30 Anne Of Green Gables -Stephanie Poppins

Chapter 30: When Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert adopt an orphan from Nova Scotia, they assume the little boy that they receive into their home will be better than any hired help, and a good hand on the farm. Little do they realize, they are in for a greater surprise than any they have ever experienced in the quiet provincial town of Avonlea. In this episode, Anne hears about the Queen's Academy.

Transcript

This is SD Hudson Magic.

I'm delighted to be able to read for you.

Anne of Green Gables.

This I consider to be my favorite story of all time.

And even though I am English and not Canadian,

I hope I will do this story justice.

Chapter 30 The Queen's Class is Organised Marilla laid her knitting on her lap and leaned back in her chair.

Her eyes were tired and she thought vaguely that she must see about having her glasses changed the next time she went to town,

For her eyes had grown tired very often of late.

It was nearly dark,

For the fall November twilight had fallen around Green Gables,

And the only light in the kitchen came from the dancing red flames in the stove.

Anne was curled up Turk fashion on the half rug,

Gazing into that joyous glow,

Where the sunshine of a hundred summers was being distilled from the maple cordwood.

She had been reading,

But her book had slipped to the floor,

And now she was dreaming with a smile on her parted lips.

Glittering castles in Spain were shaping themselves out of the mists and rainbows of her lively fantasy.

Adventures wonderful and thralling were happening to her in Cloudland.

Adventures that always turned out triumphantly and never involved her in scrapes of those of actual life.

Marilla looked at her with such a tenderness that would never have been suffered to reveal itself in any clearer light than that soft mingling of fire,

Shine and shadow.

The lesson of a love that should display itself easily in spoken word and open look was one Marilla could never learn.

But she had learned to love this slim,

Grey-eyed girl,

With an affection all the deeper and stronger from its very undemonstrativeness.

Her love made her afraid of being unduly indulgent,

Indeed.

She had an uneasy feeling it was rather sinful to set one's heart so intently on any human creature as she had set hers on Anne.

And perhaps she performed a sort of unconscious penance for this,

By being stricter and more critical than if the girl had been less dear to her.

Certainly Anne herself had no idea how Marilla loved her.

She sometimes thought wistfully that Marilla was very hard to please and distinctly lacking in sympathy and understanding.

But she always checked the thought reproachfully,

Remembering what she owed to her.

Anne,

Said Marilla abruptly,

Miss Stacy was here this afternoon when you were out with Diana.

Anne came back from her other world with a start and a sigh.

Was she?

Oh,

I'm so sorry I wasn't in.

Why didn't you call me,

Marilla?

Diana and I were only over in the haunted wood.

It's lovely in the woods now.

All the little wood things,

The ferns and the satin leaves and the crackerberries have gone to sleep,

Just as if somebody had tucked them away until spring under a blanket of leaves.

I think it was a little grey fairy with a rainbow scarf that came tiptoeing along the last moonlight night and did it.

Diana wouldn't say much about that though.

Diana has never forgotten the scolding her mother gave her about imagining ghosts into the haunted wood.

It had a very bad effect on Diana's imagination.

It blighted it.

Mrs Lynn said Myrtle Bell is a blighted being.

I asked Ruby Gillis why Myrtle was blighted and Ruby said she guessed it was because her young man had gone back on her.

Ruby Gillis thinks nothing but young men and the older she gets the worse she is.

Young men are all very well in their place but it doesn't do to drag them into everything now,

Does it?

Diana and I are thinking seriously of promising each other we will never marry but be nice old maids and live together forever.

Diana hasn't quite made up her mind though because she thinks perhaps it would be nobler to marry some wild,

Dashing,

Wicked young man and reform him.

Diana and I talk a great deal about serious subjects now,

You know.

We feel that we are so much older than we used to be and it isn't quite becoming to talk of childish matters.

It's such a solemn thing to be almost 14,

Marilla.

Miss Stacey took all us girls who were in our teens down to the brook last Wednesday and talked to us about it.

She said we couldn't be too careful what habits we formed and what ideals we acquired in our teens because by the time we were 20 our characters would be developed and the foundation laid forever.

And she said if the foundation was shaky we could never build anything really worthwhile on it.

Diana and I talked the matter over coming home from school.

We felt extremely solemn,

Marilla,

And we decided we would try to be very careful indeed and form respectable habits and learn all we could and be as sensible as possible so that by the time we were 20 our characters will be properly developed.

It's perfectly appalling to think of being 20,

Marilla.

It sounds so fearfully old and grown up.

But why was Miss Stacey here this afternoon?

That is what I want to tell you,

Anne,

If you'll ever give me the chance to get a word in edgewise.

She was talking about you.

About me?

Anne looked rather scared.

Then she flushed and exclaimed,

Oh,

I know what she was saying.

I meant to tell you,

Marilla.

Honestly,

I did,

But I forgot.

Miss Stacey caught me reading Ben-Hur in school yesterday afternoon when I should have been studying my Canadian history.

Jane Andrews lent it to me.

I was reading it at dinner hour and I just got to the chariot race when school went in.

I was simply wild to know how it turned out.

Although I felt Ben-Hur must win because it wouldn't be poetical justice if he didn't.

So I spread the history book open on my desk lid.

Then I tucked Ben-Hur between the desk and my knee.

It just looked as if I was studying Canadian history,

You know,

While all the while I was reveling in Ben-Hur.

I was so interested in it.

I never noticed Miss Stacey coming down the aisle until all at once.

I looked up and there she was looking down at me.

So reproachful,

Like,

I can't tell you how ashamed I felt,

Marilla.

Especially when I heard O.

C.

Pye giggling.

Miss Stacey took Ben-Hur away,

But she never said a word then.

She kept me in at recess and talked to me.

She said I had done very wrong in two respects.

First,

I was wasting my time I ought to have put onto my studies.

And secondly,

I was deceiving my teacher in trying to make it appear I was reading history when it was a storybook instead.

I had never realised until that moment,

Marilla,

That what I was doing was deceitful.

I was shocked.

I cried bitterly and asked Miss Stacey to forgive me and I'd never do such a thing again.

And I offered to do penance by never so much as looking at Ben-Hur for a week,

Not even to see how the chariot race turned out.

But Miss Stacey said she wouldn't require that and she forgave me freely.

So I think it wasn't very kind of her to come up here to talk to you about it after all.

Miss Stacey never mentioned such a thing to me,

Anne,

And it's only your guilty conscience that's taken the matter with you.

You've no business to be taking any storybooks to school.

You read too many novels anyhow.

When I was a girl I wasn't so much as allowed to look at a novel.

Oh how can you call Ben-Hur a novel when it's really a religious book,

Protested Anne.

Of course it's a little too exciting to be proper reading for Sunday and I only read it on weekdays.

And I never read any book now unless Miss Stacey or Miss Allen thinks it's a proper book for a girl 13 and three quarters to read.

Miss Stacey made me promise that.

She found me reading a book one day called The Lurid Mystery of the Haunted Hall.

It was one Ruby Gillis had lent me and oh Marilla it was so fascinating and creepy it just curdled the blood in my veins.

But Miss Stacey said it was very silly and an unwholesome book and she asked me not to read any more of it or any like it.

I didn't mind promising not to read any more like it but it was agonizing to give back that book without knowing how it turned out.

But my love for Miss Stacey stood the test and I did.

It's really wonderful Marilla what you can do when you're truly anxious to please a certain person.

Well I guess I'll light the lamp and get to work,

Said Marilla.

I see plainly you don't want to hear what Miss Stacey had to say.

You're more interested in the sound of your own tongue than in anything else.

Oh indeed Marilla I do want to hear it,

Cried Anne contritely.

I won't say another word,

Not one.

I know I talk too much but I'm really trying to overcome it and although I say far too much if you only knew how many things I want to say and don't you'd give me some credit for it.

Please tell me Marilla.

Well Miss Stacey wants to organize a class amongst her advanced students who mean to study for the entrance examination into Queen's.

She intends to give them extra lessons for an hour after school and she came to ask Matthew and me if we would like to have you join it.

What do you think about it yourself Anne?

Would you like to go to Queen's and pass for a teacher?

Oh Marilla,

Anne straightened to her knees and clasped her hands.

It's been the dream of my life,

That is for the last six months,

Ever since Ruby and Jane began to talk of studying for the entrance.

But I didn't say anything about it because I supposed it would be perfectly useless.

I'd love to be a teacher but won't it be dreadfully expensive?

Mr Andrew said it cost him $150 to put Prissy through and Prissy wasn't a dunce in geometry.

I guess you needn't worry about that part of it.

When Matthew and I talked you to bring up we resolved we would do the best we could for you and give you a good education.

I believe a girl being fitted to earn her own living whether she ever has to or not.

You'll always have a home at Queen Gable's as long as Matthew and I are here but nobody knows what's going to happen in this uncertain world and it's just as well to be prepared.

So you can join the Queen's class if you like Anne.

Oh Marilla,

Thank you.

Anne flung her arms about Marilla's waist and looked up earnestly into her face.

I'm extremely grateful to you and Matthew and I'll study as hard as I can and do my very best to be a credit to you.

I warn you not to expect too much in geometry but I think I can hold my own in everything else if I work hard.

I dare say you'll get along well enough.

Miss Stacey says you're bright and diligent.

Not for worlds would Marilla have told Anne just what Miss Stacey did say.

That would have been to pamper vanity.

You needn't rush to any extreme of killing yourself over your books.

There's no hurry.

You won't be ready to try the entrance for a year and a half yet but it's as well to begin in time and be thoroughly grounded Miss Stacey says.

I shall take more interest than ever in my studies now said Anne blissfully because I have a purpose in life.

Mr Allen says everyone should have a purpose in life and pursue it faithfully only he says we must first make sure it's a worthy purpose.

I would call it a worthy purpose to want to be a teacher like Miss Stacey wouldn't you Marilla?

I think it's a very noble profession.

The Queen's class was organised in due time.

Gilbert Blythe,

Anne Shirley,

Ruby Gillis,

Jane Andrews,

Josie Pye,

Charlie Sloan and Moody Spurgeon Macpherson joined it.

Diana Barry did not as her parents did not intend to send her to Queen's.

This seemed nothing short of a calamity to Anne.

Never since the night on which Minnie May had had the croup had she and Diana been separated in anything.

On the evening when the Queen's class first remained in school for the extra lessons and Anne saw Diana go slowly out with the others to walk home along the birch path and violet vale it was all the former could do to keep her seat to refrain from rushing impulsively after her chum.

A lump came into her throat and she hastily retired behind the pages of her uplifted Latin grammar to hide the tears in her eyes.

Not for worlds would Anne have had Gilbert Blythe or Josie Pye see those tears but oh Marilla I really felt I tasted the bitterness of death as Mr Allen said in his sermon last Saturday when I saw Diana go out alone she said mournfully that night.

I thought how splendid it would have been if Diana had only been going to study for the entrance too but we can't have things perfect in this imperfect world as Mrs Lynn said.

Mrs Lynn isn't exactly a comforting person sometimes but there's no doubt she says a great many very true things and I think the Queen's class is going to be extremely interesting.

Jane and Ruby are just going to study to be teachers that's the height of their ambition.

Ruby says she'll only teach for two years after she gets through and then she intends to be married.

Jane says she will devote her whole life to teaching and never never marry because you're paid a salary for teaching but her husband won't pay you anything and growls if you ask for a share in the egg and butter money.

I expect Jane speaks from mournful experience but Mrs Lynn said her father is a perfect old crank and meaner than second skimmings.

Josie Pye said she's just going to college for education's sake because she won't have to earn her own living.

She says of course it's different with orphans who are living on charity they have to hustle.

Moody Spurgeon is going to be a minister.

Mrs Lynn said he couldn't be anything else with a name like that to live up to.

I suppose it isn't wicked of me Marilla but really the thought of Moody Spurgeon being a minister makes me laugh.

He's such a funny looking boy with that big fat face and his little blue eyes and his ears sticking out like flaps but perhaps he'll be more intellectual looking when he grows up.

Charlie Sloane said he's going to go into politics and be a member of parliament but Mrs Lynn said he'll never succeed at that because the Sloanes are all honest people and it's only old rascals that get on in politics nowadays.

What is Gilbert Blythe going to be?

Queried Marilla seeing that Anne was opening her Caesar.

I don't happen to know what Gilbert Blythe's ambition in life is if he has any at all said Anne scornfully.

There was open rivalry between Gilbert and Anne now.

Previously the rivalry had been rather one-sided but there was no longer any doubt that Gilbert was as determined to be the first in class as Anne was.

He was a foeman worthy of her steel.

The other members of the class tactically announced their superiority and never dreamed of trying to compete with him.

Since the day by the pond when she had refused to listen to his plea for forgiveness,

Gilbert,

Save for the aforesaid determined rivalry,

Had invinced no recognition whatsoever of the existence of Anne Shirley.

He talked and gestured with the other girls,

Exchanged books and puzzles with them,

Discussed lessons and plans,

Sometimes walked home with one or the other of them from prayer meeting or debating club.

But Anne Shirley he simply ignored and Anne found that it is not pleasant to be ignored.

It was in vain that she told herself with a toss of her head that she did not care.

Deep down in her wayward feminine little heart she knew that she did care and that if she had that chance of the lake of shining waters again she would answer very differently.

All at once as it seemed and to her own secret dismay she found that the old resentment she cherished against him was gone.

Gone just when she needed it most.

It was in vain that she recalled every instance and emotion of that memorable occasion and tried to fill the old satisfying anger.

That day by the pond had witnessed its last spasmodic flicker.

Anne realized she'd forgiven and forgotten without knowing it.

But it was too late and at least neither Gilbert nor anybody else,

Not even Diana,

Should ever suspect how sorry she was and how much she wished she hadn't been so proud and horrid.

She determined to shroud her feelings in deepest oblivion and it may be stated here and now that she did it so successfully that Gilbert who possibly was not quite so indifferent as he seemed could not console himself with any belief that Anne felt his retaliatory scorn.

The only poor comfort he had was that she snubbed Charlie Sloane unmercifully,

Continually and undeservedly.

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