Lucy Montgomery - Anne of Windy Poplars

Katherine shrugged.

”Oh, go ahead. I suppose my hair does look dreadful ... but I've no time to be always primping. I haven't a party dress. Will my green taffeta do?”

”It will have to do ... though green is the one color above all others that you should never wear, my Katherine. But you're going to wear a red, pin-tucked chiffon collar I've made for you. Yes, you ARE. You ought to have a red dress, Katherine.”

”I've always hated red. When I went to live with Uncle Henry, Aunt Gertrude always made me wear aprons of bright Turkey-red. The other children in school used to call out 'Fire,' when I came in with one of those aprons on. Anyway, I can't be bothered with clothes.”

”Heaven grant me patience! Clothes are VERY important," said Anne severely, as she braided and coiled. Then she looked at her work and saw that it was good. She put her arm about Katherine's shoulders and turned her to the mirror.

”Don't you truly think we are a pair of quite good-looking girls?” she laughed. "And isn't it really nice to think people will find some pleasure in looking at us? There are so many homely people who would actually look quite attractive if they took a little pains with themselves. Three Sundays ago in church ... you remember the day poor old Mr. Milvain preached and had such a terrible cold in his head that nobody could make out what he was saying? ... well, I passed the time making the people around me beautiful. I gave Mrs. Brent a new nose, I waved Mary Addison's hair and gave Jane Marden's a lemon rinse ... I dressed Emma Dill in blue instead of brown ... I dressed Charlotte Blair in stripes instead of checks ... I removed several moles ... and I shaved off Thomas Anderson's long, sandy Piccadilly weepers. You couldn't have known them when I got through with them. And, except perhaps for Mrs. Brent's nose, they could have done everything I did, themselves. Why, Katherine, your eyes are just the color of tea ... amber tea. Now, live up to your name this evening ... a brook should be sparkling ... limpid ... merry.”

”Everything I'm not.”

”Everything you've been this past week. So you CAN be it.”

”That's only the magic of Green Gables. When I go back to Summerside, twelve o'clock will have struck for Cinderella.”

”You'll take the magic back with you. Look at yourself ... looking for once as you ought to look all the time.”

Katherine gazed at her reflection in the mirror as if rather doubting her identity.

”I do look years younger," she admitted. "You were right ... clothes DO do things to you. Oh, I know I've been looking older than my age. I didn't care. Why should I? Nobody else cared.

And I'm not like you, Anne. Apparently you were born knowing how to live. And I don't know anything about it ... not even the A B C. I wonder if it's too late to learn. I've been sarcastic so long, I don't know if I can be anything else. Sarcasm seemed to me to be the only way I could make any impression on people. And it seems to me, too, that I've always been afraid when I was in the company of other people ... afraid of saying something stupid ... afraid of being laughed at.”

”Katherine Brooke, look at yourself in that mirror; carry that picture of yourself with you ... magnificent hair framing your face instead of trying to pull it backward ... eyes sparkling like dark stars ... a little flush of excitement on your cheeks ... and you won't feel afraid. Come, now. We're going to be late, but fortunately all the performers have what I heard Dora referring to as 'preserved' seats.”

Gilbert drove them to the hall. How like old times it was ... only Katherine was with her in place of Diana. Anne sighed. Diana had so many other interests now. No more running round to concerts and parties for her.

But what an evening it was! What silvery satin roads with a pale green sky in the west after a light snowfall! Orion was treading his stately march across the heavens, and hills and fields and woods lay around them in a pearly silence.

Katherine's reading captured her audience from the first line, and at the party she could not find dances for all her would-be partners. She suddenly found herself laughing without bitterness.

Then home to Green Gables, warming their toes at the sitting-room fire by the light of two friendly candles on the mantel; and Mrs. Lynde tiptoeing into their room, late as it was, to ask them if they'd like another blanket and assure Katherine that her little dog was snug and warm in a basket behind the kitchen stove.

”I've got a new outlook on life," thought Katherine as she drifted off to slumber. "I didn't know there were people like this.”

”Come again," said Marilla when she left.

Marilla never said that to any one unless she meant it.

”Of course she's coming again," said Anne. "For weekends ... and for WEEKS in the summer. We'll build bonfires and hoe in the garden ... and pick apples and go for the cows ... and row on the pond and get lost in the woods. I want to show you Little Hester Gray's garden, Katherine, and Echo Lodge and Violet Vale when it's full of violets.”

”Windy Poplars,

”January 5th,

”The street where ghosts (should) walk.

”MY ESTEEMED FRIEND:

”That isn't anything Aunt Chatty's grandmother wrote. It's only something she would have written if she'd thought of it.

”I've made a New Year resolution to write sensible love-letters.

Do you suppose such a thing is possible?

”I have left dear Green Gables but I have returned to dear Windy Poplars. Rebecca Dew had a fire lighted in the tower room for me and a hot-water bottle in the bed.

”I'm so glad I like Windy Poplars. It would be dreadful to live in a place I didn't like ... that didn't seem friendly to me ... that didn't say, 'I'm glad you're back.' Windy Poplars does. It's a bit old-fashioned and a bit prim, but it likes me.

”And I was glad to see Aunt Kate and Aunt Chatty and Rebecca Dew again. I can't help seeing their funny sides but I love them well for all that.

”Rebecca Dew said such a nice thing to me yesterday.

”'Spook's Lane has been a different place since you came here, Miss Shirley.'

”I'm glad you liked Katherine, Gilbert. She was surprisingly nice to you. It's amazing to find how nice she can be when she tries.

And I think she is just as much amazed at it herself as any one else. She had no idea it would be so easy.

”It's going to make so much difference in school, having a Vice you can really work with. She is going to change her boarding-house, and I have already persuaded her to get that velvet hat and have not yet given up hope of persuading her to sing in the choir.

”Mr. Hamilton's dog came down yesterday and chivied Dusty Miller.

'This IS the last straw,' said Rebecca Dew. And with her red cheeks redder still, her chubby back shaking with anger, and in such a hurry that she put her hat on hindside before and never knew it, she toddled up the road and gave Mr. Hamilton quite a large piece of her mind. I can just see his foolish, amiable face while he was listening to her.

”'I do not like That Cat,' she told me, 'but he is OURS and no Hamilton dog is going to come here and give him impudence in his own back yard. "He only chased your cat in fun," said Jabez Hamilton. "The Hamilton ideas of fun are different from the MacComber ideas of fun or the MacLean ideas of fun or, if it comes to that, the Dew ideas of fun," I told him. "Tut, tut, you must have had cabbage for dinner, Miss Dew," said he. "No," I said,

”but I COULD have had. Mrs. Captain MacComber didn't sell all her cabbages last fall and leave her family without any because the price was so good. There are some people," sez I, "that can't hear anything because of the jingle in their pocket." And I left that to sink in. But what could you expect from a Hamilton? Low scum!'