Anne of the Island - L. M. Montgomery [74]
“So Mr. Blake has asked you to marry him at last?” said Anne calmly.
“Yes. And I sneezed three times while he was asking me. Wasn’t that horrid? But I said ‘yes’ almost before he finished—I was so afraid he might change his mind and stop. I’m besottedly happy. I couldn’t really believe before that Jonas would ever care for frivolous me.”
“Phil, you’re not really frivolous,” said Anne gravely. “‘Way down underneath that frivolous exterior of yours you’ve got a dear, loyal, womanly little soul. Why do you hide it so?”
“I can’t help it, Queen Anne. You are right—I’m not frivolous at heart. But there’s a sort of frivolous skin over my soul and I can’t take it off. As Mrs. Poyser says, I’d have to be hatched over again and hatched different before I could change it. But Jonas knows the real me and loves me, frivolity and all. And I love him. I never was so surprised in my life as I was when I found out I loved him. I’d never thought it possible to fall in love with an ugly man. Fancy me coming down to one solitary beau. And one named Jonas! But I mean to call him Jo. That’s such a nice, crisp little name. I couldn’t nickname Alonzo.”
“What about Alec and Alonzo?”
“Oh, I told them at Christmas that I never could marry either of them. It seems so funny now to remember that I ever thought it possible that I might. They felt so badly I just cried over both of them—howled. But I knew there was only one man in the world I could ever marry. I had made up my own mind for once and it was real easy, too. It’s very delightful to feel so sure, and know it’s your own sureness and not somebody else’s.”
“Do you suppose you’ll be able to keep it up?”
“Making up my mind, you mean? I don’t know, but Jo has given me a splendid rule. He says, when I’m perplexed, just to do what I would wish I had done when I shall be eighty. Anyhow, Jo can make up his mind quickly enough, and it would be uncomfortable to have too much mind in the same house.”
“What will your father and mother say?”
“Father won’t say much. He thinks everything I do right. But mother will talk. Oh, her tongue will be as Byrney as her nose. But in the end it will be all right.”
“You’ll have to give up a good many things you’ve always had, when you marry Mr. Blake, Phil.”
“But I’ll have him. I won’t miss the other things. We’re to be married a year from next June. Jo graduates from St. Columbia this spring, you know. Then he’s going to take a little mission church down on Patterson Street in the slums. Fancy me in the slums! But I’d go there or to Greenland’s icy mountains with him.”
“And this is the girl who would never marry a man who wasn’t rich,” commented Anne to a young pine tree.
“Oh, don’t cast up the follies of my youth to me. I shall be poor as gaily as I’ve been rich. You’ll see. I’m going to learn how to cook and make over dresses. I’ve learned how to market since I’ve lived at Patty’s Place; and once I taught a Sunday School class for a whole summer. Aunt Jamesina says I’ll ruin Jo’s career if I marry him. But I won’t. I know I haven’t much sense or sobriety, but I’ve got what is ever so much better—the knack of making people like me. There is a man in Bolingbroke who lisps and always testifies in prayer-meeting. He says, ‘If you can’t thine like an electric thtar thine like a candlethtick.’ I’ll be Jo’s little candlestick.”
“Phil, you’re incorrigible. Well, I love you so much that I can’t make nice, light, congratulatory little speeches. But I’m heart-glad of your happiness.”
“I know. Those big gray eyes of yours are brimming over with real friendship, Anne. Some day I’ll look the same way at you. You’re going to marry Roy, aren’t you, Anne?”
“My dear Philippa, did you ever hear of the famous Betty Baxter, who ‘refused a man before he’d axed her’? I am not going to emulate that celebrated lady by either refusing or accepting any one before he ‘axes’ me.”
“All Redmond knows that Roy is crazy about you,” said Phil candidly.” And you do love him, don’t you, Anne?”
“I—I suppose so,” said Anne reluctantly. She felt that she ought to be blushing while making