Anne Of Windy Poplars √ (Project K.)

YEAR 2: CHAPTER 7

"Windy Poplars,
"January 5th,
"The street where ghosts (should) walk.

"MY ESTEEMED FRIEND:

"That isn't anything Aunt Chatty's grandmother wrote. It's only something she would have written if she'd thought of it.

"I've made a New Year resolution to write sensible love-letters. Do you suppose such a thing is possible?

"I have left dear Green Gables but I have returned to dear Windy Poplars. Rebecca Dew had a fire lighted in the tower room for me and a hot-water bottle in the bed.

"I'm so glad I like Windy Poplars. It would be dreadful to live in a place I didn't like . . . that didn't seem friendly to me . . . that didn't say, 'I'm glad you're back.' Windy Poplars does. It's a bit old-fashioned and a bit prim, but it likes me.

"And I was glad to see Aunt Kate and Aunt Chatty and Rebecca Dew again. I can't help seeing their funny sides but I love them well for all that.

"Rebecca Dew said such a nice thing to me yesterday.

"'Spook's Lane has been a different place since you came here, Miss Shirley.'

"I'm glad you liked Katherine, Gilbert. She was surprisingly nice to you. It's amazing to find how nice she can be when she tries. And I think she is just as much amazed at it herself as any one else. She had no idea it would be so easy.

"It's going to make so much difference in school, having a Vice you can really work with. She is going to change her boarding-house, and I have already persuaded her to get that velvet hat and have not yet given up hope of persuading her to sing in the choir.

"Mr. Hamilton's dog came down yesterday and chivied Dusty Miller. 'This is the last straw,' said Rebecca Dew. And with her red cheeks redder still, her chubby back shaking with anger, and in such a hurry that she put her hat on hindside before and never knew it, she toddled up the road and gave Mr. Hamilton quite a large piece of her mind. I can just see his foolish, amiable face while he was listening to her.

"'I do not like That Cat,' she told me, 'but he is OURS and no Hamilton dog is going to come here and give him impudence in his own back yard. "He only chased your cat in fun," said Jabez Hamilton. "The Hamilton ideas of fun are different from the MacComber ideas of fun or the MacLean ideas of fun or, if it comes to that, the Dew ideas of fun," I told him. "Tut, tut, you must have had cabbage for dinner, Miss Dew," said he. "No," I said, "but I could have had. Mrs. Captain MacComber didn't sell all her cabbages last fall and leave her family without any because the price was so good. There are some people," sez I, "that can't hear anything because of the jingle in their pocket." And I left that to sink in. But what could you expect from a Hamilton? Low scum!'

"There is a crimson star hanging low over the white Storm King. I wish you were here to watch it with me. If you were, I really think it would be more than a moment of esteem and friendship."

"January 12th.

"Little Elizabeth came over two nights ago to find out if I could tell her what peculiar kind of terrible animals Papal bulls were, and to tell me tearfully that her teacher had asked her to sing at a concert the public school is getting up but that Mrs. Campbell put her foot down and said 'no' most decidedly. When Elizabeth attempted to plead, Mrs. Campbell said,

"'Have the goodness not to talk back to me, Elizabeth, if you please.'

"Little Elizabeth wept a few bitter tears in the tower room that night and said she felt it would make her Lizzie forever. She could never be any of her other names again.