Free Anne of Windy Willows by Lucy Maud Montgomery Page A

little bit pretty when I put it on tonight, Miss Shirley, and I wished Father could see me. Of course, he will see me in Tomorrow, but it sometimes seems so slow in coming. I wish we could hurry time a bit, Miss Shirley.”
    ‘Now, dearest, I must work out some geometrical exercises. Geometry exercises have taken the place of what Rebecca calls my “literary efforts”. The spectre that haunts my daily path now is the dread of an exercise popping up in class that I can’t do. And what would the Pringles say then, oh, then! Oh, what would the Pringles say then!
    ‘Meanwhile, as you love me and the cat tribe, pray for a poor broken-hearted, ill-used Thomas cat. A mouse ran over Rebecca Dew’s foot in the pantry the other day, and she has fumed ever since. “That Cat does nothing but eat and sleep, and lets mice overrun everything. This
is
the last straw!’ So she chivvies him from pillar to post, routs him off his favourite cushion, and – I know, for I caught her at it – assists him none too gently with her foot when she lets him out.’
    7
    One Friday evening, at the end of a mild, sunny December day, Anne went out to Lowvale to attend a turkey supper. Wilfred Bryce’s home was in Lowvale, where he lived with an uncle and aunt, and he had asked her shyly if she would go out with him after school to the turkey supper in the church and spend Saturday at his home. Anne agreed, hoping that she might be able to influence the uncle to let Wilfred keep on going to High. Wilfred was afraid that he would not be able to go back after New Year’s Day. He was a clever, ambitious boy, and Anne felt a special interest in him.
    It could not be said that she enjoyed her visit overmuch, except in the pleasure it gave Wilfred. His uncle and aunt were a rather odd and uncouth pair. Saturday morning was windy and dark, with showers of snow, and at first Anne wondered how she was going to put in the day. She felt tired and sleepy after the late hours of the turkey supper, Wilfred had to help thrash, and there was not even a book in sight. Then she thought of the battered old seaman’s chest she had seen in the back hall upstairs, and recalled Mrs Stanton’s request. Mrs Stanton was writing a history of Prince County, and had asked Anne if she knew of, or could find, any old diaries or documents that might be helpful.
    ‘The Pringles, of course, have lots that I could use,’ she told Anne, ‘but I can’t ask
them
. You know the Pringles and the Stantons have never been friends.’
    ‘
I
can’t ask them either, unfortunately,’ said Anne.
    ‘Oh, I’m not expecting you to. All I want is for you to keep your eyes open when you are visiting round in other people’s homes, and if you find or hear of any old diaries or maps, or anything like that, try to get the loan of them for me. You’ve no idea what interesting things I’ve found in old diaries – little bits of real life that make the old pioneers live again. I want to get things like that for my book as well as statistics and genealogical tables.’
    Anne asked Mrs Bryce if they had any such old records. Mrs Bryce shook her head.
    ‘Not as I knows on. In course’ – brightening up – ‘there’s old Uncle Andy’s chist up there. There might be something in it. He used to sail with old Captain Abraham Pringle. I’ll go out and ask Duncan if ye kin root in it.’
    Duncan sent word back that she could ‘root’ in it all she liked, and if she found any ‘dockymints’ she could have them. He’d been meaning to burn the ‘hull’ contents anyway, and take the chest for a tool-box. Anne accordingly rooted, but all she found was an old yellowed diary, or ‘log’, which Andy Bryce seemed to have kept all through his years at sea. Anne beguiled the stormy forenoon away by reading it with interest and amusement. Andy was learned in sea-lore, and had gone on many voyages with Captain Abraham Pringle, whom he evidently admired immensely. The diary was full of