Summerside and the High without you. What will the tower room be
like next year without our evenings of confab and argument, and our
hours of foolishness, when we turned everybody and everything into
a joke?"
And Anne had prevailed on Mrs. Campbell to let little Elizabeth go
home with her for a fortnight . . . no more. But Elizabeth,
looking forward to two whole weeks with Miss Shirley, asked no more
of life.
"I feel like Miss Elizabeth today," she told Anne with
a sigh of
delightful excitement, as they drove away from Windy Poplars.
"
Will you please call me 'Miss Elizabeth' when you introduce me to
your friends at Green Gables? It would make me feel so grown up."
"I will," promised Anne gravely, remembering a small, red-headed
damsel who had once begged to be called Cordelia.
Elizabeth's drive from Blight River to Green Gables, over a road
which only Prince Edward Island in June can show, was almost as
ecstatic a thing for her as it had been for Anne that memorable
spring evening so many years ago. The world was beautiful, with
wind-rippled meadows on every hand and surprises lurking around
every corner. She was with her beloved Miss Shirley; she would be
free from the Woman for two whole weeks; she had a new pink gingham
dress and a pair of lovely new brown boots. It was almost as if
Tomorrow were already there . . . with fourteen Tomorrows to
follow. Elizabeth's eyes were shining with dreams when they turned
into the Green Gables lane where the pink wild roses grew.
Things seemed to change magically for Elizabeth the moment she got
to Green Gables. For two weeks she lived in a world of romance.
You couldn't step outside the door without stepping into something
romantic. Things were just bound to happen in Avonlea . . . if not
today, then tomorrow. Elizabeth knew she hadn't quite got into
Tomorrow yet, but she knew she was on the very fringes of it.
Everything in and about Green Gables seemed to be acquainted with
her. Even Marilla's pink rosebud tea-set was like an old friend.
The rooms looked at her as if she had always known and loved them;
the very grass was greener than grass anywhere else; and the people
who lived at Green Gables were the kind of people who lived in
Tomorrow. She loved them and was beloved by them. Davy and Dora
adored her and spoiled her; Marilla and Mrs. Lynde approved of her.
She was neat, she was lady-like, she was polite to her elders.
They knew Anne did not like Mrs. Campbell's methods, but it was
plain to be seen that she had trained her great-granddaughter
properly.
"Oh, I don't want to sleep, Miss Shirley," Elizabeth whispered when
they were in bed in the little porch gable, after a rapturous
evening. "I don't want to sleep away a single minute of these
wonderful two weeks. I wish I could get along without any sleep
while I'm here."
For a while she didn't sleep. It was heavenly to lie there and
listen to the splendid low thunder Miss Shirley had told her was
the sound of the sea. Elizabeth loved it and the sigh of the wind
around the eaves as well. Elizabeth had always been "afraid of the
night." Who knew what queer thing might jump at you out of it?
But now she was afraid no longer. For the first time in her life
the night seemed like a friend to her.
They would go to the shore tomorrow, Miss Shirley had promised, and
have a dip in those silver-tipped waves they had seen breaking
beyond the green dunes of Avonlea when they drove over the last
hill. Elizabeth could see them coming in, one after the other.
One of them was a great dark wave of sleep . . . it rolled right
over her . . . Elizabeth drowned in it with a delicious sigh of
surrender.
"It's . . . so . . . easy . . . to . . . love . . . God . . .
here," was her last conscious thought.
But she lay awake for a while every night of her stay at Green
Gables, long after Miss Shirley had gone to sleep, thinking over
things. Why couldn't life at The Evergreens be like life at Green
Gables?
Elizabeth had never lived where she could make a noise if she
wanted to. Everybody at The Evergreens had to move softly . . .
speak softly . . . even, so Elizabeth felt, think softly. There
were times when Elizabeth desired perversely to yell loud and long.
"You may make all the noise you want to here," Anne had told her.
But it was strange . . . she no longer wanted to yell, now that
there was nothing to prevent her. She liked to go quietly,
stepping gently among all the lovely things around her. But
Elizabeth learned to laugh during that sojourn at Green Gables.
And when she went back to Summerside she carried delightful
memories with her and left equally delightful ones behind her.
To the Green Gables folks Green Gables seemed for months full of
memories of little Elizabeth. For "little Elizabeth" she was to
them in spite of the fact that Anne had solemnly introduced her as
"
Miss Elizabeth." She was so tiny, so golden, so elf-like, that
they couldn't think of her as anything but little Elizabeth . . .
little Elizabeth dancing in a twilight garden among the white June
lilies . . . coiled up on a bough of the big Duchess apple tree
reading fairy tales, unlet and unhindered . . . little Elizabeth
half drowned in a field of buttercups where her golden head seemed
just a larger buttercup . . . chasing silver-green moths or trying
to count the fireflies in Lover's Lane . . . listening to the
bumblebees zooming in the canterbury-bells . . . being fed
strawberries and cream by Dora in the pantry or eating red currants
with her in the yard . . . "Red currants are such beautiful things,
aren't they, Dora? It's just like eating jewels, isn't it?" . . .
little Elizabeth singing to herself in the haunted dusk of the firs
. . . with fingers sweet from gathering the big, fat, pink "cabbage
roses" . . . gazing at the great moon hanging over the brook valley
. . . "I think the moon has worried eyes, don't you, Mrs. Lynde?"
. . . crying bitterly because a chapter in the serial story in
Davy's magazine left the hero in a sad predicament . . . "Oh, Miss
Shirley, I'm sure he can never live through it!" . . . little
Elizabeth curled up, all flushed and sweet like a wild rose, for an
afternoon nap on the kitchen sofa with Dora's kittens cuddled about
her . . . shrieking with laughter to see the wind blowing the
dignified old hens' tails over their backs . . . could it be little
Elizabeth laughing like that? . . . helping Anne frost cupcakes,
Mrs. Lynde cut the patches for a new "double Irish chain" quilt,
and Dora rub the old brass candlesticks till they could see their
faces in them . . . cutting out tiny biscuits with a thimble under
Marilla's tutelage. Why, the Green Gables folks could hardly look
at a place or thing without being reminded of little Elizabeth.
"I wonder if I'll ever have such a happy fortnight again," thought
little Elizabeth, as she drove away from Green Gables. The road to
the station was just as beautiful as it had been two weeks before,
but half the time little Elizabeth couldn't see it for tears.
"I couldn't have believed I'd miss a child so much," said Mrs.
Lynde.
When little Elizabeth went, Katherine Brooke and her dog came for
the rest of the summer. Katherine had resigned from the staff of
the High School at the close of the year and meant to go to Redmond
in the fall to take a secretarial course at Redmond University.
Anne had advised this.
"I know you'd like it and you've never liked teaching," said the
latter, as they sat one evening in a ferny corner of a clover field
and watched the glories of a sunset sky.
"Life owes me something more than it has paid me and I'm going out
to collect it," said Katherine decidedly. "I feel so much younger
than I did this time last year," she added with a laugh.
"I'm sure it's the best thing for you to do, but I hate to think of
Summerside and the High without you. What will the tower room be
like next year without our evenings of confab and argument, and our
hours of foolishness, when we turned everybody and everything into
a joke?"