15/1 Anne: A Sleep Story | Chapter Fifteen - 1

Chapter 15 A Tempest in the School Teapot What a splendid day,

Said Anne,

Drawing a long breath.

Isn't it good just to be alive on a day like this?

I pity the people who aren't born yet for missing it.

And it's splendider still to have such a lovely way to go to school by,

Isn't it?

It's a lot nicer than going by the road,

That is so dusty and hot,

Said Diana practically,

Peeping into her dinner basket and mentally calculating if the three juicy,

Toothsome raspberry tarts reposing there were divided among ten girls,

How many bites each girl would have.

The little girls of Avonlea school always pooled their lunches.

And to eat three raspberry tarts all alone,

Or even to share them only with one's best chum,

Would have forever and ever branded as awful mean the girl who did it.

And yet,

When the tarts were divided among ten girls,

You just got enough to tantalise you.

The way Anne and Diana went to school was a pretty one.

Anne thought those walks to and from school with Diana couldn't be improved upon,

Even by imagination.

Going around by the main road would have been so unromantic.

But to go by Lover's Lane and Widomere and Violet Vale and the Birch Path was romantic,

If ever anything was.

Lover's Lane opened out below the orchard at Green Gables and stretched far up into the woods to the end of the Cuthbert's farm.

It was the way by which the cows were taken to the back pasture and the wood hauled home in winter.

Anne had named it Lover's Lane before she had been a month at Green Gables.

Not that lovers ever really walked there,

She explained to Marilla,

But Diana and I are reading a perfectly magnificent book and there's a Lover's Lane in it.

So we want to have one too.

And it's a very pretty name,

Don't you think?

So romantic.

We can imagine the lovers into it,

You know.

I like that lane because you can think out loud there without people calling you crazy.

Anne started out alone in the morning,

Went down Lover's Lane as far as the brook.

Here Diana met her and the two girls went on up the lane under the leafy arch of maples.

Maples are such sociable trees,

Said Anne.

They're always rustling and whispering to you.

Until they came to the rustic bridge.

Then they left the lane and walked through Mr Barry's backfield and passed Willamere.

Beyond Willamere came Violet Vale,

A little green dimple in the shadow of Mr Andrew Bell's big woods.

Of course there are no violets there now,

Anne told Marilla,

But Diana says there are millions of them in spring.

Oh Marilla,

Can't you just imagine you see them?

It actually takes away my breath.

I named it Violet Vale.

Diana says she never saw the beat of me for hitting on fancy names for places.

It's nice to be clever at something,

Isn't it?

But Diana named the Birch Path.

She wanted to,

So I let her.

But I'm sure I could have found something more poetical than plain Birch Path.

Anybody can think of a name like that.

But the Birch Path is one of the prettiest places in the world,

Marilla.

It was.

Other people beside Anne thought so when they stumbled upon it.

It was a little,

Narrow,

Twisting path,

Winding down over a long hill straight through Mr Bell's woods,

Where the light came down,

Sifted through so many emerald screens that it was as flawless as the heart of a diamond.

It was fringed in all its length with slim,

Young birches,

Wide-stemmed and lissom-bowed ferns and starflowers and wild lilies of the valley and scarlet tufts of pigeonberries grew thickly along it.

And always there was a delightful spiciness in the air and music of bird calls and the murmur and laugh of woodwinds in the trees overhead.

Now and then you might see a rabbit skipping across the road if you were quiet,

Which,

With Anne and Diana,

Happened about once in a blue moon.

Down in the valley the path came out to a main road and then it was just up the spruce hill to the school.

The Avonlea school was a whitewashed building,

Low in the eaves and wide in the windows,

Furnished inside with comfortable,

Substantial,

Old-fashioned desks that opened and shut and were carved all over their lids with the initials and hieroglyphics of three generations of schoolchildren.

The schoolhouse was set back from the road and behind it was a dusky fair wood and a brook where all the children put their bottles of milk in the morning to keep cool and sweet until dinner time.

Marilla had seen Anne start off to school on the first day of September with many misgivings.

Anne was such an odd girl.

How would she get on with the other children?

And how on earth would she ever manage to hold her tongue during school hours?

Things went better than Marilla feared,

However.

Anne came home that evening in high spirits.

I think I'm going to like school here,

She announced.

I don't think much of the master,

Though.

He's all the time curling his moustache and making eyes at Prissy Andrews.

Prissy is growing up,

You know.

She's sixteen and she's studying for the entrance examination into Queen's Academy in Charlottestown next year.

Tilly Booter says the master is dead gone on her.

She's got a beautiful complexion and curly brown hair and she does it up so elegantly.

She sits in the long seat at the back and he sits there too most of the time to explain her lessons,

He says.

But Ruby Gillis says she saw him writing something on her slate and when Prissy read it she blushed as red as a beet and giggled.

And Ruby Gillis says she doesn't believe it had anything to do with the lesson.

Anne Shirley,

Don't let me hear you talking about your teacher in that way again,

Said Marilla sharply.

You don't go to school to criticise the master.

I guess he can teach you something and it's your business to learn.

And I want you to understand right off you're not to come home telling tales about him.

That is something I won't encourage.

I hope you were a good girl.

Indeed I was,

Said Anne comfortably.

It wasn't so hard as you might imagine either.

I sit with Diana.

Our seat is right by the window and we can look down at the lake of shining waters.

There are a lot of nice girls in school and we had scrumptious fun playing at dinner time.

It's so nice to have a lot of little girls to play with.

But of course I like Diana best and always will.

I adore Diana.

I'm dreadfully far behind the others.

They are all in the fifth book and I'm only in the fourth.

I feel that is a kind of disgrace.

But there's not one of them has such an imagination as I have and I soon found that out.

We had reading and geography and Canadian history and dictation today.

Mr.

Phillips said my spelling was disgraceful and he held up my slate so everybody could see,

All marked over.

I felt so mortified,

Marilla.

He might have been politer to a stranger,

I think.

Ruby Gillis gave me an apple and Sophie Sloane lent me a lovely pink card with may I see you home on it.

I'm to give it back to her tomorrow.

And Tilly Boulter let me wear her bead ring all the afternoon.

Can I have some of those pearl beads off the old pin cushion in the garage to make myself a ring?

Oh,

And Marilla,

Jane Andrews told me that Minnie Macpherson told her that she heard Prissy Andrews tell Sarah Gillis that I had a very pretty nose.

Marilla,

That is the first compliment I have ever had in my life and you can't imagine what a strange feeling it gave me,

Marilla.

Have I really a pretty nose?

I know you'll tell me the truth.

Your nose is well enough,

Said Marilla shortly.

Secretly she thought Anne's nose was a remarkable pretty one but she had no intention of telling her so.

That was three weeks ago and all had gone smoothly so far.

And now,

This crisp September morning,

Anne and Diana were tripping blithely down the Birch Path,

Two of the happiest little girls in Avonlea.

I guess Gilbert Bly will be in school today,

Said Diana.

He's been visiting his cousins over in New Brunswick all summer and he only just came home on Sunday night.

He's awfully handsome,

Anne,

And he teases the girls something terrible.

He just torments our lives out.

Diana's voice indicated that she rather liked having her life tormented out than not.

Gilbert Bly,

Said Anne,

Isn't it his name that's written up on the porch wall with Julia Bells and a big take-notice over them?

Yes,

Said Diana,

Tossing her head.

But I'm sure he doesn't like Julia Bells so very much.

I've heard him say he studied the multiplication tables by her freckles.

Oh,

Don't speak about freckles to me,

Implored Anne.

It isn't delicate when I've got so many.

But I do think that writing take-notices up on the wall about the boys and the girls is the silliest thing.

I should just like to see anybody dare to write my name up with the boys.

Not,

Of course,

She hastened to add,

That anybody would.

Anne sighed.

She didn't want her name written up.

But it was a little humiliating to know that there was no danger of it.

Nonsense,

Said Diana,

Whose black eyes and glossy tresses had played such havoc with the hearts of Avondale schoolboys that her name figured on the porch walls in half a dozen take-notices.

It's only meant as a joke.

And don't you be too sure your name won't ever be written up.

Charlie Sloane is dead gone on you.

He told his mother,

His mother mind you,

That you were the smartest girl in school.

That's better than being good-looking.

No,

It isn't,

Said Anne,

Feminine to the core.

I'd rather be pretty than clever.

And I hate Charlie Sloane.

I can't bear a boy with goggle eyes.

If anyone wrote my name up with his,

I'd never get over it,

Diana Barry.

But it is nice to keep head of your class.

You'll have Gilbert in your class after this,

Said Diana,

And he's used to being head of his class,

I can tell you.

He's only in the fourth book,

Although he's nearly fourteen.

Four years ago his father was sick and had to go out to Alberta for his health and Gilbert went with him.

They were there three years and Gil didn't go to school hardly any until they came back.

You won't find it so easy to keep head after this,

Anne.

' "'I'm glad,

' said Anne quickly.

I couldn't really feel proud of keeping head of little boys and girls of just nine or ten.

I got up yesterday,

Spelling ebullition.

Josie Pye was head and,

Mind you,

She peeped in her book.

Mr.

Phillips didn't see her.

He was looking at Prissy Andrews.

But I did.

I just swept her a look of freezing scorn and she got as red as a beet and spelt it wrong after that.

' "'Those Pye girls are cheats all round,

' said Diana indignantly as they climbed the fence of the main road.

Gertie Pye actually went and put her milk bottle in my place in the brook yesterday.

Did you ever?

I don't speak to her now.

' When Mr.

Phillips was in the back of the room hearing Prissy Andrews' Latin,

Diana whispered to Anne,

"'That's Gilbert Bly sitting right across the aisle from you,

Anne.

Just look at him and see if you don't think he's handsome.

' Anne looked accordingly.

She had a good chance to do so,

For the said Gilbert Bly was absorbed in stealthily pinning the long yellow braid of Ruby Gillis,

Who sat in front of him,

To the back of her seat.

He was a tall boy with curly brown hair,

Roguish hazel eyes and a mouth twisted into a teasing smile.

Presently Ruby Gillis started up to take a sum to the master.

She fell back into her seat with a little shriek,

Believing that her hair was pulled out by the roots.

Everybody looked at her and Mr.

Phillips glared so sternly that Ruby began to cry.

Gilbert had whisked the pin out of sight and was studying his history with the soberest face in the world.

But when the commotion subsided he looked at Anne and winked with inexpressible drollery.

"'I think your Gilbert Bly is handsome,

' confided Anne to Diana,

"'but I think he's very bold.

It isn't good manners to wink at a strange girl.

' But it was not until the afternoon that things really began to happen.

Mr.

Phillips was back in the corner explaining a problem in algebra to Prissy Andrews and the rest of the scholars were doing pretty much as they pleased,

Eating green apples,

Whispering,

Drawing pictures on their slates and driving crickets harnessed to strings up and down the aisle.

Gilbert Bly was trying to make Anne Shirley look at him and failing utterly because Anne was,

At that moment,

Totally oblivious not only of the very existence of Gilbert Bly but of every other scholar in Avonlea School itself.

With her chin propped under her hands and her eyes fixed on the blue glimpse of the lake of shining waters that the west window afforded,

She was far away in a gorgeous dreamland,

Hearing and seeing nothing save her own wonderful visions.

Gilbert Bly wasn't used to putting himself out to make a girl look at him and meeting with failure.

She should look at him,

That red-haired Shirley girl with the little pointed chin and the big eyes that weren't like the eyes of any other girl in Avonlea School.

Gilbert reached across the aisle,

Picked up the end of Anne's long red braid,

Held it out at arm's length and said,

In a piercing whisper,

Carrots,

Carrots.

Then Anne looked at him with a vengeance.

She did more than look.

She sprang to her feet,

Her bright fancies fallen into cureless ruin.

She flashed one indignant glance at Gilbert from eyes whose angry sparkle was swiftly quenched in equally angry tears.

You mean,

Hateful boy,

She exclaimed passionately.

How dare you?

And then,

Thwack,

Anne had brought her slate down on Gilbert's head and cracked it.

Slate not head,

Clear across.

Avonlea School always enjoyed a scene.

This was an especially enjoyable one.

Everybody said,

Oh,

In horrified delight.

Diana gasped.

Ruby Gillis,

Who was inclined to be hysterical,

Began to cry.

Tommy Sloan let his team of crickets escape him altogether while he stared open-mouthed at the tableau.

Mr.

Phillips stalked down the aisle and laid his hand heavily on Anne's shoulder.

And surely,

What does this mean?

He said angrily.

Anne returned no answer.

It was asking too much of flesh and blood to expect her to tell before the whole school that she had been called carrots.

Gilbert,

It was,

Spoke up stoutly.

It was my fault,

Mr.

Phillips,

I teased her.

Mr.

Phillips paid no heed to Gilbert.

I'm sorry to see a pupil of mine displaying such a temper and such a vindictive spirit,

He said in a solemn tone,

As if the mere fact of being a pupil of his ought to root out all evil passions from the hearts of small imperfect mortals.

Anne,

Go and stand on the platform in the front of the blackboard for the rest of the afternoon.

Anne would have infinitely preferred a whipping to this punishment,

Under which her sensitive spirit quivered as from a whiplash.

With a white set face she obeyed.

Mr.

Phillips took a chalk crayon and wrote on the blackboard above her head.

Anne Shirley has a very bad temper.

Anne Shirley must learn to control her temper.

And then read it out loud so that even the primer class,

Who couldn't read writing,

Should understand it.

Anne stood there for the rest of the afternoon with that legend above her.

She did not cry or hang her head.

Anger was still too hot in her heart for that,

And it sustained her amid all her agony of humiliation.

With resentful eyes and passion-red cheeks,

She confronted alike Diana's sympathetic gaze and Charlie Sloane's indignant nods and Josie Pye's malicious smiles.

As for Gilbert Bly,

She would not even look at him.

She would never look at him again.

She would never speak to him.

When school was dismissed,

Anne marched out with her red head held high.

Gilbert Bly tried to intercept her at the porch door.

I'm awfully sorry I made fun of your hair,

Anne,

You whispered contritely.

Honest,

I am.

Don't be mad,

For keeps now.

Anne swept by disdainfully,

Without look or sign of hearing.

Oh,

How could you,

Anne,

Breathed Diana as they went down the road,

Half reproachfully,

Half admiringly.

Diana felt that she could never have resisted Gilbert's plea.

I shall never forgive Gilbert Bly,

Said Anne firmly.

And Mr.

Phillips spelt my name without an E,

Too.

The iron has set into my soul,

Diana.

Diana hadn't the least idea what Anne meant,

But she understood it was something terrible.

You mustn't mind Gilbert for making fun of your hair,

She said soothingly.

Why,

He makes fun of all the girls.

He laughs at mine because it's so black.

He's called me a crow a dozen times,

And I never heard him apologise for anything before,

Either.

There's a great deal of difference between being called a crow and being called carrots,

Said Anne with dignity.

Gilbert Bly has hurt my feelings excruciatingly,

Diana.