Chapter XXX - Page 2

that, though. Diana
has never forgotten the scolding her mother gave her about
imagining ghosts into the Haunted Wood. It had a very bad effect
on Diana's imagination. It blighted it. Mrs. Lynde says Myrtle
Bell is a blighted being. I asked Ruby Gillis why Myrtle was
blighted, and Ruby said she guessed it was because her young man
had gone back on her. Ruby Gillis thinks of nothing but young men,
and the older she gets the worse she is. Young men are all very
well in their place, but it doesn't do to drag them into
everything, does it? Diana and I are thinking seriously of
promising each other that we will never marry but be nice old
maids and live together forever. Diana hasn't quite made up her
mind though, because she thinks perhaps it would be nobler to
marry some wild, dashing, wicked young man and reform him. Diana
and I talk a great deal about serious subjects now, you know. We
feel that we are so much older than we used to be that it isn't
becoming to talk of childish matters. It's such a solemn thing
to be almost fourteen, Marilla. Miss Stacy took all us girls who
are in our teens down to the brook last Wednesday, and talked to
us about it. She said we couldn't be too careful what habits we
formed and what ideals we acquired in our teens, because by the
time we were twenty our characters would be developed and the
foundation laid for our whole future life. And she said if the
foundation was shaky we could never build anything really worth
while on it. Diana and I talked the matter over coming home from
school. We felt extremely solemn, Marilla. And we decided that
we would try to be very careful indeed and form respectable
habits and learn all we could and be as sensible as possible, so
that by the time we were twenty our characters would be properly
developed. It's perfectly appalling to think of being twenty,
Marilla. It sounds so fearfully old and grown up. But why was
Miss Stacy here this afternoon?"

"That is what I want to tell you, Anne, if you'll ever give me a
chance to get a word in edgewise. She was talking about you."

"About me?" Anne looked rather scared. Then she flushed and exclaimed:

"Oh, I know what she was saying. I meant to tell you, Marilla,
honestly I did, but I forgot. Miss Stacy caught me reading Ben
Hur in school yesterday afternoon when I should have been studying
my Canadian history. Jane Andrews lent it to me. I was reading
it at dinner hour, and I had just got to the chariot race when
school went in. I was simply wild to know how it turned out--
although I felt sure Ben Hur must win, because it wouldn't be
poetical justice if he didn't--so I spread the history open on
my desk lid and then tucked Ben Hur between the desk and my knee.
I