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.