You see before you a perfectly happy person, Marilla, she announced.
I m perfectly happy--yes, in spite of my red hair. Just at present I
have a soul above red hair. Mrs. Barry kissed me and cried and said she
was so sorry and she could never repay me. I felt fearfully embarrassed,
Marilla, but I just said as politely as I could, I have no hard
feelings for you, Mrs. Barry. I assure you once for all that I did not
mean to intoxicate Diana and henceforth I shall cover the past with the
mantle of oblivion. That was a pretty dignified way of speaking wasn t
it, Marilla?
I felt that I was heaping coals of fire on Mrs. Barry s head. And Diana
and I had a lovely afternoon. Diana showed me a new fancy crochet stitch
her aunt over at Carmody taught her. Not a soul in Avonlea knows it but
us, and we pledged a solemn vow never to reveal it to anyone else. Diana
gave me a beautiful card with a wreath of roses on it and a verse of
poetry:
If you love me as I love you
Nothing but death can part us two.
And that is true, Marilla. We re going to ask Mr. Phillips to let us
sit together in school again, and Gertie Pye can go with Minnie Andrews.
We had an elegant tea. Mrs. Barry had the very best china set out,
Marilla, just as if I was real company. I can t tell you what a thrill
it gave me. Nobody ever used their very best china on my account before.
And we had fruit cake and pound cake and doughnuts and two kinds of
preserves, Marilla. And Mrs. Barry asked me if I took tea and said Pa,
why don t you pass the biscuits to Anne? It must be lovely to be grown
up, Marilla, when just being treated as if you were is so nice.
I don t know about that, said Marilla, with a brief sigh.
Well, anyway, when I am grown up, said Anne decidedly, I m always
going to talk to little girls as if they were too, and I ll never laugh
when they use big words. I know from sorrowful experience how that hurts
one s feelings. After tea Diana and I made taffy. The taffy wasn t very
good, I suppose because neither Diana nor I had ever made any before.
Diana left me to stir it while she buttered the plates and I forgot and
let it burn; and then when we set it out on the platform to cool the cat
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