Anne of Green Gables
CHAPTER XXII
Anne is Invited Out to Tea
"And what are your eyes popping out of your head about. Now?" asked Marilla,
when Anne had just come in from a run to the post office. "Have you discovered
another kindred spirit?" Excitement hung around Anne like a garment, shone in
her eyes, kindled in every feature. She had come dancing up the lane, like a
wind-blown sprite, through the mellow sunshine and lazy shadows of the August
evening.
"No, Marilla, but oh, what do you think? I am invited to tea at the manse
tomorrow afternoon! Mrs. Allan left the letter for me at the post office. Just
look at it, Marilla. 'Miss Anne Shirley, Green Gables.' That is the first time I
was ever called 'Miss.' Such a thrill as it gave me! I shall cherish it forever
among my choicest treasures."
"Mrs. Allan told me she meant to have all the members of her Sunday-school
class to tea in turn," said Marilla, regarding the wonderful event very coolly.
"You needn't get in such a fever over it. Do learn to take things calmly,
child."
For Anne to take things calmly would have been to change her nature. All
"spirit and fire and dew," as she was, the pleasures and pains of life came to
her with trebled intensity. Marilla felt this and was vaguely troubled over it,
realizing that the ups and downs of existence would probably bear hardly on this
impulsive soul and not sufficiently understanding that the equally great
capacity for delight might more than compensate. Therefore Marilla conceived it
to be her duty to drill Anne into a tranquil uniformity of disposition as
impossible and alien to her as to a dancing sunbeam in one of the brook
shallows. She did not make much headway, as she sorrowfully admitted to herself.
The downfall of some dear hope or plan plunged Anne into "deeps of affliction."
The fulfillment thereof exalted her to dizzy realms of delight. Marilla had
almost begun to despair of ever fashioning this waif of the world into her model
little girl of demure manners and prim deportment. Neither would she have
believed that she really liked Anne much better as she was.
Anne went to bed that night speechless with misery because Matthew had said
the wind was round northeast and he feared it would be a rainy day tomorrow. The
rustle of the poplar leaves about the house worried her, it sounded so like
pattering raindrops, and the full, faraway roar of the gulf, to which she
listened delightedly at other times, loving its strange, sonorous, haunting
rhythm, now seemed like a prophecy of storm and disaster to a small maiden who
particularly wanted a fine day. Anne thought that the morning would never come.
But all things have an end, even nights before the day on which you are
invited to take tea at the manse. The morning, in spite of Matthew's
predictions, was fine and Anne's spirits soared to their highest. "Oh, Marilla,
there is something in me today that makes me just love everybody I see," she
exclaimed as she washed the breakfast dishes. "You don't know how good I feel!
Wouldn't it be nice if it could last? I believe I could be a model child if I
were just invited out to tea every day. But oh, Marilla, it's a solemn occasion
too. I feel so anxious. What if I shouldn't behave properly? You know I never
had tea at a manse before, and I'm not sure that I know all the rules of
etiquette, although I've been studying the rules given in the Etiquette
Department of the Family Herald ever since I came here. I'm so afraid I'll do
something silly or forget to do something I should do. Would it be good manners
to take a second helping of anything if you wanted to VERY much?"
"The trouble with you, Anne, is that you're thinking too much about yourself.
You should just think of Mrs. Allan and what would be nicest and most agreeable
to her," said Marilla, hitting for once in her life on a very sound and pithy
piece of advice. Anne instantly realized this.
"You are right, Marilla. I'll try not to think about myself at all."
Anne evidently got through her visit without any serious breach of
"etiquette," for she came home through the twilight, under a great, high-sprung
sky gloried over with trails of saffron and rosy cloud, in a beatified state of
mind and told Marilla all about it happily, sitting on the big red-sandstone
slab at the kitchen door with her tired curly head in Marilla's gingham lap.
A cool wind was blowing down over the long harvest fields from the rims of
firry western hills and whistling through the poplars. One clear star hung over
the orchard and the fireflies were flitting over in Lover's Lane, in and out
among the ferns and rustling boughs. Anne watched them as she talked and somehow
felt that wind and stars and fireflies were all tangled up together into
something unutterably sweet and enchanting.
"Oh, Marilla, I've had a most FASCINATING time. I feel that I have not lived
in vain and I shall always feel like that even if I should never be invited to
tea at a manse again. When I got there Mrs. Allan met me at the door. She was
dressed in the sweetest dress of pale-pink organdy, with dozens of frills and
elbow sleeves, and she looked just like a seraph. I really think I'd like to be
a minister's wife when I grow up, Marilla. A minister mightn't mind my red hair
because he wouldn't be thinking of such worldly things. But then of course one
would have to be naturally good and I'll never be that, so I suppose there's no
use in thinking about it. Some people are naturally good, you know, and others
are not. I'm one of the others. Mrs. Lynde says I'm full of original sin. No
matter how hard I try to be good I can never make such a success of it as those
who are naturally good. It's a good deal like geometry, I expect. But don't you
think the trying so hard ought to count for something? Mrs. Allan is one of the
naturally good people. I love her passionately. You know there are some people,
like Matthew and Mrs. Allan that you can love right off without any trouble. And
there are others, like Mrs. Lynde, that you have to try very hard to love. You
know you OUGHT to love them because they know so much and are such active
workers in the church, but you have to keep reminding yourself of it all the
time or else you forget. There was another little girl at the manse to tea, from
the White Sands Sunday school. Her name was Laurette Bradley, and she was a very
nice little girl. Not exactly a kindred spirit, you know, but still very nice.
We had an elegant tea, and I think I kept all the rules of etiquette pretty
well. After tea Mrs. Allan played and sang and she got Lauretta and me to sing
too. Mrs. Allan says I have a good voice and she says I must sing in the
Sunday-school choir after this. You can't think how I was thrilled at the mere
thought. I've longed so to sing in the Sunday-school choir, as Diana does, but I
feared it was an honor I could never aspire to. Lauretta had to go home early
because there is a big concert in the White Sands Hotel tonight and her sister
is to recite at it. Lauretta says that the Americans at the hotel give a concert
every fortnight in aid of the Charlottetown hospital, and they ask lots of the
White Sands people to recite. Lauretta said she expected to be asked herself
someday. I just gazed at her in awe. After she had gone Mrs. Allan and I had a
heart-to-heart talk. I told her everything—about Mrs. Thomas and the twins and
Katie Maurice and Violetta and coming to Green Gables and my troubles over
geometry. And would you believe it, Marilla? Mrs. Allan told me she was a dunce
at geometry too. You don't know how that encouraged me. Mrs. Lynde came to the
manse just before I left, and what do you think, Marilla? The trustees have
hired a new teacher and it's a lady. Her name is Miss Muriel Stacy. Isn't that a
romantic name? Mrs. Lynde says they've never had a female teacher in Avonlea
before and she thinks it is a dangerous innovation. But I think it will be
splendid to have a lady teacher, and I really don't see how I'm going to live
through the two weeks before school begins. I'm so impatient to see her."