Further Chronicles of Avonlea | Page 2

who "looked like a woman whose
opinions were always very decided and warranted to wear!"
This gift of characterization in a few words is lavished also on material
objects, as, for instance; what more is needed to describe the
forlornness of the home from which Anne was rescued than the
statement that even the trees around it "looked like orphans"?
The poetic touch, too, never fails in the right place and is never too

frequently introduced in her descriptions. They throw a glamor over
that Northern land which otherwise you might imagine as rather cold
and barren. What charming Springs they must have there! One sees all
the fruit-trees clad in bridal garments of pink and white; and what a
translucent sky smiles down on the ponds and the reaches of bay and
cove!
"The Eastern sky was a great arc of crystal, smitten through with
auroral crimsonings."
"She was as slim and lithe as a young white-stemmed birch-tree; her
hair was like a soft dusky cloud, and her eyes were as blue as Avonlea
Harbor in a fair twilight, when all the sky is a-bloom over it."
Sentiment with a humorous touch to it prevails in the first two stories
of the present book. The one relates to the disappearance of a valuable
white Persian cat with a blue spot in its tail. "Fatima" is like the apple
of her eye to the rich old aunt who leaves her with two nieces, with a
stern injunction not to let her out of the house. Of course both Sue and
Ismay detest cats; Ismay hates them, Sue loathes them; but Aunt
Cynthia's favor is worth preserving. You become as much interested in
Fatima's fate as if she were your own pet, and the climax is no less
unexpected than it is natural, especially when it is made also the last act
of a pretty comedy of love.
Miss Montgomery delights in depicting the romantic episodes hidden
in the hearts of elderly spinsters as, for instance, in the case of Charlotte
Holmes, whose maid Nancy would have sent for the doctor and
subjected her to a porous plaster while waiting for him, had she known
that up stairs there was a note-book full of original poems. Rather than
bear the stigma of never having had a love-affair, this sentimental lady
invents one to tell her mocking young friends. The dramatic and
unexpected denouement is delightful fun.
Another note-book reveals a deeper romance in the case of Miss Emily;
this is related by Anne of Green Gables, who once or twice flashes
across the scene, though for the most part her friends and neighbors at
White Sands or Newbridge or Grafton as well as at Avonlea are the
persons involved.
In one story, the last, "Tannis of the Flats," the secret of Elinor Blair's
spinsterhood is revealed in an episode which carries the reader from
Avonlea to Saskatchewan and shows the unselfish devotion of a

half-breed Indian girl. The story is both poignant and dramatic. Its one
touch of humor is where Jerome Carey curses his fate in being
compelled to live in that desolate land in "the picturesque language
permissible in the far Northwest."
Self-sacrifice, as the real basis of happiness, is a favorite theme in Miss
Montgomery's fiction. It is raised to the nth power in the story entitled,
"In Her Selfless Mood," where an ugly, misshapen girl devotes her life
and renounces marriage for the sake of looking after her weak and
selfish half-brother. The same spirit is found in "Only a Common
Fellow," who is haloed with a certain splendor by renouncing the girl
he was to marry in favor of his old rival, supposed to have been killed
in France, but happily delivered from that tragic fate.
Miss Montgomery loves to introduce a little child or a baby as a solvent
of old feuds or domestic quarrels. In "The Dream Child," a foundling
boy, drifting in through a storm in a dory, saves a heart-broken mother
from insanity. In "Jane's Baby," a baby-cousin brings reconciliation
between the two sisters, Rosetta and Carlotta, who had not spoken for
twenty years because "the slack-twisted" Jacob married the younger of
the two.
Happiness generally lights up the end of her stories, however tragic
they may set out to be. In "The Son of His Mother," Thyra is a stern
woman, as "immovable as a stone image." She had only one son, whom
she worshipped; "she never wanted a daughter, but she pitied and
despised all sonless women." She demanded absolute obedience from
Chester--not only obedience, but also utter affection, and she hated his
dog because the boy loved him: "She could not share her love even
with a dumb brute." When Chester falls in love, she is relentless toward
the beautiful young