Anne of Avonlea / Энн из Эвонли

“Five it is… and here’s the money on the spot. Now, I want you to come into the house. There’s something in there worth seeing… something very few people have seen as yet. Just come in and pass your opinion.”

“What will we say if the baby isn’t pretty?” whispered Diana in trepidation as they followed the excited Lorenzo into the house.

“Oh, there will certainly be something else nice to say about it,” said Anne easily. “There always is about a baby.”

The baby was pretty, however, and Mr.

White felt that he got his five dollars’ worth of the girls’ honest delight over the plump little newcomer. But that was the first, last, and only time that Lorenzo White ever subscribed to anything.

Anne, tired as she was, made one more effort for the public weal that night, slipping over the fields to interview Mr. Harrison, who was as usual smoking his pipe on the veranda with Ginger beside him. Strickly speaking he was on the Carmody road; but Jane and Gertie, who were not acquainted with him save by doubtful report, had nervously begged Anne to canvass him.

Mr. Harrison, however, flatly refused to subscribe a cent, and all Anne’s wiles were in vain.

“But I thought you approved of our society, Mr. Harrison,” she mourned.

“So I do… so I do… but my approval doesn’t go as deep as my pocket, Anne.”

“A few more experiences such as I have had today would make me as much of a pessimist as Miss Eliza Andrews,” Anne told her reflection in the east gable mirror at bedtime.

Chapter VII

The Pointing of Duty

Anne leaned back in her chair one mild October evening and sighed. She was sitting at a table covered with text books and exercises, but the closely written sheets of paper before her had no apparent connection with studies or school work.

“What is the matter?” asked Gilbert, who had arrived at the open kitchen door just in time to hear the sigh.

Anne colored, and thrust her writing out of sight under some school compositions.

“Nothing very dreadful. I was just trying to write out some of my thoughts, as Professor Hamilton advised me, but I couldn’t get them to please me. They seem so still and foolish directly they’re written down on white paper with black ink. Fancies are like shadows… you can’t cage them, they’re such wayward, dancing things. But perhaps I’ll learn the secret some day if I keep on trying. I haven’t a great many spare moments, you know.