The Three of Us

99. Let's Go Home

They drove back to the Warrens, Marilla with her arm around Anne, and Anne trying desperately- and unsuccessfully- to stop crying.

"It's all right, Anne, it's all right! You needn't cry, we're going back right now!"

"Make him drive faster," Anne choked.

By the time they arrived back, Anne could barely breathe and her face was splotchy and red.

They stood on the Warren's porch.

Mrs. Warren answered at Marilla's knock, not looking especially surprised to see them.

She looked at Anne- standing on her front porch, still crying her eyes out- and she opened the door wider, saying kindly to her: "He's in the cradle."

Anne ran into the house, clattering into things but not caring.

Marilla and Mrs. Warren watched her flee from them in search of her baby.

"Well, I don't know what to say," Marilla said with a sigh. "I'm sorry to have wasted your time. And to have promised you an income only to rescind it! We'll still pay you the first month; it's only right, after you've been expecting us."

Mrs. Warren shook her head, saying, "I received a letter from a girl only yesterday. I was going to have to tell her I didn't have room; I didn't think I could take on two young infants at the same time. Now I'll be able to after all. ...She really needed to find a place to keep her baby, she sounded very desperate! You see, most girls in Anne's position simply don't have the kind of support that you're giving Anne. It really makes me feel good to see it."

---

Anne fell over the cradle, heaving with sobs as she yanked her baby from it.

She woke him up, with the reckless pulling of the bed and the careless way she grabbed at him, and he began fussing, but she squeezed him tightly against her- too tightly, and he began wailing- but that didn't stop her.

Marilla rushed in to find Anne on the floor of the Warren's bedroom, hunched over the screaming baby, sobbing into him as she held his little head in her hands.

"I'm sorry!" she sobbed, slumped over him. "I left you!"

She pulled him up and, pressing him against her, she gasped: "I left you! I just...I just...left you!"

Then she looked at him, his face screwed up in unhappiness as he was held much too tightly.

Anne begged his forgiveness: "I won't ever leave you again, I won't! ...You do believe me, don't you?"

And she kept crying, rocking as she held the wailing baby.

Marilla rushed over to her, kneeling protectively at her side. "Anne, it's all right. It's all...Anne, loosen your grip on him; you're hurting him! He won't be able to breathe!"

Marilla pulled the baby away from Anne, not removing him from her arms but just forcing him out of the tight grasp that was causing him to cry.

Mrs. Warren, standing in the doorway, looked at Marilla, feeling glad that this young girl had family who would let her hold on to her baby and support her, when so many other girls who'd crossed her path had been so unsupported and felt they had no choice but to give theirs up.

Marilla tried to get Anne to calm down. "Come now," she said. "You don't have to make grand apologies to him- he's just a baby, he doesn't know what's what!"