In geometry Anne met her Waterloo. “It’s perfectly awful stuff, Marilla,” she groaned. “I’m sure I’ll never be able to make heads or tail of it. There is not scope for imagination in it at all.
Is there laughter in your face yet, Rilla? I hope so. The world will need laughter and courage more than ever in the years that will come next. I don’t want to preach – this isn’t any time for it.
Lawful heart, did any one ever see such freckles? And hair as red as carrots!
I don’t like reading about martyrs because they always make me feel petty and ashamed... ashamed to admit I hate to get out of bed on frosty mornings and shrink from a visit to the dentist!
Emotion shook Rilla from head to foot. Joy – happiness – sorrow – fear – every passion that had wrung her heart in those four long years seemed to surge up in her soul for a moment as the deeps of being were stirred. She had tried to speak; at first voice would not come. Then – “Yeth,” said Rilla.
I think this story-writing business is the foolishest yet,” scoffed Marilla. “You’ll get a pack of nonsense into your heads and waste time that should be put to your lessons. Reading stories is bad enough but writing them is worse.
I’m afraid concerts spoil people for everyday life.
But you needn’t try to make us believe you can chloroform a cat,” laughed Anne. “It was all the fault of the knothole,” protested Phil. “It was a good thing the knothole was there,” said Aunt Jamesina rather severely. “Kittens HAVE to be drowned, I admit, or the world would be overrun. But no decent, grown-up cat should be done to death – unless he sucks eggs.
Those who knew Anne best felt, without realizing that they felt it, that her greatest attraction was the aura of possibility surrounding her... the power of future development that was in her. She seemed to walk in an atmosphere of things about to happen. As.
April came tiptoeing in beautifully that year with sunshine and soft winds for a few days; and then a driving northeast snowstorm dropped a white blanket over the world.
Was not – should not – a “career” be something splendid, wonderful, spectacular at the very least, something varied and exciting? Could my long, uphill struggle, through many quiet, uneventful years, be termed a “career”?
The Donald Fraser of The Story Girl was Donald Montgomery, and Neil Campbell was David Murray, of Bedeque. The only embroidery I permitted myself in the telling of the tale was to give Donald a horse and cutter. In reality, what he had was a half-broken steer, hitched to a rude, old wood-sled, and it was with this romantic equipage that he hied him over to Richmond Bay to propose to Nancy!
She felt a wonderful lightness of spirit, a soul-stirring joy in mere existence.
The trouble is, my mind changes and then I have to get acquainted with it all over again.
The Haunted Wood was a harmless, pretty spruce grove in the field below the orchard. We considered that all our haunts were too commonplace, so we invented this for our own amusement.
It is a start, and I mean to keep on,” I find written in my old journal of that year.
Another story was that a certain dissipated youth of the community, going home one Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning, from some unhallowed orgy, was pursued by a lamb of fire, with its head cut off and hanging by a strip of skin or flame.
Just imagine – this night week I’ll be in Avonlea – delightful thought!” said Anne, bending over the box in which she was packing Mrs. Rachel Lynde’s quilts. “But just imagine – this night week I’ll be gone forever from Patty’s Place – horrible thought!
They can laugh when things go wrong. I like that. Anyone can laugh when it’s all smooth sailing.
Well, I am going to leave the war to Haig for the rest of the day and make a frosting for my chocolate cake. And when it is made I shall put it on the top shelf. The last one I made I left it on the lower shelf and little Kitchener sneaked in and clawed all the icing off and ate it. We had company for tea that night and when I went to get my cake what a sight did I behold!