Chapter XXIV

CHAPTER XXIV

Miss Stacy and Her Pupils Get Up a Concert

It was October again when Anne was ready to go back to school--a
glorious October, all red and gold, with mellow mornings when the
valleys were filled with delicate mists as if the spirit of
autumn had poured them in for the sun to drain--amethyst, pearl,
silver, rose, and smoke-blue. The dews were so heavy that the
fields glistened like cloth of silver and there were such heaps
of rustling leaves in the hollows of many-stemmed woods to run
crisply through. The Birch Path was a canopy of yellow and the
ferns were sear and brown all along it. There was a tang in the
very air that inspired the hearts of small maidens tripping,
unlike snails, swiftly and willingly to school; and it WAS jolly
to be back again at the little brown desk beside Diana, with Ruby
Gillis nodding across the aisle and Carrie Sloane sending up
notes and Julia Bell passing a "chew" of gum down from the back
seat. Anne drew a long breath of happiness as she sharpened her
pencil and arranged her picture cards in her desk. Life was
certainly very interesting.

In the new teacher she found another true and helpful friend.
Miss Stacy was a bright, sympathetic young woman with the happy
gift of winning and holding the affections of her pupils and
bringing out the best that was in them mentally and morally.
Anne expanded like a flower under this wholesome influence and
carried home to the admiring Matthew and the critical Marilla
glowing accounts of schoolwork and aims.

"I love Miss Stacy with my whole heart, Marilla. She is so
ladylike and she has such a sweet voice. When she pronounces
my name I feel INSTINCTIVELY that she's spelling it with an E.
We had recitations this afternoon. I just wish you could have
been there to hear me recite 'Mary, Queen of Scots.' I just put
my whole soul into it. Ruby Gillis told me coming home that the
way I said the line, 'Now for my father's arm,' she said, 'my
woman's heart farewell,' just made her blood run cold."

"Well now, you might recite it for me some of these days, out in
the barn," suggested Matthew.

"Of course I will," said Anne meditatively, "but I won't be able
to do it so well, I know. It won't be so exciting as it is when
you have a whole schoolful before you hanging breathlessly on
your words. I know I won't be able to make your blood run cold."

"Mrs. Lynde says it made HER blood run cold to see the boys
climbing to the very tops of those big trees on Bell's hill after
crows' nests last Friday," said Marilla. "I wonder at Miss Stacy
for encouraging it."

"But we wanted a crow's nest for nature study," explained Anne.
"That was on our field afternoon. Field afternoons are