Chapter XXII

CHAPTER XXII

Anne is Invited Out to Tea

"And what are your eyes popping out of your head about. Now?"
asked Marilla, when Anne had just come in from a run to the
post office. "Have you discovered another kindred spirit?"
Excitement hung around Anne like a garment, shone in her eyes,
kindled in every feature. She had come dancing up the lane, like
a wind-blown sprite, through the mellow sunshine and lazy shadows
of the August evening.

"No, Marilla, but oh, what do you think? I am invited to tea at
the manse tomorrow afternoon! Mrs. Allan left the letter for me
at the post office. Just look at it, Marilla. 'Miss Anne Shirley,
Green Gables.' That is the first time I was ever called 'Miss.'
Such a thrill as it gave me! I shall cherish it forever among
my choicest treasures."

"Mrs. Allan told me she meant to have all the members of her
Sunday-school class to tea in turn," said Marilla, regarding the
wonderful event very coolly. "You needn't get in such a fever
over it. Do learn to take things calmly, child."

For Anne to take things calmly would have been to change her
nature. All "spirit and fire and dew," as she was, the pleasures
and pains of life came to her with trebled intensity. Marilla
felt this and was vaguely troubled over it, realizing that the
ups and downs of existence would probably bear hardly on this
impulsive soul and not sufficiently understanding that the
equally great capacity for delight might more than compensate.
Therefore Marilla conceived it to be her duty to drill Anne into
a tranquil uniformity of disposition as impossible and alien to
her as to a dancing sunbeam in one of the brook shallows. She
did not make much headway, as she sorrowfully admitted to herself.
The downfall of some dear hope or plan plunged Anne into "deeps
of affliction." The fulfillment thereof exalted her to dizzy realms
of delight. Marilla had almost begun to despair of ever fashioning
this waif of the world into her model little girl of demure manners
and prim deportment. Neither would she have believed that she really
liked Anne much better as she was.

Anne went to bed that night speechless with misery because
Matthew had said the wind was round northeast and he feared it
would be a rainy day tomorrow. The rustle of the poplar leaves
about the house worried her, it sounded so like pattering
raindrops, and the full, faraway roar of the gulf, to which she
listened delightedly at other times, loving its strange,
sonorous, haunting rhythm, now seemed like a prophecy of storm
and disaster to a small maiden who particularly wanted a fine
day. Anne thought that the morning would never come.

But all things have an end, even nights before the day on which you