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."
