagination do when they break their bones, do you suppose, Marilla?”
Anne had good reason to bless her imagination many a time and oft during the tedious seven weeks that followed.But she was not solely dependent on it.She had many visitors and not a day passed without one or more of the schoolgirls dropping in to bring her flowers and books and tell her all the happenings in the juvenile world of Avonlea.
“Everybody has been so good and kind, Marilla,” sighed Anne happily,on the day when she could first limp across the floor. “It isn’t very pleasant to be laid up;but there is a bright side to it, Marilla. You find out how many friends you have. Why,even Superintendent Bell came to see me, and he’s really a very fine man. Not a kindred spirit,of course; but still I like him and I’m awfully sorry I ever criticized his prayers.I believe now he really does mean them,only he has got into the habit of saying them as if he didn’t.He could get over that if he’d take a little trouble. I gave him a good broad hint.I told him how hard I tried to make my own little private prayers interesting.He told me all about the time he broke his ankle when he was a boy.It does seem so strange to think of Superintendent Bell ever being a boy.Even my imagination has its limits, for I can’t imagine _that_.When I try to imagine him as a boy I see him with gray whiskers and spectacles,just as he looks in Sunday-school, only small. Now, it’s so easy to imagine Mrs.Allan as a little girl. Mrs. Allan has been to see me fourteen times.Isn’t that something to be proud of, Marilla?When a minister’s wife has so many claims on her time!She is such a cheerful person to have visit you, too.She never tells you it’s your own fault and she hopes you’ll be a better girl on account of it.Mrs. Lynde always told me that when she came to see me;and she said it in a kind of way that made me feel she might hope I’d be a better girl but didn’t really believe I would.Even Josie Pye came to see me. I received her as politely as I could,because I think she was sorry she dared me to walk a ridgepole.If I had been killed she would had to carry a dark burden of remorse all her life.Diana has been a faithful friend. She’s been over every day to cheer my lonely pillow. But oh,I shall be so glad when I can go to school for I’ve heard such exciting things about the new teacher.The girls all think she is perfectly sweet.Diana says she has the loveliest fair curly hair and such fascinating eyes.She dresses beautifully, and her sleeve puffs are bigger than anybody else’s in Avonlea.Every other Friday afternoon she has recitations and everybody has to say a piece or take part in a dialogue.Oh, it’s just glorious to think of it. Josie Pye says she hates it but that is just because Josie has so little imagination.Diana and Ruby Gillis and Jane Andrews are preparing a dialogue, called ‘A Morning Visit,’ for next Friday. And the Friday afternoons they don’t have recitations Miss Stacy takes them all to the woods for a ‘field’ day and they study ferns and flowers and birds. And they have physical culture exercises every morning and evening. Mrs. Lynde says she never heard of such goings on and it all comes of having a lady teacher. But I think it must be splendid and I believe I shall find that Miss Stacy is a kindred spirit.”
“There’s one thing plain to be seen, Anne,” said Marilla,“and that is that your fall off the Barry roof hasn’t injured your tongue at all.”
CHAPTER XXIV. Miss Stacy and Her Pupils Get Up a Concert
IT was October again when Anne was ready to go back to school--a glorious October, all red and gold,with mellow mornings when the valleys were filled with delicate mists as if the spirit of autumn had poured them in for the sun to drain--amethyst,pearl, silver, rose, and smoke-blue. The dews were so heavy that the fields glistened like cloth of silver and there were such heaps of rustling leaves in the hollows of many-stemmed woods to run crisply through. The Birch Path was a canopy of yellow and the ferns were sear and brown all along it. There was a tang in the very air that inspired the hearts of small maidens tripping, unlike snails, swiftly and willingly to school; and it _was_ jolly to be back again at the little brown desk beside Diana, with Ruby Gillis nodding across the aisle and Carrie Sloane sending up notes and Julia Bell passing a “chew” of gum down from the back seat. Anne drew a long breath of happiness as she sharpened her pencil and arranged her picture cards in her desk. Life was certainly very interesting.
In the new teacher she found another true and helpful friend. Miss Stacy was a bright,sympathetic young woman with the happy gift of winning and holding the affections of her pupils and bringing out the best that was in them mentally and morally. Anne expanded like a flower under this wholesome influence and carried home to the admiring Matthew and the critical Marilla glowing accounts of schoolwork and aims.
“I love Miss Stacy with my whole heart, Marilla. She is so ladylike and she has such a sweet voice.When she pronounces my name I feel _instinctively_ that she’s spelling it with an E.We had recitations this afternoon. I just wish you could have been there to hear me recite ‘Mary,Queen of Scots.’ I just put my whole soul into it.Ruby Gillis told me coming home that the way I said the line, ‘Now for my father’s arm,’ she said,‘my woman’s heart farewell,’ just made her blood run cold.”
“Well now, you might recite it for me some of these days, out in the barn,” suggested Matthew.
“Of course I will,” said Anne meditatively, “but I won’t be able to do it so well, I know.It won’t be so exciting as it is when you have a whole schoolful before you hanging breathlessly on your words.I know I won’t be able to make your blood run cold.”
“Mrs. Lynde says it made _her_ blood run cold to see the boys climbing to the very tops of those big trees on Bell’s hill after crows’ nests last Friday,” said Marilla. “I wonder at Miss Stacy for encouraging it.”
“But we wanted a crow’s nest for nature study,” explained Anne. “That was on our field afternoon.Field afternoons are splendid, Marilla. And Miss Stacy explains everything so beautifully.We have to write compositions on our field afternoons and I write the best ones.”
“It’s very vain of you to say so then. You’d better let your teacher say it.”
“But she _did_ say it, Marilla. And indeed I’m not vain about it. How can I be, when I’m such a dunce at geometry?Although I’m really beginning to see through it a little, too. Miss Stacy makes it so clear. Still,I’ll never be good at it and I assure you it is a humbling reflection.But I love writing compositions. Mostly Miss Stacy lets us choose our own subjects;but next week we are to write a composition on some remarkable person.It’s hard to choose among so many remarkable people who have lived.Mustn’t it be splendid to be remarkable and have compositions written about you after you’re dead?Oh, I would dearly love to be remarkable.I think when I grow up I’ll be a trained nurse and go with the Red Crosses to the field of battle as a messenger of mercy.That is, if I don’t go out as a foreign missionary. That would be very romantic,but one would have to be very good to be a missionary, and that would be a stumbling block.We have physical culture exercises every day, too. They make you graceful and promote digestion.”
“Promote fiddlesticks!” said Marilla, who honestly thought it was all nonsense.
But all the field afternoons and recitation Fridays and physical culture contortions paled before a project which Miss Stacy brought forward in November.This was that the scholars of Avonlea school should get up a concert and hold it in the hall on Christmas Night,for the laudable purpose of helping to pay for a schoolhouse flag.The pupils one and all taking graciously to this plan,the preparations for a program were begun at once.And of all the excited performers-elect none was so excited as Anne Shirley,who threw herself into the undertaking heart and soul,hampered as she was by Marilla’s disapproval. Marilla thought it all rank foolishness.
“It’s just filling your heads up with nonsense and taking time that ought to be put on your lessons,” she grumbled. “I don’t approve of children’s getting up concerts and racing about to practices.It makes them vain and forward and fond of gadding.”
“But think of the worthy object,” pleaded Anne. “A flag will cultivate a spirit of patriotism, Marilla.”
“Fudge!There’s precious little patriotism in the thoughts of any of you. All you want is a good time.”
“Well, when you can combine patriotism and fun, isn’t it all right?Of course it’s real nice to be getting up a concert.We’re going to have six choruses and Diana is to sing a solo.I’m in two dialogues--‘The Society for the Suppression of Gossip’ and ‘The Fairy Queen.’ The boys are going to have a dialogue too. And I’m to have two recitations, Marilla.I just tremble when I think of it, but it’s a nice thrilly kind of tremble.And we’re to have a tableau at the last--‘Faith, Hope and Charity.’ Diana and Ruby and I are to be in it, all draped in white with flowing hair. I’m to be Hope,with my hands clasped--so--and my eyes uplifted.I’m going to practice my recitations in the garret. Don’t be alarmed if you hear me groaning.I have to groan heartrendingly in one of them,and it’s really hard to get up a good artistic groan, Marilla.Josie Pye is sulky because she didn’t get the part she wanted in the dialogue.She wanted to be the fairy queen. That would have been ridiculous,for who ever heard of a fairy queen as fat as Josie?Fairy queens must be slender. Jane Andrews is to be the queen and I am to be one of her maids of honor.Josie says she thinks a red-haired fairy is just as ridiculous as a fat one,but I do not let myself mind what Josie says.I’m to have a wreath of white roses on my hair and Ruby Gillis is going to lend me her slippers because I haven’t any of my own.It’s necessary for fairies to have slippers, you know. You couldn’t imagine a fairy wearing boots, could you?Especially with copper toes?We are going to decorate the hall with creeping spruce and fir mottoes with pink tissue-paper roses in them.And we are all to march in two by two after the audience is seated,while Emma White plays a march on the organ. Oh, Marilla,I know you are not so enthusiastic about it as I am,but don’t you hope your little Anne will distinguish herself?”
“All I hope is that you’ll behave yourself.I’ll be heartily glad when all this fuss is over and you’ll be able to settle down.You are simply good for nothing just now with your head stuffed full of dialogues and groans and tableaus.As for your tongue, it’s a marvel it’s not clean worn out.”
Anne sighed and betook herself to the back yard,over which a young new moon was shining through the leafless poplar boughs from an apple-green western sky,and where Matthew was splitting wood. Anne perched herself on a block and talked the concert over with him,sure of an appreciative and sympathetic listener in this instance at least.
“Well now, I reckon it’s going to be a pretty good concert. And I expect you’ll do your part fine,” he said, smiling down into her eager, vivacious little face. Anne smiled back at him.Those two were the best of friends and Matthew thanked his stars many a time and oft that he had nothing to do with bringing her up.That was Marilla’s exclusive duty; if it had been his he would have been worried over frequent conflicts between inclination and said duty.As it was, he was free to, “spoil Anne”--Marilla’s phrasing--as much as he liked.But it was not such a bad arrangement after all;a little “appreciation” sometimes does quite as much good as all the conscientious “bringing up” in the world.
CHAPTER XXV. Matthew Insists on Puffed Sleeves
MATTHEW was having a bad ten minutes of it. He had come into the kitchen, in the twilight of a cold,gray December evening, and had sat down in the woodbox corner to take off his heavy boots,unconscious of the fact that Anne and a bevy of her schoolmates were having a practice of “The Fairy Queen” in the sitting room.Presently they came trooping through the hall and out into the kitchen,laughing and chattering gaily. They did not see Matthew,who shrank bashfully back into the shadows beyond the woodbox with a boot in one hand and a bootjack in the other,and he watched them shyly for the aforesaid ten minutes as they put on caps and jackets and talked about the dialogue and the concert.Anne stood among them, bright eyed and animated as they;but Matthew suddenly became conscious that there was something about her different from her mates.And what worried Matthew was that the difference impressed him as being something that should not exist.Anne had a brighter face, and bigger, starrier eyes, and more delicate features than the other;even shy, unobservant Matthew had learned to take note of these things;but the difference that disturbed him did not consist in any of these respects. Then in what did it consist?
Matthew was haunted by this question long after the girls had gone, arm in arm, down the long,hard-frozen lane and Anne had betaken herself to her books. He could not refer it to Marilla, who,he felt, would be quite sure to sniff scornfully and remark that the only difference she saw between Anne and the other girls was that they sometimes kept their tongues quiet while Anne never did. This, Matthew felt, would be no great help.
He had recourse to his pipe that evening to help him study it out, much to Marilla’s disgust.After two hours of smoking and hard reflection Matthew arrived at a solution of his problem.Anne was not dressed like the other girls!
The more Matthew thought about the matter the more he was convinced that Anne never had been dressed like the other girls--never since she had come to Green Gables. Marilla kept her clothed in plain, dark dresses, all made after the same unvarying pattern. If Matthew knew there was such a thing as fashion in dress it was as much as he did; but he was quite sure that Anne’s sleeves did not look at all like the sleeves the other girls wore. He recalled the cluster of little girls he had seen around her that evening--all gay in waists of red and blue and pink and white--and he wondered why Marilla always kept her so plainly and soberly gowned.
Of course, it must be all right. Marilla knew best and Marilla was bringing her up.Probably some wise, inscrutable motive was to be served thereby.But surely it would do no harm to let the child have one pretty dress--something like Diana Barry always wore.Matthew decided that he would give her one;that surely could not be objected to as an unwarranted putting in of his oar.Christmas was only a fortnight off. A nice new dress would be the very thing for a present.Matthew, with a sigh of satisfaction, put away his pipe and went to bed,while Marilla opened all the doors and aired the house.
The very next evening Matthew betook himself to Carmody to buy the dress,determined to get the worst over and have done with it. It would be, he felt assured,no trifling ordeal. There were some things Matthew could buy and prove himself no mean bargainer;but he knew he would be at the mercy of shopkeepers when it came to buying a girl’s dress.
After much cogitation Matthew resolved to go to Samuel Lawson’s store instead of William Blair’s.To be sure, the Cuthberts always had gone to William Blair’s;it was almost as much a matter of conscience with them as to attend the Presbyterian church and vote Conservative.But William Blair’s two daughters frequently waited on customers there and Matthew held them in absolute dread.He could contrive to deal with them when he knew exactly what he wanted and could point it out;but in such a matter as this, requiring explanation and consultation,Matthew felt that he must be sure of a man behind the counter. So he would go to Lawson’s,where Samuel or his son would wait on him.
Alas!Matthew did not know that Samuel, in the recent expansion of his business,had set up a lady clerk also; she was a niece of his wife’s and a very dashing young person indeed,with a huge, drooping pompadour, big, rolling brown eyes,and a most extensive and bewildering smile.She was dressed with exceeding smartness and wore several bangle bracelets that glittered and rattled and tinkled with every movement of her hands.Matthew was covered with confusion at finding her there at all;and those bangles completely wrecked his wits at one fell swoop.
“What can I do for you this evening, Mr. Cuthbert?” Miss Lucilla Harris inquired, briskly and ingratiatingly, tapping the counter with both hands.
“Have you any--any--any--well now, say any garden rakes?” stammered Matthew.
Miss Harris looked somewhat surprised, as well she might,to hear a man inquiring for garden rakes in the middle of December.
“I believe we have one or two left over,” she said, “but they’re upstairs in the lumber room.I’ll go and see.” During her absence Matthew collected his scattered senses for another effort.