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<h2> Chapter XXXI </h2>
<h3> Anne to Philippa </h3>
<p>"Anne Shirley to Philippa Gordon, greeting.</p>
<p>"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.</p>
<p>"I like her; and she likes me—principally, it seems, because she had
a sister named Anne who died young.</p>
<p>"'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!'</p>
<p>"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.</p>
<p>"'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.</p>
<p>"The parlor is tiny and neat. Its one window is so shaded by a huge willow
that the room has a grotto-like effect of emerald gloom. There are
wonderful tidies on the chairs, and gay mats on the floor, and books and
cards carefully arranged on a round table, and vases of dried grass on the
mantel-piece. Between the vases is a cheerful decoration of preserved
coffin plates—five in all, pertaining respectively to Janet's father
and mother, a brother, her sister Anne, and a hired man who died here
once! If I go suddenly insane some of these days 'know all men by these
presents' that those coffin-plates have caused it.</p>
<p>"But it's all delightful and I said so. Janet loved me for it, just as she
detested poor Esther because Esther had said so much shade was unhygienic
and had objected to sleeping on a feather bed. Now, I glory in
feather-beds, and the more unhygienic and feathery they are the more I
glory. Janet says it is such a comfort to see me eat; she had been so
afraid I would be like Miss Haythorne, who wouldn't eat anything but fruit
and hot water for breakfast and tried to make Janet give up frying things.
Esther is really a dear girl, but she is rather given to fads. The trouble
is that she hasn't enough imagination and HAS a tendency to indigestion.</p>
<p>"Janet told me I could have the use of the parlor when any young men
called! I don't think there are many to call. I haven't seen a young man
in Valley Road yet, except the next-door hired boy—Sam Toliver, a
very tall, lank, tow-haired youth. He came over one evening recently and
sat for an hour on the garden fence, near the front porch where Janet and
I were doing fancy-work. The only remarks he volunteered in all that time
were, 'Hev a peppermint, miss! Dew now-fine thing for carARRH,
peppermints,' and, 'Powerful lot o' jump-grasses round here ternight.
Yep.'</p>
<p>"But there is a love affair going on here. It seems to be my fortune to be
mixed up, more or less actively, with elderly love affairs. Mr. and Mrs.
Irving always say that I brought about their marriage. Mrs. Stephen Clark
of Carmody persists in being most grateful to me for a suggestion which
somebody else would probably have made if I hadn't. I do really think,
though, that Ludovic Speed would never have got any further along than
placid courtship if I had not helped him and Theodora Dix out.</p>
<p>"In the present affair I am only a passive spectator. I've tried once to
help things along and made an awful mess of it. So I shall not meddle
again. I'll tell you all about it when we meet."</p>
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