Anne’s Impressions of Sunday-school

WELL, how do you like them?” said Marilla.

Anne was standing in the gable room, looking solemnly at three new

dresses spread out on the bed. One was of snuffy colored gingham which

Marilla had been tempted to buy from a peddler the preceding summer

because it looked so serviceable; one was of black-and-white checkered

sateen which she had picked up at a bargain counter in the winter; and

one was a stiff print of an ugly blue shade which she had purchased that

week at a Carmody store.

She had made them up herself, and they were all made alike--plain skirts

fulled tightly to plain waists, with sleeves as plain as waist and skirt

and tight as sleeves could be.

“I’ll imagine that I like them,” said Anne soberly.

“I don’t want you to imagine it,” said Marilla, offended. “Oh, I can see

you don’t like the dresses! What is the matter with them? Aren’t they

neat and clean and new?”

“Yes.”

“Then why don’t you like them?”

“They’re--they’re not--pretty,” said Anne reluctantly.

“Pretty!” Marilla sniffed. “I didn’t trouble my head about getting

pretty dresses for you. I don’t believe in pampering vanity, Anne, I’ll

tell you that right off. Those dresses are good, sensible, serviceable

dresses, without any frills or furbelows about them, and they’re all

you’ll get this summer. The brown gingham and the blue print will do

you for school when you begin to go. The sateen is for church and

Sunday-school. I’ll expect you to keep them neat and clean and not to

tear them. I should think you’d be grateful to get most anything after

those skimpy wincey things you’ve been wearing.”

“Oh, I _am_ grateful,” protested Anne. “But I’d be ever so much

gratefuller if--if you’d made just one of them with puffed sleeves.

Puffed sleeves are so fashionable now. It would give me such a thrill,

Marilla, just to wear a dress with puffed sleeves.”

“Well, you’ll have to do without your thrill. I hadn’t any material

to waste on puffed sleeves. I think they are ridiculous-looking things

anyhow. I prefer the plain, sensible ones.”

“But I’d rather look ridiculous when everybody else does than plain and

sensible all by myself,” persisted Anne mournfully.

“Trust you for that! Well, hang those dresses carefully up in your

closet, and then sit down and learn the Sunday-school lesson. I got

a quarterly from Mr. Bell for you and you’ll go to Sunday-school

tomorrow,” said Marilla, disappearing downstairs in high dudgeon.

Anne clasped her hands and looked at the dresses.

“I did hope there would be a white one with puffed sleeves,” she

whispered disconsolately. “I prayed for one, but I didn’t much expect it

on that account. I didn’t suppose God would have time to bother about

a little orphan girl’s dress. I knew I’d just have to depend on

Marilla for it. Well, fortunately I can imagine that one of them is of

snow-white muslin with lovely lace frills and three-puffed sleeves.”

The next morning warnings of a sick headache prevented Marilla from

going to Sunday-school with Anne.

“You’ll have to go down and call for Mrs. Lynde, Anne,” she said.

“She’ll see that you get into the right class. Now, mind you behave

yourself properly. Stay to preaching afterwards and ask Mrs. Lynde to

show you our pew. Here’s a cent for collection. Don’t stare at people

and don’t fidget. I shall expect you to tell me the text when you come

home.”

Anne started off irreproachable, arrayed in the stiff black-and-white

sateen, which, while decent as regards length and certainly not open to

the charge of skimpiness, contrived to emphasize every corner and angle

of her thin figure. Her hat was a little, flat, glossy, new sailor, the

extreme plainness of which had likewise much disappointed Anne, who

had permitted herself secret visions of ribbon and flowers. The latter,

however, were supplied before Anne reached the main road, for being

confronted halfway down the lane with a golden frenzy of wind-stirred

buttercups and a glory of wild roses, Anne promptly and liberally

garlanded her hat with a heavy wreath of them. Whatever other people

might have thought of the result it satisfied Anne, and she tripped

gaily down the road, holding her ruddy head with its decoration of pink

and yellow very proudly.

When she had reached Mrs. Lynde’s house she found that lady gone.

Nothing daunted, Anne proceeded onward to the church alone. In the porch

she found a crowd of little girls, all more or less gaily attired in

whites and blues and pinks, and all staring with curious eyes at this

stranger in their midst, with her extraordinary head adornment. Avonlea

little girls had already heard queer stories about Anne. Mrs. Lynde said

she had an awful temper; Jerry Buote, the hired boy at Green Gables,

said she talked all the time to herself or to the trees and flowers

like a crazy girl. They looked at her and whispered to each other behind

their quarterlies. Nobody made any friendly advances, then or later

on when the opening exercises were over and Anne found herself in Miss

Rogerson’s class.

Miss Rogerson was a middle-aged lady who had taught a Sunday-school

class for twenty years. Her method of teaching was to ask the printed

questions from the quarterly and look sternly over its edge at the

particular little girl she thought ought to answer the question. She

looked very often at Anne, and Anne, thanks to Marilla’s drilling,

answered promptly; but it may be questioned if she understood very much

about either question or answer.

She did not think she liked Miss Rogerson, and she felt very miserable;

every other little girl in the class had puffed sleeves. Anne felt that

life was really not worth living without puffed sleeves.

“Well, how did you like Sunday-school?” Marilla wanted to know when Anne

came home. Her wreath having faded, Anne had discarded it in the lane,

so Marilla was spared the knowledge of that for a time.

“I didn’t like it a bit. It was horrid.”

“Anne Shirley!” said Marilla rebukingly.

Anne sat down on the rocker with a long sigh, kissed one of Bonny’s

leaves, and waved her hand to a blossoming fuchsia.

“They might have been lonesome while I was away,” she explained. “And

now about the Sunday-school. I behaved well, just as you told me. Mrs.

Lynde was gone, but I went right on myself. I went into the church, with

a lot of other little girls, and I sat in the corner of a pew by the

window while the opening exercises went on. Mr. Bell made an awfully

long prayer. I would have been dreadfully tired before he got through

if I hadn’t been sitting by that window. But it looked right out on the

Lake of Shining Waters, so I just gazed at that and imagined all sorts

of splendid things.”

“You shouldn’t have done anything of the sort. You should have listened

to Mr. Bell.”

“But he wasn’t talking to me,” protested Anne. “He was talking to God

and he didn’t seem to be very much interested in it, either. I think

he thought God was too far off though. There was a long row of white

birches hanging over the lake and the sunshine fell down through them,

‘way, ‘way down, deep into the water. Oh, Marilla, it was like a

beautiful dream! It gave me a thrill and I just said, ‘Thank you for

it, God,’ two or three times.”

“Not out loud, I hope,” said Marilla anxiously.

“Oh, no, just under my breath. Well, Mr. Bell did get through at last

and they told me to go into the classroom with Miss Rogerson’s class.

There were nine other girls in it. They all had puffed sleeves. I tried

to imagine mine were puffed, too, but I couldn’t. Why couldn’t I? It was

as easy as could be to imagine they were puffed when I was alone in

the east gable, but it was awfully hard there among the others who had

really truly puffs.”

“You shouldn’t have been thinking about your sleeves in Sunday-school.

You should have been attending to the lesson. I hope you knew it.”

“Oh, yes; and I answered a lot of questions. Miss Rogerson asked ever so

many. I don’t think it was fair for her to do all the asking. There were

lots I wanted to ask her, but I didn’t like to because I didn’t think

she was a kindred spirit. Then all the other little girls recited a

paraphrase. She asked me if I knew any. I told her I didn’t, but I could

recite, ‘The Dog at His Master’s Grave’ if she liked. That’s in the

Third Royal Reader. It isn’t a really truly religious piece of poetry,

but it’s so sad and melancholy that it might as well be. She said it

wouldn’t do and she told me to learn the nineteenth paraphrase for next

Sunday. I read it over in church afterwards and it’s splendid. There are

two lines in particular that just thrill me.

“‘Quick as the slaughtered squadrons fell

In Midian’s evil day.’

“I don’t know what ‘squadrons’ means nor ‘Midian,’ either, but it sounds

_so_ tragical. I can hardly wait until next Sunday to recite it.

I’ll practice it all the week. After Sunday-school I asked Miss

Rogerson--because Mrs. Lynde was too far away--to show me your pew.

I sat just as still as I could and the text was Revelations, third

chapter, second and third verses. It was a very long text. If I was a

minister I’d pick the short, snappy ones. The sermon was awfully long,

too. I suppose the minister had to match it to the text. I didn’t think

he was a bit interesting. The trouble with him seems to be that he

hasn’t enough imagination. I didn’t listen to him very much. I just let

my thoughts run and I thought of the most surprising things.”

Marilla felt helplessly that all this should be sternly reproved, but

she was hampered by the undeniable fact that some of the things Anne had

said, especially about the minister’s sermons and Mr. Bell’s prayers,

were what she herself had really thought deep down in her heart for

years, but had never given expression to. It almost seemed to her that

those secret, unuttered, critical thoughts had suddenly taken visible

and accusing shape and form in the person of this outspoken morsel of

neglected humanity.