Anne of Avonlea

ANNE OF AVONLEA

by Lucy Maud Montgomery



To

my former teacher
HATTIE GORDON SMITH
in grateful remembrance of her
sympathy and encouragement.


     Flowers spring to blossom where she walks
     The careful ways of duty,
     Our hard, stiff lines of life with her
     Are flowing curves of beauty.
     --WHITTIER



     I         An Irate Neighbor
     II        Selling in Haste and Repenting at Leisure
     III       Mr. Harrison at Home
     IV        Different Opinions47
     V         A Full-fledged Schoolma'am
     VI        All Sorts and Conditions of Men . . . and women
     VII       The Pointing of Duty
     VIII      Marilla Adopts Twins
     IX        A Question of Color
     X         Davy in Search of a Sensation
     XI        Facts and Fancies
     XII       A Jonah Day
     XIII      A Golden Picnic
     XIV       A Danger Averted
     XV        The Beginning of Vacation
     XVI       The Substance of Things Hoped For
     XVII      A Chapter of Accidents
     XVIII     An Adventure on the Tory Road
     XIX       Just a Happy Day
     XX        The Way It Often Happens
     XXI       Sweet Miss Lavendar
     XXII      Odds and Ends
     XXIII     Miss Lavendar's Romance
     XXIV      A Prophet in His Own Country
     XXV       An Avonlea Scandal
     XXVI      Around the Bend
     XXVII     An Afternoon at the Stone House
     XXVIII    The Prince Comes Back to the Enchanted Palace
     XXIX      Poetry and Prose
     XXX       A Wedding at the Stone House




I

An Irate Neighbor


A tall, slim girl, "half-past sixteen," with serious gray eyes and hair
which her friends called auburn, had sat down on the broad red sandstone
doorstep of a Prince Edward Island farmhouse one ripe afternoon in
August, firmly resolved to construe so many lines of Virgil.

But an August afternoon, with blue hazes scarfing the harvest slopes,
little winds whispering elfishly in the poplars, and a dancing slendor
of red poppies outflaming against the dark coppice of young firs in a
corner of the cherry orchard, was fitter for dreams than dead languages.
The Virgil soon slipped unheeded to the ground, and Anne, her chin
propped on her clasped hands, and her eyes on the splendid mass of
fluffy clouds that were heaping up just over Mr. J. A. Harrison's house
like a great white mountain, was far away in a delicious world where a
certain schoolteacher was doing a wonderful work, shaping the destinies
of future statesmen, and inspiring youthful minds and hearts with high
and lofty ambitions.

To be sure, if you came down to harsh facts . . . which, it must be
confessed, Anne seldom did until she had to . . . it did not seem likely
that there was much promising material for celebrities in Avonlea
school; but you could never tell what might happen if a teacher used
her influence for good. Anne had certain rose-tinted ideals of what a
teacher might accomplish if she only went the right way about it; and
she was in the midst of a delightful scene, forty years hence, with a
famous personage . . . just exactly what he was to be famous for was left
in convenient haziness, but Anne thought it would be rather nice to have
him a college president or a Canadian premier . . . bowing low over her
wrinkled hand and assuring her that it was she who had first kindled his
ambition, and that all his success in life was due to the lessons she
had instilled so long ago in Avonlea school. This pleasant vision was
shattered by a most unpleasant interruption.

A demure little Jersey cow came scuttling down the lane and five seconds
later Mr. Harrison arrived . . . if "arrived" be not too mild a term to
describe the manner of his irruption into the yard.

He bounced over the fence without waiting to open the gate, and angrily
confronted astonished Anne, who had risen to her feet and stood looking
at him in some bewilderment. Mr. Harrison was their new righthand