Chapter XXXI
Anne to Philippa
“Anne Shirley to Philippa Gordon, greeting.
“Well-beloved, it’s high time I was writing you. Here am I, installed once
more as a country ‘schoolma’am’ at Valley Road, boarding at ‘Wayside,’ the
home of Miss Janet Sweet. Janet is a dear soul and very nicelooking; tall, but not
over-tall; stoutish, yet with a certain restraint of outline suggestive of a thrifty
soul who is not going to be overlavish even in the matter of avoirdupois. She has
a knot of soft, crimpy, brown hair with a thread of gray in it, a sunny face with
rosy cheeks, and big, kind eyes as blue as forget-me-nots. Moreover, she is one
of those delightful, old-fashioned cooks who don’t care a bit if they ruin your
digestion as long as they can give you feasts of fat things.
“I like her; and she likes me—principally, it seems, because she had a sister
named Anne who died young.
“‘I’m real glad to see you,’ she said briskly, when I landed in her yard. ‘My,
you don’t look a mite like I expected. I was sure you’d be dark—my sister Anne
was dark. And here you’re redheaded!’
“For a few minutes I thought I wasn’t going to like Janet as much as I had
expected at first sight. Then I reminded myself that I really must be more
sensible than to be prejudiced against any one simply because she called my hair
red. Probably the word ‘auburn’ was not in Janet’s vocabulary at all.
“‘Wayside’ is a dear sort of little spot. The house is small and white, set down
in a delightful little hollow that drops away from the road. Between road and
house is an orchard and flower-garden all mixed up together. The front door
walk is bordered with quahog clam-shells—‘cow-hawks,’ Janet calls them; there
is Virginia Creeper over the porch and moss on the roof. My room is a neat little
spot ‘off the parlor’—just big enough for the bed and me. Over the head of my
bed there is a picture of Robby Burns standing at Highland Mary’s grave,
shadowed by an enormous weeping willow tree. Robby’s face is so lugubrious
that it is no wonder I have bad dreams. Why, the first night I was here I dreamed
I COULDN’T LAUGH.