26 Anne Of The Island - Read By Stephanie Poppins

Anne of the Island by L.

M.

Montgomery Read by Stephanie Poppins Chapter 26 Enter Christine The girls at Patti's place were dressing for the reception which the juniors were given for the seniors in February.

Anne surveyed herself in the mirror of the blue room with girlish satisfaction.

She had a particularly pretty gown on.

Originally it had been only a simple little slip of cream silk with a chiffon overdress.

But Philippa had insisted on taking it home with her in the Christmas holidays and embroidering tiny rose buds all over the chiffon.

Phil's fingers were deft and the result was a dress which was the envy of every Redmond girl.

Even Ali Boone whose rocks came from Paris was one to look with longing eyes on that rose bud concoction as Anne trailed up the main staircase at Redmond.

She was trying the effect of a white orchid in her hair.

Roy Gardner had sent her white orchids for the reception and she knew no other Redmond girl would have them that night.

When Phil came in with an admiring gaze.

Anne this is certainly your night for looking handsome.

Nine nights out of ten I can easily outshine you.

The tenth you blossom out suddenly into something that eclipses me altogether.

How do you manage it?

It's the dress dear.

Fine feathers.

It isn't.

The last evening you flamed out into beauty you wore your old blue flannel shirt waist that Mrs.

Lind made you.

If Roy hadn't already lost head and heart about you he certainly would tonight.

But I don't like orchids on you Anne.

It isn't jealousy.

Orchids don't seem to belong to you that's why.

They're too exotic,

Too tropical,

Too insolent.

Don't put them in your hair anyway.

Well I won't.

I admit I'm not fond of orchids myself.

I don't think they're related to me.

Roy doesn't often send them.

He knows I like flowers I can live with.

Orchids are only things you can visit with.

Jonas sent me some dear pink rosebuds for the evening.

But he isn't coming himself.

He said he had to lead a prayer meeting in the slums.

I don't believe he wanted to come.

Anne,

I'm horribly afraid Jonas doesn't really care anything about me.

And I'm trying to decide whether I'll pine away and die or go on and get my BA and be sensible and useful.

You couldn't possibly be sensible and useful Phil.

So you better pine away and die said Anne cruelly.

Heartless Anne.

Silly Phil.

You know quite well Jonas loves you.

But he won't tell me so.

And I can't make him.

He does look it,

I'll admit.

But speak to me only with thine eyes isn't a really reliable reason for embroidering doilies and hemstitching tablecloths.

I don't want to begin such work until I'm really engaged.

It would be tempting fate.

Mr.

Blake is afraid to ask you to marry him,

Phil.

He's poor.

He can't offer you a home such as you've always had.

You know that that's the only reason he hasn't spoken long ago.

I suppose so,

Grieved Phil dolefully.

Well,

If he won't ask me to marry him,

I'll ask him,

That's all.

So it's bound to come out right.

I won't worry.

By the way,

Gilbert Blythe's going about constantly with Christine Stewart.

Did you know?

Anne was trying to fasten a little gold chain about her throat.

She suddenly found the clasp difficult to manage.

What was the matter with it?

Or with her fingers?

No,

She said carelessly.

Who is Christine Stewart?

Ronald Stewart's sister.

She's in Kingsport this winter studying music.

I haven't seen her,

But they say she's very pretty and that Gilbert is quite crazy over her.

How angry I was when you refused Gilbert,

Anne.

But Roy Gardner was foreordained for you.

I can see that now.

You were right after all.

Anne did not blush as she usually did when the girls assumed her eventual marriage to Roy Gardner was a settled thing.

All at once she felt rather dull.

Phil's chatter seemed trivial in the reception of bore.

She boxed poor Rusty's ears.

Get off that cushion instantly,

You cat.

Why don't you stay down where you belong?

Then she picked up her orchids and went downstairs where Aunt Jamesena was presiding over a row of coats hung before the fire to warm.

Roy Gardner was waiting for Anne and teasing the Sarah cat while he waited.

The Sarah cat did not approve of him.

But everybody else at Patty's place liked him very much.

Aunt Jamesena,

Carried away by his unfailing and deferential courtesy and the pleading tones of his delightful voice,

Declared he was the nicest young man she ever knew and that Anne was a very fortunate young girl.

Such remarks made Anne restive.

Roy's wooing had certainly been as romantic as girlish heart could desire.

But she wished Aunt Jamesena and the girls would not take things so for granted.

When Roy murmured a poetical compliment as he helped her on with her coat,

She did not blush and thrill as usual and he found her rather silent in their brief walk to Redmond.

He thought she looked a little pale when she came out of the co-ed's dressing room.

But as they entered the reception room her colour and sparkle suddenly returned.

She turned to Roy with her gayest expression and he smiled back at her with what Phil called his deep black velvety smile.

Yet she really did not see Roy at all.

She was acutely conscious that Gilbert was standing under the palms just across the room talking to a girl who must be Christine Stewart.

She was very handsome in the stately style destined to become rather massive in middle life.

She was a tall girl with large dark blue eyes,

Ivory outlines and a gloss of darkness on her smooth hair.

She looks just as I have always wanted to look,

Thought Anne miserably.

Rose-leaf complexion,

Starry violet eyes,

Raven hair,

She has them all.

It's a wonder her name isn't Cordelia Fitzgerald into the bargain.

But I don't believe her figure's as good as mine and her nose certainly isn't.

Anne felt a little comforted by this conclusion.

Chapter 27 Mutual Confidences March came in that winter like the meekest and mildest of lambs,

Bringing days that were crisp and golden and tingling,

Each followed by a frosty pink twilight which gradually lost itself in an elf land of moonshine.

Over the girls at Patty's place was falling the shadow of April examinations.

They were studying hard.

Even Phil had settled down to text and notebooks with a doggedness not to be expected of her.

I'm going to take the Johnson Scholarship in Mathematics,

She announced calmly.

I could take the one in Greek easily but I'd rather take the mathematical one because I want to prove to Jonas I really am enormously clever.

Jonas likes you better for your big brown eyes and your crooked smile than for all the brains you carry under your curls,

Said Anne.

When I was a girl it wasn't considered ladylike to know anything about mathematics,

Said Aunt Jemisina,

But times have changed and I don't know that it's all for the better.

Can you cook,

Phil?

No,

I never cooked anything in my life except gingerbread and that was a failure.

Flat in the middle and hilly round the edges,

You know the kind.

But auntie,

When I begin in good earnest to learn to cook,

Don't you think the brains that enable me to win a mathematical scholarship will also enable me to learn cooking?

Maybe,

Said Aunt Jemisina cautiously.

I'm not decrying the higher education of women.

My daughter is an MA.

She can cook too,

But I taught her to cook before I let a college professor teach her mathematics.

In mid-March came a letter from Miss Patti Spofford saying that she and Miss Maria had decided to remain abroad for another year.

So you may have Patti's place next winter too,

She wrote.

Maria and I are going to run over Egypt.

I want to see the Sphinx once before I die.

I'm so glad we can keep Patti's place for another year,

Said Stella.

I was afraid they'd come back and then our jolly little nest would be broken up and we poor callow nestlings thrown out onto the cruel world of boarding houses again.

I'm off for a tramp in the park,

Announced Phil,

Tossing her book aside.

I think when I'm 80 I'll be glad I went for a walk in the park tonight.

What do you mean?

Asked Aunt.

Come with me and I'll tell you,

Honey.

They captured in their ramble all the mysteries and magics of a March evening.

Very still and mild it was,

Wrapped in a great white brooding silence.

A silence which was yet threaded through with many little silvery sounds which you could just hear if you hearkened as much with your soul as your ears.

The girls wandered down a long pineland aisle that seemed to lead right out into the heart of a deep red,

Overflowing winter sunset.

I'd go home and write a poem this blessed minute if only I knew how,

Declared Phil,

Pausing in an open space where a rosy light was staining the green tips of the pines.

It's so wonderful here,

This great white stillness and those dark trees that always seem to be thinking.

The woods were God's first temples,

Quoted Anne softly.

One can't help feeling reverent and adoring in such a place.

I always feel so near him when I walk among the pines.

Anne,

I'm the happiest girl in the world,

Confessed Phil suddenly.

So Mr.

Blake has asked you to marry him at last,

Said Anne calmly.

Yes,

And I sneezed three times while he was asking me.

Wasn't that horrid?

But I said yes almost before he finished.

I was so afraid he might change his mind.

I'm besottedly happy.

I couldn't really believe before that Jonas would ever care for frivolous me.

Phil,

You're not really frivolous,

Said Anne gravely.

Way down underneath that frivolous exterior of yours you've got a dear,

Loyal,

Womanly little soul.

Why do you hide it so?

I can't help it,

Queen Anne.

You are right,

I'm not frivolous at heart,

But there's a sort of frivolous skin over my soul and I can't take it off.

As Mrs.

Poyser says,

I'd have to be hatched over again and hatched different before I could change it.

But Jonas knows the real me and he loves me frivolity and all,

And I love him.

I was never so surprised in my life as I was when I found I loved him.

I never thought it possible to fall in love with an ugly man.

Fancy me coming down to one solitary beau and one named Jonas.

But I mean to call him Joe.

That's such a nice crisp little name.

I couldn't nickname Alonzo.

What about Alec and Alonzo?

Oh,

I told them at Christmas I could never marry either of them.

Seems so funny now to remember I ever thought it possible.

They felt so bad I just cried over both of them.

But I knew there was only one man in the world I could ever marry.

I'd made up my own mind for once and it was real easy too.

It's very delightful to feel so sure and know it's your own sureness and not somebody else's.

You're going to marry Roy,

Aren't you Anne?

My dear Philippa,

Did you ever hear of the famous Betty Baxter who refused a man before he'd axed her?

I'm not going to emulate that celebrated lady by either refusing or accepting anyone before he axes me.

Redmond knows Roy's crazy about you,

Said Phil candidly,

And you do love him,

Don't you Anne?

I suppose so,

Said Anne reluctantly.

She felt she ought to be blushing while making such a confession,

But she was not.

On the other hand,

She always blushed hotly when anyone said anything about Gilbert Blythe or Christine Stewart.

They were nothing to her,

Absolutely nothing.

But Anne had given up trying to analyse the reason of her blushes.

As for Roy,

Of course she was in love with him,

Madly so.

How could she help it?

Was he not her ideal,

Who could resist those glorious dark eyes and that pleading voice?

Were not half the Redmond girls wildly envious?

What a charming sonnet he'd sent her with a box of violets on her birthday.

Anne knew every word of it by heart.

Not exactly up to the level of Keats or Shakespeare,

But it was very tolerable magazine verse,

And it was addressed to her,

Not to Laura or Beatrice or the Maid of Athens,

But to her Anne Shirley.

To be told in rhythmical cadences,

Her eyes were stars of the morning,

Her cheeks had the flush it stole from the sunrise,

Her lips were redder than the roses of paradise,

Was thrillingly romantic.

Gilbert would never have dreamed of writing a sonnet to her eyebrows,

But then Gilbert could see a joke.

She'd once told Roy a funny story,

And he'd not seen the point of it.

She recalled the chummy laugh she and Gilbert had had together over it,

And wondered uneasily if life with a man who had no sense of humour might not be somewhat uninteresting in the long run.

But who could expect a melancholy,

Inscrutable hero to see the humourous side of things?

It would be flatly unreasonable.