Anne of Avonlea - L. M. Montgomery [103]
“Grandma lets me have a glass of milk and a slice of bread and butter before I go to bed; and on Sunday nights she puts jam on the bread,” said Paul. “So I’m always glad when it’s Sunday night…for more reasons than one. Sunday is a very long day on the shore road. Grandma says it’s all too short for her and that father never found Sundays tiresome when he was a little boy. It wouldn’t seem so long if I could talk to my rock people, but I never do that because Grandma doesn’t approve of it on Sundays. I think a good deal; but I’m afraid my thoughts are worldly. Grandma says we should never think anything but religious thoughts on Sundays. But teacher here said once that every really beautiful thought was religious, no matter what it was about, or what day we thought it on. But I feel sure Grandma thinks that sermons and Sunday School lessons are the only things you can think truly religious thoughts about. And when it comes to a difference of opinion between Grandma and teacher I don’t know what to do. In my heart”…Paul laid his hand on his breast and raised very serious blue eyes to Miss Lavendar’s immediately sympathetic face…“I agree with teacher. But then, you see, Grandma has brought father up her way and made a brilliant success of him; and teacher has never brought anybody up yet, though she’s helping with Davy and Dora. But you can’t tell how they’ll turn out till they are grown up. So sometimes I feel as if it might be safer to go by Grandma’s opinions.”
“I think it would,” agreed Anne solemnly. “Anyway, I daresay that if your Grandma and I both got down to what we really do mean, under our different ways of expressing it, we’d find out we both meant much the same thing. You’d better go by her way of expressing it, since it’s been the result of experience. We’ll have to wait until we see how the twins do turn out before we can be sure that my way is equally good.” After lunch they went back to the garden, where Paul made the acquaintance of the echoes, to his wonder and delight, while Anne and Miss Lavendar sat on the stone bench under the poplar and talked.
“So you are going away in the fall?” said Miss Lavendar wistfully. “I ought to be glad for your sake, Anne…but I’m horribly, selfishly sorry. I shall miss you so much. Oh, sometimes, I think it is of no use to make friends. They only go out of your life after awhile and leave a hurt that is worse than the emptiness before they came.”
“That sounds like something Miss Eliza Andrews might say, but never Miss Lavendar,” said Anne. “Nothing is worse than emptiness…and I’m not going out of your life. There are such things as letters and vacations. Dearest, I’m afraid you’re looking a little pale and tired.”
“Oh…hoo…hoo…hoo,” went Paul on the dyke, where he had been making noises diligently…not all of them melodious in the making, but all coming back transmuted into the very gold and silver of sound by the fairy alchemists over the river. Miss Lavendar made an impatient movement with her pretty hands.
“I’m just tired of everything…even of the echoes. There is nothing in my life but echoes…echoes of lost hopes and dreams and joys. They’re beautiful and mocking. Oh Anne, it’s horrid of me to talk like this when I have company. It’s just that I’m getting old and it doesn’t agree with me. I know I’ll be fearfully cranky by the time I’m sixty. But perhaps all I need is a course of blue pills.”
At this moment Charlotta the Fourth, who had disappeared after lunch, returned, and announced that the northeast corner of Mr. John Kimball’s pasture was red with early strawberries, and wouldn’t Miss Shirley like to go and pick some.
“Early strawberries for tea!” exclaimed Miss Lavendar. “Oh, I’m not so old as I thought…and I don’t need a single blue pill! Girls, when you come back