Annes House of Dreams | Page 5

Green Gables,
that I never expected to be a bride because I was so homely no one
would ever want to marry me--unless some foreign missionary did. I
had an idea then that foreign missionaries couldn't afford to be finicky
in the matter of looks if they wanted a girl to risk her life among
cannibals. You should have seen the foreign missionary Priscilla
married. He was as handsome and inscrutable as those daydreams we

once planned to marry ourselves, Diana; he was the best dressed man I
ever met, and he raved over Priscilla's `ethereal, golden beauty.' But of
course there are no cannibals in Japan."
"Your wedding dress is a dream, anyhow," sighed Diana rapturously.
"You'll look like a perfect queen in it--you're so tall and slender. How
DO you keep so slim, Anne? I'm fatter than ever--I'll soon have no
waist at all."
"Stoutness and slimness seem to be matters of predestination," said
Anne. "At all events, Mrs. Harmon Andrews can't say to you what she
said to me when I came home from Summerside, `Well, Anne, you're
just about as skinny as ever.' It sounds quite romantic to be `slender,'
but `skinny' has a very different tang."
"Mrs. Harmon has been talking about your trousseau. She admits it's as
nice as Jane's, although she says Jane married a millionaire and you are
only marrying a `poor young doctor without a cent to his name.'"
Anne laughed.
"My dresses ARE nice. I love pretty things. I remember the first pretty
dress I ever had--the brown gloria Matthew gave me for our school
concert. Before that everything I had was so ugly. It seemed to me that
I stepped into a new world that night."
"That was the night Gilbert recited `Bingen on the Rhine,' and looked at
you when he said, `There's another, NOT a sister.' And you were so
furious because he put your pink tissue rose in his breast pocket! You
didn't much imagine then that you would ever marry him."
"Oh, well, that's another instance of predestination," laughed Anne, as
they went down the garret stairs.
CHAPTER 2
THE HOUSE OF DREAMS

There was more excitement in the air of Green Gables than there had
ever been before in all its history. Even Marilla was so excited that she
couldn't help showing it--which was little short of being phenomenal.
"There's never been a wedding in this house," she said, half
apologetically, to Mrs. Rachel Lynde. "When I was a child I heard an
old minister say that a house was not a real home until it had been
consecrated by a birth, a wedding and a death. We've had deaths
here--my father and mother died here as well as Matthew; and we've
even had a birth here. Long ago, just after we moved into this house,
we had a married hired man for a little while, and his wife had a baby
here. But there's never been a wedding before. It does seem so strange
to think of Anne being married. In a way she just seems to me the little
girl Matthew brought home here fourteen years ago. I can't realize that
she's grown up. I shall never forget what I felt when I saw Matthew
bringing in a GIRL. I wonder what became of the boy we would have
got if there hadn't been a mistake. I wonder what HIS fate was."
"Well, it was a fortunate mistake," said Mrs. Rachel Lynde, "though,
mind you, there was a time I didn't think so--that evening I came up to
see Anne and she treated us to such a scene. Many things have changed
since then, that's what."
Mrs. Rachel sighed, and then brisked up again. When weddings were in
order Mrs. Rachel was ready to let the dead past bury its dead.
"I'm going to give Anne two of my cotton warp spreads," she resumed.
"A tobacco-stripe one and an apple-leaf one. She tells me they're
getting to be real fashionable again. Well, fashion or no fashion, I don't
believe there's anything prettier for a spare-room bed than a nice
apple-leaf spread, that's what. I must see about getting them bleached.
I've had them sewed up in cotton bags ever since Thomas died, and no
doubt they're an awful color. But there's a month yet, and
dew-bleaching will work wonders."
Only a month! Marilla sighed and then said proudly:
"I'm giving Anne that half dozen braided rugs I have in the garret. I

never supposed she'd want them--they're so old-fashioned, and nobody
seems to want anything but hooked mats now. But she asked me for
them--said she'd rather have them than anything else for her floors.
They ARE pretty. I made them of the nicest rags, and braided them in
stripes. It was such company these