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"Yes,
I believe she could," said Marilla dryly.
"She does plenty of unofficial preaching as it is.
Nobody has much of a chance to go wrong in Avonlea with Rachel to
oversee them."
"Marilla,"
said Anne in a burst of confidence, "I want to tell you something and
ask you what you think about it. It
has worried me terribly--on Sunday afternoons, that is, when I think
specially about such matters. I
do really want to be good; and when I'm with you or Mrs. Allan or Miss Stacy
I want it more than ever and I want to do just what would please you and
what you would approve of. But
mostly when I'm with Mrs. Lynde I feel desperately wicked and as if I wanted
to go and do the very thing she tells me I oughtn't to do.
I feel irresistibly tempted to do it.
Now, what do you think is the reason I feel like that? Do you think
it's because I'm really bad and unregenerate?"
Marilla
looked dubious for a moment. Then
she laughed.
"If
you are I guess I am too, Anne, for Rachel often has that very effect on me.
I sometimes think she'd have more of an influence for good, as you
say yourself, if she didn't keep nagging people to do right.
There should have been a special commandment against nagging.
But there, I shouldn't talk so. Rachel is a good Christian woman and
she means well. There isn't a
kinder soul in Avonlea and she never shirks her share of work."
"I'm
very glad you feel the same," said Anne decidedly.
"It's so encouraging. I
shan't worry so much over that after this.
But I dare say there'll be other things to worry me.
They keep coming up new all the time--things to perplex you, you
know. You settle one question
and there's another right after. There
are so many things to be thought over and decided when you're beginning to
grow up. It keeps me busy all
the time thinking them over and deciding what is right.
It's a serious thing to grow up, isn't it, Marilla?
But when I have such good friends as you and Matthew and Mrs. Allan
and Miss Stacy I ought to grow up successfully, and I'm sure it will be my
own fault if I don't. I feel it's a great responsibility because I have only
the one chance. If I don't grow
up right I can't go back and begin over again.
I've grown two inches this summer, Marilla.
Mr. Gillis measured me at Ruby's party.
I'm so glad you made my new dresses longer.
That dark-green one is so pretty and it was sweet of you to put on
the flounce. Of course I know
it wasn't really necessary, but flounces are so stylish this fall and Josie
Pye has flounces on all her dresses. I
know I'll be able to study better because of mine.
I shall have such a comfortable feeling deep down in my mind about
that flounce."
"It's
worth something to have that," admitted Marilla.
Miss
Stacy came back to Avonlea school and found all her pupils eager for work
once more. Especially did the
Queen's class gird up their loins for the fray, for at the end of the coming
year, dimly shadowing their pathway already, loomed up that fateful thing
known as "the Entrance," at the thought of which one and all felt
their hearts sink into their very shoes.
Suppose they did not pass! That
thought was doomed to haunt Anne through the waking hours of that winter,
Sunday afternoons inclusive, to the almost entire exclusion of moral and
theological problems. When Anne
had bad dreams she found herself staring miserably at pass lists of the
Entrance exams, where Gilbert Blythe's name was blazoned at the top and in
which hers did not appear at all.
But
it was a jolly, busy, happy swift-flying winter.
Schoolwork was as interesting, class rivalry as absorbing, as of
yore. New worlds of thought,
feeling, and ambition, fresh, fascinating fields of unexplored knowledge
seemed to be opening out before Anne's eager eyes.
"Hills peeped o'er hill and Alps on Alps arose."
Much
of all this was due to Miss Stacy's tactful, careful, broadminded guidance.
She led her class to think and explore and discover for themselves
and encouraged straying from the old beaten paths to a degree that quite
shocked Mrs. Lynde and the school trustees, who viewed all innovations on
established methods rather dubiously.
Apart
from her studies Anne expanded socially, for Marilla, mindful of the
Spencervale doctor's dictum, no longer vetoed occasional outings. The
Debating Club flourished and gave several concerts; there were one or two
parties almost verging on grown-up affairs; there were sleigh drives and
skating frolics galore.
Betweentimes
Anne grew, shooting up so rapidly that Marilla was astonished one day, when
they were standing side by side, to find the girl was taller than herself.
"Why,
Anne, how you've grown!" she said, almost unbelievingly.
A sigh followed on the words. Marilla
felt a queer regret over Anne's inches.
The child she had learned to love had vanished somehow and here was
this tall, serious-eyed girl of fifteen, with the thoughtful brows and the
proudly poised little head, in her place.
Marilla loved the girl as much as she had loved the child, but she
was conscious of a queer sorrowful sense of loss. And that night, when Anne
had gone to prayer meeting with Diana, Marilla sat alone in the wintry
twilight and indulged in the weakness of a cry.
Matthew, coming in with a lantern, caught her at it and gazed at her
in such consternation that Marilla had to laugh through her tears.
"I
was thinking about Anne," she explained.
"She's got to be such a big girl--and she'll probably be away
from us next winter. I'll miss her terrible."
"She'll
be able to come home often," comforted Matthew, to whom Anne was as yet
and always would be the little, eager girl he had brought home from Bright
River on that June evening four years before. "The branch railroad will
be built to Carmody by that time."
"It
won't be the same thing as having her here all the time," sighed
Marilla gloomily, determined to enjoy her luxury of grief uncomforted.
"But there--men can't understand these things!"
There
were other changes in Anne no less real than the physical change. For one
thing, she became much quieter. Perhaps
she thought all the more and dreamed as much as ever, but she certainly
talked less. Marilla noticed and commented on this also.
"You
don't chatter half as much as you used to, Anne, nor use half as many big
words. What has come over
you?"
Anne
colored and laughed a little, as she dropped her book and looked dreamily
out of the window, where big fat red buds were bursting out on the creeper
in response to the lure of the spring sunshine.
"I
don't know--I don't want to talk as much," she said, denting her chin
thoughtfully with her forefinger. "It's
nicer to think dear, pretty thoughts and keep them in one's heart, like
treasures. I don't like to have them laughed at or wondered over. And
somehow I don't want to use big words any more. It's almost a pity, isn't
it, now that I'm really growing big enough to say them if I did want to.
It's fun to be almost grown up in some ways, but it's not the kind of
fun I expected, Marilla. There's
so much to learn and do and think that there isn't time for big words. Besides, Miss Stacy says the short ones are much stronger and
better. She makes us write all
our essays as simply as possible. It
was hard at first. I was so used to crowding in all the fine big words I
could think of--and I thought of any number of them.
But I've got used to it now and I see it's so much better."
"What
has become of your story club? I
haven't heard you speak of it for a long time."
"The
story club isn't in existence any longer.
We hadn't time for it--and anyhow I think we had got tired of it.
It was silly to be writing about love and murder and elopements and
mysteries. Miss Stacy sometimes has us write a story for training in
composition, but she won't let us write anything but what might happen in
Avonlea in our own lives, and she criticizes it very sharply and makes us
criticize our own too. I never
thought my compositions had so many faults until I began to look for them
myself. I felt so ashamed I
wanted to give up altogether, but Miss Stacy said I could learn to write
well if I only trained myself to be my own severest critic.
And so I am trying to."
"You've
only two more months before the Entrance," said Marilla. "Do you
think you'll be able to get through?"
Anne
shivered.
"I
don't know. Sometimes I think
I'll be all right--and then I get horribly afraid.
We've studied hard and Miss Stacy has drilled us thoroughly, but we
mayn't get through for all that. We've each got a stumbling block.
Mine is geometry of course, and Jane's is Latin, and Ruby and
Charlie's is algebra, and Josie's is arithmetic.
Moody Spurgeon says he feels it in his bones that he is going to fail
in English history. Miss Stacy
is going to give us examinations in June just as hard as we'll have at the
Entrance and mark us just as strictly, so we'll have some idea. I wish it
was all over, Marilla. It
haunts me. Sometimes I wake up in the night and wonder what I'll do if I
don't pass."
"Why,
go to school next year and try again," said Marilla unconcernedly.
"Oh,
I don't believe I'd have the heart for it.
It would be such a disgrace to fail, especially if Gil--if the others
passed. And I get so nervous in
an examination that I'm likely to make a mess of it.
I wish I had nerves like Jane Andrews.
Nothing rattles her."
Anne
sighed and, dragging her eyes from the witcheries of the spring world, the
beckoning day of breeze and blue, and the green things upspringing in the
garden, buried herself resolutely in her book.
There would be other springs, but if she did not succeed in passing
the Entrance, Anne felt convinced that she would never recover sufficiently
to enjoy them.
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