OF course you must be Elaine, Anne,” said Diana. “I could never have

the courage to float down there.”

“Nor I,” said Ruby Gillis, with a shiver. “I don’t mind floating down

when there’s two or three of us in the flat and we can sit up. It’s fun

then. But to lie down and pretend I was dead--I just couldn’t. I’d die

really of fright.”

“Of course it would be romantic,” conceded Jane Andrews, “but I know I

couldn’t keep still. I’d be popping up every minute or so to see where I

was and if I wasn’t drifting too far out. And you know, Anne, that would

spoil the effect.”

“But it’s so ridiculous to have a redheaded Elaine,” mourned Anne. “I’m

not afraid to float down and I’d love to be Elaine. But it’s ridiculous

just the same. Ruby ought to be Elaine because she is so fair and has

such lovely long golden hair--Elaine had ‘all her bright hair streaming

down,’ you know. And Elaine was the lily maid. Now, a red-haired person

cannot be a lily maid.”

“Your complexion is just as fair as Ruby’s,” said Diana earnestly, “and

your hair is ever so much darker than it used to be before you cut it.”

“Oh, do you really think so?” exclaimed Anne, flushing sensitively with

delight. “I’ve sometimes thought it was myself--but I never dared to ask

anyone for fear she would tell me it wasn’t. Do you think it could be

called auburn now, Diana?”

“Yes, and I think it is real pretty,” said Diana, looking admiringly at

the short, silky curls that clustered over Anne’s head and were held in

place by a very jaunty black velvet ribbon and bow.

They were standing on the bank of the pond, below Orchard Slope, where

a little headland fringed with birches ran out from the bank; at its tip

was a small wooden platform built out into the water for the convenience

of fishermen and duck hunters. Ruby and Jane were spending the midsummer

afternoon with Diana, and Anne had come over to play with them.

Anne and Diana had spent most of their playtime that summer on and about

the pond. Idlewild was a thing of the past, Mr. Bell having ruthlessly

cut down the little circle of trees in his back pasture in the spring.

Anne had sat among the stumps and wept, not without an eye to the

romance of it; but she was speedily consoled, for, after all, as she and

Diana said, big girls of thirteen, going on fourteen, were too old for

such childish amusements as playhouses, and there were more fascinating

sports to be found about the pond. It was splendid to fish for trout

over the bridge and the two girls learned to row themselves about in the

little flat-bottomed dory Mr. Barry kept for duck shooting.

It was Anne’s idea that they dramatize Elaine. They had studied

Tennyson’s poem in school the preceding winter, the Superintendent of

Education having prescribed it in the English course for the Prince

Edward Island schools. They had analyzed and parsed it and torn it to

pieces in general until it was a wonder there was any meaning at all

left in it for them, but at least the fair lily maid and Lancelot and

Guinevere and King Arthur had become very real people to them, and Anne

was devoured by secret regret that she had not been born in Camelot.

Those days, she said, were so much more romantic than the present.

Anne’s plan was hailed with enthusiasm. The girls had discovered that if

the flat were pushed off from the landing place it would drift down

with the current under the bridge and finally strand itself on another

headland lower down which ran out at a curve in the pond. They had often

gone down like this and nothing could be more convenient for playing

Elaine.

“Well, I’ll be Elaine,” said Anne, yielding reluctantly, for, although

she would have been delighted to play the principal character, yet

her artistic sense demanded fitness for it and this, she felt, her

limitations made impossible. “Ruby, you must be King Arthur and Jane

will be Guinevere and Diana must be Lancelot. But first you must be the

brothers and the father. We can’t have the old dumb servitor because

there isn’t room for two in the flat when one is lying down. We must

pall the barge all its length in blackest samite. That old black shawl

of your mother’s will be just the thing, Diana.”

The black shawl having been procured, Anne spread it over the flat and

then lay down on the bottom, with closed eyes and hands folded over her

breast.

“Oh, she does look really dead,” whispered Ruby Gillis nervously,

watching the still, white little face under the flickering shadows of

the birches. “It makes me feel frightened, girls. Do you suppose it’s

really right to act like this? Mrs. Lynde says that all play-acting is

abominably wicked.”

“Ruby, you shouldn’t talk about Mrs. Lynde,” said Anne severely. “It

spoils the effect because this is hundreds of years before Mrs. Lynde

was born. Jane, you arrange this. It’s silly for Elaine to be talking

when she’s dead.”

Jane rose to the occasion. Cloth of gold for coverlet there was none,

but an old piano scarf of yellow Japanese crepe was an excellent

substitute. A white lily was not obtainable just then, but the effect of

a tall blue iris placed in one of Anne’s folded hands was all that could

be desired.

“Now, she’s all ready,” said Jane. “We must kiss her quiet brows

and, Diana, you say, ‘Sister, farewell forever,’ and Ruby, you say,

‘Farewell, sweet sister,’ both of you as sorrowfully as you possibly

can. Anne, for goodness sake smile a little. You know Elaine ‘lay as

though she smiled.’ That’s better. Now push the flat off.”

The flat was accordingly pushed off, scraping roughly over an old

embedded stake in the process. Diana and Jane and Ruby only waited long

enough to see it caught in the current and headed for the bridge before

scampering up through the woods, across the road, and down to the lower

headland where, as Lancelot and Guinevere and the King, they were to be

in readiness to receive the lily maid.

For a few minutes Anne, drifting slowly down, enjoyed the romance of her

situation to the full. Then something happened not at all romantic. The

flat began to leak. In a very few moments it was necessary for Elaine

to scramble to her feet, pick up her cloth of gold coverlet and pall

of blackest samite and gaze blankly at a big crack in the bottom of her

barge through which the water was literally pouring. That sharp stake at

the landing had torn off the strip of batting nailed on the flat. Anne

did not know this, but it did not take her long to realize that she was

in a dangerous plight. At this rate the flat would fill and sink long

before it could drift to the lower headland. Where were the oars? Left

behind at the landing!

Anne gave one gasping little scream which nobody ever heard; she was

white to the lips, but she did not lose her self-possession. There was

one chance--just one.

“I was horribly frightened,” she told Mrs. Allan the next day, “and it

seemed like years while the flat was drifting down to the bridge and the

water rising in it every moment. I prayed, Mrs. Allan, most earnestly,

but I didn’t shut my eyes to pray, for I knew the only way God could

save me was to let the flat float close enough to one of the bridge

piles for me to climb up on it. You know the piles are just old tree

trunks and there are lots of knots and old branch stubs on them. It was

proper to pray, but I had to do my part by watching out and right well

I knew it. I just said, ‘Dear God, please take the flat close to a pile

and I’ll do the rest,’ over and over again. Under such circumstances you

don’t think much about making a flowery prayer. But mine was answered,

for the flat bumped right into a pile for a minute and I flung the scarf

and the shawl over my shoulder and scrambled up on a big providential

stub. And there I was, Mrs. Allan, clinging to that slippery old pile

with no way of getting up or down. It was a very unromantic position,

but I didn’t think about that at the time. You don’t think much about

romance when you have just escaped from a watery grave. I said a

grateful prayer at once and then I gave all my attention to holding on

tight, for I knew I should probably have to depend on human aid to get

back to dry land.”

The flat drifted under the bridge and then promptly sank in midstream.

Ruby, Jane, and Diana, already awaiting it on the lower headland, saw it

disappear before their very eyes and had not a doubt but that Anne

had gone down with it. For a moment they stood still, white as sheets,

frozen with horror at the tragedy; then, shrieking at the tops of

their voices, they started on a frantic run up through the woods, never

pausing as they crossed the main road to glance the way of the bridge.

Anne, clinging desperately to her precarious foothold, saw their flying

forms and heard their shrieks. Help would soon come, but meanwhile her

position was a very uncomfortable one.

The minutes passed by, each seeming an hour to the unfortunate lily

maid. Why didn’t somebody come? Where had the girls gone? Suppose they

had fainted, one and all! Suppose nobody ever came! Suppose she grew so

tired and cramped that she could hold on no longer! Anne looked at the

wicked green depths below her, wavering with long, oily shadows, and

shivered. Her imagination began to suggest all manner of gruesome

possibilities to her.

Then, just as she thought she really could not endure the ache in her

arms and wrists another moment, Gilbert Blythe came rowing under the

bridge in Harmon Andrews’s dory!

Gilbert glanced up and, much to his amazement, beheld a little white

scornful face looking down upon him with big, frightened but also

scornful gray eyes.

“Anne Shirley! How on earth did you get there?” he exclaimed.

Without waiting for an answer he pulled close to the pile and extended

his hand. There was no help for it; Anne, clinging to Gilbert Blythe’s

hand, scrambled down into the dory, where she sat, drabbled and furious,

in the stern with her arms full of dripping shawl and wet crepe. It was

certainly extremely difficult to be dignified under the circumstances!

“What has happened, Anne?” asked Gilbert, taking up his oars.

“We were playing Elaine,” explained Anne frigidly, without even looking

at her rescuer, “and I had to drift down to Camelot in the barge--I

mean the flat. The flat began to leak and I climbed out on the pile.

The girls went for help. Will you be kind enough to row me to the

landing?”

Gilbert obligingly rowed to the landing and Anne, disdaining assistance,

sprang nimbly on shore.

“I’m very much obliged to you,” she said haughtily as she turned away.

But Gilbert had also sprung from the boat and now laid a detaining hand

on her arm.

“Anne,” he said hurriedly, “look here. Can’t we be good friends? I’m

awfully sorry I made fun of your hair that time. I didn’t mean to vex

you and I only meant it for a joke. Besides, it’s so long ago. I think

your hair is awfully pretty now--honest I do. Let’s be friends.”

For a moment Anne hesitated. She had an odd, newly awakened

consciousness under all her outraged dignity that the half-shy,

half-eager expression in Gilbert’s hazel eyes was something that was

very good to see. Her heart gave a quick, queer little beat. But the

bitterness of her old grievance promptly stiffened up her wavering

determination. That scene of two years before flashed back into her

recollection as vividly as if it had taken place yesterday. Gilbert had

called her “carrots” and had brought about her disgrace before the whole

school. Her resentment, which to other and older people might be as

laughable as its cause, was in no whit allayed and softened by time

seemingly. She hated Gilbert Blythe! She would never forgive him!

“No,” she said coldly, “I shall never be friends with you, Gilbert

Blythe; and I don’t want to be!”

“All right!” Gilbert sprang into his skiff with an angry color in his

cheeks. “I’ll never ask you to be friends again, Anne Shirley. And I

don’t care either!”

He pulled away with swift defiant strokes, and Anne went up the steep,

ferny little path under the maples. She held her head very high, but

she was conscious of an odd feeling of regret. She almost wished she had

answered Gilbert differently. Of course, he had insulted her terribly,

but still--! Altogether, Anne rather thought it would be a relief to

sit down and have a good cry. She was really quite unstrung, for the

reaction from her fright and cramped clinging was making itself felt.

Halfway up the path she met Jane and Diana rushing back to the pond in

a state narrowly removed from positive frenzy. They had found nobody at

Orchard Slope, both Mr. and Mrs. Barry being away. Here Ruby Gillis had

succumbed to hysterics, and was left to recover from them as best she

might, while Jane and Diana flew through the Haunted Wood and across the

brook to Green Gables. There they had found nobody either, for Marilla

had gone to Carmody and Matthew was making hay in the back field.

“Oh, Anne,” gasped Diana, fairly falling on the former’s neck

and weeping with relief and delight, “oh, Anne--we thought--you

were--drowned--and we felt like murderers--because we had made--you

be--Elaine. And Ruby is in hysterics--oh, Anne, how did you escape?”

“I climbed up on one of the piles,” explained Anne wearily, “and Gilbert

Blythe came along in Mr. Andrews’s dory and brought me to land.”

“Oh, Anne, how splendid of him! Why, it’s so romantic!” said Jane,

finding breath enough for utterance at last. “Of course you’ll speak to

him after this.”

“Of course I won’t,” flashed Anne, with a momentary return of her old

spirit. “And I don’t want ever to hear the word ‘romantic’ again, Jane

Andrews. I’m awfully sorry you were so frightened, girls. It is all my

fault. I feel sure I was born under an unlucky star. Everything I do

gets me or my dearest friends into a scrape. We’ve gone and lost your

father’s flat, Diana, and I have a presentiment that we’ll not be

allowed to row on the pond any more.”

Anne’s presentiment proved more trustworthy than presentiments are apt

to do. Great was the consternation in the Barry and Cuthbert households

when the events of the afternoon became known.

“Will you ever have any sense, Anne?” groaned Marilla.

“Oh, yes, I think I will, Marilla,” returned Anne optimistically. A good

cry, indulged in the grateful solitude of the east gable, had soothed

her nerves and restored her to her wonted cheerfulness. “I think my

prospects of becoming sensible are brighter now than ever.”

“I don’t see how,” said Marilla.

“Well,” explained Anne, “I’ve learned a new and valuable lesson today.

Ever since I came to Green Gables I’ve been making mistakes, and each

mistake has helped to cure me of some great shortcoming. The affair of

the amethyst brooch cured me of meddling with things that didn’t belong

to me. The Haunted Wood mistake cured me of letting my imagination run

away with me. The liniment cake mistake cured me of carelessness in

cooking. Dyeing my hair cured me of vanity. I never think about my hair

and nose now--at least, very seldom. And today’s mistake is going to

cure me of being too romantic. I have come to the conclusion that it is

no use trying to be romantic in Avonlea. It was probably easy enough in

towered Camelot hundreds of years ago, but romance is not appreciated

now. I feel quite sure that you will soon see a great improvement in me

in this respect, Marilla.”

“I’m sure I hope so,” said Marilla skeptically.

But Matthew, who had been sitting mutely in his corner, laid a hand on

Anne’s shoulder when Marilla had gone out.

“Don’t give up all your romance, Anne,” he whispered shyly, “a little

of it is a good thing--not too much, of course--but keep a little of it,

Anne, keep a little of it.”