LITMIR.BIZ

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to stoop down and look at it. Would you believe it, Gilbert? There, right before my eyes, were three four-leafed clovers! Talk about omens! Even the Pringles can’t contend against that. And I felt sure the banker hadn’t an earthly chance.

      “The side door was open so it was evident somebody was at home and we didn’t have to look under the flower-pot. We knocked and Rebecca Dew came to the door. We knew it was Rebecca Dew because it couldn’t have been any one else in the whole wide world. And she couldn’t have had any other name.

      “Rebecca Dew is ‘around forty’ and if a tomato had black hair racing away from its forehead, little twinkling black eyes, a tiny nose with a knobby end and a slit of a mouth, it would look exactly like her. Everything about her is a little too short … arms and legs and neck and nose … everything but her smile. It is long enough to reach from ear to ear.

      “But we didn’t see her smile just then. She looked very grim when I asked if I could see Mrs. MacComber.

      “‘You mean Mrs. Captain MacComber?’ she said rebukingly, as if there were at least a dozen Mrs. MacCombers in the house.

      “‘Yes,’ I said meekly. And we were forthwith ushered into the parlor and left there. It was rather a nice little room, a bit cluttered up with antimacassars but with a quiet, friendly atmosphere about it that I liked. Every bit of furniture had its own particular place which it had occupied for years. How that furniture shone! No bought polish ever produced that mirrorlike gloss. I knew it was Rebecca Dew’s elbow grease. There was a full-rigged ship in a bottle on the mantelpiece which interested Mrs. Lynde greatly. She couldn’t imagine how it ever got into the bottle … but she thought it gave the room ‘a nautical air.’

      “‘The widows’ came in. I liked them at once. Aunt Kate was tall and thin and gray, and a little austere … Marilla’s type exactly: and Aunt Chatty was short and thin and gray, and a little wistful. She may have been very pretty once but nothing is now left of her beauty except her eyes. They are lovely … soft and big and brown.

      “I explained my errand and the widows looked at each other.

      “‘We must consult Rebecca Dew,’ said Aunt Chatty.

      “‘Undoubtedly,’ said Aunt Kate.

      “Rebecca Dew was accordingly summoned from the kitchen. The cat came in with her … a big fluffy Maltese, with a white breast and a white collar. I should have liked to stroke him, but, remembering Mrs. Braddock’s warning, I ignored him.

      “Rebecca gazed at me without the glimmer of a smile.

      “‘Rebecca,’ said Aunt Kate, who, I have discovered, does not waste words, ‘Miss Shirley wishes to board here. I don’t think we can take her.’

      “‘Why not?’ said Rebecca Dew.

      “‘It would be too much trouble for you, I am afraid,’ said Aunt Chatty.

      “‘I’m well used to trouble,’ said Rebecca Dew. You can’t separate those names, Gilbert. It’s impossible … though the widows do it. They call her Rebecca when they speak to her. I don’t know how they manage it.

      “‘We are rather old to have young people coming and going,’ persisted Aunt Chatty.

      “‘Speak for yourself,’ retorted Rebecca Dew. ‘I’m only forty-five and I still have the use of my faculties. And I think it would be nice to have a young person sleeping in the house. A girl would be better than a boy any time. He’d be smoking day and night … burn us in our beds. If you must take a boarder, my advice would be to take her. But of course it’s your house.’

      “She said and vanished … as Homer was so fond of remarking. I knew the whole thing was settled but Aunt Chatty said I must go up and see if I was suited with my room.

      “‘We will give you the tower room, dear. It’s not quite as large as the spare room, but it has a stovepipe hole for a stove in winter and a much nicer view. You can see the old graveyard from it.’

      “I knew I would love the room … the very name, ‘tower room,’ thrilled me. I felt as if we were living in that old song we used to sing in Avonlea School about the maiden who ‘dwelt in a high tower beside a gray sea.’ It proved to be the dearest place. We ascended to it by a little flight of corner steps leading up from the stair-landing. It was rather small … but not nearly as small as that dreadful hall bedroom I had my first year at Redmond. It had two windows, a dormer one looking west and a gable one looking north, and in the corner formed by the tower another three-sided window with casements opening outward and shelves underneath for my books. The floor was covered with round, braided rugs, the big bed had a canopy top and a ‘wild-goose’ quilt and looked so perfectly smooth and level that it seemed a shame to spoil it by sleeping in it. And, Gilbert, it is so high that I have to climb into it by a funny little movable set of steps which in daytime are stowed away under it. It seems Captain MacComber bought the whole contraption in some ‘foreign’ place and brought it home.

      “There was a dear little corner cupboard with shelves trimmed with white scalloped paper and bouquets painted on its door. There was a round blue cushion on the window-seat … a cushion with a button deep in the center, making it look like a fat blue doughnut. And there was a sweet washstand with two shelves … the top one just big enough for a basin and jug of robin’s-egg blue and the under one for a soap dish and hot water pitcher. It had a little brass-handled drawer full of towels and on a shelf over it a white china lady sat, with pink shoes and gilt sash and a red china rose in her golden china hair.

      “The whole place was engoldened by the light that came through the corn-colored curtains and there was the rarest tapestry on the whitewashed walls where the shadow patterns of the aspens outside fell … living tapestry, always changing and quivering. Somehow, it seemed such a happy room. I felt as if I were the richest girl in the world.

      “‘You’ll be safe there, that’s what,’ said Mrs. Lynde, as we went away.

      “‘I expect I’ll find some things a bit cramping after the freedom of Patty’s Place,’ I said, just to tease her.

      “‘Freedom!’ Mrs. Lynde sniffed. ‘Freedom! Don’t talk like a Yankee, Anne.’

      “I came up today, bag and baggage. Of course I hated to leave Green Gables. No matter how often and long I’m away from it, the minute a vacation comes I’m part of it again as if I had never been away, and my heart is torn over leaving it. But I know I’ll like it here. And it likes me. I always know whether a house likes me or not.

      “The views from my windows are lovely … even the old graveyard, which is surrounded by a row of dark fir trees and reached by a winding, dyke-bordered lane. From my west window I can see all over the harbor to distant, misty shores, with the dear little sailboats I love and the ships outward bound ‘for ports unknown’ … fascinating phrase! Such ‘scope for imagination’ in it! From the north window I can see into the grove of birch and maple across the road. You know I’ve always been a tree worshiper. When we studied Tennyson in our English course at Redmond I was always sorrowfully at one with poor Enone, mourning her ravished pines.

      “Beyond the grove and the graveyard is a lovable valley with the glossy red ribbon of a road winding through it and white houses dotted along it. Some valleys are lovable … you can’t tell why. Just to look at them gives you pleasure. And beyond it again is my blue hill. I’m naming it Storm King … the ruling passion, etc.

      “I can be so alone up here when I want to be. You know it’s lovely to be alone once in a while. The winds will be my friends. They’ll wail and sigh and croon around my tower … the white winds of winter … the green winds of spring … the blue winds of summer … the crimson winds of autumn … and the wild winds of all seasons … ‘stormy wind fulfilling his word.’ How I’ve always thrilled to that Bible verse … as if each and every wind had a message for me. I’ve always envied the boy who flew with the north wind in that lovely old story

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