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<h2> CHAPTER V. Anne's History </h2>
<p>"Do you know," said Anne confidentially, "I've made up my mind to enjoy
this drive. It's been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy
things if you make up your mind firmly that you will. Of course, you must
make it up FIRMLY. I am not going to think about going back to the asylum
while we're having our drive. I'm just going to think about the drive. Oh,
look, there's one little early wild rose out! Isn't it lovely? Don't you
think it must be glad to be a rose? Wouldn't it be nice if roses could
talk? I'm sure they could tell us such lovely things. And isn't pink the
most bewitching color in the world? I love it, but I can't wear it.
Redheaded people can't wear pink, not even in imagination. Did you ever
know of anybody whose hair was red when she was young, but got to be
another color when she grew up?"</p>
<p>"No, I don't know as I ever did," said Marilla mercilessly, "and I
shouldn't think it likely to happen in your case either."</p>
<p>Anne sighed.</p>
<p>"Well, that is another hope gone. 'My life is a perfect graveyard of
buried hopes.' That's a sentence I read in a book once, and I say it over
to comfort myself whenever I'm disappointed in anything."</p>
<p>"I don't see where the comforting comes in myself," said Marilla.</p>
<p>"Why, because it sounds so nice and romantic, just as if I were a heroine
in a book, you know. I am so fond of romantic things, and a graveyard full
of buried hopes is about as romantic a thing as one can imagine isn't it?
I'm rather glad I have one. Are we going across the Lake of Shining Waters
today?"</p>
<p>"We're not going over Barry's pond, if that's what you mean by your Lake
of Shining Waters. We're going by the shore road."</p>
<p>"Shore road sounds nice," said Anne dreamily. "Is it as nice as it sounds?
Just when you said 'shore road' I saw it in a picture in my mind, as quick
as that! And White Sands is a pretty name, too; but I don't like it as
well as Avonlea. Avonlea is a lovely name. It just sounds like music. How
far is it to White Sands?"</p>
<p>"It's five miles; and as you're evidently bent on talking you might as
well talk to some purpose by telling me what you know about yourself."</p>
<p>"Oh, what I KNOW about myself isn't really worth telling," said Anne
eagerly. "If you'll only let me tell you what I IMAGINE about myself
you'll think it ever so much more interesting."</p>
<p>"No, I don't want any of your imaginings. Just you stick to bald facts.
Begin at the beginning. Where were you born and how old are you?"</p>
<p>"I was eleven last March," said Anne, resigning herself to bald facts with
a little sigh. "And I was born in Bolingbroke, Nova Scotia. My father's
name was Walter Shirley, and he was a teacher in the Bolingbroke High
School. My mother's name was Bertha Shirley. Aren't Walter and Bertha
lovely names? I'm so glad my parents had nice names. It would be a real
disgrace to have a father named—well, say Jedediah, wouldn't it?"</p>
<p>"I guess it doesn't matter what a person's name is as long as he behaves
himself," said Marilla, feeling herself called upon to inculcate a good
and useful moral.</p>
<p>"Well, I don't know." Anne looked thoughtful. "I read in a book once that
a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I've never been able to
believe it. I don't believe a rose WOULD be as nice if it was called a
thistle or a skunk cabbage. I suppose my father could have been a good man
even if he had been called Jedediah; but I'm sure it would have been a
cross. Well, my mother was a teacher in the High school, too, but when she
married father she gave up teaching, of course. A husband was enough
responsibility. Mrs. Thomas said that they were a pair of babies and as
poor as church mice. They went to live in a weeny-teeny little yellow
house in Bolingbroke. I've never seen that house, but I've imagined it
thousands of times. I think it must have had honeysuckle over the parlor
window and lilacs in the front yard and lilies of the valley just inside
the gate. Yes, and muslin curtains in all the windows. Muslin curtains
give a house such an air. I was born in that house. Mrs. Thomas said I was
the homeliest baby she ever saw, I was so scrawny and tiny and nothing but
eyes, but that mother thought I was perfectly beautiful. I should think a
mother would be a better judge than a poor woman who came in to scrub,
wouldn't you? I'm glad she was satisfied with me anyhow, I would feel so
sad if I thought I was a disappointment to her—because she didn't
live very long after that, you see. She died of fever when I was just
three months old. I do wish she'd lived long enough for me to remember
calling her mother. I think it would be so sweet to say 'mother,' don't
you? And father died four days afterwards from fever too. That left me an
orphan and folks were at their wits' end, so Mrs. Thomas said, what to do
with me. You see, nobody wanted me even then. It seems to be my fate.
Father and mother had both come from places far away and it was well known
they hadn't any relatives living. Finally Mrs. Thomas said she'd take me,
though she was poor and had a drunken husband. She brought me up by hand.
Do you know if there is anything in being brought up by hand that ought to
make people who are brought up that way better than other people? Because
whenever I was naughty Mrs. Thomas would ask me how I could be such a bad
girl when she had brought me up by hand—reproachful-like.</p>
<p>"Mr. and Mrs. Thomas moved away from Bolingbroke to Marysville, and I
lived with them until I was eight years old. I helped look after the
Thomas children—there were four of them younger than me—and I
can tell you they took a lot of looking after. Then Mr. Thomas was killed
falling under a train and his mother offered to take Mrs. Thomas and the
children, but she didn't want me. Mrs. Thomas was at HER wits' end, so she
said, what to do with me. Then Mrs. Hammond from up the river came down
and said she'd take me, seeing I was handy with children, and I went up
the river to live with her in a little clearing among the stumps. It was a
very lonesome place. I'm sure I could never have lived there if I hadn't
had an imagination. Mr. Hammond worked a little sawmill up there, and Mrs.
Hammond had eight children. She had twins three times. I like babies in
moderation, but twins three times in succession is TOO MUCH. I told Mrs.
Hammond so firmly, when the last pair came. I used to get so dreadfully
tired carrying them about.</p>
<p>"I lived up river with Mrs. Hammond over two years, and then Mr. Hammond
died and Mrs. Hammond broke up housekeeping. She divided her children
among her relatives and went to the States. I had to go to the asylum at
Hopeton, because nobody would take me. They didn't want me at the asylum,
either; they said they were over-crowded as it was. But they had to take
me and I was there four months until Mrs. Spencer came."</p>
<p>Anne finished up with another sigh, of relief this time. Evidently she did
not like talking about her experiences in a world that had not wanted her.</p>
<p>"Did you ever go to school?" demanded Marilla, turning the sorrel mare
down the shore road.</p>
<p>"Not a great deal. I went a little the last year I stayed with Mrs.
Thomas. When I went up river we were so far from a school that I couldn't
walk it in winter and there was a vacation in summer, so I could only go
in the spring and fall. But of course I went while I was at the asylum. I
can read pretty well and I know ever so many pieces of poetry off by heart—'The
Battle of Hohenlinden' and 'Edinburgh after Flodden,' and 'Bingen of the
Rhine,' and most of the 'Lady of the Lake' and most of 'The Seasons' by
James Thompson. Don't you just love poetry that gives you a crinkly
feeling up and down your back? There is a piece in the Fifth Reader—'The
Downfall of Poland'—that is just full of thrills. Of course, I
wasn't in the Fifth Reader—I was only in the Fourth—but the
big girls used to lend me theirs to read."</p>
<p>"Were those women—Mrs. Thomas and Mrs. Hammond—good to you?"
asked Marilla, looking at Anne out of the corner of her eye.</p>
<p>"O-o-o-h," faltered Anne. Her sensitive little face suddenly flushed
scarlet and embarrassment sat on her brow. "Oh, they MEANT to be—I
know they meant to be just as good and kind as possible. And when people
mean to be good to you, you don't mind very much when they're not quite—always.
They had a good deal to worry them, you know. It's very trying to have a
drunken husband, you see; and it must be very trying to have twins three
times in succession, don't you think? But I feel sure they meant to be
good to me."</p>
<p>Marilla asked no more questions. Anne gave herself up to a silent rapture
over the shore road and Marilla guided the sorrel abstractedly while she
pondered deeply. Pity was suddenly stirring in her heart for the child.
What a starved, unloved life she had had—a life of drudgery and
poverty and neglect; for Marilla was shrewd enough to read between the
lines of Anne's history and divine the truth. No wonder she had been so
delighted at the prospect of a real home. It was a pity she had to be sent
back. What if she, Marilla, should indulge Matthew's unaccountable whim
and let her stay? He was set on it; and the child seemed a nice, teachable
little thing.</p>
<p>"She's got too much to say," thought Marilla, "but she might be trained
out of that. And there's nothing rude or slangy in what she does say.
She's ladylike. It's likely her people were nice folks."</p>
<p>The shore road was "woodsy and wild and lonesome." On the right hand,
scrub firs, their spirits quite unbroken by long years of tussle with the
gulf winds, grew thickly. On the left were the steep red sandstone cliffs,
so near the track in places that a mare of less steadiness than the sorrel
might have tried the nerves of the people behind her. Down at the base of
the cliffs were heaps of surf-worn rocks or little sandy coves inlaid with
pebbles as with ocean jewels; beyond lay the sea, shimmering and blue, and
over it soared the gulls, their pinions flashing silvery in the sunlight.</p>
<p>"Isn't the sea wonderful?" said Anne, rousing from a long, wide-eyed
silence. "Once, when I lived in Marysville, Mr. Thomas hired an express
wagon and took us all to spend the day at the shore ten miles away. I
enjoyed every moment of that day, even if I had to look after the children
all the time. I lived it over in happy dreams for years. But this shore is
nicer than the Marysville shore. Aren't those gulls splendid? Would you
like to be a gull? I think I would—that is, if I couldn't be a human
girl. Don't you think it would be nice to wake up at sunrise and swoop
down over the water and away out over that lovely blue all day; and then
at night to fly back to one's nest? Oh, I can just imagine myself doing
it. What big house is that just ahead, please?"</p>
<p>"That's the White Sands Hotel. Mr. Kirke runs it, but the season hasn't
begun yet. There are heaps of Americans come there for the summer. They
think this shore is just about right."</p>
<p>"I was afraid it might be Mrs. Spencer's place," said Anne mournfully. "I
don't want to get there. Somehow, it will seem like the end of
everything."</p>
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