LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Well, I was!

      “But I hadn’t finished with Elizabeth. One stormy evening when the wind was howling along Spook’s Lane, we couldn’t go for a walk, so we came up to my room and drew a map of fairyland. Elizabeth sat on my blue doughnut cushion to make her higher, and looked like a serious little gnome as she bent over the map. (By the way, no phonetic spelling for me! ‘Gnome’ is far eerier and fairy-er than ‘nome.’)

      “Our map isn’t completed yet … every day we think of something more to go in it. Last night we located the house of the Witch of the Snow and drew a triple hill, covered completely with wild cherry trees in bloom, behind it. (By the way, I want some wild cherry trees near our house of dreams, Gilbert.) Of course we have a Tomorrow on the map … located east of Today and west of Yesterday … and we have no end of ‘times’ in fairyland. Springtime, long time, short time, new-moon time, goodnight time, next time … but no last time, because that is too sad a time for fairyland; old time, young time … because if there is an old time there ought to be a young time, too; mountain time … because that has such a fascinating sound; night-time and daytime … but no bedtime or school-time; Christmas-time; no only time, because that also is too sad … but lost time, because it is so nice to find it; some time, good time, fast time, slow time, halfpast kissing-time, going-home time, and time immemorial … which is one of the most beautiful phrases in the world. And we have cunning little red arrows everywhere, pointing to the different ‘times.’ I know Rebecca Dew thinks I’m quite childish. But, oh, Gilbert, don’t let’s ever grow too old and wise … no, not too old and silly for fairyland.

      “Rebecca Dew, I feel sure, is not quite certain that I am an influence for good in Elizabeth’s life. She thinks I encourage her in being ‘fanciful.’ One evening when I was away Rebecca Dew took the milk to her and found her already at the gate, looking at the sky so intently that she never heard Rebecca’s (anything but) fairy footfalls.

      “‘I was listening, Rebecca,’ she explained.

      “‘You do too much listening,’ said Rebecca disapprovingly.

      “Elizabeth smiled, remotely, austerely. (Rebecca Dew didn’t use those words but I know exactly how Elizabeth smiled.)

      “‘You would be surprised, Rebecca, if you knew what I hear sometimes,’ she said, in a way that made Rebecca Dew’s flesh creep on her bones … or so she avers.

      “But Elizabeth is always touched with faery and what can be done about it?

      “Your Very Anne-est ANNE.

      “P.S.1. Never, never, never shall I forget Cyrus Taylor’s face when his wife accused him of crocheting. But I shall always like him because he hunted for those kittens. And I like Esme for standing up for her father under the supposed wreck of all her hopes.

      “P.S.2. I have put in a new pen. And I love you because you aren’t pompous like Dr. Carter … and I love you because you haven’t got sticky-out ears like Johnny. And … the very best reason of all … I love you for just being Gilbert!”

Chapter XII

       Table of Contents

      “Windy Poplars,

       “Spook’s Lane,

       “May 30th.

      “DEAREST-AND-THEN-MORE-DEAR:

      “It’s spring!

      “Perhaps you, up to your eyes in a welter of exams in Kingsport, don’t know it. But I am aware of it from the crown of my head to the tips of my toes. Summerside is aware of it. Even the most unlovely streets are transfigured by arms of bloom reaching over old board fences and a ribbon of dandelions in the grass that borders the sidewalks. Even the china lady on my shelf is aware of it and I know if I could only wake up suddenly enough some night I’d catch her dancing a pas seul in her pink, gilt-heeled shoes.

      “Everything is calling ‘spring’ to me … the little laughing brooks, the blue hazes on the Storm King, the maples in the grove when I go to read your letters, the white cherry trees along Spook’s Lane, the sleek and saucy robins hopping defiance to Dusty Miller in the back yard, the creeper hanging greenly down over the half-door to which little Elizabeth comes for milk, the fir trees preening in new tassel tips around the old graveyard … even the old graveyard itself, where all sorts of flowers planted at the heads of the graves are budding into leaf and bloom, as if to say, ‘Even here life is triumphant over death.’ I had a really lovely prowl about the graveyard the other night. (I’m sure Rebecca Dew thinks my taste in walks frightfully morbid. ‘I can’t think why you have such a hankering after that unchancy place,’ she says.) I roamed over it in the scented green cat’s light and wondered if Nathan Pringle’s wife really had tried to poison him. Her grave looked so innocent with its new grass and its June lilies that I concluded she had been entirely maligned.

      “Just another month and I’ll be home for vacation! I keep thinking of the old orchard at Green Gables with its trees now in full snow … the old bridge over the Lake of Shining Waters … the murmur of the sea in your ears … a summer afternoon in Lover’s Lane … and you!

      “I have just the right kind of pen tonight, Gilbert, and so …

       (Two pages omitted.)

      “I was around at the Gibsons’ this evening for a call. Marilla asked me some time ago to look them up because she once knew them when they lived in White Sands. Accordingly I looked them up and have been looking them up weekly ever since because Pauline seems to enjoy my visits and I’m so sorry for her. She is simply a slave to her mother … who is a terrible old woman.

      “Mrs. Adoniram Gibson is eighty and spends her days in a wheel-chair. They moved to Summerside fifteen years ago. Pauline, who is forty-five, is the youngest of the family, all her brothers and sisters being married and all of them determined not to have Mrs. Adoniram in their homes. She keeps the house and waits on her mother hand and foot. She is a little pale, fawn-eyed thing with golden-brown hair that is still glossy and pretty. They are quite comfortably off and if it were not for her mother Pauline could have a very pleasant easy life. She just loves church work and would be perfectly happy attending Ladies’ Aids and Missionary Societies, planning for church suppers and Welcome socials, not to speak of exulting proudly in being the possessor of the finest wandering-jew in town. But she can hardly ever get away from the house, even to go to church on Sundays. I can’t see any way of escape for her, for old Mrs. Gibson will probably live to be a hundred. And, while she may not have the use of her legs, there is certainly nothing the matter with her tongue. It always fills me with helpless rage to sit there and hear her making poor Pauline the target for her sarcasm. And yet Pauline has told me that her mother ‘thinks quite highly’ of me and is much nicer to her when I am around. If this be so I shiver to think what she must be when I am not around.

      “Pauline dares not do anything without asking her mother. She can’t even buy her own clothes … not so much as a pair of stockings. Everything has to be sent up for Mrs. Gibson’s approval; everything has to be worn until it has been turned twice. Pauline has worn the same hat for four years.

      “Mrs. Gibson can’t bear any noise in the house or a breath of fresh air. It is said she never smiled in her life… . I’ve never caught her at it, anyway, and when I look at her I find myself wondering what would happen to her face if she did smile. Pauline can’t even have a room to herself. She has to sleep in the same room with her mother and be up almost every hour of the night rubbing Mrs. Gibson’s back or giving her a pill or getting a hot-water bottle for her … hot, not lukewarm! … or changing her pillows or seeing what that mysterious noise is in the back yard. Mrs. Gibson does her sleeping in the afternoons and spends her nights devising tasks for Pauline.

      “Yet nothing has ever made Pauline bitter. She is sweet and unselfish and patient and I am glad she has a dog to love. The

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