you are going to give them to eat, so I won t tell you what she said we
could have to drink. Only it begins with an R and a C and it s bright
red color. I love bright red drinks, don t you? They taste twice as good
as any other color.
The orchard, with its great sweeping boughs that bent to the ground
with fruit, proved so delightful that the little girls spent most of the
afternoon in it, sitting in a grassy corner where the frost had spared
the green and the mellow autumn sunshine lingered warmly, eating apples
and talking as hard as they could. Diana had much to tell Anne of what
went on in school. She had to sit with Gertie Pye and she hated
it; Gertie squeaked her pencil all the time and it just made
her--Diana s--blood run cold; Ruby Gillis had charmed all her warts
away, true s you live, with a magic pebble that old Mary Joe from the
Creek gave her. You had to rub the warts with the pebble and then throw
it away over your left shoulder at the time of the new moon and the
warts would all go. Charlie Sloane s name was written up with Em White s
on the porch wall and Em White was _awful mad_ about it; Sam Boulter had
sassed Mr. Phillips in class and Mr. Phillips whipped him and Sam s
father came down to the school and dared Mr. Phillips to lay a hand on
one of his children again; and Mattie Andrews had a new red hood and a
blue crossover with tassels on it and the airs she put on about it were
perfectly sickening; and Lizzie Wright didn t speak to Mamie Wilson
because Mamie Wilson s grown-up sister had cut out Lizzie Wright s
grown-up sister with her beau; and everybody missed Anne so and wished
she s come to school again; and Gilbert Blythe--
But Anne didn t want to hear about Gilbert Blythe. She jumped up
hurriedly and said suppose they go in and have some raspberry cordial.
Anne looked on the second shelf of the room pantry but there was no
bottle of raspberry cordial there. Search revealed it away back on the
top shelf. Anne put it on a tray and set it on the table with a tumbler.
Now, please help yourself, Diana, she said politely. I don t believe
I ll have any just now. I don t feel as if I wanted any after all those
apples.
Diana poured herself out a tumblerful, looked at its bright-red hue
admiringly, and then sipped it daintily.
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