A New Interest in Life

THE next afternoon Anne, bending over her patchwork at the kitchen

window, happened to glance out and beheld Diana down by the Dryad’s

Bubble beckoning mysteriously. In a trice Anne was out of the house

and flying down to the hollow, astonishment and hope struggling in

her expressive eyes. But the hope faded when she saw Diana’s dejected

countenance.

“Your mother hasn’t relented?” she gasped.

Diana shook her head mournfully.

“No; and oh, Anne, she says I’m never to play with you again. I’ve cried

and cried and I told her it wasn’t your fault, but it wasn’t any use. I

had ever such a time coaxing her to let me come down and say good-bye to

you. She said I was only to stay ten minutes and she’s timing me by the

clock.”

“Ten minutes isn’t very long to say an eternal farewell in,” said Anne

tearfully. “Oh, Diana, will you promise faithfully never to forget

me, the friend of your youth, no matter what dearer friends may caress

thee?”

“Indeed I will,” sobbed Diana, “and I’ll never have another bosom

friend--I don’t want to have. I couldn’t love anybody as I love you.”

“Oh, Diana,” cried Anne, clasping her hands, “do you _love_ me?”

“Why, of course I do. Didn’t you know that?”

“No.” Anne drew a long breath. “I thought you _liked_ me of course but I

never hoped you _loved_ me. Why, Diana, I didn’t think anybody could

love me. Nobody ever has loved me since I can remember. Oh, this is

wonderful! It’s a ray of light which will forever shine on the darkness

of a path severed from thee, Diana. Oh, just say it once again.”

“I love you devotedly, Anne,” said Diana stanchly, “and I always will,

you may be sure of that.”

“And I will always love thee, Diana,” said Anne, solemnly extending her

hand. “In the years to come thy memory will shine like a star over my

lonely life, as that last story we read together says. Diana, wilt

thou give me a lock of thy jet-black tresses in parting to treasure

forevermore?”

“Have you got anything to cut it with?” queried Diana, wiping away the

tears which Anne’s affecting accents had caused to flow afresh, and

returning to practicalities.

“Yes. I’ve got my patchwork scissors in my apron pocket fortunately,”

said Anne. She solemnly clipped one of Diana’s curls. “Fare thee well,

my beloved friend. Henceforth we must be as strangers though living side

by side. But my heart will ever be faithful to thee.”

Anne stood and watched Diana out of sight, mournfully waving her hand

to the latter whenever she turned to look back. Then she returned to

the house, not a little consoled for the time being by this romantic

parting.

“It is all over,” she informed Marilla. “I shall never have another

friend. I’m really worse off than ever before, for I haven’t Katie

Maurice and Violetta now. And even if I had it wouldn’t be the same.

Somehow, little dream girls are not satisfying after a real friend.

Diana and I had such an affecting farewell down by the spring. It will

be sacred in my memory forever. I used the most pathetic language I

could think of and said ‘thou’ and ‘thee.’ ‘Thou’ and ‘thee’ seem so

much more romantic than ‘you.’ Diana gave me a lock of her hair and I’m

going to sew it up in a little bag and wear it around my neck all my

life. Please see that it is buried with me, for I don’t believe I’ll

live very long. Perhaps when she sees me lying cold and dead before her

Mrs. Barry may feel remorse for what she has done and will let Diana

come to my funeral.”

“I don’t think there is much fear of your dying of grief as long as you

can talk, Anne,” said Marilla unsympathetically.

The following Monday Anne surprised Marilla by coming down from her room

with her basket of books on her arm and hip and her lips primmed up into

a line of determination.

“I’m going back to school,” she announced. “That is all there is left

in life for me, now that my friend has been ruthlessly torn from me. In

school I can look at her and muse over days departed.”

“You’d better muse over your lessons and sums,” said Marilla, concealing

her delight at this development of the situation. “If you’re going back

to school I hope we’ll hear no more of breaking slates over people’s

heads and such carryings on. Behave yourself and do just what your

teacher tells you.”

“I’ll try to be a model pupil,” agreed Anne dolefully. “There won’t be

much fun in it, I expect. Mr. Phillips said Minnie Andrews was a model

pupil and there isn’t a spark of imagination or life in her. She is

just dull and poky and never seems to have a good time. But I feel so

depressed that perhaps it will come easy to me now. I’m going round by

the road. I couldn’t bear to go by the Birch Path all alone. I should

weep bitter tears if I did.”

Anne was welcomed back to school with open arms. Her imagination had

been sorely missed in games, her voice in the singing and her dramatic

ability in the perusal aloud of books at dinner hour. Ruby Gillis

smuggled three blue plums over to her during testament reading; Ella May

MacPherson gave her an enormous yellow pansy cut from the covers of a

floral catalogue--a species of desk decoration much prized in Avonlea

school. Sophia Sloane offered to teach her a perfectly elegant new

pattern of knit lace, so nice for trimming aprons. Katie Boulter gave

her a perfume bottle to keep slate water in, and Julia Bell copied

carefully on a piece of pale pink paper scalloped on the edges the

following effusion:

“TO ANNE

“When twilight drops her curtain down

And pins it with a star

Remember that you have a friend

Though she may wander far.”

“It’s so nice to be appreciated,” sighed Anne rapturously to Marilla

that night.

The girls were not the only scholars who “appreciated” her. When Anne

went to her seat after dinner hour--she had been told by Mr. Phillips to

sit with the model Minnie Andrews--she found on her desk a big luscious

“strawberry apple.” Anne caught it up all ready to take a bite when she

remembered that the only place in Avonlea where strawberry apples grew

was in the old Blythe orchard on the other side of the Lake of Shining

Waters. Anne dropped the apple as if it were a red-hot coal and

ostentatiously wiped her fingers on her handkerchief. The apple lay

untouched on her desk until the next morning, when little Timothy

Andrews, who swept the school and kindled the fire, annexed it as one

of his perquisites. Charlie Sloane’s slate pencil, gorgeously bedizened

with striped red and yellow paper, costing two cents where ordinary

pencils cost only one, which he sent up to her after dinner hour, met

with a more favorable reception. Anne was graciously pleased to accept

it and rewarded the donor with a smile which exalted that infatuated

youth straightway into the seventh heaven of delight and caused him to

make such fearful errors in his dictation that Mr. Phillips kept him in

after school to rewrite it.

But as,

The Cæsar’s pageant shorn of Brutus’ bust

Did but of Rome’s best son remind her more,

so the marked absence of any tribute or recognition from Diana Barry who

was sitting with Gertie Pye embittered Anne’s little triumph.

“Diana might just have smiled at me once, I think,” she mourned to

Marilla that night. But the next morning a note most fearfully and

wonderfully twisted and folded, and a small parcel were passed across to

Anne.

“Dear Anne, ran the former, “Mother says I’m not to play with you or

talk to you even in school. It isn’t my fault and don’t be cross at

me, because I love you as much as ever. I miss you awfully to tell

all my secrets to and I don’t like Gertie Pye one bit. I made you

one of the new bookmarkers out of red tissue paper. They are awfully

fashionable now and only three girls in school know how to make

them. When you look at it remember

Your true friend,

Diana Barry.

Anne read the note, kissed the bookmark, and dispatched a prompt reply

back to the other side of the school.

My own darling Diana:--

Of course I am not cross at you because you have to obey your

mother. Our spirits can commune. I shall keep your lovely present

forever. Minnie Andrews is a very nice little girl--although she

has no imagination--but after having been Diana’s busum friend I

cannot be Minnie’s. Please excuse mistakes because my spelling

isn’t very good yet, although much improoved.

Yours until death us do part

Anne or Cordelia Shirley.

P.S. I shall sleep with your letter under my pillow tonight.

A. _or_ C.S.

Marilla pessimistically expected more trouble since Anne had again begun

to go to school. But none developed. Perhaps Anne caught something of

the “model” spirit from Minnie Andrews; at least she got on very well

with Mr. Phillips thenceforth. She flung herself into her studies heart

and soul, determined not to be outdone in any class by Gilbert Blythe.

The rivalry between them was soon apparent; it was entirely good natured

on Gilbert’s side; but it is much to be feared that the same thing

cannot be said of Anne, who had certainly an unpraiseworthy tenacity for

holding grudges. She was as intense in her hatreds as in her loves. She

would not stoop to admit that she meant to rival Gilbert in schoolwork,

because that would have been to acknowledge his existence which Anne

persistently ignored; but the rivalry was there and honors fluctuated

between them. Now Gilbert was head of the spelling class; now Anne, with

a toss of her long red braids, spelled him down. One morning Gilbert had

all his sums done correctly and had his name written on the blackboard

on the roll of honor; the next morning Anne, having wrestled wildly with

decimals the entire evening before, would be first. One awful day they

were ties and their names were written up together. It was almost as bad

as a take-notice and Anne’s mortification was as evident as Gilbert’s

satisfaction. When the written examinations at the end of each month

were held the suspense was terrible. The first month Gilbert came out

three marks ahead. The second Anne beat him by five. But her triumph was

marred by the fact that Gilbert congratulated her heartily before the

whole school. It would have been ever so much sweeter to her if he had

felt the sting of his defeat.

Mr. Phillips might not be a very good teacher; but a pupil so inflexibly

determined on learning as Anne was could hardly escape making progress

under any kind of teacher. By the end of the term Anne and Gilbert were

both promoted into the fifth class and allowed to begin studying the

elements of “the branches”--by which Latin, geometry, French, and

algebra were meant. In geometry Anne met her Waterloo.

“It’s perfectly awful stuff, Marilla,” she groaned. “I’m sure I’ll never

be able to make head or tail of it. There is no scope for imagination in

it at all. Mr. Phillips says I’m the worst dunce he ever saw at it.

And Gil--I mean some of the others are so smart at it. It is extremely

mortifying, Marilla.

“Even Diana gets along better than I do. But I don’t mind being beaten

by Diana. Even although we meet as strangers now I still love her with

an _inextinguishable_ love. It makes me very sad at times to think about

her. But really, Marilla, one can’t stay sad very long in such an

interesting world, can one?”