Anne of the Island | Page 9

no power over me. Common nonsense takes
possession of my soul. Really, after Mrs. Elisha went away I hardly had
the heart to finish packing."
"You're just tired, Anne. Come, forget it all and take a walk with me --
a ramble back through the woods beyond the marsh. There should be
something there I want to show you."
"Should be! Don't you know if it is there?"
"No. I only know it should be, from something I saw there in spring.
Come on. We'll pretend we are two children again and we'll go the way
of the wind."
They started gaily off. Anne, remembering the unpleasantness of the
preceding evening, was very nice to Gilbert; and Gilbert, who was
learning wisdom, took care to be nothing save the schoolboy comrade
again. Mrs. Lynde and Marilla watched them from the kitchen window.
"That'll be a match some day," Mrs. Lynde said approvingly.
Marilla winced slightly. In her heart she hoped it would, but it went
against her grain to hear the matter spoken of in Mrs. Lynde's gossipy
matter-of-fact way.
"They're only children yet," she said shortly.
Mrs. Lynde laughed good-naturedly.
"Anne is eighteen; I was married when I was that age. We old folks,
Marilla, are too much given to thinking children never grow up, that's
what. Anne is a young woman and Gilbert's a man, and he worships the

ground she walks on, as any one can see. He's a fine fellow, and Anne
can't do better. I hope she won't get any romantic nonsense into her
head at Redmond. I don't approve of them coeducational places and
never did, that's what. I don't believe," concluded Mrs. Lynde solemnly,
"that the students at such colleges ever do much else than flirt."
"They must study a little," said Marilla, with a smile.
"Precious little," sniffed Mrs. Rachel. "However, I think Anne will. She
never was flirtatious. But she doesn't appreciate Gilbert at his full value,
that's what. Oh, I know girls! Charlie Sloane is wild about her, too, but
I'd never advise her to marry a Sloane. The Sloanes are good, honest,
respectable people, of course. But when all's said and done, they're
SLOANES."
Marilla nodded. To an outsider, the statement that Sloanes were
Sloanes might not be very illuminating, but she understood. Every
village has such a family; good, honest, respectable people they may be,
but SLOANES they are and must ever remain, though they speak with
the tongues of men and angels.
Gilbert and Anne, happily unconscious that their future was thus being
settled by Mrs. Rachel, were sauntering through the shadows of the
Haunted Wood. Beyond, the harvest hills were basking in an amber
sunset radiance, under a pale, aerial sky of rose and blue. The distant
spruce groves were burnished bronze, and their long shadows barred
the upland meadows. But around them a little wind sang among the fir
tassels, and in it there was the note of autumn.
"This wood really is haunted now -- by old memories," said Anne,
stooping to gather a spray of ferns, bleached to waxen whiteness by
frost. "It seems to me that the little girls Diana and I used to be play
here still, and sit by the Dryad's Bubble in the twilights, trysting with
the ghosts. Do you know, I can never go up this path in the dusk
without feeling a bit of the old fright and shiver? There was one
especially horrifying phantom which we created -- the ghost of the
murdered child that crept up behind you and laid cold fingers on yours.
I confess that, to this day, I cannot help fancying its little, furtive

footsteps behind me when I come here after nightfall. I'm not afraid of
the White Lady or the headless man or the skeletons, but I wish I had
never imagined that baby's ghost into existence. How angry Marilla and
Mrs. Barry were over that affair," concluded Anne, with reminiscent
laughter.
The woods around the head of the marsh were full of purple vistas,
threaded with gossamers. Past a dour plantation of gnarled spruces and
a maple-fringed, sun-warm valley they found the "something" Gilbert
was looking for.
"Ah, here it is," he said with satisfaction.
"An apple tree -- and away back here!" exclaimed Anne delightedly.
"Yes, a veritable apple-bearing apple tree, too, here in the very midst of
pines and beeches, a mile away from any orchard. I was here one day
last spring and found it, all white with blossom. So I resolved I'd come
again in the fall and see if it had been apples. See, it's loaded. They
look good, too -- tawny as russets but with a dusky red cheek. Most
wild seedlings are green and uninviting."
"I suppose it sprang years ago from some chance-sown