Anne of Avonlea - L. M. Montgomery [76]
Dora said primly that she liked school; but she was very quiet, even for her; and when at twilight Marilla bade her go upstairs to bed she hesitated and began to cry.
“I’m…I’m frightened,” she sobbed. “I…I don’t want to go upstairs alone in the dark.”
“What notion have you got into your head now?” demanded Marilla. “I’m sure you’ve gone to bed alone all summer and never been frightened before.”
Dora still continued to cry, so Anne picked her up, cuddled her sympathetically, and whispered:
“Tell Anne all about it, sweetheart. What are you frightened of?”
“Of…of Mirabel Cotton’s uncle,” sobbed Dora. “Mirabel Cotton told me all about her family today in school. Nearly everybody in her family has died…all her grandfathers and grandmothers and ever so many uncles and aunts. They have a habit of dying, Mirabel says. Mirabel’s awful proud of having so many dead relations, and she told me what they all died of, and what they said, and how they looked in their coffins. And Mirabel says one of her uncles was seen walking around the house after he was buried. Her mother saw him. I don’t mind the rest so much, but I can’t help thinking about that uncle.”
Anne went upstairs with Dora and sat by her until she fell asleep. The next day Mirabel Cotton was kept in at recess and “gently but firmly” given to understand that when you were so unfortunate as to possess an uncle who persisted in walking about houses after he had been decently interred it was not in good taste to talk about that eccentric gentleman to your deskmate of tender years. Mirabel thought this very harsh. The Cottons had not much to boast of. How was she to keep up her prestige among her schoolmates if she were forbidden to make capital out of the family ghost?
September slipped by into a gold and crimson graciousness of October. One Friday evening Diana came over.
“I’d a letter from Ella Kimball today, Anne, and she wants us to go over to tea tomorrow afternoon to meet her cousin, Irene Trent, from town. But we can’t get one of our horses to go, for they’ll all be in use tomorrow, and your pony is lame…so I suppose we can’t go.”
“Why can’t we walk?” suggested Anne. “If we go straight back through the woods we’ll strike the West Grafton road not far from the Kimball place. I was through that way last winter and I know the road. It’s no more than four miles and we won’t have to walk home, for Oliver Kimball will be sure to drive us. He’ll be only too glad of the excuse, for he goes to see Carrie Sloane and they say his father will hardly ever let him have a horse.”
It was accordingly arranged that they should walk, and the following afternoon they set out, going by way of Lover’s Lane to the back of the Cuthbert farm, where they found a road leading into the heart of acres of glimmering beech and maple woods, which were all in a wondrous glow of flame and gold, lying in a great purple stillness and peace.
“It’s as if the year were kneeling to pray in a vast cathedral full of mellow stained light, isn’t it?” said Anne dreamily. “It doesn’t seem right to hurry through it, does it? It seems irreverent, like running in a church.”
“We must hurry, though,” said Diana, glancing at her watch. “We’ve left ourselves little enough time as it is.”
“Well, I’ll walk fast, but don’t ask me to talk,” said Anne, quickening her pace. “I just want to drink the day’s loveliness in.. I feel as if she were holding it out to my lips like a cup of airy wine and I’ll take a sip at every step.”
Perhaps it was because she was so absorbed in “drinking it in” that Anne took the left turning when they came to a fork in the road. She should have taken the right, but ever afterward she counted it the most fortunate mistake of her life. They came out finally to a lonely, grassy road, with nothing in sight along it but ranks of spruce saplings.
“Why, where are we?” exclaimed Diana in bewilderment. “This isn’t the West Grafton road.”
“No, it’s the base-line road in Middle Grafton,