Chapter XXII
Spring and Anne Return to Green Gables
The firelight shadows were dancing over the kitchen walls at Green Gables,
for the spring evening was chilly; through the open east window drifted in the
subtly sweet voices of the night. Marilla was sitting by the fire—at least, in
body. In spirit she was roaming olden ways, with feet grown young. Of late
Marilla had thus spent many an hour, when she thought she should have been
knitting for the twins.
“I suppose I’m growing old,” she said.
Yet Marilla had changed but little in the past nine years, save to grow
something thinner, and even more angular; there was a little more gray in the
hair that was still twisted up in the same hard knot, with two hairpins—WERE
they the same hairpins?—still stuck through it. But her expression was very
different; the something about the mouth which had hinted at a sense of humor
had developed wonderfully; her eyes were gentler and milder, her smile more
frequent and tender.
Marilla was thinking of her whole past life, her cramped but not unhappy
childhood, the jealously hidden dreams and the blighted hopes of her girlhood,
the long, gray, narrow, monotonous years of dull middle life that followed. And
the coming of Anne—the vivid, imaginative, impetuous child with her heart of
love, and her world of fancy, bringing with her color and warmth and radiance,
until the wilderness of existence had blossomed like the rose. Marilla felt that
out of her sixty years she had lived only the nine that had followed the advent of
Anne. And Anne would be home tomorrow night.
The kitchen door opened. Marilla looked up expecting to see Mrs. Lynde.
Anne stood before her, tall and starry-eyed, with her hands full of Mayflowers
and violets.
“Anne Shirley!” exclaimed Marilla. For once in her life she was surprised out
of her reserve; she caught her girl in her arms and crushed her and her flowers
against her heart, kissing the bright hair and sweet face warmly. “I never looked
for you till tomorrow night. How did you get from Carmody?”