Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery [0]
Anne of Green Gables
To the memory of my Father and Mother
The good stars met in your horoscope,
Made you of spirit and fire and dew.
—BROWNING
Contents
Epigraph
1. Mrs. Rachel Lynde Is Surprised
2. Matthew Cuthbert Is Surprised
3. Marilla Cuthbert Is Surprised
4. Morning at Green Gables
5. Anne’s History
6. Marilla Makes Up Her Mind
7. Anne Says Her Prayers
8. Anne’s Bringing-up Is Begun
9. Mrs. Rachel Lynde Is Properly Horrified
10. Anne’s Apology
11. Anne’s Impressions of Sunday-School
12. A Solemn Vow and Promise
13. The Delights of Anticipation
14. Anne’s Confession
15. A Tempest in the School Teapot
16. Diana Is Invited to Tea with Tragic Results
17. A New Interest in Life
18. Anne to the Rescue
19. A Concert, a Catastrophe, and a Confession
20. A Good Imagination Gone Wrong
21. A New Departure in Flavorings
22. Anne Is Invited Out to Tea
23. Anne Comes to Grief in an Affair of Honor
24. Miss Stacy and Her Pupils Get Up a Concert
25. Matthew Insists on Puffed Sleeves
26. The Story Club Is Formed
27. Vanity and Vexation of Spirit
28. An Unfortunate Lily Maid
29. An Epoch in Anne’s Life
30. The Queen’s Class Is Organized
31. Where the Brook and River Meet
32. The Pass List Is Out
33. The Hotel Concert
34. A Queen’s Girl
35. The Winter at Queen’s
36. The Glory and the Dream
37. The Reaper Whose Name Is Death
38. The Bend in the Road
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
Mrs. Rachel Lynde Is Surprised
MRS. RACHEL LYNDE lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies’ eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde’s Hollow it was a quiet, well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs. Rachel Lynde’s door without due regard for decency and decorum; it probably was conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof.
There are plenty of people, in Avonlea and out of it, who can attend closely to their neighbor’s business by dint of neglecting their own; but Mrs. Rachel Lynde was one of those capable creatures who can manage their own concerns and those of other folks into the bargain. She was a notable housewife; her work was always done and well done; she “ran” the Sewing Circle, helped run the Sunday-school, and was the strongest prop of the Church Aid Society and Foreign Missions Auxiliary. Yet with all this Mrs. Rachel found abundant time to sit for hours at her kitchen window, knitting “cotton warp” quilts—she had knitted sixteen of them, as Avonlea housekeepers were wont to tell in awed voices—and keeping a sharp eye on the main road that crossed the hollow and wound up the steep red hill beyond. Since Avonlea occupied a little triangular peninsula jutting out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, with water on two sides of it, anybody who went out of it or into it had to pass over that hill road and so run the unseen gauntlet of Mrs. Rachel’s all-seeing eye.
She was sitting there one afternoon in early June. The sun was coming in at the window warm and bright; the orchard on the slope below the house was in a bridal flush of pinky-white bloom, hummed over by a myriad of bees. Thomas Lynde—a meek little man whom Avonlea people called “Rachel Lynde’s husband”—was sowing his late turnip seed on the hill field beyond the barn; and Matthew Cuthbert ought to have been sowing his on the big red brook field away over by Green Gables. Mrs. Rachel knew that he ought because she had heard him tell Peter Morrison the evening before in William J. Blair’s store over at Carmody that he meant to sow his turnip seed the next afternoon.