Anne of Avonlea - L. M. Montgomery [37]
“It’s very difficult to scold anybody properly under such circumstances.
“Here is Barbara Shaw’s letter. I can’t reproduce the blots of the original:
Dear teacher,
You said we might write about a visit. I never visited but once. It was at my Aunt Mary’s last winter. My Aunt Mary is a very particular woman and a great housekeeper. The first night I was there we were at tea. I knocked over a jug and broke it. Aunt Mary said she had had that jug ever since she was married and nobody had ever broken it before. When we got up I stepped on her dress and all the gathers tore out of the skirt. The next morning when I got up I hit the pitcher against the basin and cracked them both and I upset a cup of tea on the tablecloth at breakfast. When I was helping Aunt Mary with the dinner dishes I dropped a china plate and it smashed. That evening I fell downstairs and sprained my ankle and had to stay in bed for a week. I heard Aunt Mary tell Uncle Joseph it was a mercy or I’d have broken everything in the house. When I got better it was time to go home. I don’t like visiting very much. I like going to school better, especially since I came to Avonlea.
Yours respectfully,
Barbara Shaw
“Willie White’s began:
Respected Miss,
I want to tell you about my Very Brave Aunt. She lives in Ontario and one day she went out to the barn and saw a dog in the yard. The dog had no business there so she got a stick and whacked him hard and drove him into the barn and shut him up. Pretty soon a man came looking for an imaginary lion [query—did Willie mean a menagerie lion?] that had run away from a circus. And it turned out that the dog was a lion and my Very Brave Aunt had druv him into the barn with a stick. It is a wonder she was not et up but she was very brave. Emerson Gillis says if she thought it was a dog she wasn’t any braver than if it really was a dog. But Emerson is jealous because he hasn’t got a Brave Aunt himself, nothing but uncles.
“I have kept the best for the last. You laugh at me because I think Paul is a genius but I am sure his letter will convince you that he is a very uncommon child. Paul lives away down near the shore with his grandmother and he has no playmates…no real playmates. You remember our School Management professor told us that we must not have ‘favorites’ among our pupils, but I can’t help loving Paul Irving the best of all mine. I don’t think it does any harm, though, for everybody loves Paul, even Mrs. Lynde, who says she could never have believed she’d get so fond of a Yankee. The other boys in school like him too. There is nothing weak or girlish about him in spite of his all games. He fought St. Clair Donnell recently because St. Clair said the Union Jack was away ahead of the Stars and Stripes as a flag. The result was a drawn battle and a mutual agreement to respect each other’s patriotism henceforth. St. Clair says he can hit the hardest but Paul can hit the oftenest.
“Paul’s letter:
My dear teacher,
You told us we might write you about some interesting people we knew. I think the most interesting people I know are my rock people and I mean to tell you about them. I have never told anybody about them except grandma and father but I would like to have you know about them because you understand things. There are a great many people who do not understand things so there is no use in telling them.
My rock people live at the shore. I used to visit them almost every evening before the winter came. Now I can’t go till spring, but they will be there, for people like that never change…that is the splendid thing about them. Nora was the first one of them I got acquainted with and so I think I love her the best. She lives in Andrews’ Cove and she has black hair and black eyes, and she knows all about the mermaids and the water kelpies. You ought to hear the stories she can tell. Then there are the Twin Sailors. They don’t live anywhere, they sail all the time, but they often come ashore to talk to me. They are a pair of jolly tars and they have seen everything in the world…and more than