Anne's History

"Do you know," said Anne confidentially, "I've made up my mind to enjoy this drive. It's been my experience that you can neary always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will. Of course, you must make it up firmly. I am not

 .

going to.............. think about going back to the asylum while we're having our drive. I'm just going to think about the drive. Oh, look, there's one little early wild rose out! Isn't it lovely? Don't you think it must be glad to be a rose?

 

Wouldn't it be nice if roses could talk? I'm sure they could tell us such lovely things. And isn't pink

 the most bewitchin

g color in the world? I love it, but I can't wear it. Redheaded people can't wear pink, not whose hair was red when she was young, but got to be another color when she grew up?"

"No, I don't know as I ever did," said Marilla mercilessly, "and I shouldn't think it likely to happen in your case, either."

Anne sighed.

 

"Well, that is another hope gone. My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes. That's a sentence I read in a book once, and I say it over to comfort myself whenever I'm disappointed in anything."

"I don't see where the comforting comes in myself." said Marilla.

"Why, because it sounds so nice and romantic, just as if I were a heroine in a book, you know. I am so found of romantic things, and a graveyard full of buried hopes is about as romantic a thing as one can imagine, isn't it? I'm rather gald I have one. Are we going across the Lake of Shining Waters today?"

"We're not going over Barry's pond, if that's what you mean by your Lake of Shining Waters. We're going bt the shore read."

"Shore road sounds nice," said Anne dreamily. "Is it as nice as it sounds?

"It's five miles; and as you're evidently bent on talking you might as well talk to some purpose by telling me what you know about yourself."

"Oh, what I know about myself isn't really worth telling," said Anne eagerly. "If you'll only let me tell you what I imagine about myself you'll think it ever so much more interesting."

"No, I don't want any of your imaginings. Just you stick to bald facts. Begin at the beginning. Where were you born and how old are you?"

"I was eleven last March," said Anne, resigning herself to bald facts with a little sigh.

 

 "And I was born in Bolingbroke, Nova Scotia. My father's name was Walter Shirley, and he was a teacher in the Bolingbroke High School. My mother's name was Bertha Shirley. Aren't Walter and Bertha lovely name? I'm so glad my parents had nice names. It would be a real disgrace to have a father named- well, say Jedediah, wouldn't it?"

"I guess it doesn't matter what a person'g name is as long as he behaves himself." said Marilla, feeling herself called upon to inculcate a good and useful moral.

"Well, I don't know." Anne looked thoughtful. "I read in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I've never been able to believe it. I don't believe a rose cabbage. I suppose my father could have been a good man even if he had

 been called Jedediah; but I'm sure it would have been a cross. Well, my mother was a teacher in the High School, too, but when she married father she gave up teaching. of course. A husband was enough responsibility. Mrs. Thomas said that they were a pair of babies and as poor as church mice. T hey went to live in a  weeny-twwny little yellow house in Bolingbroke.

 

I've never seen that house, but I've imagined it thousands of times. I think it must have had honeysuckle over the oarlor window and lilacs in the front yard and lilies of the valley just inside the gate. Yes, and muslin curtains in all the windows. Muslin curtains give a  house such an air. I was born in that house.