d you splendid, Anne, except
Anthony Pye. I must admit he didn't. He said you 'weren't any good,
just like all girl teachers.' There's the Pye leaven for you. But never
mind."
"I'm not going to mind," said Anne quietly, "and I'm going to make
Anthony Pye like me yet. Patience and kindness will surely win him."
"Well, you can never tell about a Pye," said Mrs. Rachel cautiously.
"They go by contraries, like dreams, often as not. As for that DonNELL
woman, she'll get no DonNELLing from me, I can assure you. The name is
DONnell and always has been. The woman is crazy, that's what. She has a
pug dog she calls Queenie and it has its meals at the table along with
the family, eating off a china plate. I'd be afraid of a judgment if I
was her. Thomas says Donnell himself is a sensible, hard-working man,
but he hadn't much gumption when he picked out a wife, that's what."
VI
All Sorts and Conditions of Men . . . and women
A September day on Prince Edward Island hills; a crisp wind blowing
up over the sand dunes from the sea; a long red road, winding through
fields and woods, now looping itself about a corner of thick set
spruces, now threading a plantation of young maples with great feathery
sheets of ferns beneath them, now dipping down into a hollow where a
brook flashed out of the woods and into them again, now basking in
open sunshine between ribbons of golden-rod and smoke-blue asters;
air athrill with the pipings of myriads of crickets, those glad little
pensioners of the summer hills; a plump brown pony ambling along the
road; two girls behind him, full to the lips with the simple, priceless
joy of youth and life.
"Oh, this is a day left over from Eden, isn't it, Diana?" . . . and Anne
sighed for sheer happiness. "The air has magic in it. Look at the purple
in the cup of the harvest valley, Diana. And oh, do smell the dying fir!
It's coming up from that little sunny hollow where Mr. Eben Wright has
been cutting fence poles. Bliss is it on such a day to be alive; but
to smell dying fir is very heaven. That's two thirds Wordsworth and one
third Anne Shirley. It doesn't seem possible that there should be dying
fir in heaven, does it? And yet it doesn't seem to me that heaven would
be quite perfect if you couldn't get a whiff of dead fir as you went
through its woods. Perhaps we'll have the odor there without the death.
Yes, I think that will be the way. That delicious aroma must be the
souls of the firs
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