It is not a standard hardbound; it is an inexpensive book glued to an economical difficult cover. It implies it will certainly not put on any type of far better than the inexpensive mass market paperbacks they print up these prolonged serials as.
Anne takes a room at Windy Poplars, an old home with personality in Summerside, owned by two eccentric widows as well as kept by their gloriously opinionated chef and also housemaid, Rebecca Dew. Next door is an ignored and lonesome child named Elizabeth Grayson. This Anne of Windy Willows is worth understanding. She is a fully grown, attractive girl with a degree as well as a great heart, significantly conscious of her ability to influence the lives of others, and still vested with some of the fiestiness of her younger self.
And for no fault of my own. It is the injustice that stings me. There go more italics! But a few italics really do relieve your feelings.
There are some clever, ambitious, hard-working ones who are really interested in getting an education. Lewis Allen is paying for his board by doing housework at his boarding-house and isn't a bit ashamed of it. And Sophy Sinclair rides bareback on her father's old gray mare six miles in and six miles out every day. There's pluck for you! If I can help a girl like that, am I to mind the Pringles?
It isn't a boardinghouse. And they like me. I don't pet him much when Rebecca Dew is around because it really does irritate her. By day he is a homely, comfortable, meditative animal. Rebecca says it is because he is never allowed to stay out after dark.
She hates to stand in the back yard and call him. She says the neighbors will all be laughing at her. She calls in such fierce, stentorian tones that she really can be heard all over the town on a still night shouting for 'Puss. Every day I like them better. Aunt Kate doesn't believe in reading novels, but informs me that she does not propose to censor my reading-matter. Aunt Chatty loves novels.
She has a 'hidy-hole' where she keeps them. It is in a chair seat which nobody but Aunt Chatty knows is more than a chair seat. She has shared the secret with me, because, I strongly suspect, she wants me to aid and abet her in the aforesaid smuggling. There shouldn't really be any need for hidy-holes at Windy Poplars, for I never saw a house with so many mysterious cupboards. Though to be sure, Rebecca Dew won't let them be mysterious. She is always cleaning them out ferociously.
I am sure she would make short work of a novel or a pack of cards if she found them. They are both a horror to her orthodox soul. Rebecca Dew says cards are the devil's books and novels even worse. The only things Rebecca ever reads, apart from her Bible, are the society columns of the Montreal Guardian. She loves to pore over the houses and furniture and doings of millionaires. She has produced from somewhere a comfortable old wing chair of faded brocade that just fits my kinks and says, 'This is your chair.
We'll keep it for you. Aunt Kate showed me her engagement ring she can't wear it because it has grown too small set with turquoises. But poor Aunt Chatty owned to me with tears in her eyes that she had never had an engagement ring. She does it every night to preserve her complexion, and has sworn me to secrecy because she doesn't want Aunt Kate to know it. And I am sure Rebecca Dew thinks that no Christian woman should try to be beautiful. I used to slip down to the kitchen to do it after Kate had gone to sleep but I was always afraid of Rebecca Dew coming down.
She has ears like a cat's even when she is asleep. If I could just slip in here every night and do it. Campbell who was a Pringle! I haven't seen her but from what I can gather she is a very grim old lady.
She has a maid, Martha Monkman, almost as ancient and grim as herself, who is generally referred to as 'Mrs. Campbell's Woman.
Her mother, who is dead, was a granddaughter of Mrs. Campbell, who brought her up also. Her parents being dead. She married a certain Pierce Grayson, a 'Yankee,' as Mrs. Rachel Lynde would say.
She died when Elizabeth was born and as Pierce Grayson had to leave America at once to take charge of a branch of his firm's business in Paris, the baby was sent home to old Mrs. The story goes that he 'couldn't bear the sight of her' because she had cost her mother's life, and has never taken any notice of her.
This of course may be sheer gossip because neither Mrs. Campbell nor the Woman ever opens her lips about him. The things that she says sometimes! And they make her do it. Campbell says there are to be no cowards in her house. They watch her like two cats watching a mouse, and boss her within an inch of her life.
If she makes a speck of noise they nearly pass out. It's "hush, hush" all the time. I tell you that child is being hush-hushed to death. And what is to be done about it? She seems to me a bit pathetic. Aunt Kate says she is well looked after from a physical point of view. I can never forget what my own life was before I came to Green Gables. The only drawback will be that everybody I see will ask me how I like teaching in Summerside.
I find it in my heart to wish I were there now with. Isn't it delicious? What a thrill of superiority it must have given the grandfather! Wouldn't you really prefer it to 'Gilbert darling, etc. But, on the whole, I think I'm glad you're not the grandfather. It's wonderful to think we're young and have our whole lives before us.
Last night I had such a lovely walk with myself. I really had to go somewhere for it was just a trifle dismal at Windy Poplars. Aunt Chatty was crying in the sitting-room because her feelings had been hurt and Aunt Kate was crying in her bedroom because it was the anniversary of Captain Amasa's death and Rebecca Dew was crying in the kitchen for no reason that I could discover.
I've never seen Rebecca Dew cry before. But when I tried tactfully to find out what was wrong she pettishly wanted to know if a body couldn't enjoy a cry when she felt like it.
So I folded my tent and stole away, leaving her to her enjoyment. There was such a nice frosty, Octobery smell in the air, blent with the delightful odor of newly plowed fields.
I walked on and on until twilight had deepened into a moonlit autumn night. I was alone but not lonely. I held a series of imaginary conversations with imaginary comrades and thought out so many epigrams that I was agreeably surprised at myself. I couldn't help enjoying myself in spite of my Pringle worries. I hate to admit it but things are not going any too well in Summerside High.
There is no doubt that a cabal has been organized against me. And there is no use in appealing to the parents. They are suave, polite, evasive. I know all the pupils who are not Pringles like me but the Pringle virus of disobedience is undermining the morale of the whole room. One morning I found my desk turned inside out and upside down.
Nobody knew who did it, of course. And no one could or would tell who left on it another day the box out of which popped an artificial snake when I opened it.
But every Pringle in the school screamed with laughter over my face. I suppose I did look wildly startled. She passes notes in class under my very nose. I found a peeled onion in the pocket of my coat when I put it on today. I should love to lock that girl up on bread and water until she learned how to behave herself.
Everybody denied doing it, Jen among the rest, but I knew Jen was the only pupil in the room who could draw like that. It was done well. My nose. But it was me. I woke up at three o'clock that night and writhed over the recollection. Isn't it queer that the things we writhe over at night are seldom wicked things? Just humiliating ones.
I am accused of 'marking down' Hattie Pringle's examination papers just because she is a Pringle. I am said to 'laugh when the children make mistakes. Socially as well as educationally, Summerside seems to be under the Pringle thumb. No wonder they are called the Royal Family. I wasn't invited to Alice Pringle's walking party last Friday. And when Mrs. Frank Pringle got up a tea in aid of a church project Rebecca Dew informs me that the ladies are going to 'build' the new spire!
I have heard that the minister's wife, who is a newcomer in Summerside, suggested asking me to sing in the choir and was informed that all the Pringles would drop out of it if she did.
That would leave such a skeleton that the choir simply couldn't carry on. When the other teachers send theirs up to me to be 'disciplined'.
But there is never any complaint made about them. Ten minutes later the carriage from Maplehurst drew up before the school house and Miss Ellen was at the door. She was so sorry but could she have Jen? She was going to visit friends in Lowvale and had promised to take Jen.
Jen went off triumphantly and I realized afresh the forces arrayed against me. But I know they're not. I feel that I could like them if they were not my enemies. They are, for the most part, a frank, jolly, loyal set.
I could even like Miss Ellen. I've never seen Miss Sarah. Miss Sarah has not left Maplehurst for ten years. All the Pringles are proud but those two old girls pass everything. You should hear them talk about their ancestors. Well, their old father, Captain Abraham Pringle, was a fine old fellow. His brother Myrom wasn't quite so fine, but you don't hear the Pringles talking much about him. But I'm desprit afraid you're going to have a hard time with them all.
When they make up their mind about anything or anybody they've never been known to change it. But keep your chin up, Miss Shirley. It's an old English family recipe. They're so exclusive about their recipes. The maddening thing is that I could easily make Jen do it myself if her whole clan weren't backing her up in her deviltry. A house was entered and some money and a dozen silver spoons stolen.
So Rebecca Dew has gone up to Mr. Hamilton's to see if she can borrow a dog. She will tie him on the back veranda and she advises me to lock up my engagement ring! It seems there had been a domestic convulsion. He was wearing her to a fiddle-string. It was the third time in a year and she knew he did it on purpose.
And Aunt Kate said that if Rebecca Dew would always let the cat out when he meowed there would be no danger of his misbehaving. Something very impertinent was written across one of my books yesterday and Homer Pringle turned handsprings all the way down the aisle when leaving school. Also, I got an anonymous letter recently full of nasty innuendoes.
Somehow, I don't blame Jen for either the book or the letter. Imp as she is, there are things she wouldn't stoop to. Rebecca Dew is furious and I shudder to think what she would do to the Pringles if she had them in her power.
Nero's wish isn't to be compared to it. I really don't blame her, for there are times when I feel myself that I could cheerfully hand any and all of the Pringles a poisoned philter of Borgia brewing.
There are two, you know. Of George I have little to say. He is a shy, good-natured lad of twenty, with a slight, delicious Highland accent suggestive of low shielings and misty islands. So far as I know him I like him. But I'm afraid I'm going to have a hard time liking Katherine Brooke. I have been told she cherished hopes of promotion to the Principalship and I suppose she resents my getting it, especially when I am considerably her junior.
She is a good teacher. And doesn't worry over it! She doesn't seem to have any friends or relations and boards in a gloomy-looking house on grubby little Temple Street. She dresses very dowdily, never goes out socially and is said to be 'mean. I am told that her way of raising her thick black eyebrows and drawling at them reduces them to a pulp. I wish I could work it on the Pringles.
But I really shouldn't like to govern by fear as she does. I want my pupils to love me. I know she does it purposely and I feel miserably certain that she exults in my difficulties and would be glad to see me worsted. The widows have invited her several times to Sunday supper. So they have given it up because, as Aunt Kate says, 'there are limits.
Aunt Chatty once asked her to recite at a church supper. She is dark and swarthy, with magnificent black hair always dragged back from her high forehead and coiled in a clumsy knot at the base of her neck. Her eyes don't match her hair, being a clear, light amber under her black brows. She has ears she needn't be ashamed to show and the most beautiful hands I've ever seen. Also, she has a well-cut mouth. But she dresses terribly. Seems to have a positive genius for getting the colors and lines she should not wear.
Dull dark greens and drab grays, when she is too sallow for greens and grays, and stripes which make her tall, lean figure even taller and leaner. And her clothes always look as if she'd slept in them. Every time I pass her on the stairs I feel that she is thinking horrid things about me. Every time I speak to her she makes me feel I've said the wrong thing. And yet I'm very sorry for her. And I can't do anything to help her because she doesn't want to be helped.
She is really hateful to me. One day, when we three teachers were all in the staff room, I did something which, it seems, transgressed one of the unwritten laws of the school, and Katherine said cuttingly, 'Perhaps you think you are above rules, Miss Shirley. Katherine is so much more alluring than Catherine, just as K is ever so much gypsier a letter than smug C.
She is small, pale, golden and wistful. Her eyes, looking at me through the autumn twilight, are large and golden-hazel. Her silver-gold hair was parted in the middle, sleeked plainly down over her head with a circular comb, and fell in waves on her shoulders. She wore a pale blue gingham dress and the expression of a princess of elf-land. She had what Rebecca Dew calls 'a delicate air,' and gave me the impression of a child who was more or less undernourished.
More of a moonbeam than a sunbeam. I was Elizabeth last night and tomorrow night I'll prob'ly be Beth. It all depends on how I feel.
I never can feel like Lizzie. I felt that I was being weighed in some secret spiritual balance and presently I realized thankfully that I had not been found wanting. For little Elizabeth asked a favor of me. I lifted him and little Elizabeth put out a tiny hand and stroked his head delightedly. And the Woman hates them. The Woman is out tonight, so that is why I could come for the milk.
I love coming for the milk because Rebecca Dew is such an agree'ble person. You are very agree'ble, too. I've been wanting to get 'quainted with you but I was afraid it mightn't happen before Tomorrow comes. The Woman had told her that Tomorrow never comes, but Elizabeth knows better. It will come sometime. Some beautiful morning she will just wake up and find it is Tomorrow. Not Today but Tomorrow. And then things will happen. She may even have a day to do exactly as she likes in, with nobody watching her.
Or she may find out what is at the end of the harbor road. Perhaps the Island of Happiness is there. Elizabeth feels sure there is an Island of Happiness somewhere where all the ships that never come back are anchored, and she will find it when Tomorrow comes.
I told Grandmother that when she wouldn't let me have a kitten, Miss Shirley, and she was angry and said, "I'm not 'customed to be spoken to like that, Miss Impert'nence.
And I couldn't sleep, Miss Shirley, because the Woman told me that she knew a child once that died in her sleep after being impert'nent. I think we had been watched all the time. My elf-maiden ran, her golden head glimmering along the dark spruce aisle until she vanished. She was looking clean through me at something she saw in that Tomorrow of hers. The trouble with that child is she doesn't laugh enough.
I feel that she hasn't learned how. The great house is so still and lonely and laughterless. It looks dull and gloomy even now when the world is a riot of autumn color. Little Elizabeth is doing too much listening to lost whispers. Rebecca Dew was really excited. And she was quite sure it was not out of friendliness.
It's very becoming. I could love them if they'd let me. Maplehurst is a proud, exclusive house which draws its trees around it and won't associate with common houses.
It has a big, white, wooden woman off the bow of old Captain Abraham's famous ship, the Go and Ask Her, in the orchard and billows of southernwood about the front steps, which was brought out from the old country over a hundred years ago by the first emigrating Pringle. They have another ancestor who fought at the battle of Minden and his sword is hanging on the parlor wall beside Captain Abraham's portrait.
Captain Abraham was their father and they are evidently tremendously proud of him. It was hung with silver-stripe wallpaper. Heavy brocade curtains at the windows. Marble-topped tables, one bearing a beautiful model of a ship with crimson hull and snow-white sails--the Go and Ask Her.
An enormous chandelier, all glass and dingle-dangles, suspended from the ceiling. A round mirror with a clock in the center. I'd like something like it in our house of dreams. Miss Ellen showed me millions. A big tortoise-shell cat came in, jumped on my knee and was at once whisked out to the kitchen by Miss Ellen. She apologized to me. But I expect she had previously apologized to the cat in the kitchen. Miss Sarah, a tiny thing in a black silk dress and starched petticoat, with snow-white hair and eyes as black as her dress, thin, veined hands folded on her lap amid fine lace ruffles, sad, lovely, gentle, looked almost too fragile to talk.
And yet I got the impression, Gilbert, that every Pringle of the clan, including Miss Ellen herself, danced to her piping. The water was cold, the linen beautiful, the dishes and glassware thin. We were waited on by a maid, quite as aloof and aristocratic as themselves.
But Miss Sarah pretended to be a little deaf whenever I spoke to her and I thought every mouthful would choke me. All my courage oozed out of me. I felt just like a poor fly caught on fly-paper. Gilbert, I can never, never conquer or win the Royal Family. I can see myself resigning at New Year's. I haven't a chance against a clan like that.
It had once lived. And now it has nothing but the memories by which they live. She is sure it foretells a death in the household. Aunt Kate is very much disgusted with such superstition.
But I believe I rather like superstitious people. Author : L. Author : Lucy Maud. The books recounts Anne's adventures in making a home. Anne, a young orphan from the fictional community of Bolingbroke, Nova Scotia based upon the real community of New London , is sent to Prince Edward Island after a childhood spent in strangers' homes and orphanages.
Anne, an 11 year old girl, the hero of a girls novel has become a worldwide bestseller, from Canada to Japan, for children to adults. First published in , it details Anne Shirley's experiences over three years teaching at a high school in Summerside, Prince Edward Island. The novel features a series of letters Anne sends to her intended, Gilbert Blythe, who is completing medical school.
Chronologically, this book is fourth in the series, but it was the seventh book written. Lucy Maud Montgomery — , was a Canadian author best known for a series of novels beginning with Anne of Green Gables.
Montgomery went on to publish 20 novels as well as short stories, poems, and 30 essays. Anne of the Island. Rainbow Valley. Rilla of Ingleside. Chronicles of Avonlea. Further Chronicles of Avonlea.
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