“Rebecca Dew says they are far too strict with little Elizabeth and she hasn’t much of a time of it with them.
“‘She isn’t like other children … far too old for eight years. The things that she says sometimes! “Rebecca,” she sez to me one day, “suppose just as you were ready to get into bed you felt your ankle nipped?” No wonder she’s afraid to go to bed in the dark. And they make her do it. Mrs. Campbell says there are to be no cowards in her house. They watch her like two cats watching a mouse, and boss her within an inch of her life. If she makes a speck of noise they nearly pass out. It’s “hush, hush” all the time. I tell you that child is being hush-hushed to death. And what is to be done about it?’
“What, indeed?
“I feel that I’d like to see her. She seems to me a bit pathetic. Aunt Kate says she is well looked after from a physical point of view … what Aunt Kate really said was, ‘They feed and dress her well’ … but a child can’t live by bread alone. I can never forget what my own life was before I came to Green Gables.
“I’m going home next Friday evening to spend two beautiful days in Avonlea. The only drawback will be that everybody I see will ask me how I like teaching in Summerside.
“But think of Green Gables now, Gilbert … the Lake of Shining Waters with a blue mist on it … the maples across the brook beginning to turn scarlet … the ferns golden brown in the Haunted Wood … and the sunset shadows in Lover’s Lane, darling spot. I find it in my heart to wish I were there now with … with … guess whom?
“Do you know, Gilbert, there are times when I strongly suspect that I love you!”
“Windy Poplars,
“Spook’s Lane,
“S’side,
“October 10th.
“HONORED AND RESPECTED SIR: —
“That is how a love letter of Aunt Chatty’s grandmother began. Isn’t it delicious? What a thrill of superiority it must have given the grandfather! Wouldn’t you really prefer it to ‘Gilbert darling, etc.’? But, on the whole, I think I’m glad you’re not the grandfather … or A grandfather. It’s wonderful to think we’re young and have our whole lives before us … together … isn’t it?”
(Several pages omitted. Anne’s pen being evidently neither sharp, stub nor rusty.)
“I’m sitting on the window seat in the tower looking out into the trees waving against an amber sky and beyond them to the harbor. Last night I had such a lovely walk with myself. I really had to go somewhere for it was just a trifle dismal at Windy Poplars. Aunt Chatty was crying in the sitting-room because her feelings had been hurt and Aunt Kate was crying in her bedroom because it was the anniversary of Captain Amasa’s death and Rebecca Dew was crying in the kitchen for no reason that I could discover. I’ve never seen Rebecca Dew cry before. But when I tried tactfully to find out what was wrong she pettishly wanted to know if a body couldn’t enjoy a cry when she felt like it. So I folded my tent and stole away, leaving her to her enjoyment.
“I went out and down the harbor road. There was such a nice frosty, Octobery smell in the air, blent with the delightful odor of newly plowed fields. I walked on and on until twilight had deepened into a moonlit autumn night. I was alone but not lonely. I held a series of imaginary conversations with imaginary comrades and thought out so many epigrams that I was agreeably surprised at myself. I couldn’t help enjoying myself in spite of my Pringle worries.
“The spirit moves me to utter a few yowls regarding the Pringles. I hate to admit it but things are not going any too well in Summerside High. There is no doubt that a cabal has been organized against me.
“For one thing, home work is never done by any of the Pringles or half Pringles. And there is no use in appealing to the parents. They are suave, polite, evasive. I know all the pupils who are not Pringles like me but the Pringle virus of disobedience is undermining the morale of the whole room. One morning I found my desk turned inside out and upside down. Nobody knew who did it, of course. And no one could or would tell who left on it another day the box out of which popped an artificial snake when I opened it. But every Pringle in the school screamed with laughter over my face. I suppose I did look wildly startled.
“Jen Pringle comes late for school half the time, always with some perfectly watertight excuse, delivered politely, with an insolent tilt to her mouth. She passes notes in class under my very nose. I found a peeled onion in the pocket of my coat when I put it on today. I should love to lock that girl up on bread and water until she learned how to behave herself.
“The worst thing to date was the caricature of myself I found on the blackboard one morning … done in white chalk with scarlet hair. Everybody denied doing it, Jen among the rest, but I knew Jen was the only pupil in the room who could draw like that. It was done well. My nose … which, as you know, has always been my one pride and joy … was humpbacked and my mouth was the mouth of a vinegary spinster who had been teaching a school full of Pringles for thirty years. But it was me. I woke up at three o’clock that night and writhed over the recollection. Isn’t it queer that the things we writhe over at night are seldom wicked things? Just humiliating ones.
“All sorts of things are being said. I am accused of ‘marking down’ Hattie Pringle’s examination papers just because she is a Pringle. I am said to ‘laugh when the children make mistakes.’ (Well, I did laugh when Fred Pringle defined a centurion as ‘a man who had lived a hundred years.’ I couldn’t help it.)
“James Pringle is saying, ‘There is no discipline in the school … no discipline whatever.’ And a report is being circulated that I am a ‘foundling.’
“I am beginning to encounter the Pringle antagonism in other quarters. Socially as well as educationally, Summerside seems to be under the Pringle thumb. No wonder they are called the Royal Family. I wasn’t invited to Alice Pringle’s walking party last Friday. And when Mrs. Frank Pringle got up a tea in aid of a church project (Rebecca Dew informs me that the ladies are going to ‘build’ the new spire!), I was the only girl in the Presbyterian church who was not asked to take a table. I have heard that the minister’s wife, who is a newcomer in Summerside, suggested asking me to sing in the choir and was informed that all the Pringles would drop out of it if she did. That would leave such a skeleton that the choir simply couldn’t carry on.
“Of course I’m not the only one of the teachers who has trouble with pupils. When the other teachers send theirs up to me to be ‘disciplined’ … how I hate that word! … half of them are Pringles. But there is never any complaint made about them.
“Two evenings ago I kept Jen in after school to do some work she had deliberately left undone. Ten minutes later the carriage from Maplehurst drew up before the school house and Miss Ellen was at the door … a beautifully