Chapter IX

An Unwelcome Lover and a Welcome Friend

The second term at Redmond sped as quickly as had the first—“actually

whizzed away,” Philippa said. Anne enjoyed it thoroughly in all its

phases—the stimulating class rivalry, the making and deepening of new

and helpful friendships, the gay little social stunts, the doings of

the various societies of which she was a member, the widening of

horizons and interests. She studied hard, for she had made up her mind

to win the Thorburn Scholarship in English. This being won, meant that

she could come back to Redmond the next year without trenching on

Marilla’s small savings—something Anne was determined she would not do.

Gilbert, too, was in full chase after a scholarship, but found plenty

of time for frequent calls at Thirty-eight, St. John’s. He was Anne’s

escort at nearly all the college affairs, and she knew that their names

were coupled in Redmond gossip. Anne raged over this but was helpless;

she could not cast an old friend like Gilbert aside, especially when he

had grown suddenly wise and wary, as behooved him in the dangerous

proximity of more than one Redmond youth who would gladly have taken

his place by the side of the slender, red-haired coed, whose gray eyes

were as alluring as stars of evening. Anne was never attended by the

crowd of willing victims who hovered around Philippa’s conquering march

through her Freshman year; but there was a lanky, brainy Freshie, a

jolly, little, round Sophomore, and a tall, learned Junior who all

liked to call at Thirty-eight, St. John’s, and talk over ’ologies and

’isms, as well as lighter subjects, with Anne, in the becushioned

parlor of that domicile. Gilbert did not love any of them, and he was

exceedingly careful to give none of them the advantage over him by any

untimely display of his real feelings Anne-ward. To her he had become

again the boy-comrade of Avonlea days, and as such could hold his own

against any smitten swain who had so far entered the lists against him.

As a companion, Anne honestly acknowledged nobody could be so

satisfactory as Gilbert; she was very glad, so she told herself, that

he had evidently dropped all nonsensical ideas—though she spent

considerable time secretly wondering why.

Only one disagreeable incident marred that winter. Charlie Sloane,

sitting bolt upright on Miss Ada’s most dearly beloved cushion, asked

Anne one night if she would promise “to become Mrs. Charlie Sloane some

day.” Coming after Billy Andrews’ proxy effort, this was not quite the

shock to Anne’s romantic sensibilities that it would otherwise have

been; but it was certainly another heart-rending disillusion. She was

angry, too, for she felt that she had never given Charlie the slightest

encouragement to suppose such a thing possible. But what could you

expect of a Sloane, as Mrs. Rachel Lynde would ask scornfully?

Charlie’s whole attitude, tone, air, words, fairly reeked with

Sloanishness. “He was conferring a great honor—no doubt whatever about

that. And when Anne, utterly insensible to the honor, refused him, as

delicately and considerately as she could—for even a Sloane had

feelings which ought not to be unduly lacerated—Sloanishness still

further betrayed itself. Charlie certainly did not take his dismissal

as Anne’s imaginary rejected suitors did. Instead, he became angry, and

showed it; he said two or three quite nasty things; Anne’s temper

flashed up mutinously and she retorted with a cutting little speech

whose keenness pierced even Charlie’s protective Sloanishness and

reached the quick; he caught up his hat and flung himself out of the

house with a very red face; Anne rushed upstairs, falling twice over

Miss Ada’s cushions on the way, and threw herself on her bed, in tears

of humiliation and rage. Had she actually stooped to quarrel with a

Sloane? Was it possible anything Charlie Sloane could say had power to

make her angry? Oh, this was degradation, indeed—worse even than being

the rival of Nettie Blewett!

“I wish I need never see the horrible creature again,” she sobbed

vindictively into her pillows.

She could not avoid seeing him again, but the outraged Charlie took

care that it should not be at very close quarters. Miss Ada’s cushions

were henceforth safe from his depredations, and when he met Anne on the

street, or in Redmond’s halls, his bow was icy in the extreme.

Relations between these two old schoolmates continued to be thus

strained for nearly a year! Then Charlie transferred his blighted

affections to a round, rosy, snub-nosed, blue-eyed, little Sophomore

who appreciated them as they deserved, whereupon he forgave Anne and

condescended to be civil to her again; in a patronizing manner intended

to show her just what she had lost.

One day Anne scurried excitedly into Priscilla’s room.

“Read that,” she cried, tossing Priscilla a letter. “It’s from

Stella—and she’s coming to Redmond next year—and what do you think of

her idea? I think it’s a perfectly splendid one, if we can only carry

it out. Do you suppose we can, Pris?”

“I’ll be better able to tell you when I find out what it is,” said

Priscilla, casting aside a Greek lexicon and taking up Stella’s letter.

Stella Maynard had been one of their chums at Queen’s Academy and had

been teaching school ever since.

“But I’m going to give it up, Anne dear,” she wrote, “and go to college

next year. As I took the third year at Queen’s I can enter the

Sophomore year. I’m tired of teaching in a back country school. Some

day I’m going to write a treatise on ‘The Trials of a Country

Schoolmarm.’ It will be a harrowing bit of realism. It seems to be the

prevailing impression that we live in clover, and have nothing to do

but draw our quarter’s salary. My treatise shall tell the truth about

us. Why, if a week should pass without some one telling me that I am

doing easy work for big pay I would conclude that I might as well order

my ascension robe ‘immediately and to onct.’ ‘Well, you get your money

easy,’ some rate-payer will tell me, condescendingly. ‘All you have to

do is to sit there and hear lessons.’ I used to argue the matter at

first, but I’m wiser now. Facts are stubborn things, but as some one

has wisely said, not half so stubborn as fallacies. So I only smile

loftily now in eloquent silence. Why, I have nine grades in my school

and I have to teach a little of everything, from investigating the

interiors of earthworms to the study of the solar system. My youngest

pupil is four—his mother sends him to school to ‘get him out of the

way’—and my oldest twenty—it ‘suddenly struck him’ that it would be

easier to go to school and get an education than follow the plough any

longer. In the wild effort to cram all sorts of research into six hours

a day I don’t wonder if the children feel like the little boy who was

taken to see the biograph. ‘I have to look for what’s coming next

before I know what went last,’ he complained. I feel like that myself.

“And the letters I get, Anne! Tommy’s mother writes me that Tommy is

not coming on in arithmetic as fast as she would like. He is only in

simple reduction yet, and Johnny Johnson is in fractions, and Johnny

isn’t half as smart as her Tommy, and she can’t understand it. And

Susy’s father wants to know why Susy can’t write a letter without

misspelling half the words, and Dick’s aunt wants me to change his

seat, because that bad Brown boy he is sitting with is teaching him to

say naughty words.

“As to the financial part—but I’ll not begin on that. Those whom the

gods wish to destroy they first make country schoolmarms!

“There, I feel better, after that growl. After all, I’ve enjoyed these

past two years. But I’m coming to Redmond.

“And now, Anne, I’ve a little plan. You know how I loathe boarding.

I’ve boarded for four years and I’m so tired of it. I don’t feel like

enduring three years more of it.

“Now, why can’t you and Priscilla and I club together, rent a little

house somewhere in Kingsport, and board ourselves? It would be cheaper

than any other way. Of course, we would have to have a housekeeper and

I have one ready on the spot. You’ve heard me speak of Aunt Jamesina?

She’s the sweetest aunt that ever lived, in spite of her name. She

can’t help that! She was called Jamesina because her father, whose name

was James, was drowned at sea a month before she was born. I always

call her Aunt Jimsie. Well, her only daughter has recently married and

gone to the foreign mission field. Aunt Jamesina is left alone in a

great big house, and she is horribly lonesome. She will come to

Kingsport and keep house for us if we want her, and I know you’ll both

love her. The more I think of the plan the more I like it. We could

have such good, independent times.

“Now, if you and Priscilla agree to it, wouldn’t it be a good idea for

you, who are on the spot, to look around and see if you can find a

suitable house this spring? That would be better than leaving it till

the fall. If you could get a furnished one so much the better, but if

not, we can scare up a few sticks of finiture between us and old family

friends with attics. Anyhow, decide as soon as you can and write me, so

that Aunt Jamesina will know what plans to make for next year.”

“I think it’s a good idea,” said Priscilla.

“So do I,” agreed Anne delightedly. “Of course, we have a nice

boardinghouse here, but, when all’s said and done, a boardinghouse

isn’t home. So let’s go house-hunting at once, before exams come on.”

“I’m afraid it will be hard enough to get a really suitable house,”

warned Priscilla. “Don’t expect too much, Anne. Nice houses in nice

localities will probably be away beyond our means. We’ll likely have to

content ourselves with a shabby little place on some street whereon

live people whom to know is to be unknown, and make life inside

compensate for the outside.”

Accordingly they went house-hunting, but to find just what they wanted

proved even harder than Priscilla had feared. Houses there were galore,

furnished and unfurnished; but one was too big, another too small; this

one too expensive, that one too far from Redmond. Exams were on and

over; the last week of the term came and still their “house o’dreams,”

as Anne called it, remained a castle in the air.

“We shall have to give up and wait till the fall, I suppose,” said

Priscilla wearily, as they rambled through the park on one of April’s

darling days of breeze and blue, when the harbor was creaming and

shimmering beneath the pearl-hued mists floating over it. “We may find

some shack to shelter us then; and if not, boardinghouses we shall have

always with us.”

“I’m not going to worry about it just now, anyway, and spoil this

lovely afternoon,” said Anne, gazing around her with delight. The fresh

chill air was faintly charged with the aroma of pine balsam, and the

sky above was crystal clear and blue—a great inverted cup of blessing.

“Spring is singing in my blood today, and the lure of April is abroad

on the air. I’m seeing visions and dreaming dreams, Pris. That’s

because the wind is from the west. I do love the west wind. It sings of

hope and gladness, doesn’t it? When the east wind blows I always think

of sorrowful rain on the eaves and sad waves on a gray shore. When I

get old I shall have rheumatism when the wind is east.”

“And isn’t it jolly when you discard furs and winter garments for the

first time and sally forth, like this, in spring attire?” laughed

Priscilla. “Don’t you feel as if you had been made over new?”

“Everything is new in the spring,” said Anne. “Springs themselves are

always so new, too. No spring is ever just like any other spring. It

always has something of its own to be its own peculiar sweetness. See

how green the grass is around that little pond, and how the willow buds

are bursting.”

“And exams are over and gone—the time of Convocation will come

soon—next Wednesday. This day next week we’ll be home.”

“I’m glad,” said Anne dreamily. “There are so many things I want to do.

I want to sit on the back porch steps and feel the breeze blowing down

over Mr. Harrison’s fields. I want to hunt ferns in the Haunted Wood

and gather violets in Violet Vale. Do you remember the day of our

golden picnic, Priscilla? I want to hear the frogs singing and the

poplars whispering. But I’ve learned to love Kingsport, too, and I’m

glad I’m coming back next fall. If I hadn’t won the Thorburn I don’t

believe I could have. I _couldn’t_ take any of Marilla’s little hoard.”

“If we could only find a house!” sighed Priscilla. “Look over there at

Kingsport, Anne—houses, houses everywhere, and not one for us.”

“Stop it, Pris. ‘The best is yet to be.’ Like the old Roman, we’ll find

a house or build one. On a day like this there’s no such word as fail

in my bright lexicon.”

They lingered in the park until sunset, living in the amazing miracle

and glory and wonder of the springtide; and they went home as usual, by

way of Spofford Avenue, that they might have the delight of looking at

Patty’s Place.

“I feel as if something mysterious were going to happen right away—‘by

the pricking of my thumbs,’” said Anne, as they went up the slope.

“It’s a nice story-bookish feeling. Why—why—why! Priscilla Grant, look

over there and tell me if it’s true, or am I seein’ things?”

Priscilla looked. Anne’s thumbs and eyes had not deceived her. Over the

arched gateway of Patty’s Place dangled a little, modest sign. It said

“To Let, Furnished. Inquire Within.”

“Priscilla,” said Anne, in a whisper, “do you suppose it’s possible

that we could rent Patty’s Place?”

“No, I don’t,” averred Priscilla. “It would be too good to be true.

Fairy tales don’t happen nowadays. I won’t hope, Anne. The

disappointment would be too awful to bear. They’re sure to want more

for it than we can afford. Remember, it’s on Spofford Avenue.”

“We must find out anyhow,” said Anne resolutely. “It’s too late to call

this evening, but we’ll come tomorrow. Oh, Pris, if we can get this

darling spot! I’ve always felt that my fortunes were linked with

Patty’s Place, ever since I saw it first.”