Anne Of Green Gables - LimpidSoft

1 anne Of Green Gablesby Lucy Maud MontgomeryStyled by LimpidSoftContentsCHAPTER I4 CHAPTER II17 CHAPTER III40 CHAPTER IV52 CHAPTER V63 CHAPTER VI73 CHAPTER VII83 CHAPTER VIII90 CHAPTER IX104 CHAPTER X117 CHAPTER XI130 CHAPTER XII140 CHAPTER XIII151 CHAPTER XIV1602 CONTENTSCHAPTER XV175 CHAPTER XVI200 CHAPTER XVII219 CHAPTER XVIII230 CHAPTER XIX246 CHAPTER XX266 CHAPTER XXI277 CHAPTER XXII294 CHAPTER XXIII301 CHAPTER XXIV313 CHAPTER XXV321 CHAPTER XXVI338 CHAPTER XXVII 351 CHAPTER XXVIII 363 CHAPTER XXIX377 CHAPTER XXX392 CHAPTER XXXI411 CHAPTER XXXII422 CHAPTER XXXIII 436 CHAPTER XXXIV 452 CHAPTER XXXV464 CHAPTER XXXVI 472 CHAPTER XXXVII 482 CHAPTER XXXVIII 4943 The present document was derived from textprovided by Project Gutenberg (document45) which was made available free of document is also free of RACHELLYNDE ISSURPRISEDMrs. Rachel Lyndelived just where the Avonlea mainroad dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with aldersand ladies eardrops and traversed by a brook that had itssource away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place;it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in itsearlier course through those woods, with dark secrets ofpool and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde s Hol-low it was a quiet, well-conducted little stream, for noteven a brook could run past Mrs.

2 Rachel Lynde s doorwithout due regard for decency and decorum; it prob-ably was conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at herCHAPTER Iwindow, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed,from brooks and children up, and that if she noticed any-thing odd or out of place she would never rest until shehad ferreted out the whys and wherefores are plenty of people in Avonlea and out of it,who can attend closely to their neighbor s business bydint of neglecting their own; but Mrs. Rachel Lynde wasone of those capable creatures who can manage their ownconcerns and those of other folks into the bargain. Shewas a notable housewife; her work was always done andwell done; she "ran" the Sewing Circle, helped run theSunday-school, and was the strongest prop of the ChurchAid Society and Foreign Missions Auxiliary. Yet with allthis Mrs.

3 Rachel found abundant time to sit for hoursat her kitchen window, knitting "cotton warp" quilts shehad knitted sixteen of them, as Avonlea housekeeperswere wont to tell in awed voices and keeping a sharpeye on the main road that crossed the hollow and woundup the steep red hill beyond. Since Avonlea occupied alittle triangular peninsula jutting out into the Gulf of with water on two sides of it, anybody whowent out of it or into it had to pass over that hill road andso run the unseen gauntlet of Mrs. Rachel s all-seeing was sitting there one afternoon in early June. The6 CHAPTER Isun was coming in at the window warm and bright; theorchard on the slope below the house was in a bridalflush of pinky-white bloom, hummed over by a myriadof bees. Thomas Lynde a meek little man whom Avon-lea people called "Rachel Lynde s husband" was sowinghis late turnip seed on the hill field beyond the barn; andMatthew Cuthbert ought to have been sowing his on thebig red brook field away over by Green Gables .

4 Knew that he ought because she had heard himtell Peter Morrison the evening before in William J. Blair sstore over at Carmody that he meant to sow his turnipseed the next afternoon. Peter had asked him, of course,for Matthew Cuthbert had never been known to volun-teer information about anything in his whole yet here was Matthew Cuthbert, at half-past threeon the afternoon of a busy day, placidly driving over thehollow and up the hill; moreover, he wore a white collarand his best suit of clothes, which was plain proof that hewas going out of Avonlea; and he had the buggy and thesorrel mare, which betokened that he was going a con-siderable distance. Now, where was Matthew Cuthbertgoing and why was he going there?Had it been any other man in Avonlea, Mrs. Rachel,deftly putting this and that together, might have given a7 CHAPTER Ipretty good guess as to both questions.

5 But Matthew sorarely went from home that it must be something press-ing and unusual which was taking him; he was the shyestman alive and hated to have to go among strangers or toany place where he might have to talk. Matthew, dressedup with a white collar and driving in a buggy, was some-thing that didn t happen often. Mrs. Rachel, ponder asshe might, could make nothing of it and her afternoon senjoyment was spoiled."I ll just step over to Green Gables after tea and findout from Marilla where he s gone and why," the worthywoman finally concluded. "He doesn t generally go totown this time of year and henevervisits; if he d run outof turnip seed he wouldn t dress up and take the buggy togo for more; he wasn t driving fast enough to be going fora doctor. Yet something must have happened since lastnight to start him off. I m clean puzzled, that s what, andI won t know a minute s peace of mind or conscience un-til I know what has taken Matthew Cuthbert out of Avon-lea today.

6 "Accordingly after tea Mrs. Rachel set out; she had notfar to go; the big, rambling, orchard-embowered housewhere the Cuthberts lived was a scant quarter of a mileup the road from Lynde s Hollow. To be sure, the long8 CHAPTER Ilane made it a good deal further. Matthew Cuthbert s fa-ther, as shy and silent as his son after him, had got as faraway as he possibly could from his fellow men withoutactually retreating into the woods when he founded hishomestead. Green Gables was built at the furthest edgeof his cleared land and there it was to this day, barely visi-ble from the main road along which all the other Avonleahouses were so sociably situated. Mrs. Rachel Lynde didnot call living in such a placelivingat all."It s juststaying, that s what," she said as she steppedalong the deep-rutted, grassy lane bordered with wildrose bushes. "It s no wonder Matthew and Marilla areboth a little odd, living away back here by aren t much company, though dear knows if theywere there d be enough of them.

7 I d ruther look at peo-ple. To be sure, they seem contented enough; but then, Isuppose, they re used to it. A body can get used to any-thing, even to being hanged, as the Irishman said."With this Mrs. Rachel stepped out of the lane into thebackyard of Green Gables . Very Green and neat and pre-cise was that yard, set about on one side with great patri-archal willows and the other with prim Lombardies. Nota stray stick nor stone was to be seen, for Mrs. Rachelwould have seen it if there had been. Privately she was9 CHAPTER Iof the opinion that Marilla Cuthbert swept that yard overas often as she swept her house. One could have eatena meal off the ground without overbrimming the prover-bial peck of Rachel rapped smartly at the kitchen door andstepped in when bidden to do so. The kitchen at GreenGables was a cheerful apartment or would have beencheerful if it had not been so painfully clean as to give itsomething of the appearance of an unused parlor.

8 Its win-dows looked east and west; through the west one, look-ing out on the back yard, came a flood of mellow Junesunlight; but the east one, whence you got a glimpse ofthe bloom white cherry-trees in the left orchard and nod-ding, slender birches down in the hollow by the brook,was greened over by a tangle of vines. Here sat MarillaCuthbert, when she sat at all, always slightly distrustfulof sunshine, which seemed to her too dancing and ir-responsible a thing for a world which was meant to betaken seriously; and here she sat now, knitting, and thetable behind her was laid for Rachel, before she had fairly closed the door, hadtaken a mental note of everything that was on that ta-ble. There were three plates laid, so that Marilla must beexpecting some one home with Matthew to tea; but the10 CHAPTER Idishes were everyday dishes and there was only crab-apple preserves and one kind of cake, so that the ex-pected company could not be any particular what of Matthew s white collar and the sorrel mare?

9 Mrs. Rachel was getting fairly dizzy with this unusualmystery about quiet, unmysterious Green Gables ."Good evening, Rachel," Marilla said briskly. "This is areal fine evening, isn t it? Won t you sit down? How areall your folks?"Something that for lack of any other name might becalled friendship existed and always had existed betweenMarilla Cuthbert and Mrs. Rachel, in spite of or perhapsbecause of their was a tall, thin woman, with angles and with-out curves; her dark hair showed some gray streaks andwas always twisted up in a hard little knot behind withtwo wire hairpins stuck aggressively through like a woman of narrow experience and rigid con-science, which she was; but there was a saving somethingabout her mouth which, if it had been ever so slightlydeveloped, might have been considered indicative of asense of humor."We re all pretty well," said Mrs.

10 Rachel. "I was kind of11 CHAPTER Iafraidyouweren t, though, when I saw Matthew startingoff today. I thought maybe he was going to the doctor s."Marilla s lips twitched understandingly. She had ex-pected Mrs. Rachel up; she had known that the sightof Matthew jaunting off so unaccountably would be toomuch for her neighbor s curiosity."Oh, no, I m quite well although I had a bad headacheyesterday," she said."Matthew went to Bright re getting a little boy from an orphan asylum in NovaScotia and he s coming on the train tonight."If Marilla had said that Matthew had gone to BrightRiver to meet a kangaroo from Australia Mrs. Rachelcould not have been more astonished. She was actuallystricken dumb for five seconds. It was unsupposable thatMarilla was making fun of her, but Mrs. Rachel was al-most forced to suppose it."Are you in earnest, Marilla?