“That’s my little mother,” said Paul with loving pride. “I got Grandma to hang it there where I’d see it as soon as I opened my eyes in the morning. I never mind not having the light when I go to bed now, because it just seems as if my little mother was right here with me. Father knew just what I would like for a birthday present, although he never asked me. Isn’t it wonderful how much fathers DO know?”
“Your mother was very lovely, Paul, and you look a little like her. But her eyes and hair are darker than yours.”
“My eyes are the same color as father’s,” said Paul, flying about the room to heap all available cushions on the window seat, “but father’s hair is gray. He has lots of it, but it is gray. You see, father is nearly fifty. That’s ripe old age, isn’t it? But it’s only OUTSIDE he’s old. INSIDE he’s just as young as anybody. Now, teacher, please sit here; and I’ll sit at your feet. May I lay my head against your knee? That’s the way my little mother and I used to sit. Oh, this is real splendid, I think.”
“Now, I want to hear those thoughts which Mary Joe pronounces so queer,” said Anne, patting the mop of curls at her side. Paul never needed any coaxing to tell his thoughts … at least, to congenial souls.
“I thought them out in the fir grove one night,” he said dreamily. “Of course I didn’t BELIEVE them but I THOUGHT them. YOU know, teacher. And then I wanted to tell them to somebody and there was nobody but Mary Joe. Mary Joe was in the pantry setting bread and I sat down on the bench beside her and I said, ‘Mary Joe, do you know what I think? I think the evening star is a lighthouse on the land where the fairies dwell.’ And Mary Joe said, ‘Well, yous are de queer one. Dare ain’t no such ting as fairies.’ I was very much provoked. Of course, I knew there are no fairies; but that needn’t prevent my thinking there is. You know, teacher. But I tried again quite patiently. I said, ‘Well then, Mary Joe, do you know what I think? I think an angel walks over the world after the sun sets … a great, tall, white angel, with silvery folded wings … and sings the flowers and birds to sleep. Children can hear him if they know how to listen.’ Then Mary Joe held up her hands all over flour and said, ‘Well, yous are de queer leetle boy. Yous make me feel scare.’ And she really did looked scared. I went out then and whispered the rest of my thoughts to the garden. There was a little birch tree in the garden and it died. Grandma says the salt spray killed it; but I think the dryad belonging to it was a foolish dryad who wandered away to see the world and got lost. And the little tree was so lonely it died of a broken heart.”
“And when the poor, foolish little dryad gets tired of the world and comes back to her tree HER heart will break,” said Anne.
“Yes; but if dryads are foolish they must take the consequences, just as if they were real people,” said Paul gravely. “Do you know what I think about the new moon, teacher? I think it is a little golden boat full of dreams.”
“And when it tips on a cloud some of them spill out and fall into your sleep.”
“Exactly, teacher. Oh, you DO know. And I think the violets are little snips of the sky that fell down when the angels cut out holes for the stars to shine through. And the buttercups are made out of old sunshine; and I think the sweet peas will be butterflies when they go to heaven. Now, teacher, do you see anything so very queer about those thoughts?”
“No, laddie dear, they are not queer at all; they are strange and beautiful thoughts for a little boy to think, and so people who couldn’t think anything of the sort themselves, if they tried for a hundred years, think them queer. But keep on thinking them, Paul … some day you are going to be a poet, I believe.”
When Anne reached home she found a very different type of boyhood waiting to be put to bed. Davy was sulky; and when Anne had undressed him he bounced into bed and buried his face in the pillow.
“Davy, you have forgotten to say your prayers,” said Anne rebukingly.
“No, I didn’t forget,” said Davy defiantly, “but I ain’t going to say my prayers any more. I’m going to give up trying to be good, ‘cause no matter how good I am you’d like Paul Irving better. So I might as well be bad and have the fun of it.”
“I don’t like Paul Irving BETTER,” said Anne seriously. “I like you just as well, only in a different way.”
“But I want you to like me the same way,” pouted Davy.
“You can’t like different people the same way. You don’t like Dora and me the same way, do you?”
Davy sat up and reflected.
“No … o … o,” he admitted at last, “I like Dora because she’s my sister but I like you because you’re YOU.”
“And I like Paul because he is Paul and Davy because he is Davy,” said Anne gaily.
“Well, I kind of wish I’d said my prayers then,” said Davy, convinced by this logic. “But it’s too much bother getting out now to say them. I’ll say them twice over in the morning, Anne. Won’t that do as well?”
No, Anne was positive it would not do as well. So Davy scrambled out and knelt down at her knee. When he had finished his devotions he leaned back on his little, bare, brown heels and looked up at her.
“Anne, I’m gooder than I used to be.”
“Yes, indeed you are, Davy,” said Anne, who never hesitated to give credit where credit was due.
“I KNOW I’m gooder,” said Davy confidently, “and I’ll tell you how I know it. Today Marilla give me two pieces of bread and jam, one for me and one for Dora. One was a good deal bigger than the other and Marilla didn’t say which was mine. But I give the biggest piece to Dora. That was good of me, wasn’t it?”
“Very good, and very manly, Davy.”
“Of course,” admitted Davy, “Dora wasn’t very hungry and she only et half her slice and then she give the rest to me. But I didn’t know she was going to do that when I give it to her, so I WAS good, Anne.”
In the twilight Anne sauntered down to the Dryad’s Bubble and saw Gilbert Blythe coming down through the dusky Haunted Wood. She had a sudden realization that Gilbert was a schoolboy no longer. And how manly he looked — the tall, frank-faced fellow, with the clear, straightforward eyes and the broad shoulders. Anne thought Gilbert was a very handsome lad, even though he didn’t look at all like her ideal man. She and Diana had long ago decided what kind of a man they admired and their tastes seemed exactly similar. He must be very tall and distinguished looking, with melancholy, inscrutable eyes, and a melting, sympathetic voice. There was nothing either melancholy or inscrutable in Gilbert’s physiognomy, but of course that didn’t matter in friendship!
Gilbert stretched himself out on the ferns beside the Bubble and looked approvingly at Anne. If Gilbert had been asked to describe his ideal woman the description would have answered point for point to Anne, even to those seven tiny freckles whose obnoxious presence still continued to vex her soul. Gilbert was as yet little more than a boy; but a boy has his dreams as have others, and in Gilbert’s future there was always a girl with big, limpid gray eyes, and a face as fine and delicate as a flower. He had made up his mind, also, that his future must be worthy of its goddess. Even in quiet Avonlea there were temptations to be met and faced. White Sands youth were a rather “fast” set, and Gilbert was popular wherever he went. But he meant to keep himself worthy of Anne’s friendship and perhaps some distant day her love; and he watched over word and thought and deed as jealously as if her clear eyes were to pass in judgment on it. She held over him the unconscious influence that every girl, whose ideals are high and pure, wields over her friends; an influence which would endure as long as