L M Montgomery

Anne's House of Dreams L M Montgomery

"Thanks be, I'm done with geometry, learning or teaching it," said Anne Shirley, a triflevindictively, as she thumped a somewhat battered volume of Euclid into a big chest of books, banged the lid in triumph, and sat down upon it, looking at Diana Wright across the GreenGables garret, with gray eyes that were like a morning sky. The garret was a shadowy, suggestive, delightful place, as all garrets should be. Through theopen window, by which Anne sat, blew the sweet, scented, sun-warm air of the Augustafternoon; outside, poplar boughs rustled and tossed in the wind; beyond them were the woods, where Lover's Lane wound its enchanted path, and the old apple orchard which still bore its rosyharvests munificently. And, over all, was a great mountain range of snowy clouds in the bluesouthern sky. Through the other window was glimpsed a distant, white-capped, blue sea-thebeautiful St. Lawrence Gulf, on which floats, like a jewel, Abegweit, whose softer, sweeterIndian name has long been forsaken for the more prosaic one of Prince Edward Island. Diana Wright, three years older than when we last saw her, had grown somewhat matronly inthe intervening time. But her eyes were as black and brilliant, her cheeks as rosy, and herdimples as enchanting, as in the long-ago days when she and Anne Shirley had vowed eternalfriendship in the garden at Orchard Slope. In her arms she held a small, sleeping, black-curledcreature, who for two happy years had been known to the world of Avonlea as "Small AnneCordelia." Avonlea folks knew why Diana had called her Anne, of course, but Avonlea folkswere puzzled by the Cordelia. There had never been a Cordelia in the Wright or Barryconnections. Mrs. Harmon Andrews said she supposed Diana had found the name in some trashynovel, and wondered that Fred hadn't more sense than to allow it. But Diana and Anne smiled ateach other. They knew how Small Anne Cordelia had come by her name.