“Yours are not very noticeable,” comforted Diana. “Try a little lemon juice on them tonight.”
The next day Anne made her pies and lady fingers, did up her muslin dress, and swept and dusted every room in the house … a quite unnecessary proceeding, for Green Gables was, as usual, in the apple pie order dear to Marilla’s heart. But Anne felt that a fleck of dust would be a desecration in a house that was to be honored by a visit from Charlotte E. Morgan. She even cleaned out the “catch-all” closet under the stairs, although there was not the remotest possibility of Mrs. Morgan’s seeing its interior.
“But I want to FEEL that it is in perfect order, even if she isn’t to see it,” Anne told Marilla. “You know, in her book ‘Golden Keys,’ she makes her two heroines Alice and Louisa take for their motto that verse of Longfellow’s,
‘In the elder days of art
Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part,
For the gods see everywhere,’
and so they always kept their cellar stairs scrubbed and never forgot to sweep under the beds. I should have a guilty conscience if I thought this closet was in disorder when Mrs. Morgan was in the house. Ever since we read ‘Golden Keys,’ last April, Diana and I have taken that verse for our motto too.”
That night John Henry Carter and Davy between them contrived to execute the two white roosters, and Anne dressed them, the usually distasteful task glorified in her eyes by the destination of the plump birds.
“I don’t like picking fowls,” she told Marilla, “but isn’t it fortunate we don’t have to put our souls into what our hands may be doing? I’ve been picking chickens with my hands but in imagination I’ve been roaming the Milky Way.”
“I thought you’d scattered more feathers over the floor than usual,” remarked Marilla.
Then Anne put Davy to bed and made him promise that he would behave perfectly the next day.
“If I’m as good as good can be all day tomorrow will you let me be just as bad as I like all the next day?” asked Davy.
“I couldn’t do that,” said Anne discreetly, “but I’ll take you and Dora for a row in the flat right to the bottom of the pond, and we’ll go ashore on the sandhills and have a picnic.”
“It’s a bargain,” said Davy. “I’ll be good, you bet. I meant to go over to Mr. Harrison’s and fire peas from my new popgun at Ginger but another day’ll do as well. I espect it will be just like Sunday, but a picnic at the shore’ll make up for THAT.”
XVII. A Chapter of Accidents
Anne woke three times in the night and made pilgrimages to her window to make sure that Uncle Abe’s prediction was not coming true. Finally the morning dawned pearly and lustrous in a sky full of silver sheen and radiance, and the wonderful day had arrived.
Diana appeared soon after breakfast, with a basket of flowers over one arm and HER muslin dress over the other … for it would not do to don it until all the dinner preparations were completed. Meanwhile she wore her afternoon pink print and a lawn apron fearfully and wonderfully ruffled and frilled; and very neat and pretty and rosy she was.
“You look simply sweet,” said Anne admiringly.
Diana sighed.
“But I’ve had to let out every one of my dresses AGAIN. I weigh four pounds more than I did in July. Anne, WHERE will this end? Mrs. Morgan’s heroines are all tall and slender.”
“Well, let’s forget our troubles and think of our mercies,” said Anne gaily. “Mrs. Allan says that whenever we think of anything that is a trial to us we should also think of something nice that we can set over against it. If you are slightly too plump you’ve got the dearest dimples; and if I have a freckled nose the SHAPE of it is all right. Do you think the lemon juice did any good?”
“Yes, I really think it did,” said Diana critically; and, much elated, Anne led the way to the garden, which was full of airy shadows and wavering golden lights.
“We’ll decorate the parlor first. We have plenty of time, for Priscilla said they’d be here about twelve or half past at the latest, so we’ll have dinner at one.”
There may have been two happier and more excited girls somewhere in Canada or the United States at that moment, but I doubt it. Every snip of the scissors, as rose and peony and bluebell fell, seemed to chirp, “Mrs. Morgan is coming today.” Anne wondered how Mr. Harrison COULD go on placidly mowing hay in the field across the lane, just as if nothing were going to happen.
The parlor at Green Gables was a rather severe and gloomy apartment, with rigid horsehair furniture, stiff lace curtains, and white antimacassars that were always laid at a perfectly correct angle, except at such times as they clung to unfortunate people’s buttons. Even Anne had never been able to infuse much grace into it, for Marilla would not permit any alterations. But it is wonderful what flowers can accomplish if you give them a fair chance; when Anne and Diana finished with the room you would not have recognized it.
A great blue bowlful of snowballs overflowed on the polished table. The shining black mantelpiece was heaped with roses and ferns. Every shelf of the whatnot held a sheaf of bluebells; the dark corners on either side of the grate were lighted up with jars full of glowing crimson peonies, and the grate itself was aflame with yellow poppies. All this splendor and color, mingled with the sunshine falling through the honeysuckle vines at the windows in a leafy riot of dancing shadows over walls and floor, made of the usually dismal little room the veritable “bower” of Anne’s imagination, and even extorted a tribute of admiration from Marilla, who came in to criticize and remained to praise.
“Now, we must set the table,” said Anne, in the tone of a priestess about to perform some sacred rite in honor of a divinity. “We’ll have a big vaseful of wild roses in the center and one single rose in front of everybody’s plate — and a special bouquet of rosebuds only by Mrs. Morgan’s — an allusion to ‘The Rosebud Garden’ you know.”
The table was set in the sitting room, with Marilla’s finest linen and the best china, glass, and silver. You may be perfectly certain that every article placed on it was polished or scoured to the highest possible perfection of gloss and glitter.
Then the girls tripped out to the kitchen, which was filled with appetizing odors emanating from the oven, where the chickens were already sizzling splendidly. Anne prepared the potatoes and Diana got the peas and beans ready. Then, while Diana shut herself into the pantry to compound the lettuce salad, Anne, whose cheeks were already beginning to glow crimson, as much with excitement as from the heat of the fire, prepared the bread sauce for