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<h2> CHAPTER IV. Morning at Green Gables </h2>
<p>It was broad daylight when Anne awoke and sat up in bed, staring
confusedly at the window through which a flood of cheery sunshine was
pouring and outside of which something white and feathery waved across
glimpses of blue sky.</p>
<p>For a moment she could not remember where she was. First came a delightful
thrill, as something very pleasant; then a horrible remembrance. This was
Green Gables and they didn't want her because she wasn't a boy!</p>
<p>But it was morning and, yes, it was a cherry-tree in full bloom outside of
her window. With a bound she was out of bed and across the floor. She
pushed up the sash—it went up stiffly and creakily, as if it hadn't
been opened for a long time, which was the case; and it stuck so tight
that nothing was needed to hold it up.</p>
<p>Anne dropped on her knees and gazed out into the June morning, her eyes
glistening with delight. Oh, wasn't it beautiful? Wasn't it a lovely
place? Suppose she wasn't really going to stay here! She would imagine she
was. There was scope for imagination here.</p>
<p>A huge cherry-tree grew outside, so close that its boughs tapped against
the house, and it was so thick-set with blossoms that hardly a leaf was to
be seen. On both sides of the house was a big orchard, one of apple-trees
and one of cherry-trees, also showered over with blossoms; and their grass
was all sprinkled with dandelions. In the garden below were lilac-trees
purple with flowers, and their dizzily sweet fragrance drifted up to the
window on the morning wind.</p>
<p>Below the garden a green field lush with clover sloped down to the hollow
where the brook ran and where scores of white birches grew, upspringing
airily out of an undergrowth suggestive of delightful possibilities in
ferns and mosses and woodsy things generally. Beyond it was a hill, green
and feathery with spruce and fir; there was a gap in it where the gray
gable end of the little house she had seen from the other side of the Lake
of Shining Waters was visible.</p>
<p>Off to the left were the big barns and beyond them, away down over green,
low-sloping fields, was a sparkling blue glimpse of sea.</p>
<p>Anne's beauty-loving eyes lingered on it all, taking everything greedily
in. She had looked on so many unlovely places in her life, poor child; but
this was as lovely as anything she had ever dreamed.</p>
<p>She knelt there, lost to everything but the loveliness around her, until
she was startled by a hand on her shoulder. Marilla had come in unheard by
the small dreamer.</p>
<p>"It's time you were dressed," she said curtly.</p>
<p>Marilla really did not know how to talk to the child, and her
uncomfortable ignorance made her crisp and curt when she did not mean to
be.</p>
<p>Anne stood up and drew a long breath.</p>
<p>"Oh, isn't it wonderful?" she said, waving her hand comprehensively at the
good world outside.</p>
<p>"It's a big tree," said Marilla, "and it blooms great, but the fruit don't
amount to much never—small and wormy."</p>
<p>"Oh, I don't mean just the tree; of course it's lovely—yes, it's
RADIANTLY lovely—it blooms as if it meant it—but I meant
everything, the garden and the orchard and the brook and the woods, the
whole big dear world. Don't you feel as if you just loved the world on a
morning like this? And I can hear the brook laughing all the way up here.
Have you ever noticed what cheerful things brooks are? They're always
laughing. Even in winter-time I've heard them under the ice. I'm so glad
there's a brook near Green Gables. Perhaps you think it doesn't make any
difference to me when you're not going to keep me, but it does. I shall
always like to remember that there is a brook at Green Gables even if I
never see it again. If there wasn't a brook I'd be HAUNTED by the
uncomfortable feeling that there ought to be one. I'm not in the depths of
despair this morning. I never can be in the morning. Isn't it a splendid
thing that there are mornings? But I feel very sad. I've just been
imagining that it was really me you wanted after all and that I was to
stay here for ever and ever. It was a great comfort while it lasted. But
the worst of imagining things is that the time comes when you have to stop
and that hurts."</p>
<p>"You'd better get dressed and come down-stairs and never mind your
imaginings," said Marilla as soon as she could get a word in edgewise.
"Breakfast is waiting. Wash your face and comb your hair. Leave the window
up and turn your bedclothes back over the foot of the bed. Be as smart as
you can."</p>
<p>Anne could evidently be smart to some purpose for she was down-stairs in
ten minutes' time, with her clothes neatly on, her hair brushed and
braided, her face washed, and a comfortable consciousness pervading her
soul that she had fulfilled all Marilla's requirements. As a matter of
fact, however, she had forgotten to turn back the bedclothes.</p>
<p>"I'm pretty hungry this morning," she announced as she slipped into the
chair Marilla placed for her. "The world doesn't seem such a howling
wilderness as it did last night. I'm so glad it's a sunshiny morning. But
I like rainy mornings real well, too. All sorts of mornings are
interesting, don't you think? You don't know what's going to happen
through the day, and there's so much scope for imagination. But I'm glad
it's not rainy today because it's easier to be cheerful and bear up under
affliction on a sunshiny day. I feel that I have a good deal to bear up
under. It's all very well to read about sorrows and imagine yourself
living through them heroically, but it's not so nice when you really come
to have them, is it?"</p>
<p>"For pity's sake hold your tongue," said Marilla. "You talk entirely too
much for a little girl."</p>
<p>Thereupon Anne held her tongue so obediently and thoroughly that her
continued silence made Marilla rather nervous, as if in the presence of
something not exactly natural. Matthew also held his tongue,—but
this was natural,—so that the meal was a very silent one.</p>
<p>As it progressed Anne became more and more abstracted, eating
mechanically, with her big eyes fixed unswervingly and unseeingly on the
sky outside the window. This made Marilla more nervous than ever; she had
an uncomfortable feeling that while this odd child's body might be there
at the table her spirit was far away in some remote airy cloudland, borne
aloft on the wings of imagination. Who would want such a child about the
place?</p>
<p>Yet Matthew wished to keep her, of all unaccountable things! Marilla felt
that he wanted it just as much this morning as he had the night before,
and that he would go on wanting it. That was Matthew's way—take a
whim into his head and cling to it with the most amazing silent
persistency—a persistency ten times more potent and effectual in its
very silence than if he had talked it out.</p>
<p>When the meal was ended Anne came out of her reverie and offered to wash
the dishes.</p>
<p>"Can you wash dishes right?" asked Marilla distrustfully.</p>
<p>"Pretty well. I'm better at looking after children, though. I've had so
much experience at that. It's such a pity you haven't any here for me to
look after."</p>
<p>"I don't feel as if I wanted any more children to look after than I've got
at present. YOU'RE problem enough in all conscience. What's to be done
with you I don't know. Matthew is a most ridiculous man."</p>
<p>"I think he's lovely," said Anne reproachfully. "He is so very
sympathetic. He didn't mind how much I talked—he seemed to like it.
I felt that he was a kindred spirit as soon as ever I saw him."</p>
<p>"You're both queer enough, if that's what you mean by kindred spirits,"
said Marilla with a sniff. "Yes, you may wash the dishes. Take plenty of
hot water, and be sure you dry them well. I've got enough to attend to
this morning for I'll have to drive over to White Sands in the afternoon
and see Mrs. Spencer. You'll come with me and we'll settle what's to be
done with you. After you've finished the dishes go up-stairs and make your
bed."</p>
<p>Anne washed the dishes deftly enough, as Marilla who kept a sharp eye on
the process, discerned. Later on she made her bed less successfully, for
she had never learned the art of wrestling with a feather tick. But is was
done somehow and smoothed down; and then Marilla, to get rid of her, told
her she might go out-of-doors and amuse herself until dinner time.</p>
<p>Anne flew to the door, face alight, eyes glowing. On the very threshold
she stopped short, wheeled about, came back and sat down by the table,
light and glow as effectually blotted out as if some one had clapped an
extinguisher on her.</p>
<p>"What's the matter now?" demanded Marilla.</p>
<p>"I don't dare go out," said Anne, in the tone of a martyr relinquishing
all earthly joys. "If I can't stay here there is no use in my loving Green
Gables. And if I go out there and get acquainted with all those trees and
flowers and the orchard and the brook I'll not be able to help loving it.
It's hard enough now, so I won't make it any harder. I want to go out so
much—everything seems to be calling to me, 'Anne, Anne, come out to
us. Anne, Anne, we want a playmate'—but it's better not. There is no
use in loving things if you have to be torn from them, is there? And it's
so hard to keep from loving things, isn't it? That was why I was so glad
when I thought I was going to live here. I thought I'd have so many things
to love and nothing to hinder me. But that brief dream is over. I am
resigned to my fate now, so I don't think I'll go out for fear I'll get
unresigned again. What is the name of that geranium on the window-sill,
please?"</p>
<p>"That's the apple-scented geranium."</p>
<p>"Oh, I don't mean that sort of a name. I mean just a name you gave it
yourself. Didn't you give it a name? May I give it one then? May I call it—let
me see—Bonny would do—may I call it Bonny while I'm here? Oh,
do let me!"</p>
<p>"Goodness, I don't care. But where on earth is the sense of naming a
geranium?"</p>
<p>"Oh, I like things to have handles even if they are only geraniums. It
makes them seem more like people. How do you know but that it hurts a
geranium's feelings just to be called a geranium and nothing else? You
wouldn't like to be called nothing but a woman all the time. Yes, I shall
call it Bonny. I named that cherry-tree outside my bedroom window this
morning. I called it Snow Queen because it was so white. Of course, it
won't always be in blossom, but one can imagine that it is, can't one?"</p>
<p>"I never in all my life saw or heard anything to equal her," muttered
Marilla, beating a retreat down to the cellar after potatoes. "She is kind
of interesting as Matthew says. I can feel already that I'm wondering what
on earth she'll say next. She'll be casting a spell over me, too. She's
cast it over Matthew. That look he gave me when he went out said
everything he said or hinted last night over again. I wish he was like
other men and would talk things out. A body could answer back then and
argue him into reason. But what's to be done with a man who just LOOKS?"</p>
<p>Anne had relapsed into reverie, with her chin in her hands and her eyes on
the sky, when Marilla returned from her cellar pilgrimage. There Marilla
left her until the early dinner was on the table.</p>
<p>"I suppose I can have the mare and buggy this afternoon, Matthew?" said
Marilla.</p>
<p>Matthew nodded and looked wistfully at Anne. Marilla intercepted the look
and said grimly:</p>
<p>"I'm going to drive over to White Sands and settle this thing. I'll take
Anne with me and Mrs. Spencer will probably make arrangements to send her
back to Nova Scotia at once. I'll set your tea out for you and I'll be
home in time to milk the cows."</p>
<p>Still Matthew said nothing and Marilla had a sense of having wasted words
and breath. There is nothing more aggravating than a man who won't talk
back—unless it is a woman who won't.</p>
<p>Matthew hitched the sorrel into the buggy in due time and Marilla and Anne
set off. Matthew opened the yard gate for them and as they drove slowly
through, he said, to nobody in particular as it seemed:</p>
<p>"Little Jerry Buote from the Creek was here this morning, and I told him I
guessed I'd hire him for the summer."</p>
<p>Marilla made no reply, but she hit the unlucky sorrel such a vicious clip
with the whip that the fat mare, unused to such treatment, whizzed
indignantly down the lane at an alarming pace. Marilla looked back once as
the buggy bounced along and saw that aggravating Matthew leaning over the
gate, looking wistfully after them.</p>
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