Anne of Windy Poplars - L. M. Montgomery [26]
Wilfred took her back to Windy Willows that evening, both of them feeling happy. Anne had talked Duncan Bryce into letting Wilfred finish out his year in High.
‘Then I’ll manage Queen’s for a year, and after that teach and educate myself,’ said Wilfred. ‘How can I ever repay you, Miss Shirley? Uncle wouldn’t have listened to anyone else, but he likes you. He said to me out in the barn, “Red-haired women could always do what they liked with me.” But I don’t think it was your hair, Miss Shirley, although it is so beautiful. It was just – you.’
At two o’clock that morning Anne woke up and decided that she would send Andy Bryce’s diary to Maplehurst. After all, she had a bit of liking for the old ladies. And they had so little to make life warm, only their pride in their father. At three she woke again and decided she wouldn’t. Miss Sarah pretending to be deaf, indeed! At four she was in the swithers again. Finally she determined she would send it to them. She wouldn’t be petty. Anne had a horror of being petty, like the Pyes.
Having settled this, Anne went to sleep again, thinking how lovely it was to wake up in the night and hear the first snowstorm of the winter round your tower, and then snuggle down in your blankets and drift into dreamland again.
On Monday morning she wrapped the old diary up carefully and sent it to Miss Sarah, with a little note:
DEAR MISS PRINGLE,
I wonder if you would be interested in this old diary. Mr Bryce gave it to me for Mrs Stanton, who is writing a history of the county, and I don’t think it would be of any use to her, and I thought you might like to have it.
Yours sincerely,
ANNE SHIRLEY
‘That’s a horribly stiff note,’ thought Anne. ‘But I can’t write naturally to them. And I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if they sent it haughtily back to me.’
In the fine blue of the early winter evening Rebecca Dew got the shock of her life. The Maplehurst carriage drove along Spook’s Lane, over the powdery snow, and stopped at the front gate. Miss Ellen got out of it, and then, to everyone’s amazement, Miss Sarah, who had not left Maplehurst for ten years.
‘They’re coming to the front door!’ gasped Rebecca Dew, panic-stricken.
‘Where else would a Pringle come to?’ asked Aunt Kate.
‘Of course. Of course. But it sticks,’ said Rebecca tragically. ‘It does stick, you know it does. And it hasn’t been opened since we house-cleaned last spring. This is the last straw!’
The front door did stick, but Rebecca Dew wrenched it open with desperate violence, and showed the Maplehurst ladies into the parlour.
‘Thank heaven, we’ve had a fire in it today,’ she thought. ‘And all I hope is That Cat hasn’t haired up the sofa. If Sarah Pringle got cat’s hairs on her dress in our parlour…’
Rebecca Dew dared not imagine the consequences. She called Anne from the tower room, Miss Sarah having asked if Miss Shirley was in, and then betook herself to the kitchen, half mad with curiosity as to what on earth was bringing the old Pringle girls to see Miss Shirley.
‘If there’s any more persecution in the wind…’ said Rebecca Dew darkly.
Anne herself descended with considerable trepidation. Had they come to return the diary with icy scorn?
It was little, wrinkled, inflexible Miss Sarah who rose and spoke without preamble when Anne entered the room.
‘We have come to capitulate,’ she said bitterly. ‘We can do nothing else. Of course, you knew that when you found that scandalous entry about poor Uncle Myrom. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. Uncle Myrom was just taking a rise out of Andy Bryce – Andy was so credulous. But everybody outside of our family will be glad to believe it. You knew it would make us all a laughing-stock – and worse. Oh, you are very clever! We admit that. Jen will apologize and behave herself in future. I, Sarah Pringle, assure you of that. If you will only promise not to tell Mrs Stanton – not to tell anyone – we will do anything, anything.’
Miss Sarah wrung her