Anne of Avonlea - L. M. Montgomery [65]
“Could I pull you out if I crawled up?” suggested Diana.
Anne shook her head hopelessly.
“No…the splinters hurt too badly. If you can find an axe you might chop me out, though. Oh dear, I do really begin to believe that I was born under an ill-omened star.”
Diana searched faithfully but no axe was to be found.
“I’ll have to go for help,” she said, returning to the prisoner.
“No, indeed, you won’t,” said Anne vehemently. “If you do the story of this will get out everywhere and I shall be ashamed to show my face. No, we must just wait until the Copp girls come home and bind them to secrecy. They’ll know where the axe is and get me out. I’m not uncomfortable, as long as I keep perfectly still…not uncomfortable in body I mean. I wonder what the Copp girls value this house at. I shall have to pay for the damage I’ve done, but I wouldn’t mind that if I were only sure they would understand my motive in peeping in at their pantry window. My sole comfort is that the platter is just the kind I want and if Miss Copp will only sell it to me I shall be resigned to what has happened.”
“What if the Copp girls don’t come home until after night…or till tomorrow?” suggested Diana.
“If they’re not back by sunset you’ll have to go for other assistance, I suppose,” said Anne reluctantly, “but you mustn’t go until you really have to. Oh dear, this is a dreadful predicament. I wouldn’t mind my misfortunes so much if they were romantic, as Mrs. Morgan’s heroines’ always are, but they are always just simply ridiculous. Fancy what the Copp girls will think when they drive into their yard and see a girl’s head and shoulders sticking out of the roof of one of their outhouses. Listen…is that a wagon? No, Diana, I believe it is thunder.”
Thunder it was undoubtedly, and Diana, having made a hasty pilgrimage around the house, returned to announce that a very black cloud was rising rapidly in the northwest.
“I believe we’re going to have a heavy thundershower,” she exclaimed in dismay. “Oh, Anne, what will we do?”
“We must prepare for it,” said Anne tranquilly. A thunderstorm seemed a trifle in comparison with what had already happened. “You’d better drive the horse and buggy into that open shed. Fortunately my parasol is in the buggy. Here…take my hat with you. Marilla told me I was a goose to put on my best hat to come to the Tory Road and she was right, as she always is.”
Diana untied the pony and drove into the shed just as the first heavy drops of rain fell. There she sat and watched the resulting downpour, which was so thick and heavy that she could hardly see Anne through it, holding the parasol bravely over her bare head. There was not a great deal of thunder, but for the best part of an hour the rain came merrily down. Occasionally Anne slanted back her parasol and waved an encouraging hand to her friend; but conversation at that distance was quite out of the question. Finally the rain ceased, the sun came out, and Diana ventured across the puddles of the yard.
“Did you get very wet?” she asked anxiously.
“Oh, no,” returned Anne cheerfully. “My head and shoulders are quite dry and my skirt is only a little damp where the rain beat through the lathes. Don’t pity me, Diana, for I haven’t minded it at all. I kept thinking how much good the rain will do and how glad my garden must be for it, and imagining what the flowers and buds would think when the drops began to fall. I imagined out a most interesting dialogue between the asters and the sweet peas and the wild canaries in the lilac bush and the guardian spirit of the garden. When I go home I mean to write it down. I wish I had a pencil and paper to do it now, because I daresay I’ll forget the best parts before I reach home.”
Diana the faithful had a pencil and discovered a sheet of wrapping paper in the box of the buggy. Anne folded up her dripping parasol, put on her hat, spread the wrapping paper on a shingle Diana handed up, and wrote out her garden idyll under conditions that could hardly be considered as favorable to literature. Nevertheless,