There are some things that cannot be expressed in words.
It was because you looked so happy. Oh, you’ll agree with me now that I AM a hateful beast – to hate another woman just because she was happy, – and when her happiness didn’t take anything from me! That.
We are schoolmates, I see,” he said, smiling at Anne’s colors. “That ought to be sufficient introduction. My name is Royal Gardner.
For, disguise the fact as we will, when friends, even the closest – perhaps the more because of that very closeness – meet again after a separation there is always a chill, lesser or greater, of change. Neither finds the other quite the same. This is natural and inevitable. Human nature is ever growing or retrogressing – never stationary.
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.
There’ll be love there, Phil-faithful tender love, such as I’ll never find anywhere else in the world-love that’s waiting for me. That makes my picture a masterpiece, doesn’t it, even if the colours are nit very brilliant?
Yet he was a rather nice-looking young man, with crinkly russet eyes and crinkly red-brown hair, not to mention a chin that gave the world assurance of a chin.
First came a delightful thrill, as of something very pleasant; then a horrible remembrance.
I’m going to imagine that I’m the wind that is blowing up there in those tree tops. When I get tired of the trees I’ll imagine I’m gently waving down here in the ferns – and then I’ll fly over to Mrs. Lynde’s garden and set the flowers dancing – and then I’ll go with one great swoop over the clover field – and then I’ll blow over the Lake of Shining Waters and ripple it all up into little sparkling waves. Oh, there’s so much scope for imagination in a wind!
What I want is a housekeeper. If I shaved every Sunday and went to church I’d get all the housekeepers I’d want. I’d be respectable then. But what’s the use of going to church when it’s all settled by predestination? Tell me that, Miss.
Susan Baker,′ she says to me, ‘I hope you never light a fire with coal-oil. Or leave oily rags lying around, Susan. They have been known to cause spontaneous combustion in less than an hour. How would you like to stand and watch this house burn down, Susan, knowing it was your fault?’ Well, Miss Dew dear, I had my laugh on her over that. It was that very night she set her curtains on fire and the yells of her are ringing in my ears yet.
It’s nice to be needed.
Cornelia was rightfully Mrs. Marshall Elliott, and had been Mrs. Marshall Elliott for thirteen years, but even yet more people referred to her as Miss.
Green Gables has been translated into Swedish and Dutch. My copy of the Swedish edition always gives me the inestimable boon of a laugh. The cover design is a full length figure of Anne, wearing a sunbonnet, carrying the famous carpet-bag, and with hair that is literally of an intense scarlet!
Occasionally she would come to church, stalking unconcernedly up the aisle to a prominent seat. She never put on hat or shoes on such occasions, but when she wanted to be especially grand she powdered face, arms and legs with flour!
Big guns are good but the Almighty is better, and He is on our side, no matter what the Kaiser says about it.
Oh, I like things to have handles even if they are only geraniums. It makes them seem more like people. How do you know but that it hurts a geranium’s feelings just to be called a geranium and nothing else? You wouldn’t like to be called nothing but a woman all the time.
The Blue Chest of Rachel Ward” was another “ower-true tale.” Rachel Ward was Eliza Montgomery, a cousin of my father’s, who died in Toronto a few years ago. The blue chest was in the kitchen of Uncle John Campbell’s house at Park Corner from 1849 until her death. We children heard its story many a time and speculated and dreamed over its contents, as we sat on it to study our lessons or eat our bed-time snacks.
But it’s a million times nicer to be Anne of Green Gables than Anne of nowhere in particular, isn’t it?
Reformation with men and dogs never goes very deep.