Anne of the Island | Page 6

for her.
"I must go home," she exclaimed, with a rather overdone carelessness.
"Marilla had a headache this afternoon, and I'm sure the twins will be
in some dreadful mischief by this time. I really shouldn't have stayed
away so long."
She chattered ceaselessly and inconsequently until they reached the
Green Gables lane. Poor Gilbert hardly had a chance to get a word in
edgewise. Anne felt rather relieved when they parted. There had been a
new, secret self-consciousness in her heart with regard to Gilbert, ever
since that fleeting moment of revelation in the garden of Echo Lodge.
Something alien had intruded into the old, perfect, school-day
comradeship -- something that threatened to mar it.
"I never felt glad to see Gilbert go before," she thought, half-
resentfully, half-sorrowfully, as she walked alone up the lane. "Our
friendship will be spoiled if he goes on with this nonsense. It mustn't be
spoiled -- I won't let it. Oh, WHY can't boys be just sensible!"
Anne had an uneasy doubt that it was not strictly "sensible" that she
should still feel on her hand the warm pressure of Gilbert's, as distinctly
as she had felt it for the swift second his had rested there; and still less
sensible that the sensation was far from being an unpleasant one -- very
different from that which had attended a similar demonstration on
Charlie Sloane's part, when she had been sitting out a dance with him at
a White Sands party three nights before. Anne shivered over the
disagreeable recollection. But all problems connected with infatuated
swains vanished from her mind when she entered the homely,
unsentimental atmosphere of the Green Gables kitchen where an
eight-year-old boy was crying grievously on the sofa.
"What is the matter, Davy?" asked Anne, taking him up in her arms.
"Where are Marilla and Dora?"
"Marilla's putting Dora to bed," sobbed Davy, "and I'm crying 'cause

Dora fell down the outside cellar steps, heels over head, and scraped all
the skin off her nose, and -- "
"Oh, well, don't cry about it, dear. Of course, you are sorry for her, but
crying won't help her any. She'll be all right tomorrow. Crying never
helps any one, Davy-boy, and -- "
"I ain't crying 'cause Dora fell down cellar," said Davy, cutting short
Anne's wellmeant preachment with increasing bitterness. "I'm crying,
cause I wasn't there to see her fall. I'm always missing some fun or
other, seems to me."
"Oh, Davy!" Anne choked back an unholy shriek of laughter. "Would
you call it fun to see poor little Dora fall down the steps and get hurt?"
"She wasn't MUCH hurt," said Davy, defiantly. "'Course, if she'd been
killed I'd have been real sorry, Anne. But the Keiths ain't so easy killed.
They're like the Blewetts, I guess. Herb Blewett fell off the hayloft last
Wednesday, and rolled right down through the turnip chute into the box
stall, where they had a fearful wild, cross horse, and rolled right under
his heels. And still he got out alive, with only three bones broke. Mrs.
Lynde says there are some folks you can't kill with a meat-axe. Is Mrs.
Lynde coming here tomorrow, Anne?"
"Yes, Davy, and I hope you'll be always very nice and good to her."
"I'll be nice and good. But will she ever put me to bed at nights, Anne?"
"Perhaps. Why?"
"'Cause," said Davy very decidedly, "if she does I won't say my prayers
before her like I do before you, Anne."
"Why not?"
"'Cause I don't think it would be nice to talk to God before strangers,
Anne. Dora can say hers to Mrs. Lynde if she likes, but I won't. I'll wait
till she's gone and then say 'em. Won't that be all right, Anne?"

"Yes, if you are sure you won't forget to say them, Davy-boy."
"Oh, I won't forget, you bet. I think saying my prayers is great fun. But
it won't be as good fun saying them alone as saying them to you. I wish
you'd stay home, Anne. I don't see what you want to go away and leave
us for."
"I don't exactly WANT to, Davy, but I feel I ought to go."
"If you don't want to go you needn't. You're grown up. When _I_'m
grown up I'm not going to do one single thing I don't want to do,
Anne."
"All your life, Davy, you'll find yourself doing things you don't want to
do."
"I won't," said Davy flatly. "Catch me! I have to do things I don't want
to now 'cause you and Marilla'll send me to bed if I don't. But when I
grow up you can't do that, and there'll be nobody to tell me not to do
things. Won't I have the time!