The Complete Novels of Lucy Maud Montgomery - 20 Titles in One Volume: Including Anne of Green Gables Series, Emily Starr Trilogy, The Blue Castle, The Story Girl & Pat of Silver Bush Series. Lucy Maud Montgomery
ago I took the glass of milk to the wall door and little Elizabeth herself was there to get it instead of the Woman, her head just coming above the solid part of the door, so that her face was framed in the ivy. She is small, pale, golden and wistful. Her eyes, looking at me through the autumn twilight, are large and golden-hazel. Her silver-gold hair was parted in the middle, sleeked plainly down over her head with a circular comb, and fell in waves on her shoulders. She wore a pale blue gingham dress and the expression of a princess of elfland. She had what Rebecca Dew calls ‘a delicate air,’ and gave me the impression of a child who was more or less undernourished … not in body, but in soul. More of a moonbeam than a sunbeam.
“‘And this is Elizabeth?’ I said.
“‘Not tonight,’ she answered gravely. ‘This is my night for being Betty because I love everything in the world tonight. I was Elizabeth last night and tomorrow night I’ll prob’ly be Beth. It all depends on how I feel.’
“There was the touch of the kindred spirit for you. I thrilled to it at once.
“‘How very nice to have a name you can change so easily and still feel it’s your own.’
“Little Elizabeth nodded.
“‘I can make so many names out of it. Elsie and Betty and Bess and Elisa and Lisbeth and Beth … but not Lizzie. I never can feel like Lizzie.’
“‘Who could?’ I said.
“‘Do you think it silly of me, Miss Shirley? Grandmother and the Woman do.’
“‘Not silly at all … very wise and very delightful,’ I said..
“Little Elizabeth made saucer eyes at me over the rim of her glass. I felt that I was being weighed in some secret spiritual balance and presently I realized thankfully that I had not been found wanting. For little Elizabeth asked a favor of me … and little Elizabeth does not ask favors of people she does not like.
“‘Would you mind lifting up the cat and letting me pat him?’ she asked shyly.
“Dusty Miller was rubbing against my legs. I lifted him and little Elizabeth put out a tiny hand and stroked his head delightedly.
“‘I like kittens better than babies,’ she said, looking at me with an odd little air of defiance, as if she knew I would be shocked but tell the truth she must.
“‘I suppose you’ve never had much to do with babies, so you don’t know how sweet they are,’ I said, smiling. ‘Have you a kitten of your own?’
“Elizabeth shook her head.
“‘Oh, no; Grandmother doesn’t like cats. And the Woman hates them. The Woman is out tonight, so that is why I could come for the milk. I love coming for the milk because Rebecca Dew is such an agree’ble person.’
“‘Are you sorry she didn’t come tonight?’ I laughed.
“Little Elizabeth shook her head.
“‘No. You are very agree’ble, too. I’ve been wanting to get ‘quainted with you but I was afraid it mightn’t happen before Tomorrow comes.’
“We stood there and talked while Elizabeth sipped her milk daintily and she told me all about Tomorrow. The Woman had told her that Tomorrow never comes, but Elizabeth knows better. It will come sometime. Some beautiful morning she will just wake up and find it is Tomorrow. Not Today but Tomorrow. And then things will happen … wonderful things. She may even have a day to do exactly as she likes in, with nobody watching her … though I think Elizabeth feels that is too good to happen even in Tomorrow. Or she may find out what is at the end of the harbor road … that wandering, twisting road like a nice red snake, that leads, so Elizabeth thinks, to the end of the world. Perhaps the Island of Happiness is there. Elizabeth feels sure there is an Island of Happiness somewhere where all the ships that never come back are anchored, and she will find it when Tomorrow comes.
“‘And when Tomorrow comes,’ said Elizabeth, ‘I will have a million dogs and forty-five cats. I told Grandmother that when she wouldn’t let me have a kitten, Miss Shirley, and she was angry and said, “I’m not ‘customed to be spoken to like that, Miss Impert’nence.” I was sent to bed without supper … but I didn’t mean to be impert’nent. And I couldn’t sleep, Miss Shirley, because the Woman told me that she knew a child once that died in her sleep after being impert’nent.’
“When Elizabeth had finished her milk there came a sharp tapping at some unseen window behind the spruces. I think we had been watched all the time. My elf-maiden ran, her golden head glimmering along the dark spruce aisle until she vanished.
“‘She’s a fanciful little creature,’ said Rebecca Dew when I told her of my adventure … really, it somehow had the quality of an adventure, Gilbert. ‘One day she said to me, “Are you scared of lions, Rebecca Dew?” “I never met any so I can’t tell you,” sez I. “There will be any amount of lions in Tomorrow,” sez she, “but they will be nice friendly lions.” “Child, you’ll turn into eyes if you look like that,” sez I. She was looking clean through me at something she saw in that Tomorrow of hers. “I’m thinking deep thoughts, Rebecca Dew,” she sez. The trouble with that child is she doesn’t laugh enough.’
“I remembered Elizabeth had never laughed once during our talk. I feel that she hasn’t learned how. The great house is so still and lonely and laughterless. It looks dull and gloomy even now when the world is a riot of autumn color. Little Elizabeth is doing too much listening to lost whispers.
“I think one of my missions in Summerside will be to teach her how to laugh.
“Your tenderest, most faithful friend,
“ANNE SHIRLEY.
“P.S. More of Aunt Chatty’s grandmother!”
Chapter III
“Windy Poplars,
“Spook’s Lane,
“S’side,
“October 25th.
“GILBERT DEAR: —
“What do you think? I’ve been to supper at Maplehurst!
“Miss Ellen herself wrote the invitation. Rebecca Dew was really excited … she had never believed they would take any notice of me. And she was quite sure it was not out of friendliness.
“‘They have some sinister motive, that I’m certain of!’ she exclaimed.
“I really had some such feeling in my own mind.
“‘Be sure you put on your best,’ ordered Rebecca Dew.
“So I put on my pretty cream challis dress with the purple violets in it and did my hair the new way with the dip in the forehead. It’s very becoming.
“The ladies of Maplehurst are positively delightful in their own way, Gilbert. I could love them if they’d let me. Maplehurst is a proud, exclusive house which draws its trees around it and won’t associate with common houses. It has a big, white, wooden woman off the bow of old Captain Abraham’s famous ship, the Go and Ask Her, in the orchard and billows of southernwood about the front steps, which was brought out from the old country over a hundred years ago by the first emigrating Pringle. They have another ancestor who fought at the battle of Minden and his sword is hanging on the parlor wall beside Captain Abraham’s portrait. Captain Abraham was their father and they are evidently tremendously proud of him.
“They have stately mirrors over the old, black, fluted mantels, a glass case with wax flowers in it, pictures full of the beauty of the ships of long ago, a hair-wreath containing the hair of every known Pringle, big conch shells and a quilt on the spare-room bed quilted in infinitesimal