Anne of Windy Poplars - L. M. Montgomery [66]
‘I won’t. But I can’t answer for the twins.’
‘I’m not going to ask you to sit down here. You’d freeze. But I see that there’s a very fine moon in place of your sunset, and I’ll walk home with you and help you to admire it, if you like.’
‘I do like,’ said Anne. ‘But I want to impress on your mind that we have much finer moons in Avonlea.’
‘So she’s going?’ said Rebecca Dew, as she filled Anne’s hot-water bottle. ‘Well, Miss Shirley, I hope you’ll never try to induce me to turn Mohammedan – because you’d likely succeed. Where is That Cat? Out frisking round Summerside, and the weather at zero.’
‘Not by the new thermometer. And Dusty Miller is curled up on the rocking-chair by my stove in the tower, snoring with happiness.’
‘Ah, well,’ said Rebecca Dew, with a little shiver, as she shut the kitchen door, ‘I wish everyone in the world was as warm and sheltered as we are tonight.’
5
Anne did not know that out of one of the mansard windows of the Evergreens a wistful little Elizabeth was watching her drive away from Windy Willows, an Elizabeth with tears in her eyes who felt as if everything that made life worth living had gone out of her life for the time being, and that she was the very Lizziest of Lizzies. But when the livery sleigh vanished from her sight round the corner of Spook’s Lane Elizabeth went and knelt down by her bed.
‘Dear God,’ she whispered, ‘I know it isn’t any use to ask You for a Merry Christmas for me, because Grandmother and the Woman couldn’t be merry. But please let my dear Miss Shirley have a merry, merry Christmas, and bring her back safe to me when it’s over.’
‘Now,’ said Elizabeth, getting up from her knees, ‘I’ve done all that I can.’
Anne was already tasting Christmas happiness. She fairly sparkled as the train left the station. The ugly streets slipped past her. She was going home – home to Green Gables. Out in the open country the world was all golden-white and pale violet, woven here and there with the dark magic of spruces and the leafless delicacy of birches. The low sun behind the bare woods seemed rushing through the trees like a splendid god as the train sped on. Katherine was silent, but did not seem ungracious.
‘Don’t expect me to talk,’ she had warned Anne curtly.
‘I won’t. I hope you don’t think I’m one of those terrible people who make you feel that you have to talk to them all the time. We’ll just talk when we feel like it. I admit I’m likely to feel like it a good part of the time, but you’re under no obligation to take any notice of what I’m saying.’
Davy met them at Bright river with a big two-seated sleigh full of furry robes, and a bear hug for Anne. The two girls snuggled down in the back seat. The drive from the station to Green Gables had always been a very pleasant part of Anne’s week-ends home. She always recalled her first drive home from Bright river with Matthew. That had been in late spring, and this was December, but everything along the road kept saying to her, ‘Do you remember?’ The snow crisped under the runners; the music of the bells tinkled through the ranks of tall, pointed firs, snow-laden. The White Way of Delight had little festoons of stars tangled in the trees. And on the last hill but one they saw the great Gulf white and mystical under the moon, but not yet ice-bound.
‘There’s just one spot on this road where I always feel suddenly, “I’m home,”’ said Anne. ‘It’s the top of the next hill, where we’ll see the lights of Green Gables. I’m just thinking of the supper Marilla will have ready for us. I believe I can smell it here. Oh, it’s good – good – good to be home again!’
At Green