BEAUTY FOR ASHES
"Any news from Green Gables, Anne?"
"Nothing very especial," replied Anne, folding up Marilla's letter. "Jake Donnell has been there shingling the roof. He is a full-fledged carpenter now, so it seems he has had his own way in regard to the choice of a life-work. You remember his mother wanted him to be a college professor. I shall never forget the day she came to the school and rated me for failing to call him St. Clair.""Does anyone ever call him that now?"
"Evidently not. It seems that he has completely lived it down. Even his mother has succumbed. I always thought that a boy with Jake's chin and mouth would get his own way in the end. Diana writes me that Dora has a beau. Just think of it--that child!""Dora is seventeen," said Gilbert. "Charlie Sloane and I were both mad about you when you were seventeen, Anne.""Really, Gilbert, we must be getting on in years,"said Anne, with a half-rueful smile, "when children who were six when we thought ourselves grown up are old enough now to have beaux. Dora's is Ralph Andrews--Jane's brother. I remember him as a little, round, fat, white-headed fellow who was always at the foot of his class. But I understand he is quite a fine-looking young man now.""Dora will probably marry young. She's of the same type as Charlotta the Fourth--she'll never miss her first chance for fear she might not get another.""Well; if she marries Ralph I hope he will be a little more up-and-coming than his brother Billy," mused Anne.
"For instance," said Gilbert, laughing, "let us hope he will be able to propose on his own account. Anne, would you have married Billy if he had asked you himself, instead of getting Jane to do it for him?""I might have." Anne went off into a shriek of laughter over the recollection of her first proposal.
"The shock of the whole thing might have hypnotized me into some such rash and foolish act. Let us be thankful he did it by proxy.""I had a letter from George Moore yesterday," said Leslie, from the corner where she was reading.
"Oh, how is he?" asked Anne interestedly, yet with an unreal feeling that she was inquiring about some one whom she did not know.
"He is well, but he finds it very hard to adapt himself to all the changes in his old home and friends. He is going to sea again in the spring. It's in his blood, he says, and he longs for it. But he told me something that made me glad for him, poor fellow. Before he sailed on the Four Sisters he was engaged to a girl at home. He did not tell me anything about her in Montreal, because he said he supposed she would have forgotten him and married someone else long ago, and with him, you see, his engagement and love was still a thing of the present. It was pretty hard on him, but when he got home he found she had never married and still cared for him. They are to be married this fall.
I'm going to ask him to bring her over here for a little trip; he says he wants to come and see the place where he lived so many years without knowing it.""What a nice little romance," said Anne, whose love for the romantic was immortal. "And to think," she added with a sigh of self-reproach, "that if I had had my way George Moore would never have come up from the grave in which his identity was buried. How I did fight against Gilbert's suggestion! Well, I am punished: I shall never be able to have a different opinion from Gilbert's again! If I try to have, he will squelch me by casting George Moore's case up to me!""As if even that would squelch a woman!" mocked Gilbert. "At least do not become my echo, Anne. Alittle opposition gives spice to life . I do not want a wife like John MacAllister's over the harbor. No matter what he says, she at once remarks in that drab, lifeless little voice of hers, `That is very true, John, dear me!'"Anne and Leslie laughed. Anne's laughter was silver and Leslie's golden, and the combination of the two was as satisfactory as a perfect chord in music.
Susan, coming in on the heels of the laughter, echoed it with a resounding sigh.
"Why, Susan, what is the matter?" asked Gilbert.
"There's nothing wrong with little Jem, is there, Susan?" cried Anne, starting up in alarm.
"No, no, calm yourself, Mrs. Doctor, dear. Something has happened, though. Dear me, everything has gone catawampus with me this week. I spoiled the bread, as you know too well--and I scorched the doctor's best shirt bosom--and I broke your big platter. And now, on the top of all this, comes word that my sister Matilda has broken her leg and wants me to go and stay with her for a spell.""Oh, I'm very sorry--sorry that your sister has met with such an accident, I mean," exclaimed Anne.
"Ah, well, man was made to mourn, Mrs. Doctor, dear.
That sounds as if it ought to be in the Bible, but they tell me a person named Burns wrote it. And there is no doubt that we are born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. As for Matilda, I do not know what to think of her. None of our family ever broke their legs before.
But whatever she has done she is still my sister, and Ifeel that it is my duty to go and wait on her, if you can spare me for a few weeks, Mrs. Doctor, dear.""Of course, Susan, of course. I can get someone to help me while you are gone.""If you cannot I will not go, Mrs. Doctor, dear, Matilda's leg to the contrary notwithstanding. I will not have you worried, and that blessed child upset in consequence, for any number of legs.""Oh, you must go to your sister at once, Susan. I can get a girl from the cove, who will do for a time.""Anne, will you let me come and stay with you while Susan is away?" exclaimed Leslie. "Do! I'd love to--and it would be an act of charity on your part.
I'm so horribly lonely over there in that big barn of a house. There's so little to do--and at night I'm worse than lonely--I'm frightened and nervous in spite of locked doors. There was a tramp around two days ago."Anne joyfully agreed, and next day Leslie was installed as an inmate of the little house of dreams. Miss Cornelia warmly approved of the arrangement.
"It seems Providential," she told Anne in confidence.
