Anne of Ingleside - L. M. Montgomery [3]
‘Perhaps there’s more in a name than Shakespeare allowed. Don’t grudge Anne Cordelia her fancies, Diana. I’m always sorry for children who don’t spend a few years in fairyland.’
‘Olivia Sloane is our teacher now,’ said Diana doubtfully. ‘She’s a B.A., you know, and just took the school for a year to be near her mother. She says children should be made to face realities.’
‘Have I lived to hear you taking up with Sloanishness, Diana Wright?’
‘No… no… no! I don’t like her a bit. She has such round, staring blue eyes, like all that clan. And I don’t mind Anne Cordelia’s fancies. They’re pretty, just like yours used to be. I guess she’ll get enough “reality” as life goes on.’
‘Well, it’s settled then. Come down to Green Gables about two and we’ll have a drink of Marilla’s redcurrant wine… she makes it now and then in spite of the minister and Mrs Lynde, just to make us feel real devilish.’
‘Do you remember the day you set me drunk on it?’ giggled Diana, who did not mind ‘devilish’ as she would if anybody but Anne used it. Everybody knew Anne didn’t really mean things like that. It was just her way.
‘We’ll have a real do-you-remember day tomorrow, Diana. I won’t keep you any longer… there’s Fred coming with the buggy. Your dress is lovely.’
‘Fred made me get a new one for the wedding. I didn’t feel we could afford it since we built the new barn, but he said he wasn’t going to have his wife looking like someone that was sent for and couldn’t go when everybody else would be dressed within an inch of her life. Wasn’t that like a man?’
‘Oh, you sound just like Mrs Elliott at the Glen,’ said Anne severely. ‘You want to watch that tendency. Would you like to live in a world where there were no men?’
‘It would be horrible,’ admitted Diana. ‘Yes, yes, Fred, I’m coming. Oh, all right! Till tomorrow then, Anne.’
Anne paused by the Dryad’s Bubble on her way back. She loved that old brook so. Every trill of her childhood’s laughter that it had ever caught it had held and now seemed to give out again to her listening ears. Her old dreams… she could see them reflected in the clear Bubble… old vows… old whispers… the brook kept them all and murmured of them; but there was no one to listen save the wise old spruces in the Haunted Wood that had been listening so long.
2
‘Such a lovely day… made for us,’ said Diana. ‘I’m afraid it’s a pet day though… there’ll be rain tomorrow.’
‘Never mind. We’ll drink its beauty today, even if its sunshine is gone tomorrow. We’ll enjoy each other’s friendship today even if we are to be parted tomorrow. Look at those long, golden-green hills… those mist-blue valleys. They’re ours, Diana. I don’t care if that farthest hill is registered in Abner Sloane’s name… it’s ours today. There’s a west wind blowing. I always feel adventurous when a west wind blows; and we’re going to have a perfect ramble.’
They had. All the old dear spots were revisited… Lover’s Lane, the Haunted Wood, Idlewild, Violet Vale, the Birch Path, Crystal Lake. There were some changes. The little ring of birch saplings in Idlewild, where they had had a playhouse long ago, had grown into big trees; the Birch Path, long untrodden, was matted with bracken, the Crystal Lake had entirely disappeared, leaving only a damp, mossy hollow. But Violet Vale was purple with violets, and the seedling apple-tree Gilbert had once found far back in the woods was a huge tree peppered over with tiny, crimson-tipped blossom-buds.
They walked bareheaded. Anne’s hair still gleamed like polished mahogany in the sunlight and Diana’s was still glossy black. They exchanged gay and understanding,