Anne Shirley Complete 8-Book Series (Anne of Green Gables, #1-8)

by L.M. Montgomery

for not even a brook could run past Mrs. Rachel Lynde's door without due regard for decency and decorum; it probably was conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof.

Peter had asked him, of course, for Matthew Cuthbert had never been known to volunteer information about anything in his whole life.

always slightly distrustful of sunshine, which seemed to her too dancing and irresponsible a thing for a world which was meant to be taken seriously;

but there was a saving something about her mouth which, if it had been ever so slightly developed, might have been considered indicative of a sense of humor.

It seems uncanny to think of a child at Green Gables somehow; there's never been one there, for Matthew and Marilla were grown up when the new house was built-if they ever WERE children, which is hard to believe when one looks at them.

It's so easy to be wicked without knowing it, isn't it?

And people laugh at me

because I use big words. But if you have big ideas you have to use big words to express them, haven't you?" "Well now, that seems reasonable," said Matthew.

It will be my lifelong sorrow. I read of a girl once in a novel who had a lifelong sorrow but it wasn't red hair.

Have you ever imagined what it must feel like to be divinely beautiful?"

It's the first thing I ever saw that couldn't be improved upon by imagination. It just satisfies me here"-she put one hand on her breast-"it made a queer funny ache and yet it was a pleasant ache. Did you ever have an ache like that, Mr. Cuthbert?" "Well now, I just can't recollect that I ever had."

"I have it lots of time-whenever I see anything royally beautiful.

Yes, that is the right name for it. I know because of the thrill. When I hit on a name that suits exactly it gives me a thrill. Do things ever give you a thrill?" Matthew ruminated. "Well now, yes. It always kind of gives me a thrill to see them ugly white grubs that spade up in the cucumber beds. I hate the look of them."

boy. Oh, this is the most TRAGICAL thing that ever happened to me!"

"I've never been in the depths of despair, so I can't say," responded Marilla.

"I should say not. What good would she be to us?" "We might be some good to her," said Matthew suddenly and unexpectedly.

"Matthew Cuthbert, I believe that child has bewitched you! I can see as plain as plain that you want to keep her."

I'm not in the depths of despair this morning. I never can be in the morning. Isn't it a splendid thing that there are mornings?

But the worst of imagining things is that the time comes when you have to stop and that hurts."

It's all very well to read about sorrows and imagine yourself living through them heroically, but it's not so nice when you really come to have them, is it?"

That was Matthew's way—take a whim into his head and cling to it with the most amazing silent persistency—a persistency ten times more potent and effectual in its very silence than if he had talked it out.

"You're both queer enough, if that's what you mean by kindred spirits," said Marilla with a sniff.

But what's to be done with a man who just LOOKS?"

"Well, that is another hope gone. 'My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.' That's a sentence I read in a book once, and I say it over to comfort myself whenever I'm disappointed in anything."

"Oh, what I KNOW about myself isn't really worth telling," said Anne eagerly. "If you'll only let me tell you what I IMAGINE about myself you'll think it ever so much more interesting."

She brought me up by hand. Do you know if there is anything in being brought up by hand that ought to make people who are brought up that way better than other people?

I've never brought up a child, especially a girl, and I dare say I'll make a terrible mess of it. But I'll do my best. So far as I'm concerned, Matthew, she may stay."

Matthew's shy face was a glow of delight. "Well now, I reckoned you'd come to see it in that light, Marilla," he said. "She's such an interesting little thing."

I kind of think she's one of the sort you can do anything with if you only get her to love you."

Mrs. Thomas told me that God made my hair red ON PURPOSE,

and I've never cared about Him since.

"Do you never imagine things different from what they really are?" asked Anne wide-eyed. "No."

If I wasn't a human girl I think I'd like to be a bee and live among the flowers." "Yesterday you wanted to be a sea gull," sniffed Marilla.

"when I make up my

mind to do a thing it stays made up.

You're—you're going to give her something to eat, aren't you?" "When did you ever hear of me starving people into good behavior?" demanded Marilla indignantly.

It's been preying on my mind ever since Diana told me." "Well, it needn't prey any longer.

But you're so featherbrained, Anne, I've been waiting to see if you'd sober down a little and learn to be steady before I begin. You've got to keep your wits about you in cooking and not stop in the middle of things to let your thoughts rove all over creation.

"Oh, Marilla, looking forward to things is half the pleasure of them," exclaimed Anne. "You mayn't get the things themselves; but nothing can prevent you from having the fun of looking forward to them. Mrs. Lynde says, 'Blessed are they who expect nothing for they shall not be disappointed.' But I think it would be worse to expect nothing than to be disappointed."

"I am 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.

but it is much to be feared that the same thing cannot be said of Anne, who had certainly an unpraiseworthy tenacity for holding grudges. She was as intense in her hatreds as in her loves.

"Well now, I ain't interfering. It ain't interfering to have your own opinion. And my opinion is that you ought to let Anne go."

Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It's splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world."

There's such a lot of different Annes in me.

And Mrs. Lynde says you can never be sure of getting good baking powder nowadays when everything is so adulterated. Mrs. Lynde says the Government ought to take the matter up, but she says we'll never see the day when a Tory Government will do it.

"Marilla, isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?"

For Anne to take things calmly would have been to change her nature. All "spirit and fire and dew," as she was, the pleasures and pains of life came to her with trebled intensity. Marilla felt this and was vaguely troubled over it, realizing that the ups and downs of existence would probably bear hardly on this impulsive soul and not sufficiently understanding that the equally great capacity for delight might more than compensate.

"The trouble with you, Anne, is that you're thinking too much about yourself. You should just think of Mrs. Allan and what would be nicest and most agreeable to her," said Marilla, hitting for once in her life on a very sound and pithy piece of advice. Anne instantly realized this.

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?"

"Well now, I dunno," said Matthew, who, being patient and wise and, above all, hungry, had deemed it best to let Marilla talk her wrath out unhindered, having learned by experience that she got through with whatever work was on hand much quicker if not delayed by untimely argument.