ANNE OF GREEN GABLES

By Lucy Maud Montgomery

Table of Contents

CHAPTER I. Mrs. Rachel Lynde Is Surprised
CHAPTER II. Matthew Cuthbert Is Surprised
CHAPTER III. Marilla Cuthbert Is Surprised
CHAPTER IV. Morning at Green Gables
CHAPTER V. Anne's History
CHAPTER VI. Marilla Makes Up Her Mind
CHAPTER VII. Anne Says Her Prayers
CHAPTER VIII. Anne's Bringing-up Is Begun
CHAPTER IX. Mrs. Rachel Lynde Is Properly Horrified
CHAPTER X. Anne's Apology
CHAPTER XI. Anne's Impressions of Sunday-school
CHAPTER XII. A Solemn Vow and Promise
CHAPTER XIII. The Delights of Anticipation
CHAPTER XIV. Anne's Confession
CHAPTER XV. A Tempest in the School Teapot
CHAPTER XVI. Diana Is Invited to Tea with Tragic Results
CHAPTER XVII. A New Interest in Life
CHAPTER XVIII. Anne to the Rescue
CHAPTER XIX. A Concert, a Catastrophe, and a Confession
CHAPTER XX. A Good Imagination Gone Wrong
CHAPTER XXI. A New Departure in Flavorings
CHAPTER XXII. Anne Is Invited Out to Tea
CHAPTER XXIII. Anne Comes to Grief in an Affair of Honor
CHAPTER XXIV. Miss Stacy and Her Pupils Get Up a Concert
CHAPTER XXV. Matthew Insists on Puffed Sleeves
CHAPTER XXVI. The Story Club Is Formed
CHAPTER XXVII. Vanity and Vexation of Spirit
CHAPTER XXVIII. An Unfortunate Lily Maid
CHAPTER XXIX. An Epoch in Anne's Life
CHAPTER XXX. The Queen's Class Is Organized
CHAPTER XXXI. Where the Brook and River Meet
CHAPTER XXXII. The Pass List Is Out
CHAPTER XXXIII. The Hotel Concert
CHAPTER XXXIV. A Queen's Girl
CHAPTER XXXV. The Winter at Queen's
CHAPTER XXXVI. The Glory and the Dream
CHAPTER XXXVII. The Reaper Whose Name Is Death
CHAPTER XXXVIII. The Bend in the Road

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CHAPTER I. Mrs. Rachel Lynde Is Surprised

Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived right where the main road through Avonlea dipped down into a small hollow. The hollow was lined with alder bushes and a plant called ladies' eardrops, and a brook ran through it. That brook started far back in the woods on the old Cuthbert property. People said that deep in the woods it was a wild, rushing stream, full of hidden pools and little waterfalls. But by the time it reached Lynde's Hollow, it had calmed down into a quiet, well-behaved little stream — because not even a brook could rush carelessly past Mrs. Rachel Lynde's door. It seemed to know that she was watching from her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed by, whether it was a brook or a child. And if she ever spotted anything strange or out of place, she would not rest until she discovered exactly why it was happening.

Plenty of people, both in Avonlea and elsewhere, manage to poke into their neighbors' business by ignoring their own. But Mrs. Rachel Lynde was a capable woman who managed to take care of her own affairs and keep track of everyone else's too. She was an excellent housekeeper — her work was always finished, and finished well. She ran the Sewing Circle, helped run Sunday school, and was one of the strongest supporters of the Church Aid Society and the group that raised money for missionaries overseas. Yet even with all this, Mrs. Rachel still found plenty of time to sit for hours at her kitchen window. There she knitted "cotton warp" quilts — she had already made sixteen of them, which Avonlea housewives spoke of in hushed, admiring voices — all while keeping a close watch on the main road that crossed the hollow and climbed the steep red hill beyond.

Avonlea sat on a small triangular piece of land jutting out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, with water on two sides. This meant that anyone entering or leaving the village had to travel over that hill road — and so could not escape passing beneath Mrs. Rachel's watchful eyes.

One afternoon in early June, she was sitting there as usual. Sunlight poured warmly through the window. Below the house, the orchard was covered in pink-and-white blossoms, and bees hummed busily among the flowers. Thomas Lynde — a quiet, mild little man whom people in Avonlea simply called "Rachel Lynde's husband" — was out planting his late turnip seeds in the hill field beyond the barn. Matthew Cuthbert should have been doing the very same thing, planting his turnip seeds in the big red brook field over by Green Gables. Mrs. Rachel knew this because she had overheard him tell Peter Morrison the evening before, in William J. Blair's store in Carmody, that he planned to sow his turnip seed the next afternoon. Of course, Peter had to ask him this — Matthew Cuthbert was not the kind of man who ever offered information about anything on his own.

And yet, here was Matthew Cuthbert, at half-past three in the afternoon on what should have been a busy working day, calmly driving his buggy over the hollow and up the hill. What's more, he was wearing a white collar and his best suit — clear proof that he was heading out of Avonlea. And he had taken the buggy along with his sorrel-colored mare, which meant he was going quite a distance. So where was Matthew Cuthbert going, and why?

If this had been any other man in Avonlea, Mrs. Rachel could have pieced together a pretty good guess just from these clues. But Matthew almost never left home unless something urgent or unusual required it. He was the shyest man alive and hated being around strangers or having to make conversation anywhere new. Seeing him dressed up in a white collar, driving off in a buggy, was simply not something that happened often. No matter how hard she thought about it, Mrs. Rachel could make no sense of it, and it completely ruined her pleasant afternoon.

"I'll just step over to Green Gables after supper and ask Marilla where he's gone and why," the good woman finally decided. "He doesn't usually go into town this time of year, and he never pays visits. If he'd run out of turnip seed, he wouldn't need to dress up and take the buggy just to buy more. And he wasn't driving fast enough to be rushing for a doctor. Still, something must have happened since last night to send him off like this. I'm completely puzzled, and I won't have a moment's peace until I find out what has taken Matthew Cuthbert out of Avonlea today."

So, after supper, Mrs. Rachel set out. She didn't have far to go. The big, rambling house surrounded by orchards where the Cuthberts lived stood barely a quarter of a mile up the road from Lynde's Hollow — although the long lane leading up to it made the walk feel longer. Matthew Cuthbert's father had been just as shy and quiet as his son, and when he built the family homestead, he had placed it as far from other people as he possibly could without moving into the woods entirely. Green Gables stood at the very edge of the cleared land, tucked away and barely visible from the main road where all the other Avonlea houses stood in friendly view of one another. Mrs. Rachel Lynde did not consider living in such an out-of-the-way spot to be living at all.

"It's just staying put, that's what it is," she muttered to herself as she walked along the deeply rutted, grassy lane bordered with wild rose bushes. "No wonder Matthew and Marilla are a bit odd, tucked away back here all by themselves. Trees aren't much company, though goodness knows there are plenty of them around. I'd rather look at people myself. Still, they seem content enough — I suppose they've grown used to it. A person can get used to almost anything, even being hanged, as the saying goes."

With that thought, Mrs. Rachel stepped out of the lane and into the backyard of Green Gables. The yard was neat and tidy, green grass bordered on one side by tall, old willow trees and on the other by straight rows of poplar trees. Not a single stray stick or stone lay out of place — because if there had been, Mrs. Rachel certainly would have spotted it. Privately, she suspected that Marilla Cuthbert swept that yard just as often as she swept her house. You could practically have eaten a meal straight off the ground without picking up a speck of dirt.

Mrs. Rachel knocked briskly on the kitchen door and walked in as soon as she was invited. The kitchen at Green Gables was a pleasant room — or would have been pleasant, if it hadn't been kept so painfully clean that it almost looked like an unused parlor rather than a real, lived-in kitchen. It had windows facing east and west. Through the west window, which looked out on the backyard, streamed cheerful June sunlight. But the east window, which offered a glimpse of blossoming white cherry trees in the left-hand orchard and slender birch trees nodding down by the brook, was shaded by a tangle of climbing vines. Here sat Marilla Cuthbert, whenever she sat down at all — she was always a little suspicious of sunshine, which struck her as far too playful and carefree a thing for a world that was meant to be taken seriously. She sat here now, knitting, with the table behind her already set for supper.

Before she had even finished closing the door, Mrs. Rachel had mentally noted everything laid out on that table. Three plates were set, meaning Marilla must be expecting someone to come home with Matthew for tea. But the dishes were ordinary, everyday ones, and there was only crab-apple preserves and a single kind of cake — so whoever was expected clearly wasn't anyone very important. Yet what, then, explained Matthew's white collar and the sorrel mare? Mrs. Rachel was growing quite dizzy trying to solve this unusual mystery surrounding the normally unmysterious Green Gables.

"Good evening, Rachel," Marilla said briskly. "This is a real fine evening, isn't it? Won't you sit down? How is your family?"

A kind of friendship — it's hard to call it anything else — existed between Marilla Cuthbert and Mrs. Rachel, perhaps because the two women were so different from one another rather than in spite of it.

Marilla was tall and thin, all angles and no curves. Her dark hair, streaked with a little gray, was always twisted into a tight knot at the back of her head, held firmly in place with two wire hairpins. She looked like a woman who had seen little of the world and lived by a very strict sense of right and wrong — which she had, and did. Still, there was something about the shape of her mouth that, if it had been allowed to show itself just a little more, might have hinted at a sense of humor.

"We're all doing fine," said Mrs. Rachel. "Though I was a bit worried about you, when I saw Matthew heading off