Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery (best color ebook reader txt) 📕

“Will I take the peas with me?” said Anne meekly.

“No, I’ll finish shelling them myself. Do as I bid you.”

When Anne had gone Marilla went about her evening tasks in a very disturbed state of mind. She was worried about her valuable brooch. What if Anne had lost it? And how wicked of the child to deny having taken it, when anybody could see she must have! With such an innocent face, too!

“I don’t know what I wouldn’t sooner have had happen,” thought Marilla, as she nervously shelled the peas. “Of course, I don’t suppose she meant to steal it or anything like that. She’s just taken it to play with or help along that imagination of hers. She must have taken it, that’s clear, for there hasn’t been a soul in that room since she was in it, by her own story, until I went up tonight. And the brooch is gone, there’s nothing surer. I suppose she has lost it and is afraid to own up for fear she’ll be punished. It’s a dreadful thing to think she tells falsehoods. It’s a far worse thing than her fit of temper. It’s a fearful responsibility to have a child in your house you can’t trust. Slyness and untruthfulness⁠—that’s what she has displayed. I declare I feel worse about that than about the brooch. If she’d only have told the truth about it I wouldn’t mind so much.”

Marilla went to her room at intervals all through the evening and searched for the brooch, without finding it. A bedtime visit to the east gable produced no result. Anne persisted in denying that she knew anything about the brooch but Marilla was only the more firmly convinced that she did.

She told Matthew the story the next morning. Matthew was confounded and puzzled; he could not so quickly lose faith in Anne but he had to admit that circumstances were against her.

“You’re sure it hasn’t fell down behind the bureau?” was the only suggestion he could offer.

“I’ve moved the bureau and I’ve taken out the drawers and I’ve looked in every crack and cranny” was Marilla’s positive answer. “The brooch is gone and that child has taken it and lied about it. That’s the plain, ugly truth, Matthew Cuthbert, and we might as well look it in the face.”

“Well now, what are you going to do about it?” Matthew asked forlornly, feeling secretly thankful that Marilla and not he had to deal with the situation. He felt no desire to put his oar in this time.

“She’ll stay in her room until she confesses,” said Marilla grimly, remembering the success of this method in the former case. “Then we’ll see. Perhaps we’ll be able to find the brooch if she’ll only tell where she took it; but in any case she’ll have to be severely punished, Matthew.”

“Well now, you’ll have to punish her,” said Matthew, reaching for his hat. “I’ve nothing to do with it, remember. You warned me off yourself.”

Marilla felt deserted by everyone. She could not even go to Mrs. Lynde for advice. She went up to the east gable with a very serious face and left it with a face more serious still. Anne steadfastly refused to confess. She persisted in asserting that she had not taken the brooch. The child had evidently been crying and Marilla felt a pang of pity which she sternly repressed. By night she was, as she expressed it, “beat out.”

“You’ll stay in this room until you confess, Anne. You can make up your mind to that,” she said firmly.

“But the picnic is tomorrow, Marilla,” cried Anne. “You won’t keep me from going to that, will you? You’ll just let me out for the afternoon, won’t you? Then I’ll stay here as long as you like afterwards cheerfully. But I must go to the picnic.”

“You’ll not go to picnics nor anywhere else until you’ve confessed, Anne.”

“Oh, Marilla,” gasped Anne.

But Marilla had gone out and shut the door.

Wednesday morning dawned as bright and fair as if expressly made to order for the picnic. Birds sang around Green Gables; the Madonna lilies in the garden sent out whiffs of perfume that entered in on viewless winds at every door and window, and wandered through halls and rooms like spirits of benediction. The birches in the hollow waved joyful hands as if watching for Anne’s usual morning greeting from the east gable. But Anne was not at her window. When Marilla took her breakfast up to her she found the child sitting primly on her bed, pale and resolute, with tight-shut lips and gleaming eyes.

“Marilla, I’m ready to confess.”

“Ah!” Marilla laid down her tray. Once again her method had succeeded; but her success was very bitter to her. “Let me hear what you have to say then, Anne.”

“I took the amethyst brooch,” said Anne, as if repeating a lesson she had learned. “I took it just as you said. I didn’t mean to take it when I went in. But it did look so beautiful, Marilla, when I pinned it on my breast that I was overcome by an irresistible temptation. I imagined how perfectly thrilling it would be to take it to Idlewild and play I was the Lady Cordelia Fitzgerald. It would be so much easier to imagine I was the Lady Cordelia if I had a real amethyst brooch on. Diana and I make necklaces of roseberries but what are roseberries compared to amethysts? So I took the brooch. I thought I could put it back before you came home. I went all the way around by the road to lengthen out the time. When I was going over the bridge across the Lake of Shining Waters I took the brooch off to have another look at it. Oh, how it did shine in the sunlight! And then, when I was leaning over the bridge, it just slipped through my fingers⁠—so⁠—and went down⁠—down⁠—down, all purply-sparkling, and sank forevermore beneath