properly developed. It s perfectly appalling to think of being twenty,
Marilla. It sounds so fearfully old and grown up. But why was Miss Stacy
here this afternoon?
That is what I want to tell you, Anne, if you ll ever give me a chance
to get a word in edgewise. She was talking about you.
About me? Anne looked rather scared. Then she flushed and exclaimed:
Oh, I know what she was saying. I meant to tell you, Marilla, honestly
I did, but I forgot. Miss Stacy caught me reading Ben Hur in school
yesterday afternoon when I should have been studying my Canadian
history. Jane Andrews lent it to me. I was reading it at dinner hour,
and I had just got to the chariot race when school went in. I was simply
wild to know how it turned out--although I felt sure Ben Hur must win,
because it wouldn t be poetical justice if he didn t--so I spread the
history open on my desk lid and then tucked Ben Hur between the desk and
my knee. I just looked as if I were studying Canadian history, you know,
while all the while I was reveling in Ben Hur. I was so interested in it
that I never noticed Miss Stacy coming down the aisle until all at
once I just looked up and there she was looking down at me, so
reproachful-like. I can t tell you how ashamed I felt, Marilla,
especially when I heard Josie Pye giggling. Miss Stacy took Ben Hur
away, but she never said a word then. She kept me in at recess and
talked to me. She said I had done very wrong in two respects. First, I
was wasting the time I ought to have put on my studies; and secondly,
I was deceiving my teacher in trying to make it appear I was reading a
history when it was a storybook instead. I had never realized until that
moment, Marilla, that what I was doing was deceitful. I was shocked. I
cried bitterly, and asked Miss Stacy to forgive me and I d never do such
a thing again; and I offered to do penance by never so much as looking
at Ben Hur for a whole week, not even to see how the chariot race turned
out. But Miss Stacy said she wouldn t require that, and she forgave me
freely. So I think it wasn t very kind of her to come up here to you
about it after all.
Miss Stacy never mentioned such a thing to me, Anne, and its only your
guilty conscience that s the matter with you. You have no business to be
taking storybooks to school. You read too many novels anyhow. When I was
a girl I wasn t so much as allowed to look at a novel.
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