Chapter IV

CHAPTER IV

Morning at Green Gables

It was broad daylight when Anne awoke and sat up in bed,
staring confusedly at the window through which a flood of
cheery sunshine was pouring and outside of which something
white and feathery waved across glimpses of blue sky.

For a moment she could not remember where she was. First
came a delightful thrill, as something very pleasant; then a
horrible remembrance. This was Green Gables and they didn't
want her because she wasn't a boy!

But it was morning and, yes, it was a cherry-tree in full
bloom outside of her window. With a bound she was out of
bed and across the floor. She pushed up the sash--it went
up stiffly and creakily, as if it hadn't been opened for a
long time, which was the case; and it stuck so tight that
nothing was needed to hold it up.

Anne dropped on her knees and gazed out into the June
morning, her eyes glistening with delight. Oh, wasn't it
beautiful? Wasn't it a lovely place? Suppose she wasn't
really going to stay here! She would imagine she was.
There was scope for imagination here.

A huge cherry-tree grew outside, so close that its boughs
tapped against the house, and it was so thick-set with
blossoms that hardly a leaf was to be seen. On both sides
of the house was a big orchard, one of apple-trees and one
of cherry-trees, also showered over with blossoms; and their
grass was all sprinkled with dandelions. In the garden below
were lilac-trees purple with flowers, and their dizzily
sweet fragrance drifted up to the window on the morning
wind.

Below the garden a green field lush with clover sloped down
to the hollow where the brook ran and where scores of white
birches grew, upspringing airily out of an undergrowth
suggestive of delightful possibilities in ferns and mosses
and woodsy things generally. Beyond it was a hill, green
and feathery with spruce and fir; there was a gap in it
where the gray gable end of the little house she had seen
from the other side of the Lake of Shining Waters was visible.

Off to the left were the big barns and beyond them, away
down over green, low-sloping fields, was a sparkling blue
glimpse of sea.

Anne's beauty-loving eyes lingered on it all, taking everything
greedily in. She had looked on so many unlovely places in her life,
poor child; but this was as lovely as anything she had ever dreamed.

She knelt there, lost to everything but the loveliness
around her, until she was startled by a hand on her
shoulder. Marilla had come in unheard by the small dreamer.

"It's time you were dressed," she said curtly.

Marilla really did not know how to talk to the child, and
her uncomfortable ignorance made her crisp