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CHAPTER XXVIII A June Evening
"I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June," said
Anne, as she came through the spice and bloom of the twilit orchard to the front
door steps, where Marilla and Mrs. Rachel
were sitting, talking over Mrs. Samson Coates' funeral, which they had attended
that day.
Dora sat between them, diligently studying her lessons; but Davy was sitting tailor-
fashion on the grass, looking as gloomy and depressed as his single dimple would let
him.
"You'd get tired of it," said Marilla, with a sigh.
"I daresay; but just now I feel that it would take me a long time to get tired of
it, if it were all as charming as today.
Everything loves June. Davy-boy, why this melancholy November face
in blossom-time?" "I'm just sick and tired of living," said
the youthful pessimist.
"At ten years? Dear me, how sad!"
"I'm not making fun," said Davy with dignity.
"I'm dis--dis--discouraged"--bringing out the big word with a valiant effort.
"Why and wherefore?" asked Anne, sitting down beside him.
"'Cause the new teacher that come when Mr. Holmes got sick give me ten sums to do for
Monday. It'll take me all day tomorrow to do them.
It isn't fair to have to work Saturdays.
Milty Boulter said he wouldn't do them, but Marilla says I've got to.
I don't like Miss Carson a bit." "Don't talk like that about your teacher,
Davy Keith," said Mrs. Rachel severely.
"Miss Carson is a very fine girl. There is no nonsense about her."
"That doesn't sound very attractive," laughed Anne.
"I like people to have a little nonsense about them.
But I'm inclined to have a better opinion of Miss Carson than you have.
I saw her in prayer-meeting last night, and she has a pair of eyes that can't always
look sensible. Now, Davy-boy, take heart of grace.
'Tomorrow will bring another day' and I'll help you with the sums as far as in me
lies. Don't waste this lovely hour 'twixt light
and dark worrying over arithmetic."
"Well, I won't," said Davy, brightening up. "If you help me with the sums I'll have 'em
done in time to go fishing with Milty. I wish old Aunt Atossa's funeral was
tomorrow instead of today.
I wanted to go to it 'cause Milty said his mother said Aunt Atossa would be sure to
rise up in her coffin and say sarcastic things to the folks that come to see her
buried.
But Marilla said she didn't." "Poor Atossa laid in her coffin peaceful
enough," said Mrs. Lynde solemnly. "I never saw her look so pleasant before,
that's what.
Well, there weren't many tears shed over her, poor old soul.
The Elisha Wrights are thankful to be rid of her, and I can't say I blame them a
mite."
"It seems to me a most dreadful thing to go out of the world and not leave one person
behind you who is sorry you are gone," said Anne, shuddering.
"Nobody except her parents ever loved poor Atossa, that's certain, not even her
husband," averred Mrs. Lynde. "She was his fourth wife.
He'd sort of got into the habit of marrying.
He only lived a few years after he married her.
The doctor said he died of dyspepsia, but I shall always maintain that he died of
Atossa's tongue, that's what.
Poor soul, she always knew everything about her neighbors, but she never was very well
acquainted with herself. Well, she's gone anyhow; and I suppose the
next excitement will be Diana's wedding."
"It seems funny and horrible to think of Diana's being married," sighed Anne,
hugging her knees and looking through the gap in the Haunted Wood to the light that
was shining in Diana's room.
"I don't see what's horrible about it, when she's doing so well," said Mrs. Lynde
emphatically. "Fred Wright has a fine farm and he is a
model young man."
"He certainly isn't the wild, dashing, wicked, young man Diana once wanted to
marry," smiled Anne. "Fred is extremely good."
"That's just what he ought to be.
Would you want Diana to marry a wicked man? Or marry one yourself?"
"Oh, no.
I wouldn't want to marry anybody who was wicked, but I think I'd like it if he COULD
be wicked and WOULDN'T. Now, Fred is HOPELESSLY good."
"You'll have more sense some day, I hope," said Marilla.
Marilla spoke rather bitterly. She was grievously disappointed.
She knew Anne had refused Gilbert Blythe.
Avonlea gossip buzzed over the fact, which had leaked out, nobody knew how.
Perhaps Charlie Sloane had guessed and told his guesses for truth.
Perhaps Diana had betrayed it to Fred and Fred had been indiscreet.
At all events it was known; Mrs. Blythe no longer asked Anne, in public or private, if
she had heard lately from Gilbert, but passed her by with a frosty bow.
Anne, who had always liked Gilbert's merry, young-hearted mother, was grieved in secret
over this.
Marilla said nothing; but Mrs. Lynde gave Anne many exasperated digs about it, until
fresh gossip reached that worthy lady, through the medium of Moody Spurgeon
MacPherson's mother, that Anne had another
"beau" at college, who was rich and handsome and good all in one.
After that Mrs. Rachel held her tongue, though she still wished in her inmost heart
that Anne had accepted Gilbert.
Riches were all very well; but even Mrs. Rachel, practical soul though she was, did
not consider them the one essential.
If Anne "liked" the Handsome Unknown better than Gilbert there was nothing more to be
said; but Mrs. Rachel was dreadfully afraid that Anne was going to make the mistake of
marrying for money.
Marilla knew Anne too well to fear this; but she felt that something in the
universal scheme of things had gone sadly awry.
"What is to be, will be," said Mrs. Rachel gloomily, "and what isn't to be happens
sometimes.
I can't help believing it's going to happen in Anne's case, if Providence doesn't
interfere, that's what." Mrs. Rachel sighed.
She was afraid Providence wouldn't interfere; and she didn't dare to.
Anne had wandered down to the Dryad's Bubble and was curled up among the ferns at
the root of the big white birch where she and Gilbert had so often sat in summers
gone by.
He had gone into the newspaper office again when college closed, and Avonlea seemed
very dull without him. He never wrote to her, and Anne missed the
letters that never came.
To be sure, Roy wrote twice a week; his letters were exquisite compositions which
would have read beautifully in a memoir or biography.
Anne felt herself more deeply in love with him than ever when she read them; but her
heart never gave the ***, quick, painful bound at sight of his letters which it had
given one day when Mrs. Hiram Sloane had
handed her out an envelope addressed in Gilbert's black, upright handwriting.
Anne had hurried home to the east gable and opened it eagerly--to find a typewritten
copy of some college society report--"only that and nothing more."
Anne flung the harmless screed across her room and sat down to write an especially
nice epistle to Roy. Diana was to be married in five more days.
The gray house at Orchard Slope was in a turmoil of baking and brewing and boiling
and stewing, for there was to be a big, old-timey wedding.
Anne, of course, was to be bridesmaid, as had been arranged when they were twelve
years old, and Gilbert was coming from Kingsport to be best man.
Anne was enjoying the excitement of the various preparations, but under it all she
carried a little heartache.
She was, in a sense, losing her dear old chum; Diana's new home would be two miles
from Green Gables, and the old constant companionship could never be theirs again.
Anne looked up at Diana's light and thought how it had beaconed to her for many years;
but soon it would shine through the summer twilights no more.
Two big, painful tears welled up in her gray eyes.
"Oh," she thought, "how horrible it is that people have to grow up--and marry--and
CHANGE!"