MARILLA, walking home one late April evening from an Aid meeting,

realized that the winter was over and gone with the thrill of delight

that spring never fails to bring to the oldest and saddest as well as to

the youngest and merriest. Marilla was not given to subjective analysis

of her thoughts and feelings. She probably imagined that she was

thinking about the Aids and their missionary box and the new carpet

for the vestry room, but under these reflections was a harmonious

consciousness of red fields smoking into pale-purply mists in the

declining sun, of long, sharp-pointed fir shadows falling over the

meadow beyond the brook, of still, crimson-budded maples around a

mirrorlike wood pool, of a wakening in the world and a stir of hidden

pulses under the gray sod. The spring was abroad in the land and

Marilla’s sober, middle-aged step was lighter and swifter because of its

deep, primal gladness.

Her eyes dwelt affectionately on Green Gables, peering through its

network of trees and reflecting the sunlight back from its windows in

several little coruscations of glory. Marilla, as she picked her steps

along the damp lane, thought that it was really a satisfaction to know

that she was going home to a briskly snapping wood fire and a table

nicely spread for tea, instead of to the cold comfort of old Aid meeting

evenings before Anne had come to Green Gables.

Consequently, when Marilla entered her kitchen and found the fire black

out, with no sign of Anne anywhere, she felt justly disappointed and

irritated. She had told Anne to be sure and have tea ready at five

o’clock, but now she must hurry to take off her second-best dress and

prepare the meal herself against Matthew’s return from plowing.

“I’ll settle Miss Anne when she comes home,” said Marilla grimly, as

she shaved up kindlings with a carving knife and with more vim than was

strictly necessary. Matthew had come in and was waiting patiently for

his tea in his corner. “She’s gadding off somewhere with Diana, writing

stories or practicing dialogues or some such tomfoolery, and never

thinking once about the time or her duties. She’s just got to be pulled

up short and sudden on this sort of thing. I don’t care if Mrs. Allan

does say she’s the brightest and sweetest child she ever knew. She may

be bright and sweet enough, but her head is full of nonsense and there’s

never any knowing what shape it’ll break out in next. Just as soon as

she grows out of one freak she takes up with another. But there! Here I

am saying the very thing I was so riled with Rachel Lynde for saying at

the Aid today. I was real glad when Mrs. Allan spoke up for Anne, for

if she hadn’t I know I’d have said something too sharp to Rachel before

everybody. Anne’s got plenty of faults, goodness knows, and far be it

from me to deny it. But I’m bringing her up and not Rachel Lynde, who’d

pick faults in the Angel Gabriel himself if he lived in Avonlea. Just

the same, Anne has no business to leave the house like this when I told

her she was to stay home this afternoon and look after things. I must

say, with all her faults, I never found her disobedient or untrustworthy

before and I’m real sorry to find her so now.”

“Well now, I dunno,” said Matthew, who, being patient and wise and,

above all, hungry, had deemed it best to let Marilla talk her wrath

out unhindered, having learned by experience that she got through

with whatever work was on hand much quicker if not delayed by untimely

argument. “Perhaps you’re judging her too hasty, Marilla. Don’t call her

untrustworthy until you’re sure she has disobeyed you. Mebbe it can all

be explained--Anne’s a great hand at explaining.”

“She’s not here when I told her to stay,” retorted Marilla. “I reckon

she’ll find it hard to explain _that_ to my satisfaction. Of course I knew

you’d take her part, Matthew. But I’m bringing her up, not you.”

It was dark when supper was ready, and still no sign of Anne, coming

hurriedly over the log bridge or up Lover’s Lane, breathless and

repentant with a sense of neglected duties. Marilla washed and put away

the dishes grimly. Then, wanting a candle to light her way down the

cellar, she went up to the east gable for the one that generally stood

on Anne’s table. Lighting it, she turned around to see Anne herself

lying on the bed, face downward among the pillows.

“Mercy on us,” said astonished Marilla, “have you been asleep, Anne?”

“No,” was the muffled reply.

“Are you sick then?” demanded Marilla anxiously, going over to the bed.

Anne cowered deeper into her pillows as if desirous of hiding herself

forever from mortal eyes.

“No. But please, Marilla, go away and don’t look at me. I’m in the

depths of despair and I don’t care who gets head in class or writes the

best composition or sings in the Sunday-school choir any more. Little

things like that are of no importance now because I don’t suppose I’ll

ever be able to go anywhere again. My career is closed. Please, Marilla,

go away and don’t look at me.”

“Did anyone ever hear the like?” the mystified Marilla wanted to know.

“Anne Shirley, whatever is the matter with you? What have you done? Get

right up this minute and tell me. This minute, I say. There now, what is

it?”

Anne had slid to the floor in despairing obedience.

“Look at my hair, Marilla,” she whispered.

Accordingly, Marilla lifted her candle and looked scrutinizingly at

Anne’s hair, flowing in heavy masses down her back. It certainly had a

very strange appearance.

“Anne Shirley, what have you done to your hair? Why, it’s _green!_”

Green it might be called, if it were any earthly color--a queer,

dull, bronzy green, with streaks here and there of the original red

to heighten the ghastly effect. Never in all her life had Marilla seen

anything so grotesque as Anne’s hair at that moment.

“Yes, it’s green,” moaned Anne. “I thought nothing could be as bad as

red hair. But now I know it’s ten times worse to have green hair. Oh,

Marilla, you little know how utterly wretched I am.”

“I little know how you got into this fix, but I mean to find out,” said

Marilla. “Come right down to the kitchen--it’s too cold up here--and

tell me just what you’ve done. I’ve been expecting something queer for

some time. You haven’t got into any scrape for over two months, and I

was sure another one was due. Now, then, what did you do to your hair?”

“I dyed it.”

“Dyed it! Dyed your hair! Anne Shirley, didn’t you know it was a wicked

thing to do?”

“Yes, I knew it was a little wicked,” admitted Anne. “But I thought it

was worth while to be a little wicked to get rid of red hair. I counted

the cost, Marilla. Besides, I meant to be extra good in other ways to

make up for it.”

“Well,” said Marilla sarcastically, “if I’d decided it was worth while

to dye my hair I’d have dyed it a decent color at least. I wouldn’t have

dyed it green.”

“But I didn’t mean to dye it green, Marilla,” protested Anne dejectedly.

“If I was wicked I meant to be wicked to some purpose. He said it would

turn my hair a beautiful raven black--he positively assured me that it

would. How could I doubt his word, Marilla? I know what it feels like

to have your word doubted. And Mrs. Allan says we should never suspect

anyone of not telling us the truth unless we have proof that they’re

not. I have proof now--green hair is proof enough for anybody. But I

hadn’t then and I believed every word he said _implicitly_.”

“Who said? Who are you talking about?”

“The peddler that was here this afternoon. I bought the dye from him.”

“Anne Shirley, how often have I told you never to let one of those

Italians in the house! I don’t believe in encouraging them to come

around at all.”

“Oh, I didn’t let him in the house. I remembered what you told me, and I

went out, carefully shut the door, and looked at his things on the step.

Besides, he wasn’t an Italian--he was a German Jew. He had a big box

full of very interesting things and he told me he was working hard to

make enough money to bring his wife and children out from Germany. He

spoke so feelingly about them that it touched my heart. I wanted to buy

something from him to help him in such a worthy object. Then all at once

I saw the bottle of hair dye. The peddler said it was warranted to dye

any hair a beautiful raven black and wouldn’t wash off. In a trice I

saw myself with beautiful raven-black hair and the temptation was

irresistible. But the price of the bottle was seventy-five cents and I

had only fifty cents left out of my chicken money. I think the peddler

had a very kind heart, for he said that, seeing it was me, he’d sell it

for fifty cents and that was just giving it away. So I bought it, and as

soon as he had gone I came up here and applied it with an old hairbrush

as the directions said. I used up the whole bottle, and oh, Marilla,

when I saw the dreadful color it turned my hair I repented of being

wicked, I can tell you. And I’ve been repenting ever since.”

“Well, I hope you’ll repent to good purpose,” said Marilla severely,

“and that you’ve got your eyes opened to where your vanity has led you,

Anne. Goodness knows what’s to be done. I suppose the first thing is to

give your hair a good washing and see if that will do any good.”

Accordingly, Anne washed her hair, scrubbing it vigorously with soap and

water, but for all the difference it made she might as well have been

scouring its original red. The peddler had certainly spoken the truth

when he declared that the dye wouldn’t wash off, however his veracity

might be impeached in other respects.

“Oh, Marilla, what shall I do?” questioned Anne in tears. “I can never

live this down. People have pretty well forgotten my other mistakes--the

liniment cake and setting Diana drunk and flying into a temper with

Mrs. Lynde. But they’ll never forget this. They will think I am not

respectable. Oh, Marilla, ‘what a tangled web we weave when first we

practice to deceive.’ That is poetry, but it is true. And oh, how Josie

Pye will laugh! Marilla, I _cannot_ face Josie Pye. I am the unhappiest

girl in Prince Edward Island.”

Anne’s unhappiness continued for a week. During that time she went

nowhere and shampooed her hair every day. Diana alone of outsiders knew

the fatal secret, but she promised solemnly never to tell, and it may

be stated here and now that she kept her word. At the end of the week

Marilla said decidedly:

“It’s no use, Anne. That is fast dye if ever there was any. Your hair

must be cut off; there is no other way. You can’t go out with it looking

like that.”

Anne’s lips quivered, but she realized the bitter truth of Marilla’s

remarks. With a dismal sigh she went for the scissors.

“Please cut it off at once, Marilla, and have it over. Oh, I feel that

my heart is broken. This is such an unromantic affliction. The girls in

books lose their hair in fevers or sell it to get money for some good

deed, and I’m sure I wouldn’t mind losing my hair in some such fashion

half so much. But there is nothing comforting in having your hair cut

off because you’ve dyed it a dreadful color, is there? I’m going to weep

all the time you’re cutting it off, if it won’t interfere. It seems such

a tragic thing.”

Anne wept then, but later on, when she went upstairs and looked in the

glass, she was calm with despair. Marilla had done her work thoroughly

and it had been necessary to shingle the hair as closely as possible.

The result was not becoming, to state the case as mildly as may be. Anne

promptly turned her glass to the wall.

“I’ll never, never look at myself again until my hair grows,” she

exclaimed passionately.

Then she suddenly righted the glass.

“Yes, I will, too. I’d do penance for being wicked that way. I’ll look

at myself every time I come to my room and see how ugly I am. And I

won’t try to imagine it away, either. I never thought I was vain about

my hair, of all things, but now I know I was, in spite of its being

red, because it was so long and thick and curly. I expect something will

happen to my nose next.”

Anne’s clipped head made a sensation in school on the following Monday,

but to her relief nobody guessed the real reason for it, not even Josie

Pye, who, however, did not fail to inform Anne that she looked like a

perfect scarecrow.

“I didn’t say anything when Josie said that to me,” Anne confided

that evening to Marilla, who was lying on the sofa after one of her

headaches, “because I thought it was part of my punishment and I ought

to bear it patiently. It’s hard to be told you look like a scarecrow

and I wanted to say something back. But I didn’t. I just swept her one

scornful look and then I forgave her. It makes you feel very virtuous

when you forgive people, doesn’t it? I mean to devote all my energies

to being good after this and I shall never try to be beautiful again. Of

course it’s better to be good. I know it is, but it’s sometimes so hard

to believe a thing even when you know it. I do really want to be good,

Marilla, like you and Mrs. Allan and Miss Stacy, and grow up to be a

credit to you. Diana says when my hair begins to grow to tie a black

velvet ribbon around my head with a bow at one side. She says she

thinks it will be very becoming. I will call it a snood--that sounds so

romantic. But am I talking too much, Marilla? Does it hurt your head?”

“My head is better now. It was terrible bad this afternoon, though.

These headaches of mine are getting worse and worse. I’ll have to see

a doctor about them. As for your chatter, I don’t know that I mind

it--I’ve got so used to it.”

Which was Marilla’s way of saying that she liked to hear it.