JUNIOR Avonlea found it hard to settle down to humdrum existence

again. To Anne in particular things seemed fearfully flat, stale, and

unprofitable after the goblet of excitement she had been sipping for

weeks. Could she go back to the former quiet pleasures of those faraway

days before the concert? At first, as she told Diana, she did not really

think she could.

“I’m positively certain, Diana, that life can never be quite the

same again as it was in those olden days,” she said mournfully, as if

referring to a period of at least fifty years back. “Perhaps after a

while I’ll get used to it, but I’m afraid concerts spoil people for

everyday life. I suppose that is why Marilla disapproves of them.

Marilla is such a sensible woman. It must be a great deal better to be

sensible; but still, I don’t believe I’d really want to be a sensible

person, because they are so unromantic. Mrs. Lynde says there is no

danger of my ever being one, but you can never tell. I feel just now

that I may grow up to be sensible yet. But perhaps that is only because

I’m tired. I simply couldn’t sleep last night for ever so long. I just

lay awake and imagined the concert over and over again. That’s one

splendid thing about such affairs--it’s so lovely to look back to them.”

Eventually, however, Avonlea school slipped back into its old groove

and took up its old interests. To be sure, the concert left traces. Ruby

Gillis and Emma White, who had quarreled over a point of precedence in

their platform seats, no longer sat at the same desk, and a promising

friendship of three years was broken up. Josie Pye and Julia Bell did

not “speak” for three months, because Josie Pye had told Bessie Wright

that Julia Bell’s bow when she got up to recite made her think of a

chicken jerking its head, and Bessie told Julia. None of the Sloanes

would have any dealings with the Bells, because the Bells had declared

that the Sloanes had too much to do in the program, and the Sloanes had

retorted that the Bells were not capable of doing the little they had to

do properly. Finally, Charlie Sloane fought Moody Spurgeon MacPherson,

because Moody Spurgeon had said that Anne Shirley put on airs about

her recitations, and Moody Spurgeon was “licked”; consequently Moody

Spurgeon’s sister, Ella May, would not “speak” to Anne Shirley all the

rest of the winter. With the exception of these trifling frictions, work

in Miss Stacy’s little kingdom went on with regularity and smoothness.

The winter weeks slipped by. It was an unusually mild winter, with so

little snow that Anne and Diana could go to school nearly every day by

way of the Birch Path. On Anne’s birthday they were tripping lightly

down it, keeping eyes and ears alert amid all their chatter, for Miss

Stacy had told them that they must soon write a composition on “A

Winter’s Walk in the Woods,” and it behooved them to be observant.

“Just think, Diana, I’m thirteen years old today,” remarked Anne in an

awed voice. “I can scarcely realize that I’m in my teens. When I woke

this morning it seemed to me that everything must be different. You’ve

been thirteen for a month, so I suppose it doesn’t seem such a novelty

to you as it does to me. It makes life seem so much more interesting.

In two more years I’ll be really grown up. It’s a great comfort to think

that I’ll be able to use big words then without being laughed at.”

“Ruby Gillis says she means to have a beau as soon as she’s fifteen,”

said Diana.

“Ruby Gillis thinks of nothing but beaus,” said Anne disdainfully.

“She’s actually delighted when anyone writes her name up in a

take-notice for all she pretends to be so mad. But I’m afraid that is an

uncharitable speech. Mrs. Allan says we should never make uncharitable

speeches; but they do slip out so often before you think, don’t they? I

simply can’t talk about Josie Pye without making an uncharitable speech,

so I never mention her at all. You may have noticed that. I’m trying to

be as much like Mrs. Allan as I possibly can, for I think she’s perfect.

Mr. Allan thinks so too. Mrs. Lynde says he just worships the ground she

treads on and she doesn’t really think it right for a minister to

set his affections so much on a mortal being. But then, Diana, even

ministers are human and have their besetting sins just like everybody

else. I had such an interesting talk with Mrs. Allan about besetting

sins last Sunday afternoon. There are just a few things it’s proper

to talk about on Sundays and that is one of them. My besetting sin is

imagining too much and forgetting my duties. I’m striving very hard

to overcome it and now that I’m really thirteen perhaps I’ll get on

better.”

“In four more years we’ll be able to put our hair up,” said Diana.

“Alice Bell is only sixteen and she is wearing hers up, but I think

that’s ridiculous. I shall wait until I’m seventeen.”

“If I had Alice Bell’s crooked nose,” said Anne decidedly, “I

wouldn’t--but there! I won’t say what I was going to because it was

extremely uncharitable. Besides, I was comparing it with my own nose and

that’s vanity. I’m afraid I think too much about my nose ever since I

heard that compliment about it long ago. It really is a great comfort to

me. Oh, Diana, look, there’s a rabbit. That’s something to remember for

our woods composition. I really think the woods are just as lovely in

winter as in summer. They’re so white and still, as if they were asleep

and dreaming pretty dreams.”

“I won’t mind writing that composition when its time comes,” sighed

Diana. “I can manage to write about the woods, but the one we’re to

hand in Monday is terrible. The idea of Miss Stacy telling us to write a

story out of our own heads!”

“Why, it’s as easy as wink,” said Anne.

“It’s easy for you because you have an imagination,” retorted Diana,

“but what would you do if you had been born without one? I suppose you

have your composition all done?”

Anne nodded, trying hard not to look virtuously complacent and failing

miserably.

“I wrote it last Monday evening. It’s called ‘The Jealous Rival; or In

Death Not Divided.’ I read it to Marilla and she said it was stuff and

nonsense. Then I read it to Matthew and he said it was fine. That is

the kind of critic I like. It’s a sad, sweet story. I just cried like

a child while I was writing it. It’s about two beautiful maidens called

Cordelia Montmorency and Geraldine Seymour who lived in the same village

and were devotedly attached to each other. Cordelia was a regal brunette

with a coronet of midnight hair and duskly flashing eyes. Geraldine was

a queenly blonde with hair like spun gold and velvety purple eyes.”

“I never saw anybody with purple eyes,” said Diana dubiously.

“Neither did I. I just imagined them. I wanted something out of the

common. Geraldine had an alabaster brow too. I’ve found out what an

alabaster brow is. That is one of the advantages of being thirteen. You

know so much more than you did when you were only twelve.”

“Well, what became of Cordelia and Geraldine?” asked Diana, who was

beginning to feel rather interested in their fate.

“They grew in beauty side by side until they were sixteen. Then Bertram

DeVere came to their native village and fell in love with the fair

Geraldine. He saved her life when her horse ran away with her in a

carriage, and she fainted in his arms and he carried her home three

miles; because, you understand, the carriage was all smashed up. I found

it rather hard to imagine the proposal because I had no experience to

go by. I asked Ruby Gillis if she knew anything about how men proposed

because I thought she’d likely be an authority on the subject, having so

many sisters married. Ruby told me she was hid in the hall pantry when

Malcolm Andres proposed to her sister Susan. She said Malcolm told Susan

that his dad had given him the farm in his own name and then said, ‘What

do you say, darling pet, if we get hitched this fall?’ And Susan said,

‘Yes--no--I don’t know--let me see’--and there they were, engaged as

quick as that. But I didn’t think that sort of a proposal was a very

romantic one, so in the end I had to imagine it out as well as I could.

I made it very flowery and poetical and Bertram went on his knees,

although Ruby Gillis says it isn’t done nowadays. Geraldine accepted

him in a speech a page long. I can tell you I took a lot of trouble

with that speech. I rewrote it five times and I look upon it as my

masterpiece. Bertram gave her a diamond ring and a ruby necklace

and told her they would go to Europe for a wedding tour, for he was

immensely wealthy. But then, alas, shadows began to darken over their

path. Cordelia was secretly in love with Bertram herself and when

Geraldine told her about the engagement she was simply furious,

especially when she saw the necklace and the diamond ring. All her

affection for Geraldine turned to bitter hate and she vowed that she

should never marry Bertram. But she pretended to be Geraldine’s friend

the same as ever. One evening they were standing on the bridge over a

rushing turbulent stream and Cordelia, thinking they were alone, pushed

Geraldine over the brink with a wild, mocking, ‘Ha, ha, ha.’ But Bertram

saw it all and he at once plunged into the current, exclaiming, ‘I

will save thee, my peerless Geraldine.’ But alas, he had forgotten he

couldn’t swim, and they were both drowned, clasped in each other’s arms.

Their bodies were washed ashore soon afterwards. They were buried in the

one grave and their funeral was most imposing, Diana. It’s so much

more romantic to end a story up with a funeral than a wedding. As for

Cordelia, she went insane with remorse and was shut up in a lunatic

asylum. I thought that was a poetical retribution for her crime.”

“How perfectly lovely!” sighed Diana, who belonged to Matthew’s school

of critics. “I don’t see how you can make up such thrilling things out

of your own head, Anne. I wish my imagination was as good as yours.”

“It would be if you’d only cultivate it,” said Anne cheeringly. “I’ve

just thought of a plan, Diana. Let you and me have a story club all our

own and write stories for practice. I’ll help you along until you can

do them by yourself. You ought to cultivate your imagination, you know.

Miss Stacy says so. Only we must take the right way. I told her about

the Haunted Wood, but she said we went the wrong way about it in that.”

This was how the story club came into existence. It was limited to Diana

and Anne at first, but soon it was extended to include Jane Andrews

and Ruby Gillis and one or two others who felt that their imaginations

needed cultivating. No boys were allowed in it--although Ruby Gillis

opined that their admission would make it more exciting--and each member

had to produce one story a week.

“It’s extremely interesting,” Anne told Marilla. “Each girl has to read

her story out loud and then we talk it over. We are going to keep them

all sacredly and have them to read to our descendants. We each write

under a nom-de-plume. Mine is Rosamond Montmorency. All the girls

do pretty well. Ruby Gillis is rather sentimental. She puts too much

lovemaking into her stories and you know too much is worse than too

little. Jane never puts any because she says it makes her feel so silly

when she had to read it out loud. Jane’s stories are extremely sensible.

Then Diana puts too many murders into hers. She says most of the time

she doesn’t know what to do with the people so she kills them off to get

rid of them. I mostly always have to tell them what to write about, but

that isn’t hard for I’ve millions of ideas.”

“I think this story-writing business is the foolishest yet,” scoffed

Marilla. “You’ll get a pack of nonsense into your heads and waste time

that should be put on your lessons. Reading stories is bad enough but

writing them is worse.”

“But we’re so careful to put a moral into them all, Marilla,” explained

Anne. “I insist upon that. All the good people are rewarded and all

the bad ones are suitably punished. I’m sure that must have a wholesome

effect. The moral is the great thing. Mr. Allan says so. I read one of

my stories to him and Mrs. Allan and they both agreed that the moral was

excellent. Only they laughed in the wrong places. I like it better when

people cry. Jane and Ruby almost always cry when I come to the pathetic

parts. Diana wrote her Aunt Josephine about our club and her Aunt

Josephine wrote back that we were to send her some of our stories. So

we copied out four of our very best and sent them. Miss Josephine Barry

wrote back that she had never read anything so amusing in her life. That

kind of puzzled us because the stories were all very pathetic and almost

everybody died. But I’m glad Miss Barry liked them. It shows our club

is doing some good in the world. Mrs. Allan says that ought to be our

object in everything. I do really try to make it my object but I forget

so often when I’m having fun. I hope I shall be a little like Mrs. Allan

when I grow up. Do you think there is any prospect of it, Marilla?”

“I shouldn’t say there was a great deal” was Marilla’s encouraging

answer. “I’m sure Mrs. Allan was never such a silly, forgetful little

girl as you are.”

“No; but she wasn’t always so good as she is now either,” said Anne

seriously. “She told me so herself--that is, she said she was a dreadful

mischief when she was a girl and was always getting into scrapes. I felt

so encouraged when I heard that. Is it very wicked of me, Marilla,

to feel encouraged when I hear that other people have been bad and

mischievous? Mrs. Lynde says it is. Mrs. Lynde says she always feels

shocked when she hears of anyone ever having been naughty, no matter how

small they were. Mrs. Lynde says she once heard a minister confess that

when he was a boy he stole a strawberry tart out of his aunt’s pantry

and she never had any respect for that minister again. Now, I wouldn’t

have felt that way. I’d have thought that it was real noble of him to

confess it, and I’d have thought what an encouraging thing it would be

for small boys nowadays who do naughty things and are sorry for them

to know that perhaps they may grow up to be ministers in spite of it.

That’s how I’d feel, Marilla.”

“The way I feel at present, Anne,” said Marilla, “is that it’s high time

you had those dishes washed. You’ve taken half an hour longer than

you should with all your chattering. Learn to work first and talk

afterwards.”